Yesterday was kind of an overcast day with some snow flurries. I worked from home, as usual, and also worked out from home and was otherwise just home all day, until around 3:30.
At that point, I went upstairs and flipped the fireplace on and just kind of sat there for a minute as I put my shoes on. It already felt like it was practically starting to get dark, and I had one of those brief flashes of what I REALLY wanted to do at the moment.
This is what sounded good to me:
-keep sitting by the fireplace, after I poured myself a cup of tea
-read my book for an hour at least. Maybe doze off for a few minutes with my red snowflake blanket over me.
-wake up and continue just sort of enjoying the quiet house. Turn some Christmas music on and sit by the fire and address my Christmas cards, peacefully.
-then, eat something eventually (not prepared by me, duh…the food would sort of need to magically appear, because I’m home alone, remember).
-by this point I might be ready for Ivan to join me for a couple movies. Still maybe no kids home (this is just a one night little mini fantasy, not an actual desire to not see my kids). Sit by the fire, watch the movies, ideally with some light snow flurries outside the window.
The end.
This is what I actually did last night:
– spent ~45 minutes driving to pick up my high school aged nephew from school and taking him to a job interview (they called in a favor…)
– came home, took a shower, got dressed. Left with Asher by 5:15 for his swim team carb loading “State team” pizza dinner (the December Sprint State Championships are this weekend).
-spent 5:30-6:45 or so at the pizza place with a bunch of other 12& under teammates and parents. Ate pizza and cheesy bread. Chatted with people/ took pictures/ etc. Very fun for the kids! I enjoyed it too. (But, it wasn’t reading by the fireplace 😉 )
-drove home, helped the kids with a couple quick homework items, fed Ethan leftover pizza (Ivan got home later last night), Ethan practiced piano.
-then spent from 7:30- 9:30 pm working on volunteer stuff for the big swim meet in 2 weeks. I had to organize and schedule ~30 high school National Honor Society kids who are volunteering to help us! Needed to fill them into open shifts, adjust the shift times for the updated schedule, make a big spreadsheet, email them all the details, etc. etc. It sounds so simple, but took forever and felt very tedious. ugh.
-finally upstairs between 9:30-10 pm, kids were in bed, and then got a second wind and stayed up too late watching an episode of Atypical with Ivan. Bed after 11 pm. oops.
There were still many good things about the reality version! It was very much a pretty typical example of my current life reality. I still enjoyed my evening. But I was just in the mood for a slightly alternate reality last night. 😉
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful for spreadsheets. I’m not exactly an excel/ google sheets “whiz” per se, but I’ve gotten really into using spreadsheets for organizing stuff in the last few years and it’s so great. I am a big fan of color coded cells. 🙂
GRATEFUL KAE 
Good luck Asher!
Here here for spreadsheets! Every year I lose my Xmas addresses one file path and this year I popped into Google Sheets. No more.
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Thanks!
I finally did that last year too! I also finally made a thanksgiving shopping list in Google sheets too – so hopefully the grocery trip will be easier next year with less forgotten items. Haha.
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Your “want” night sounds absolutely perfect. After we got home from kids activities and errands last night, I almost recreated what you wanted. I skimmed through a Scandinavian Christmas book full of crafts (I’ll never, ever make any of them but it was fun to flip through and look at all the pictures) on the couch in the glow of all the Christmas lights. I was EXHAUSTED so went to sleep fairly quickly; my husband offered to turn on the fireplace, but bed was calling my name so I didn’t quite get to that point, but it was a nice way to end the day.
As much as I love to eat – and really do enjoy the cooking process most of the time – it feels like SUCH a wonderful treat to not have to meal plan/shop/prepare, or clean up after a meal. Sometimes my husband will ask what I want for supper on a date-night where he’s cooking and I usually say – please just pick something you know I’ll like. Not having to even think about options feels like luxury.
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Flipping through the Christmas book sounds nice. 🙂 Agree- I’d probably never make any, but would be fun to look at!
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this is so like what I think sometimes. I want more alone time enjoying slow hobbies time, but when I do, I miss terribly my girls and husband. 🙂 the dilemma.
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Oh yes, I feel this want v reality thing hard core right now. Mostly I want to go to bed and not be needed during the night. And to have Phil get up w/ the kids in the morning. With Will still BF’ing it doesn’t make sense to get up and feed him and then go back to bed – I’m too wide awake by that point. But I would love to get like 12 hours w/ no one crying for me/etc.
That was genius to get NHS kids to volunteer for the swim meet! I am sure they are looking for volunteer hours! I hope the meet went well!
And your posts are back in feedly for me! Yay!
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