Author: August

I spent a good part of the day cleaning and rearranging furniture in our dining room / my office. It feels a lot more open and even Mr. Z commented on how now it felt. Asynchronistically, we moved into this smaller house closer to my last job (where’d I’d been for many years) just as my career path there would wind down. Now I’ve been working from a home that is much smaller than our last. I super love working from home but I do hope for a move again when the current *waves hands* situation eventually… does a thing? gets better? whatever?

I had plans to blow up my overpriced inflatable pool today, but it didn’t work out that way. We’ve either lost or got rid of our air compressor, so that we a fun search and realization. 🙂

But it’s just as well. It looks like a little storm cloud may be making its way across the skies. I’m not mad, I just hope it brings a little reprieve from these triple digit days.

It was a busy, productive morning – some general adulting combined with the weather being at least 10° cooler than it has been, means we got some yardwork done! Then a lazy afternoon, and now a calm and quiet evening.

a salt lamp from my mom and one of the many notebooks i use to write her letters.

One of my “favorite” things is when other bloggers make these kinds of lists.

I’m only a moderate consumer of stuff physical and digital, but I’ll see what I can dig up. Here’s a few goodies:

This Rainbow Sweater – which my bff linked me. It’s perfectly perfect.

Beachbody 30-day Breakaway – an outdoor running program from BOD?! YES! I’m not even sure when this drops, I was so excited by the news I forgot to watch the video. This might be what it takes to break my treadmill addiction. Speaking of which,

Peloton – has some fun group challenges this summer. I don’t have a branded tread, but the app and my watch are enough to make the runs really fun and challenging to PR.

Homemade Crunchwrap Supremes – lest those workout links make your think I’m virtuous. I made these a few weeks ago and they came out AMAZING. All I’ll say is

a. that the recipe says it makes 4, but it made closer to 6 for us, with a bucket of leftover queso (don’t worry, we ate it with tortilla chips a few days later)

b. I like a big dinner and even 1.5 of those babies was too much for me. Proceed at will.

c. Watch the YouTube video, because Farideh is adorable and it actually helped me make sense of how it all comes together.

And last, I’ll mention YouTube itself. We’ve had a few household projects and I love that are so many experts who make awesome videos that teach you so much more than you could learn mucking up a project multiple times. It’s nice when technology actively brings good into the world.

Happy Friday, friends!

I discovered this catstagram ( @waffleon_moon ) today and since it’s been the highlight of my week, I thought I’d make it the highlight of whole post for today.

and that previous post was the lamest white girl shit ever.

Join me in making a donation, supporting a black-owned business, and calling yourself out when you’re lazy and awful af.

https://blacklivesmatter.com/

My BLM garden flag came today and I love it. Yes, I also need to pressure wash our porch and one day the xeriscape will be installed.

That’s all for tonight.

Writing daily is tough stuff.

I finished In the Dream House. (spoiler alert I loved it crazy hard and gave it 5/5)

I bought a ridiculous inflatable pool.

I started counting calories (again again again – I hate it in theory but I feel better about it in practice).

I’m trying to read less news.

I’m trying to be less anxious.

I’m trying to tamp down my penchant to turn my every fleeting thought into an action item.

I got engrossed in reading In The Dream House: A Memoir this evening and lost track of time. This used to happen so often when I was a younger reader but not so much these adult-filled days. It’s fabulous when it does. Also, I can’t recommend this book strongly enough – it scratches all my itches: lbgtq+, a dark underbelly, coming of age, Iowa, English major themes referenced with footnotes. The works, I tell you.

I’ve only got a tiny bit left of the evening, so I’m off to squeeze in a few more chapters.

Not much to say tonight. I’ve got the Sunday, heat wave, cabin fever, missing dinner with a friend because of covid, ready to shake up my life but not sure how blues.

I’m also currently convinced that the perfect new bag will solve all these problems so I’ve done nothing but virtually window shop all day.

It was ridiculously hot out today, so we hid inside and watched both parts of Twilight: Breaking Dawn. They were both so ridiculous and imminently forgettable but watchable in that mockable way. Great discussions on the best vampire series followed and for the first time ever I rue not being an English teacher who can make my students sit through all these movies and discuss the themes of Mormonism through the lens of this whole series.