fun and games

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Things I Love Lately

Carla had a day off school on Monday, so I have spent the entire week feeling slightly off-kilter and a day behind. I think I am less low than I was. For everyone who echoed my low feelings: I hope your mood is on the upswing as well. My writing slump, however, continues. Writing here does not “count”; and yet it feels important to just get words on a page. Any words, on any page.

Even though they were mere buds just days ago, the magnolias are now in full bloom, and my walks around the neighborhood are punctuated by the heady scents of blossoming flowers and trees.

It’s been hot here – legit hot – and yet we haven’t been able to bring ourselves to turn on the air conditioner yet. At least it isn’t (yet) humid. We have been leaving the windows wide open, and I am loving the fresh air and birdsong coursing through the house. I am loving less the repetitive, insistent bark of the chipmunk who seems to perch directly outside my bedroom at the earliest sign of dawn. But! Today, I will focus on things I am loving rather than on the things I am not. Here are a few recent fun finds:

Bobbi Brown Cream Eyeshadow Stick: My husband and I went on a date the other day. Even though it was a day date, I wanted to look cute, so I dabbed on a little of my new makeup best friend, which is this slightly sparkly, very-easy-to-swipe-on eyeshadow stick. I don’t wear a lot of makeup (aside from mascara, which is my best makeup friend; Nicole [HI NICOLE] recommended this one and so obviously I bought it and I looooooove it), but I have been wearing this eyeshadow a LOT. It’s so easy to swipe on and it adds a little sparkle or a lot of depth and sparkle depending on how much you wear. I have the moonstone color, which is a soft sparkly bronze.

image from amazon.com

Pusheen Purrfect Pick Board Game: Carla has been in this absolutely wonderful phase lately of wanting to Do Stuff with Mommy. The week of spring break that we were home together, she (begrudgingly) went on daily walks with me, and held my hand every time which is just so precious and fleeting that I am soaking up every second of her little hand in mine. We spent entire days playing games together. Clue and Sleeping Queens and Qwirkle Rummy remain solid favorites. But we also played several rounds of this Pusheen game which I find very charming and oddly soothing. Your goal is to collect a certain number of stars, represented on cards. You get cards by collecting the tokens that appear on the cards. So a card with four stars might have a bird, a Pusheen, and a cupcake. Once you collect the bird, Pusheen, and cupcake tokens (which is very easy to do – you get to collect a token each turn you take), you exchange them for the four-star card. It is simple and sweet and – perhaps most important – the gameplay doesn’t last very long.

Long Shoehorn: There is perhaps nothing that can make a person feel like she is ready to pop down to the retirement village rec center for a lively game of Bingo than having the affection I have for a shoehorn. I LOVE IT. My father-in-law, a legit senior, why am I using the word “legit” so frequently in this post, is it to counteract the feeling I got when I typed “long shoehorn” into the Amazon search bar and the first autofill was “long shoehorn for seniors,” bought this shoehorn to leave at our house a few months ago. He’d recently had knee surgery and was finding it difficult to put on his shoes. But he left it behind and Carla started using it, and then I got new snow boots and found them tricky to pull over my heel. “Try the shoehorn,” Carla coaxed, in the low, purring voice of someone offering you your first taste of an illicit and highly addictive drug. And I did and now I can’t quit. It makes putting on shoes SO MUCH EASIER. I don’t even have to bend down!

image from amazon.com

Raspberry Yogurt Chocolate Lumps: I saw someone make these on Instagram – not that I saved the “recipe” or remember who it was – and attempted to make them at home. It was very easy and the end result was even better than I hoped. First, you get some raspberries and you squish ’em. I got a bag of frozen raspberries and let them defrost in the fridge, then squished them with the back of a fork. Then you arrange them in rough circles on a cookie sheet and freeze them until solid. Then you dip the raspberry circles in Greek yogurt and freeze. Then you dip the frozen raspberry/yogurt circles in melted chocolate (I used semisweet chocolate chips) and freeze. Then you eat them. They are SO good. Even Carla likes them, and she is – as we all know – extremely choosy. My first batch, I used a cookie dough scoop which was roughly two tablespoons of raspberries. I did not measure the yogurt or chocolate; I just used enough of each to coat the outside of the frozen lump. The final products were VERY LARGE lumps. Perhaps I should be referring to these as “treats” instead of “lumps.” I have a second batch starting in the freezer now; this time I used a single tablespoon for the raspberries which seems like a much more reasonable size. 

Truff Black Truffle Hot Sauce: I am already talking about food, so I might as well continue along that path, not that I ever stray very far from this particular trail. Santa placed a tiny bottle of this hot sauce in my husband’s stocking last Christmas. I have been adding it to sour cream and using it as a dip for Cape Cod chips (which are also SO good). This hot sauce is delicious, even though I think “hot sauce” is somewhat of a misnomer. It has a hint of truffle flavor, but not in the overpowering, I-can-taste-truffles-for-days-afterward sense. It is not, to my palate, spicy but has a pleasing impression of heat to it, if that makes any sense at all. More like how a barbecue sauce leaves you with the smack of smoke, but in this case, without the barbecue or smoke flavors. I fear I am not doing it justice. It is unique and yummy and I need to order another bottle of it right away because I finished my husband’s bottle yesterday.

image from amazon.com

What are you loving lately? 

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Five for Friday

I am in a mood to write, but can’t think of anything particularly worthwhile to write about. So I am taking a page out of Stephany’s book and doing five bullets for this sunny Friday.

1. Our housecleaner came back! I am so delighted. But man alive was I ever awkward about the whole thing. I kept finding myself cleaning in the days leading up to her arrival. I didn’t want her to think that our house had devolved into TOTAL disarray in her absence. I am can be a decent housecleaner when I want to (i.e. when guests are imminent), and I did a pretty good job of keeping the house neat and tidy, for the most part, for the past year and change. But then I’d say to myself, maybe that will make her feel GOOD and NEEDED, to see a layer of dust on the bookshelves and a layer of soap scum on the shower door. And then I would feel ridiculous because perhaps she has no thoughts at all about the state of my house beyond, “Wow, this is really dirty and will require more time” or “Okay, this doesn’t need much attention today.” So I finally talked myself into simply tidying things – moving piles and encouraging Carla to pick up her toys and crafting spreads. It was SO NICE to have her back, but I was super awkward in person – we never hugged in the past, so I wasn’t going to hug her NOW, especially because of a pandemic. And I was really sweaty for some reason (perimenopause, or some sort of pre-housecleaner-return panic attack) so I was uncomfortable and my mask was sticking to my face. And I didn’t want to be TOO gushy about having her back because, after all, this is WORK for her. But I did want to be appropriately gushy because I missed her, both as a housecleaner and as a person. We exchanged a little bit of small talk and then she got right to work and I flapped about the house, not really knowing where to be or what to do. I kept remembering things to tell her – let me know if we are out of some cleaning supply you need; make sure you take as many mask breaks as you need; open the windows if you feel more comfortable – and then I went outside and sat on the porch and failed to concentrate on anything because Someone Was In My House.

2. Carla’s birthday is coming up. We are contemplating an Actual Party this time (outdoors), which makes me pre-exhausted. I don’t want to find a venue or buy decorations or come up with an activity or figure out how to do everything in a way that provides everyone with the least exposure to Covid. I want someone to plan her party FOR ME. Is there someone I can call and pay to do this? Why yes, Suzanne, this is called a Party Planner and they exist and cost way more than what you want to spend on an eight-year-old’s birthday bash, get it together.

3. We, once again, had too many overripe bananas in the house. Not a SINGLE ONE of my many cookbooks had a recipe for chocolate banana snack cake. Only the America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook even had any banana snack cake recipes at all. It’s like Martha Stewart and Maida Heatter have never even HEARD of bananas, although I think their books had entries for how to store overripe bananas. But then what to DO with them, Martha and Maida????? Anyway, I found this Betty Crocker recipe online – chosen primarily because I didn’t have to soften any butter, and secondarily because it didn’t call for buttermilk, and tertiarily because I could mix the entire thing in the baking pan itself – and it turned out very well. EVEN THOUGH I didn’t have the right pan size and therefore had to increase the recipe by 50%, which required a LOT of math. My husband had three pieces last night alone, so I know it was a hit. (If you recall, I do not eat bananas.)

4. My skin has pretty much returned to normal, after its prolonged temper tantrum the other week. I have no idea what to do with the FIVE BOTTLES of skincare product I used literally once or twice. My husband suggested that I try them out, one at a time, to see which one is the culprit… but a) if I were a betting man, I would guess all three of the products with retinol were responsible and b) they were meant to be used together, not separately, and c) I don’t wanna.

5. I have absolutely no plans this weekend. Normally, this would be fine – especially seeing as one of the days would be designated Cleaning Day, and dusting, floor scrubbing, and vacuuming would take up a good portion of the day. But now that I have my beloved housecleaner to take over the heavy lifting, I have an entire day back! Obviously, I could curl up in a chair and read all weekend, which is always delightful. But I’m in an activity kind of mood (subject to change). Let’s see. I still have no desire to go to a restaurant. But it would be nice to Do Something this weekend. Perhaps the zoo? The botanical garden? Maybe we could scope out a few potential birthday party venues? Gah. What are YOU doing this weekend, that I could potentially copy?