For Love of the Weekend: Total Win; Total Fail.

This weekend was a curious little creature. It was long, as The Professor and I both took off on Friday. It was sunny and warm, with temperatures reaching 78 sizzling degrees (for us Northern girls, them's beach temperatures.) There was also a mix of ups and downs, making this past weekend a true example of convergence.

First, my job search claimed another fatality (besides that of my soul.) My baby toe was crushed in a door as I ran to answer my interviewer's phone call, which was twenty minutes early, thus my failure at being prepared (total fail). Although I screamed obscenities and writhed in severe pain, I rallied to answer the phone with a cheerful "Good morning!" After my hour spent in preparation, my nervous twitching, and my balmy palms, the call actually informed me that due to extreme business, my interview would have to be pushed back six hours (fail.)*

Rearranging my day, I did my weekly weigh-in and discovered I had lost 5% of my body weight, an initial goal (total win!) Which was followed by me leaving the house commenting, "I'm sure I can get around the grocery store, how bad can this pinky toe thing be anyway. It's just a pinky toe!" Total fail. My sad, pathetic self wallowed around in the local grocery, limping here, throwing my body there. Apparently the pinky toe is quite important in functioning, and balancing, and, you know, standing upright. People looked worried for me, like I had escaped some sort of caretaker.

Saturday I have deemed hide-away-day due to The Professor and I lying to anyone who asked and saying we had busy, busy and important plans for Saturday and could not attend any number of social engagements. This is because we are tired. We've been gone almost every weekend. And we drive three hours on the week days. Every day. So we spent a lazy day around the house (total win!) Well, I mostly limped around and ever so slowly cleaned (total fail) while I made sad, puppy faces, whining too much which resulted in The Professor enjoying taking care of me a bit (total win!)

When one lives in the middle of nowhere, one prepares for a day of errands like a soldier might prepare for battle. You need to rev yourself up. Play loud music. Pretend the car ride is actually fun. The hour long car ride. The hour it takes to get from your personless plot of land to the oh-so-over-populated 10 mile long stretch of horrifying plazas. After church and lunch we had only two tasks at hand. Get The Professor's car washed as we had a free coupon and go to Pet Smart. But first we had to get gas. Being adorably anal, The Professor demanded I hand over any trash from under my seat of the car (where's a girl supposed to shove her granola bar wrappers?) and he threw them away.

After what seemed like an entire lifetime we made all the necessary u-turns and plaza short cuts to come to the car wash but, EPIC FAIL NUMBER 1: The Professor accidentally threw away the coupon with my garbage. The decision: to trash dive or to not trash dive? I am not proud of us for this. But this was an exterior AND interior car wash, with buff and shine! Who can pass up a free buff and shine just because in the twenty minutes it took you to cross the highway someone could have thrown God-knows-what on top of your beloved coupon? We spent another twenty minutes returning. The Professor braved the public rubbish bin and produced the slightly dampened coupon (which I refused to touch.)

After the car wash (total win!) we completed our PetSmart run, with me pushing a shopping cart just to keep up appearances and not unseemly limp around, thus scaring all the small children. The task at hand: pick out a new collar for our beloved dog. EPIC FAIL NUMBER 2: After returning home (another entire hour in the car, during which we had to stop and get iced tea because that's how long the drive was) and painstakingly removing all pup's tags and putting them on the new collar, we discover the collar is much too large for our petite pup. Oh the horror. The Professor's face goes into melt-down mode. We must return next weekend and repeat the entire experience (except, I hope, for the bin diving.) During a slight (sort of massive) hissy-fit, The Professor rolled his ankle and is at this point also limping like a pathetic broken toy.

How could I possibly rescue such a failure of a weekend? The answer: BRINNER! Apparently not wanting anything our kitchen had to offer, I produced (using all of The Professor's gram's cottage pantry) pancakes, scrambled eggs, and fortune cookies. Our spirits brightening, we limp-danced around the kitchen to some favorite music, remembering how blessed we are and how beautiful the love of the weekend can be.

*I know jinxes are not real, but I'd rather not test it out. Thus I probably won't discuss my job interview until I hear something. Better safe than unemployed.