Life Lately

Yesterday, I sat at the beach while Caden played in the sand at the edge of the water. It was 80+ degrees out, warmer than they’d predicted, and my hair stuck to the back of my neck until I fished a hair tie out of my bag and pulled it into a ponytail. It’s still August, which signals summer to my brain, but also it’s September tomorrow, which screams nothing but fall. Time to transition. Again.

The kids start school next week and I feel all the normal excitement that goes along with a fresh school year—what always feels like more of a new year than January ever does. And also there’s the anxiety that’s become the norm around masking and local case counts and how long before one of my kids is in quarantine?

I’ve been in a flurry of ordering things because it seems like I’ve either been running out or needing all the things all at once. Clothes for kids who have outgrown everything from pants to socks to shoes. Refill tablets of hand soap and house cleaner. Boy brow and yes that is an affiliate link in case you’d like to help feed my addiction to the product that I would bring with me even to a deserted island. Three whole sets of school supplies. A fresh box of contacts. Laundry detergent. Parchment paper and tin foil and plastic wrap. A fresh bottle of elderberry gummies because besides masking, it’s the thing that feels like I’m doing something to help my kids stay healthy. Name labels for the aforementioned school supplies which have somehow been held up in customs for weeks and I am crossing my fingers they arrive before the first day of school. Tea and a new sweater because despite that 80-degree temperature, fall is coming, dammit, and I intend to be prepared.

Everything around me feels in or about in transition. Though thinking back to a year ago, things were largely the same. The start of school was pushed back a week but I was still buying up masks and elderberry and school supplies and Costco orders made up entirely of snacks. (Mental note: place Costco order.) We didn’t know exactly what the school year would bring and we largely still don’t have the answer to that question this year.

I don’t know what else to do except to continue keeping under control what I can, even if it’s just stocking the snack shelf in the pantry and baking first day of school treats and emailing the teachers to see who in their class needs school supplies. Remembering that this, too, is important work, even if it doesn’t always (ever?) feel like quite enough.

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Action Item

I’m not sure how you can feel anything but sick to your stomach after the way things unfolded in Afghanistan this month. TIME magazine has an excellent round-up of ways to support refugees and people still in Afghanistan: from organizations taking donations to contacting your representatives.

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Around the Internet

• Tom Daly knitting is one of my favorite things this summer and R. Eric Thomas is one of my favorite things on the internet, so put them together and it brings me an enormous amount of joy.

• “But I think the real problem is that life is still exhausting because the pandemic was and remains exhausting in so many invisible ways — and we still haven’t given ourselves space to even begin to recover. Instead, we’re just softly boiling over, emptying and evaporating whatever stores of energy and patience and grace remain.”

• We Could Have Changed the World (really the title says it all)

• For those of us who have or are about to send our kids back to school.

• “This is parenting these days, for us and too many people we know. Peak inconsistency. Complete incoherence. Just decision after decision based on a little bit of science, a little bit of outdated guidance, and a little bit of how much time or energy we have to think it through.”

• Did I go down the rabbit hole of ‘Bama Rush in an attempt to understand why all of America was suddenly invested? Yes I did. And then this deep-dive on Greek fashion.

• This feels like it sums up 2021.

• So does this.

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Eating

• Have I told you to make falafel before? Because you should definitely make falafel. And then serve it with pita bread and roasted veggie (team bell peppers over here) and kalamata olives and a healthy scoop of caramelized onion hummus.

• This mushroom pasta stir-fry is delicious. Unfortunately, I can almost never seem to find broccolini around here so I subbed regular broccoli and it was fine (but if you can get your hands on it actual broccolini would be better!).

• I will now evangelize you to the ways of dark chocolate hummus. I will continue to pretend it is the healthiest of healthy snacks because the first ingredient is chickpeas and continue to ignore that the second ingredient is sugar. Mostly because I don’t care. It’s delicious.

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Fun Things

• Currently wearing a late summer/early fall pink and gray ombre mani of my own creation using AW, RP, MG, Wild & Free, and BI from Olive and June and the Gen Z barista told me she loved my nails this morning so #winning.

• This button-up shirt was an impulse buy earlier this summer which will go down as one of my favorite purchases of 2021.

• This tee. The color is more of a gray-washed lavender in person. Love the fit, love the rolled sleeves, love that I foresee wearing it under lots of cardigans come cooler temperatures.

Read, Watched, Listened

I love reading just about everything (okay, you won't see any horror or sci-fi picks on here), watching things that make me think and especially if they make me laugh, and wholeheartedly embrace the podcast. Here's my two cents worth.

READ
(Follow the links below or click through to bookshop.org to find all books referenced in this post and past Read, Watched, Listened posts. And here’s your friendly reminder that these are affiliate links!)

The Girl With the Louding Voice
Abi Dare gives Adunni, this book’s young protagonist, a compelling voice. I cheered Adunni on in her own fight against the Nigerian patriarchy she continually finds herself in. In the end, it’s more plot-based than character-based, and I personally need more character to draw me completely into a book.

The Four Winds
Set during the upheaval of the dustbowl, I couldn’t help but compare this to The Grapes of Wrath—especially because I only read that particular American classic for the first time late last summer. The drive/struggle in California is basically Grapes of Wrath revisited; there were so many parallels. I loved the protagonist, Elsa—my only complaint is that I wanted more of Elsa in her pre-dustbowl life. Though my low-key MVP is Elsa’s daughter Loreda. Loreda for president, please.

The Liturgy of Politics
Honestly, I wanted to love this more than I did. I thought the intersection of faith + politics would make this perfect for me but it felt like it was drawn out too long in book-form. Like maybe this would have been better served as a series of essays? I still want to hear more from Kaitlyn Schiess, but I don’t think a book was the best format for what this was.

The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories
Am I a short story reader now? Because apparently, I’m a short story reader now. This collection of stories was on fire. I didn’t think I liked short stories—maybe because I want a good short story to last so much longer than it does—which is exactly how I felt with each and every one of these.

What We Were Promised
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: give me a detailed family drama any day. Set in China, this was a beautifully written novel about family, wealth, class, and society.

Rules of Civility
This was a delight—good for summer. I couldn’t help but think of Elizabeth Gilbert’s City of Girls while reading it. It’s not quite as frothy but is set in the same era and a similar setting. Single girl in NYC in the 1930s is almost always going to be a good time.

The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage
This book was a journey (hello, almost 500 pages) but it was worth it. It follows the lives of Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor, and Thomas Merton as they wrestle with their Catholicism, society, their writing, and sometimes each other. I can’t even fathom how much research went into a book like this: studying their lives, reading their works and correspondence, visiting the places they lived, and then compiling and interweaving it all together. Sometimes it was admittedly a slog, but at other times it read a bit like a novel.

One Two Three
I finished this book a couple of weeks ago and still don’t know how I feel about it. On one hand, I couldn’t put it down; I wanted to know what happened next. on the other hand, it took a little bit for me to get used to the three different voices and I wanted more…something? More backstory? More depth? I’m not even sure. It’s no This is How it Always Is, but since that’s one of my favorite books of all time it feels pretty unfair to compare Laurie Frankel’s work from here on out to that one. Tell me you read this and then tell me your thoughts because mine are muddled.

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
I thought this book was lovely. I might need to re-read it in the actual winter. It’s s-l-o-w. I would probably have found it boring at another point in time but it felt like exactly what I needed to read right now. For anyone going through a life change or new season in life.

Crying in H-Mart: A Memoir
This book is as good as everyone says it is. Also, it made me hungry, even though I didn’t know what most of the Korean foods were and lots of them included various types of seafood, and I’m allergic to shellfish.

RE-READS: Pride and Prejudice, Here for It, This Is How it Always Is

WATCHED

The Last Blockbuster
How fun was this documentary? Did they tap into every last bit of millennial nostalgia I possess? Yes, yes they did, and I’m not even mad about it.

Last Chance U
Oof. A docu-series exploring a community college basketball team in East LA as they try to get out of the community college world and break into top-level colleges. I felt like the series was a few episodes too long but the last one was worth all of it.

Bo Burnham: Inside
Bo Burnham wins quarantine. Full stop. Also, he deserves both a Grammy and a top-level comedy award (Do those exist?) for this piece.

Top Chef Portland
We are Top Chef junkies and this may have been the best season yet.

High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America
The worst part of this series is that I can’t reach through the screen to eat all the deliciousness depicted. It should be clear by now that I will read/watch anything to do with food so I couldn’t hit “play” fast enough for this.

In the Heights
How fun is this movie? All the fun. (Also: Tyson and I went back to a movie theater what is this life??) I could watch the pool scene on repeat for infinity.

LISTENED
Sour
Obviously.

No One Is Coming to Save Us
If you’re a parenting America, there’s probably not much that’s going to be groundbreaking here. Yet I still binged this podcast because yes, I am your choir, and yes, you are preaching to me, and yes , I am here for it.

Dirty Rotten Church Kids
If you identify as any sort of exvangelical or were impacted by early 2000s Evangelical church culture at all, this is the podcast for you. The episodes are LONG (it takes me several days to get through one) but they’re always thought-provoking, funny, and I end up saying “YES” out loud to no one and nodding my head vigorously at least once an episode. Also, I can’t recommend their Instagram enough.

The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill
Speaking of Evangelical culture: I am EATING this one up. It’s amazing how Mark Driscoll’s influence leeched out into so much of Christian culture and I’m not even a little sad about dancing on the grave of Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll in a very un-Christian-like way.

Life Lately

Taking a page from Pantsuit Politics’ Instagram page, (who apparently take this practice from Emily P. Freeman, so I’m just another link in the chain at this point), to list the things I learned in June:

• If you have the option for your kid to be bussed to an activity instead of driving them, you should do it. Every time. It will be worth all the dollars.

• I can’t keep up with anything lately and feel like I’m failing at everything. There are too many small children around and also we’re coming out of a pandemic which I’m sure has something (read: almost everything) to do with it, but I don’t have time to unpack that now (see: I can’t keep up with anything). I feel like I’m behind in every area of my life and also things feel like they take between 2-5 times longer than I think they should. The kids should be nicer and the kitchen should be cleaner and I want to get back to doing yoga and I want new furniture for almost every room of my house and maybe the kids would be nicer if I set a better example instead of snapping at them. However, if my little corner of the internet has anything to say about it, apparently that’s how everyone is feeling lately. So maybe that’s just how life is, at least for right now. Solidarity.

• I think number one on this list might have a decent amount to do with number two on this list, since I have spent approximately all of June in my minivan. So. There’s that. Maybe I would have more time to do all the things if I weren’t driving around the entire Twin Cities every single day.

• Driving hours in the car by myself with a bunch of podcasts and good music (read: Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo) is my new favorite form of self-care.

• Grilling anything and throwing chips and a sliced melon on the table is a good enough meal when it’s one million degrees out. We can just pretend the kids ate a fair share of the fruit instead of gorging themselves on chips and processed white buns from a package. It’s fine.

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Action Item

The disaster in Surfside, Florida and the unprecedented heatwave in the Northwest are both on my mind this week. CNN has a great round-up of organizations to support, if you’re able, who are on the ground in the Miami area. Bustle has a list of organizations to support in the Pacific Northwest, as well as general links to organizations who are advocating for climate change solutions. We had our own unheard-of heatwave here in Minnesota in late May/early June, and unfortunately, these climate events are only going to continue. Less unprecedented, much, much more commonplace.

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Around the Internet

• This thread is an entire sermon in ten slides.

• Because I can always have to link to at least one Anne Helen Peterson piece, and this one is everything.

• “Families desperately need help. In other countries, they get it. In the United States, they get empty homilies about the importance of family.”

• An important read about female athletes, especially as we move forward into the Olympics.

• I feel this piece in a very deep way.

• Have you heard of FaceTune? This read was both fascinating and gag-inducing. “Cosmetic surgeons who spoke to HuffPost said they now regularly have patients come in with photos of themselves that have been so heavily Facetuned they would be anatomically impossible to replicate.”

• “A residency is typically designed to give the artist the space to create. In the art world that translates, almost always, to being alone, she explained. ‘It felt quite offensive that somehow you are more creative away from your family than with them,’ she said.”

• In case you haven't seen the “Dear Intern” thread yet. It will make you feel ten types of encouraged with the world.

• I’m in a (usually) happy marriage, but damn if I don’t wish I had someone to break up with so I could blast this perfect mash-up.

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Eating

• These harissa meatballs with whipped feta. Though—UNPOPULAR OPINION ALERT—I don’t actually care for the whipped feta. I make the meatballs and bell peppers, omit the zucchini, and serve it all with homemade pita chips, hummus, sliced cucumbers, and kalamata olives.

• These cheesesteaks but add more bell pepper, onion, mushrooms, and cheese, and buy prepackaged shaved steak from the store so it all comes together ridiculously fast. And deliciously.

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Fun Things

• Back in April, I told you to get a For Days Take Back Bag. Now I’m telling you to buy this relaxing romper because it looks like I put effort into getting dressed but feels like I’m wearing pajamas, which is my exact goal with every outfit.

• The tagline of this product is “the (cashmere) sweatpants of lipstick” and I co-sign that 100%. I’m always on the look for a product that glides on like a chapstick but deposits a little bit of color; something I can use whether I’m in the drop-off line or date night. Ultralip is that thing. I bought it in Lucite but will definitely be back for more.

• This tank. I’ve dressed it up with black shorts and all the way down with athletic shorts and a ponytail. The exaggerated shoulder/extra fabric under the armpit means you don’t have to worry about flashing your bra. It runs large—I tuck it all the way in or it’s a lot of fabric for me. Recommend sizing down if that’s an option for you.

• Okay, I’d seen this Supergoop Unseen Sunscreen going around my corners of the internet and finally tried it out. It’s not shiny or greasy but glides on smooth and matte as the perfect makeup primer. I’m a believer.

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Another thing I learned this month is that June doesn’t quite feel like summer yet. The kids spend the first two weeks wrapping up school. Caden had an activity that’s started at 8 am (!!!) the last few weeks. (See: if there’s a bus option it will be worth all your $$$.) Baseball has largely taken over our evenings. All of these activities have walked us right up to a point where we’ll be traveling for a few days at a time here and there, where it feels like I’m either packing for or unpacking from a trip. And, you might be saying, what do you mean it doesn’t feel like summer? Baseball! What’s more summer than that?

I know. And these things aren’t bad. I’m so glad we’re able to do them this year. And also: it doesn’t feel like summer to me until we’ve had a chance to lay low, sleep in, and do a whole lot of nothing around the house for days at a time.

Those days are coming. I just wrote up our July calendar and am admiring all the blank spots on the calendar. The same blank spots I will then probably curse around the second week of August. Because: balance!

That Minivan Life

Brooklyn and Nolan tumble into the mudroom where they kick off their sandals. I’m right behind them, glass of iced-coffee-going-to-water in hand. 

“You have one hour. I’m going to eat breakfast. Make sure your teeth are brushed and you find your water bottles before we head out again.” They scamper off to play and (hopefully) follow directions.

Summer began barely a week ago and already I feel as though I’ve been living in my minivan.

Our day kicked off with a near hour-long trek to drop Caden off at Summer Academy by 8 am. (Praise hands that concludes before The Fourth.) Brooklyn and Nolan have PlayNet on Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 9:30-noon. There have been playdates and park meet-ups. There will be day camps.

I’m already regretting not taking advantage of the bussing option to get Caden to and from Summer Academy. I thought I was saving him close to an hour each way. Well, I am, but I didn’t stop to think who would be spending that hour driving instead. *insert raised hand and slap-face emojis here* Tyson told me we should bus him and let it be known in writing here today honey that you were right.

(Also, the pollution. Why didn’t I do the communal drive option? I mean, I guess we hardly went anywhere last summer—the first eight weeks of lockdown we didn’t fill up a tank of gas once— so maybe I’m allocated some extra miles this year? Still. Ugh.)

This minivan life can be chaotic. And I’m not talking about the lunacy that is Minnesota roads under construction in the summertime. I’m talking about what happens inside those marvelous power-glide, push-of-a-button sliding doors.

There are kids who expect me to do some sort of backward yoga move to retrieve whatever toy/snack/piece of trash they dropped while also navigating us safely through traffic. Kids fighting over things like “looking at me” and “breathing” and “maybe they rolled their eyes at me.” There’s the general state of the car, what with the leftover Starbucks cups and granola wrappers and Goldfish dust and LEGO pieces which are expressly forbidden to leave the house but somehow migrate out to the minivan anyway. (That they escape in pockets and tiny fists while I distractedly dash through the house to go to the bathroom, yell at everyone else to go to the bathroom, ensure everyone has a water bottle, mask, and shoes, and run back in the house because I forgot at least one of these things is just a guess.)

We’re managing. Wow in the World has already emerged as the podcast of choice to get us through the long drives to and from Summer Academy. Water bottles and snacks are a must, even if stray pretzels and fruit snacks end up atrophying on the floor. 

Sometimes we’re more than managing. There are giggles during the podcast, even if it’s about poop and I’ve already heard that word or one of its many iterations 34 times that morning. Sometimes we sing along to Hamilton or Taylor Swift. Yesterday they practiced the song and actions they’ll be performing at church on Sunday, Nolan’s voice practically shouting despite the song being called “One Small Voice.” (Guess that title is only a nice suggestion.) 

There’s Caden climbing into the car after Summer Academy, full of stories about his day and reminders for tomorrow. “I made my picture like this and no one else did it this way, Mommy. They all made a flower because that was the example but I decided to do something different!” and “Don’t forget we need to wear our Summer Academy shirts tomorrow.” and “I spent my fifty cents of snack money on a Fruit by the Foot because you never buy them so I took my chance.”

There are the times where we drive and it’s blessedly quiet and I see their big blue eyes staring out the windows as the trees and the lakes and the buildings pass by. They seem to be just taking it all in and I think, “This is nice.”

I’ve only ever thought of the minivan as a thing to get us from point A to point B; from this one thing we’re doing to that other thing we’re doing. It’s time to kill: please sit down and buckle up and let me think and don’t ask too many questions. But having spent several hours in the car each day this week, I’m discovering it’s all its own time. 

It might not be exactly how I wish I were spending my time, which would preferably be reading a book in a hammock with a light breeze, cold drink, and children playing in the background. (Reader, my children never play in the background.) (Also, I don’t own a hammock. Details.) At the very least, I might wish I were listening to a podcast of my choice instead of the same few episodes of Wow in the World on repeat.

I’ve heard people talk about how much time they spend in the car running kids around, how they feel like a chauffeur, and I thought, Surely they’re exaggerating. Guess not. I have spent so. much. time. in my minivan this week. This wholly ordinary thing I never thought all that much about when it was only eight minutes to school and back, twelve minutes to dance class, ten to hit up McDonald’s for Happy Meals. 

All these drop-offs and pick-ups and the kids are there and so am I. We’re our own little universe bumping down the road, and sometimes they fight over who gets to put their hand where and I wonder if I should even bother with the ground-in crackers in the carpet and other times they ask about each other’s days and pass around compliments like candy and sing along to We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together and it’s both harmonious and also entirely off-key.

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in this series "Minutiae".

Life Lately

It kind of feels like the rest of the country has gone back to school while we’re stuck in some sort of cruel eternal summer. It began on March 13th with the first day of Spring Break and won’t end until September 14th, when Nolan goes back to preschool, and September 15th, when Caden and Brooklyn do. So actually that makes this the longest spring break ever? Either way, I’m out.

The end of August is always a beast. The five of us are over each other. The activities have all ended. It’s too hot. Except this year there never were any activities, it’s still too hot, and we’re extra over each other. The kids were doing remarkably well this summer with listening and helping and playing together. Then, a couple week ago, we hit a wall. Hard. We hit a similar wall at the end of May/early June after a few months of distance learning and no activities and a stay-at-home order, when all novelty of this so-called “novel” coronavirus wore off and we were all. over. it. So. I guess we were due for another one.

We did receive some long-awaited school information this week. Caden and Brooklyn will be attending a hybrid schedule that has them distance learning Monday-Wednesday and attending in-person on Thursdays and Fridays. Nolan, miracle of miracles, has few enough kids enrolled in his preschool class that he will be attending his regularly scheduled Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. I could walk you through the week I spent of agonized debate over whether to commit to hybrid or pull them out for full distance learning, but I’ll spare you the anxiety. It’s nothing you don’t already know. If you’re a parent of young children, you’ve had this same debate yourself. Suffice to say, we felt this was the least shitty of shitty options for the time being. (Side note: we also have the ability to opt-in to full distance learning at any time, so if we ever feel truly unsafe we have that as our back-up option.)

All I know is that every parent, even once they’ve made their decisions, even for my friends who’ve already sent (or “sent”) kids back to school, are still agonizing over their decisions. Whether distance, hybrid, in-person, or homeschooling, every parent I know is still asking themselves if they’ve made the right choice. The only ones I know who are confident in their decisions were either already homeschoolers or have kids who are immunocompromised, making the choice of staying home obvious.

Despite the amount of brain space it’s been taking up in my head, school still feels like this bizarre far-off ghost of an idea. Here in MN, we’ve got a few weeks to go. We don’t yet have supply lists or official distance learning schedules. The pool is out and we’re wearing swimsuits and eating ice cream while it lasts. Walls and all.

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Take Action

My heart is breaking for Kenosha. I feel like our summer has been bookended by police violence: first with George Floyd and now with Jacob Blake.

I subscribed to the Anti-Racism Daily newsletter by Nicole Cardoza last month. Each day includes education and action items covering a different topic related to racism in the US (and around the world). I highly recommend signing up. There is also an option to receive a Saturday-only newsletter which highlights the topics discussed all week.

I’ve appreciated the way this newsletter has grown my awareness, activism, and education around these issues. This week, I highly recommend looking at the issue dedicated to Jacob Blake and taking some of the action steps listed.

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Around the Internet

• How QAnon has infiltrated the corners of the Internet I frequent. Corners that to a certain extent felt safe.

• The most playful layout and fascinating read on sweatpants and the collapse of the fashion industry.

• On sourdough and what it means now.

• On being a mother and how “America just can’t really be bothered".

• A beautiful essay on the first day of school.

• And this is the biggest laugh I’ve had all week.

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Eating

Ugh it’s hot and I don’t want to cook or eat anything, said everyone everywhere in August. Still. We have to eat. Here’s what keeps popping up on my table:

• Not exactly summery, but this chickpea tikka masala has been on repeat. The sauce is everything.

• These chicken kabobs. Wrapped up in a pita with yogurt. So good.

• And while I think frying fish is kind of a pain, these fish tacos are 100% worth it. (Please just fry your fish, throw them in some good corn tortillas, and pull out your store-bought slaw and pico and call it good.)

• Also continuing our Friday night tradition of takeout, including our new favorite Mexican spot. Queso FTW.

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Fun Things

Have you heard that the house dress is back? This might be the best thing to come out of 2020. I’ve been living in this tank one and this midi tee one.

Nolan got this Mario LEGO set and I am stan-ing it hard. It combines two of his favorite things (LEGOs + Mario) and is so well-designed. You need to download an app for the building instructions, which at first had me all, “Seriously? Can we not do anything without technology?” but then I ate my words. Nolan usually has the technical ability to build LEGO sets but not the attention span. It’s like dredging the bottom of the ocean to get him to do the next thing. It’s constant prompting. “What piece do you need next? How many? Okay, where does it go? Are you sure? Okay. Turn the page. Now what do you need?” etc. on repeat forever. The digital instructions + videos were so well done and engaging and he was zero percent distracted by the fact that they were on a tablet. I did nothing but sit there and watch in amazement. The Mario figure itself is ingenious. Everything is so meticulously well-designed and thought out. 10/10 highly recommend.

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I’m currently typing this as the kids…I don’t know. There’s lots of (happy) yelling and running and banging going on. We tried going outside but it’s too hot (like immediately-break-into-a-fine-layer-of-sweat-when-you-step-outside kind of hot) so that didn’t last long. I couldn’t stand their noise so I walked upstairs. They’re not exactly being naughty, just….we’ve hit that wall. They’re loud. I don’t want to hear them. I don’t know what they’re doing. As long as no one is bleeding or on fire or standing over me saying “Mommy” on repeat, I just. don’t. care. This is called self-preservation. Am now wondering what would happen if I simply…didn’t emerge again. Until tomorrow morning. Except for the fact that I’m hungry. (On the menu tonight: BLTs , watermelon, and chips because: hot and summer and also EASY.)

September is coming, and while I have no illusions that it will be easier in any sense of the word, (besides in the wardrobe department because we could all use some cozy sweaters up in here), a new routine will probably shake us all up for the better. At the very least, I’ll have an entire 2.75 hours to myself every single week, and while that sounds pitiful, that’s also more time than I’ve had since March 13th. God bless us, every one.