Not a Wasted Word

The yearbook is due this Friday and I REALLY want to turn it in on time. If we do the final touches over the weekend it will be fine, but I’m really hoping to put this baby to bed.

Yearbook has been SO MUCH BETTER this year. That is partly due to me knowing more, and partly due to some parent volunteers who stepped up in massive ways and took huge tasks off my plate (::cough:: 8th grade baby photos ::cough::) without involving me at all. Finally, it’s due to not involving the crazy mom who made everything harder and more stressful last year. Will this year’s yearbook be as good as last year’s? Maybe not. But my mental health hasn’t suffered nearly as much as it did last May, so I’ll take the trade.

Serval is a very distinguished gentleman, especially when he’s perched on the top of our couch.

I would apologize for two cat photos in a row, but I love cat photos so I won’t. Also, today was a crazy day and I’m exhausted and it’s almost 11pm and I’m going to bed.

I am attempting to post every day in May and I’ve skipped a few and forgotten once or twice and always feel like I’m playing catch up.

So here is a catch up photo of Panther sitting on my closed computer. She loves to sabotage computer use, and sitting on it while it’s closed is a pretty effective way to keep me off it. Touché Panther. Touché.

I have struggled with this day in the past, with not feeling seen, appreciated or celebrated by my family, and with feeling pressure to see, appreciate and celebrate my own mother enough. I know it’s much harder for so many people, people who have lost their mothers, or never had the relationship with them that they needed. And for those who haven’t been able to embody the role mother in the way they so desperately wanted. It’s minefield to be sure.

Today I got three heartfelt notes, one from each member of my family. I absolutely felt seen, appreciated and celebrated.

My mom is joining us to see Project Hail Mary, which is exactly how I want to spend this afternoon.

I am feeling immensely grateful.

The 15yo and I watch a lot of reality TV. One of our favorites is Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. We started watching the first season over a year ago and just finished season 4 last night. At the end of the finale we heard an iconic line that has been quoted in articles about the show for years, but that we’d never actually seen. We both freaked out, and this is a shot of the 15yo losing her mind in front of the actual moment when Heather Gay yells, “Receipts, proof, timeline, screenshots, ducking everything.” An iconic piece of Real Housewives history, that we’ve been quoting for months, that we finally saw.

Last night, as I finished a 45 min Arms & Intervals ride and queued up a 10 minute core class, I realized I was about to hit 500 workouts on Peloton. 500 is a lot of workouts! Especially since I’ve only been a member for 2-3 years and I was repeating Bike Bootcamps that I Zoom recorded for a year before I bought a used Peloton bike. Peloton is not the only way I work out, but I’m clearly using the app a lot!

I swear I posted this on Monday! Boo! Oh well, I’ll post it now.

This is a table in my classroom. It’s right next to my teaching desk and it acts as a depository for basically everything I put down. I try to clear it off every week but eventually it looks like this again.

And this is what my life feels like right now. Every day I have 1-2 extra things, on top of regular life requirements. I just feel so, so busy.

Which is why I should probably go to sleep right now…

Last night the husband and I met two friends out for dinner (at Cubita’s rooftop bar – the weather was beautiful for the first time in ages), then we all went to an early concert. We rarely make it out on weekdays, and this was super fun. We even had a few drinks!

This lizard makes me laugh. Especially when he’s falling off his hammock so magnificently. Truly, who falls off a hammock like that? He’s always good for a laugh. (And yes, we helped him back up again. We always do.)

{I know my blog has been a little broken lately. I still can’t access it on a browser… le sigh. But I think today the photo should post and that comments should be open. Apologies for the mess around here lately!}

There is no way I am posting every day in May! Ha! It’s been two weeks since I last posted here. I also just met up with a blogger I read years ago and have “known” for over a decade but never before seen in real life, and it was awesome and got me thinking a lot about why I first started blogging and why I’m still blogging now (she mentioned feeling compelled to write in the beginning., and oh how I felt compelled to write so long ago. Now, not so much…). I hope to write more about all that, but I know how infrequently I end up circling back to topics I mention wanting to circle back to…

Maybe in May I can’t post every day (like SHU, and Kae and Jenny), but I can probably post a photo with a caption every day, so I will try to do that.

My husband sent this screenshot this morning. He has his lock screen set to cycle through photos of our cats (how does he do that?!) and today this one came up and it might be the most perfect lock screen. I’m not sure, I’ll let you be the judge.