It's Monday: How was your weekend?

And how could you make the next one (even) better?

Hi everyone—and welcome new members! Catherine here, with a Monday morning check in.

First things first, how was your weekend? Did you experiment with time-chunking and/or treating it like a vacation? (No idea what I’m talking about? Click here.)

If so, how’d it go?

My report: I tried time-chunking, and had very high hopes, particularly for Sunday, when I planned for us to go on a family bike ride in the morning and to attend a Cider Fest at a historic house in Philadelphia on Sunday afternoon. It’s perfect fall weather at the moment, and the idea of being outdoors in the crisp air, surrounded by fall foliage, consuming apple products, sounded delightful.

But you know that expression, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry”? (Turns out it’s from a Robert Burns poem from 1785, ominously titled, “On turning up her nest with the plough,” and the actual phrasing is: “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men / Gang aft agley / An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain / For promis’d joy!”)

Well, we didn’t get to the “grief an’ pain” level, thankfully, but our plans certainly aft-ed agley, because our daughter came down with a cold and didn’t want to leave the house . . . leaving me and my husband trapped inside as well. (We had one of those, “You can go to the cider fest” / “No, YOU can go to the cider fest” spousal exchanges, only to conclude that neither of us really wanted to go to the cider fest alone. So we moped around the house lamenting our inside-ness until there were only 30 minutes of possible cider fest-ing left, and then bribed our daughter off the couch with the promise of a stuffed animal — not perhaps my proudest parental move but it worked — and went to the cider fest together for all of about ten minutes before turning around and coming home. Like I said, agley.)

The overall weekend experience has made me realize two things:

1. One of the challenges of the weekend (besides the unexpected cold and cider fest debacle) is that my husband and I hadn’t made social plans in advance, and also hadn’t arranged for a babysitter and also had not reached out to any friends to see if they could get a babysitter. PARENT FAIL! Planning is important for everyone, but for parents, it’s essential. Thankfully, weekends come around every seven days, and today is Monday — which means that we all have a chance for a re-do. So start thinking ahead to next weekend! (Also, the earlier you make plans, the more time you’ll have to anticipate those plans, which can be enjoyable in and of itself.)

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2. In addition to making plans, it’s good to leave room for spontaneity. The highlight of my own weekend was undoubtedly Saturday night, when I decided last-minute to go to a party being thrown by a friend. Technically it was a baseball viewing party, and I am not that into (read: at all into) baseball, even though the Phillies are on the cusp of getting into the World Series and Philadelphians care VERY MUCH about their sports teams. But with my husband’s encouragement, I decided to sneak out Saturday night after our daughter’s bedtime and go to the party. And I am so glad I did, because . . .

Delight Alert

. . . said friend has a HOT TUB in his back yard, which might not be that exciting if you live in Northern California, but which is VERY exciting (and unusual) if you live in Philadelphia AND the hot tub is made of cedar AND you have friends who also want to go in the hot tub AND if the hot tub is about seven feet tall, with room for at least five grown adults to sit comfortably in it without touching.

The hot tub, by light of day, in a photo that avoids violating anyone’s hot tub privacy. It’s also a photo of the belt of my bathrobe, which somehow fell INTO the hot tub, and which my friend the host found the next day. In a second-level delight, another friend (hi, Anne) pointed out that there is something potentially scandalous about getting a photo on a Sunday morning of your robe tie dangling on a hot tub, which made us both giggle.

Anyway, in addition to the incongruous delight of being in a backyard hot tub in October in Philadelphia, it was truly fun to have the chance to spontaneously hang out with a group of friends, without kids, on a Saturday night, at a gathering that I myself did not have to organize. It made me very much wish that such things would happen more often—and also motivated me to try to get back into the habit of organizing such things myself.

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Lastly, speaking of delights, I just found out that

Carissa Potter

, who’s an artist and the author of the Substack “Bad at Keepng Secrets,” just published a podcast she and I recorded about fun and feeling alive. Carissa and I immediately hit it off—rarely have I felt such an immediate connection with someone over Zoom— and if you haven’t checked out/subscribed to her Substack, you should do so immediately.

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That’s it for today.

Please don’t forget to introduce yourself, and If you need a pick-me-up, be sure to join our “daily delights” chat.

To scrolling less and living more,

Catherine

PS: As always, you can learn about my courses & resources here. (Paid subscribers get a 25% discount.)

PPS: One more delight for you: A friend of mine told me last week that she’d gotten bored during a call, and so had done what any normal person would do — which is to say, she crocheted a piece of toast with butter and a smiling jam blob, complete with sparkly eyes and rosy cheeks and a smile. BECAUSE WHY NOT?

Hello.