Labor Day Weekend

Can I say how much I love three-day weekends? We stayed home for this one, mostly, and it felt like the perfect blend of getting-stuff-done, going-places, resting, and staying-put.

It didn’t really feel like Labor Day, though, since we’re usually in West Virginia this time of year. Every Sunday before Labor Day, my family has a reunion. We skipped out this year in order to stay close to home and have a more restful weekend than the drive out there and back would allow. I was awfully sad that I missed the reunion, so I tried not to think about it. The weekend was restful and nice, and I know it was good to stay close to home. I am missing the mountains, and my family, and the lake near my parents’ place, though. Ah. See, this is why I tried to keep myself from thinking about it.

Other than the family-missing, the weekend was very nice. Friday night we went to dinner with the couples who will make up our new small group. Have I told you? We are getting a new small group. Well, sort of. Our old small group is splitting into three groups—we weren’t really a “small” group anymore. (Nine couples! Eighteen people!) More like a “large group” and none of us have particularly large living rooms. It’s a little hard to feel connected to such a large bunch. So, we’re divvying up our members among three groups, and I’m pretty excited about it.

So. Friday night—Tex-Mex + hanging out afterward, talking about theology and pets and marriage and money, you know, all that fun stuff.

Saturday, Jesse and I went to Raleigh. We just did the usual—guitar stores for Jesse, the mall, the Apple store, Barnes & Noble (why is it I’ve not been able to find The Things They Carried at any bookstore lately?), and so on. We tried to see Avatar, but the theater smelled like pee and there was something wrong with the projector because the picture was constantly a little out of focus (movies in 3D always look weird to me, but Jesse’s always able to watch them just fine), so we left and got a refund. We’ve never left a movie before; it felt kind of scandalous.

We slept in on Sunday. Then, I cleaned the house top to bottom, even steam-cleaning our carpets. I’m not sure what kind of filthy people come into our house while we’re not here and roll around our carpet, but the stuff that came up was just plain disgusting. I think I need to add cleaning the carpets to my cleaning routine. My friend Kristin does it every week! I’m just proud of myself that I vacuum every week, so I think I might start out cleaning the carpets every month. That seems doable.

Sunday evening was church and our Tex-Mex leftovers and an old movie. Monday, a friend from out of town came over for a waffle breakfast and hours of good conversation. I was enjoying the conversation so much I forgot to look at the time and before I knew it, it was three o’clock and we’d not eaten any lunch. That evening, the lamb I was going to cook was bad (I’m going to get a complex–two different types of meat bought from Harris Teeter in the last week or so have been bad), but it was okay because we weren’t all that hungry anyway. Later, a friend came over for a movie. The weekend was what it should have been—restorative, nice. All right, September, let’s go.