working out

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Friday Randomosity: Snow Day Shopping and Request for Recommendations Edition

Due to a series of events, some planned and others not, last weekend was a five-day weekend, followed by one day of school, and now we have begun a three-day weekend. Keep in mind that our two-week winter break ended a mere two weeks ago.

I adore my child. And yet. This is not ideal. 

  • Do you have a planner you love? I think I might need to become A Person Who Uses A Planner, and I don’t really know where to start. I have looked through planners on recent trips to Barnes & Noble, Target, and Joann Fabric. There is no dearth of options, which is probably what’s tripping me up. All I have been able to settle on is that I don’t want a bullet journal. I have a feeling the people in our blogging community have Strong Planner Feelings, though, so I am hoping you will direct me to The One True Planner.
  • Speaking of planning, I am floundering when it comes to finding a workable structure to my days and I keep wanting to post about it (and beg you for advice) but I worry it is too boring a topic? 
  • I can now add “dismantling a doorbell” to my list of skills I never thought I’d need. A month or so ago, our doorbell started making a weird buzzing noise. It did this intermittently for a day or two and then stopped. But then it started again on Monday! And continued buzzing every ten or so seconds, directly outside my office. Fortunately, my doorbell was very low wattage, so it was easy to disconnect the wires from the buzz-causing things they were attached to (I added “doorbell dismantling” to my skillset, not “doorbell understanding”), wrap the exposed wires in electrical tape, and close the whole thing up again. I suppose I will soon be adding “replacing a doorbell” to my list of skills.
  • Snow days are kind of boring these days. We used to do a LOT during snow days of yesteryear – probably I whined, then, about not being able to have time to myself; am impossible to please – Carla loved the snow and seemed entirely impervious to the cold. We’d play outside and make snow angels and build things out of snow and she’d climb up the snow mountains formed by the snowplow. Now, she has no interest. And also it is QUITE chilly so I’m not really pushing for outdoor time. She is similarly uninterested in: watching movies, baking things, playing games, reading, doing chores/homework/instrument practice. So. Screens it is, I guess? “More screens,” I should say, since this is – checks notes – Day 6 of being mainly inside. Maybe there’s a craft we could do together? But that requires having the appropriate tools/materials on hand. Or maybe I just need to lean into the screens thing and read some of the blogs I’ve been neglecting???? 
  • To counteract the cold this week, I made a really good lentil soup. It was based on this recipe, with some major modifications. Instead of crushed tomato, I used a 4-ounce can of tomato paste. I didn’t have much paprika, so threw in a half teaspoon of cayenne instead. I tripled the garlic because that’s how I roll. I used an entire bag of lentils, rather than 2 cups (I think it was about 2 ½ cups, but I didn’t measure; I just didn’t want a little useless scrap of lentils lying around). And I used two 4-cup cartons of chicken stock to compensate for the lack of tomatoes and the additional lentils. It is delicious and hearty. 
  • To pair with the soup, I toasted some store-bought sourdough. Except our toaster has joined the throngs of quiet quitters and is now declining to toast, so I broiled the bread in the oven and it got all black and smoky. Clearly I need a new toaster. I am tempted to replace our toaster with the exact same model – this one lasted at least a decade, after all – but maybe you have a toaster you are gaga about?
  • As long as I’m dabbling in some online shopping, I would also love to buy a travel mug for my tea. This has never been a thing I’ve wanted before, as I drink my tea first thing in the morning and I gulp it down so fast it barely has a chance to cool. But for various boring reasons I think I might prefer to drink my tea while driving Carla to school. I’ve borrowed one of my husband’s to-go mugs for this purpose, and it’s fine – it keeps my tea warm, it fits in my car’s cup holder, it holds the enormous volume of tea I drink – but I want my own mug. Perhaps more importantly, I’ve found that unless I’m very careful, the tea will slosh up over my face when I’m lowering the mug after taking a sip. I do not care for that. My main criteria for a travel mug, in addition to the above, is that it is dishwasher safe. And I don’t mean the wishy-washy “well, you can dishwash it, but we don’t recommend it.” I mean, it is MEANT for the dishwasher. This one looks good, and it comes in purple and doesn’t seem to have any tiny parts I have to dismantle before dishwashing. This is the one my husband has used for years – and has repurchased several times when one mug goes missing or gets dropped one too many times. But I don’t like the lid and I can’t explain why. This one is so pretty, and I feel more kindly toward ceramic as a material than I do toward stainless steel… but the dishwashability seems a little suspect. (How can the product care instructions be “machine wash” but also “hand wash only”?) What is your hot drink to-go mug of choice?
  • I am having a frustrating email communication issue with someone. The communication is not optional, but it feels very one-sided, with me reaching out and waiting for days and then sending a nudge and then also getting a third party involved to nudge from a different direction. And now the person I am communicating with has finally responded and said they would attach a document I need in order to move forward, but they did not attach this document and have not responded to my request to resend the attachment. I guess the only next step is a phone call, which I HATE, but it seems like it might be my only recourse. 
  • Trader Joe’s Italian truffle cheese is my new favorite cheese. It’s soft and truffley and pairs so well with a buttery Ritz cracker that I’m thinking of having some for second breakfast. 
  • Twice in the past three weeks I have borked my back doing strength training. The first time, I have no idea what I did to injure my back. I could barely move for the first day and then sitting and driving were agony for three or four consecutive days. I treated the pain with ice and Advil. This time, I think I injured it either doing squats with weights or back rows. My best guess is that I tweaked my back doing the squats and then the back rows exacerbated the injury to the point where I had to quit. I love squats so I feel quite bereft at the thought of not doing them for awhile. I’m guessing something in my form is off? Maybe I need to hold the weights at my chest instead of at my sides during squats? I don’t know. Immediately after my back tweaked out (I was in the middle of this routine, where we were doing 100 reps each of squats, pushups, kettlebell swings, and back rows. Very frustrating to have to quit at 50 of each! Will I ever know if I could have done 100???), I did a series of back stretches, then took Advil and iced my back. It feels much less painful today than it did the last time I hurt it. This is an extremely boring bullet point, but I am including it for Future Me, who is bound to repeat this injury at some point. 
  • Are you watching the newest season of True Detective? There’s only been one episode so far, but I keep thinking about it and eagerly awaiting the next one. It’s got Jodie Foster and Alaska and supernatural elements and mysterious deaths and disappearances. SO GOOD. I haven’t felt this excited about a TV show in a long time. 

That’s all I have for today, Internet. I am going to try to cajole Carla into doing some sort of screen free activity with me. Brownies, maybe? Who can resist brownies?

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Sunday Randomosity: Writing Myself Out of the Gloom Edition

It’s a dreary, grey Sunday – the kind where the weather is obstinate and heavy but refuses to give into the relief of rain. Everything is Deeply Oppressively Gloomy. I feel like writing (actually, I feel like Avoiding Exercise), so let’s try some medicinal randomosity.

  • Speaking of medicinal remedies: I plan to make a batch of chocolate snickerdoodles with Carla at some point this afternoon. If the weather clears up, we will have a farewell “party” tomorrow with the three friends she’s been doing an afterschool activity with for the past couple of months. The weather has to clear up because the “party” involves pizza and cookies and will take place outdoors. The cookies will take place either way. 
  • One reason I feel so gloomy is that I am in a phase of poor sleep. I know it’s a phase. I have been in poor sleep phases before. And yet knowing it is a phase does not prevent me from being absolutely certain that I will never get a good night’s sleep again, that this is my life now, and I will live out the rest of my days feeling tired and groggy and cranky, craving carbs and thinking of nothing but strategies for finally breaking the poor sleep pattern that will surely fail.
  • I am not having trouble falling asleep, which is the issue that plagues me when I am stressed. Instead, I fall asleep just fine, but then either a) wake up five hours later as though that is an appropriate amount of time to sleep night after night (it is not) or b) wake up multiple times throughout the night, ensuring that I never get the deep restorative rest I need. The other night, I counted and I woke up eight times. Twice to pee and six times because my husband did something obnoxious like turning over or breathing.
  • My normal get-back-to-sleep strategies are failing me. Nonetheless, I doggedly keep at them. Maybe THIS is the night I will sleep. I keep trying to remember that lying in bed and resting has value, even if it is not as MUCH value as actual sleep. I also keep wishing that my husband – a real live doctor – would say, Wow, you should go see your doctor about this. He does not, which I think indicates that there’s nothing I can do about it except wait for the phase to end. 
  • Things I have tried: Sleeping in the guest room. Making my husband sleep in the guest room. Exercising in the morning. Exercising in the afternoon. Taking melatonin. Taking Benadryl. Eliminating screens for an hour before bed. Taking a warm shower before bed. Wearing socks to bed. Wearing squishy ear things in my ears (they have a name, but all I am coming up with is “ear phones” and that isn’t right; the lack of sleep is already setting in as mental decay). Eliminating soda. Eliminating alcohol. Not eating too close to bedtime. Cutting out all liquids at nine pm. Drinking warm herbal tea right before the nine pm cutoff. Doing soothing stretches right before bed. Going to bed early. Going to bed late. The only thing left to try is giving caffeine up entirely (I drink tea every morning), but I don’t wanna.
  • Okay, I am done talking about my sleep struggles now. 
  • If you are a fan of at-home exercise routines, I would like to recommend Lindsey of Nourish, Move, Love. I found a few of her exercise routines on YouTube, and enjoyed them. And then I found out she has free challenges on her site. I’ve been doing the April challenge, which has a great mix of routines. None of them is too long, and they require very little equipment – maybe a yoga mat or a chair or a set of hand weights if you have them. If you have no equipment, she recommends workarounds. She suggests variations you can do if you want low impact or higher impact, so I never feel like I have to push myself to do things my body can’t handle. I find her routines to be challenging but doable, and they make me sweat and they make my muscles sore and I always feel good when I’m done. And she seems like such a lovely person – she does the entire workout along with you, and makes “oh my gosh this is hard” faces and sweats and shouts motivational things at you. She doesn’t really talk at all about weight loss, at least not that I’ve noticed – she will mention eating a balanced diet once in a while, but really she’s all about feeling strong and powerful. I love that message. Sometimes she has other people join her for the routines, and sometimes she’ll invite advertisers to come work out with her. Like there is one exercise routine where she works out with a representative from the Minnesota Pork Board, or something like that, and I find that so charming – both that she would get a sponsorship from Big Pork and that they would send a representative to work out with her. And so she’ll mention pork a few times during the routine, about how it’s a lean protein that’s great for building healthy muscles. It’s very low pressure and I find it amusing and sort of sweet. Anyway, it’s all free and available on her website or on YouTube and if you want to switch up your at-home workouts, you might want to give her a try. 
  • I am still on the lookout for The Perfect Summer Dress. I have rejected every dress I’ve tried on. Once again, I’m confronted with the fact that I do not look good in a maxi dress. Apparently this is a lesson I am forced to learn annually, because it never sticks from year to year. I really WANT a maxi dress – they seem like they would be comfortable and cool and look cute with a denim jacket – but they are not for me. Really what I want is the T-shirt and jeans equivalent of a dress. But with a waistline. And the sad fact is that I am too lumpy for jersey, which is what most of those dresses are made of. So. The search continues. Lauren says my perfect dress is at Boden, so I am looking there.
  • Reading Lauren’s latest post reminds me that I need to get cracking on my seed starters. So far I have purchased the seeds and seed starter and moved a seed tray into my dining room. That FEELS like progress, but I am really no closer to growing pepper plants and sugar snap peas than I was before. 
  • In an effort to Treat Ourselves (and also treat me, by removing a large something from the freezer), we made schnecken for breakfast. My in-laws had sent us the schnecken some time ago but they ordered us an enormous quantity, so we had some left over. If you have not ever experienced schnecken, it is similar to a cinnamon roll… but with less cinnamon. It also has raisins, which I pick out. It tastes like eating cooked cinnamon roll dough made out of butter. A very decadent treat indeed.
  • Would you like a non-update on my housecleaner situation? As you may know if you read Swistle’s recent post on the topic, I have been eager to call my former housecleaner to see if she wants to return to cleaning our house. Now that I am fully vaccinated, and Carla is out of the house all day, IT IS TIME. After Swistle posted on the topic (and also sent me a very nice, reassuring email), and I read all of the lovely comments, I gathered my nerve and placed the call. She sounded genuinely happy to hear from me, which was such a relief; I had worried that she would be mad that we had discontinued her services (after paying her not to come for several months, it started to feel weird to keep doing so).  When I said, all in a rush, that I would love for her to come back now that my husband and I are vaccinated, I could HEAR the smile in her voice as she said, “I would LOVE to come back!” But of course, you know, it wasn’t as simple as all that. She has, understandably, taken other jobs. And I think she had just placed a new ad for her services. So she said she needed to check her schedule and get back to me. This was nearly a week ago and my confidence in that “I would LOVE to come back!” is now wavering. Also, when we spoke, she said “I think I still have your number” and I SHOULD HAVE said, “Oh, just in case you can’t find it, here it is” but I DIDN’T and so now I am fretting that she has no way to get in touch with me. Plus, I forgot to say that I would want to know EITHER WAY – even if she can’t work me into her schedule now, I would ask her to put me on a wait list for next time she needs to fill a spot. And also, I was so overwhelmed by making the call and talking with her after so many months that I completely forgot to mention that I’d prefer her to wear a mask. Well. There’s nothing I can do about any of it NOW. I suppose I could call back after a couple of weeks go by just to check in. I really REALLY do not want to find and vet and train another housecleaner, especially when my old one is so lovely and wonderful. 
  • Meanwhile, the house creeps further and further toward squalor. Some sort of mental switch flipped, I think, when I heard my housecleaner’s voice. And I just felt Done with housecleaning. Carla is doing her best to contribute, having renewed her interest in various toys with thousands of tiny parts/crafting projects that require her to pull multiple supplies out of the craft cupboard and strew them all over every available surface. My recent clothes buying craze hasn’t helped either; I have “to try on” and “to return” piles all over the place.
  • What are you watching right now? My husband and I just finished Bodyguard, which, in case you are operating under the same misapprehension, has nothing whatsoever to do with the 1992 movie The Bodyguard starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner. I got over my disappointment pretty quickly because it was a great series. It was very action packed and made me EXTREMELY stressed, though. Like, heart pounding, gripping my husband’s hand tightly kind of stress. So keep that in mind if you plan to give it a try. The lead – Richard Madden, of Game of Thrones fame – was fantastic, and should probably win an Emmy for his jaw-muscle acting alone. There was also some good hair acting in the last third of the series, but maybe we should award THAT Emmy to his hair styling team. Prior to Bodyguard, we finally watched Little Fires Everywhere, the TV adaptation of the best-selling Celeste Ng book. It starred Reese Witherspoon and Joshua Jackson and Kerry Washington and a whole host of child actors and it was excellent and thought provoking. I am telling you this as though I am not the last person in the universe to watch it. It was one of those rare TV shows that, to me, was even better than the book – but in a way that made the parts of the book I loved really shine… and in a way that made me appreciate the book anew. Reese Witherspoon is one hell of an actress, is one of my takeaways from the show. Also, Joshua Jackson is Full On Dad Mode in this series, which may be upsetting if you are accustomed to seeing him as a teen heartthrob; I never watched Dawson’s Creek so it didn’t bother me, but I could see how it MIGHT. Anyway: two great shows in a row, and now I am at a loss for what to watch next. 
  • Speaking of shows, the next season of Ted Lasso comes out July 23! I don’t know how the second season could possibly stand up to the quality of the first, but I am excited nonetheless. Have you watched the trailer? Ted Lasso (and Ted Lasso) was a real bright spot in the past year and I am really looking forward to having MORE Ted Lasso in my life.
  • Every single time I type “Ted Lasso” I type “Lasson” instead, and then have to erase the terminal N.
  • Earplugs. They’re called earplugs.

All right, Internet. Time for me to go make some cookies and then get through Leg Day. How are you on this, the final Sunday of April?

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Things I Love Lately

We had zero days of sunshine in January. ZERO. But! It is only Day 7 of February and we have already had THREE WHOLE DAYS of sunshine! Glorious! (Note: It is currently Not Sunny, but I am holding on to those memories of sun with both fists.)

Let’s discuss a few other things I am loving, besides sunshine.

(This post uses affiliate links.)

Jalapeno Ranch Ruffles

Photo from target.com

Jalapeno Ranch Ruffles – I was having A Day recently, and after I put gas in my car, I popped into the convenience store to buy Diet Mountain Dew and the chip section just started calling to me. I haven’t had non-tortilla chips in a loooooonnnnggggg time. But which chips to get??? It has been well established on this here blogaroo that spicy things are my jam. My normal spicy-chip go-to is Miss Vickie’s Jalapeno Chips, but they have this annoying tendency of making me cough. Worse than that, they are very hard to find. Anyway, I spotted these Jalapeno Ranch Ruffles and they sounded yummy. It turns out they ARE yummy. Very yummy indeed. I wouldn’t call them spicy, exactly. But they have a great flavor and a nice little kick. A+, would crunch again.

Meadow hand soap

Photo from target.com

Smartly Hand Soap – Meadow Scent – This soap was a whopping 99 cents at Target recently, so I bought some to replace my expensive Method foam soap. (My husband and I, for no memorable reason, have decided that we need to wean ourselves off of foam soap. It’s expensive and the gel soap works just as well and there was possibly some other driving force behind this very important decision.) My problem is that I still like FUN soap, and gel soap is less fun. Enter the Smartly soap collection. The Meadow scent has a nice clean, grassy smell without being overpowering and I love it.

Plumping oil

Photo from beautycounter.com

Beautycounter Plumping Oil – I have been using the Beautycounter brightening oil for about a year, and still love it. But I tried this plumping oil in the past several months and LOVE it. It smells so good – I mean, it’s not smelly, per se. But it has a light, semi-citrusy scent that I really like. And it feels so soothing in these dry winter months. I do think my skin looks smoother than it has before. I still have crow’s feet though. Oh well.

Bomba no slip

Photo from bombas.com

Bombas No-Slip Socks – My husband and I had a $10 coupon for Dick’s Sporting Goods, so I thought it would be the perfect chance to buy a new sports bra. Turns out I could not find a sports bra I liked (this is going to be a difficult resolution aspiration to keep). But I saw these no-slip socks on an end-cap and bought them to wear during my barre classes. I LOVE them. They fit really snugly, even though I have narrow feet. The anti-slip dots cover the entire foot, so I’m not sliding during my warrior 2 pose and planks if I don’t have my foot positioned just so. And they are comfy.

Stone Cold Heart

Photo from amazon.com

Stone Cold Heart by Caz Frear – This book came out this past July and I bought it immediately. But I didn’t want to read it too fast, and have it be over. So I refrained from reading it until the very end of the year. It was WELL worth the wait. This is my kind of book – a detective novel with a relatable, complicated main character – and it was even better than the first in the series, which I thought was excellent. (And the first book, Sweet Little Lies, is only $7.49 right now!!!) I can’t wait for the third book, Shed No Tears, which should be out some time this year. Woo!

What are you loving lately?