Tag Archives: fridayfiles

a calm and sunny day + life and bathroom update

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Happy Friday friends. I worked from home today for the first time all week and it was – just what I needed. I am coming off of a 2-week period of busyness at work, with parenting, and a bathroom renovation and so a calm, sunny day in my home office, with only ONE MEETING, getting through emails and clearing my to-do list with sleeping cats around me and a classic jazz playlist felt like a luxury. I love the feeling of being able to shut down my computer on a Friday feeling caught up, with pins in the things I need to pick back up on Monday. It makes me feel like I’ve earned my weekend and if work stress crops up, I can remind myself that I have things in order and even if they’re not finished, I have a plan to get them there and, in the meantime, my only job is to relax and feel at ease with my down time.

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 The bathroom reno is going well and I am going to love the new space. Brandon picked out some really beautiful tile, which is all in place, and the shower is done! But the two weeks leading up to this were loud and dusty, with a marked lack of privacy. Although Brandon and his cousin Tony were able to do all of the demo work, after that we had tradesmen in doing drywall and tile-setting and often working until into the evening. Thankfully, that is at an end as of yesterday. We’re still all sharing the kid’s bathroom as there is more work to do – painting, vanity, mirror, lighting, plumbing – but everything has gone on schedule and very smoothly thanks to Brandon’s hard work (and his cousin’s support) and I feel like we are over the hump. My only disappointment is that the art tile I purchased from Pewabic in Detroit just isn’t going to go with the shower tile. I thought it was going to complement the floor, but it just misses being complementary and ends up clashing. There was no time to pick out another one. I’m sad that we won’t get our extra special Detroit touch, but sometimes things just work out that way and I’m sure we can find a place for the tile somewhere else.  

The other big news – I have a new boss at work and I could not be happier about that. For the past six months, we have been very short-staffed and while we “kept the lights on” (which was what I committed to do when my prior boss left), it is always frustrating to feel as though I am being slammed left and right, only able to do triage and firefighting and nothing is done as well or as thoroughly as I’d like it to be. This week was the light at the end of the tunnel, but no less frantic. We had meetings with overseas colleagues late Monday night, early Wednesday morning, I had four office days and the nights that we didn’t have calls, I had the kid’s soccer games and EMT training to rush off to (EMT training is always a fun time, though – I got to volunteer to be an accident victim that the kids extricated from a vehicle and loaded into an ambulance!). This is a lot for an introvert like me so I warned Brandon that this weekend I will be in full goblin mode. I have knitting (Wolop advent cowl, and I just cast on the Perfect Knit T-shirt by Lion), I’m halfway through ‘Wild and Wicked Things’ by Francesca May and have ‘Weyward’ by Emilia Hart on my Kindle. I want to water my plants and feed the birds and get a vanilla latte tomorrow morning and hang out in the sunshine with a cat or two and have nothing else to do besides that. The kiddo is off on a snowboarding trip with her dad for her Spring Break so I told Brandon that Saturday night is date night, even if we just get takeout and eat it in bed with a nice bottle of Chianti or Shiraz and episodes of ‘White Lotus’.

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we’re all loving watching the Friends of Big Bear Valley eagle nest cam

I hope you are all doing well and looking forward to whatever brings you joy, peace, and inspiration this weekend!

the last friday in february

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After an extraction and two years of orthodontics, my braces came off Wednesday. I still have 14 weeks of Invisalign and then lifelong retainers, but as of now, the metal is GONE. The Invisalign is no joke, but it’s an improvement over what was an uncomfortable and confidence-eroding couple of years. Entering my 50s and dealing with peri-menopause and its changes to my body and mind was bad enough without braces. But I didn’t do the orthodontics for aesthetics and now, at the end of the treatment, my bite is almost fully fixed and my front teeth won’t continue to chip, loosen and erode, so I guess I can say it was worth it in the end.

Today I am observing the economic boycott. (I probably can’t say the same about the kiddo who needed a Starbucks on her way to school.) This boycott seems like a small thing to protest such enormous fuckery from the regime of the Orange Manbaby and Apartheid Clyde, but I’m committed, and have also been burning up the phone lines with my 5 Calls app. I’m sure that my senators and House Rep are beyond sick of this constituent. I could talk a lot about this political timeline but that’s for another post.

So in a happier topic, this weekend begins a several-week foray into renovating our master bathroom. We live in a 1962 Colonial and while the bath may have been redone in the ’80’s, it’s still what you would expect, which is pretty bad. Brandon is doing a lot of the work himself and I’ve been of limited support (mostly just saying ‘yes that sounds fine’). He has all of our household’s skill with decor and aesthetics. I’m most excited about a trip to Pewabic in Detroit to pick out some cool accent tiles. For awhile, we will all be sharing the kiddo’s bathroom, which may result in her spending more time at her dad’s to avoid the enforced togetherness!

The kiddo has a full-day CPR class tomorrow for her EMT Cadet training and I am hoping to finish up a couple of knitting projects and get some reading done. My library haul this week included two Dune graphic novels and a historical fantasy from Francesca May ‘Wild and Wicked Things’. And lastly, on this Friday evening, I leave you with something that absolutely made my heart leap with joy. In these uncertain times, seeing all four original members of REM reunite this week at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, GA to sing ‘Pretty Persuasion’ with Michael Shannon is a light that we all deserve.

the friday files, harlequin edition: several intrepid heroines, a dummy, and a gurney

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This week has been a total blur – but I look back and feel like I traveled miles. There were work complexities, three days in the office, depression and rage over
the current political situation (always, now), a comparatively and thankfully minor ice
storm, and an evening spent at EMT Cadet training for the kiddo. (As usual, this was the
high point for me. This week our intrepid heroines strapped the lifelike dummy to the gurney and fluttered around him performing industrious lifesaving maneuvers. Then, they took turns hurtling the gurney up and down the halls, banging him around the corners, and loading him into and out of the ambulance. I’m glad that the dummy made this appearance; a couple of weeks ago it may have been volunteer moms strapped to that gurney. I speak from personal experience.)

I finished the latest Haruki Murakami book. “The City and its Uncertain Walls” was not
as swiftly immersive as “1Q84”. The book felt a bit disjointed, which makes sense as I
learned it was written in two different time periods of Murakami’s life. The cast of people and places include a teenage couple in love who become separated; there is a walled city with a library of dreams, perishing unicorns, and characters who become separated from their shadows. There is another library in another world, a ghostly librarian with a quirky fashion sense, and a boy with a Yellow Submarine parka. The plot and poetry lies amid those details. If you love Murakami and would read his writing even if it was on a bathroom wall in a Tokyo train station, you’ll enjoy the delicate unfurling of this book. If you don’t, or if you’re not familiar with him at all, this may not be the book for you.

In other reading news, perusing the NYTimes, I saw this starter pack of romance novels and I’m intrigued. I think the last romance novels I read were back in early high school. One summer vacation, our rental cottage had a rickety bookshelf full of old Harlequins and I worked my way through all of them with single minded determination, staying up late, gritty eyed with fatigue but determined to find out if the romance between the plucky yet wilting amnesiac with a secret twin and the arrogant aristocrat with the eyepatch and the tortured history could ever bear fruit. That led to spending allowance money on a few Regency romances at our local bookstore ‘The Printed Word’ (where I also bought my Tiger Beat magazines, horoscope rolls, and later, the biography of Ed Gein which made the clerk ask suspiciously if my mother knew what I was reading). I really only remember ‘Lady Lochinvar’, a Barbara Hazard banger (no pun intended) with the requisite strong-willed heroine and a worldly and fairly smutty viscount, but I know for a fact there were more than that on my shelves for awhile, until they became embarrassingly unsophisticated for my high school literary ambitions. One of my mom friends has a Goodreads account full of ‘new’ romance – she says she likes her reading to be “spicy”. She’s Canadian (and btw Canadians – I am SO VERY SORRY about our embarrassment of a “president” – over 75 million Americans did not choose this for you or for us) so many of these are centered in the hockey world, and have seemingly endless riffs on the word ‘puck’ in the titles. So there’s definitely a market for it and if romance is written up in the NY Times, it HAS to have an aura of respectability, right?

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Several of the classic titles I may have read as a teenager, and one that I most definitely did not…

I feel like I might be coming down with a head cold so perhaps some time spent under
the duvet with a couple of recommended steamy romance novels may be the best plan
for the weekend ahead. I will report back.


In the meantime, be well and safe – xo.

friday five – the 89th day of january

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It’s the final day of January and I’m cautiously optimistic that we have made it through what was a very long month of frigid cold, post-holiday crash, political chaos, and dry skin.

1. Dry January. For the first time in several years, my Dry January was a booming success.
I made it the entire month (plus an alcohol-free NYE). For the last few years, I’ve made it
for some time period (17 days; 28 days; a few years ago I only made it as far as January
6 as you may remember what happened on that date) but usually not for the full 31 days.
While I felt like I flew through it without ambivalence or struggling, I did put work in – I joined the Dry group on the Weight Watchers app, which is full of some of the best people I could have hoped to connect with. I read sober curious literature and listened to several podcasts (‘This Naked Mind’ being my favorite). I think it’s the influence of our societal approach to drinking that I feel self-conscious about bragging too much on my Dry January because I worry that people will think I did it because I have a “problem” with alcohol. I could write a much longer post about this (particularly what our modern culture deems “problematic” when it comes to a highly addictive substance that is not only socially acceptable, but widely encouraged) but for now – no, I don’t feel that I have a “problem” with alcohol. I really enjoy red wine, and have a fairly high tolerance for it, but I do not categorize myself as a “problem” drinker. However, there is a preponderance recent evidence that any amount of alcohol may not be good for us. I had such a positive Dry January that I have now determined that I will also commit to being alcohol-free for the month of February and see where it goes from there.

2. Vibes at home. Emmett, who is our most loving, anxious, needy cat, had a dentist
appointment on Tuesday and had two premolars extracted. All of our cats have
“emotional problems” and require accommodations – two of them are on Prozac and the other is a small, cute, virulent sociopath. When one of them disappears for a day and comes home loopy and smelling of the vet, the other two become unhinged and treat the patient like a dangerous interloper. So there has been hissing, separation, pain med dosing, treats, sleeping accommodations, and general household disruption. Emmett is fine and recovering nicely. Sarge and Josie, on the other hand, are still recovering from his ordeal.

3. Journaling. One of my goals for the year is to use my physical journal more. I have used a Hobonichi Techo Cousin paper planner for a few years now without taking full
advantage of all of its space and features (monthly, weekly, and daily pages). I’ve been
scribbling more thoughts this month. I plan to use one of the layout pages for an informal monthly goal-set, using key words, quotes and actions, and update the bottom half of that page at the end of the month with my reflections: what went well, what didn’t, what I achieved, etc. I’m looking forward to settling in at my home office desk tomorrow morning (early, because I’ve been sleeping so well with Dry January) with a big cup of coffee, my sticker folio and my nice pen and washi tapes to reflect on January and set up the February page.

4. RTO. Next week begins the more organized RTO (“return to office”) push at Widget
Central. Executives have been hands-off about office time, leaving it to managers to set
their department’s guidelines. I’m usually in one or two days a week and set my own schedule for what those days are on a weekly basis. Next week, however, the mandate is for three office days for everyone with Tuesday and Thursday mandatory. This can be a polarizing issue for people but I’m fairly ‘meh’ about it. I like working from home and think I’m pretty disciplined about it, but I also like the office. I do appreciate that feeling of separation of my home space and workspace. I am productive in either space with a possible productivity edge in the office, I like my coworkers, and as an introvert, it’s good and healthy for me to socialize with people on a limited yet regular basis. I’m much more opinionated about the quality of my work experience. Trust and flexibility are key – I do not want to be micromanaged, nickel-and-dimed about coming-in times and leaving-times, I want the ability to flex my time if I need to be home for any reason, have an appointment, etc. (I think a lot of the issues that people have with remote work come down how well managers are trained to identify and handle a poor performer – if you have an employee, ANY employee, that you cannot trust to do their job and be responsive during core work hours, that’s a performance / management issue, and it’s not going to be addressed or resolved based on the location of their workplace.) The biggest issue for me is going to be organization – meal planning and prep for full days in the office with a commute, packing my breakfast, lunch, snacks, and workout clothes, and making the most of all my days, office and remote.

5. Weekend. No big plans. Babying the neurotic and recovering felines: Brandon is
planning a redo of our master bathroom, so we need to go to Ikea to buy the vanity
we’ve selected; the weather in Suburban Elysia will be clear and seasonal in the 30’s, so
I hope to get out for at least one run. I’m working on a small secret knitting project and
will likely finish up my recent read, Haruki Murakami’s ‘The City and its Uncertain Walls’
which I’ll review next week.

Hope everyone has a peaceful, healthy weekend! xoxo

carnival of sorts – friday five

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  1. Inauguration. The Trump train rolled noisily into Washington with their toots and whistles and backfiring pickup trucks and a predictably low class display of capering. Like a carnival of the bizarre and deeply stupid, in its wake it trailed a dribble of toadie weirdos running the gamut from Proud Boys to Nazi tech bro oligarchs glitching out from their boutique drugs to MAGA fembots wearing lingerie to the Rotunda. The yokels outside with faces pressed against the glass were festively adorned with their cult leader’s name and face on their polyester (made in China) shirts and hats and waving their lil flags. God Bless GW, Bill and Hillary for a few unguarded moments of uncontrollable merriment over some of the more gauche and ludicrous aspects of this spectacle (never in a million years pre-MAGA did I think that I would ever have cause to utter the words “God bless GW” but here we are). It’s going to be a long four years watching this gang of thieves mugging for the cameras while they grab all they can with both grubby fists. Luckily, if the Orange One’s prior administration is any indication, they’ll start turning on each other sooner rather than later and then there will be something to see besides bullies and tackiness.

2. Seems like a good time to pull this out of the archives.

3. To round out my political content, it feels like there are a lot of folks out there who could use a reminder about what throwing a Nazi salute actually means.

4. Moving on. In other news. Polar vortex – the beginning of the week was pretty freaking cold. The kid didn’t have school for two days due to wind chills (what do they do in Alaska, I wonder? Or Minnesota?). I got my office days out of the way early in the week and it was really good to stay in my shearling slippers and fleece leggings the remainder of the week. I usually feed the wild birds and squirrels once a day (and keep a heated bird bath full of clean water available) but when the weather is this cold I fill the feeders as often during the day as they empty, and throw out lots of peanuts. The little guys can use as much help as they can get.

(This not so little guy needs not as much help.)

5. In lieu of watching the news (see number 1) we have been diving deep into the DVR. Brandon always has a massive selection of old movies to pick from. Among other things, we watched a silent film from the great Buster Keaton, “Sherlock, Jr.” It was a masterpiece of comedy and the quality of the 2015 restoration was incredible – crystal clear. I am not usually drawn to movies that old but this one was an absolute gem and what he was able to achieve with film at that time is nothing short of genius. And while I know that his path was a difficult one, may I say that in my estimation, young Buster was kind of a hottie.

Onwards. Keep the faith and as my higher power reminded me this week in a moment of meditation, render unto Caesar.

(Post title based on this fantastic track.)

october friday check-in

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It’s been such a week that I don’t even have a single photograph to add to this post! Unless you want a grocery receipt that I snapped to upload to my Ibotta app.

4 weeks since my Covid diagnosis and I am still struggling to get back to good health. I’m still very congested with a lingering cough and fatigue. I don’t know if it’s remaining Covid impacts, fall allergy symptoms, a couple of small other-type viruses or what, but I am ready to feel better again. Unfortunately no amount of taking it easy seems to be putting a dent in it and I think everyone in my life is getting a little impatient about my inability to operate at 100%.

It’s been a terrible week in the world community. I do not pretend to be knowledgeable about the complex nature of politics in the Middle East. I personally feel anti-Hamas, pro-Israel, pro-free Palestine, and solidly “people are not their governments”. These are most likely naïve statements and I would probably be told by people more knowledgeable than myself that they cannot coexist. These concepts probably put me at odds with everyone in the conflict who demands that a side be chosen. But the thought of all the babies and children and young people being murdered, raped, mutilated and traumatized is so abhorrent that I cannot believe anyone would care whether they were Palestinian or Israeli.

I have to drag my weary and dispirited bones through an ortho appointment, my first workplace-sponsored Spanish class, and a lot of driving of the kiddo for marching band activities before I can lay my head on my Friday night pillow and consider the weekend. I hope you are all as well as can be expected. xo

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Gifts from Brandon’s recent trip. ♥️

Daily Tarot card pulls and this Queen has come up for me twice in two weeks.

Obligatory cute cat pic starring Emmett.

My work pants are perilously close to not fitting me; thinking about these “Dream Pants” but afraid I’ll look like a chimney sweep in them.

Windy, warm, and wet for Michigan February.

Finished the Road Trippin’ hat in time for my bestie’s 50th birthday celebration this weekend – we have an AirBnB, champagne, facial and dinner reservations, and an itinerary of vintage and antique stores to explore.

TGIF! xo

drinking from a fire hose

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My brother recently said that his week felt like drinking from a fire hose and I thought it was such a perfect description of my 2023 so far. As always, there are things that I can’t / won’t blog about but let me just say that teenagers are no joke, y’all. There are times when I feel like a stranger has taken up residence in my kiddo’s appallingly messy bedroom and is stomping around in her new varsity jacket. I know we all go through this terrifying developmental stage and my own parents advised me on more than one occasion that I was a massive storm cloud during my teen years but sometimes you have to live with it to really get it. And kids these days have very different concerns and stressors than we did with the omnipresent influence of technology and social media. Sooo… deep breath, both hands on the wheel.

Likes this week: A mid-week snow storm which didn’t disrupt my life too badly, just laid down a nice fluffy blanket of white that’s been largely absent so far this winter. Looking up at almost 6pm the other day and seeing that it was still light outside (we’re starting to move out of the dark season now). Keeping up with my 2023 reading challenge and finding a new cozy series (the Dr. Nell Ward mysteries by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett) to keep me occupied. Keeping up with my vitamin D and happily finding the missing 3 cards from the tarot deck that my parents gave me for Christmas when I turned 14.

Dislikes this week: See first paragraph above.

This weekend is a breakfast with my bestie and a big football day on Sunday for Brandon, via his team the Bengals. TGIF!

friday files

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Yesterday started out at almost 50, and pouring rain, and by midnight it was 10 and snowing. We got about 5 inches which is covering a sheet of thick ice. The kiddo has a snow day and Brandon only has one meeting; she’s still sleeping, he’s making cinnamon rolls, I’m taking some vacation time to hang out with them and hit the sled hill when it warms up.

I have a couple of beauty product recommendations for today – although if you saw me lately you may not want to take them. (No affiliations, just products I’ve tried and like.) I am playing chicken with myself about coloring my greys and I’m looking a little feral. But my stylist convinced me to try this brush for my shoulder length, layered cut and it’s a two thumbs up. It’s a very light carbon and heats up with the blow dryer to act almost as a curling iron. The bristles are perfectly spaced. It was pricey – far more than any other brush I’ve ever had – but worth it so far.

Along with coloring my hair, I need to get my eyebrows shaped and tinted. As I age, they have thinned out and I’ve tried probably 20 different drugstore pencils, pomades, and gels. So far, this is the best gel type pomade (my favorite pencil is from Aveda). It also has an amazing dense, soft brush for fluffing.

We always have to try the new Oreo types and the kid says these are pretty good.

What’s everyone up to this weekend? I am making beef stew, the kiddo has a theater rehearsal, and tomorrow I have a day-long basket weaving class at the Michigan Folk School. Just when I think I can’t get any crunchier, I level up. Be well and enjoy. xx