Unplugged Weekend Wrap-Up

Hello there!  It’s Monday night and I haven’t blogged for three whole days now.  Crazy!

To sum up, my unplugged weekend was a great success.  Benzo and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.  And I found that it’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t have your face stuck to a computer screen for hours at a time.

But first let me back up to Friday night at 5pm, which marked the start of Unplugged Weekend.  I actually started preparing during my last hour at work.  I wasn’t too busy so I tried to clean and organize my desk and also made a to do list for the following week.  That way when I came to work on Monday morning I would have a clear desk and a clear sense of direction for the week.

At 5pm I left work and went to the track.  I did a quick speed workout which was great.  I felt exhilirated afterwards.  I hadn’t run on the track yet this year so I really wanted to fit in this workout on Friday.  Then I headed home to Benzo and we made one of my favorite pasta dinners – Spinach & Sun Dried Tomato Pasta.  I’ll post the recipe later this week.  After dinner we got right to work cleaning.  Doesn’t sound very relaxing to clean does it?  Well we really wanted to enjoy a clean house for the rest of the weekend so we wanted to get the cleaning done right away.

Saturday morning we slept in.  It was glorious!  When we got up and around we decided to head for the farmers’ market, with a stop to get donuts on the way.  😀  The farmers’ market was pretty busy for it being the very first weekend.  We bought some kale, spinach and asparagus.  After the market we headed back home.  It was still a little chilly to start on yard work so we worked around the inside of the house some more.

After lunch it was warmer so we headed outside.  The day was beautiful!  The sun was shining and the birds were singing.  There’s a bright red cardinal that lives in our yard and we saw him flying around a few times.  Benzo mowed the grass while I worked on cleaning out the front flower bed.  It was sooo overgrown.  The landscaping has taken a backseat to the vegetable garden the past two years.  It needed some serious TLC.

Once the bed was mostly cleaned out and the lawn was mowed we headed out to buy some flowers to plant.  We bought a ton of begonias.  I love those things.  Not only do they have pretty flowers but they have pretty leaves too.  After that we went back home and planted them.  We had way too many!  So we put some in pots and then squeezed the rest in where we could.   I may know a few things about vegetable gardening, but I sure don’t know much about landscaping and flowers. 

By the time we were done it was getting late.  I managed to whip together some lentil tacos for dinner and then we hit the sack at 8:30pm!  We were just exhausted from all the yard work.

At this point I was wondering if we were trying to accomplish too much during unplugged weekend.  This weekend was supposed to be about relaxing and unwinding and we hadn’t really done much of that yet.

Sunday morning we actually had plans.  I know!  We weren’t supposed to have any plans at all.  But Benzo had committed us to run in a race that’s raising money for a kid with cancer.  We decided that since it didn’t involve computers, it was with all strangers and it was for a good cause that it was okay.  So we had to get up pretty early to eat and then head to the race.  It didn’t start till 9:15am, but we volunteered at packet pickup starting at 7am.

The race turned out great.  There were tons of people there and they raised a lot of money.  Benzo ran the 5k and I ran the 10k.  I demolished my time from a few weeks ago and ran 47:40.  I couldn’t believe it!  I was also the third woman overall and I think I won my age group.  Of course the results posted online are totally messed up.  They have my name as running the 5k in 32 minutes.  The one time I actually run well enough to place and I don’t even get my name on it!  Oh well it was for a good cause, not for my own personal glory.

After the race we hit a couple of stores to get some more plants and then headed back home to finish the front flower bed.  We bought two very special shrubs that I can’t wait to tell you about.  But more on that later this week. 

Let me tell you, getting this flower bed done felt amazing.  We have had the worst landscaping on the street for a long time.  And now it looks so nice.  All the digging and weeding and planting and mulching was totally worth it.

Sunday night we managed to get some fun time in.  We went and saw a matinee of Date Night.  I thought it was hilarious.  We both really liked it.  Then we had dinner out including dessert.  A perfect way to cap off the weekend.

Over dinner we talked about what causes stress in our lives and what we can do to try and eliminate the causes or combat them.  It was a great discussion and I think we came up with some good ideas to hopefully reduce stress.  My main stressor is a messy, cluttery house.  I’ll write more on that later.

When we got home, we both agreed that even though we worked hard all weekend around the house and in the yard, we still felt relaxed and re-energized for the week to come.  I think it was because although we were working hard, we were not stressed at all.  There was no time crunch.  No “I have to get this done by 3pm so I can get in the shower because we have to leave at 4pm to be across town by 4:30pm”.

I felt more motivated this weekend than I ever have before.  I’m still not sure I completely know why that is.  I do know that it was very nice to be away from the computer for almost three whole days.  I did not even look at a computer screen until I got to work this morning.  I even felt more focused at work today that I have before.

We will definitely be scheduling another Unplugged Weekend for May.  I’m already looking forward to it.  And I would recommend it to anyone else too.  Even if you couldn’t do an entire weekend, try it for one day or even half a day.  If you do, let me know how it goes!

P.S. The camera with all the pictures from this weekend is currently in the car.  And there’s no way I’m going outside at 10pm to get it.  So as much as I hate a picture-less post, I’m just going to have to deal with it.