I’m a doer.

That’s who I am.  I get a little uncomfortable sitting around doing nothing, or worse, having nothing to do.  Luckily, as the father of three, with a family of seven to feed and clean up after, I rarely am at a loss for activities. 

But beyond the obligations of life (dishes, laundry, vacuuming) I like to be out experiencing the world.  This world, and more specifically, this DC area I live in has so much to offer.  There is always a new museum, exhibit, concert, play, festival, or something going on.  And I have no intention of sitting on the sidelines while all that passes by.  (I’m already planning on taking in the Portrait gallery’s Elvis exhibit and the Corcoran’s Cezanne)

One of my biggest criticisms of my fellow DC metro neighbors is that they don’t take advantage of all that this wonderful city has to offer.  If you’re not getting out and doing some of the things that this city has going on than you’re really just paying too much on your mortgage.  If you want to live somewhere that doesn’t have anything to do, you can move out to the middle of nowheresville and have a much easier commute, lower house payment and milk probably won’t cost you $4.00 either.

But we take advantage of this wonderful little corner of the world.  Pretty much every weekend, we are off doing something. 

But not this weekend.

Somehow, our January got a little crazy.  We had birthday parties, guests from out of town, work trips, a trip to Disney….. It was all wonderful, but also a little intense.  There was hardly any time to breathe, and I have always been a big fan of breathing.

So, this weekend, we sat down and stared at something that I haven’t seen in several months -  a weekend with nothing written on the calendar.

We weren’t traveling to visit relatives, we didn’t have any birthday parties, no one had a soccer game, there wasn’t even a church meeting slipped in.  We were completely free!

Completely free to do whatever we wanted.  Or, as it turned out, absolutely nothing at all. 

We made the bold (for us) decision not to do anything this past weekend.

Ok, when I say we didn’t do anything, I don’t really mean that we really didn’t do anything.  I took the kids to a movie, Sarah did some shopping, we did the taxes and we went out for ice cream.

But for us, that’s hardly anything.  Any weekend where we put less than 200 miles on the odometer was a nothing weekend.  So, yes, we did get out of the house a couple of times, but for the most part we just sat around. 

We watched a movie with the kids, we played a couple of card games, we had a roaring fire going for almost the entire day and we caught up on a lot of our backlogged DVR and Netflix viewing (very important.  I had been suffering from severe Netflix guilt)

I got to spend (like most red blooded American males) a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon doing nothing but sitting by the fire, drinking a beer, watching Jack Bauer torture some people on 24…. and knitting  (I’m pretty sure that’s what Bret Favre was doing on Saturday).

It was really quite wonderful.  I don’t know why we don’t do this more often.  Of course, it was coming to a speedy end.  We had church the next morning.  But then, we were given the added bonus of church being cancelled (there was almost 6 inches of snow on the ground after all) and so Sunday morning we sat around and ate pancakes and watched the kids play by the fire and read the paper.  Then we played in the snow and took baths and watched more TV and…

And then, somewhere around Sunday afternoon the children started to lose it.  Their peaceful playing somehow morphed into constant arguments about someone touching someone else or about who’s toy belonged to whom.

All of a sudden our peaceful Sunday afternoon didn’t seem so peaceful.  These kids were crazy.  We had to get them the heck out of the house, ASAP.

So we packed up and bustled them out the door for ice cream and sanity.  Then we came home and for naps and dinner, bedtime and a little more sitting around watching TV by the fireplace. 

And I have to tell you, it was all pretty nice.  I enjoyed the emptiness of the days.  I enjoyed mentally checking out and casting all of my obligations out the window for a while and just sitting around and doing a whole lot of nothing.

I doubt we will get another weekend like this, probably not for the rest of the year, and I don’t even think I would want too many more.  If I had a series of weekends of sitting around the house, I think I would get as stir crazy and nutty as the children and start yelling at my wife to “stop touching me!”….. Ok, that’s probably not real likely, but I can definitely get a little stir crazy. 

But not to worry, next weekend we’ve got a friend’s birthday party, the superbowl (we don’t watch the game that carefully, but the snacks are very important) and probably a few other things squeezed in. 

Yes, the days of sitting by the fireplace and reading or watching TV are probably already gone for 2010, but they were nice while they lasted…. (well, for a little while.  Sunday afternoon was rough)

And now Monday is here and as soon as we get past this 2 hour snow delay, (I mean, honestly?  My two teens from Mississippi had no trouble navigating the “icy roads”) it will be back to the whirlwind of drop offs, pick ups, cooking and cleaning.

The Doing will begin once again.  But that’s ok.  I’m a Doer.

It’s just that sometimes, it’s nice to be a Don’t.