Recurring Series

Five for Friday (v. 94)

1) A bookstore photoshoot

I had this idea in my head that I wanted to introduce the world to my girlfriend via a cute, Pride-themed photoshoot in June. I’ve also never officially come out on Instagram so there were some coworkers and even some family members who didn’t know about my queer identity. On Friday, we met up with Bri and her husband to take photos at our favorite bookstore (owned by a queer couple!) in downtown St. Pete. Even better: there was a Pride kickoff party happening nearby that same day! Bri was an amazing photographer and took well over 100 photos of us both inside and outside the bookstore. (We took a few photos outside the bookstore and then when we came inside, the booksellers clapped for us and were more than happy to let us take photos inside.)

2) Meeting all the people

My girlfriend and I are definitely in the “meet all the people” stage of our relationship. I’ve met her brother and her best friend, and she has met Bri, Bri’s husband, and my mom. (!!!) I think I was way more nervous to meet her brother than I was on our first date! I like to think I’m a likable, personable person, but I’m also incredibly shy and have social anxiety, and that can sometimes come off as standoffish. But meeting all the people has gone really, really well so far. Bri and her husband adored her, which made me really happy. My mom also loved her, and we had a really great dinner with the three of us. I also got the stamp of approval from her brother and best friend, which is such a relief!

Next up is meeting more of my girlfriend’s friends (we’re doing a game night next Friday) as well as her parents (which will be lunch the following day). Whew! We have had to put on our extrovert pants this month, but it’s all totally worth it.

3) Cancer-free

This whole post has been filled with wonderful news, but this is the BEST news: My family member was declared cancer-free this week! He’s been doing chemo and radiation for a few months now and had scans done last week. When he went in for treatment this week, he was told the scans came back clear and he was done with treatment. He got to ring the bell and everything! I am so, so happy that he is cancer-free and can get back to his normal life again.

4) A milestone birthday

On Monday, my dad turned 60 years old. Estrangement is such a hard thing, and it feels especially difficult when I don’t get to celebrate with him on his birthday. Father’s Day is also right around the corner, another day that can be fraught for me. I’ve been pretty sad this week, thinking about my dad and wondering if he has anyone to celebrate him on his birthday. I hope he did.

5) Weekend plans

It will be a fun-filled weekend for me! Today, Bri and I have a lady date planned. We are going to hit up a BBQ place for dinner and then head to this super-cool museum in downtown St. Pete that’s doing a Pride Immersive Experience. We’ll check out the exhibit and do a scavenger hunt, which should be really fun. On Saturday, I have a writing date with Mikaela in the morning, podcast recording with Bri in the afternoon, and game night in the evening. (WHEW!) And Sunday will be more of a low-key day!

What are your weekend plans?

Categories: Recurring Series

Five for Friday (v. 93)

1) On Friday, I had my mole removal appointment at my dermatologist. Once they numbed me up, it was pretty easy! I just laid on my stomach with a pillow under my head and chatted with the dermatologist and her assistant about weekend plans. When my mom changed my bandage the next night, we were a little shocked to find out that I had seven stitches from the procedure! I had a mole removed last year and only had to get two stitches, so seven feels like a lot! I haven’t exercised much since the mole removal because I’m a little scared about popping a stitch since it’s in a bit of a precarious area of my back (a place where the muscles pull a lot). I’m going to attempt some low-intensity cycle classes this weekend and see how it feels, but I’m going to stay away from any strength classes until the stitches are out (next Friday!).

2) During my mole removal procedure, we got to talking about game nights and trying to find games like a 3 player card games that would interest a wide range of ages (we usually have an 8-year-old, a 14-year-old, and three adults). The assistant told me about this game called Fishbowl that sounded really fun. We played it on Saturday night and really enjoyed ourselves! Here’s how it works: everyone writes down 5 different words on five sheets of paper, folds up the paper, and puts them in a bowl. The game is then played in three rounds and on teams (our teams were my brother and my youngest nephew, and my mom and me). During the first round, you pick out a folded piece of paper from the bowl and play like Taboo. You’re able to give clues about what the word is and give as many clues as you want (without, of course, giving away the word). Once all folded papers have been played, they all go back into the bowl for round two. During round two, it’s charades. You have to act out the word on the piece of paper. Same as before, when all folded papers have been played, they go back into the bowl for round three. During round three, you can only give one word to describe the word on your piece of paper. The genius of this game is that, after the first round, you will know all of the words being played (if you have a good memory). So guessing the word can get easier as the rounds go on. Let me know if you play this with your family!

3) Eloise now believes that the best place to sleep during the day is on my laptop keyboard. And I probably created a monster because I let her stay there all day Wednesday since it wasn’t messing up what I was doing. Since I have a wireless keyboard that I use, her being there didn’t cause my computer to act all weird, even though she was literally holding down a bunch of keys at one time. But on Thursday, it did cause some issues. She started adding “jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj” to documents, highlighting a bunch of text at one time that I didn’t want highlighted, and once even almost reported one of my emails as phishing. So, I had to move her off the keyboard all day long on Thursday. I even tried to create a cozy nest on the other side of my desk with a blanket and she wasn’t having it at all. I don’t know why a bumpy laptop keyboard is more comfortable than a cozy blanket, but cats are weird. It’s my own fault for letting her sleep there on Wednesday but look at how cute she was:

4) I have developed the most painful pimple on my right cheekbone. Did I think I was still going to be dealing with hormonal pimples in my mid-thirties? No, no I did not. But here I am, and every time my period is about to come, something erupts on my face and it is super unpleasant. And this pimple hurts. It hurts to sleep with the right side of my face on my pillow, it hurts to wash my face, it hurts to smile. I’ve been applying my little pimple reducer gel to it daily, and even that is so, so painful that I can’t do it more than once a day. Ugh. Hormones suck.

5) It’s a three-day weekend around here! Yay! I have a lunch date with my girlfriend this afternoon and then book club this evening (we’re doing Greek food and shuffleboard, with possibly dessert afterward). Saturday, all I have going on is my writing date with Mikaela, which we’ll be doing later in the day. And Sunday – who knows! Originally, it was going to be booked with podcast stuffs (recording two episodes), but Bri isn’t feeling great so we may have to cancel. If so, that frees up a day to spend with my girlfriend, so I’m not too mad about it, ha. I’d love to do some sort of pool day/cookout at my mom’s on Monday—just have to get her and my stepdad on board, which I think I can do. 😉

What are your weekend plans?

Categories: Recurring Series

One Picture Per Hour: Sunday, May 21st

I’ve seen a few bloggers do these “One Picture Per Hour” posts, which is a different way to do a Day in the Life type of blog post. Since Sunday was a pretty busy day in my world, I figured it would be a fun one to document. Let’s dive in!

7:15 am – I’m up a little before my alarm and lazing around in bed. The cats are being extra cute!

8:22 am – Wrapping up my book for Silent Book Club. Every meeting, we’re encouraged to bring a book to swap. We wrap up the book and put a few details about it that won’t give anything away (sort of like Blind Date with a Book). Then, we do a White Elephant swap!

9:32 am – I arrive early for Silent Book Club. My girlfriend is already there and she brought me a bagel! (We found out on our first date that we would be attending SBC together, so it’s been a fun little thing for us to do every month.)

10:35 am – Silent reading time! I brought The 1619 Project and Happy Place. I read two chapters of The 1619 Project and then have time to read two chapters of Happy Place before the hour was up.

11:44 am – This is the book I ended up with in our book exchange. I’m always down for a good thriller, and the book I unwrapped was The End of Her by Shari Lapena.

12:53 pm – I’m at Bri’s for podcast work! We recorded our new intro for season 5, our season 5 trailer, and the first episode. We had a good time!

1:52 pm – We’ve finished recording for the day and Bri’s sweet pup, Titan, is sleeping with his mouth open and looks so derpy that I have to take a picture of him. He’s such a sweetheart, I swear.

2:33 pm – Leaving Bri’s house, and of course, I’ve got my Taylor playlist going.

3:14 pm – I stop at the grocery store on my way home and I do something I have never done: I pick up a bag of peanut M&Ms, open them up, and eat them while I shop. I was starving and started to have a hypoglycemia episode so I needed to get some sugar in my system ASAP. (And yes, of course I paid for them when I finished shopping!) It’s my own fault for not eating since the morning (what was I thinking?!), but live and learn.

4:32 pm – A very, very early dinner for this girl! I watched a few episodes of Happy Endings while eating and playing on my phone. Much needed!

5:36 pm – I finally sit down at my laptop to start working on this post. Ellie wants me to stop everything I’m doing to give her all of the pets, so I oblige.

6:25 pm – I’ve been sitting at my laptop for a while. In between writing this post, I’m reading/commenting on blog posts and trying to catch up on my email subscriptions. Lila jumps up on the table and gives me a green-eyed stare. How can I deny her anything?!

7:28 pm – I got started on my nighttime routine so early today! I’m never starting my nighttime skincare this early. What a delight! Here’s my routine: cleanser, BHA exfoliant, toner, niacinamide, mandelic acid, lactic acid, and moisturizer.

8:35 pm – It’s time to curl up in bed with Ellie and read until I get sleepy. In the past week, I have really been trying to get into bed by 9 and turning off the lights between 10-10:30, and I’m doing pretty well. I am certain I’ll be asleep by 10 tonight for sure!

What’s something fun you did yesterday?

Categories: Recurring Series

TGIF (v. 53)

The high of my week was having dinner with my cousin, her daughter, and my mom. My cousin graduated with her BSN last weekend, but we weren’t able to attend her graduation, so we happily took her out for a yummy dinner at one of our favorite places. We got to catch up, which was so nice. And we learned that my cousin has a fangirl thread on a local infertility support group on Facebook! She’s a nurse at a fertility clinic and it does not surprise me at all that her patients love her so much that they boast about her on a Facebook page. She is such a kind, patient, and caring soul—the epitome of an enneagram 2!

The low of my week was getting ghosted by the person who was supposed to pick up my bed frame on Wednesday night. Ugh! I really hate selling things on FB Marketplace, but it’s a huge bed frame and it would be nice to send it to a good home. The person seemed really keen on receiving the bed frame, but the time when he was supposed to pick it up, he disappeared from our Facebook messages. He had given me his cell phone number, so I tried texting him to ask about it, but he never responded. And then my anxiety brain decided that this meant he was actually a serial killer and preyed on people in FB Marketplace, and I had just given him my mom’s address and he was going to come over and murder my mom and stepdad in their sleep. !!! THIS IS WHERE MY BRAIN GOES, YOU GUYS. Anxiety is fun.

One nagging task I marked off my to-do list was calling my water company to find out why my water bill was so high this month. I’ve had to call them twice, but luckily, the second time, the man I spoke to seemed very adamant that something looked wrong on my bill. (It was $220 and my usage was nearly 13,000 gallons for a month! That’s more than 4-person household would use and it’s definitely more than a single person would use in a month, even someone like me who loves to take a bath almost every day, ha.) I’m hoping it can get corrected!

I’m currently reading four books! I am slowly reading The 1619 Project (it’s very dense, so I read one chapter every other day or so). My e-book right now is The Body by Bill Bryson, which I am loving. It’s so interesting! My print book is Happy Place by Emily Henry, which I’m not far enough into to give an opinion. And my audiobook is Sure, I’ll Be Your Black Friend by Ben Phillipe, which I just started yesterday.

A podcast episode I enjoyed was The Inflammation Theory of Disease on Stuff You Should Know. This paired very nicely with reading The Body and was quite interesting!

An Internet find I loved was k.s. Rhoads who takes popular children songs and sings them like one of his favorite “dad bands.” The videos he posts are so well-produced that they look like actual music videos, and the songs are SO GOOD. Like, I want him to put out an album with these songs. There’s Mumford & Sons singing You Are My Sunshine; Weezer singing Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes; Dave Matthews singing Sesame Street; and Hamilton singing The Itsy-Bitsy Spider. THEY ARE SO GOOD!

The best money I spent this week was $23 on some new books! I had a $25 Barnes & Noble gift card that was burning a hole in my pocket, so it was exciting to do some online book shopping this week. The books I got: Something Wild and Wonderful, Women Are the Fiercest Creatures, and Last Night at the Telegraph Club.

My plans this weekend include lots of fun things and one not-so-fun thing. Today, I have my mole removal procedure, which won’t be fun but will be necessary. Tomorrow, I’m doing breakfast with my girlfriend and then she’s coming over to my apartment to finally meet the cats! (Well, it’s unlikely she’ll meet Lila since Lila likes to hide when company is over, but I’ll try my best to coax her out.) Later on Saturday, I have game night! And then Sunday will be a busy one, as I have Silent Book Club in the morning and then I’m heading to Bri’s to record a few episodes of the podcast. (Season 5!)

What was the high of your week?

Categories: Recurring Series

Currently in May

anticipating recording podcast episodes with Bri over the next few weeks. (We haven’t recorded in two months!)

researching tours to do in Charleston for my mom’s birthday trip in July.

buying a new set of Mixtiles when they were having a great sale—16 canvas tiles for $100. (My mom and I went in together, so we each got 8 tiles for $50!)

thinking about my upcoming move and the fact that it’s only 5 months away! I am so excited to move, you guys. So. Excited.

reading The 1619 Project very slowly. I read one chapter every day or so. It’s dense and heavy, but I’m learning so much.

happy to report that my family member is responding well to cancer treatment. He was on a regimen of chemo and radiation and the radiation worked so well, he doesn’t have to do it anymore!

excited every time I see a blooming crepe myrtle tree in my neighborhood.

using the Pomodoro productivity method as I’m working to make sure I stay on task throughout the day (my focus has been terrible lately).

committed to getting into a better nighttime routine, especially as my psychiatrist was quick to point out that having a soothing nighttime routine could be helpful for my anxiety. (Imagine that!)

hoping that my mole removal on Friday goes well and the residual pain is minimal. I remember the area hurting a lot the last time I got a mole removed once the numbing agent wore off, so I’m prepared for a bit of pain.

loving my new bed. Every time I climb into bed, I am so, so happy because my new bed is so cozy and comfy. I waited so long for a new bed and it was well worth the wait!

needing to replace my running shoes. I honestly can’t remember when I bought the shoes I currently wear, but the soles are completely worn down and it’s really time for new shoes.

proud that I have managed to work out almost every day in May (I took Mother’s Day off because I had a killer headache when I woke up). There’s something about the idea of doing something every day that keeps the excuses away.

relieved that I finally sold my old bedframe. It’s been on Facebook Marketplace for a two weeks now and I’ve had to reduce the price a bunch, but didn’t want to reduce it any further. I should have it off my hands today!

loathing dealing with grown-up issues like having to find out why my water bill is 4x the amount it usually is (pretty sure I don’t have a leak, so it’s concerning)

watching Happy Endings. (I put it aside to watch Love is Blind and Master Chef, but now I’m back.) I started season 2 this week, and it just keeps getting better and better.

preparing to do an Enneagram training with my department at work. I am super excited to introduce everyone to the Enneagram and find out the numbers for all of our managers and our writers. I truly do feel like the Enneagram can be such a powerful tool, as it teaches you so much about your personality, motivations, and fears. And it’s very useful in a work setting, too! I’m looking forward to helping everyone discover their Enneagram number.

listening to the “Goodbye Michael” episodes of the Office Ladies podcast. I put off watching these episodes of the show because they were just going to make me sad, and they did, but I’m glad I powered through, especially so I could listen to Jenna and Angela talk to Steve Carrell about his time on the show.