A Whirling Swirling Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day Weekend

Three days to chill and relax, maybe get some last bits of spring cleaning done, barbecue with friends and family, or it can be like the rest of my days, a mad attempt to cram three weekends full in one.

Guess which one materialized seemingly out of thin air.

Saturday

Two future events colliding with results of the past would dramatically shape our weekend.

One was that Cindy was hired to work on additional photography and I would be leading for her. That was a very familiar and regular work relationship, 13-plus years ago.

Two was that in just over a week I would start teaching the Ecology 101 class. We decided to keep it simpler by keeping it to one class a week as opposed to the two that I was doing before. Now the class looks to be twice as large, with a goodly mix of new people and ages.

The past events were series of things ranging from flooding, to too many projects, to Cindy returning after being gone for practically a year and her life abroad arriving in multiple boxes and of course the on-going chicken saga. This basically meant that the two rooms that I conduct class in, the living room and dining room were jammed pack of stuff.

Lots of Stuff.

This doesn't look like a classroom. Where do the children go?

And we didn't want to just cram it back into the garage and various closets, nooks and crannies, etc. That's how we ended up with have tons of "stuff" and never being able to find it when we need it.

So with that in mind, we both acknowledged that the weekend would be primarily dedicated to that major projects.

Balance

That concept ended up dovetailing with the other concept of wanting to not become beholden to our stuff and the banality of chores. Which meant that we were going to not just work over the weekend. For us that doesn't mean doing less work or lowering our goals and expectations, rather we try to just shove more into a twenty-four hour day.

The Lakers were positioned to beat the Phoenix Suns and secure their spot in the NBA Finals. There was also a big MMA UFC fight. And one of are favorite couples are huge Laker fans and MMA fans, so of course we invited them over for a multi-hour sports indulgence.

Sunday

There was also a weekend long festival I had heard about, Lightning in a Bottle. After some discussion and some debate we decided that we would work extra hard on Saturday and get a day pass for Sunday. We made these plans and purchased the not so cheap tickets prior to
realizing we would be having a sports viewing marathon with guests, something we rarely do.

Monday

By Monday, we were exhausted and far behind in our quest to get the house in classroom condition. Add to that, we had done none of the "homework" we needed to do for the job we were starting the following day. There was gear to wrangle and many phone calls to be made. So Monday, even though we were fried from the festival, still tired from the day before, we were resolved to but our collective noses to the grindstone and get some shit done.

At around 6 that morning as I am beginning to tend to the gardening end of things, our cat Daisy stumbles toward me foaming at the mouth. Mad "Googling" and calls to find a vet open on Memorial Day ensue.

Details to follow....