I cannot tell you HOW MANY things I needed to do on Saturday. So, so many.

I needed to take down my Halloween decorations, for one.  I needed to take them down before they became sentient and started haunting my house, and also because I found out this weekend that I’m the only person in Grand Forks without my Christmas decorations up.  In my defense, I’m Jewish; but I’m married to a gentleman of the Christian persuasion and I want him to feel like he’s part of a team.  I wasn’t planning on putting any Christmas decorations up on Saturday, but I figured I could at least throw away the moldy pumpkins and pack up the ghost-shaped candle on the coffee table and make it seem like I was at least moving in the right direction of seasonal decor.

I needed to take off my toenail polish.  I had gotten a pedicure earlier this fall and had picked out a peachy-coral color for my tootsies.

“You don’t want a fall color?” The nail tech had asked me.

“This is a fall color,” I, a person who was not a professional nail person who saw dozens of women pick out thematic colors every day, told the professional nail person who saw dozens of women pick out thematic colors every day.

She raised her eyebrow in disappointment.

“You can come back in a couple of weeks and we will do a burgundy,” she told me.

I hadn’t gone back in two weeks, or even two months, because I hadn’t had time.  By Saturday, I either needed to take off whatever last gasps of polish were still desperately gripped into my toes, or plan on leaving it until the following spring when the color WOULD be in season.  Plus, I was concerned it would turn sentient and start haunting my house.  So, it had to go.

I needed to attend Fourteen’s hockey game.  I needed to pop over to my coworker’s tailgating tent at the University of North Dakota/North Dakota State University football game.  I needed to change the sheets on the beds.  I needed to paint a wall in the guest room.  I needed to mend a tear in Kyle’s jacket.  I needed to contact furniture upholsterers to see if our very-cheap-kinda-old-much-loved dining room chairs could be salvaged.  I needed to work out, and finish reading a book, and wash winter coats, and start my column for the Herald, and run script lines with Ten for Finding Nemo, and search for Christmas decoration ideas on my phone.  I was very busy.

Fourteen’s hockey game was on Saturday morning.  I took a shower, put on clothes – yoga pants and a UND sweatshirt – made breakfast, ate breakfast, cleaned up breakfast, stripped one of the beds and put the sheets in the laundry, and headed to the rink.  I had volunteered to be a box worker even though the only thing at which I’m semi-competent is opening the door when a player has a penalty, so I did a terrible job at that (it was a twofer Amanda Hat-trick: couldn’t get the door open twice, opened the wrong door twice, and missed the time cue twice).

“Where are you off to now?”  One of my friends asked as we waited for the boys to come out of the locker room.

“Tailgating,” I told her.  “But only long enough to have lunch and listen to the band.”

“You’re not going tailgating,” she told me.  “It’s too cold.”

She showed me a picture on her phone of a group of college students huddled together in winter coats.

“You’re right,” I said.  “We’re not going to tailgating.”

With two activities checked off the ol’ list (even though one was technically a forfeit), we grabbed some lunch and headed home.

“That lunch made me tired,” I told Kyle.  “I need to sit down [author’s note: I had yet to do anything standing for more than a few minutes up to that point] for a minute before I move on to anything else.”

I sat down on the couch, scrolled Christmas decorations on my phone for 30 seconds (check!), and then watched videos about Gypsy weddings for an hour.

“My gosh, I really have so much to do,” I said to Kyle.  I walked upstairs, took a set of sheets out of the linen closet, remade the bed I had stripped, and decided my yoga pants were not conducive to extreme activity and went to change into sweatpants.  I then remembered that I had purchased some new bubble bath and figured, hey! Since I already wasn’t wearing pants, I may as well take a bath.

I took a bath.  I also watched more videos about Gypsy weddings [author’s note: if anyone wants to know something about Gypsy weddings, I know some stuff].

“Do you want to watch Finding Nemo with me?”  Ten asked as I was tying on my post-bath sweatpants.

“We’ve watched it ten times in the past two weeks,” I said to him.  “So yes.”

We went downstairs.  We sat back onto the couch.  We watched Finding Nemo.

As it was now dinnertime, I made dinner.

Let me be honest here: I did so little after dinner that I can’t actually remember what happened after that.  At some point I put Ten to bed so I guess that.  On Sunday, I crammed in every single thing I had procrastinated the day before, excluding the painting.  There just aren’t enough days in the weekend to get everything done.

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I was too busy on Saturday to take a picture, so here is a picture from a different Saturday.

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This week on North Dakota Today we talked about Samuel and Coralie Wai, my Nice People of the Week, as well as a free storytime you can access anywhere at anytime (Valley News Live)

Minot’s Clara Z. will be North Dakota’s FIRST-ever representative at the National Civics Bee Championship. (Valley News Live)

Why am I only now finding out that this is a thing? (Facebook)

Looking to kick off the season of giving back?  Check this out. (Facebook)

After 35 seasons and 6 state championships, Coach Gibson is hanging up his whistle. (Valley News Live)

Fargo’s Carl Ben Eielson held its first-ever mechanized pull toy parade. (Fargo Forum, found via Oops Only Good News)

Fargo Army veteran James Malstrom is now the proud owner of an insured Camry thanks to a donation from Progressive. (Fargo Forum, found via Oops Only Good News)

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