life + happiness

I am in the midst of fall cleaning and was able to get rid of some bigger items (one was a large dresser I passed along to my sister). With every item I remove from the house make it easier to breathe.

Jesse and I got delightfully day drunk in a funky bar or Madeline Island on our road trip.

Mackinac Island is quite something. And hearing horse-drawn carriages clomp down the street is a bit jarring at first.

There are Grandmas making beer in The Lager Queen of Minnesota!

And if you haven’t checked out any of Sandhya Menon’s books you are really missing out.

I am too sweaty to be a summer person, so I am thrilled for the cooler temperatures are finally here. I hope it is cooling off wherever you live!

I instead of the usual things that I learned I wanted to try something a little different this time around. I wanted to share personal-ish things that are going on in my life and maybe a bit of thing I am planning/dreaming of.

Imagine that we are sitting at our favorite little coffee shop, we just placed our order and are sipping chai as we catch up.

So what I am drinking on this coffee date? A black coffee (Kickapoo Radiowave) with a bit of raw sugar stirred in.

What are you going to have?

Weeds

When we first moved out to the farm, I had visions of making our yard a beautiful park-like grotto. Life caught up with me pretty fast, and the last few years, I have let everything go.

Now I have a gross pile of weeks, right where every visitor to our house can see it when they pull into the driveway.

Now I have a massive pile of weeds with a few perennials mixed in. It was my goal this summer to get the bed under the windmill cleaned up and mulched.

Instead of using bark mulch, which is usually standard, I am using gravel from a pile that is on the other side of the driveway from the windmill bed.

Why you ask? I didn’t want to have to spend the time and the money going back and forth to the store to buy the bark.

Shockingly enough, It is really starting to come together.

CSI

I have become horribly obsessed with this show. I watched it while it was on originally, through most of its 15-year run. But for the last few weeks, it has been playing in my house on evenings and weekend almost non-stop.

It didn’t choose it; it started playing when another show finished and I just kind of got sucked in.

My mom, even with all of her squeamishness, watched this show religiously. For her, it was like the James Patterson novels she loved so much: interesting, fast-paced, and easy to read/watch. I am finding some kind of weird comfort in that now while watching gruesome deaths play out on the screen.

Fall Cooking

The temperatures around here have moved towards fall-like (warm days, cool evenings), which has been a relief. Weeks on end of hiding in the air-conditioning is the worst.

When the temps cooled off I came out of hibernation and started on some yard work (see the weed section above) and dug out some recipes that require some serious oven time. I made a couple of beautiful batches of banana bread, and I spent most of a Sunday afternoon slow-roasting a chicken.

I hope September treats you well and thank you for joining me for this first edition of coffee talk. Until next month!

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. That means if you click through a link and buy something, I get a small commission and it doesn’t cost you any extra. Awesome, right?!

It has been a weird summer.

Spring rolled in cold and rainy. As we moved to summer, things got hot, humid, and damp.

The particular day I am writing this we are having both an Excessive Heat Warning (Heat Index of 110) and Flood Warning. Jesse and I also woke up to a couple of feet of water in our basement.

Climate Change is Real, my friends.

Keeping track of the things that are saving my life throughout the year was something that I picked up as an exercise of self-reflection as an avid reader of Anne’s blog. It is easy to remember what is driving you crazy but to pick out the little things that are saving you take a bit more thought.

Here a few of the simple, everyday things from my list.

Buggins

There are certain spots in my yard (and the surrounding area) where when we get a big rainstorm the water collects. These spots have been holding water most of the summer. And that means bugs. Biting gnats in particular.

Buggins sprays started showing up in my area a couple of years ago, and it is the only thing that keeps that gnats away. On top of that, it uses natural ingredients and smells good. It has been my perfume all summer.

My Robot Vacuum

We are just at the tail end of the three-month-long season where my husky, Dru, sheds uncontrollably. We spend those months pulling out his hair in chunks when we are on walks and vacuuming the house. Since Derek, my robot vacuum, has joined the family, he has been able to take over the vacuuming duty. Using the app, I set up a daily timer, and Derek is finishing up when I get home from work.

Extra days off work

I work four 10 hours days right now and my days off shift. So every other weekend is a four day weekend, without having to use any PTO. These long weekends have been an excellent summertime perk. I have been able to get projects done around the house, spend time with family, and still spend time binging Stranger Things.

Pattiegonia

I did a digital detox a while ago. When my head cleared, I made some social media choices, and one of the big ones is to not following people that make me angry or feel bad about myself and support people that make me feel good.

Enter Pattie.

I can’t express or explain why I love Pattie so much. I think it is best to let Pattie explain themselves:

“she’s your backcountry queen bringing inclusivity, positivity, and drag into the outdoors. proud lgbtq+ & outdoors advocate.”

So what little things are making you happy this summer? I’d love to hear about them!

Photo by Silvana Carlos on Unsplash

PS What is saving my life right now.

Instead of a gratitude journal, I keep a list of things that I learned in my planner with my to-do list. Paraphrasing Emily P. Freeman this list is a way of purposely looking back before moving forward.

Self-Care is not watching Netflix all day.

For the last nine years, I get a little lethargic in mid-July. This happens right around the anniversary of my mom’s death. Obviously, this lethargy is not a coincidence.

This year I decided to lazy around on the sofa watching CSI reruns. This went on for weeks. I did this under the umbrella of ‘self-care’. And, shocker, I felt like crap.

Do you know what did make me feel better? Working in the yard, taking walks with my dog, and a lunch date with my sisters.

Small updates make a big difference.

During our heatwave, I spent a lot of time trapped in the house. For months the spot where the old hutch used to need paint. I had the color, just not the motivation to do it.

I drug the paint out, grabbed a brush, and took care of it while watching reruns of CSI on Hulu. While I was at it, I touched up paint around the thermostat and in a couple of spots where I hung a mirror a few years ago.

There are still tons of little projects that need finishing around the house, but these small updates at least give the illusion that we finish what we start.

What did you learn in July?

PS. That pic above is from one of my early morning walks. It is mornings like those that make me remember why I live here.

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. That means if you click through a link and buy something, I get a small commission and it doesn’t cost you any extra. Awesome, right?!

Instead of a gratitude journal, I keep a list of things that I learned in my planner with my to-do list. Paraphrasing Emily P. Freeman this list is a way of purposely looking back before moving forward.

I crave routine.

Sometime in Mid-May, my supervisor gave us the option of working four 10-hour days. I am accustomed to long hours and since the days off rotate every-other-weekend is a four day weekend. It was a pretty easy decision.

My new start time is only a half hour earlier, but it has torpedoed my whole morning routine. It has left me feeling out of sorts and I don’t like that feeling. The biggest thing I am struggling with now it not having enough time to take a morning walk. I didn’t realize what a great way that was for me to get my day started out right.

Veronica Mars is coming back!

I came across Veronica a few years ago. I figured it would be one of those shows that I would watch by myself while folding laundry, but my husband wandered in and announced that I couldn’t watch an episode without him.

I was thrilled when I logged into Hulu a few weeks ago and saw a new season was dropping soon. If you are a fan, you should check out the trailer. If you are not a fan, you should watch the trailer anyhow.

Decluttering is a lot of work.

My husband says I am the queen of throwing stuff away. Ever since we moved our house, I have been KonMarie-ing the shit out of it. And the thing about decluttering is once you start and enjoy the freedom that less stuff gives you and your family, you want more.

Jesse was a little off on the ‘throwing stuff away.’ I usually only toss something at the last resort. I look for a way to donate (or sell) items if possible and recycle if not.

I want to donate items that do good in my community first, if possible. Local Donation involves lots of research to find who needs what and lots of driving around with bags or boxes of things in my car. If the item is not donatable (i.e., broken), I try to recycle it. One of the cons of living in a rural area (or at least my rural area) you have to WANT to recycle because there is a tiny window of time during the week that you can do it.

Decluttering can be easy, but if you also want to be a good steward of the envoiroment, it takes some time too.

Books and other things of note:

I got wrapped up in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix. Both of them are creepy, but Sabrina is also campy. I love them both until I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and am thoroughly creep-ed out. That is when I am rethinking my life choices.

On the book front, I finally got to Anthony Bourdain’s Medium Raw (which, if you are a Bourdain fan, is great). I fell more in love with Helen Ellis after reading Southern Lady Code, and I got lots of food for thought in If Buddha Got Stuck.

What things did you learn in June?

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. That means if you click through a link and buy something, I get a small commission and it doesn’t cost you any extra. Awesome, right?!

Instead of a gratitude journal, I keep a list of things that I learned in my planner with my to-do list. Paraphrasing Emily P. Freeman this list is a way of purposely looking back before moving forward.

You can get a lot accomplished if I turn off the podcasts/audiobooks and focus.

In April, I started taking two classes through the local Community College.  This is something that my job offers to train people for more ‘in demand’ positions within the company.  For me, that means more pay and the possibility to work from home sometime within the near future.

This was something that I applied and interviewed for, so I was in it for the long (12 weeks) haul.  Like most things, it was much more work than I was expecting.  I am not sure what I was expecting.  Something easy(er) I guess?

I struggled with homework, work work, blog work, and home-work.  But once I sat down and turned off my phone and conccentrated I was shocked by the amount of work I could get done.  Who knew?!

Apple’s Trade-in Program is pretty lucrative.

I upgraded my MacBook a few years back. I set up my new computer, wiped my old one, and set it aside. Completely forgetting about it. Right until I was moving office stuff to a new room and I found it, full of dust, on a high shelf.

I found out through The Digital Organizer’s Newsletter that Apple recycles its products, and you usually get the best price by using them directly. I filled out the form and found out I am getting more than $250 for that old dusty laptop. The money is technically an apple store gift card, but I am alright with that.

It is just easier to pay someone to wash your dog

Every spring as the snow melts, our dog finds every bone we have given him over the course of the winter. These aren’t the dried out ones that you buy at the pet store, these are beef bones that came out of the freezer so there is usually some meat left on them. So at this point, they are rancid AF.

The nasty bones wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t roll on them. And then come into the house smelling of death.

After one such incident, I grabbed some dog shampoo, a brush and brought Dru out to a sunny part of the yard were we have an outdoor faucet with the intention to give him a quick bath.

After 45 minutes and soaking wet legs I remembered why we pay someone to groom him. It is pain in the ass.

Some of the books I Read

I am a voracious reader and library user. Libby is my BFF.

Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport made me feel validated for thinking that FB is the worst; Free to Focus by Michael Hyatt made me feel validated for carrying my planner around with me everywhere; Burnout by Emily Nagoski gave me some great ideas for dealing with overwhelm; and the delightful Flavia solved another murder in As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust.

What things did you learn last month?