Why does May feel so busy? It’s not even THAT busy, and yet I am SO BUSY. Why? What am I even doing?
For one thing, I am FREAKING OUT ABOUT THE KITTEN. We are getting a kitten, have I mentioned this? It is my understanding from such reliable sources as Twitter that cats just randomly show up in people’s lives and the people simply adjust to now having a living creature they need to take care of. On the other hand, there’s me, who has dreamt of owning a cat for decades now, and who has been planning this specific cat since February, and I do not feel ready! Our house is too big for a kitten with far too many places for said kitten to get lost! How does one ensure a kitten gets enough but not too much food? What if I am allergic to the kitten and spend the next twenty years feeling like crap? THERE ARE TOO MANY LITTER OPTIONS.
I hope anyone reading this understands that the kitten is A Done Deal. Next week at this time, we will have a kitten. In our house. That is ours. I am a little hyperventilatey, can you tell?
As you know, I tend to channel my anxiety into buying random shit. Or at the very least, ogling random shit, adding it to my online shopping cart, and then never buying it. Sometimes adding a thing to my shopping cart scratches the same itch as hitting the “buy now” button, without the attendant “OMG why did I just spend good money on that” feelings. I am trying very, very hard not to buy this faux-velvet chaise longue for the kitten. (I did not manage to avoid buying this mid-century modern pet bed for a friend slash dog owner who just moved into a new house. But I am only human.)
Speaking of spending ridiculous money, my husband got me a cat book (bookshop.org / amazon) for my birthday… and then I accidentally “returned” it to the library, along with a stack of other books. So we just repurchased it.
It is Memorial Day weekend here in the US, which means three consecutive days at home with my family. Although I am ditching them today to go spend time with friends, and I am PUMPED. The weather has been so soggy around here lately that I am raring to get outside.
My mom and I got pedicures as our Mother’s Day activity, so my feet are ready for sandal weather. But sandal weather is so far eluding us. I have been wearing CLOSE TOED SHOES and JACKETS. I am not opposed to either, but it feels wrong. It’s the latter third of May for Pete’s sake! I suppose this gives me a teeny bit of extra time to get new sandals. My old, well-worn and well-loved sandals are a bit frayed, so I’m eyeing these wedges as replacements. Or maybe these ones. (The old sandals no longer come in the colors I like, otherwise I would absolutely buy them again.)
One thing that I have yet to do is ANY GARDENING. I am so behind. My pots from last year are all outside, looking empty and sad. Well. The tomato pots have fresh cilantro growing in them, which is a fun surprise. I guess the seeds I planted at the end of the season last year waited until now to make an appearance. I’ve already harvested a bowlful to make it into sauce. Yum. I bought some new planters last fall to take the place of the old, falling-apart planters we inherited from the previous owners, and I really want to fill them with pretty flowers. Maybe this weekend????
Adding to the sense of frantic busy-ness is the bunch of unusual activities we’ve had this month, like recitals and concerts and tournaments and class trips and special lunches. They seem to ramp up exponentially as the month progresses, as though no one realized it was May already and we need to schedule the things before the year ends. For instance, I am supposed to bring food for a sixth grade party next week and I have no idea how much food to bring. I know how many kids are in Carla’s grade, but surely I can’t be expected to provide something that feeds ALL of them, right? If I bring something for about 50% of them, that should be fine, right? (The teacher in charge is not responding to requests for more information.)
I have no good way to end this post, so I will leave you with a photo of my irises, which, despite the lack of sunshine, are finally blooming!
Oh hi! It’s the weekend and it’s AUGUST. The second weekend in August, in fact, even though that seems impossible on multiple levels. We just got back from vacation and are not fully adjusted back into Real Life. Let’s have some randomosity, shall we?
Perhaps you recall that Carla accompanied me on a recent grocery store trip. My policy is to pretty much say “yes” if she points out a food she wants to try, although I reserve the right to limit the number of sweet things I let her put into the cart. I kept close track of the things she actually ate from that trip.
Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese:I am pretty sure this is still unopened. But that’s because we left town for a week. She did eat most of a giant block of cheddar that was in my mother’s fridge, though.
Demi Baguette: Carla ate half of this baguette in the car and the other half for dinner.
Chobani Flip Cookie Dough Yogurt: She ate all but one before we left on vacation.
Watermelon: I kept reminding her it was in the fridge and she kept saying she would eat it and then… it went bad. SIGH.
Fully Cooked Bacon: I think she ate four slices immediately and then forgot about it.
Black Seedless Table Grapes: She ate some of these, but not all of them. I consider this a half win. Next time, I will take my grocery store at their word that we can take a smaller portion out of the grapes bag and buy that instead of an entire huge molds-before-we-can-get-to-it amount.
Crepes: She has been eating these pretty regularly, both before and after our trip! She put sliced strawberries in the first one, then moved on to Nutella. (I tried one, too; I found a recipe for a lemony yogurt spread to put inside and it was so awful I couldn’t finish it. The crepe was good though.)
Golden Berries: I washed the whole carton of these little guys and ended up eating a few. They had a texture I don’t love, but the sour-sweet flavor was enjoyable enough to override it. Carla ate ZERO. This may be my fault, though; when I ate the first one, I mentioned it was sour, and then she kept asking me if they were as sour as WarHeads. She LIKES WarHeads, so I don’t really know why “sour” would have been a deterrent, but maybe she doesn’t like sour fruit?
Raw Slivered Almonds: This container remains unopened in the cupboard.
Wax Beans: Carla ate about half of these before we left. Next time, I am going to buy fewer than AN ENTIRE PACKAGE.
Ham: Carla ate the entire quarter pound of ham!
Protein+ Spaghetti Noodles: Carla has made several pots of spaghetti noodles.
Wholly Guacamole: We still have a whole package left, and I ate at least half of the other package myself.
Cookie: Not eaten on account of walnuts.
Our vacation was lovely and relaxing. We had a mix of rainy days, during which we stayed inside and did things like read and watch movies, and sunny days, during which we went swimming and boating and hiking. On our last hike, Carla managed to attract a dog. This is much more surprising than it sounds, considering the nearest neighbor lives about a mile away in the middle of a very isolated and remote forest. Leave it to Carla to find a dog wherever she goes! The other highlight of our trip, for her at least, was a bird that fell down the chimney into the wood stove. The four of us had to team up to remove the bird (who was sooty but flew away, seemingly unharmed) and Carla thought it was The Best Thing Ever.
Lake time.Front yard.
Carla and I have been getting into hair styling videos. I have never been Good At Hair. My hair has been pretty much the same style since high school. I can form a rudimentary braid, I can pull it back into a ponytail, I can stuff it into a claw clip. That’s really the extent of my hair styling abilities. So I’m always intrigued by videos on Instagram that show Super Easy Ways to Braid! I have saved a bunch of these videos but have not tried any of them. Carla tried a braid on me the other day. She decorated it with those little plastic rectangles you use to close a bread bag. Slay.
Another recent purchase was a big hit, though. My daughter is always asking, “What does that mean?” when my husband and I use idioms, so I got her this book to explain what a bunch of common phrases and sayings mean and where they came from. She LOVES IT. Oooh – it looks like there’s a whole series of these books! Maybe I need to get her another one for Christmas or Hanukkah?
My “vegetable garden” is finally producing some vegetables. Tomatoes are starting to ripen, peas are podding, strawberries are somehow surviving the birds. I have only had ONE LONELY ZUCCHINI. Next year, I think I will plant multiple zucchini plants and only one cucumber. I don’t really LIKE cucumbers, and the two cucumber plants I planted have been prolific and weird. One of them produces round cucumbers. The little card that came with the plant has a picture of totally normal oblong cucumbers on it… so I’m not sure what I’ve done to produce globular cucumbers. I’m just letting it do its thing.
Zucchini and a normal cucumber.
Why is it round and why is it yellow???
Speaking of plants behaving oddly… Do you remember a million years ago when I was complaining about the state of my front stoop? Well, I buying a couple of little evergreens that I LOVE. I bought them from the same garden center, on the same day. I planted them in identical pots, at the same time, with identical soil and fertilizer. I have watered them identically. And yet… one of them has done rather poorly.
Tree on the left: thriving! Tree on the right: has given up on life.
I am thinking about starting a beef with our FedEx driver. Is that the correct way to say that? “Starting a beef”? Sounds more like prepping dinner than I intended, but oh well. We have a front door with a covered stoop and UPS and the mail person leave packages there. This is nice, because they are protected from the elements, plus we know that someone left a package there because we have a video doorbell that alerts us. The FedEx driver does not leave packages on the stoop. He leaves them by our garage, right out in the open. Which is why we did not know that a package my in laws had sent us – full of fun gifts and snacks from Europe – had been delivered until the next morning, when my husband went to work and found the box in a mess of candy wrappers. Some grateful raccoon mistook our package for its own, broke in, and ate every single edible thing within.
Do you know a Cat Lady for Kamala? A friend of a friend created this coloring book and I am in the mood for a little giveaway. Let me know in the comments if you (or someone you know) are interested in having this coloring book, and I’ll choose a number at random and send a copy to the winner!
That’s all I have for you today, Internet! I hope your weekend is off to a great start!
Oh hello there! It’s been too long! Like, really too long. Thank you so much to everyone who has written a sweet note or text or blog comment checking in. I feel very loved, and I’m so sorry if I caused you any worry.
I’m also a little embarrassed, to be honest. Because there is NO REASON for my very lengthy impromptu break from the blog world. I can say “I’ve been busy” because that’s true, but also: WE ARE ALL BUSY. And yet YOU have continued to prioritize posting and commenting and I somehow have not.
That doesn’t mean I don’t miss you. And it doesn’t mean that I don’t feel tremendous guilt about missing all the things going on in your life. There are a lot of negatives in there; I trust you get where I’m coming from.
1. Writer’s Block: Because I am currently struggling to think of ANYTHING AT ALL to write in this post, I might as well start with the Big Dumb Excuse, which is that I have been suffering a severe case of Writer’s Block lately. I sit down to write and there might be a few gasping spurts of words but then there’s nothing but hissing air and the sense that something might be broken. I have neglected all three of my writing partners this month, and I hate that. As someone who thrives when I know a friend is sitting beside me, tapping away at their keyboard at the exact same time, I hate that I’m not holding up my end of the clickety-clack. When I told one of my writing pals that I hadn’t written a word in eons, he mused that he doesn’t believe in writer’s block. I get it; he has been a professional writer for decades now, and when there is a deadline, you simply can’t have writer’s block. You find a way for the words to flow. And I managed to tap into that source this month – the cold, deep pool of responsibility in which swim your reputation and your income, present and future – for a work project, and again for an editing project. But I could not get it together to do any other writing whatsoever. I opened my document of blog posts and stared at it more times that you can imagine. I made lists of blog topics. I brainstormed a new story idea with a friend via text. I opened up in-progress works and stared at them. That’s as far as I got. My writer’s-block-is-not-a-thing friend gently tried to prompt me to just WRITE, anything, even if it’s crap, and – this blog post aside – I find that nearly impossible to do. I know that it’s like exercise: you do it, even if it hurts, even if your heart feels like it will explode the cage of your ribs, and the more you do it, the easier it gets, bit by agonizing bit. And yet I find myself staring at the cursor, blinking, blinking, and cannot remember what a sentence is or how to form one. Alongside the shame of any kind of personal failure, there’s something uniquely demoralizing about not being able to do something you’ve always done. ANYWAY. I no longer have The Chaos of May to blame for my not sitting and staring at the cursor, so I’m forcing myself to Just Do It, even if the results are Of Highly Questionable Value.
2. The Best Thing About My House: It has been SO FUN to see my yard come alive this spring and summer! The previous owners planted so many things and many of them are haphazard and a little weird (like big tufts of grass that seem to be plopped down in places with no rhyme or reason), but many of them are delightful. There is a lone forsythia bush in the back yard that burst into yellow in early spring. A lilac bush followed, and oh – lilac is one of my favorite scents. I collected big bunches of the blooms and brought them inside where they filled the house with spring scent. And then came a glorious surprise: IRISES. I adore irises. Alongside tulips, they may be my favorite flower ever. We had so many of them! They were gorgeous and smell divine. There is a magnolia tree in my backyard! I have wanted a magnolia tree since college, when I first encountered one outside my freshman year dorm. For several magical days each spring, you could walk through a shower of fragrant pink petals. And now I have my own! It’s white, though, but it’s nonetheless so lovely. We have roses! And daylilies! And peonies! Catmint and lavender by the bushel! And a bunch of flowers I don’t recognize! The hydrangeas are just starting to bloom and we have some butterfly bushes and I am just so happy with all of this color and scent and summery abundance.
3. Plans and Planning: A million years ago, I asked for advice about buying a planner. I am not a planner person, but I wanted to BECOME a planner person. So many of my blog readers are planner people, and they all seem to Have It Together, so I kind of deluded myself into thinking if only I had a planner, I could also Have It Together. I admit, somewhat sheepishly to everyone who was kind enough to leave a helpful comment, that I panic-ordered the first specific planner someone suggested. It was a Passion Planner, recommended by Kate (thanks, Kate!) and I got it in the 5×8 size because that’s what Gigi recommended. It arrived, and I looked at it, and it has since gone unused. Turns out I have no idea how to use a planner. Anyway. My daughter is beginning MIDDLE SCHOOL next year, and the Middle School administration recommends using a planner to keep track of their absolutely bonkerballs schedule (bonkerballs is my term, not theirs; presumably they think it is doable and normal), so I bought Carla a planner and we are going to learn how to use one together this summer.
4. More Gardening Talk! My husband and daughter got me a garden center gift certificate for Mother’s Day, so I spent one entire glorious day shopping for and planting a whole host of annuals. The previous owners left quite a few containers behind (some of which are in poor shape; one disintegrated the instant I moved it) and I had some containers from my old house. So I had a lot of real estate to fill. I bought plenty of flowers but I also bought a bunch of vegetables. It’s been a few years since I tried to grow veggies, but our backyard is fenced in, so there is no danger of deer (chipmunk danger is, however, rampant) and I’m excited to try again. I have a zucchini plant, a broccoli plant, two different cucumbers (I asked A Woman Who Seemed to Know Her Stuff for cucumber advice at the garden center, and she recommended two types, and I felt like I couldn’t not take her advice), a strawberry plant, a jalapeno plant. I also planted a few sugar snap peas and a bunch of herbs (thyme, rosemary, basil, cilantro). THEN our old next door neighbor texted me that she’d grown a few tomato plants from seed just for Carla. The neighbor is an avid gardener, and Carla used to go over to her house to play with her dog and they’d end up in the garden, where Carla would eat so many tomatoes. This former neighbor is also solely responsible for Carla liking broccoli, which is a thing she now reliably eats, so you will understand that I have undying love and adoration for this person and her magical powers. We just got to visit the ex-neighbor and her dog, where we also collected three beautiful tomato plants, and as soon as I’m done typing this nonsense I am going to go move them from their tiny pots into bigger containers.
5. Summer Priorities: Carla and I sat down the other day and came up with a list of summer priorities. I feel like I have too many priorities, though, and feel a little pre-stressed about failing to prioritize any of them. Anyway, my daily priorities are: writing, exercising, spending time outside, spending time with my kid, reading, dusting off my rusty French. Weekly, I want to swim, go for a drive, and have a family movie night. Carla’s daily priorities are: biking, playing with the neighbors, reading, and swimming. (She is also studying French daily, though for some reason it didn’t make it on the priorities list.) Each week, she wants to walk with me, swim with me, get ice cream, and have playdates with friends. Some of these things can be done in combination. Like, if Carla and I go on a walk or a swim, that covers three priorities at once. I could even try writing outdoors, which could be fun? (I just ordered this bug spray because our lovely yard is humming with biting insects.)
6. Why French? Carla and I are both studying French because we have a loose plan to go to France as a family in 2025. My husband and I have both been lucky enough to visit France several times apiece. We also spent our honeymoon in Paris. We love the country and we both feel fairly comfortable getting around. Right now, we are in the planning stages and we haven’t yet narrowed down where we want to go. Paris is a definite, since Carla has never been there and wants to see the Eiffel Tower. But then where should we go? My husband and I have both been to a lot of places, but there is surprisingly little overlap in where we’ve visited. Do we go somewhere one of us has already been? Do we try to stick to places neither of us have seen? I’m also kind of excited about the idea of picking a historical French subject for us to study as a family and then explore in person. Joan of Arc! Marie Antoinette! Eleanor of Aquitaine! Marie Curie! How cool would it be to read about a historical person and then see where she lived? My family is (so far) less enthused about this plan than I am. Carla has never been abroad and we are all super excited about introducing her to the joy of international travel.
That’s it for today, Internet. Carla’s tomato plants are calling. Thank you again for being so kind, and for caring about me.
If you could go to any non-Paris city in France, where would you go? Do you have any summer priorities? Do you use a planner and, if so, do you have any hot tips for a planner neophyte?
