Currently {June 2023 Edition}

Reading: 

This is our book club selection for June, and I'm not sure if I'll get to finish it in time for our meeting (Meeting? Is that what we call it? That sounds very boring). Between having my kids out of school for the summer and getting ready for Young Women camp coming up, there's not a lot of reading time. 

Gasp! I hate saying that!

Wearing: cut off shorts and baggy t-shirts. My summer uniform.

Annoyed by: falling asleep without giving myself permission. I’ve never just fallen asleep randomly until recent months. Now I’ve done it a handful of times. That’s not what I’m supposed to do! I’m too much of a control freak! 

(Note: I was blogging from bed when I wrote that, and I fell asleep as described… mid-blogging).

Remembering: the horrible sensation of waking up in the middle of the night as a child with a bloody nose. I was a big time nose bleeder, and I have a child who is an even bigger time nose bleeder (Nicky has an abnormally large blood vessel in one nostril - too big to effectively cauterize outside of the O.R. He pretty much bled from the face for the first 12 years of his life).

Sad about: no more zippity-doo-dah.

Our last ride on Splash Mountain... forever!

Watching: nothing. I haven’t spent enough time with the TV lately. Maybe I should try to repair that relationship. 

Listening to:

Feeling: ornery, to be honest. 

Wanting: a nap in my garage recliner during a rainstorm. 

Craving:  a hot, fresh, original chicken sandwich from Chick-Fil-A with no pickles.

Playing: 

Still loving Ark Nova.

Eating: pancakes. 

Procrastinating: getting Nicky a haircut and scheduling an appointment for Daisy to see an orthopedic specialist for  thumb injury.

Hoping: our vehicles, dryer, and fridge can hang on just a bit longer and stagger their departures from this life. I’m worried they will all go at once. 

Needing: new flip-flops. I’ve been wearing the same pair from Walmart since before COVID. They’re in rough shape, but I haven’t found any replacements worthy of investment yet.

Dreaming of: garden produce.

Our first strawberry of the season

Garden progress as of Saturday

Looking forward to: vacation!

Wondering: how many people actually obey the whole “don’t put cotton swabs in your ears” rule? Cuz this rebel will be sticking q-tips in her ears until the day she dies. 

Sick of: stuff getting stuck in my teeth. I have two spots in my mouth that are problematic, and my dentist really wants to fix them, but I always say “Let’s wait until I’m having other work done, and we can do it all at once.” I’ve been saying that for 8 years. I can’t help it if I keep not getting cavities! Darn my amazing flossing habits! …which happen to have developed because of the problematic food traps I’m currently complaining about!

Ah, the circle of dental life!

Buying: food. We buy so much of it, and then we turn around, and it’s gone!

Grateful for: cool mornings and evenings. I will love them and embrace them for as long as I can!

Things the Kids Say: Episode 23

Me (singing): We only got four minutes to save the world!

Zoe: Four minutes? That isn’t very much time. You should have at least four decades to save the world!

—————

Eva: I’m going to brush my hair for 25 minutes.

(She didn’t brush her hair at all. Never does).

—————

Zoe: The purpose of dance is to twerk in front of boys you love.

—————

Me: Cell phones used to only be for emergencies, and they couldn’t take pictures.

Eva: That’s dumb. Whoever made those phones made really bad choices.

—————

Zoe (in the van): It smells like an old woman in here.

—————

Zoe: I only kiss things that don’t have bark on them.

—————

Zoe (to her primary teacher who gave her a magazine at church): Magazines are really good for when I’m constipated and I have to wait a while for my poop to come out.

—————

Nicky: I didn’t get a single wiener drawn in my yearbook this year.

—————

Me (singing Bohemian Rhapsody): Mama! Ooo-ooo-ooo!

Eva: Why are you singing a song about Grandma?

—————

Me: You should go for a bike ride.

Daisy: I’d rather eat carrots.

—————

Eva (to me while I watch a period drama): Why do you watch so many shows with boring colors?

There Will Be Muffins

I’m kind of obsessed with making muffins. I bake muffins all the time. Healthy ones. Not healthy ones. Almost healthy ones. I’m not sure that I actually like muffins to that degree… I mean, they’re fine, but I think the reason I make them so much is probably because I always have ingredients that need to be used up (bananas or zucchini, for example), and muffins are a great way to do that, and a great way to feed people. I have a kid who won’t eat anything I pack her for lunch except muffins. I always (at minimum) double the batch and freeze some. In the last week, I’ve made banana muffins, double chocolate muffins, and poppy seed muffins, and I currently have a batch of cinnamon sugar donut muffins in the oven, which I’m making for the first time (part of my muffin making obsession is trying out new muffin recipes). 

I confess, I’m making muffins more than usual right now. I do make muffins regularly, but right now, I’m making them with greater frequency because I’m freezing them for girls camp. The Young Women wanted muffins for breakfast one of the days, and when I priced out the cost of muffins for 25 people with a portion of them needing to be gluten-free for our girls with celiac, it would have been about $27 in muffins. I thought, “Well, I’m a muffin making maniac, so it’s no big deal to make muffins for camp at a fraction of the cost!” Thus, I’ve been baking. And I made even more muffins because I needed to entice some Young Women to help me set up the tents and get them waterproofed so I bribed them with breakfast… hence the cinnamon sugar donut muffins (which I balanced with scrambled eggs - laid by my chickens) and watermelon (I had an extra watermelon left over from our summer kick-off party last week). So it was a pretty inexpensive breakfast to provide for the YW as long as you don’t count the $500 I spent on paper plates.

The thing I don’t like about making muffins, though, is when I have to get the muffins out of the tin. I’m sure somewhere on the Tik Tok there’s some great muffin hack that I could be today years old for, but me at today years old doesn’t have the energy or mind space for the Tik Tok. 

Here’s my problem… to get the muffins out of the tin, I usually flip them over and give the pan a little wiggle. Sometimes one will fall on the floor. Sometimes I have to give them a little more of a shake, and they fall out on their tops and get slightly smashed. Sometimes they fall onto the baking rack and end up with baking rack lines in the tops.

I rarely use paper liners for muffins because A) why? B) lazy and C) garbage. Cupcakes? Yes to paper liners. Muffins? Nah. I also have some silicone liners that I got from the thrift store for $.50. They actually work rather nicely (I wasn’t sure what to expect), but washing them can be annoying. Why am I telling you this? I don’t even use them for muffins!

(May I interject that when I started this post, I had no idea where I was going with it, and I didn’t know that I had so much to say about muffins?)

So know this… if you ever need muffins for a potluck or just for your fine self… I gotchu. You let me know, and there will be muffins. They might be slightly smashed and lop-sided, but I’ll throw in some chocolate chips to make up for it.

Day One

Summer break is officially upon us. I guess today is Day One - depending on how you count. Today is the first weekday of summer break, and it feels like it should mean something. I handled the last day of school like a champ. I even hosted a party! I decided to try and be celebratory. Like maybe that would help me cope with summer.

(If you've been around this blog for a while, you already know I hate summer. If you're new here... I hate summer).

Then yesterday, it's like a switch went off, and I had to ward off an emotional breakdown, and the closer I got to TODAY, the worse it got. So last night I had to give myself some therapy - the good kind and the bad kind because I'm all about balance - so I did some CBT and emotionally ate some potato salad.

Did anyone else make potato salad at 9:00 p.m. on Saturday night just in case you had a craving for it on Fast Sunday afternoon?

Then I was like... it's fine. You're not even in the depths of it yet! Just take it a day at a time!

I decided that for Day One, I was going to try really hard to do things "right." (And by that, I mean "right" for me - no one has to do Day One like me, but I have a good grasp on what helps me stay afloat mentally and emotionally, so that's what I mean by "right.") I woke up early and did my gospel study, and then I exercised. Then I ate a (mostly) healthy breakfast. I can't promise how any other days of summer will go, but at least I did it "right" on Day One. 

Any maybe... maybe... I'm going to be just fine this summer. But I can't help being a little mental about it. 

I have things. Things, people.

Anyway, it's only 9:20 a.m. on Day One as I write this. Nicky hasn't gotten out of bed, and since he's never slept this late in his entire life, I had to go in his room and make sure he was still breathing (he was). 

I've already been asked about watching YouTube at least a dozen times, and Eva has begged for food five times since I started this post. Note that she has been fed (waffles with strawberries and cream - mind you, I haven't resorted to marshmallows and Doritos yet... probably next week...) I anticipate three months of fighting with my kids about technology rules. We've already had fights about sleepovers and endured a heavy amount of whining about hiking, but we haven't even attempted hiking, nor planned any hiking, so I'm not sure why that battle has already commenced. 

Aaaaand Eva just asked for food again.

Welcome to summer!

I'm suddenly getting sick of potato salad. 

There is No Appropriate Title For This Post

I’m going to start this post with a warning… I’m about to get a bit morbid. I’ve probably piqued your curiosity, and if you’re like me, you’re going to keep reading. But just remember… I tried to warn you!

Sometimes I think about dead bodies. I don't know if it's a normal, healthy amount or a weird amount. Maybe by the end of this blog post, someone can tell me. 

I haven't been around a lot of dead people in my lifetime. Aside from viewings, the first person I saw deceased was my grandpa, and I was in my 30's. When he died, I got the phone call and was told the mortuary wouldn't be coming for another hour or so, and I could go see him if I wanted to. I just went and sat in the room with my family and my grandpa. It was peaceful. I didn't touch him or even get very close. It wasn't scary - it was just... fine, I guess. He lived a long life. It was okay that he had passed on. It was a necessary and welcome release. 

I've always thought that viewings are strange. I've never really understood why we display our dead. But even worse, I don't understand why we make the families stand in a reception-style line and greet us. I never go through the lines at viewings. However, I recently had an experience that helped me make more sense of viewings. 

When my grandma passed away, we just had a "family only" graveside. When they brought the casket to the cemetery, I started to wonder... how do we know she's in there? There hadn't been a viewing. I started asking around to my aunts and uncles... do we know that Grandma is actually in there? Did anyone confirm this? Everyone just laughed like I was making a joke, but I was dead serious (no pun intended). 

To make things all the more interesting, the cemetery was so back-logged with burials that they couldn't bury my grandma after her graveside. Our family was given the option to either postpone the graveside service to the next week or do a "mock" interment where they bring the casket to the cemetery for the service and then take it back to the mortuary until they can schedule the burial. My family opted for the mock interment, so after my grandma's graveside, they loaded the casket back in the hearse and took it away. 

A few days later, we came back to the cemetery to unload her and have her buried. But again... was she really in there? Once more, I went around asking my aunts and uncles if anyone confirmed that Grandma was really in the casket. I mean... it was taken out of sight for several days and then brought back to be put into the earth. 

YOU JUST NEVER KNOW!

And after all of this overthinking, it dawned on me that that is one purpose for a viewing. You see the body, and then, in most cases, the casket it sealed up while everyone is present, it's wheeled into the funeral, delivered to the cemetery, and buried. You know the person is in there. 

Now, it's not like I think my grandma is secretly alive on the island with Elvis (I'm still holding out for the Elvis conspiracy, it would be the BEST THING TO EVER HAPPEN ON THIS EARTH), but there's this little ounce of me that's like what if? What if she wasn't in that casket? I don't know where she would be... it would have to be some weird case of body swapping or illegal organ harvesting, but no one seemed to be able to tell me with confidence that she was in that casket!

Therefore, a viewing suddenly makes sense despite being totally weird. 

I'm hardly knowledgeable about death and cadavers, but I'm definitely curious. A few years ago, I read the book Stiff by Mary Roach and found it quite fascinating. 

Did you know that corpses can fart, pee, and even groan? I can pretty much guarantee I'll be a farting corpse. My husband will concur. 

My whole life, I've imagined what it would be like to find a body. 

Last year my book club read a book wherein one of the characters stumbles across a dead body wrapped in duct tape. As readers, we knew that the duct taped individual was one of the characters of the book, but we didn’t yet know who. The character that found the body had to choose whether to remove the duct tape to see who it was. We asked each other at book club, “What would you do? Would you be able to remove the tape and look or would you wait for the police?" 

I immediately declared that I wouldn't be able to look. 

As you may recall, last year, I did, in fact, find a dead body in the park on my morning walk with two of my friends. We didn't feel comfortable getting close to the body. This was, in part, because we were shaken and a little confused and disoriented about what we were seeing. Without too much description, it didn't look the way we thought it would. I spent the next several weeks on the Google learning everything there is to know about that type of death. My search history for June 2022 is nothing but sketchy. 

Now that I've had a year to rehash the experience, I often think about what obligations we have to approach the body and check for a pulse. In this case, I think we were okay to not check. She wasn't alive. We couldn't have saved her. BUT in other situations, it could save a life. 

Sometimes, my imagination gets the best of me, and I envision this type of scenario. Yesterday I was walking through the park (the same park - I don't have any qualms about being in that park, but I never walk past that spot without thinking about our girl), and I kind of needed to go to the bathroom, but only to the point where I was making a game plan just in case. I started wondering if I was going to open the door to the park bathrooms and find a homeless person, and once I started imagining that scenario, I imagined that the person was non-responsive, possibly dead, and oh great! I now have to decide what to do about it. 

I don't think I can check. And I didn't check when we found our girl. 

(I call her "our girl" - I'm not always sure how to reference her, so that's what I say. "Our girl." I know her name, and I think of her by her name, but when I talk about her, I usually say "our girl"). 

I think if it were someone I knew, I could check, but when stumbling across a stranger in an unexpected place, not so much. The circumstances are a big factor in that. Let's hope I don't have to make that decision again.

So how does one end a blog post about dead bodies? I'm not really sure. But this is the point where I ask... normal and healthy? Or weird?

One More Week of School (and ten other random facts)

Fact #1: It’s after hours - meaning that my littlest ones are asleep (or will be momentarily). The big kids have retreated to the basement, and Scotty has gone to “band practice.” Therefore, I’m kind of alone. 

Fact #2: There’s so much I want to do with this time! I want to finish watching A Small Light (even though I’m pretty sure I know how it’s going to end).

I have a book I need to finish that was due back at the library today (Hang the Moon by Jeannette Wells), and I also wouldn’t mind going for a walk around the neighborhood because I didn’t exercise today, and I spent three hours sewing which means I sat down a lot. I’m also in the middle of an audiobook I am loving (Who Asked You? by Terry McMillan) (sexual content warning), and I could go for a round of Wingspan. 

But for now… I’m blogging. Because that’s also on the list of things I want to do.

Fact #3: The other day, one of my children, who shall remain anonymous (but if you know my children, you can do the detective work), used nail polish remover instead of make-up remover.

On her eyes

Twice.

Sigh.

Fact #4: I keep having dreams wherein “Brass Monkey” by the Beastie Boys is playing. 

Fact #5: The other day, I went to Kohl’s to return something to Amazon (a too-small shirt, if you’re wondering). There was a family in front of me that had two bins from their house labeled “Amazon returns.” They were returning about 12 items. I can only assume that this is a common practice for them. What kind of shopping habits do you have if you have to have labeled bins for your Amazon returns? I have so many questions.

Fact #6: One of my playlists I listen to when I exercise is titled “Musical Workout.” It features some of the more upbeat selections from musicals, such as “Stick it to the Man” from School of Rock and “Non-Stop” from Hamilton (can’t beat that synth). 

Might I say that the Moulin Rouge cast recording saved me from my workout slump this week? 

Fact #7: Speaking of musicals, I feel like I was born to play Mme Thenardier in Les Mis. But only because I’m too old to be Tracy Turnblad in Hairspray or Charlotte in Cinderella. 

Alas, my acting resume includes playing Mama Bear in my preschool exclusively, and I didn’t even get to sing or show off my sweet dance moves. 

Fact #8: I’m still on edge about yesterday’s text messaging fiascos!

Fact #9: I think we are finally done with end-of-year school performances. Daisy had her last (I think) Dance Co performance at school today, and I did an evil thing and talked Zoe out of doing her school talent show. I made it up to her by watching her do a ten minute miming routine in my living room.

Fact #10: I must now move on to my next activity… which will be brushing my teeth. But then! I’m going to read for ten minutes and then listen to my audiobook while playing Wingspan (which takes advanced skills).

Twenty Minute Brain Dump

My mind is very unsettled right now, so I’m going to attempt a 20 minute brain dump. It probably won’t fix my head, but it will be fun to see what falls out, right?

Twenty minutes of writing - whatever happens happens. 

Aaaaaand go…

(I’ve attempted 20 minute brain dumps before, but I always cheat. Wait… are there even any rules? Not really. But I kind of imagine that a bloggy brain dump means you have to publish and deal with whatever you write. You can’t go back and edit afterward, and you must absolutely stop writing when the timer goes off! And in previous brain dumps, I have not always obeyed those unofficial rules. This time I will. I swear. Maybe. Am I wasting my twenty minutes on this parenthetical paragraph? Dang. I am). 

I just ate a PB&J sandwich, and I really want to brush my teeth, but it’s too soon post-sandwich. I need to give my teeth some time. As I wait, I have Korean taco and PB&J breath. That’s not a good way to end the day.

But is that what’s making my mind all a-jumble? No. 

Nevertheless I look forward to a date with my toothbrush and possibly some Listerine. 

One thing bothering me today is that I’ve been very burdened by other people not returning text messages. I’m frustrated. And then I got on Instagram tonight and saw a post from Emily Belle Freeman (whom I don’t even follow, but that’s what Instagram desires to show me this round) where she shared a screenshot of a text message, and she had 301 unread texts. It made me feel crazy. 

I can’t stop thinking about the fact that if I texted Emily Belle Freeman, she probably wouldn’t text me back. Because she is the kind of person who has 301 unread texts.

Okay, I’m suddenly realizing that this is what’s ailing me. It’s the texts. My unanswered texts. And hers. Hers put me over the edge. 

I struggle with people who don’t respond to texts. In my mind there is a list of people I don’t trust because they have left me hanging by not responding to texts. Today I had to attempt to correspond with TWO of those people. I was already pre-stressed just having to attempt to communicate with them because I know what to expect. Have either of them replied? Nope. How many hours has it been? Sixteen hours for Person #1 and fourteen hours for Person #2. The first person is leaving me hanging. The second person is leaving my child hanging. Which is all the more frustrating. 

Wow. And there went twenty minutes. My timer just went off, and this is what you get. 

Do the world a favor and respond to your texts! Kthanxbye.

——————-

And here is where I break the unofficial Brain Dump Rules and come back to make a clarification. My frustration lies with consistent offenders. Missing a text message every now and then is forgivable. But let’s keep it rare, mmmkay?