clothing

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Five for Friday

I am so scattered lately. So. Scattered. Is it the time change? Is it perimenopause? Am I experiencing the early signs of dementia? WHO KNOWS.

*sob*

Keeping Track of Things You Need to Do: This feels like the dumbest question ever (and yet I feel like I have asked the same or a very similar question before, which… well, it says a lot), but I am 100% serious: How do you keep track of things you need to do?

Back in the middle ages of 2005 or so, I kept a physical planner. At least, I’m pretty sure I did; I remember buying extra pages to insert into the planner. I am assuming that’s how I kept on top of tasks and meetings etc. When I worked in an office, everyone used Outlook to keep track of those things. I have a dim recollection of getting a little pop-up notification on my screen five minutes before my next meeting. For years now, I’ve been keeping all my appointments and things in my phone’s calendar. But more and more often, I find that I’m straight up MISSING things. I failed to show up for a doctor’s appointment last fall, which is super embarrassing, in large part because my husband finds it SO frustrating when people fail to show up for appointments with him. I have been *sure* that I already had appointments on my calendar, only to find that I had never scheduled them. The other day, I was supposed to attend an informational meeting and, even though I rescheduled plans because of it, and even though my entire family was aware I needed to attend this meeting, I forgot about it completely. If I make any tiny deviation in my normal morning routine, I will forget critical necessities for myself and family members. Let me tell you, I feel like I am losing my mind.

One thing that has helped, slightly, is for me to program multiple “alerts” into each calendar entry. So if I have a hair appointment, I put in an alert for a week prior to the appointment, then for a day prior to the appointment, and finally, for an hour prior to the appointment. This seems to do the trick. But, and this is CRUCIAL, it only works if I remember to program the alerts, which I apparently did not do for the recent informational meeting.

I don’t know why the second alert comes before the alert; it works out the way it should.

I am pretty sure I complained in recent months on this very blog about forgetting to take my regular daily medications, and I resolved that by a) taking everything at one time instead of some in the morning and some at night, and b) programming a recurring alarm into my phone, with the title “Take medication.” I suppose I could do that with lots of things, but also I am wary of having too many alarms. That seems like it will become quickly and counterproductively overwhelming.

I have spent way too much time thinking, plaintively, “But I used to be able to just remember things!” For whatever horrifying or normal reason, I can no longer count on “just remembering things.” What I *do* need to do is find a system, because I am tired of and irritated about feeling like a flaky dumbass so often.

Good Chips: It’s no secret around here that I love me some tortilla chips. My kid loves plain old Tostitos, but they have become prohibitively expensive over the past six to twelve months. I only ever buy tortilla chips if they are on sale or if I happen to be at Trader Joe’s when I am in need of tortilla chips. This restriction is how I discovered these chips; they were on sale at my local grocery store. And they are SO GOOD. Flaky and crunchy and light. Good flavor, good salt level. They taste pretty darn close to the handmade tortilla chips you get at a Mexican restaurant.

Workout Workaround: A few months ago, I strained my forearm. It has been painful ever since, and hurts even when I use that hand to lift something light, like a carton of yogurt. This means that I haven’t been able to lift weights, even though strength training is my preferred method of exercise. I tried resting the arm, I tried stretching it, I tried whining about it anyone who would listen. Nothing worked. But then I found this video with some specific massages and exercises for forearm pain. I wouldn’t say it’s fully resolved the pain, but it has helped SO MUCH. I have also decided that I can’t just never lift weights again. But instead of doing a few reps of heavy weights, I decided to seek out some workout videos featuring high reps of small weights. This one is my favorite so far. Some of the exercises strain my arm even with my lightest weight (5 pounds / 2.27 kg), so when I encounter one of those, I use no weight at all. I have been pleased with how sweaty I get during these workouts and by how shaky my arms and legs and abs get by the end of the video.

Summer Stripes: We have reached the portion of the year where I am longing for an all new wardrobe of spring and summer clothing. Not that the weather is cooperating; I went for a walk with a friend yesterday and had to wear gloves and my winter coat, and for the first half of our time together I was kicking myself for not bringing a hat and scarf as well. But the heart wants what it wants.

Currently, my heart is fixated on summer weight pants with a vertical stripe. I have tried buying several pairs of pants of this nature, but nothing – so far – has stuck. First of all, these pants sold out after I’d ordered them, but before I received them. Boo. They seem perfect. I am on the fence about these jeans. On the one hand, they are cute enough. On the other hand, they are jeans and I really wanted something light and breezy. On the other other hand, they are light and I feel like light colors emphasize the wrong parts of my body. These pants are cute in theory but look terrible on my actual body. These pants are pretty cute, and I like the material, which is silky. But they are black and I really want blue pants. Maybe I will order these.

The main problem with these pants of my heart, aside from them not looking great on me, is that I am now struggling to differentiate them from pajamas. I don’t really want to look as though I’m gallivanting about the world in pajamas.

Obligatory Cat Photo: My cat is weird and adorable.

He likes to hang out like this. Perfectly normal way to use the stairs.
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Thursday Chit Chat

Oh hi there – I have a big mug of tea and a nice cold mango smoothie next to me and I’m feeling chatty. Care to sit a minute and catch up?

The first thing on my mind is that I have been doing some Spring Shopping. You know, because once again, I hate all my clothes and nothing fits or looks remotely cute. My first purchase arrived yesterday. I got some pants and a shirt from Quince. Have you tried Quince? One of my friends swears by them – and she is always beautifully dressed, so I have had Quince on my radar for awhile. I bought a pair of wide leg ponte pants, a pair of wide leg linen pants, and a plain white T-shirt. The shipping was remarkably fast and I was so excited to try everything on. 

The T-shirt feels amazing. It is so soft, but also feels substantial, somehow? Not flimsy, like some of those tissue Ts, which I guess is the fault of the Me and not of the T when “tissue” is right there in the name. I got it in white, and it’s not see-through, which I appreciate. What I like most about it is that it’s fitted. Most T-shirts these days seem to be so boxy, and I really need all the help I can get when it comes to approximating a waistline, so I like a shirt that is more fitted. Also! It’s not SHORT. I am long-waisted as it is, but everything is both boxy and short, and I like to keep my midriff covered; yes I know midriffs are In again, but my midriff had plenty of exposure in the 90s thank you very much.

The linen pants were lovely, but I am not keeping them. The material is soft and hangs beautifully, and they fit just fine. However, they had what I can only describe as a little pouch that cupped my lower tummy like a precious jewel. I mean, it FELT very nice, very comforting. My lower tum was free to be itself. The thing is… when it comes to clothing, I want my lower abdomen to be smoothed and disguised, not cherished. I do not need a pooch pocket, is what I’m saying. 

But the ponte pants. Oh my goodness. I may have ordered them in slightly the wrong size? Either that or they are designed for people who are more straight up and down than I am. But I love them so. They just FEEL so GOOD. The material is beautiful, they drape in such a lovely way, and they make my bottom half feel well-dressed. I don’t know that they are particularly flattering on my body shape, but they are so nice I am considering keeping them anyway. 

Anyway, I don’t know that I found the right Quince clothing for me, but I plan to keep trying. (And if you decide to try it, let me know and I can send you a $20 off $100 coupon!)

This talk of clothing reminds me that I did end up buying the anti-cellulite cream. It’s still early days, so I don’t know if it’s magically transforming my cellulite yet. But it does produce quite a lot of heat on the areas of application. I would describe the sensation as similar to the feeling of sitting in direct sunlight for a long time. It feels deeply uncomfortable, but not unbearable. The worst part, for me, is that sometimes it moves past hot to itchy. If it does help with the cellulite, it will all have been worth it.

I am in a bit of book slump lately. Usually, I have an audiobook that I listen to while driving/walking/puttering around the house, and I also have a book I read in bed before I fall asleep. My last three audiobooks have been a big flop, though. One of the books (bookshop.org / amazon) just hasn’t captured my attention; I’m 35% in and I think I’m going to DNF. I just don’t care about any of the characters and I think there was a murder, but it happened so long ago I’ve lost any sense of urgency about it. 

The other two books were DNFs because of the narrators. So maybe I will pick one or both of them up later, as physical books? The first is a book (bookshop.org / amazon) I really want to read, and I was enjoying it, but the narrator WHISPERS the entire time and at 54% in I cannot stand it anymore. I’m either missing crucial things or feeling irritated by the whispering and I just can’t do it. The next book (bookshop.org / amazon) was a new release that was on my holds list, either because someone recommended it, or it just sounded good – I’m not sure – but the narrator swallows audibly and I JUST CANNOT.

My husband is listening to Wellness (bookshop.org / amazon)  right now, and loves it. So maybe I will listen to that one next? 

I’m having similar issues with my physical books, though. I read through the prologue and first chapter of a book on my Kindle, and that was enough for me. It’s not like I have any sort of dearth of books on hand, but nothing is calling to me. What’s the last book you read or listened to that really gripped you from the beginning? 

That’s what’s on my mind this morning. What are you in the mood to chat about?

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Five for Friday

It’s not only Friday, it’s the first Friday in November. I am not ready for the pell-mell can’t-catch-my-breath of the last two months of the year (and I don’t even want to THINK about the holidays; I am pretending they don’t exist), but ready or not, they’re here. 

  • We had our first snowfall of the season! I love snow and it was such a pure delight to see big flakes falling from the night sky, and then to wake up to a good two inches of snow on all the exterior surfaces. Especially because the roads were blissfully bare and dry. I did realize that a) I’d purged Carla’s snow clothing prior to the move, because she’d been wearing them for two years straight and they were sprouting holes and showed an inch or two of ankle and b) I’d never replaced them. Fortunately, Lands End is having a sale so I was able to order her new things. And new snow boots. 
  • Speaking of Carla, and snow, and clothing: she has extremely specific fashion tastes these days. And those fashion tastes are not always compatible with the weather. But she’s TEN, and I’ve grown weary of negotiating with her about whether shorts over tights counts as appropriate winter wear. Also, at what age does a child realize that it might be wise to put on a sweatshirt if you are cold rather than complaining plaintively about it to your mother? It’s not age ten, that’s for sure.
  • Halloween was fine. There was a neighborhood gathering, at which I felt completely overwhelmed. People were nice but not friendly, and there were so very many of them. I brought the wrong thing and used the wrong container (this group seems to lean quite Fancy), but at least I know better for next time. On the good side, Carla seemed to have a BLAST. There were tons of kids. Twenty? Fifty? I couldn’t keep track of them because they didn’t stay still, and sometimes they had masks on, and sometimes they didn’t. But Carla got to run from house to house in a pack of children and that made me feel very happy and relieved. We bought WAY too much candy and now have an entire grocery bag full of leftovers (on top of Carla’s haul), which I am itching to donate as soon as Carla’s school accepts donations. I wasn’t missing candy – so why am I unable to ignore the siren song of a fun size Snickers? None of my favorites showed up this year, either in the candy we bought or the candy Carla brought home; I’m partial to Milky Way Midnights and Sour Patch Kids. But I’m making up for it with the aforementioned Snickerses and a fairly obscene number of Reese’s peanut butter cups. 
  • Do you put outgoing mail in your mailbox, or do you take it to the post office? I am having a bit of a disagreement with someone about the appropriate course of action. Some context: One of us grew up in a country area that wasn’t served by the postal service; mail was delivered to a post office box in town. One of us grew up in the suburbs of a large city and had access to a mailbox at the end of the driveway. One of us believes that you put outgoing mail in the mailbox, and, in fact, this is part of the purpose of a mailbox; why else would there be a little red flag on the side of the mailbox meant to alert the postal worker to the presence of outgoing mail? One of us thinks that outgoing mail should be handled at the post office only, or perhaps at one of those once-ubiquitous blue mailboxes that used to be on every street corner but have all but disappeared in the wake of 9/11. Who is right? Where does outgoing mail go? If a person wants to utilize the home mailbox, do they have to call the post office to make sure it’s okay, or is lifting the little red flag alert enough?
  • I recently read the newest Robert Galbraith book, The Running Grave. It was truly gripping, despite the fact that it seemed like no one had really edited the thing, and despite the fact that the will they/won’t they storyline has been grating on me for about three books by now. In fact, reading it made me want to reread the series from the beginning, so I waited until we had unpacked all the book boxes to find the first book… and it wasn’t there. Neither were the second and third books in the series. My husband thinks that I may have started reading the series on my kindle, which sounds plausible. But for various reasons, I don’t want to read it on kindle again, so I am contemplating buying a copy. But then I will want to own ALL the books in the series, and that feels like a commitment I’m not ready to make. So. Here I dither, not reading the book I want to read, not buying books I want to buy, and not complaining about it on the book blog, but here instead. What would you do? I suppose I could check it out from the library, which would address a whole host of issues, some of which I started to discuss here but then deleted. However, for some unknown reason the library option isn’t appealing to me. What would you do? Have you ever bought a book you’ve already read just to own the complete series? What if I DO buy the rest of the series and the hardbacks are no longer available so half the series is in hardback and the other half is in paperback? Will that drive me book bonkers?

That’s all I have for today, Internet. Hope your Friday is sunny and that your weekend starts early!

I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join in the fun, check out San’s blog here.