Gauche and Grateful

 Three times in the last week, I've been in the middle of working with a patient and my computer has completely shut down. It made me feel very grateful that I was trained in the stone age and used to do testing on actual paper with a pen and a stopwatch. Kids these days don't know how good they have it! It also made me grateful that my computer died during the Black Friday chaos so I was able to replace it with a brand new version for nearly the same price it would have cost to fix it.

So in the vein of gratitude, here's a photo dump of all the various things that I've been grateful for lately (and a little example of why I'm not fit for polite society) 

Averson has been very into doing nails lately. They don't stay on long, but the art is getting so good! 

It's crafty season! I made Thanksgiving earrings and laughed anytime I had an opportunity to show off my turkey legs. I've also been sewing and carving and cooking and laminating Twilight themed Christmas ornaments. There may or may not be a dead snake in my garage waiting to be encased in resin. 

Sydney waited SO patiently for the Jimmy Johns Picklewich. It was actually pretty good, and a delightful gluten free option. 

Sydney and her friend randomly replaced a couple family pictures with ones that included John Pork. Simultaneously terrifying and hilarious

We're trying to plan a "dopamine activity" most weekends, and Averson chose to visit the animal shelter a couple weeks ago. If you need to kill a couple hours with a kid, this is a solid option. Our shelter has a cat "cafe" (really just a room you can go into with free-roaming cats) that was a nice surprise, until I read the cats' various bios. All of them said that the cat was one of the "lucky ones" who survived for three weeks unattended after their owner had passed away. I'm almost certain what wasn't said is that the cats ate the person (This is a thing, I'm not just being morbid! When I was younger a local restaurant owner was found dead after two weeks because he was supposed to be on vacation, and his cats had been left alone with his body the whole time. They couldn't identify him.) It made the room feel very uncomfortable when the very sweet elderly man kept commenting about how the cats loved him so much because they kept jumping on his lap. 

I threw a party!

A few weeks ago, I had the thought that a Girls "Book Fair" Night would be super fun and the perfect way to host a party without getting all weird about it. I planned it for the week before Thanksgiving as a kick-off to cozy reading season and invited all of my reader friends. I can't recommend this kind of party enough. I was able to mix all of my different circles together and everyone had something to talk about because everyone there loved books. I asked each person to bring three books that they enjoyed and everyone got to go home with three new books. We had an awesome variety and everyone added even more lists based on each other's recommendations. I ended up with Circe, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, and The Ember in the Ashes series. All three I wouldn't have necessarily picked for myself but I'm so excited about. It was such a fun night and I even ended up getting invited to my first (and second!) book clubs! 

 

Vintage blogging question?

 Has anyone else noticed that Blogger is getting kind of wonky? I know it's a vintage platform, so this might be par for the course, but I recently got flooded with updates from 2012 (which has been a fun trip down nostalgia, but those kids are in college now!) and I've lost other blogs I used to follow. Is this the beginning of the end? And how are we archiving blogs? I know this has been asked before but maybe a better option has arisen since 2012? 

Halloweekend

 On Wednesday last week, I started to get all in my feelings because Halloween was almost here and I didn't feel like we'd celebrated enough. And then C executed the most amazing holiday/birthday weekend and I got to do all the things I love with all the people that I love and it was basically the best Halloweekend ever. 

Holy shit. These pictures were ABSOLUTELY loaded in no particular order. Let's just lump the whole weekend into a nonsensical timeline:

Pumpkin patch and an awesome selfie with the guy

Shenanigans. She asked if I could "lift me like a deer" and then right away said, "Of course you can. Pick me up!" 

Ahh! Okay. So one day we went to an exhibit of Trolls: Save the Humans. It was amazing and totally worth the drive, even if some families are less in tune with the social contract than others. There's gentle parenting and then there's... whatever was happening here. But it was still an awesome time (and I was even more grateful for my own hooligans)

On the grounds there's also a huge historic mansion that was still decked out for Halloween. The pool table was a giant Oijia board! 

And on another day, an old friend and I did a Mudgirl run! If you get the chance to do one of these, you totally should (even if it feels kind of scammy when you sign up) It was such a blast

RIP socks

This is the "before" After I had mud in my ears even after my shower! 

Oh look! We're to Halloween now! Which I took almost no pictures of. But at one point we ended up at bars like we were children

Sydney (a shark) and her sweet friend Kate (a mermaid)

I was spoiled perfectly, including a shirt that reads "My daughter and I talk shit about you," a smut book, a crafty little ghost, and new coffee syrups. Like I said, perfect. I feel quite seen.

Averson was "The girl with the green ribbon" It was so niche and so perfectly her. Halloween Averson is one of my favorite Aversons. 

Birthday donuts! 

Early morning birthday gym crew. I dressed up like Winnie the Pooh and I loved it so much I almost abandoned my witch costume. We did birthday burpees and there were enough people to not make it suck, and most of my favorite gym people were there. Apparently I'm a person who goes to the gym on her birthday for the 45th trip around the sun. 

I watched part of the new season of Nobody Wants This, and the main character's mother says that she prefers to spend her birthday in the energy she wants to bring into the next year. If that's how it works, I am feeling very optimistic about this next year <3

For posterity

 Sydney, noticing that a strand of tinsel fell out of her hair, with all the gravitas you can imagine: “Oh no! I’m losing my whimsy!”

Glimmers

Things have been... not blog-appropriate and pretty hard lately (we're fine, it's fine, everything's fine), but I also want to recognize all the fun and glimmery things that have been happening. And in the mix of the hard, there's been some really fun things too. 

I got a tattoo! It's my first flash tattoo, and it ended up being bigger than I'd planned, but I'm obsessed with it. I'm so happy that Fall is here except that I want to be wearing shorts and showing off my thigh everyday. Also, my tattoo lady called me "jacked" and I'm going to ride that high for MONTHS. 

Not only did I find the TJ's mini totes, I was able to get all the colors that I wanted! 

These three have been best friends since they were in preschool. All three go to different high schools but every few months they do a sleepover and it feeds my soul. 

These silly cats. Kirby is so clingy and I'm obsessed with it

This shadow that our skeleton is projecting onto the neighbor's house is perfection

Our local hospital has a robust dog program and each dog has a huge photo on this wall. There's no scale, but this wall is probably 20 feet high. 

There was a gathering of "Witches on the Water" this weekend. I didn't make it to participate, but Syd and I were able to walk down and see them. Whimsy at it's finest. 

 

Am I Okay? (Megan Maroney concert)

For Sydney's birthday in May, I bought us tickets to see Megan Maroney in Salt Lake City. Tahoe was closer, but tickets were SUPER expensive, and at the time I thought it would be a fun mini vacation. It turned out to be fortuitous, since my father-in-law's services were scheduled for the same day as the Tahoe show. But since we were going to Utah, we were able to keep our plans and then drive over to Colorado for the services. With just a little bit of rearranging it worked out perfectly and I'm really glad we made it happen. 

Can you tell I'd been sick and stressing for a week? I look ROUGH. 

Syd, on the other hand, was adorable in her pajamas and cowboy boots with her weighted unicorn. 

We landed in Utah and immediately went in search of a soda shop. 

The first of many. My friend called it "Utah Soda Culture" and I'm here for it. Also? It was so cheap. Two fancy sodas for $8!

We tried to be touristy and went to find Temple Square. The whole area is under renovation and it was underwhelming to say the least. 

On Thursday, my friend Amanda met us in the cutest neighborhood and played tour guide for the day. We started the morning thinking Salt Lake City was kind of boring, but after seeing Amanda's sites, we were in love! 

Speaking of love. I finished my book on the plane ride and, for the first time ever, hadn't packed a back-up. So our first stop was the Lovebound Library. If I hadn't been traveling, I would've spent so much money here. It was the cutest, and the staff was so friendly and helpful. 100% recommend stopping if you're in the area. 

It's not a trip with my middle if we don't end up upside-down.

Then Amanda took us to our first cat cafe. I fell in love with a senior cat named Florida who bit everyone who came in. He was toothless and wearing a bow tie and I'm still obsessed. 

The coffees were all cat-themed (obviously) and I, with my full chest, ordered a "extra large meow." Syd is still laughing at me. 

Love her! Also love the burgers at Burgertory. If you go, buy a t-shirt. I have few regrets in life, but not buying a Burgertory t-shirt is one of them. 

Amanda had asked if we wanted to take a hike while we were there, but we were limited on shoe space (and also last time I visited her she took me to an "easy" Zumba class and I almost died) She comprimised and took us to this look out that gave us an amazing view of the city

After that, we headed back to the hotel to hopefully get a nap and then get ready for our show! Driving by the event center, we saw that they'd already set up the merch booth (outside!) so we were able to swing by and get our t-shirts without lines and without having to hold them during the show. I don't know why more artists don't do this. It was an awesome perk! 

Syd was so excited that she got ready HOURS early

I don't know if she could get cuter

Shoutout to my fellow IG moms who jump in to take pictures of each other <3

The line for dirty sodas

Post-show glow :) 

One of my unexpected favorites was all the bows on boots. It was the sweetest, girliest vibe and I'm so grateful that I got to be a part of it.