Five For Friday

 1. Monday work was good. I went to Costco after to get some stuff for book club which was yesterday (Thursday). I still forget I have a membership and find going there kind of panic-inducing, and a thing which happens quite often happened, which is that I couldn't find the Gyoza pork dumplings I bought last time and really liked. I bought chicken and vegetable potstickers instead, and they were good, but whyyyyy Costco why, I hate change in all things, even dumplings. I also got spring rolls and edamame because the book was Japanese, and I don't always match the food to the book, but I do if I can because it amuses me.

I made quinoa bowls for dinner, of which I was ridiculously proud. My ADD brain makes it really hard to do something with this many steps - I order them but almost never make them. So Sunday I made stir-fried lemongrass chicken and instant pot Mongolian beef for the week, and then Monday I cooked the edamame, sweet potato, lime cilantro black beans and quinoa and made bowls with the chicken. 

2. Tuesday I went for lunch with Sonia who has a timeshare in my dog, and Pam, my dear, dear friend who I met when Eve was in kindergarten with her daughter Laura. We used to hang out constantly while the kids were in school, walk a lot and go shopping and get weird looks from the staff (or meet weird staff which made great stories). The kids got older and we got jobs and it's harder to get together, so it was really nice to see her. 

We always go to the restaurant at the college nearby, where the food and service is all done by students in the hospitality program. The food is always really good. This time we got a clearly very new waiter who was very nervous and sort of hilariously bad at everything, and we had to pitch our response somewhere between reassuring and condescending. He tried to take out his pen to write down orders and flung it halfway across the restaurant. He didn't know what side to serve anything from. He brought me soup, stared at it and said "you'll probably need a spoon". He took the drink orders then came back and said to Sonia "how big a wine did you want?" He brought the bill, looked at it in his hands, put it down on the table and pushed it over to me and said "here". No judgment, to be clear - I was a waitress in university and sucked at it. It just added to the experience.

After lunch we went to Bath and Body Works because Pam had let us use her hand sanitizer which was lotiony and smelled like sunshine and oranges instead of rotten tequila (which most of the store hand sanitizers seemed to smell like during Covid) and we wanted to buy some. I bought two little hand sanitizers. Sonia bought eight hand soaps and forgot to buy sanitizer. The employee helping us was into our wacky vibe. She nearly managed to sell me a soap and candle called Book Loft, and it smelled okay but I really would have been buying it for the name, and I RESISTED.

3. Wednesday I accidentally read a whole book. Sarah inspired me to start researching upcoming books and racing to be one of the first few people to put some on hold. This has resulted in me pausing most of my life to be a nearly full-time reader, so ask me how that makes me feel compared to Sarah who is doing this while parenting five kids and professoring - FINE, it's FINE. Anyway, I went to pick up two holds and then in a fit of extreme optimism picked up a book from the Express shelf, which I almost NEVER do, but hey, no fines now, it's a lawless reading wild west.

I got home and ate something, then carried some stuff upstairs, including the library books. I sat down in my chair and opened the Express book just to read the synopsis again, and then two hours later I was still in the chair, and then a while later I got into bed and kept reading.

It was The Bones Beneath My Skin by TJ Klune. I read The House in the Cerulean Sea a while ago, and thought it was wholesome and lovely (I am really overusing the word 'lovely' lately, I've somehow morphed into a lavender-hat-wearing seventy-year-old auntie), and sort of vaguely meant to read more but hadn't until now. How everything was probably going to go was apparent very early, but the characters were very enjoyable and the narrative energy was off the charts. The back flap made reference to the author being queer and thinking that more queer representation in literature was necessary - no argument there. After I finished the book, I googled to see whether he had a partner, and found an incredibly sad story about how he did, but the partner died and the circumstances were very sad (I'm not going to detail them, they are available if you are curious). I kind of wished I hadn't googled, but there is something very poignant about how he is grieving but still putting out hopeful stories into the world. 

4. Thursday was book club. It was good. There was a little bit of a 'young people today' session that started, and that kind of talk really gets my back up. Most of the young people I know are smart, thoughtful, empathetic and way more politically engaged than I was at the same age. Are some young people dumb and annoying? Uh-huh. Are many old people similarly dumb and annoying? UH-HUH. I mean, what did our generation do, besides fuck the planet and get bad perms? Yeah, I'm over-simplifying, which is what happens when you try to categorize any generation. Anyway. Deep breath. It's a hot button for me.

5. After book club I went to bed and proceeded to have one of the crappiest nights of sleep I have had in a long time. Around four a.m., still tossing and uncomfortable and having weird pains, I decided I would do mostly nothing today except read and rest, and Lucy could run around in the back yard with Riley and it would be fine. I got up to let Lucy out, and it was a beautiful, sunny, cool day. It is worth mentioning that the forecast for the weekend is for a possible blizzard and/or ice storm. I can't decide whether it's my fault for getting my winter tires off TODAY, or Matt's fault for leaving the country tomorrow FOR CALIFORNIA (his fault, obviously, right?) So we went for a really nice walk, and then I did a healing yoga session, and now if we're stuck inside all weekend it will be not as bad, and I'm glad I changed my plan. 

The calm before the storm. 

6. I have no memory of buying this dress.