August in Review – Adventures in a Messy Life

Oh my goodness, I’m going to pretend I believe life is going to calm down. This is a lie, but it’s August 8th, and I’m starting to write this.

But, I also regularly start these things on this date, so it’s regular thing for me to have this bit of belief.

(there are affilliate links in here)

Week 1

The pictures are all out of order for when they happened. So down in the right-hand corner, we’ve got D&D last Friday. So, we’ve got this big fight and they’re all fighting this big terrible dragon and the wizard has cast wish and now can’t cast any spells but cantrips, and he has an ability that lets him turn into a young dragon, so he gets the T-Rex figure that he uses when his wizard polymorphs into one, and he gets an index card and tapes it to the back for wings and then proceeds to have fun with that.

But I just sat there for a solid minute after he cast Wish, trying to figure out what I was going to do with that. So this entire fight was a lot of fun and had me sitting and trying to figure out how I was going to react to what they did because they were flexing with their abilities.

Then moving up to the top left, my friend is opening up a subscription library for homeschoolers, and she’s at the stage of organizing it, so I spent an afternoon helping her organize it. She has so many great books, and she’s put together kits of books that go together for themes, experiment kits, and sensory kits. It will be a very cool place to have a subscription to for homeschoolers. We did a lot of discussing how we would organize the books and the materials for ease of use.

OH!

Okay, funny story I have to tell.

There is no picture for this, but on Sunday we had some of the kids’ friends over and I was wearing my Mercution drew first shirt on, and the friend asked, “Who’s Mercutio?”

I stood there and stared for a solid minute as I was deciding if this was a joke or a real question because he graduated from one of the top 10 high schools here in Texas and took honors and AP classes, and is currently attending a top national college.

Finally, I decided it was a real question and explained he was Romeo’s best friend who died fighting Tybalt, and that clearly we needed to have him over to watch the best version of Romeo and Juliet, the Leonardo DiCaprio version.

But, this was a story I talked about with my friend as we sorted and organized books, partially because years ago, we were talking about what version of R&J I would recommend watching with kids to introduce them to it, and she wondered why I recommended it because it’s set in modern day and all of that, but I explained how it captures the emotions and the over the top emotions of teenagers. But she said, now having parented teenagers, she understood why I would recommend this version.

And I may be totally overplaying how much he should have known it, or he may have just understood it to pass the test and then dumped the knowledge. Or it could be he had a crap teacher who made the information boring. Or they’ve changed what they teach so they no longer teach Romeo and Juliet to freshmen, which would be a shame.

Final pictures, Jeff and I went out to lunch on Wednesday. We found this fun little noodle shop, and it had a fun presentation of the meal. I got to put in what I wanted for the soup. It was really good, and it was clearly a family-owned shop. I was also very amused by the name of the tea shop a couple of stores down, but it was boba tea, which I’m not a fan of, so we didn’t stop in to get any. I just took a picture of the name for amusement’s sake.

And I didn’t include any pictures, but Jeff gave me Clank Legacy 2 for my birthday, and it finally came in, so we’ve been slowly playing through the storyline. We’re three games in and I quite love how it’s going. We’re trying to get all of the stories and plots completed.

Books read:

• Catching Fire
• Mocking Jay– I read both of these in a day, as I had the world’s worst migraine and that was about all I could do.
• Miss Percy’s Guide to the Care and Feeding of Dragons– A fun book vaguely set in Regency England and the main character is an older single woman living with her married sister and inherits a trunk from her great uncle. She gets a rock that hatches into a dragon. Hijinks ensue as she tries to figure out how to deal with that.

Games played:

• Clank Legacy 2– We’re part of the way through this storyline, so we’ll see which one we like better. This storyline seems to be a bit lighter, but it’s been a bit different so far with how it’s done. Instead of putting stickers on the cards, we scratch off the cards. It’s very interesting. We’ve told Superman, he needs to tell us which one he likes better, and that will probably be his big Christmas present this year.

Week 2

So, my best friend and I we are notorious for not getting presents to people on time. That is me getting her Christmas presents, which I’ve had for her since actually Christmas, but see we previous years had gotten together at some random point in the year where we would just celebrate Christmas together. But this year that didn’t happen.

So, I decided I’m just going to mail her the presents now. Actually, the plan had been to mail it in July, you know the whole “Christmas in July,” but that didn’t happen. But, I still haven’t mailed it, so it’s going to be in “Christmas in September.” Which is totally a thing.

However, as I’m attempting to decorate the presents Leezard is coming over and inspecting the paint water, and trying to drink the paint water! So, I’m shouting, “DON’T DRINK THE PAINT WATER!” as I try to paint at the same time. It was very exciting. Not in a good way.

I also had a sewing project I wanted to make, but then Leezard decided the best way she could help me was by laying down right in the middle of what I’m trying to sew because you know that’s so helpful, except it’s not. Not at all.

For the next random picture, we’ve got the giant bag of popcorn Jeff randomly brought me home one day. He just saw it at the gas station and thought it was hilarious. He brought it home and said, “It was just so comically large I had to get it. It would probably be terrible.”

It wasn’t good, but just the idea of this giant bag of popcorn was hilarious.

And then I was sewing upstairs, and as I was ironing, there was this little gecko, and it totally made me smile, and I had to take a picture.

So, that’s week 2.

Books read:

Games played:

Week 3

This was the week we took the kids up to college, and it was a rather crazy week as you might expect.

The first picture in terms of what happened is the bottom left, the last night the kids were here, we went out and grabbed drinks from Sonic and took Leezard with us, who thought it was the most amazing thing ever, and it was the most amazing trip ever. Why don’t more people take her on trips like this?

The big picture up at the top is the hotel we stayed at when dropping the kids off at college. It was one of those older-style motels with a big open area in the middle with a pool, and various different things to try. So it had a mini golf course, a ping pong table, and all that.

Though the mini golf course was at this point just a putting green, so we made up holes. It would be things like, you have to bounce it off the wall at this particular point, and then go between these two other holes, and then get it into the hole in this spot. It was a lot of fun, but absolutely the silliest thing ever.

We did spend a long time playing ping pong, especially considering none of us have any skills at the game, so most of our game was spent chasing down the ball, but we still had a blast laughing at ourselves doing terribly.

After dinner, The Artist and I went across the street to this forgotten park that was slowly being overgrown as it wasn’t being upkept, and I had this fun feeling as if I had walked back into this unknown time period. It was almost magical.

And then the final picture is my medicine chart…. Dramatic sigh, I was gardening and found something I was very allergic to and so had to keep track of taking medication, which was rather not fun to do. The medication has a horrid aftertaste.

Books read:

I feel like I read more books than this, but I forgot to write them down, and so I could only find one:

• A Fellowship of Librarians and Dragons– This was a sequel to a book I’d gotten earlier, and in retrospect, I remember having the same feeling when I read the last book in the series, but I was hoping I would like this second book more since it was about a librarian. But, it feels like the author is trying to have unique quirky characters without actually doing the work to do it, and so just tells me the characters are unique and quirky, and then I was supposed to automatically remember the characters from the last book, which I don’t remember them; they were bland. It was okay. But, it got another one of my books I picked up off my “books I own, but haven’t read list,” so that’s good, and now I know I don’t want to reread it anytime soon, and definitely won’t get the third book in the series.

Week 4

So, we have this blanket I have no clue where it came from, but the top was made from some kind of nice silky fabric that is cool, but does not wash well, and since we would leave it on the couch or just use it for random things, it got washed all the time. As a result, the top of the quilt is shredded.

I decided it would make an amusing hand-sewing project to slowly make a new top for it out of scraps. So, as I sit and watch TV or movies, I sew things rather than play on my phone or tablet. Well, I was working on it while I was talking to my friend on Zoom, and I accidentally sewed my project to the tablecloth. Thankfully, it was only a few stitches and the rest of it was pinned to the table, but it was rather annoying.

The next picture is of some of the progress of it. The fun part for me is how I can tell you what most of the fabric scraps came from, many are from particular projects, or sometimes just “I like this fabric,” and picked it up to use for odds and ends.

Meanwhile, I picked up the Lutterloh Sewing System, which is a style of pattern drafting, and this is the results of my second project with it. The first was a pair of shorts, which I had to fiddle with a little bit to get to fit just about perfectly. This dress still has a lot of work to go. I sewed it from a set of sheets, so I really don’t care how much it doesn’t quite fit right yet, but I’m having fun fiddling with it and slowly making it fit better. The dress is amusing to me because it very much reads 1930s to me right now with the shawl collar.

And then the final picture is from Jeff and I playing Aoen’s End, which we’re having fun playing together again now that the kids are back at college.

Books read:

• A Study of Shattered Spells– I backed this on Kickstarter, so it’s not officially out yet, but I very much enjoyed it and the take of what it’s like to be a teacher at a magic school who is tasked with teaching the “Chosen One,” and what that might be like. This is my second book to read in the Dark Academia sub-genre
• Time Door– this was the book for Lorehaven’s book club, and I enjoyed it. We had a lot of discussion on whether or not the title spoiled one of the plot twists, because with a name like Time Door, you’re expecting time travel at some point.