(Long) Weekend Shenanigans

As I write this, my eyelids are heavy, my body feels so physically exhausted I can compare it to nothing other than running a marathon (which I did once when I was 26). And it is only 7:15pm… but I know I need to power through the last of the kitchen cabinet painting and just be done with it already (more on that tomorrow, if you’d like!).

But don’t get me wrong- to me, physical exhaustion is a welcome feeling. It means that I have lived and worked toward a goal and what’s more, it means I will sleep well at night.

Andrew returned home on Friday morning and took the day off work for a long weekend. He did the lion’s share of childcare for four days straight while I busied myself with weeding our vegetable garden and painting the cabinets and kitchen walls and vacuuming the house. Honestly, the work was such a relief. All my life before having children I worked jobs that required a lot of physicality (until my job as a social worker, but even that was pretty rigorous, considering): I mowed lawns, mulched, planted, and weeded for several summers in a row for my step-father’s landscaping company. I worked 8 hours a day high atop a ladder painting trim on houses with my brother. I painted interiors another summer. I have waitressed and supervised at a local cafe, requiring me to be on my feet for hours on end, willingly. I have lifted the elderly in and out of bed and in and out of wheelchairs at a nursing facility.

Sometimes I miss those jobs the most because there was such a sense of accomplishment at the completion of them. When a lawn was mowed and all the gardens weeded and mulched, it looked amazing. When all the trim was painted on a huge Victorian house, I could stand back and admire my work that was done. That kind of satisfaction is hard to come by as a stay-at-home mama. Needless to say, the work is never, ever done. And if I am doing a task that has an end, such as laundry, you’d better believe that I will be interrupted during that task several times before finishing. Or a certain young man will pull all the folded laundry off the dining room table while I turn my back for two minutes to help someone wipe his bottom or clean up spilled milk, etc. It is an infuriating thing, but an inevitable one. 

I found myself sore and sunburned, but completely content as I squatted on the garden path pulling up weed after weed. When it was complete, I had two huge buckets full of intruders to show for my work, and a very tidy-looking garden. The kitchen is almost complete, save for some things we would like to buy for it eventually (these stools, this magnetic knife rack, and this shelf for one wall) and it is so much more bright and cheerful to be in at all hours. I love the white walls and cabinets, despite or because of how much work they were.

It wasn’t all work, though. We took time to meet up with friends at the Tower Grove Farmer’s Market on Saturday morning, where we caught an act from Circus Flora. We walked to dinner one night and reveled in the fact that our boys were so well-behaved during the long wait (though bribing them with arcade games afterwards certainly had something to do with it!). It was a good, productive weekend.