Whenever I have a day off/weekend, I have a friend at work who says, when I come back, because it’s what you say if you are polite and have had good home-training: “How was your day off?” The other day, when I replied, she said: “can I ask you what the HECK you are doing on your days off? Because every time I ask you, you are all ‘IT WAS THE BEST DAY OFF EVER OMG SO GREAT.'”

Homies, I was mortified. I am being tres obnoksh about my days off! But the thing is, the love, it is real. I DO love my days off, and rock them hard like a, like a, I don’t know, a Day Off Rocker. This is how I rock a weekend day off. I am not saying it is for everyone, I mean, you do you, but for me, it works so well that I scare my co-workers with enthusiasm and wet-eyed nostalgia when I return to work. I challenge you to make a list of items that make your days off perfect, and then recreate. Self care, y’all.  Here’s mine.

1. I do not sleep in. I KNOW I KNOW I HAVE LOST YOU ALREADY. I do have an inner Chris Traeger sometimes, and I acknowledge it can be annoying. But if you wake up you can cram more fun in, is the thing.
2. Ok so I wake up early, but I lollygag in the bed. Reading in bed on a day off morning is the best and worth waking up for. Also, if one has a bed-mate, you know, one could snuggle them or something. I’m just saying, I don’t know, have some adult touching time. I feel like you are getting uncomfortable with this part so MOVING ON.
3. There is a spot in my living room that catches the sunlight just right on a cold, crisp morning. This is where I have my morning tea. If it is gloomy and raining, I have a corner section of my couch where I can park it. In the summer, I go outside on the deck. I know where I am parking my butt for morning tea according to weather, is I guess what I am saying.
4. I love a fancy breakfast on a day off! Make some pancakes, do up an egg sandy, go out to a breakfast joint.
5. I make some space to do something productive, but I BOOKEND IT. Need to do house chores? Go to the grocery store? I set aside a specific couple of hours and KNOCK IT OUT AND THEN I AM DONE. I do not spread it out or let it hang over my head. Just do it, fast and scheduled in a block.
6. Speaking of household chores, I couple that up with some audiobook/podcast time. Makes folding the laundry something I actually want to do.
7. Make a social plan. I am a solid ambivert. I like to be around people, and I also like my solo time. This means I try to make space for both. For me, two social plans with friends per weekend is a chill minimum amount. Plus one outing of some sort with the dude. (My dude, not The Dude).
8. Take a walk, read a book, stare out the window. Gots to have the unstructured solo time. So luxurious.
9. 30 minute nap! More than one of you want! This helps if you, like me, stay up late and wake up early. Warning: more than an hour nap and I risk feeling like a groggy froggy.
10. If at all possible, (I know, sometimes you gotta, but) DON’T DO WORK WORK. ESPECIALLY EMAILS.

This is my own personal recipe for a great weekend, according to me. A Me-kend. Y’ALL I JUST SAID ME-KEND. I should go now. Ok, going now. Bye.

Dearly Beloved, we shall now convene and commence the time of year when those of us in Seattle who have been freezing our clammy bootangos all year go SUNSHINE KISS ME YOU FOOL, while others who prefer to slosh around in puddles will hide in their gollum caves saying THE FIREBALL IT BURNS US. There are those who lie in between those two extremes but Y’ALL I AIN’T ONE OF EM.

Sun sun sun sun sun sun sun sun sun SUNNNNNNNNN

One of the most lovely feelings of summer weather starting up is setting up our yard and deck for the first time. Hosing everything off, setting up the chairs, popping up the sun shades, firing up the grill, and then sitting out there for the first time with a book and drink? Major jollies are had from this, I GAR-on-tee. The only thing that sometimes stops me from getting my butt out there? Camp Dude.

I may have mentioned this last summer, but let us refresh. Living next door to me is a house full of dudes. Now let me just preface what I am about to say by saying the following. This house is a rental and, pretty much annually, we get different neighbors. We have had a lot of, well, variation over the years, and I have never had any reason to, in my heart, throw any shade toward a neighbor. There was a somewhat loud group of goth kids, just barely out of their teens, that lived there for a year, blasting their emo music and sipping what one could only assume was absinthe in their yard while draped in black like a Severus Snape picnic. Their wifi username would pop up on my computer sometimes: The Necropolis of Angels. I thought every last bit of it was adorable, including the Bauhaus that would play through my windows when I was going to bed at night. I think those were my favorite neighbors.

This year, there is nothing cute to me about what is going on with my neighbor house. This year is the Year of the Brosephs. It is pretty much a frat house over there, I think. Like, the level of it is so cliche that I almost can’t believe it is for realsies. I know you thought that the goth kids were cliche, but I guess the difference here is that I am comfortable with outsiders, but I have spent my entire life running as fast as I can from this particular brand of privileged, white, insecurely hetero, aggressively masculine bullcaca. LIKE I JUST CAN’T EVEN DEAL WITH IT. Could it really be that dude-ish over there or are they maybe just making a Zac Efron movie? Their front yard, like mine, has a large-ish patio deal, and just that alone is a sight to behold. First of all, they have strung their front fence with lights that are covered in red solo cups. I say again, RED SOLO CUPS. Then, they have a dirty papasan chair on the patio because OF COURSE THEY DO. Next up, a pingpong table, a portable basketball hoop, three coolers, and oh yeah, garbage all over the floor. Mostly crushed beer cans. I do not know what all gets consumed over there in that house but the amount of garbage bags that are piled up on their curb on trash day each week is ALARMING. Also, they yell a lot. Like, so much yelling all the time! Like there is a constant sportsball match happening in their collective brains. Some fave phrases “COME ON MAN” and also “STOP BEING A BITCH.” Are these greetings and salutations in Bro-land, and does it only count when being hollered? Whatever the case, they seem completely unaware that there is anyone else on planet earth, let alone on our street. How dare my elderly neighbor, Maggie, sit on her stoop to take in a sunset when these fine young gentlemen decide that it would be really HILAIR to have a shouting contest to see who can scream the word “PUSSY” down the street the loudest? I mean, boys will be boys, so CUTE, amirite ladies?

The only saving grace of it all is that they all seem to have other places to be most of the time, so their patio time usually happens for a couple hours a week, here and there. Still, just NOPE, NOPE, NOPE. Let’s hope this is a dudey-free zone by 2017. Because this isn’t my favorite.

Stop yelling, Brah.

I’m always available for the home improvement assist, but usually I am in and out of the process– an hour here, an hour there, while Fixy (my new nickname for Nordic Boy, it’s so approps) puts in the real hours. With the deck project though, I was in it to win it. Or perhaps not to win it, but more like to effing get it done before the summer was really and truly over. There have been weekends where I truly thought this was going to be the home improvement project that would do us in and never get finished, but that is just me being dramatic because that is how I do. It was a nice relief to realize that Fixy (ha ha ha, I know it’s only funny to me) and I enjoy working together for long hours even while being burnt to a crisp and doing lots of math (carpentry! SO MUCH MATHEMATICS) which are two ingredients that could mix together to spell B-R-E-A-K-U-P.

But we made it through, and our deck, which is almost as big as our motherscratching house, has been built! By us and our four hands (well, 6 hands if you count Delium, which we shall, because he pitched in as per usual because he is DA BEST).

It’s so pretty, you guys!!!!!!! Let’s kick back with our mint juleps and deck it up.

Weekend #2 of working on the deck is complete, and we now have 90% of the framing (our deck’s foundational garment) done! This dude of mine is on FUEGO, people. The level of excitement on my part cannot be overstated. On a zero-to-ten scale of amped I am running at a solid and annoying ten. The only people who may be more excited about this event may be our neighbors. There is nothing that will make you understand how jank ass your yard is than fixing it up and watching how badly your neighbors want to hug you and possibly cry with happiness. This is the secret to being perceived as successful, perhaps. Just set expectations way, way, deep down into the toilet hole for a long period of time, and then do something, anything productive, and people will give you a standing ovation.

In other yard news, the grass that we planted is coming in like a thick Trumpian combover, so we bought the very first lawnmower of our lives. There are certain material things that will make you feel like an honest-to-Maude grownup (the first time you have a dishwasher or a washer/dryer on your own premises are two big ones) and to me, a lawnmower is one of them. Granted, we got a teensy bitsy electric battery powered mower that pretty much looks like it was made by Fisher Price, but for our teensy bitsy yard that’s all we really need. Despite the toy-ishness of the mower, it feels like the motheryucking Cleavers up in here.

I can’t wait for this to be done so that I can show you guys!