indulge in some quiet time

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DigsMagazine.com.

These days, my Friday nights are apparently a whole lot less exciting, and it's a rare weekend indeed when the boy and I can actually stand to sleep till noon. Back when we lived in Tucson, Saturday mornings were house fix-up time, as we'd take advantage of the slightly less brutal rays of the morning sun to tackle our DIY project of the moment. Since moving to overcast Edinburgh last year, however, the whole sun thing is no longer an issue; moreover, living in rented digs, with furnishings that came with the apartment no less, means that the big home projects we used to find ourselves mired in really aren't doable. Frustrating from a decorating point? Yes. But the upside is that for now, at least, we have a great big chunk of extra weekend time to enjoy in whatever manner happens to tickle our fancy.

For a while after settling into our place in Edinburgh, Saturday mornings were simply reserved for what my friend Eileen calls Big Breakfast. Big Breakfast, not to be confused with boring old regular breakfast, is a proper full course breakfast feast, the sort of spread that takes far too much time and energy to bother with on an ordinary workday morning, and generally involves enough calorific goodness to take you past lunch and all the way to dinner. Big Breakfast is one of life's great delights, and being able to indulge in it every week makes for a very happy me indeed.

Turns out, however, that there's something even better than a big pile of waffles with a side of bacon and scrambled eggs. Yes! It's true! And that's enjoying the waffles, bacon and egg while sitting in front of the TV, plate delicately balanced on your lap, which should ideally be clad in pajamas (the lap, that is, not the plate). And whether it's because after a long week of work, the brain is simply too tired to process anything serious, or because at 10 am in the morning, the glare on the TV screen is far too strong, I've made another exciting discovery: featuring bright colors and packaged in perfect bite-size portioned episodes, cartoons make the ideal match for that Saturday Big Breakfast.

Yes, I know: most of you learned this long ago, say, back in the primary school days. But maybe it's just as well that I'm a little late in getting indoctrinated into the blissful sloth of spending Saturday morning in front of the TV. Because these days, the Saturday morning cartoon options are almost certainly way better than when we were kids. Back in the pre-DVD, pre-TiVo era, folks generally just watched whatever show the network felt like broadcasting; if you were eager to watch Muppet Babies but Bugs Bunny happened to be on, you were pretty much out of luck, a slave to the whims of scheduled programming. Nowadays, however, we're lucky enough to be able to watch our favorite shows pretty much whenever the mood so strikes. Ah, how I love technology.

don't stop: there's more!

---------------------------> lounge . nourish . host . laze . home .