Captain Distraction

“All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.” ― Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

I love a weekend that has no obligations. More than that, I love a weekend with no obligations and great weather. It's like a boxed present with a big bow on top: I don't know what's in it, but I'm happy to contemplate what is within.

Paradoxically, I approach these weekends with great plans for getting stuff done. I wanted to knit, knit, knit... the heretic inside of me believed I'd be halfway through my current sweater project before the weekend was done. And yet...

Saturday was a productive knitting day. Two episodes of Criminal Minds in the afternoon and one movie in the evening meant I was able to power through a few inches on my sweater. Things were looking up as I approached Sunday morning...

During my Sunday morning run, I was slogging my way up a hill when I was distracted by a noise in the direction of the nearby water. I thought I heard sea lions barking, a noise with which I am very well-acquainted after working in a zoo years ago. I made a mental note of it, and after I got home, ate my breakfast, and got showered and changed, I took the hubby and the Rascal for a walk down to the marina:

We encountered no sea lions (if they were there, they were long gone before we got there), but we sat down and enjoyed the sunshine for a while instead. After the rain we had last week, I felt like I was being showered in delicious warmth:

I got home, determined to sit down and knit, but was then distracted by my newest kitchen purchase: a Cuisinart enamelled cast iron casserole. It's a huge thing, a mighty 7 quarts of awesomeness that makes me feel pretty good about the weightlifting I do at the gym. I forgot to tell the hubby I'd ordered it, and the poor guy had to haul it home from the post office. Oops.

The main reason I wanted it was to make some crusty bread, but we're still working on the second of the loaves I made the weekend before:

So instead, I made some rice and beans for a burrito bowl recipe I found last week. It's beautiful, isn't it? In a fit of efficiency, I made enough to last me for lunch the whole week.

I packed it away into containers, then made a couple of breakfast smoothies and packed a few containers of veggies to snack on for work. Right, time to knit...

But then I pulled a load of towels from the dryer and hung them out to finish drying (I have a fear of drying things all the way in the dryer... too many ruined clothes). Between trips from the dryer and the back door, I was further distracted by the huge spider web in the front window. There's nothing for scale, but this is an impressive beast:

Then I had a nap.

Then I did some yoga.

Then I had a cup of coffee and a muffin, walked the dog again, and then called my parents while I cooked dinner (roast chicken and potatoes in the Cuisinart again, no photo because it smelled so good that we gobbled it up before I thought of it).

So, I haven't done much knitting today, but all these distractions have given me the chance to think more about how I'm going to shape it, and how I'm going to arrange the rest of the stripes. It's going to be a nice sweater...

I just have to knit it now.