My weekend started with a trip to Costco on Friday night after work. I met my mom there because we like to split things. We hadn’t been in a while so we did quite a lot of damage. A take-and-bake pizza and nice bottle of wine was one of the many things inside the jumbo-sized shopping cart filled to the brim with food. As we unloaded the cart into our cars one of Marley’s friends met us in the parking lot and I took the girls to the high school for a comedy show. Chandler was already there watching a hypnosis show in another building. Dave and I enjoyed our pizza and wine kid-free and caught up with each other, then hung out with our favorite anti-hero Walter White. We only have a few episodes left and the shit is really hitting the fan. (In case you didn’t know drugs are bad people, very very bad.) When we’re done it’s on to House of Cards, then Downton Abbey. Who needs dinner and a movie when we’ve got take-and-bake pizza and binge TV?

On Saturday Marley had a lacrosse tournament at the Rose Bowl. Dave had to work in the morning so it was just Marley and me. We had a great mother-daughter talk on the way out. I’ve always found that kids will tell you things in the car they won’t tell you anywhere else. Probably because they don’t have to look at you. Marley played goalie all three games and did a great job even though she got pretty beat up the second game (and has the bruises to prove it). Dave was able to meet us there after the first game. The weather was perfect. It was a good day. As we were driving home I got a text alert. I asked Marley to read me the text. It was from my friend Rita.

Marley read me the text and asked me if I wanted her to answer.

“No, I’ll do it when we get home,” I told her.

Sometimes my texts with Rita are a bit blue. We act a little silly. (Or a lot silly.) I wondered if Marley had scanned up and seen our previous texts. I think she would have been pretty mortified. Of course I see her Instagrams and am pretty mortified. (She doesn’t post inappropriate pictures, but she says the F word a lot.) I wonder what’s more mortifying – a daughter reading her mother’s inappropriate texts or a mother reading her daughter’s inappropriate Instagrams? We’ll call it a draw.

I made a good dinner and afterwards, as Chandler was putting condiments away in the fridge he came up behind me and gave me a giant hug. He knows exactly how to make my heart go pitter-pat. I don’t know how I’ll bear it when he goes away to college next year.

After dinner I received a text from my friend Juliana. She and Carol decided to meet at Stonehaus and run around the lake instead of meeting our run club for our Sunday morning run. That would have been fine (the coffee at Stonehaus is FAB), but run club was only supposed run two miles and the run around the lake is four. Any runner will tell you (or someone who pretends to be a runner like me), that running is 90% mental. Well, I had only mentally prepared for 2 miles! And in case you’re bad at math four is twice as many as two. I’d take four dollars over two dollars. I’d take four (dozen) French fries over two (dozen) French fries. But what kind of idiot runs four miles when their run coach says they only have to run two?!

Apparently me.

Stupid run club friends.

Amazingly, I ran my best time ever. I ran 4.23 miles in 40:07. Chandler smirked at my time (I like him better when he’s hugging me), but I don’t care. I still say I kicked ass!

After the run (and more importantly coffee) I went to a memorial service for my aunt’s brother. It was at the beach and it was lovely, but I am heartbroken for my aunt and her sisters. They’ve lost their two brothers in less than two years. It’s so cliché to say life’s too short and often too cruel, but the thing about clichés is they’re usually true. 

This is why still get a warm fuzzy feeling from enjoying simple pleasures with my husband. Why I delight in my talks with Marley. Why I I savor my hugs from Chandler. Why I celebrate a 9:29 minute mile.

Because it’s the little things in life. Small moments from a relatively uneventful suburban weekend that make this short cruel life so beautiful.

What did you do this weekend?