what do real people do on saturdays?

Admittedly, I have blown of my Saturdays for the last who knows how many weekends.
I don't even remember what used to make me get out of bed before 10am on a Saturday besides needing to work at my retail job, desperation for a Monday-due date assignment, leaving for a long drive, or just plain legit plans with friends or family. 

Well I certainly don't have a retail job anymore, and I'm not required to work weekends (although sadly I sometimes wish I did because it would give me something worthwhile to devote my time to and make the day go by more quickly.....).

I most definitely do not have assignments or homework on the weekend (and IT IS WONDERFUL!  believe me, I am NOT asking for a paper or a project!). 


Occasionally those weekend trips happen, and I LOVE them!  I have gone to Chapel Hill a number of times, a football game with my old roommate at his former college, and gone to my Grandma's house a few hours away. But I also don't want to make trips an every-weekend thing because I realize I DO need to invest in my life here.

As far as making fun plans here...  I have lived here only 6 months and I still get lost driving sometimes... but more significantly, I still only know a handful of people.  And they are either the 2 people who I knew before I moved here (who are engaged and live together), 1 person I met through those people, or roommates (ex-roommate doesn't live here anymore and current roommate is never around), or my coworkers (who are all at least 10 years old than me, married and/or have children), or my "sometimes"-coworkers (20 somethings who are all either engaged/married and have children and whom I see in quick passing a couple times a week when I help out at the other building).

So... what does that leave a 20-something bachelorette to do on a Saturday with no responsibilities and no plans in a town she doesn't know all that well?

My ideal Saturday: I'd get up at 8, go for a run, make a healthy breakfast and clean the house by noon.  Then run errands, shop for household items, get groceries, drop off bills at the post office and work on projects around the house.  Maybe meet a friend for lunch and explore the city, come home and get ready to go out on a hot dinner date, back in time to pre-game with friends at my uptown apartment and walk up to the bars.  Ideally.

My real Saturday: I got up at 10 and took a shower first thing in the morning (which normally gets put off until I absolutely HAVE to leave the house...).  I made a cheese omelet and cleaned the kitchen.  I got ready to go run errands and make returns.... aaaand while I was there I couldn't ignore the sales at J.Crew, Gap, and Anthro... and the not-quite-sale at Madewell (because the bow-printed skinny jeans I bought were a NEED).

I had been wanting to plant a small container herb/vegetable garden on the little bit of space we have on our back step, so I went to Home Depot-- (a store I used to DREAD going to with my mother, before I was on my own). :)  I came home with rosemary, basil and cilantro plants, a "better boy" tomato (a variety which one of my patients had recommended!), a "patio" tomato (this is my first patio/container vegetable garden so I didn't want to take too many chances) and a red bell pepper plant; a large rectangle box planter, and some more potting soil.  I planted my herbs in a large round planter I already had, and planted the veggies in my new box. I am excited!  I'll have to put up pictures with my progress in the next couple months.

For some reason today, I had an inspiration to bake... I always think of myself as this pretty decent baker but really I just have this one go-to cookie recipe that I am obsessed with and they always turn out really yummy and really addicting.  I tried pinterest-ing for something new to try, but all I could think about were Cowboy Cookies.  I made a quick trip to Target for the ingredients... and while I was at Target (of course... because Target does these things to you) I got inspired to get the ingredients to make fresh homemade salsa.  Well sorry Tarjay, but your produce section does NOT cut it... which meant a trip to Trader Joe's for tomatoes and jalepenos and onion and lime and blackbean-quinoa tortilla chips.  Completely burnt out (yay!) from shopping all day, I came home to embark on the cookie adventure.

Now I normally use the original Laura Bush recipe that I would look up online, but I wasn't able to find it this time... and this food network version made a much smaller portion of cookie dough than her recipe.  (All that cookie dough is hard to handle with my "vintage" hand mixer that was a hand-me-down from my parents... a wedding gift to them in the 70s.)  I made the cookies on the big side this time to speed up the process, and ended up with 27 big cookies altogether (minus the somewhere-between-1-and-10 cookie-equivalent of cookie dough that I inevitably ate while they were baking).

"Vintage" mustard-color hand-mixer, giant cookies, and the ingredients for my Sunday project

Come 10:30pm... I am STUFFED with oatmeal and pecans and coconut and chocolate and butter and it is time for me and my nearly empty Sauvignon Blanc to get under the covers and relax after my VERY productive day as an independent adult.

So... I know it doesn't quite add up to my "ideal" Saturday vision.  But it was better than some of the Saturdays I have had here.  My day has no mention of friends, or family, or dates.  I didn't work out.  And I certainly didn't eat healthy.  I got a few important chores done but there are still a lot left to do.

All day I preach to people the importance of staying active, and being engaged with important activities, and doing what matters to you.  My most valued and favorite activity in my life is other people-- it's just that unfortunately right now (and this weekend in particular) that is a resource I happen to be low on.  Being single in your 20s in a cool city sounds like the best time ever, and in my "ideal" world it is... but in the real world, it does get lonely because all the other people your age are off on their own, also trying to figure out what is important to them and what matters to them.

Shopping can only occupy you for so long, but then you run out of money..... Gardening only needs so much of my attention, now my plants need time on their own..... Baking and cooking certainly fulfill a physiological need, but how much can a single girl eat.....

I am still looking for things that matter to me... exercise needs to be the next one, along with community/charity work.  But perhaps more importantly, I'm still looking for those people (or person) who are a part of my regular routine.  When activities and interests and hobbies become regular enough in our lives they become habits, they become second nature.  When people become regular enough in our lives, they also become habits and become second nature.  Regularity and routine and consistency is what I need, and that's what I am going to be working on.  My hope is that the people come along with it.