The eggshells seem to have helped?Earlier this month, I’d begun sprinkling eggshells around my coleus plants and hydrangeas, in the hopes of deterring the slugs that seem to have been ripping them to shreds. The coleus is definitely thriving. This could, of course, be due to a break in our ungodly heat, but I’m going to credit the eggshells.
My zucchini plants have begun bearing fruit! Well, one of them has, at least. I have already eaten one zucchini and there are two more in varying stages of readiness. It’s not a Nicole-level haul, by any means, but it’s something.
I finally set up thegrow lightsfor my indoor plants. I don’t know that the plants are doing any better than before, but perhaps these things take time. Also, I am terrible at watering them, just, really dreadful.
Last year, we redid a bunch of our landscaping. I kind of hate it. I am trying to be patient, because things take time. We did plant young plants and shrubs, so they will probably require a few years before they look as envisioned. But I’m not sure I’ll like it even then. There are just too many discrete little bundles of growth all over. It looks fussy and overly ornate and I do not care for it. Of course, I can do NOTHING about this, except spend $$$$ to redo what I’ve already spent $$$$ to do.
Looks like my mystery plant is a weed. So disappointing! I was hoping for a big gorgeous phlox, but – Suz, you called it! – it seems to be some kind of willowherb. If its flowers were more impressive, I might consider keeping it, but I don’t love the way it looks. Plus, it sounds like it can take over pretty quickly/easily, so I’m getting rid of it.
2. Five Pleasing Purchases
Battery Operated Clip-On Fan: We got this little guy for Carla to take to camp and I am quite impressed with it. Unlike pretty much every other option available, this fan is truly battery operated. It does not require being plugged in to anything, which was important during camp when Carla had no access to an outlet. Plus, it produces quite a decent breeze for such a small fan.
Three Piece (Swim)Suit: Carla got a new bathing suit earlier this summer and I loved it so much, I bought one for myself. It has shorts, which I prefer to bikini bottoms. It has a bikini top, which feels daring and fun. And it has a tank top that goes over everything. ALL of it is swimwear, so I can wear all three pieces at once, or I can jettison the tank top if I feel brave or overhot. It strikes me as more sporty than sexy, which I like both for myself and my teen. And it comes in a wide array of colors, which kind of makes me want to get another one.
Great Gift for Puzzle Lovers: My husband got some pretty unsurprising gifts for Father’s Day, but they were things he’d expressly asked for (car wash coupons, new perfume), so I dutifully got him the unsurprising gifts. Then I came across this book of puzzles and thought he would enjoy them, so I added it in as a little bonus. He’s a fan of logic puzzles and a fan of number puzzles (Sudoku, Kakuro, KenKen), and this is a mix of both. Turns out that he loves it. Definitely the sleeper hit from Father’s Day.
Shower Hair Catcher: I mentioned that I was thinking about getting this for one of the members of my household. I did, and it’s amazing.
Cat Brushing Tool: My beautiful medium-haired kitty sheds constantly, despite regular brushing. I ordered this grooming glove to see if it would make a difference, and, while it doesn’t seem to reduce the amount of fur on our floors by one tiny tumbleweed, Lenny loves it. And it really does collect a disturbing amount of fur, each time I use it. I’m about as good at brushing the kitty as I am about watering the plants, though, so let’s keep that in mind.
3. Five Recent Reads
The Vanishing Place by Zoe Rankin: (bookshop.org link/amazon link) This book was fast-paced and well written. It reminded me, in some ways, of Heartwood and Gray After Dark with a soupcon of The Return of Ellie Black. (I loved all but the latter, although I think I was in the minority on disliking that one.)
Helpless by Jessica Knoll: (bookshop.org link/amazon link) I don’t even know how to describe this book. Maybe The Three Lives of Cate Kay meets Fifty Shades of Grey? It was predictable, outlandish, steamy, disturbing, and I loved every minute of it.
Hot Girl Murder Club by Ashley Winstead: (bookshop.org link/amazon link) I love Ashley Winstead, but this was not my favorite of her books. The concept is fun – a group of prominent Hollywood women start avenging other women’s poor treatment – but it was a little silly and overly convoluted for me. I still gobbled it down, though.
The Neighbors Are Watching by Aggie Blum Thompson: (bookshop.org link/amazon link) I love a juicy story about neighbors behaving badly, and this did not disappoint.
The Keeper by Tana French: (bookshop.org link/amazon link) I have been savoring this, the latest (and last) in Tana French’s Cal Hooper trilogy. Savoring mainly because I am reading it in hardcover and I tend to fall asleep when I’m reading a physical book. She is such a master at atmosphere, at threading a mystery into the landscape, at revealing deep-seated truths that I’ve never heard voiced. This reminds me, in some ways, of my favorite of her Dublin Murder Squad books, Broken Harbor; it identifies an insidious aspect of society that is growing, unstoppably, beneath the foundations people build their lives on. It’s so good and I’m going to miss Cal and Lena and Trey.
4. Five Meals I’d Make Again:
Beef Stroganoff: I’m kinda sorta off chicken right now, which makes me feel like my meal preferences are wildly unbalanced. As though there’s a spectrum and Veggies Only are on one end and Beef is on the other end, and I keep careening from one end to the other. I realize it doesn’t work like that, and yet it still feels weird. Anyway: this recipe is excellent and I always double the mushrooms.
Cold Peanut Ginger Noodles: I made this a few weeks ago, in the heart of the heat wave, and it was delicious and lasted for days. The weird ingredient here is candied ginger, which I dutifully chopped and added. Despite my skepticism, it really did meld into the dish in a way that was delicious and unexpected.
Salmon Crunch Bowls: This recipe is from What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking; I have yet to try anything from this cookbook that isn’t delicious, and this is no exception. My husband doesn’t like salmon, but he quite liked this dish. I like how customizable it is, too.
Chickpeas al Limone with Burrata: This is exactly my kind of dish: lemony, cheesy, easy. The last time I made it, I stir fried some zucchini at the very beginning of the cooking and added that to the chickpea mixture. Like a bunch of the comments suggested, I didn’t bother with a separate bowl for the lemon juice and parmesan; I just added that straight to the chickpeas in the pot. Also, my husband and I are divided about the inclusion of burrata. I felt it was superfluous. He loved the burrata and felt that the parmesan could have been excluded.
Crunchwrap: I owe Birchie big time for introducing me to the crunchwrap as a concept I could make at home. They are easy, delicious, and very customizable. My husband uses ground beef taco meat in his; I use black beans as my protein; Carla sticks with cheese. I cannot abide the thought of warm lettuce, and you know how I feel about tomatoes, so this is a recipe perfect for our current ongoing state of lettuce aversion.
5. Five Occasions of Quintessential Cute Catness
Hunting a Moth: The expert predator stalks his prey.
Enduring Enrichment: Carla and I built this enrichment activity for Lenny – he has to navigate a series of strings to retrieve his treats – and he was mostly unimpressed.
Investigating an Unknown Space: Carla and I were cleaning her bathroom and Lenny climbed into one cabinet and into a drawer so he could help us organize the other cabinet.
Testing Out New Spots: Carla found a couple of carpet squares and put them down in the basement. Lenny obligingly sat on each of them.
Hugging a Toy: Lenny wore himself out by hiding in this tiny perfectly sized box and leaping onto a tennis ball. But sleepy as he was, he refused to relinquish the tennis ball.
I am incapable of launching into bullets without some sort of preamble.
New Summer Salad
I made a new-to-me summer salad to take to a friend’s dinner party the other day. A+, delicious, automatic new fave. Of course, because I am incapable of following a recipe as stated, I added blueberries as well. The other slight variations I made, based on recipe comments: I used nectarines instead of peaches, walnuts instead of pinenuts (walnuts are $5.99 at my grocery store; pinenuts are $8.99) (I forgot that I could use pinenuts to make pesto, so maybe I should have shelled out the $8.99), and I added a half teaspoon of honey to the dressing.
Oh! Since I was taking this salad on the road, I had to experiment a little with the best way to keep the nectarines and basil from browning. For the basil, I coated the leaves in a tiny bit of olive oil and gave them a quick chiffonade with a pizza cutter. Then I threw them in a salad bowl with the dry arugula.
For the nectarines, I mixed together two tablespoons of honey and two cups of water, then added the cut nectarines to the mixture for five minutes. After the timer went off, I drained them in a colander, rinsed them with cool water, and laid out them out between two dish towels to dry. Then I popped them into a Tupperware container with the blueberries.
(I found both the honey water and oil coat strategies via multiple sources online, and I was very grateful they worked.)
About five minutes before dinner, I added the dressing to the arugula and basil and tossed everything together until the greens were lightly coated. Then I added half the fruit, nuts, and goat cheese, added a bit more dressing, tossed, and topped with the rest of the fruit, nuts, and goat cheese. It was very tasty and summery and light. I will say that the basil flavor didn’t really pop out at me. I wonder if it all fell to the bottom of the salad bowl? Next time I will do a better job of dispersing the basil throughout.
I was super pleased with how well the nectarines lasted. Here is a photo of them the next morning. The honey/water combo did not alter their flavor or texture at all.
Hmm. This isn’t the most persuasive photo. I will have to try a before and after at some point. In the meantime, just trust me that they looked and tasted as fresh as the instant I cut them.
Plant Problems
I am feeling some botanical despair. I love plants, and I have accumulated quite a few over the years. But they are not loving their lives, and I feel responsible. I am responsible. They remind me of Heidi, wasting away in Klara Sesemann’s urban mansion, longing for the sun and sky and trees of her grandfather’s alpine cottage. (Why yes, I am reading Heidi to Carla right now.)
Our house is full of windows, and yet it is not particularly sunny. Worse, possibly, is that the areas available for plants are on the north side of the house and get the least light.
I have tried to do my research and buy only plants that supposedly enjoy low light. And yet… they are leggy and/or dead. Even the African violet I bought – which is supposed to thrive in very little light! – is just barely living.
While part of me aches for these poor living things that are trying so valiantly to hang on under my poor care, and wants to nurse them back to health, I have TRIED. I have googled, I have bought special plant food, I have moved them around to different parts of the house, I have repotted several of them. I have babied them, I have left them alone. Nothing is working. Perhaps it is time to replace them? That feels so harsh!!! And also kind of fruitless, because I fear that the replacements will just die anyway.
You know what IS thriving? This mystery plant in my backyard. We had some landscaping work done last fall, moving things around, thinning things out. This space used to hold an enormous hydrangea that was completely overgrown and so old only the very tips were green. We moved some hydrangeas from the front of the house and they seem to be adjusting well to their new home. We also planted a vibirnum in the place where the old hydrangea used to be. Then, this guy showed up.
Wow, two for two on really unhelpful photos today. This plant is approximately four feet tall (so far), has no scent or milky sap, a round stem, multiple stalks coming from the same base,has very gentle fuzz on the leaves and stem, and, from above, has non-serrated leaves with a very pronounced whorled leaf pattern.There are no buds as yet.
I have NO IDEA what it is. It’s acting like a perennial that belongs there, but I have never seen it before. It’s possible that the previous homeowners planted it a long time ago, but then the old hydrangea took over and bullied this guy into submission. Now that the old hydrangea is gone, this little guy can finally shine. This little imaginary scenario, plus some extensive googling, has me thinking it’s a plant and not a weed. My current very non-expert guess is that’s something called an “obedient plant” or some kind of phlox or maybe some kind of aster. I guess we just wait and see if it produces flowers. Unless… do you know what it is?
Physical Therapy Update
I have been seeing a physical therapist twice a week for six weeks for tennis elbow, and just this week I moved to one time a week for the next four weeks. The reduction in pain and the improvement in mobility has been tremendous, and I am so pleased with the experience. Physical therapy is MAGICAL. I mean, it’s also expensive and hard work, but MAGICAL.
It is not, however, a cure. My physical therapist said his goal was for me to see an 80% improvement in pain/mobility. I have zero idea how a person is supposed to quantify such a thing; I still have no idea how to answer the “what is your pain on a scale of 1 to the worst pain you’ve ever experienced” question. But I will say that my arm is greatly improved, to the point that sometimes I don’t even think about it. Sure, I still have some soreness in my elbow. Sometimes I wake up and my arm aches for a while. I definitely still experience pain if I grip something wrong or lift something too heavy or don’t consider the best way to pick something up. But it’s SO MUCH BETTER.
Despite the improvements, it has occurred to me that I may not be able to resume lifting weights for a long time. I miss lifting weights, but I am also not eager to reinjure myself. So I have been dithering a long time about getting some of the same strength training equipment I use at my PT’s office. Two products are currently in my cart: a set of resistance bands with handles and a set of superlong resistance bands. In the office, when I do the exercises the PT prescribes, my arms get pleasantly tired and my muscles feel like they are being challenged. Working with resistance bands really does feel like a workout, even if I’m not sweating buckets or, like, grunting with effort. I am sure I could find some more intense routines online that I could adapt at home.
I’m not really sure why I haven’t just ordered them already. Maybe today.
This has been my kid’s second five-day school week since the beginning of 2026, which seems wrong in all sorts of ways. It has also had the effect of feeling incredibly long. Don’t worry – we don’t have another five-day school week until March.
Five random things on my mind today.
Another Mystery
I have a tea subscription that supposedly arrived Wednesday. I got the confirmation email, complete with a photo of the box in my mailbox. The confirmation email, strangely, said “Your package was left near the front door or porch.” even though my mailbox is near the street and not near my front door. Whatever, the driver must have checked the wrong box, the photo clearly shows it in my mailbox.
I did not check my email or the mail on Wednesday, which feels like a crucial point. But yesterday, when I finally read the confirmation email, I went to the mailbox and retrieved a whole pile of magazines and letters and bills and junk mail. But no box. Neither was the box on our front porch, nor was it near the backdoor. I interrogated my family members, but neither of them had retrieved a box. I looked in the cupboard where I normally keep my tea; nothing. WHERE IS MY TEA? My theory is that the mailman opened the box to put in Thursday’s mail, was unable to fit it securely around the box, and removed the box temporarily to put the rest of the mail in. Then he forgot about the box and drove away with it. I’m hoping he returns the box today, but I suppose we’ll see.
Palm Update
I have been babying my palm trees (which did not adjust well to moving indoors this winter) and they both have some new growth. One of them is still struggling – some of the new growth has already turned brown, and it’s not putting out as many new shoots as the other. But the other one seems almost happy? It would possibly be more happy if the cat didn’t so thoroughly enjoy nibbling on its leaves. I really hope I can keep them alive until it warms up enough for them to move back into the sunroom. They liked it much better out there.
Everything Falls Apart
When it snows, it dumps, right? Well, first the freezer in our garage refrigerator died, taking along with it a ton of food.
Then my oven started acting up, which is something it does periodically, and about which I have complained extensively before. (It doesn’t seem to want to heat to the correct temperature. However, an oven repair guy came out to check it – along with the other, more expensive oven, which somehow has the same problem – and after three hours and $300 told me both ovens are just fine and perhaps it is user error.) I made these cookies (which are just as delicious in February as they are in November) on Wednesday and the oven refused to heat to 350 degrees. It just got stuck at 340. But it was still in preheating mode. I am assuming, with no actual knowledge whatsoever, that the preheating mode injects extra heat into the oven, and that’s why my cookies got quite crisp around the edges before they were supposed to be done. (They were still scrumptious.) I wrote this off to me not allowing the oven enough time to come up to temperature. Then, later that night, I preheated the oven to 400 for dinner, left it alone… and completely forgot about it because the “I’m done preheating” beep never happened. An hour later, I remembered that I hadn’t put anything into the oven, and hurried into the kitchen to find that the oven was still preheating and still at 395. Okay, fine. I will turn it off and try again. Then it got stuck at 370 until I finally gave up and used the air fryer. This morning, however, I set it to 350 to reheat a breakfast sandwich, and it worked exactly as it was supposed to. Either it was having an off day on Wednesday and is back to full strength, or it only heats to 350.
After I dropped off Carla, I went into the basement to walk on the treadmill for awhile. But when I powered it on, it said it was paused. And no amount of pressing the pause button, the stop / start button, powering it off and back on, or unplugging it and plugging it back in made the pause screen go away. Obviously, none of these things is dire. We are fortunate in that we have both a second freezer and a second oven, which allows us to meet our freezing and baking needs. The garage fridge is pretty old – we bought it in 2012. And the oven is probably 10 to 15 years old (and seemed to have never once been cleaned before we moved in, so who knows what kind of maintenance it had). The treadmill is even older. My in-laws bought it when they lived in Europe back in the early aughts. They brought it back to the States with them in 2005ish, and then gave it to us in the early 2010s. It has served long and hard.
To recap, these losses are not dire and were going to happen sometime anyway. But I hadn’t anticipated that they would happen so close together. As we use all three of these appliances daily, we will be replacing them. Good times.
Avocados
I am not particularly interested in the Super Bowl this year, but my husband is excited about making a seven layer dip. I do not care for seven layer dip, but I will make the guacamole and eat plenty of that. Our grocery store had a nice sale on avocados – $1 apiece – so I bought a few. And then I went to Trader Joe’s and they had ENORMOUS avocados for $1.49 apiece. I had to buy two, just to see if they are as good as the normal little guys. I will try to remember to report back.
Cat Curiosity
My cat continues to be the best cat. He exemplifies the whole “cats are curious” personality type, and is constantly investigating everything. The exterminator came the other day to check our mouse bait and he said, of Lenny, “He’s a nosy little guy, isn’t he?” Yes. Lenny has to be where the action is, and he needs to be apprised of anyone entering the house and insists on doing a thorough inspection of their shoes and any bags they might bring.
He is, of course, wildly curious about Outside. Any time a door opens, our security system chimes, and that’s the cue for Lenny to beeline to the door and try to sneak out. We usually keep the laundry room door closed, so that it acts as a sort of airlock between the kitchen and the garage. He knows that we often disappear when we go into the laundry room, and that we appear through that door at the end of the day. As soon as the door chimes, he takes up a spot near the door – usually on the floor just inside the kitchen, but sometimes on the counter right next to the laundry room door. Then he greets us with a deep stretch and some little chirpy meows.
This week, he’s taken to hiding in the laundry room while we’re in there putting our shoes and coats on. He is a very good hider. So good, in fact, that one day he was unable to extricate himself from his hiding place. Can you find him? Slide the photo to the left to reveal his location.
That’s all I have for today. It’s snowing here, once again. I hope you are warm and cozy and that you have a restful weekend.
