By Adam Stewart
From the Newsroom
I asked one of my colleagues, Brendan Ulmer, this morning how his weekend was, and he responded that lately he has come to the disappointing realization that weekends have become a time to catch up on the things he didn’t have time for during the work week.
He is right, really. Weekends are when Michelle and I do most of our house cleaning, laundry, meal planning, grocery shopping, and—during the growing season—mowing. It’s when we tackle most of our home repair and improvement projects. This month, we’ve done most of our Christmas shopping on the weekends.
It’s when most of the have-to-dos and should-dos outside of our jobs get done.
But weekends are also the time we do most of the want-to-dos that we don’t have time for during the work week. This weekend was filled with those things at the Stewart house.
On Saturday morning, I got up bright and early to get thin-sliced, marinated beef in the oven to make beef jerky for my dad’s Christmas gift. Don’t worry, he won’t be spoiled if he reads my column this week. I’ve given Dad homemade beef jerky for Christmas every year for nearly a decade. He knows it is coming. He even returns the jar I deliver it in every year to be refilled.
The beef jerky took about eight hours in the oven to be ready. We don’t have time for that on a weeknight.
Saturday evening, we welcomed friends over for our regular Dungeons & Dragons game night. When everyone’s schedules allow, we meet every other Saturday to play games at the dinner table while sharing snacks. That series of game nights has been going since 2016 or 2017, with only relatively minor interruptions—always on weekends, except for a few times we met on a weeknight during the holidays.
When Sunday morning came around, it was Michelle’s turn to monopolize our oven, as she conducted the first part of her annual cookie-baking extravaganza, filling multiple 1-gallon ziplock bags with orange-cranberry cookies and peanut butter blossoms, mostly to give away for Christmas. Maybe she could fit baking a batch of cookies into a weeknight after work, but it’s much easier to get on a roll and do them back-to-back.
Both the jerky and cookie projects made our house smell wonderful, for what it’s worth.
Sunday evening, we concluded the weekend with a date night in. We dressed up nice, cooked and ate a nice dinner together, and settled in to watch a movie we hadn’t seen yet. When the credits rolled at the end of the movie, we felt very satisfied with our weekend. We made things ourselves for people in our lives, spent time with friends, and reserved time for each other.
It is important to remember that those things that sustain you and give you happiness are have-to-dos and should-dos just the same as cleaning, laundry, and grocery shopping. They may be less urgent at any particular moment, but you should make time for them all the same.
We still did housework over the weekend, but despite a full weekend, I woke up Monday morning refreshed and ready for the week, because I didn’t just recover from the work week and catch up on housework. I did things I enjoy and spent time with people I love, and that is what I call making the most of a weekend.
Adam Stewart is the assistant news editor of The Hutchinson Tribune. He can be reached at adam@hutchtribune.com.