Hobby, Diversion, Pastime, Leisure Pursuit

I have only a few hobbies. I scrapbook & make cards two or three times a year. I play World of Warcraft in a very casual manner. I don't garden or make preserves or sew or knit or quilt. The real things that take up most of my free-time are music and renaissance restivals. Singing at a renaissance festival is what I do every weekend in April and May, every year that I've been in the DFW area. This will be my eighth season to perform, my third to sing, and my second to teach. So, starting Saturday my weekends belong to the Scarborough Academy of Performing Arts and Queen Anne's Lace.

Yes, that's 16 weekends but it only really works out to 28 days, which is ony 7.7% of the year. For the majority of those days I will be outside for a minimum of 8 hrs--at least half of them more than 12 hrs. I'll start in the cold, possibly in the snow and ice, and finish in the blistering heat of Memorial Day weekend, which almost inevitably comes with rain of some sort. I do this for fun.

And it is fun. It's challenging and sometimes frustrating, but there is a rush and a thrill that makes me keep wanting to do it again and again. It might take a special kind of person to want to give up more than a quarter of their weekends to play a highly elaborate game of make-believe mixed with street theatre of the interactive variety while wearing clothes designed to mimic a time and place 500 years in the past and at least 40 degrees cooler. Thankfully, I'm that kind of special.

Now, it's not all downhill just yet. Sunday is mostly mine. And I'm not teaching all of the days, so I have a few hours here and there to take care of some last-minute spring cleaning (long before spring officially arrives).

In my Barbie dream world, I'd manage to get the bookshelves organized--not in an alphabetical, thematic, or any other logical manner. I just want to have books and things that belong on shelves on the shelves and not sitting in boxes on the floor. My Barbie dream world also has clean floors and counters, so let's not think that it's actually going to come to pass anytime soon.

I do want to hang curtains though. I have some lovely valances for the living room and beautiful tapestry curtains for the dining/music room. I would love to get one of those nifty wall stencils that says "If music be the food of love, play on..." to put above the little opening to the hallway.

Truth be told though, I'm going to spend a lot of those few breaks doing utterly unexciting things like... napping with my cats piled about me, cooking with my husband while watching Netflix, and maybe going to see a matinee movie.

Cleaning and necessary housework will happen during the week like it always does. Laundry will get slower as costuming takes its place in the rotation. Meals will get crock-potted and left-overs will sustain us. We'll come home tired and possibly bruised. We'll tell stories about classes and people we met and things we said that we had no intention of saying. We'll begin to detest our alarm clocks and the smell of sunscreen... because it's fun. I'll put on my 35 lbs of pink, fluffy costume and sing and be silly. I'll wander about acting like a superhero from the planet Cozmetix and making up tall tales to suit my mood. Then I'll come back to my job, Monday through Friday, dragging myself through the work week telling the stories of the things I did and hope to do next time.

But for now... I'll read up on my lesson plans, and review my music, and check costume bits for tears while sitting on my couch, covered in cats, watching Netflix.