A Reprieve

I spent the whole week working (60+ hours so far...) and trying to resign myself to the fact that we would be in session and debating the appropriations bill we've been writing all day Saturday and Sunday. The combo of working until 11 pm or midnight two days in a row and no light at the end of the tunnel left me on the verge of tears most of Thursday. Then, suddenly, the light reappeared! They pulled our bill from the schedule! I am sitting here in cutoffs instead of on the House floor in a suit! Praise the Lord!

(Have I ever mentioned that the unpredictability of the schedule is the thing I hate most about my job? It is. This week is an absolute case in point.)

This was already supposed to be the first free weekend of the entire summer (we even put off Harry Potter--again--in order to have a weekend of nothing), but the sudden reprieve from work has made this weekend feel sort of magical. I woke up with a raging post-work headache, and even that hasn't put a damper on things. We've already done so many lovely things (though we have not, incidentally, laid on the hammock outside, since it is seriously a million degrees outside, but that is how today feels), like:

* Sleeping in until 10. Jason also had a crazy week, what with four African presidents in town (he complained that he had ceased being a policy person and become an event planner), so we fell asleep early last night and racked up double-digit hours of sleep. Awe.some.

* Going to the farmer's market for the first time in weeks. I love how much the market changes after even a week's absence, from greens and strawberries to peaches and piles and piles of tomatoes.

* Roasting some of those tomatoes for this. I think Andrea linked it on her blog, what, four, five years ago? I'm finally getting around to it. Between the market and our garden, we have our own pile of tomatoes to work through. Yay!

* Sewing projects in the cool basement. Mom dug me out of my sewing backlog when she was last here, and it turns out I don't hate sewing after all! Thinking about hemming a couple of skirts and giving them new life, hmm.

* Trying out this restaurant. So happy we didn't have to cancel our reservations. It's been far too long since it's been just Jason and me on a weekend, and even longer since we wandered in to DC for dinner.

* Painting my toenails, changing the sheets, going to the groc, cutting new flowers for the kitchen, mopping the kitchen floor, and sitting on the couch with a book--all things I didn't think would happen until mid-August.

See? Such a nice day. And there's this lovely little rumor going around that, rather than staying in session an extra week in August (I will quit), we may just give into our exhaustion and start recess immediately once the debt ceiling crisis is finally fixed. I'm not holding my breath, but still...