Life: It Goes On - August 4

Hey, all! I usually try to check in early on Sunday mornings but this Sunday was having none of it. My to-do list for this weekend was long and, truth be told, I only got about a third of the things on it crossed off. Still, I feel like it was a very productive weekend and I even managed to get things done that you can actually see, which I think we can all agree is a plus. I'm bummed to have missed out on the Dewey's Reverse Readathon and even more bummed to have missed getting to spend time with family not once, but twice. Oh the other hand, we finally got to celebrate Mini-him's birthday. And I will go to bed tonight exhausted, in a good way.

Last Week I:

Listened To: Phoebe Robinson's You Can't Touch My Hair which I finished yesterday. Tomorrow I will start Elizabeth Gilbert's City of Girls. Really looking forward to it.

Watched: Miss H and I watched a couple of episode's of last season's Orange Is The New Black. She is anxious that I get to this season so we can watch it together, but I'm not loving last season three episodes in so I'm having to make myself power through.

Read: Lara Spencer's Flea Market Fabulous and Laura Lippman's Lady In The Lake, which I'll be reviewing this week. Tomorrow I'll start The Accidentals by Minrose Gwin.

Made: Asian Chicken Salad and red velvet cake for Mini-him's birthday dinner. Our gardens are really starting to produce so we also made BLTs and bruschetta to use our tomatoes; and, today I canned pickled banana peppers.

Enjoyed: Sorting through some paper dolls that my mom gave me a couple of weeks ago and I found a Bedknobs and Broomsticks set. My parents gave them to me July 20, 1969. How, you may ask, could I possibly remember the exact date, fifty years ago, that I was given a set of paper dolls. On July 20, 1969, my family went to watch Neil Armstrong become the first man to step foot on the moon with a couple who had no young children. My siblings and I needed to be kept preoccupied through the long evening waiting for that momentous first step. I don't know what my siblings were given; but I vividly recall playing with that set in the basement of the Breed's house that night.

This Week I’m: 

Planning: On building that mantel for Mini-him that I had intended to work on last week. Mini-him was gone all last week so I decided to wait until he could be here to help with design choices. 

Thinking About: Friendships. My parents and I went to the funeral of one of my dad's oldest friends on Tuesday. They had known each other for 70 years! It takes work to maintain a friendship over all of those years and I know I need to step up my game if I hope to, one day, find myself saying goodbye to someone who's been such an important part of my life as John was for my dad.

Feeling: Happy - I finally finished, at least for now, the stool I've been working on refinishing for weeks! It's very soft wood that absorbed a lot of paint color and I'm loathe to keep sanding in an attempt to get below that. I'm also loathe to turn around and throw more paint on it after all of this work. For now, it the stool of many colors and I'm kind of liking it that way.

Looking forward to: Another quiet week. Y'all know how much I like those!

Question of the week: If you've got kids heading back to school this week, are you in the "whoopee" camp or the "Nooooo, I'm not ready for summer to be over yet" camp? I was always sad for summer to end - I loved the slower pace, not having to get everyone up and out the door in the mornings, no homework, and time to enjoy my kids and not just herd them.