I could title my account of the weekend "Janet Has No Life But Is Extremely Busy -- Episode 4", but I won't :-)
Weds. night I came down with a cold so I stayed in and sucked down mass quantities of herbal tea, orange juice, water, and Vitamin C. It seems to have helped. Thanksgiving dinner at Kevin and Kathleen's was very nice. The whole family was there. Bob made it from Arizona. Kathleen and Thomas and Steve cooked up a storm so there was lots of good food. So much good food that the table collapsed toward the end of dinner. There was this cracking sound, a few second delay, and then total collapse. Miraculously, no one was hurt and nothing broke. All we had to contend with was spilled food and frightened kids. Bob and Kevin put a sawhorse under part of the table but it wasn't enough to make it useable for the rest of dinner. We had our pumpkin pie and coffee in the living room -- many of us sitting on the floor. Too bad we didn't videotape it.
Friday I nursed my cold some more, went to the postoffice, made a feeble attempt at Xmas shopping, read a little, bought groceries, mostly rested. A friend called and we made a date for the following night for dinner. I planned an easy casual meal (one I could prepare without cutting or chopping anything -- black pepper pasta in tomato basil sauce with a simple salad of mesclun and crusty French rolls (the local bakery's implementation of Italian bread leaves something to be desired but french bread they do pretty well) and some tangerines for dessert.) It was fun planning this and buying the ingredients. I had a momentary attack of self-pity in the EarthFood Store when I had excruciating pain simply lifting a bottle of salad dressing off the shelf, but I got over it.
Saturday I went to breakfast at Ford's, bought a few more groceries, continued my cleaning frenzy (how many weeks have I been cleaning now? you'd think my place would be organized and immaculate by now).
My Sunday morning walk around the lake with Linda turned into breakfast with Linda because it was raining too hard to go for a walk. We had a good time, seemed to like each other and thought maybe we'd get together for a walk sometime soon. Very pleasant for my first time answering a personal ad. I went back home and read the paper, nursed my cold some more, answered 2 more personal ads (the Globe runs them on Thursday and Sunday), went to Dr. Mark to have needles stuck in my wrist/arm/shoulder, went to the Brattle for this week's double feature in the Katherine Hepburn series (Woman of the Year and Pat & Mike), and fell happily into bed without the usual Sunday night dread of Monday sleeplessness.
Oh, and I bought an electric can-opener, a mini food processor, and a new Dustbuster. The can opener and the mini food processor should increase the range of dinner I can prepare without pain. The Dustbuster was just part of my cleaning frenzy.