Tag Archives: fridayroundup

friday files – three things we’re doing better at lately

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  1. We’re doing a better job with food efficiency. I have been a meal planner and a weekly shopper for forever – I think this goes hand in hand with my organizational and emotional well-being requirements as a working parent. I make a weekly meal plan, write it on our kitchen board, and do a shopping trip for that meal plan every Sunday. However, despite that organization, it always seemed as though we ended up with uneaten leftovers at the end of the week that had gotten lost behind the pickles. Brandon has a strong reluctance to throw food away, while I tend to believe that leftovers have a short shelf life and should be thrown away rather than gambled on in the big game of botulism roulette. He’d be as distressed to see me throw something away as I would be to see him eating something that I knew was SEVEN DAYS OLD. So gradually, instead of buying sandwich bread and cold cuts for us to take to our respective jobs for lunches, we’ve migrated to main meals that are leftover-friendly, stored properly and visible in our fridge, and packable in our lunch boxes the following day. We make sure there are things like fresh fruit, crackers, hummus, chips, cheese sticks and yogurt on hand to supplement for breakfasts and snacks, and it’s made a big impact on the efficiency and cost of our meal planning. Also – not as much of a cost saver but more as a fun addition- I got a stand mixer for Christmas and I’m baking a lot more on the weekends, too, working my way through 100 Cookies by Sarah Kieffer (everything has been good so far but the peanut butter cookies were a little salty?)
  2. Feeding and watering the wildlife. Whatever we may be saving on our food is probably going straight out the back door and into the bellies of the local animals. I say this in jest but I am not complaining a bit – feeding and watching birds is a huge joy for me in the wintertime (I don’t tend to feed in the summertime). I make sure I have ample stocks of black-oil sunflower seeds at all times and during the extreme cold snaps, I add more expensive bags of fruit and nut and songbird mixes. I cycle between unroasted, unsalted peanuts in the shell and a more cheap ‘critter mix’ for the furry residents. With all that, we attract titmice, a host of sparrows, finches, siskins, chickadees and juncos. We have several mated pairs of northern cardinals and bluejays (who love the peanuts and wait and watch for me to bring them out in the mornings) and no fewer than eight pairs of plump mourning doves, who flap and titter and flutter and settle on the heated birdbaths like it’s the backdrop for a ‘70’s swingers convention. We have several species of woodpeckers, including flickers, red-bellied, and downy. The seed and suet that falls on the ground attracts the neighborhood black, red, fox, and gray squirrels, and in the blue hour, our deer will come up to drink out of the birdbaths as well. Last week we had four young bucks, and in the mornings, the fresh snow also shows tracks of rabbit, possum, skunk, and the neighborhood red fox. I think we’re going to invest in a Ring camera for the backyard so we can start documenting our winter wildlife and once I upgrade to a zoom lens for the Canon I bought last fall (that lens is a hefty $2k price tag) I’ll hopefully have way better pictures to share.
  3. This last one is an improvement just for me, since Brandon has always been really good at it, but it’s staying off my phone more. I simply don’t have the capacity for doom scrolling with everything going on in the US right now and so I’ve gotten a lot better at putting my phone down in the evenings and being more present. The trend of ‘analog bags’ has been all over my Patreon and YouTube vlogs lately – these are just bags that you pack up with things that keep you off your phone. It’s fun to see what other people put in theirs – art and journaling supplies, needlepoint, books, markers and coloring books, puzzle books, etc. While I haven’t gone so far as to lean into that, mostly because I already have knitting bags strewn all over the den and don’t need another dust catching bag that will drive Brandon crazy, I do feel like the time I’ve saved by putting my phone down has resulted in a big uptick in knitting and reading productivity (I also joined a January ‘Pages’ challenge on Storygraph that helped motivate me to do more reading).

February is here and I hope to fill it with lots more birds and deer, gradual creeping light into the morning and evening skies, baking in my kitchen and crafting in my spare time. I’ll still light the candles in the evenings and keep the fire going, but it would be nice to be able to start running outside in cold clean air without worrying that I’ll slip on a patch of ice and break a bone. I hope wherever you are, you are well and safe, breathing in hopes and joys, and celebrating your wins, too, even if they seem small.

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.

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.)

third friday of january roundup, recent pins

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It’s cold here in Michigan. And not as dark as December, but still pretty dark. Cars and people don’t want to start. Work is work. It’s going to be even colder next week. That’s that. I promise that my Friday posts will get more substantial as 2025 warms up but in the meantime, without further ado, some more recent pins for your viewing pleasure.

I probably need to warn Brandon that I am pinning a LOT of hairstyles that look like this lately. I won’t do it until I get my braces off but that day is coming up in the not-too-distant future!

Could those be handknit socks there? I have those exact Birks, some olive trousers, and a whole lotta knit socks so I see myself copying this look.

I absolutely love this closet. I wish I had a window in ours but at the very least I’m thinking I could put down a cool rug and maybe add a small antique (or antique-looking) dresser or chest of drawers in ours, and maybe some baskets for storage. Maybe even a string of battery-operated fairly lights.

I absolutely love this and I think that even my very limited sewing skills could accomplish something similar. What a great way to add a unique, artsy vibe to an otherwise standard shirt.

Good reminder.

TGIF – have a loving and peaceful weekend. xoxo

friday roundup – recent pins

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I often pin and forget – but here are a few of my recent favorites.

Hot Chocolate Bar Coasters by Purl Soho. I think these are really cute and would knit up quickly in bulky super wash. They’d be a sweet gift pack tied up with some twine or ribbon and given with some tea or hot chocolate and a nice mug.

A very cool coastal-casual style.

Why do I love this fish tattoo so much?

Bedroom vibes. This may be AI. But I love the slapdash wood paneling, the weird old man pictures (reminds me of my grandmother’s den), and the pile of books and the general imperfection yet perfection of mismatched yet complementary patterns. My only complaint would be the preponderance of useless pillows (a pet peeve).