Five for Friday

It’s Friday and I am posting this on Friday, March 15; you may not see this until June for all Feedly cares, but I don’t think I have any control over that. This is kind of a cranky way to begin a blog post, so, as I say to Carla: Let’s try that again.

It’s Friday! I am coming off a night of broken sleep (child coming in at three, returning to bed around four, husband waking up for the day at five thirty), so let’s have some Friday bullets. 

1. Are you as steeped in the Kate Middleton drama as I am? If you have no idea what I’m talking about, a) bless you and b) here is a really thorough explainer. If you are In It, I highly recommend finding a friend who is similarly obsessed so you can text her memes and links to conspiracy theories at all hours of the day. My personal opinion is that Kate is recovering from surgery, probably doesn’t look or feel her best, and just wants to recover in private until Easter as previously planned and communicated by the Palace. BUT, simmering in that dark gross part of me that enjoys drama, especially when it feels very removed from my own boring non-royal life, I am kind of hoping that someone is pregnant with someone’s love child.

2. What kind of snacks do you keep stocked in your house? I ask because we have become friendly with our new neighbors and they invite us over all the time for all manner of things. While I am a little intimidated by reciprocating with A Real Meal (they are incredible cooks and bakers, and every time we’ve been invited to their house the food has been astonishing in both quantity and quality), I am ostensibly fine with having them over for drinks and snacks. The other day, the kids went sledding and we had them over for impromptu cocoa. Luckily, we had cocoa mix in the pantry, and even more luckily the mix had tiny marshmallows, and even more luckily, we had an unopened bottle of spray whipped cream because one of the neighbor kids informed me that he really likes whipped cream on his cocoa in a tone so grave I understood him to mean that something dire would happen if no whipped cream appeared. But then there are all these kids and their parent in my house and I realized I DON’T HAVE ANY SNACKS. It’s not that I don’t enjoy snacks; it’s that I enjoy them too much. We managed to scrape together some muffins I had in the freezer and some individual bags of chips and veggie straws that we had leftover from some party or other, so no one starved. But it made me feel like I need to have at least some snacks on hand. But what?!? I’m not crazy about having a bunch of cookies around, because they either go uneaten or get devoured in two seconds. If we have chips, I will eat the chips. Cheese and crackers aren’t big among the elementary school set, and it’s not like I can have an emergency brie on hand for last minute guests (or can I?). Fresh fruits and veggies, yes, great, and I try to have those around as much as possible, but we don’t eat enough of them to have a ready supply in the fridge at all times. Occasionally I panic buy a bag of clementines, but at least a third of them inevitably go bad before we can eat them. So: shelf stable snacks that appeal to kids and adults but are not so appealing that my family will eat them before we have guests. Is this a thing? 

3. In vanity news, I have been Influenced to buy several things lately. I really like this very inexpensive multi-use highlighter stick. Of course I cannot find the video that originally persuaded me that this was an essential tool in my (non-existent) makeup game, but I like dabbing it on the inner and outer aspects of my eyes and swiping it below my eyebrows for a little bit of lively glow. Totally worth $2.94. The other thing I’ve already tried enough times to recommend it is this bronzing mousse. The weather is edging ever closer to summer, and I don’t want to scare the new neighbors with my fish-belly legs, so I’ve been practicing in the hope that I can add a little lifelike color to my skin before I appear in public in running shorts. I am always on a quest for the perfect fake tan, and this is the closest I’ve gotten. The things I like best about it are: a) It’s dark when it goes on, so you can SEE where you are applying it, and you can also see if you are introducing streaks to your thighs or stomach before the streaks have become one with your skin. b) While it has a scent, as all tanning products inevitably do, it strikes me as much fainter and less objectionable than any other tanning product I’ve ever used. c) The resulting tan is darker than my normal skin tone, but not so dark that it screams FAKE TAN. (I use this tanning mitt to apply it to my body which works really well and helps prevent streaking.) Once again, I have no idea which account suggested this tanning mousse, but I am a fan.

4. One of my current parenting goals is to provide more opportunities for Carla to spend time with her friends. I think I’ve mentioned before that I hate playdates. They fill me with anxiety, because they are both forced social time – sometimes with parents I don’t know well – and because I have no idea how to deal with more than just my one child. For better or for worse, that’s just how I am, and so we haven’t had a ton of playdates. But now that Carla is older, playdates presumably no longer require that social element AND the kids are old enough that I can give them a lot more independence. I used to agonize over how I was going to entertain two whole children, and so I’d gravitate toward things in my comfort zone, like baking projects or crafts. Unfortunately, those things require a lot of prep and supervision and clean up, so they aren’t relaxing or easy. But now I can pretty much let the kids go off and play together. Sometimes we all take a walk outside, and I’m always happy to take a walk, even if the kids ask me to pretend I’m not with them.

Even though playdates are, in many ways, easier now, I still of course have anxiety about them. I find myself fretting about planning An Activity, just in case. I find myself worrying about what happens if the kids get into a fight or misbehave or want food (it always comes back to snacks!) or want to be on screens the whole time.

This is so silly! When I was a kid, I don’t think my friends and I EVER had An Activity. We just went and played Barbies or roller skated in my basement or played school or ran around outside or played house. I can’t even imagine asking my mom or a friend’s mom for ideas. And snacks were not provided by the parent! We scrounged up our own snacks, and I don’t even remember a parent being present for any snacking. In fact, part of the fun of going to someone’s house was checking out their snacks. (Not as fun: eating any sort of meal at a friend’s house, because they had different foods than I was used to and different rules. THAT filled me with anxiety.) I loved my friend J’s house because they had an entire drawer full of candy, and you could just… eat candy when you wanted to! J, notably, was pretty uninterested in the candy. I loved my friend R’s house because her garage freezer was STOCKED with popsicles. At my house, we always had little bags of chips or Zingers in the pantry and Dilly Bars in the freezer and pickles in the fridge. (R and I used to each eat a pickle when we were at my house.) So I am guessing that kids DON’T CARE either what they do or what they eat at playdates. They will figure it out. And yet. We have two playdates on the schedule in the next few weeks and I am already stressing about it. I am planning to be Mean Mom and put a ban on screens, but beyond that… I don’t know what to do or what not to do. Wow, I wish I could chill out about this. 

5. You know something that always feels like magic to me, even though it’s science? Topology. Various algorithms keep serving me videos of topological experiments – because I keep watching them when they appear in my feed – and my mind cannot grasp the mathematics/physics. My dad taught Carla how to make a mobius strip and even seeing him create it with my own eyes doesn’t help me understand how or why it works. It’s witchcraft.

What are you up to this weekend, internet? And, more importantly, what kind of snacks will you be eating?

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You Look Tired

“You look tired.” That has to be one of the most irritating sentences ever uttered, no? I mean, it’s not HELPFUL. And if you ARE tired, which you probably are, it just makes you ALSO feel like you look like a used dishrag, which is not the look anyone is trying to achieve. 

A family member used to say that to me almost every time we got together, to the point that there became a need for A Conversation. Fortunately, the commentary has since stopped.

It’s a good thing we are not planning to see this family member anytime soon, because the commentary would be ACCURATE. These days, I feel like I just look SO TIRED. This is probably because I AM tired, even though there is no real reason for being so tired. I lead a low-stress life; I typically go to bed at a reasonable time and rise for the day at a reasonable time; I should be perky and well-rested. 

The thing is, I am NOT. This is in large part because I am a terrible sleeper, and I am trying to work on that. I read a really fascinating article recently, about why so many of us are waking up at 3:00 am every night. You do this too, right? I do. Whenever I wake up in the middle of the night, I can be pretty sure it will be at 3:00 or 4:30. Sometimes both. The aforementioned article has some insights and potential fixes that I plan to implement, but right now I’m more concerned with the aesthetic impact. 

I have always sported dark undereye circles; that’s just how my face is designed. (This is why the Tula Rose Glow cooling balm is one of my longtime favorite cosmetics.) But lately, I feel like the tired look has become exponentially worse.

For one thing, my eyes are super puffy for the first few hours of the day – like my eyelids have decided to provide their own cozy comforters for the night and are declining to put them away once I wake up. Plus, the crows feet at the sides of my eyes are SO aggressive these days. I keep thinking that they are sleep wrinkles, from pressing my face into one position on the pillow for too long. But… I am beginning to realize they may just be WRINKLE wrinkles. 

Also, I have developed wrinkles across the bridge of my nose, that extend over onto my upper eyelids, like my body is etching its own goggles onto my skin.

Listen, I want very much to be able to wholeheartedly embrace Nicole’s pro-aging philosophy. And in general, I do. But when it comes to whatever is going on with my eye area? I am a fan of NONE of it. Not one thing. 

We live in 2024. There MUST be products that can address these problems and, if not improve them, at least make me feel like I’m Taking Action. (I do wear sunscreen on my face, and I have been moisturizing with Bag Balm, per recommendations from, I think, Birchie and Elisabeth, so I am taking some preventative action already.)

I recently read about these silicone anti-wrinkle patches and they are at a price point that makes me feel pretty strongly about giving them a try. They have options to address forehead wrinkles and mouth wrinkles and undereye wrinkles and hand wrinkles and more, but nothing for the crows feet area. 

From a brief foray into wrinkly eye area remedies, it really sounds like retinol is the best option… but I’ve had Issues with retinol in the past, so I’m reluctant to give it a try. 

I would give some eye masks a go, though. These undereye gel patches get good reviews and have peptides which are supposed to help moisturize and smooth fine lines. Maybe a cooling eye mask would be good, too, especially because I am more self-conscious about my upper-eye puffiness. 

Beyond those things, it looks like the only options are more invasive, like lasers or Botox or fillers. And maybe I need to explore those ideas… but the thought of doing so makes me even more tired. 

What are you doing to keep yourself from looking like you haven’t slept in ten years? Tell me all your secrets – even those that involve retinol or Botox. 

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Skintervention

What is going on with my skin lately, friends?!?!

I am having some serious skin drama, is what.

It’s tempting for me to blame everything on the bottle of Kirkland-brand body wash I bought the last time I was at Costco. (It was obviously enormous, and also there were two bottles per package, so it was not my smartest purchase.) I tried the body wash and noticed the next day that my legs were itchy and a little bumpy. So I didn’t use it for a few days, on the off chance the body wash was causing a rash. When I used it again, sure enough: RASH. And this time, my legs were so intensely offended by the body wash, I got an immediate flaming red, itchy, bumpy rash all over my legs. It took more than a week before the rash went away; I had to pull out the big guns, which is a tube of high-intensity corticosteroid that makes my skin both greasy and sticky. 

Fine. Body wash induced leg rash is one thing. But now I am having a rash on my neck and something is going on with my face. It’s not a rash, but it is itchy and there is redness and a lot of teensy breakouts.

I used to suffer from eczema, when I was a kid. As a result, I am very careful about what I put on my skin as it is extremely sensitive. But I have had several decades of little-to-no trouble, so I don’t know that this is eczema. I suppose I don’t know that it ISN’T eczema, either. But I cannot find a cause of whatever is happening.

I swear to you that – outside the Kirkland-brand body wash, which I used for three days – I have not introduced anything new. I have been using the same face oil I’ve been using for at least half a decade now. I infrequently wear the same amount and brands of the same minimal makeup I’ve always worn. I wash my face in the shower with the same Clean and Clear face wash I’ve been using since the early aughts. I haven’t changed perfumes or body lotions or laundry detergent. I have been washing my sheets and towels regularly, in the regular detergent with the regular moderate amount of regular fabric softener.

Okay, I have had a good investigative think, and there are two other things that are new-ish to my life that could be potential culprits:

1. New-ish Medication: I changed birth controls – a decision my insurance company made for me, when they decided out of the blue that they no longer wished to cover the bcp I had been on for MANY YEARS. I hate it, thanks. It’s not quite as bad as I anticipated (I have had some scary times with oral contraceptives in the past), but I do fall into a pit of despair for about a week each month, and also my skin is overall much more blemish-y than it has been in the past. But I started this new medication in April? May? Awhile ago; seems unlikely it would be causing an issue NOW. 
2. New-ish Skincare Routine: I have been trying for months now to transform my “skincare routine” to a more environmentally sustainable one. I feel so ashamed to tell you this – but I am going to tell you anyway, on the principle that no one is perfect, and that each of us has room for improvement – but my skincare routine for the past few years has been a nightly regimen of wiping my face with a disposable Neutrogena wipe and then wiping my face with a disposable Noxzema wipe. I know. I am cringing so hard. Then I would slather my face with face oil. The end. This was an improvement, skin-wise, over my previous routine of leaving all the dirt and makeup on my face while I slept and then only washing it off in the shower the next day. But! I am horrified by all the waste this routine produces, so I have been weaning myself off of it. Change and I are not close friends, so the weaning process has involved many months of me a) looking into alternatives and b) reading other people’s recommendations and c) adding products to my online shopping cart(s). I finally procured some reusable facial pads and my husband (I think?) bought me a reusable face wipe. After trying them a few times, I realized, first of all, that I have no idea how anyone washes their own face without getting water EVERYWHERE but especially down their sleeves, and secondly, that I needed something on which to stow my pads and wipes. So I bought a little stand-up towel rack on which everything hangs. I have been using Pond’s cold cream and Neutrogena face wash, and I have been pretty regular about it since around September I think. But again, that’s nearly two months of no issues, so I can’t see why this new routine would suddenly bother me. 

This is all to say: I do not know what is going on with my skin, but I hate it so much. I have resorted to slathering my entire body, including my face, with Eucerin. It’s so light and so soothing that it doesn’t seem to exacerbate the issue, but nothing – NOTHING – seems to be soothing the itch. Not even my old buddy Benadryl. And I’m sitting over here with an itchy, broken out face and neck with lots of red blotches and scaly patches and I don’t know what to do. 

Perhaps I could call my dermatologist, but… a) I don’t think I will be able to get in to see him any earlier than January, and I already have an appointment for then, and b) I am afraid he will just prescribe Retinol again, which he suggested when I complained about my face several years ago. I cannot do Retinol; it is agony. 

So I am hoping that you, my dear Internet lovelies, have The Magical Solution. Or at least have some Skin Drama tales you can tell in commiseration.

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Friday Randomosity: I Hate Mud and Phone Calls Edition

Meal planning, grocery store reports, and randomosity. Seems like that’s all I can dredge up for a blog post these days. Thank you for reading anyway.

(Perhaps you could use one of your over-long randomosity bullets as its own blog post! you might suggest. Ah. If only my brain were capable of processing posts in manageable bite sizes instead of epic book-length tomes.) 

• I finally got my hair cut and colored this week. My original appointment was a month ago. But the day before I was scheduled to see her, my hair stylist canceled because she had Covid. And then the day before I was rescheduled to see her, I thought I had Covid. My hair was very, very grey and now it is very, very brown and I am deeply grateful to my hair stylist. This time, she also dyed my eyebrows. You will have to trust me when I say that I currently look exactly like Uncle Leo. (The dye has temporarily adhered to the skin beneath my brows, and my hair stylist promises it will wash out in a day or so. Until then, I say, “Hello!”)

The resemblance is uncanny.

• Speaking of vanity, I have totally forgotten to report back on my waterproof mascara experimentation.  Perhaps you did not know or care about said experimentation, but I am reporting back nonetheless. Julie recommended that I try L’Oreal Voluminous Million Lashes, so I marched right out to Target to buy some. This was back in Julyish. Target did not have any of that particular mascara, but I was determined to try something new, so I got the closest thing available on the shelves: L’Oreal Paris Voluminous Superstar Waterproof Mascara.

• (This is not a new bullet, but WordPress disagrees.) Aside from the absolutely ridiculous name, I love it. It has the base primer, which makes my lashes super long. And then it has the top layer. And it’s waterproof so it never runs or smudges. It is a little difficult to remove, but it stays on so well I don’t mind. Since we are all wearing masks for the next FOREVER, it is my new best friend. I wore it skiing the other day, when it was snowing so heavily that my family and I were human moguls by the time we reached the top of the chair lift. And I made the mistake of putting my goggles on top of my helmet, where they immediately became crusted with snow and ice, which rendered them completely unusable, so I had to spend the rest of the day with snow flying directly into my face. My mascara did not budge.

Yes, that is a sliver of my actual forehead. Titillating.

• Who was it that recommended I watch Sex Education? My husband and I just finished Season 2 and I love it. The first season was good. I wasn’t crazy about the premise: Otis, son of beautiful sex therapist Gillian Anderson, starts offering a sex advice clinic of his own at school, with the help of prickly bad girl Maeve. For the entirety of Season 1, I had to suspend a LOT of disbelief, and plus the advice that Otis charged for seemed really basic – like no one could simply google their issues and get the exact same solution? But the characters were interesting, and I became Very Invested in a couple of the side stories, so we went straight into Season 2. And it was GREAT. The cast of characters are so fun and interesting. Everyone is complex and has their own inner struggles. I love how diverse the cast is (although there could be a little more size diversity), and I love how plainly and non-judgmentally a wide variety of sexual preferences are portrayed, and I love the friendship between Otis and his best friend Eric, and I love Gillian Anderson even though her character can be kind of irritating. Anyway: it is a really different, interesting show and I am hoping my husband will be up for jumping right into Season 3. (This may sound like “no, duh” advice, but if you aren’t interested in seeing/hearing about pretty graphic sex acts, I would skip this show.)
• Has it been cold in your neck of the woods? It’s been cold here, but nowhere near as cold as it COULD be. I grew up in the land of Minus Sixty Degrees, so I am pretty blasé about our current in-the-teens temps. We do have some pretty serious icicle action going on though. These guys are all come at me bro and I want to say, Whoa, whoa, whoa. Chill out, my dude. No need to get so defensive.

These are two separate icicles from two separate sides of my home. Which is apparently ready to defend me from enemies.

• Where I was originally going with the previous bullet was that my office is quite frigid lately. I used to have a space heater, one that’s so old I can’t remember when or how or why I acquired it. It died last year. Is it still sitting forlornly in the corner of my office, mourning its inability to fulfill its life purpose? Yes. Despite my sympathy for the defunct space heater, I decided to buy a new space heater and I found this little guy. So far, I really like it. I park it in the middleish of my office and direct it toward my desk, and it definitely makes the space warmer. I think it would be perfect for a cubicle or a small office. It has a little handle, and it is very sensitive to being bumped, and I really like it. It’s little, too – about the height of a hard-bound book, and a very cute little fella. Because as we all know, cuteness is a key factor in which space heater to buy.

• Not that I’ve been in my office a whole lot this week. Even though I am supposed to be doing revisions, I have instead been traipsing all over hither and thither for all sorts of stupid appointments. Annual gyn appointment. Annual mammogram. Routine physical to establish with a new PCP. Hair appointment. Financial advisor appointment. PTA meeting about something I volunteered for. And then I just had to make a bunch of phone calls (UGH) to set up more appointments. Eye appointments for me and Carla. Dental appointment. Car maintenance appointment. Ugh ugh ugh. I hate being on the phone and I feel like my schedule is BOOKED for the rest of the year. 

Actual text between me and my husband. He is very accommodating.

• May I complain a moment about the central scheduling system my healthcare provider has? I spent a very long time on the phone with a scheduler, trying to set up eye appointments for myself and Carla. And while I am grateful that I could call one number and get appointments for us both, with different doctors, I am… a little concerned. I explained my time/date parameters, and she found a time and a date. So I plugged them into my calendar on my phone. And then she said, “Okay, I have you scheduled on DATE at TIME.” But… that was not the date she and I had agreed on! So I asked her to double check it, and she confirmed the original date and time, in a tone of voice that indicated I should have been paying closer attention. And then when I scheduled Carla’s appointment, she said, “Oh, I have an appointment on the same day as your appointment – DATE.” But the date she said was not the date we’d agreed on, so I had to ask her to double check it again. Also for Carla, I picked a specific location near our house, and a specific time of day (after school, because the doctor will need to dilate her eyes). The scheduler set it all up, and then said, “Oh, I scheduled it for DIFFERENT LOCATION. Is that okay?” I said no, could we please find a date at the nearby office. And she said sure, and then offered several early morning times… when we had just discussed that the appointment needed to be in the afternoon. FINALLY we got it scheduled, and then she told me the date and time, and they were different from what I had just plugged into my calendar! It was a very confusing call, and I really, really hope that Carla and I are scheduled correctly. 

• In my never-ending quest to find ways to use the bananas that eventually soften into mush before anyone (ahem, CARLA) eats them, I attempted a new recipe. It was a MAGICAL recipe, let me tell you. Elisabeth posted it on her blog, and it sounded ideal for my particular child: it contains oats (which she will eat RAW by the bowl), bananas, and chocolate chips. It also used dates, which I had on hand from the sticky toffee pudding we never ate. No liquid though, which I felt was surely a mistake. But no! As soon as I turned on the blender, the banana liquified and the ingredients morphed into a beautiful, uniform batter. I was generous with the chocolate chips. The cupcakes were so easy and seemed so wholesome. And none of my family members liked them. HUGE WEARY SIGH. [CLARIFICATION: They are not dry. They are perfect. If they didn’t have a banana flavor, which I cannot stand, I would have eaten them myself.]

I think they LOOK beautiful, but apparently they are “too DRY, Mommy.”

• I need some advice about my “mud room,” even though I am pretty sure that my situation is un-fixable. As I have complained about at great length in the past, my “mud room” is a teeny tiny square of space between my garage and kitchen, with a shoe closet on one side. We come in through the garage, remove our shoes, toss them in the general direction of the shoe closet, and then enter the kitchen. It’s not great normally, but currently, with the deep snow we find ourselves in, it’s reached a fever pitch of untenability. Our feet are wet and muddy, so the floor gets wet and muddy. And there’s no easy way to remove one’s shoes and then step into the kitchen, so mud and dirt inevitably get tracked into the kitchen and then all around the house. I am zooping things constantly. I am spraying and wiping the floor constantly. And then, multiple times a day, the floor is a filthy mess again. Plus, the shoe closet is FULL. There is NO ROOM for all the snow boots that have assembled. The other closet, where I store the snow boots in dry weather, is too far away for us to reasonably store the boots in between wearings. And because some people like to wear normal shoes when it’s not actively snowing, I can’t simply stow the regular footwear in the other closet. I guess I could move SOME of the shoes, so that we could put our boots INSIDE the closet, instead of outside. But that still doesn’t resolve the Mud and Dirt issue. I would love to get a boot tray… but the “mud room” is so small that a boot tray would make it impossible to open the door. I don’t think a boot tray would fit inside the shoe closet, either. It’s tiny, plus we already have a shoe shelf in there, taking up most of the real estate. You will have to believe me that there is no In the Garage Solution, either; our garage is tiny, and there is barely enough room to squeeze past our cars to get inside. We cannot remove our shoes outside before we come in. So. Is there some obvious solution I am overlooking? Or is this just a Grit Your Teeth and Keep Zooping situation?

The reality is SO MUCH WORSE than it appears here.

• This may be really silly question, but if you track your reading, and you also have children, do you track the books you read with/to your children? I track the books I read on Goodreads, and I never used to count the books I read to Carla. (Mostly because my husband is the primary bedtime reader in our household – his accents are MUCH higher quality.) But I have making an effort to read to her more often outside of bedtime, and we just finished Frindle and I tracked it. I mean, I read the entire thing. Out loud. So I want credit. Credit that matters literally only to me. 
• By the way, have you read Frindle yet? It was seriously such a good book. It’s about a boy named Nick and his teacher Mrs. Granger. As part of an effort to distract Mrs. Granger from teaching/assigning homework, Nick decides to make up his own word for a pen (frindle), and then launches a campaign to make frindle the real word for an ink-filled writing implement. It was a fun book about how words come to be, and how students can make a difference, and how important good teachers are. My voice was wobbling all over the place as I read the last two chapters. It was really such a lovely, fun, moving book. Carla liked it too, but being a child and not a parent/former child, she didn’t fully understand the beauty of the Nick/Mrs. Granger relationship. 

That seems as good a note to end on as any. I need to go gear myself up to make yet another phone call and schedule yet another appointment. And then I have two meetings today. Blech. 

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Pandemic Randomosity: Eating/Feeeeeeeeelings/Eating Feelings Edition

My brain is doing that thing where it won’t settle on one thing for more than about 6 seconds before it leaps, hiccuping-jack-rabbit style to the next topic. So let’s have some randomosity, shall we?

• I was supposed to post a Dinners This Week post yesterday and I DIDN’T because arbitrary blog-scheduling needs don’t rule my life. And also because I have nothing new on my meal plan for the week. Not that a) anyone cares or b) anyone but me would even notice that I am once again scheduling us for tacos and chicken fajitas.
• We are, however, having ribs this weekend. I bought a three-pack of racks – a three-rack-pack, a rack three-pack – at Costco, and, if I could only organize my freezer, I plan to freeze two racks and make/serve one as a Labor Day treat this coming weekend. Do I have a recipe for this weekend’s ribs? Not yet.
• Speaking of ribs, have I sung the praises of Pig of the Month yet? If not, I am severely in the wrong. I ordered a rack a billion years ago (May?) and they were heavenly. I got the sriracha BBQ flavor (they have a bunch of options) and the ribs were SO GOOD. They came in a package with dry ice and included re-heating instructions and they were everything I want ribs to be. Tender, not fatty. Substantial and meaty. Great sauce. Easy to re-heat. Free shipping. Plus, they cost about the same for what you’d pay at a restaurant. I promptly ordered some for my father for Father’s Day, and have another rack coming our way for a September surprise and ordered ANOTHER three-pack for my mother-in-law’s birthday present. They are so good. I don’t know why I didn’t order some to eat on Labor Day, instead of making my own like CHUMP, but here we are.
• Labor Day usually marks our neighborhood block party. We got the typical block party flyer over the weekend with a big CANCELLED on it. But also, the fine print read, maybe some enterprising neighbors will be serving treats and booze beverages, to be enjoyed SAFELY, just in case you want to check it out. My main question is: Does anyone really think this can be managed safely? Because I sure as hell don’t. AND my neighbors are all, as far as I can tell after more than a decade of living here, super nice and consicientious and respectful of other people. But anytime you mix alcohol beverages and a bunch of people who either a) have been cooped up with their college-age children for five months or b) are college-age children once again living at home with their parents, probably involuntarily, I think safety is going to go right out the window in favor of getting lit having fun.
• Because our house is down at the boring end of the block, I have been toying with the idea of making cupcakes and putting them, bake-sale-style, in individual containers, just so we can take part in the block party. I could put them on a card table at the end of our driveway and wave at people from my front porch. We’ll see. Carla, of course, would be the rate-limiting factor because I don’t think she’d be able to keep herself from visiting the neighbors’ dogs. So we will probably watch a movie inside our house, in the dark, so it doesn’t look like we are avoiding our neighbors.
• School starts soon and I am having ALL the feelings. Any feeling you can imagine, I am having it in relation to school starting. Terror? Check. Guilt? Yes. Delight? Absolutely. Relief? In spades. Fatigue? All the time. Sad that I won’t be with Carla as often? Shocked by how sad I am. Excitement about all the alone time I will suddenly have? Yeppers. Certainty about how I will fill all those hours? Sure thing. Anxiety about whether Carla will be sad/stressed/anxious/able to wear a mask all day/able to interact normally with other humans? Of course. Nerves about potentially seeing other parents? Totes. Irritation that I will have to wear a Real Bra and Hard Pants in the car twice a day? You bet. Concern about whether I’m making the right choice in sending her to school? UH HUH. Pre-cranky at the parents who don’t think this is A Big Deal? Yessir. Deep, soul-shaking gratitude for the teachers and administrative staff at Carla’s school? Oh, yeah. Resignation about the eventual and possibly quick return to remote learning? Yup. Hunger for foods that will fill the aching hole all these warring emotions have eaten in my heart? Obviously.
• Is hunger an emotion? Hmmm. These are the real, important questions we should be asking.
• I had a pre-school meeting with Carla’s teacher on Monday. She is pretty much the loveliest person in the universe. She was so kind and attentive and reassuring. I feel deep, all-encompassing gratitude for her — and for the school that Carla attends. The kids don’t need to bring anything to school besides masks and a water bottle this year. Not even a backpack. (My backpack angst was completely unfounded.) I am glad they have a plan and they have everything Carla needs at school, but I am also sad that they won’t have even these completely frivolous trappings of normalcy. The teacher wanted to be clear that the first few weeks of school would really be focused on safety and community, and that academics might take a backseat for awhile. The kids have been out of school for so long, and their sense of normalcy is by now so warped, and their ability to interact with their peers has been so stunted/different, and the school itself has been so drastically reconfigured and adapted to our current circumstances, they will all need a – probably lengthy – period of adjustment. I didn’t cry during our conversation, but that is only because I was holding back my tears by gripping my chair arms so hard it left indentations in my wrists.
• Let’s immediately move on to less emotionally roller-coastering topics. You know my go-to topic is food. Or shopping for food.
• There should be a long-German-noun type word to describe the bone-deep exhaustion one feels after doing the grocery shopping during a pandemic. Saturday, I went to both the grocery store AND Costco, which was a mistake on all levels. But it had been two weeks, and we had eaten the very last morsel of vegetable matter for dinner Friday night (zucchini). We had two grape tomatoes to our name, procured earlier this week from the other store that does curbside pickup. We had half a plum leftover from Carla’s lunch. Surprisingly, we also had two heads of iceberg lettuce, because apparently I overbought at some point. (Yes, I recognize that iceberg lettuce technically counts as “vegetable matter” so we had not technically consumed ALL of it. But I put iceberg lettuce and zucchini in two very different food categories.)
• When I was at the grocery store, I tried valiantly to buy only enough food for one week. Despite having done every-other-week shopping since March, I have never gotten very good at buying the correct amount of produce. Last week was the worst. I had to throw away an entire head of perfectly good broccoli, two zucchinis, and half a bag of sugar snap peas. I mean, they were no longer perfectly good; the broccoli was moldy and the zucchini had developed deep, soft pockmarks, and the ends of most of the snap peas were brown and liquified. Gross. It made me really sad and frustrated. Money and food, right in the garbage. I think what has happened is that I plan the meals two weeks in advance, and then, by the time I get to the day on which I need to eat the planned meal, I (or my husband, or Carla) no longer want to eat it. I am feeling more comfortable with going to the grocery store during a pandemic, and I feel, overall, pretty good about our grocery store’s safety practices. And the people who also shop at my grocery store seem to be pretty good about wearing masks and keeping their distance. (Well, they are not GREAT at the latter, but what can you do.) So I think I am ready to resume once-per-week shopping. And I can always go back to every-other-week if I feel less comfortable, or if our county’s infection rate begins to rise again.
• This is all to say that I TRIED to shop for just a week’s worth of food. It was hard; I have now developed a pretty serious feast-or-famine perspective on shopping, so it was really hard to not buy zucchini for the first time all summer, even though I have planned nothing with zucchini as an ingredient for this week’s meals. I lingered over the grapes for awhile, even though I already had peaches AND plums AND apples AND blueberries in my cart. And I… well, I did buy another head of iceberg, just in case the two (2) icebergs we have at home go bad before I can use them. And THEN pork was on sale, in many forms. My husband has recently decided he is no longer a fan of chicken. I know Very Well what that’s like, so I am cutting back on meals that feature chicken. But since we are meat eaters in this household, I need to buy SOME sort of meat to fill in for all the chicken we used to eat. Instead of buying enough for what we are going to eat this week, I bought… more. Well. Pork freezes very well and we will eat it. It was a relief to see the final bill, which was much less than what I have been spending of a typical shopping trip. It was a bit more than half, though, but we shall blame that on the pork sale.
• A friend and I are doing a Burpee Challenge together. That makes it sound like my friend had a choice; what really happened is that I told her, “I’m doing this, please please please do it with me” and then just expected her to agree. We completed an Ab Challenge together earlier this summer (which took me two tries, because I suffered from excruciating back pain after Week 1 of the first try and had to take a three-week hiatus), and when I came across a PopSugar article about someone who did 50 burpees for 30 days, I knew that was the next thing to try. Sometimes I like to torture myself with physical challenges I am in no way fit enough to complete, just to see how much pain I can inflict on myself. Or endure. I don’t know. Let’s not delve too deeply into the psychology of the thing. I don’t know if my friend is, in fact, doing 50 burpees a day or if she is just going about her normal life, enjoying walking around without searing shoulder and wrist pain, but even the prospect that she might be doing 50 burpees a day is enough to keep me accountable. Well, except that I have already skipped a day. Whatever. I will make it up on the other end.
• It is safe to say that my forties are LOOMING in front of me and I am dealing with it by being Very Concerned about my physical fitness level. (Not good.) I am achey ALL the time. Just sitting here typing, I have a headache (from neck/shoulder tension), my hand hurts (too much Toy Blast on my phone), my wrists ache (burpees), and my left knee aches (walking). I know that aches and pains are associated with age, but… this can’t just be How It Is from now on, can it? CAN IT? (If the answer is yes, then… can it. I don’t need the truth, I need HOPE.)
• Speaking of forties: My husband is turning 40 in a few weeks and I want to do something special for him. Any ideas????? Based on knowing nothing about my husband aside from the fact he is a doctor and can apparently put up with my shenanigans for at least 19 years???? He wants a new desk for his home office, so we will get that for him – but it’s more than I can afford myself, so it doesn’t really feel like it’s coming from me. But he is notoriously difficult to buy presents for and I am also a TERRIBLE gift giver, so I am FLOUNDERING. He doesn’t want any sort of party and we aren’t going to restaurants and as much as I’d love to have an actual date with him, we have no family in the area and are not ready to try having a babysitter come into our home. I feel like I can’t just buy him another puzzle for his FORTIETH BIRTHDAY. Right? HELP?
• STILL speaking of forties, I think I am finally nearing the point at which I want to try coloring my hair at home. My hair is now the color Streaked With Grey and I am not loving it. Instagram keeps serving me ads for Madison Reed, and a friend of mine just used that very company to color her own hair and it looks GREAT, so I am edging closer and closer to the DIY dye cliff.
• Here is a satisfying follow-up to my satisfying shoe project: I had called my local DSW last week, to see if they did, in fact, accept donations. The very lovely woman I spoke to said that I could donate one pair of shoes per week for 50 (I think???) points (for what????) and was very confused when I asked if I could donate multiple shoes, and then, as a follow up, if I didn’t actually care about the points, could I then donate multiple pairs of shoes? She had warmed to me considerably by then, and told me that sure, I could donate a big bag of shoes! And yes, the donation center was right inside the door. So on Saturday, I drove to DSW, hauled my bag of shoes out of my car, pulled on my mask, and marched inside. The donation box WAS right inside the door. I was a little leery because the other donations were single shoe boxes with nearly-perfect-condition shoes in them. My shoes are in good condition, but they have been WORN. Well. I did not let it deter me. I put my giant bag of eight pairs of shoes into the donation bin and LEFT.

Should we end on that very random but surprisingly positive note? Yes, I think we shall.

What’s going on with you, Internet?

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Dinners This Week

After a VERY frustrating month and a half of trying to lose any, any at all, of the weight I gained from eating my feelings all autumn (and, simultaneously, a month and a half of reminding myself that weight has nothing to do with my self-worth and that maybe I am just This Size and should embrace it and worrying that I am setting a bad example for Carla by “dieting” and churning with ALL of the Fraughtness that comes with wanting to be a certain size in our society today and facing a truly insurmountable resistance to buying myself new jeans), I have persuaded my husband to try the Keto plan with me. This is literally Day Three, so please understand that I may give it up any second now and never speak of it again. (I mean, no carbs I can sort-of live with… but NO SAUCES? No BEANS? And the limit on Healthful Vegetables – like, I typically have to restrict myself to two cups of LETTUCE!!!!! to stay within my carb allotment – has me in a panic.) (I understand that I am CHOOSING this, by the way.) (I don’t really plan to speak of keto/diet stuff, that often, but it may shift the tenor of my weekly dinner plan posts and/or the tenor of my general complaining, so I am warning you about it now.)

Anyway, meal planning is newly challenging because I am trying to emphasize fat and protein over carbohydrates. Here’s what’s on the menu this week:

Dinners for the Week of February 24-March 1 (WHAT. HOW IS IT MARCH ALREADY SLOW DOWN TIME OMG)

• Spiced Tuna Steaks with Avocado Salsa: https://irenamacri.com/recipes/mexican-tuna-steak-with-peppers-avocado-salsa/

Note: There were some absolutely beautiful tuna steaks on sale at Costco this weekend, so I snapped them up. We will not be eating the sautéed red pepper portion of this meal; instead I will be sautéing some green beans. This is because I already have the green beans and I don’t want to waste them, not because of some red-pepper-related bias.

• Crockpot Pepperoncini Beef: https://addapinch.com/slow-cooker-pepperoncini-roast-recipe/#wprm-recipe-container-33661

Note: I fully realize that the Internet has been swooning over this recipe for eons. I have read about it with suspicion for many years and NOW is finally the time to try it out.

• Chicken, Bacon, and Avocado Salad: https://www.howsweeteats.com/2016/07/rosemary-chicken-bacon-and-avocado-salad/

 

• Creamed Spinach Salmon: https://www.halfbakedharvest.com/garlic-butter-creamed-spinach-salmon/#bo-recipe

 

• Crispy Slow Cooker Carnitas: https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/crispy-slow-cooker-carnitas/#tasty-recipes-63652

Note: I haven’t figured out what I will pair with this yet. Maybe some avocado?

 

• Leftovers of some sort or possibly eggs

 

• OUT

Note: My birthday is this week, so we will be going out to celebrate. I am already feeling grouchy about not being able to eat all the things I want to eat — solely because of completely voluntary and self-imposed restrictions! — but I think we have found a restaurant that serves some nice fish options. And the whole point of doing Keto is to reset my eating habits, so a little limitation on the all-out scarf-fest I would otherwise be doing on my birthday is probably not a bad thing.

 

What’s on your menu this week?

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