On Friday morning, I tweeted this:
As a weekend of mundane chores and To Do lists opened up before me like a yawning chasm of drudgery, I sighed over the days when weekends were different.
It’s over three years ago now – more like four really – when weekends meant late nights on dancefloors, drinks in the pub, shopping trips and lazy afternoons at the cinema. In the absence of swimming lessons or trips to the tip, Sundays were spent sleeping in until midday, followed by an impromptu pub lunch and an evening in front of a DVD.
These days, weekends are punctuated with a morning in a cold swimming pool, a flurry of housework and piles of dirty laundry.
The thing is, I actually rather like weekends full of the mundane minutae of domestic life. Being a busy family, we’re often rushing around the country to see friends or relatives. If we’re not off visiting someone, I’m likely to be at a work event or meeting a deadline. Call me old, but Monday sometimes sees me a broken woman, yearning for a couple of days at home with nothing much to do.
A morning pottering around the garden with my toddler, faffing around with bits of blossom and rogue dandelions was actually just what I needed yesterday. Boring it may be, but it was also calm and strangely satisfying. (My 21 year old self is mortified at that last sentence).
You know what I don’t miss about those former weekends? Feeling regularly hungover – and that dawning realisation on a Monday morning that I spent more than I had.
Although Mother Guilt often makes an appearance in my life these days, Weekend Guilt has long gone. And I don’t miss it one little bit.
If the mundane means a weekend spent with two people I love very much, then bring it on.
What’s your ideal weekend? Do you look forward to ones where there are no plans at all?
I’m really with you ….. I love an ordinary weekend doing ‘stuff’ around the house. Leaves me feeling refreshed – I always feel tired after we have had a ‘friends’ or ‘extended family’ weekend of visits or playing host. Great to see them all, but love those ‘nothing’ weekends too.
Awww lovely Molly. I quite like a mundane weekend too 🙂
You can’t beat a mundane weekend.
I love a weekend without plans. There is always stuff to do – The Boy’s swimming lesson on Sat am, and church on Sun am – but that is often enough activity for us to spend the rest of the weekend happily pottering. Today, DH has massacred a privet, The Boy has spent half the day up our apple tree, and The Toddler was in the sandpit – just about perfect.
I certainly do! Not had one in ages. Need to plan one – how sad is that. Used to be planning to do things – now planning NOT to do things.
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