What's a very good weekend look like to you?

I had what I would call a very good weekend.

Sometimes, when the weeks are so busy I spend more than one lunch break sobbing into my steering wheel or rage-vaping in the work bathroom (where there's a vent), and the weekends are so often about just catching up on sleep and sanity, I forget what a very good weekend actually is.

Kiddo was at his dad's, so bf and I got to spend some QT together. Buckle up while I regale you with tales of our get-setting Friday night! Er. Um. We binged Modern Family on USA and ate whatever we wanted--"but mom, I haaaaate green beans!"--whenever we were hungry--"just five more minutes of Legos!!"--instead of making an actual sit-down meal. We did this in our pajamas that no one had to negotiate with us to get us into. We did this in front of TV, like we almost never let the kids do. We lounged with our feet up on the coffee table because guess what, WE probably won't kick OUR beverages (adult, thankyouverymuch) onto the floor/couch/cat. We also Amazon-browsed gifts for the kids (his 8yo daughter, my 5yo son)(whom we actually miss a lot when they're not with us)(did you know some huge gift-centric holiday approacheth?!). I believe I received a shoulder massage, so thanks, bf.

Ah, Saturday morning. We slept in til 7:30. If you know us, you know this is definitely sleeping in. Both of us are up before dawn on weekdays--him to be at work by 6, me to work at my standing desk with coffee before it's time to get kiddo and myself ready for preschool and day job, respectively. Not to rouse from unconsciousness until 7:30 is decadent.

If you don't think 7:30 is sleeping in, you probably also won't agree with another of my "very good weekend" prerequisites: manual labor. I feel super productive if I can do some heavy lifting at some point on the weekend, usually right after a fried egg sandwich and a second cup of coffee. No, I am not drunk. I am saving to buy a house, a house I already live in, and which has accumulated 30 years worth of crap. Think knick-knack hell. The garage is where everything goes to live or die because there is literally nowhere else to put anything. Which means the garage is my nemesis. So we picked a corner and attacked it like clutter gives us hives (nearly true for me), loaded up bf's '87 Chevy pickup, and made a huge recycling run.

Bf also has land, lots of it. Major mountain acreage. We headed up there to salvage a loft bed from a dilapidated hunting cabin his grandfather and uncles built (I use the term loosely) in the 80s. Problem was, the cabin floor is warped and the door only opens about a foot and a half. Picture bf (I realize you don't know what he looks like. Tall, dark, handsome, mountain man--got it?) wading through decades of uber-male detritus and vermin excrement to get to the loft, slowly disassemble it, pass it to me board by board so I can shimmy out the narrow opening and pull nails out on the crumbling "porch" before sliding them into the truck bed.

Amused? Us too.

We found a table that would be perfect for base camp at the top of the hill, so that went in the bed, too. Going up. Nope, nevermind, here comes our friend's dad and his buddy down off the mountain at the end of a long cold morning of hunting. Back up, slooooooooowly, so they can pass. Except they didn't pass. They sat in the road and shot the shit with bf for like 20 mins, the passenger resting his rifle on his right shoulder so it poked out the open window right at, you guessed it, me. Oh is he fiddling with it now? Loaded or not, why are you fiddling with a hunting rifle from inside a vehicle while the barrel is pointing right at a passenger in another car? He must've noticed me ducking and moving my head around like a crazy person afraid her face was about to fly off because he laid the gun across the backseat and didn't look at me again. Hunters. Smh.

Also, did you know ticks are out even when temps are barely above freezing? Now you do. Between finding one on my sweater and the fact that an hour after we exited the cabin for good I could still smell the mouse crap, I insisted it was shower time.

We got cleaned up at home and decided to reward ourselves with beer and French fries. Not just any French fries. There's a bar near us, the Spruce Creek Tavern. SCT's specialty is a tray of fries. Not a plate or even a platter, but a full TRAY of fries. For $8.

Guinness and French fries until we nearly burst. Oh what would the children think?!

The long, scenic way home, sunset in the late fall central PA pine forests.

Sunday. 7:45 AM wakeup (WHAAA!), breakfast, and a three-mile hike around a nearby lake. I love cold hikes. Because you know what I completely hate? Hiking up a sweat in 80-degree heat and being eaten alive by mosquitoes. No mosquitoes in December (so seriously, what was your deal, tick?).

You also probably hate grocery shopping, too. I don't. Well the actual shopping, yes, I hate that. I'm with you there. But once it's all home and tucked away, I feel rich. I just throw the receipt away so I don't have to remember that I'm in fact broke now. Nevermind all that; I feel stocked up and ready for the week! I've probably even jotted down some dinner ideas! The laundry is done and put away! Time to go get kiddo.

Like, an infomercial, this weekend hit me with a "but wait, there's more!" about 10 minutes away from where I meet kiddo's dad to pick him up, in the form of a sign that said "River Bend Brewery -->." Bf and I made a pact long ago that if a sign signs "brewery" with an arrow, we follow that arrow. Just the kind of people we are. We had a little time to kill so we followed. And followed. Over train tracks, through a tiny town, past tumbleweeds... Let's just say the river bent several times and we didn't see any brewery. I bet the brewery is a cooler with a sign about the honor system at the end of someone's lane, I said to bf. I bet the brewery is just some Frank filling fancy bottles with Coors Light in his basement.

We laughed a lot, just before we rounded one more bend--the last before we had to turn around and go back--and saw a huge barn behind an even more huge hops field. Whoa. And 10 minutes from kiddo pickup, too... We didn't have time to go in, sadface, but we'll be back. (I'm gonna need a shirt--great name, great discovery).

My Very Good Weekend capped off with an enormous grin and running hug from my favorite five-year-old, who proclaimed how much he missed me but also that he would like me to go inside the convenience store and purchase him a cheese stick, a meat stick, some chocolate milk, and one of those stuffed Paw Patrol things he could see through the display window that Christmas threw up on.

A weekend for the books. What does a very good weekend look like to you?