November in Review – Adventures in a Messy Life

Okay, it’s December 2 and I’m sitting down to write this. That tells you what my November was like. And most of what made my month crazy there are not pictures for and I can’t totally put on here because it involves things that I won’t share publicly.

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Week 1

The month started off with the end of my college reunion. We visited Buffalo Gap, which is a “historical village” near Abilene. Really it’s where they gathered all of the older buildings within the nearby counties into one area and described the context of the building and put furnishings for the time period. It was a fun visit and something that I’d always wanted to do while I was in college, but never did.

The next picture is one of my college roommates, I pulled her in for a rather blurry selfie together. I forget if I mentioned this in the October wrap up, but it was a rather add time together because I realized that of my college friends that I got together with that weekend over half of them were no longer married. Two had been divorced, one was a widower, and the final one was still married. Two-fifths were still in solid marriages.

Then I got home and spent that next week texting with one of my friends who hadn’t made it, and her husband present her with a divorce certificate that Monday, and that nightmare. She learned all sorts of things he had been hiding during their marriage. A couple of us spent the week texting her encouragement and generally threatening to do terrible things to her soon to be ex-husband.

Texas had voting on Tuesday, not a lot to vote on, but there were several amendments to vote on, which was lots of things to figure out what I thought of the different amendments.

The final picture is my books read for the month….

This is the final week of calmness. Actually, the announcement of all things going crazy arrived on Friday, so November 5…

Books read:

I wrote these down after the fact, so I kind of made up what I read when

The Wild Card– It all started when this book came out. I’ve been waiting for the next book in this series to come out for a while as the author started writing some other series. So I read this. Then went back and read the other books in the series
The Buy-In
The Bluff
The Pocket Pair– So, the series is slowly going through and having each brother in the series find love, as happens in books like this. It also has one or two other side characters introduced find love, which works quite nicely
Holly Jilly Christmas– now I’m thinking maybe I didn’t read this one, because this doesn’t sound like the story I was thinking of. The problem is there are several different side stories, and I kind of forgot to write it all down

Games played

Week 2

Okay, this is where things started going crazy…. On Monday part of the leadership team of our homeschool co-op called a meeting claiming they were in deadlock and we all needed to come in and vote on what was going on. So we all came out to the park and listened to both sides as one side complained about the other and the other side defended themselves for two hours in forty-degree weather.

That’s right, it was almost freezing, as we got to listen to this petty bickering and it then turned into gossip as it all got posted on Band, the app we use to communicate. The side that called the meeting would post on Band claiming they were being censored or persecuted, or whatever, and that they were working to save the co-op from those who were trying to create a secret group.

I spent the week getting texts, pulled into group texts, more group texts, phone calls, accused of not understanding what was going on, meetings, and more things.

Then on Friday, we all got together for our yearly Friendsgiving meal, where everyone acted like nothing was wrong, only one side of the fight didn’t show up to the event, and because several people in the group really just wanted to pretend it wasn’t going on, that worked. And some people literally did post on Band saying, “Please leave us out of your fight, why did you bring the group into it?”

That didn’t work by the way, the members of leadership that brought people in just started sharing screenshots explaining why they were right.

I’m going to stop before I get started on this whole drama again, because I can feel my blood pressure rising again.

I finished painting The Artist’s bedroom.

Leezard broked my slow-cooker as she desperately tried to eat the soup in it. So now I have a fancy new slow cooker, which makes me happy.

Books read:

Fallin for Your Best Friend’s Twin– This is the series that led to the previous series that I read. In re-reading it, I figured out there are some of the books in this series I just don’t really like. I knew that somewhat, and on previous reread I had skipped some books, but I have decided if I reread this series again, I will skip some of the books for sure. I like the first book okay, or I like the characters, but not always the storyline.
Falling for your Boss– I don’t like this story. I don’t like the HUGE age gap, 20 years, that’s extreme for me, and there are just some scenes in here that are very weird for me. So I’ll skip this book on future rereads.
Falling for your Fake Fiancee– The male lead in this regularly shows up in the other series, and I quite enjoy this book, it’s lots of fun to read, and I think it makes the best use of the other characters in the series
Falling for your Best Friend– this book has the characters who inspire the next series, and I like this book story, more or less
Falling for your Enemy– I also very much enjoy this one, it has a nice flash forward epilogue where you get to see them decades later and see how the happily ever afters turned out.
Twelve Holidates– This was a companion novella that goes with the Love Cliches series, and it’s cute and fun.

Side note, the Love Cliches series is shorter than the Sheet Cake series, as a general rule I think those books are in the 250-300 page length, and the Sheet Cake books are in the 300-400 pages.

I don’t remember what games I played offhand.

Week 3

The Artist came down for the weekend, and so we spent Saturday night painting Christmas presents. This made me quite happy to have a bunch of them all decorated.

Monday, the homeschool co-op had a field trip to Newman Castle, which we hadn’t gone to for years, and so I rode with a friend as a chance to go see it again. It was a fun field trip because the original builder of the castle has passed on and now his nephew owns the castle and runs the field trips. So we got a different introduction, and it was ever so slightly different.

There was another odd aspect to the field trip as during the whole event we’re aware that people know some of the people on the field trip aren’t really talking to some of the other people on the field trip, and it’s just such a weird feeling to have this going on.

The next day I went to the press screening of Wicked for Good with my brother, and while the movie was going on my Fitbit was buzzing the entire time as I kept getting texts and I didn’t have a way to silence that without getting kicked out of the theater. I got 200 texts during the movie, all about the co-op as they were trying to figure out what to do about some of the people who were posting things like “Our co-op has been infiltrated.”

Then I have this fun outfit I completed, technically the stays I made several years earlier for out trip to Colonial WIlliamsburg, but the shirt and skirt were new creations and I wanted to show them off.

Books read:

Christmas Letters– this was a cute book very clearly inspired by You’ve Got Mail, and I enjoyed reading this
Wayne Family Adventures– I decided I wanted even more low-key and there’s a rumor this might get an animated series, so I decided to reread this webcomic

Week 4

The plan to get peace in the co-op was to have a vote on everyone in leadership and see who will stay on leadership and if anyone would be leaving the group and vote on Tuesday.

The days leading up to the vote, the crazy side of leadership posted all sorts of insane things. There were posts from one woman she would share with statements like, “A friend shared this with me and I thought it would encourage you,” and it would be about how people can be slowly ostracized from a group. Or a Bible verse about false teachers and foolish women, or a Bible study about persecution and standing up against false leaders. One of the other leaders was constantly posting about how the other side of leadership was wanting to control the group and how they wanted to work in shadows, and would throw out all of these psychology terms and say, “I’m not naming names, but who do you think is acting like this?” And then the other member would say, “The other members of leadership are being spiritually abusive.”

My phone is buzzing constantly, and people are using the “everyone” tag on Band for every single comment, and I’m in more and more chats and group texts.

It’s insane.

The vote happened, and we shut down Band, no one can post anything until after Thanksgiving.

Superman, Jeff, and I finish Clank Legacy 2 which I got for my birthday. Lots of fun was had.

We played Floor Plan, a fun new game I found on clearance and think was a great purchase.

Thanksgiving my family came over we had lots of fun.

Friday we decorated the tree and celebrated The Artist’s birthday.

Saturday, I went with The Artist and the two oldest cousins to Ren Fest. It was their first time there and it was so much fun.

And for days on end, my phone didn’t buzz all the time. It was quiet, I’m still getting used to it not buzzing all the time. It’s weird to have happen. I don’t know quite what to do about that.

Books read:

Charmwitch Seamstress– I have been waiting for this to come out for a couple of years now, and it finally did. I loved this series and wouldn’t mind more in it, but there’s no obvious next character to write for it
Herbwitch Apprentice
Herbwitch Princess– This is a fun cozy Regency series

Games played