I've Moved!!

Hey hey! I've moved! Not physically (although that is tempting given the results of yesterday's election...). After 16 years of blogging, I took the plunge and moved my site to a wordpress site: lisasyarns.com. 

Please click of there and add my new site to your feedly/blogrolls/etc. See you over there!!

Weekend Review + Organizing Bug

Well election week is upon us. I am anxious and so very ready to have this behind us. And that is all I have to say about the election! 

Moving on… my weekend did not get off to a good start. Late in the day on Friday, my rheumatology clinic called to cancel my infusion appointment for this week because they have no IV drugs (I think the saline, not the drug itself, but I didn’t ask) due to the supply chain interruptions caused by the hurricanes last month. I have been in so much pain lately as my flare has gotten worse so I am so sad that I can’t get the drugs my body needs. They can’t even reschedule at this point as they don’t know when the meds will be back in stock. #sob I’ve already increased my prednisone to 15mg but can’t bare to increase it further because 20mg makes me overly ragey.

After that I had the lovely distraction of volunteering at chess club that afternoon which helped. And then that evening we let the boys stay up later in the hopes that they would sleep later on Sunday when we fell back for the end of DST. We watched the movie, Sing, which was so delightful! 

On Saturday I woke on my own, not from a child yelling for me which is always a treat. Taco was up around 6:30 and I had to wake Paul up at 7:30! I ran 4 miles, showered and then a friend came over and walked to Starbucks with us while Phil grocery shopped. Her daughter is almost 14 so she enjoyed being around the boys and said she wanted to take Taco home with her. We need to take her up on her offer to watch the boys for a date night. 

That afternoon, Phil took both boys out to his mom’s so I could get a break (husband of the year!!!). I spent that time organizing the window seat shelves - now that task is off my list and I can mostly use my days off this week as shouldless days. Woo hoo!! I forwent my typical Saturday afternoon reading session/nap and set to work. I also had Taco help me go through the board books before he went to Nana’s so we could donate things we no longer read. 

Lots of books to donate!

Here is a before of one side of the window seat shelves… 

Yes it was a disaster!

… and after! 

Can you see the John Dickerson photo? I’m a huge fan so Phil had his cousin’s wife who works at CBS get a signed photo for my 40th bday. Apparently he didn’t have stock photos to sign so his assistant took this for him to sign. Pretty cool, huh? I’m looking forward to listening to John’s election commentary. 

Here is the other side which wasn’t AS bad…

And after!

The finished product! It will rarely look like this. The pillows are too tempting for the boys and this area tends to be a dropping place for everyone’s bags.

I also hung some of Paul’s kindergarten art work in his room and then I ran out of motivation so caught up on the Great British Baking Show and watched some episodes of One Day. 

The boys were up at 5:50 on Sunday which isn’t too bad since that felt like 6:50. I was already awake and was laying in bed waiting for one of then to wake up. I’m glad our strategy of pushing bedtimes back worked. Starting our day at 5:50 is much better than 5! 

The boys got some holiday activity books from their Nana the day before so Taco and I did some coloring that morning. 

We we working on teaching him now to hold crayons. Fine motor skills are hard! 

I ran 3 miles and then we went to church/Sunday school. I attended a new member orientation brunch at church and then it was time for swimming lessons. Both boys will repeat their levels but have made great progress - yesterday was the halfway point of the term so we still have about 1.5 months of lessons left. 

We had a more ‘effortful’ dinner - turkey breast made in the instant pot with mashed potatoes, gravy, and roasted carrots. Both boys love poultry so the meal was a hit although Paul only ate the turkey. But I’ll take what I can get! 

We’ll obviously eat this meal again later this month on Thanksgiving. I mostly made the turkey breast so we could use some of the leftover meat to make turkey wild rice soup later this week! 

I ended the night watching some of the Vikings game with Phil before calling it a night.

I have Wednesday and Thursday off this week so it’s a short week which I am looking forward to! I really needed a break from work. The days will be mostly shouldless kind of days with a few errands mixed in. 

How was your weekend? Did you enjoy ‘falling back’? I hate this manipulation of time and wish we could just stay on DST! But overall, it wasn’t bad since we pushed the boys bedtimes back throughout the week. 

Halloween + What We Read in October

First up, Halloween! In true Minnesota fashion, we went from 75 degrees on Tuesday to this yesterday. 

At least the ground was warm so most of it melted. It was just depressing. But I nearly always trick or treated with a winter jacket, mittens and hat so they are just getting a true Midwestern trick or treating experience!

Pikachu and Chase, under warm winter jackets in our neighbor’s yard.

It wasn’t so bad once we were walking around, especially with heavy bags of candy. They went with me for an hour and then we emptied their bags and they went back out for 30 more minutes with dad. We do not need this much candy but it’s a good opportunity to see our neighbors. 

Now- onto the main topic! Here we are in the penultimate month of the year! I'm not going to say "where did the time go?" because while time has flown, I have been so busy with travel and such so it feels like 10 months have passed. But I digress. My book count for October is 10 which is very high, but I read 97% of one of the books (Wellness) in September and I slowly read another book over the course of 9 months with a Patreon group (Lonesome Dove) so I didn't actually read every word of these books in October. If I had to pick a word for my October reading, it would be "meh." There were a lot of solid 3 star reads which for me means "just ok to meh." 

Favorite Books:

Ina Garten's memoir "Be Ready When the Luck Comes" was a DELIGHT. I gave it an enthusiastic 5 stars. 

The Return of Ellie Black is a mystery about a missing girl that is found on a hiking trail in the Pacific NW. Something is not quite right with her (which, duh, she was missing for years) - where has she been and why isn't she talking much about her captors? 

Forgotten on Sunday has a truly horrible cover but it's a very sweet tale about a young woman that works in a retirement home in France and forges a relationship with one of her patients. 

Lonesome Dove was a re-read for me but I had read it so many years ago that I did not remember much. I read this with a Patreon group which really added to the experience. Now I want to track down the miniseries!

The rest (which is a mix of ok to meh):

I've liked other books by Rainbow Rowell but Slow Dance was solidy "just ok to meh" for me. It's a romance but the main protagonist is hard to root for and while I know she had a challenging family background, some of her behavior was just so juvenile. 

The Great Divide is historical fiction about the building of the Panana Canal. I had heard great things about this book but didn't connect with it. 

Expiration Dates was a fun romance and almost made my best of list for October. It's about a women who gets a slip of paper telling her how long a relationship will last when she meets someone new. 

I Hope This Finds You Well is about a woman who writes nasty things about/to her coworkers in white text in emails. HR finds out and she gets in trouble, but they accidentally give her access to the whole company's emails and instant messages. It was good in theory but was too unbelievable for me. 

It pains me to say that I didn't adore Shark Heart. I fear it was a bit over-hyped. This is my October book club selection which we'll be discussing next week since I was traveling when our club usually meets. The premise of the book is that a newlywed couple finds out that the husband is slowly turning into a great white shark. It's a bananas set-up but it somehow works. The writing felt choppy to me, though. 

Lastly Wellness is a book that had such mixed reviews but people kept telling me I should read it so I finally did. It did not work for me, though. It was just TOO DANG LONG. I thought the writer had some great things to say about marriage and parenting but, for me, it got lost is all the wandering side stories. I did not need to know about several generous of the husband and wife at the center of the novel. 

What the boys read:

Paul continues to mostly be interested in Dog Man books, but I am trying to expand his interest outside of that genre (Chelsea - I am going to check out Stick Dog!! Thank you for the rec!). We were told at his teacher's conferences that he is reading at a 4th grade level which kind of blew our minds! His teacher emphasized that we should still read to him so I'm trying to get him interested in a read-aloud. Currently he mostly reads to himself at bedtime. We started The Mouse and the Motorcycle but that didn't seem to interest him, so my search continues... 

Taco has been VERY into Halloween books. His favorite is Pumpkin Soup which is an adorable book that I heard about from The Mom Hour years ago. Besides that we've been reading a lot of Julia Donaldson, including Room on the Broom. I think it's time to get rid of our board book collection as he rarely picks out board books anymore! I like that board books are short but much prefer picture books!

Did you read anything great in October?