Monday:

Why don’t you put fresh flowers in every room of your house or apartment or manor or hotel room or tent or wherever it is you live? The first time I stayed at the Winter Palace in Luxor, Egypt, I was utterly charmed at having flowers from the garden on my desk, in the bathroom, and strewn on my bed. It was so luxurious. When I was last there in August, I tipped the maids well to get bigger and better bouquets. Money well spent. Now, I do this at home, too. I get a bouquet or two of flowers at Walmart — which are really quite nice and unreasonably cheap — and divide them into smaller arrangements. It’s so nice to have a touch of nature on your bedside table, on the sink, and in your changing room. You do have a changing room, don’t you, reader?

Tuesday:

Why don’t you go to the used bookstore nearest you and scour the shelves for new additions to your personal library? I tend to stay away from The Half-Price Bookstore because I can’t control myself and inevitably spend more than I need to. I’m so glad that I went recently though, because somebody with an Egyptological interest must have died. There were so many delightful old books. I grabbed the official guide to the Sound and Light Show at Karnak Temple, an essay collection on Akhenaten, and a couple other delightful tomes. Most excitingly, though, was the discovery of a signed omnibus of Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody Mysteries. I squeaked in an inhuman way as I paid for that one, dear reader. I’m so happy. Go shopping. Who cares about being debt free?

Wednesday:

Why don’t you spend an entire day, from dawn until dusk, walking? It doesn’t matter where you go. Walk on a bike trail, around the block, to another city, in the middle of the countryside, anywhere you please. Just walk. I love to walk, I could probably walk to the moon and back if the chance existed. I would be walking back to Luxor right now if it were possible. You burn calories, tone your legs, and have a chance to listen to a couple audiobooks. It would suit me right down to the ground to walk all day every day. I might just do this if we have another warm day and I have nothing else to do. That’ll never happen. Oh well.

Thursday:

Why don’t you take some kind of extracurricular cultural lessons? If I had the time, I would like to take ballroom dancing lessons, painting lessons, lessons in fencing, and Arabic lessons. I would be so much better rounded as a Renaissance Man if I could fence and insult my opponent in Arabic. Wouldn’t that be dashing? Then I could go home and paint the scene on a large oil canvas that would inevitably hang in the National Gallery in Washington DC. I don’t have small aspirations. Go educate yourselves, reader.

Friday:

Why don’t you plan a trip to someplace you never dreamed of going? I’ve always imagined myself going everywhere, from the peak of Mount Everest to the South Pole in uncharted Antarctica, perusing the Amazon and gallivanting through the Kalihari. Now I’m thinking I’ve got to see Pakistan. It looks stunning, reader. If my experiences in the Middle East are anything to go off of, we have a very skewed perception of what life is like in that nation. I want to see the remote villages, the bustling city of Karachi, the mausoleums, the mosques, and the mountains. I want to see the places that nobody sees anymore. And I still need to go to Romania.