Monday hijinks

Is "upright and moving" good enough for Monday hijinks? Asking for a friend.

It's good of me to call myself my friend, isn't it?

Anyhow, this morning had me googling when the time change happens (November 5, FYI) so I can get up in the morning with a reasonable degree of awareness. I keep attempting to pry myself from the sheets early so I can leisurely ready myself for work and do my makeup and drive to work in a calm and orderly manner, only to hit the snooze an unbearable number of times, throw myself into clothes, make sure my makeup from YESTERDAY isn't too smeared and off I go. The one good thing about me being too lazy to wash my face on a Sunday night.

But I'm up and moving and relatively productive this morning and I'm ready to face the day. I'm two hours late for facing the day but hey! Better late than never! Honestly, I was on time but my brain is still catching up. Hence this rambling stream of consciousness blathering I'm going on with.

So what to talk about? I stayed up late hoping to see the Indians come back to sweep the Yankees, but it didn't happen. I've been watching Veronica Mars whenever I have a few minutes to myself. Listening to Tower of Dawn by Sarah J. Maas - I was disappointed that she decided to follow a different story arc but man, still SO GOOD. Taking walks with Louie whenever I need out of the house.

Do your kids drive you up the wall? S fancies himself funny. He is not funny. He's loud and repeats his punchlines eleven times and makes a million Vine videos about eating a shoe that might or might not be meatloaf. He's affected this barking laugh that is not him but has become his new favorite thing to do and OMG I'm going to die from noise pollution. H is not quite as obnoxious, but I think he's getting there ... that age of 8-10 holy sweet baby Jesus.

So I spend a lot of time with my headphones on, is what I'm saying. Or barking at children to stop talking, FTLOG. I feel like a terrible parent. This is surviving, right?

September Bookery

After I read most of four books during Hurricane Irma, I thought that this month would be a big one for reading. Alas, I just couldn’t get into much. I watched some television; I stared off into the void. There was baseball. There was not a ton of reading.

By the numbers

8 books

4 owned (personal collection)

4 library

6 print (ebooks)

2 audio

7 new

1 reread

pages (or equivilent) read: 3009

Best book I read:

Currently ... Happy October!

I’m wanting to keep up with my blogging, but I’m not sure what to type out, so I’m going to go a la Stephany and answer these fun questions. October! It’s October!

Loving … My new boots, which I bought off a friend and they are excellent. It’s still 90 degrees here in Florida, but it feels like the arctic at work so I can easily wear wool-lined Uggs and be October-y.

Loathing … I was pretty sick at the end of last week and I’m still not 100%.

Reading … Oooh, this is a fun one for me right now. I’m listening to the Unearthly series (I just finished the second, Hallowed, and I’ll start the third, Boundless, today). I’m also reading the fifth in the Throne of Glass series (Empire of Storms) and holy goodness, I adore that series.

Watching … The Originals. So the reason I started watching was because Jason Dohring (Logan in Veronica Mars) is in the second or third season and I wanted to see him in a different series, but then of course I wanted to watch the show from the beginning. I’ve been binging television one day a week (we know how notoriously bad I am at watching tv) so this is my binge show. I really really like it, and I haven’t even gotten to the season with Jason Dohring!

Anticipating … cooler temperatures. I can’t anticipate EXTREMELY cooler temps, but anything less than 89 degrees would be welcome. Perhaps a slight breeze?

Thinking about … The violent shooting in Vegas, my dreams last night, all the work I have on my plate, my three brain-related doctor appointments this week. How much I want the really bad-for-me breakfast that work is supplying today that I’m not eating. Life is a lot right now.

Needing … a break. I didn’t do much at the end of last week because I was so sick, but it wasn’t a break. I need a vacation from everything. I’ll go with another cup of coffee instead.

What We're Eating This Week - keto central

I don’t know if I have mentioned it here (probably not based on the amount of posts in the last 6 weeks), but we’re eating keto these days. It’s not as hard as I thought it would be; I’m not craving pasta or bread, although I am craving chocolate, it’s mostly manageable. It does make things interesting for meal planning because I seem to be more labor intensive trying to make appealing meals we will all eat. We also have started eating family style and seriously, it’s been the best for getting my kids to eat real food (okay, mostly). I can just put out an extra thing for them that’s not keto also, instead of short-ordering it.

Here’s this week, what the meal is and if there’s any changes for the kids, who are not eating keto:

Sunday: taco lettuce wraps (kids also had tortillas) This worked well because I just put out a few tortillas for the kids. H opted for a lettuce wrap WRAPPED by a tortilla, which tickled me. S wasn’t feeling well and just ate a plain tortilla. I didn’t feel like fighting.

Monday: pork ragu over almond “polenta”. I’m interested to see how this polenta recipe works out. The kids don’t like the texture of spaghetti squash and don’t like the taste of zucchini, so I was at a loss over what to make under the meat sauce. I’ll probably also make a small amount of pasta for them to mix in if they want.

Tuesday: kale mozzarella burgers and asparagus

 Wednesday: grilled chicken salads

Thursday: carnitas (leftover pork) and sautéed spinach (and fruit for kids)

Friday: leftover deli meats and cheeses (and crackers for kids), keto rangoons (thanks, Candy!)

(picture and recipe from Candy)

Saturday is baseball day, so we will probably go out to eat for a late lunch/early dinner after the games. That’s what we did this last week and it worked out well.

Bookery: An Update

August was a hard month for me, anxiety wise. I’m working more on it; I’ve added acupuncture, chiropractic and massage to my ever-growing list of attempts to relieve my issues, but in the meantime reading as an escape has always been my number one way to fight when life gets hard.

Maybe it’s not a surprise then that I read 20 books in August. Well, 19 if you count 2 halves of the two books I’m currently engaged in, but since I’m deep into them I count them for August because I won’t count them for September.

Here’s the breakdown:

12 ebook

8 audio

19 from the library

1 Audible

18 new

2 reread (the 2^nd and 3^rd of the Throne of Glass series)

19 fiction

1 memoir

I can’t count hours of audiobooks because on Overdrive they don’t show me the full amount of hours; it’s broken down by parts. Therefore I count pages for audio just like I do paper or ebooks.

6656 pages.

Goodreads star rating:

2 star – 2

3 star – 5

4 star – 9

5 star – 4

I hate the star rating – I wish so much that there were half stars.

Favorite books:

(reread)

(new)

(New)

Day in the Life

I randomly decided to brush off the dust here by doing a Day in the Life post, so if you weren’t bored by the lack of content, you can be bored by my day! No, but really. I think it’ll be an interesting day but first you have to get through six hours of me staring at a computer screen. I apologize in advance.

5:30am My alarm goes off. SO TIRED so eff that. I hit snooze twice.

5:48am okay, okay! I’m up! Plus, Louie needs to pee and he’s all snorty up in my grill telling me so, so I’m up and walking the dog. No picture because it’s too dark (and also because I didn’t think of doing this until an hour later)

6:20am I am done and ready to go to work and I’ve already cleaned the poo off the floor an inch from the puppy pad and everything, so it’s time to leave! Yesterday I was many hours early for work. Today I will be … on time.

6:30am But first, Starbucks! Okay, they totally got me with their “buy these three things and get 100 extra stars” because two of them were things I already buy occasionally anyhow. Today is the third: ANY LATTE! (I chose cascara) and for extra oomph, I got the bacon sous vide bites. Remind me of this when I complain to my doctor today about my weight gain on my new meds.

7:00am At work! And working! So riveting. Here’s my coffee.

7:20am First things first (after deleting all the Living Social emails) is to deal with the 23 emails in my inbox that I haven’t dealt with. This requires listening to Leap Year for the millionth time.

8:00am Time to take my meds! I have an alarm at 8am, and a follow up one at 11am just in case. I missed both alarms one day last week and it was a bad time. I don’t recommend it (Keeping it real over here)

8:15am “Hang” is a verb. It’s not a sandwich.

9:00am Still working on those emails. We can pretty much all agree that emails are the devil right? I know some people in politics would agree.

9:30am I have three left but I can’t anymore with the emails. One is something I’m waiting for information on and the other two are very in depth. I’ll tackle them later today, hopefully.

Instead! I will work on writing a letter for work. Bah.

10:30am Where did that last hour go? At least I’ve been productive. C texted me my daily Louie picture.

11:00am So I wasn’t going to go to this meeting until I found out it was for credit, but it was one hour and then got in there and it was TWO HOURS straight through lunch and no one brought us food. Not cool.

1:15p I make a beeline to Jimmy John’s

1:25pm Back at my desk, a #12 no mayo combo spread out on my desk and doing email. Again. Some day I’ll get to something else.

2:20pm Some days I feel like a hamster in a treadmill. Here’s a gratuitous shot of my keyboard.

2:45pm I’m out! I have appointments this afternoon so I had to leave early. I never got to anything except emails – how sad is that?

2:50pm Listening to podcasts … I don’t know how not everyone is listening to Ask Me Another – it’s the actual best.

3:30pm my psychiatrist is running late. Sigh. Nervous because we have things to talk about.

5:00pm MY TATTOO APPOINTMENT!!!!!!!!

6:30pm tattoo completed and I’ve texted a picture of it to everyone I know.

7:30pm There’s a new noodle place near my house that I figured we could try rather than me cooking. It was delightful and I want to go back to try everything on the menu.

8:00pm Making lunches for the kids for tomorrow’s camp because I didn’t do all of them on Sunday. Be like normal me: make all the lunches on Sunday so you don’t have to do this every day.

8:10pm there is laundry I should be folding but instead I’m snuggling with my pup, my wine and my book.

9:00pm retire to the bedroom, again with the pup, wine, book and now added husband!

10:15pm my strict bedtime is 10:00 but somehow I’ve been stretching that lately. Lights out at 10:15 and I was asleep almost immediately.

So there was my day! It wasn’t typical; usually I work till 3:45 and go pick up the kids from camp and go home and clean or cook or something, but it was a little different and hey! Maybe more interesting. Or maybe you’re sleeping through this. Meh.

Happy whatever day today is!

The future is now! In so many ways!

I’ve been getting myself to work heinously early for the past couple weeks and thought hey! I should write a blog post!

Things are good here. I’m on a crapload of meds that keep my mood stable and elevated. I laugh more, enjoy time with my family more. We grabbed an Echo for Prime Day and last night we had an Alexa dance party while playing Wii Frolf. Family time is good. I don’t get quite so short tempered; I laugh more. Oh hey, I already said that! Still true.

Science is wonderful.

Today I placed my first order for Publix delivery and if this works out, it makes me beyond happy. The prices on some things are slightly higher but not outrageous, and it gets delivered to my husband while I’m still at work – I have to do nothing except input the order! I’m so excited.

The future is now, people.

Another way the future is now is that two weeks ago, this sweet face became part of our family.

  

My husband has maintained that we couldn’t get a dog until we moved, but for various reasons we keep putting off getting our house in selling condition and hiring a realtor to buy a new house. I finally decided to push back on getting a puppy and I’m so so so glad I did. This is Louie, and he’s just the best puppy that ever puppied. We’re all over the moon about him. You can follow him at Louie_the_dox on IG!