Vendredi V - Saturday Edition

Sorry all, a bit late to the party this week. It's been a doozy of a week, with The Husband travelling for a few days and all the working at home plus juggling kids' schedules that means. But he's home (for a few days), and work is done for the week, and it's Saturday.

Ah, Saturdays. They're the July of weekends. You've gotten the "just let out of school" silliness out, but you've still got the "slowly-approaching the new school year" preparation period to come. Saturday is that golden "between" day of the weekend. And so, in honour of the day:

Top 5 Best Saturday Memories:

1. Cartoons. This one's a standard. Getting up at the crack of dawn, whispering while making a racket in the kitchen and foraging for breakfast, and turning on the sugary sweetness of hours' worth of commercials and the kids' shows in between them. We held out to the bitter end and didn't trudge upstairs for lunch until all that was on was ten-pin bowling on CBC.

2. Going to the dump. An odd memory, perhaps, but one of the things that could drag us away from Voltron and She-Ra was when Dad would call downstairs, "anyone wanna go to the dump?" We'd squeal and run, pull rubber boots over our pajamas, and go with him to drop off that day's load of yard clippings/garage crap.

3. The smell of the vacuum cleaner. I hated Saturday cleaning with all my might (my jobs were bathrooms and dusting), but one of the last tasks of the day was when my mom would vacuum. I don't know what it was, but the Filter Queen - an ancient machine which has been passed down to the next generation and has been used by all three of us siblings, I think - gave off this weird smell. I think it was still a residual from when Yenno looked at the vacuum nozzle, then the toilet, and then wondered what would happen if the two met. While the vacuum was on. Annnnnyway, this smell would show up whenever the vacuum was used, and it always signalled both the end of work and the happiness of a clean house.

4. Daylight reading hours. Back in the day (and even on the odd day during my grown-up life), my favourite afternoons were those curled up with a book. Saturday afternoons were long stretches of time when I could skip out on reality as I knew it and join the likes of Nancy Drew, Claudia Kishi, and Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield.

5. The wet hair/pajama combo. Saturday night meant bath night, and to this day, going to bed with wet hair always reminds me of that cozy feeling when everything was clean, my mind was whirling with whatever reading adventure I'd been on, and my insulin levels were back to normal after OD'ing on sugared cereals during cartoons.

Good times.