September 30, 2022
Good Things Friday (188) and Link Love
1. I adore my soot sprites bag, a birthday present from a dear friend. It holds exactly everything I need for our twice daily dog walks..
September 23, 2022
Good Things Friday (187) and Link Love
1. “Because we’re a nation of sociopaths, we’ve never seen a law we didn’t try to break.” Favorite quote this week from The Cosmic Avenger.
2. The T-Mobile Tuesdays app doesn’t usually yield much for us but last Tuesday they had a promo code for 10 free prints at Walgreens and I’ve been needing just a few prints. Savings: $3.84.
3. I preemptively ordered three dinners for Bentocart delivery because we had so much going on this weekend before an extra heavy week. Normally I wouldn’t have scheduled anything before a week like this but we had a dear friend in town so we had to embrace this rare occurrence and not punish myself by forcing myself to socialize AND put in extra hours cooking to prep for the week.
September 16, 2022
Good Things Friday (186) and Link Love
1. I’ve made a little more progress in setting up our household computer in case my work computer bites the dust. I was fighting with our password keeper, though, that’s still not working quite the way it should. Once that’s settled, I will do a work day on that computer to make sure it’s an adequate substitute.
2. I made JB’s Christmas present!!! It needs just a little more work to secure the fraying fabric but I finally powered through my hesitation and self doubt and made them a pair of packing cubes. It would have been cheaper (time wise) to just buy them a pair of $10 packing cubes but these are made with that Hello Kitty fabric I couldn’t resist so I believe this is called making the most of what you have 😬😁
This settles two things for my holiday anxiety brain: they will now have packing cubes to use for annual travel and I’ll be done with their present once all the bits are tidied up. Now I have to get going on the last remaining gifts. I’m also tempted to make myself a new cube too.
3. We’ve come up negative on our weekly COVID tests.
4. Even only three days a week, and even with how hard the transition has been, daycare has been such a huge help. We can get more work done, reducing that frantic hamster in a wheel feeling we get every single day, and I can even cook dinners some nights of the week instead of just hoping we can throw something together from the pantry. Five days a week would probably feel like a miracle but I’m not yet prepared to pay $2600 a month for that. 😓
September 9, 2022
Good Things Friday (185) and Link Love
1. My attempt at meal planning while grocery shopping:
- Romaine hearts and lemon to make a salad with pork roast and rice
- Russet and sweet potatoes to bake and serve with chicken of some kind
- Broccolini to saute and serve with rice and steak
2. I started a spreadsheet of recently successful meals so that I can stop reinventing the wheel and pick from the various columns when I’m not sure what kind of meal to construct. Let’s see if this actually helps.
3. I actually made all three meals! I swapped the components around a bit, rice goes better with the chicken I made than potatoes, and the broccolini got replaced by salad on a hot day but THREE balanced dinners in a row?? Unprecedented!
4. The FDA authorized updated Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccine boosters. I’m checking Kaiser regularly to find out when we can get boosted.
Challenges this week: knowing that the country has given up on fighting COVID, tests won’t be funded, vaccines won’t be funded. School stopped pooled testing. Thinking about when we need to start holding on to our test kits instead of sharing freely makes me want to kick something.
September 2, 2022
Good Things Friday (184) and Link Love
1. Who knew Hot Topic had all kinds of cool stuff now? I never shopped there as a teen but I had so much fun ogling cute stuff. All the dopamine! No actual shopping!:
- R2-D2 carry-on case (I’d totally use this)
- An Appa wallet (and this)
- Jean Grey/Phoenix wallet (or this, even if Jean Grey wasn’t my favorite X-man)
- I love soot sprites: shortalls (Suspect I would wear this if we ever actually had warm weather)
- Totoro satchel (unrealistic for my lifestyle and health needs)
- Totoro berry picking mini backpack (unrealistic for daily needs but so cute)
- Totoro sweatshirt (would absolutely wear but they only have 3x left sadly)
- Jiji stripe cardigan (from Kiki’s delivery service, absolutely would wear, it has EARS)
- Soot sprites crossbody passport bag (tempted to use this for my dog walking bag)
- Eevee and Pikachu satchel (again, heavy satchels are unrealistic for me but so cute)
- Eevee Passport Crossbody Bag (not JB’s favorite Pokemon but it’d be a great prize present if this were)
2. I made a version of my mom’s chicken salad recipe which also yields a very simple chicken broth/soup and JB was over the moon about the soup (“onion broth” they call it). Nice to be appreciated.
3. Sunday was good. After PiC took the early morning stretch with Smol Acrobat (who persists in waking at 6 am sharp), I took the kids til noon and we swapped again in the afternoon when he got home. We didn’t see much of each other but we both got a solid chunk of time where we got to be alone/away from the family. I worked and then I napped and then I was able to cook and it was glorious. The mental health benefit of getting some hours of silence is unbelievably good.
August 26, 2022
Good Things Friday (183) and Link Love
1. Our food friends showed up with an entree for dinner and we cobbled together a delicious unplanned BBQ dinner. It felt positively decadent!
2. My friend pushed back against sexist policies at her kid’s school and got them to change! I’m so proud of her for standing up for kids.
August 19, 2022
Good Things Friday (182) and Link Love
1. We donated to our local CASA chapter, our local homeless shelter, a dog rescue, and The Human Utility.
2. We’re working on more Lakota donations! I’m rounding up good used clothing, toys, books, and some other odds and ends to ship.
3. PiC spotted a sale on Dave’s Killer Bread ($1.44 a loaf) and ibotta had a $1.50 rebate per loaf. This is the first time I’ve caught such a deal, we rarely buy the brands they promote.