Me Time: Take a Break for Sanity’s Sake

photo by mochida1970
At least somebody enjoys the snow

This weekend, what with the impending snow storm, I gave up any ides of checking off items on my to-do list. Down in Virginia, even flurries are cause for alarm.

Being from Massachusetts, I always thought the mid-Atlantic’s fear of snow was silly until we were dumped on during the holidays. Too few plows cleared the pile of snow. No one seemed to understand the importance of sand and salt. And don’t get me started on how long it took the main roads to be drivable again.

Anyhow, all of that made me realize driving around Saturday during a snowstorm just wasn’t going to happen. We’ll have to wait yet another day to stock up on groceries. (Yep, I’m going on three weeks. It’s amazing what’s left to eat at my house.) Because I was snowed in, and because this week was more or less hellish, I decided to have a Me Time kind of weekend.

photo by intrepidation
Mine was just as delicious looking.

On Friday I had my third headache in four days, and by the time I got home I thought my eyeballs were going to ooze out of their sockets. (Sorry for the gross mental picture. Just telling it like it is.) So at 5 p.m. I locked myself in my room to take a short nap. Two hours later, my headache was gone and The Man and I decided to bundle up and grab some wood-fired pizza. For some reason, pizza and Diet Coke tame a killer headache. Not the healthiest meal, but at least the pie was loaded with eggplant, zucchini, red peppers, tomatoes, and fresh basil.

After downing a bowl of bran cereal and milk in the morning, I launched Lazy Saturday. The Man and I plopped down on the couch and read all day long. Though I spend my life reading and writing, it’s nice to take a break from health- and work-related reading and open a book for pure pleasure.

I skipped all housework for the day, except running a couple of loads of laundry, mainly because the dryer sheet smell masks the horrible cigarette stink that seeps through my walls. I’m not tolerant of cigarette smoke. And I’m really not tolerant of smokers who puff away in a nonsmoking building, stinking up my apartment and triggering another headache. Off my soapbox.

Saturday night The Man and I scraped together a meal, realized just how much we need to hit up a grocery store, and then settled in to watch the snow still fall. Netflix sent us 3:10 to Yuma, which we both enjoyed.

photo by always be cool
I’m pining for spring.

And then Sunday after a cold cereal breakfast we settled back into our reading spots. The couch has started to get butt indents from this weekend. I had a list of chores I needed to complete, but I was more than halfway through The Help and, well, I just wanted to finish. It’s Me Time, I reasoned. Then I finished. (If you haven’t read it, I highly suggest you do.)

I still have about five thousand things to do—including making a grocery trip. And I’m sure this Me Time weekend only pushed me further behind. But after a crazy week (and nonstop work weeks before that), it felt pretty darn good to slow things down for two days. Sometimes all you really need it to step back, take a breath, forget your to-do list, and take some Me Time.

Do you ever take time out of a busy day/week/month for yourself? How do you spend your Me Time?