the weekend = filling my car

Sometimes, seriously, it feels like the weekend is about driving around and filling the back of my car.  

If the weekdays are about making money, then the brief weekend time is about trading that money for stuff that fills the back of the Prius, requiring multiple trips to get it all in the house.

I’m not complaining, just remarking that sometimes it feels a little funny to get home after a couple of hours, after breakfast with The Kids and errands and shopping and have to unload so much stuff, so very many canvas bags from the back of the car.  It's true that I’ve been on a serious nest-feathering kick and also that it’s spring, which contributes the burning desire to go the nursery, but even so: just keeping the pantry full and the bathrooms stocked with toilet paper takes a lot of time and attention.

Having a life -- especially a beautiful life -- is work.  The very best kind of work, work I love for sure, but still it takes constant effort.

I’ve been loving my house so much lately, ever since I cleaned my desk.  Jeff Goins, whose writing is helping me in my own writing and blogging so much, has a great piece on how clutter kills your creativity, and also writes about not letting a mess distract you from the real work of writing.  I’ve definitely given up some writing time in the past two weeks in favor of kicking my office’s ass and getting it neat and inviting so that I won’t dread spending time in it.  I’ve even done the same at my job -- which is major since it has made my time there a joy.  A joy.  Not kidding.

The shopping, dare I say it, was a profoundly creative act.  

As a result, I made a delicious dinner for tonight and started a bunch of seeds this afternoon, working toward a really big bounty this summer and fall.  Thanks to all that shopping, there's garlic and kale and cauliflower, wasabi mustard greens and pansies in the ground in Box 2, and a third flat of seeds started -- dill and chamomile and lettuce and amaranth and more pansies and nicotiana.  

Shopping's not bad.  Shopping means I have everything I need to make this all this magic happen, to pull off a delicious stew (page 112 in Cook's Illustrated) and ensure that, in a few months, we will have fresh food we've grown ourselves.

So yeah, it's true: the weekend can be about driving around and filling my car, but at least it's a purposeful car-filling.  Not shopping for shopping's sake, but the acquisition of the necessary ingredients to cook up my beautiful life, leaving enough time to actually sit in the midst of it all and feel how beautiful it is, taste it, breathe it in.

And sometimes, if it also includes a squeaky blue squirrel toy for somebody special, that's a pretty sweet bonus.

An equal-opportunity beautiful life, benefiting everyone I live with.  Surely that's worth a little driving around.