Tired out

School is starting a bit sooner than usual this year, and this past weekend had to double up and be both the last relaxing weekend of summer and the last chance to get everything done before school starts.

I planned for it in the usual way — by making a list so I could check off my tasks if I ever when I actually got them done. What made the weekend a bit unusual is that I had several things I wanted to sit down and watch: the race, the qualifying session, and the free practice sessions for the Belgian Grand Prix; the rebroadcast of the Hungarian Grand Prix, which I missed while I was travelling; the last two “What If…?” episodes, and the Netflix series “The Chair.”

Of course, this was just the list of what I wanted to sit down and watch. I wasn’t even planning to knit along — this was just dead time, purely focused video time, which isn’t what I normally do with my weekends. You can also add: laundry, dishes, cleaning, daily reading and journal entries, prepping two packages for shipping, shopping for school supplies, shopping for any needed school clothes, and clearing out SecondBorn’s bedroom, now to be used even less frequently now that they are moving into a dorm this week for their first year of college. (Does anyone want to buy a very sturdy loft bed, 2 years old, maybe used a dozen times?) Allow for a fishing trip for Lastborn on Saturday afternoon, and add to this list anything that came up in the course of the weekend.

Laundry and dishes went on in the background, proceeding without a hitch. I was able to watch the free practices for the Belgian Grand Prix when nobody else was up, so those were removed from the DVR right away.

Nothing really went sideways (for my British readers, please substitute ‘pear-shaped’) until Saturday afternoon, when MiddleSon and I were preparing a UPS shipment that he’d been nagging me about for several weeks. Today was the day, and we confirmed that the UPS Store would be open until 5 pm. We had purchased the right-sized shipping box last weekend, and he had packed the goods halfway up. I found more packing materials to add to the top of the box. He taped everything shut and contacted the recipient to obtain their mailing address and phone number…only to find that they didn’t want the items until later in the year. We took a moment, then he asked if he could just store the box in the attic until we really needed to ship it. Bingo! One less task on the list for Saturday.

That was a Good Thing™ because we had previously determined that it was better to focus on in-house priorities on Saturday so we could do any travel on Sunday. So the dishes continued and the laundry continued, until Lastborn was picked up for his fishing trip and we could concentrate on some specialty vacuuming (cobwebs! ick!) of the TV room. Unfortunately, I had promised Lastborn that I would get a fish fry dinner for him on Saturday, and I was planning to do this while returning from the trip to the UPS Store that had just been cancelled.

Stay flexible! After Lastborn was home again I realized that I needed to make a trip to the grocery store and I could combine that with a trip to [REDACTED], which on occasion makes a pretty good fish fry dinner. Off we went to get some cartons of Classic Coke and just a few other things. Then we stopped at [REDACTED] and went inside to place our carry-out order. We didn’t pick up on the store’s vibe right away, but after a while it became apparent that while the location was quick to take orders, they were for some reason slow to deliver them. After I had been waiting for about ten minutes, parked drive-through customers started coming into the store to find out when they would get their dinners, having placed their orders twenty minutes ago. The customers themselves were quite patient and reasonable, but the manager had completely lost the narrative. By the time he realized I was waiting for a to-go order he was apologizing and saying that he didn’t know where it was. He was getting ready to throw a stack of coupons at me, when he suddenly realized that the order was up and I could take it. We were in the car (after advising a family, complete with dog, that had just parked their car in the lot that perhaps this was not where they could receive their dinner anytime soon on this particular evening) when Lastborn looked at his order and sighed upon sight of a slice of unanticipated American cheese. We were able to get him a whopper of a substitution at another fast food establishment that was on our way home. I ate his order and saved my salad for another day, and culinary harmony was restored.

I’ll have to admit that that was pretty much it for Saturday. Daily reading, one glass of wine, journal entry, time for bed. But I did watch two free practice sessions for the Grand Prix, plus the first episode of “The Chair,” sometime during the morning, afternoon, and evening. Check, check, check.

Sunday Sunday Sunday! I woke before the boys did, and I was able to Netflix-binge the rest of “The Chair” (or almost the rest of it) before anybody else needed me for anything else. I have a lot of thoughts about “The Chair.” If you work for a university or, particularly, an English department, you will see a lot of resonance. I suspect that legal concerns ought to prevent me from making further comment on the content.

The next task was to serve as sous chef for prepping a slow-cooker beef stew before Firstborn and I sat down to watch a recording of the Belgian Grand Prix (race time plus two extra hours of recording, just in case it rained). As it happened, it rained quite a lot in Belgium this weekend. We were determined not to be spoiled on the race results via social media, so it was about 5:30 pm before our recording ended and we were aware of all the outcomes (no spoilers here!).

On Sunday afternoon, the rest of the task list went kaflooie (British friends, what comes after ‘pear-shaped’?) when MiddleSon and I loaded the car to go make Goodwill donations and pick up school supplies. I started the car and turned on the air conditioning. Then we brought forth our cell phones to check the hours of OfficeMax and Goodwill. Both were already closed. Hmm.

We thought it over, and we decided to go to the nearest gas station since I was down to 1/4 of a tank. While I was filling up, another motorist spoke the fateful words: “Hey, you have a flat tire.” I checked, and he was right; in the past few days I had driven over a screw or a bolt that was firmly embedded in my left rear tire. That explained the squirrely handling I had noticed in the last few days. MiddleSon and I put air in the punctured tire and limped home, where Firstborn was prepared to change the tire to the full-sized spare. (I supervised.) We tested the spare by driving to the same gas station and putting in a bit more air.

No school supplies. No new clothes for school. One call to the mechanic to check prices on a new set of tires.

Recalculating….