Matt told me the other day that it's frustrating when I say, at the end of a day, that I didn't really feel like I got anything done. "You're always working," he said. "You've always done a lot more than you think you have."
And I laughed, because he's right, but still. "But there really are entire days where I don't think I've done much! Answered a few emails, cleaned up the kitchen, but mostly sat around and watched television and played computer games."
"Susan. Seriously. Most people call those -weekends-."
So, weekends. Sometimes they even happen right on schedule. I've had two great weekends in a row, and I just want to, I don't know. Recognize it somehow. I'm realizing more and more often how time just slips past, days and weeks and months have gone and I don't think I even noticed. The semester's almost over, it's nearly Christmas again already, it's Tuesday night and I meant to write this yesterday, and I don't want to just lose track of all of it.
The weekend before last, I was in Washington for a conference, the annual meeting of the History of Science Society. It was a busy weekend--I gave a paper, threw a party, got a couple thousand words written on my next book, and finally met a new friend who had just turned ten months old. (Oh, and lost two World Fantasy Awards, but that's fine, the winners deserved the wins.) Over the course of three days, I spent time with a friend from middle school, friends from college, friends from graduate school, and a number of professional colleagues; if we count the long phone conversation I had with a friend from high school, then pretty much all the phases of the last twenty years of my life were represented in one weekend. A chance encounter with a woman I first met when we were both bridesmaids in the same wedding was just the final flourish I needed to convince me that I really do live in a dense and heavily interconnected social world.
This weekend that just ended, it was more or less the other end of the pendulum. While the weekend in DC was very professionally-focused and extremely social, this weekend was very personal and restorative. I spent a lot of time with Matt, I started (and made some good progress on!) a small quilt, we did a lot of cooking (a new stew recipe, a relatively new black bean chicken that's rapidly becoming a favorite, that kind of thing), cleaned the house, slept in. I also was lucky enough to get to meet wee River Shaw at just a few days old, making that two new friends in two weekends. This weekend was a good antidote for the mid-semester blahs, the creeping malaise that seems to settle in on college campuses in this period where the shiny newness of the semester has thoroughly worn off but the end isn't quite in sight yet. You can see it everywhere--student attendance and participation dips, the graduate students look thoroughly exhausted, the lecturers aren't quite hitting on all cylinders. And then, suddenly, there's a lovely three-day weekend, and (with luck) we're all a little bit refreshed.
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