The Quietest Weekend

As I sit here and look around the house, forty five minutes before my work week is scheduled to begin, everything looks exactly the same as it did the moment my work week ended Friday afternoon.

Nothing has been vacuumed or cleaned or picked up or rearranged in the house. The lawn has not been mowed. Groceries have not been bought.

It is like the weekend did not exist. Except it did.

Since 5:30 Friday night, I have not poked my head out the door, excluding a twelve hour "Saturday" which included work, travel time and a trek out to my son's farm for an "egg pick-up" errand (and supper).

As I drove home on the last leg of Saturday evening, getting home 12-1/2 hours after I left it that morning, I felt as empty as my gas tank.

It was as if two hours of conversation took all that I had and it disappeared into thin air with little to show for it except for bugs splattered all over my freshly washed car.

What I should have done with that empty tank Sunday morning, was go out and fill it up again.

But I didn't.

I parked myself on the couch and read a book. And slept. And read. And ate. And read. And slept. I was on a continual loop. All day.

By 7:00 p.m., I had finished reading my book and we had not yet had supper. The lawn was not mowed. Groceries had not been bought.

I looked in the fridge and thought "good enough". We have milk to get us through today. We have enough food in the house to get us through a few months.

I found my "budget spreadsheet" open on the computer this morning and when I went to update this past weekend's spending onto it, I realized the only money I had spent all weekend was $5.05. It was a very frugal weekend in more ways than one.

I was "cheap" with my money, my words and my outbound letters/emails/phone calls. I have retreated "within" a lot lately and that is not an entirely good thing.

A person needs to expend a little energy to refuel their own resources. Just as I need to spend some money to fill that half empty gas tank and scrub some bugs off the windshield, I need to spend some energy and surround myself with friendship to refill my own personal "tank".

I use every excuse in the book to justify these "lost weekends". I have every "Saturday" accounted for until August 8th and I think that is what is dragging me down. I seem to be hoarding my "Sundays" in an attempt to regain that lost weekend day. Except my strategy is not working.

I'm waking up on "empty" this morning. It is time to find a strategy to reorganize my resources and fill up on what needs to be filled.

I hear my day on the doorstep right now. It is time for my work week to begin.