We’re at the halfway point in the month and I’ve been getting texts and seeing posts all week from friends in different parts of the world writing about their kids going back to school.
Our little family still has another few weeks of summer left. As always, I’m conflicted.
I love the ease of summer. Sleeping in, casual meals we throw together at the last minute with whatever happens to be in the fridge, less rigid schedules. I also struggle with the lack of structure and the continual chaos in the house. Grass clippings get tracked in, there are always wet beach towels in some state of drying in various spots in the house, and we go to bed far too late.
It’s a season—literally and figuratively—and it’s fun and hard at the same time. Acknowledging that feels helpful and so I feel both happy to have a few more weeks of summer to enjoy and also immensely relieved I only have a few more weeks of summer to endure.
Let’s talk Happy Things. There are a lot this week!
PODCASTS
I recorded two guest spots for upcoming podcast episodes this week. It was such a fun experience and I can’t wait to see them go live (barring any issues, I should have an episode to share with you on Monday morning!).
I am decidedly not used to talking into a microphone and it’s a bit unnerving to realize just how often I do say “Um.”
SURGERY DATE
A family member has been waiting to receive a time-sensitive surgery date and it kept getting bumped later and later into the summer. Yesterday morning, a cancellation slot opened up… and the surgery is scheduled for this coming Monday morning. Praise the Lord!!!
GONE WITH THE WIND
I did it! I read Gone With the Wind. And I have so many thoughts. I also kind of want to take a university course dedicated to unravelling ALL the layers of this story.
I stayed up way too late multiple nights in a row, but I could not put this epic down.
I’ll talk about it at length in my monthly reading recap, but I can see why this book won the Pulitzer Prize, I can see why it’s been so widely banned (it is quite scandalous, and the racial side of the story is incredibly complicated), I can see why it was made into a famous movie (can’t you imagine this as an epic miniseries a la the BBC Pride and Prejudice??), and I can see why so many people love this book.
It was All the Things. It was frustrating. It was sad. It was confusing. It was beautiful. It was tragic. It was a 1,000-page masterclass in fiction. (Though, as per usual, I do think the book would have been better with 300 pages shaved off; the middle section dragged for me).
Also, did you know the author—Margaret Mitchell—was struck and killed by a car when she was 49?? It reminded me of the fact that Gaudi (of Sagrada Familia fame) was killed by a tram, though he was in his 70s. It feels like such a sad and abrupt way to go.
WATERFALL PICTURES
The actual event happened last week, but I promised some photo evidence of the fun. Unfortunately, the jumping pictures of me didn’t turn out because of the angle, but you get the idea. You can see me hitting the water in the middle photo.
BRIDGE JUMPING
On the theme of jumping from heights into water… on Sunday I ended up hosting one of Indy’s friends after church and we decided to go bridge jumping. On a whim, I asked if another friend wanted to join, and then another one asked if they could come too. In the end, I took four boys to the bridge.
I never know how long these adventures are going to last. Sometimes the water is too cold, or they get bored. It can be 20 minutes… or it can be 2 hours.
Well, the water was warm, there were all sorts of people jumping (which does add to the fun, in my opinion), and I all but had to drag the boys away after THREE HOURS.
TRAMPOLINE JUMPING
Apparently, summer involves a lot of jumping. And not always into water.
My friend Joy has a wonderful trampoline that Indy, in particular, absolutely loves using. I was over at her place this week and Indy tagged along… and enjoyed a very fun jumping session on their (springfree) trampoline!
CROSSING THINGS OFF (MY NEVER-ENDING LIST)
I feel like my to-do list is a bit like Mary Poppins’s carpetbag. It has no bottom.
But, despite the fact that as soon as I cross things off a dozen new things crop up, it DOES feel good to check things off the list:
- I did a pesky return
- I bought stamps (sorry penpals, I have fallen woefully behind in snail mail correspondence)
- I went to the library and returned books/picked up new holds
- I refilled a prescription and picked it up
- I scheduled a routine doctor’s appointment for one of the kids
- I dealt with a variety of time-sensitive banking logistics
- I deep-cleaned some lawn chairs
- I washed and changed the sheets/pillowcases on our bed
- I made and froze all sorts of food items for upcoming guests
TENNIS
Indy spent a lot of time at our local tennis court this summer which has been delightful. He’s there for about 3.5 hours a day and it’s a great environment full of people who love tennis and being active. It does mean a lot of driving to/from each day, but it’s worth it.
THRIFTED SNEAKERS
Speaking of Indy, he is growing like crazy and ALL his sneakers were getting too tight. We’ve been trying to find some good second-hand pairs since investing in new ones doesn’t seem to pay off at his age.
I wasn’t feeling too desperate until we realized he has FOUR pairs that are too small, and the one pair that did fit… he forgot out at a friend’s cottage.
He went to tennis one day in too-tight shoes, and I said we’d check out a local consignment store as soon as he finished up his volunteer gig. It’s actually a women’s consignment shop, but his current sneakers—plain black Nikes—were from there. I was not expecting to find anything in his size that was in a gender-neutral colour, but we walked in… and walked out with brand new sneakers on his feet less than 5 minutes later.
A great pair of Nike Versairs that were in like-new condition for $28. And what a fun colour for a tween boy.
At a shop in our little town! I was absolutely delighted, because I was resigned to trying multiple stores and paying full price for a pair at a sporting goods shop.
SPENDING LESS THAN EXPECTED ON SPENDY THINGS
On Monday, I had to get a complete brake job done on our SUV. They had never been replaced before, so it was time for this pricey form of regular maintenance to get done. But there were new rotors and sensors and all sorts of other things. And… it was half the price of what we expected!!!
Late last week, we also noticed the SUV had a sizeable crack in the windshield. Darn. A quick trip to a local glass place confirmed there was nothing that can be done to fix it, aside from a completely new windshield. But because we have some fancy sensors in the glass (heads-up display), the replacement windshield was likely to be very expensive AND only certain places are equipped to do the calibration necessary for the new windshield.
Not only did we get into the shop quickly, turns out they specialize in installing and calibrating this sort of windshield, and because of the insurance coverage we have, we had to pay a small deductible and the rest was billed directly to our car insurance AND because it’s no-fault, it won’t impact our premiums (sometimes it’s not wise to run this sort of thing through insurance because of the impact on future premiums) AND, we now have a brand-new windshield with a warranty for up to three chips (we’ve only had to get one chip repaired once in our marriage).
Finally, we had a little house upgrade project and it came in at HALF THE PRICE we had anticipated.
While I don’t believe in jinxing, surely we are now jinxed to everything breaking down at an alarming rate and for exorbitant replacement costs… but we’re basking in the delight of things costing less than anticipated this week.
One thing that DOES need to be fixed is an inconsistent, small leak under our kitchen sink. It has been truly baffling. A week or two will go by and then all of a sudden, there will be a puddle of water that drips out onto the floor. We have puzzled over it, trying to figure out the source. I finally found the issue. A plumber will need to be called, but for now it’s small and contained and once I knew where the water was leaking from, I could put a little bucket underneath it to collect the water. It’s a short-term solution, but it feels satisfying (and I was getting tired of bringing out a towel to sop up puddles of water).
BONUS HAPPY THINGS
- Blog reader Kate had a baby! Huge congrats to her whole family as they welcome baby George <3
- Blog reader Elinoora emailed me this link from The Guardian about a “couch-to-5K for books” for trying to boost people’s interest in reading. Fascinating!
- Our dishwasher.
- My new companion journal for The Bible Recap. I needed something to get my Bible reading habit back on track, so I added another book to the stack! There are three simple, repeated prompts each day, but it feels good to switch things up for a fresh read-through of the Bible.
- Worship music by Josiah Queen.
- Sparkling water.
- Air conditioning.
- A refreshing shower after a sweaty walk in the sun.
- A new hand towel in our en suite. It’s fluffy and pretty and a much better colour fit than our old one since we got the bathroom re-painted. $7.99 at Winners. (Alas, nothing in the clearance section captured my fancy.)
- Kids playing LEGO. I love hearing the rustle of hands through plastic blocks (literally hearing it right now as Indy plays with a friend in the basement).
- Clearing out the fridge. With company coming, our fridge will fill up quickly. We have been eating down ALL the leftovers and starting with a fresh slate feels good.
And that’s a wrap.
Next week will be… busy. The week after that will be… busy. And the week after that WILL INCLUDE THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL for the kids since MARCH 6th! Oh happy day.
Happy weekending, friends!
Your turn.
- Tell me the happiest thing that happened in your world this week.
- Have you ever read Gone with the Wind?
- What are you most looking forward to in September?
Discover more from The Optimistic Musings of a Pessimist
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So glad you tried GWTW! I really liked it- complicated is a great description.
That waterfall and bridge jumping- scary to me but what an awesome summer activity! And you saved so much on expenses- what a blessing.
Happiest this week- my daughter started back to school.
September- I get a long weekend helping with my granddaughter. I think being happy about her will move hot showers and fuzzy cats down on my happy list.
It’s… complicated about sums it up. But it’s also brilliant. I’ve never felt quite the same way about any book (or set of characters) in my life.
I didn’t jump off the bridge this time, but I’ve done it before and it IS scary. It is so much fun to sit in my camping chair and watch the boys jump and laugh and do all sorts of silly things. At one point they wanted me to take a slo-mo video and it’s hilarious to watch them walk off the ledge simultaneously and fall slowly. Of course in real time it happens so fast!
Enjoy that time with your grandbaby. <3 I think if I had a newborn to cuddle (that I wasn't responsible for feeding and getting up with in the night) it might nudge hot showers down my list, too.
What, Margaret Mitchell got run over by a car? I didn’t know that.
“Gone with the Wind” was my big re-read last summer. Among other things, I was fascinated by how different life was back then. Travelling, communicating, house chores, farming… wow. How different Atlanta must have looked like compared to today. It made me even feel a bit nostalgic for the “olden days”.
Enjoy the last few days of “unstructured life”! (with less of the hard bits)
I KNOW! What a tragic, unceremonious way to die. So sad. And I wonder if she would have written more books?? A sequel to GWTW, maybe?
I remembered you reading it last summer and enjoying it! I think Birchie, Engie, and Jenny all have read it in the last year, too. This was my first time and I was blown away.
I haven’t heard about that book and so sad about how she died, same as Gaudi, so young.
enjoy summer break and soon you’ll be back to routine. We are week 2 of the school year and settled into a good rhythm. I am looking forward to every easy weekend that we have at home, chill, relaxing, lots of cooking and reading, and maybe napping on the hammock.
Enjoy the weekend (and your hammock—I’ve loved seeing pictures of it set up).
I’m anxious for school to start and for a routine, but TRYING not to wish away these last few weeks of summer. It feels like it’s been such a long time where we’ve been living without structure, so it will feel good, but also probably a bit strange??
Happy Friday! We had a great first few days back to school and I’m settling into a bit more of a work routine after a very fragmented summer. I’ve handed over final edits for an article over to my co-author, and we have nice social plans this weekend AND a completely free Saturday so we can get some long-standing house jobs done. We need to start stripping the wallpaper back in T’s room – it’s going to be a bear but this is the shabbiest room (we pulled the carpet up and beautiful floors underneath) and it will be delightful to have it done.
Fragmented! Coree, that’s the word my brain has been searching for… and that’s what sums it up exactly for my summer, too!
What a delight to find nice flooring under carpet. It’s like discovering a treasure (and a valuable one at that).
FIDDLE DEE DEE!!! I do love that book and wow, is it complicated. I first read it as a teenager and so much of it I didn’t understand. It’s fascinating and so complicated.
I can’t wait to listen to your podcasts! Eeeee! You know I love a podcast.
Happiest thing that happened this week is the smoke cleared. It was ten days of super thick smoke cover and on Wednesday when it cleared it felt like a miracle.
God’s nightgown…
IT IS SO COMPLICATED and I wish I had read it as a teen to compare my before/after impressions. The only book that sticks out for that sort of thing is Jane Eyre which I absolutely adored as a teen and absolutely abhorred as an adult. I have a feeling it would have been reversed feelings for GWTW??
I am happy to give you some podcast fodder 🙂
And that is great news about the smoke. Yesterday we had very heavy rains and the only thing on my mind was the fire situation. We’ve had a lot more rain this summer, so I’m hoping it’s not nearly as damaging as last year.
YES! Gone With the Wind!!! You may remember that Birchie and I read it as a buddy read last year. SUCH a great book. And, as everyone agrees… complicated. It’s a fascinating look at racial issues at that time.
Glad your house and car projects are costing LESS than expected (I think we’re making up for it around here, ha ha.)
It sounds like your next two weeks will be very busy and very fun- and then you will be more than ready for school to start!
One last thing… I can just hear that sound of the hands rustling through Lego bins. That was the sound of our house for many, many years.
I know there are sure to be more projects that DO end up costing more than we’d expected, but I’ll take the savings while they come.
I love the LEGO rustling sound 🙂 I’ve also heard the sound of LEGO smashing followed by cries over the years, too. Picking up a finished project to show it off and then having it slip through fingers = VERY SAD KIDS.
I remember first reading Gone With the Wind when I found the paperback in my parent’s huge bookshelf (we were never forbidden to read any books in the house, so I was introduced to Margaret Mitchell at the tender age of 12, as well as Pearl S. Buck and others). It was so huge that it looked like it would keep me busy for quite some time, so I carried it around and read it whenever I had a few minutes. Since the cover was the racy movie version with Rhett leaning over Scarlett, you can imagine I got teased quite a bit at school… but I was entranced mostly by the detailed descriptions of how people lived back then. The little details like how they used acorn caps for buttons when the blockades kept supplies from the South, or grinding burnt sorghum to make “coffee”. I’ve always been fascinated by social history, and Mitchell packed her book full of those details. So for a while I had a habit of re-reading the book every summer. It feels like a summer book. I may go back and re-read it again if I have time!
When I visited Atlanta years ago I went to the Margaret Mitchell house, which was very interesting. There were a lot of Japanese tourists there, for whatever reason. I try to remember when I’m reading GWTW that Mitchell was raised by Southerners who remembered the war and for their own reasons thought it was a Glorious Cause, and I think she was very influenced by that. Authors are a product of their times.
I agree that it feels like a summer book!
It’s definitely an investment of time, but I can see getting new details out of the book on each re-read. And I also loved all the little details. She writes in a very immersive way.
My happy thing…I turned 75! Great find on the shoes. I bet he likes that color. I admit to skimming thru some of GWTW. You’ve had a Blessed week!
Happy Birthday!!!
There are some dense, long parts of GWTW (though the first 1/3 I literally could hardly put down the book).
How exciting to be a guest on the podcasts!
I hope the surgery goes well for your family member and they make a speedy recovery!
Good job with reading Gone With the Wind!
The waterfall is beautiful and looks like a great place to visit and the bridge jumping looks like a lot of fun!
Ahh! I know how you feel about your to do list being never ending, mine is pretty much the same!
The new sneakers look fab and it’s always good to get a bargain!
Thank you for the kind wishes. Surgery is never fun, but it’s needed so we’re grateful the date came up.
I was so happy with the sneakers and he wore them yesterday for a tennis tournament… and matched the court surface 🙂
Now you nee to read SCARLET..the follow-up to GWTW.
Ohhhh. I know there are a few follow-up books; I think there’s one about Rhett, too? Actually, that might be less of a follow-up and more a retelling of GWTW from Rhett’s perspective?
I have never read Gone With the Wind, but we were in our local library just yesterday and I literally laid eyes on it and briefly considered paging through it and perhaps checking it out… then left it on the shelf. Wow, is it a thick book!
One that I did check out was Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney. And proceeded to read it in the span of 12 hours. My conclusion at the end was “oh my word, that was a messed up story.” Haha. Creepy and thrilling but oh my, psychopathic.
We start school in less than two weeks, and I concur: looking forward to it, but also don’t want to wish this time away.
Julia, it’s HUGE.
I really enjoyed Beautiful Ugly. My favourite Alice Feeney book by far. The rest have been more hit and miss for me. It is… bizarre. I think it helped it was my first Feeney book, so I was less likely to start guessing the twists.
I read Gone With the Wind several years ago because we planned a driving trip through Georgia and South Carolina. I had seen the movie and for me it was too romance focused so I wasn’t expecting so much depth out of the book. I was really blown away by it. I felt Mitchell did a lot of research and I came away with a lot of knowledge about the differing perspectives of the North and South US at that time. I remember her mentioning several times the “red dirt” and when we were walking around Atlanta I said to my husband, “Look! The dirt is red!!” A trivial fact but it was funny to see it with my own eyes.
Great find on the runners for your son – love the colour!
Happy thing this week is my future son-in-law, his father and my husband went wedding suit shopping for him and it was a success. He looks good!
I have a lot of family in South Carolina so all the mentions of Charleston and Savannah (both within 2 hours of where my sister lives) definitely got my attention each and every time.
Hooray for finding wedding attire!
I mean, if you’re going to put Gone With the Wind in a post, I don’t know that I can talk about anything else, except maybe your pictures of jumping in the water, which are amazing, and I know how it is to love something that is right now and also look forward to the end of that thing. Travel is similar. We love summer, we crave structure. We love travel, we crave home. A blessing to have both in our lives, right?
OK, GWTW. I’m so amazed by this book. I mean, Mitchell was a woman of the south and she was so clearly racist (her depictions of black people are horrible), but Scarlett’s internal thoughts are so anti the war. She sees it as so stupid and such a waste, even though the only reason she sees that is that she doesn’t like the inconvenience and bother to her life. But she sees that war is dumb, which is interesting to me because Mitchell was a daughter of the confederacy. There had to be lots of people in the south who felt this way. There are people in every war that feel this way, right? I first read this book in 8th grade, and I’ve been addicted ever since. I generally read sections, not the whole thing. When I read the whole thing, the racist stuff really gets to me, descriptions of black people as being like apes or dogs and stupid and so on. Some people say those are Scarlett’s thoughts, not Mitchell’s, but I don’t think so. She clearly says when Scarlett is thinking something, and so many of these are ‘this person looked simple’ not ‘Scarlett thought how simple this person looked’, etc. HOWEVER. Scarlett has the heart of a lion. She works 10x harder than anyone else, to protect her family and her home. She would do anything to save her family, even stupid Suellen. She hates Melanie, is so envious, but she stays in Atlanta to help her and then gets her to safety. And Melanie loves her completely, whether she deserves it or not. Because Melanie sees her lion’s heart, as does Ashley, as does Rhett. And Melanie also has a lion’s heart, unlike her husband. Scarlett has shitty morals (convict labor, slavery) but also so much loyalty and devotion to those she loves. Such a complicated book. Oh, by the way, the scenes with Scarlett and her kids break my heart. Such a shitty mom. I think that’s why Wade and Ellen aren’t in the film. It would be hard for people to sympathize without that internal dialogue. I could ramble for hours about this book.
YES! The layering of Scarlett as a character and even the war as a distinct character and the juxtaposition of Mitchell being injected into the narrative (in a way)… fascinating.
I feel like there is so much good in Scarlett; I really was rooting for her. I also think Melanie is FAR stronger than she appears and is also far more intelligent than she appears. Ditto, Scarlett, they just manifest these strength completely differently.
I had no idea there were kids other than Bonnie until reading the book! Her parenting is… so sad, but it warmed my heart how much comfort Wade found in Melanie… so what a trauma for him when Melanie died 🙁
When we get together in person, we’ll have a long chat about GWTW.
Awww, I’m so thrilled to have made an appearance on the Happy Things post!! Baby George certainly is the happiest “thing” in our orbit these days.
I have never read GWTW but it’s on my lifelong TBR — one of those books I feel I *should* read at some point.
Can’t wait to learn more about the podcast episodes. It’s so fun to hear someone’s actual voice when you’re used to just “hearing” their writerly voice! The “um” thing is very relatable.
Those shoes are SO GREAT. 90% of the time we buy the kids’ school shoes from consignment stores but I just bought both Greta and Cece brand new pairs of shoes for school, for a grand total of $80 — one pair was already marked down, plus there was a buy one get one 50% off deal. Paying $40 for a pair of shoes STILL seems like a lot to me but they are so excited to have pristine shoes for the start of school and they really do look sharp! They wear uniforms and G in particular HATES that fact, so I think it was worth a little splurge to get her the shoes she really wanted at least.
Two things to look forward to in September — school starts September 1 and we all are ready for more structure (although I’m NOT looking forward to the early mornings). Also, we were just invited to a pool party at our friend’s parents’ house over Labor Day weekend — these parties are the highlight of our summer but they’ve been dealing with some home renovations and we thought there may not be a party this year. Everyone is soo excited!
It is SO long, Kate… but also fascinating and I am ever so glad I read it.
Congrats again on a beautiful baby boy. Enjoy all the newborn snuggles.
And that’s such fun news about the pool party. It’s always so nice to have something like that to look forward to in the future schedule, as well.
I read GWTW in high school – I don’t remember much about it, only that I was really disappointed at the end because I had been promised some romantic love story, and … well it definitely was not that.
Water leaks are the worst! They’re often either huge and gushing, or small and pervasive and almost unnoticeable until they become a thing. We discovered a leak in the waterline to our fridge the week before we were to go on vacation….
I think the happiest thing for me was going to see a show at the Shaw Festival in Niagara on the Lake. Ever since I was a child I’ve wanted to go to the Shaw Festival. It is a gorgeous theatre facility, and makes going to the theatre an EVENT – there are gardens to walk through, the building is gorgeous, there are places for people to hang out and talk…. It make me kind of sad that my opera company has lost its home.
I’m glad you found your water leak quickly and without too much damage; they can be SO destructive.
I think the book ending was spectacular AND I also was left wanting more. I really, really, really want to know how Mitchell envisioned Scarlett’s life turning out. Did she get Rhett back??
Great roundup!
I read Gone With the Wind in junior high and saw the movie shortly after. I thought the movie was cheesey and actually laughed out loud when Rhett ran down the stairs after Bonnie fell (was it Bonnie who fell??) Never re-read it. My main thought was when my sister had her first baby in 1983 and told me she was naming her daughter Ashley. I was shocked, and said, “Like the man in Gone With the Wind?!?”
So glad about the surgery date!
She’s in the OR right now. Praying all goes smoothly <3
I read Gone With The Wind about ten years ago, and it’s definitely complicated. I enjoyed it but it was frustrating; both in terms of Scarlett’s behaviour and the entire attitude of the book towards slavery. Mitchell herself was racist to say the least; unsurprising but still disappointing. I watched the film once and in the opening credits about the good old days my mother remarked ‘easy to say when you’re at the top!’
My birthday is coming up so I’m looking forward to that, although I don’t have concrete plans. My happy things this week are buying new running shoes, doing the park run on Saturday and planning a trip to Venice in October with my sister! I am trying to save money now, so am thinking of that as an early birthday present 😉 My actual birthday will probably be lowkey.
Definitely frustrating: I wanted to see Scarlett come to her senses. She had so much potential to be wise and kind!!!
Happy birthday (soon) and hooray for Venice!!! We loved our time there and I’d love to spend a few more days there sometime.
Hooray for getting things crossed off your to do list! Such a satisfying thing. And you really had a good run of things being less expensive than feared. Yay!
I read GWTW in high school. I remember finding it kind of long and feeling like it had really good parts and really draggy parts. I’ve got no motivation to read it again!
I’m with you on the hard and good thing about summer. Need to officially decide on when we start back to homeschooling. The public schools aren’t going back until the 7th or 8th – so late! I am leaning towards starting the week before on the 31st but my list of (maybe aspirational?) summer projects is still so long.
Agreed—some parts of the book definitely dragged! I can see reading again, but I think I need a few years off. It is a tome!
All the best with the return to school routines <3
So many happy things! I love the end-of-summer fun you and your kids are having — and I am a little sad that our summer is over, even though I’m also relieved to return to the routine of the school year.
“I feel like my to-do list is a bit like Mary Poppins’s carpetbag. It has no bottom.” <— THIS. I made two onerous phone calls and sent two texts/emails this morning, in hopes of making progress on my own carpetbag. I am also very slowly whittling away the number of unread blog posts I missed while on vacation. VERY SLOWLY, but it's happening. And it's kind of fun to have so many posts to read whenever I have a moment!
There is a sense of success when I get to the bottom of my list… but then I almost immediately have a brand new list to start. There is no end. C’est la vie, I guess. But I try to revel in the satisfaction of the momentary completion 😉
What a relief about the windshield and brake replacement costing less than you expected/not impacting your insurance premium! We have had a sort of bad run of home ownership/unexpected expenses popping up. First, our air conditioner stopped working on a Friday night during an extremely hot week. My dad was able to talk to Phil and figure out the likely problem (capacitor needed to be replaced) but since we had it fixed on a Saturday, it was $500 as there was an extra fee for a weekend service call. But it was going to be 95 and humid that weekend so it was worth paying to get it fixed asap. Then last week, the spring on our garage door broke so the door wouldn’t fully close without some intervention on Phil’s part. We’ve had a number of issues with the garage door and I’ve lobbied to replace the whole dang thing. It’s so heavy that when we lose power and need to manually open it ourselves, Phil has to find another male to help him lift it. I think I am pretty fit but it’s beyond my ability to help lift this stupid, heavy wood door. The garage repair person came last week and said it would be $700 to replace the spring or $3000 to replace the door/garage opener/etc. Phil thought it would be $5k-7k to replace everything. Spending $3k to replace everything was something we could agree on. And the new opener will be battery operated so we will never have to manually open the dang thing again! Hurrah! (losing power is unfortunately quite common since our power lines are all above ground so a big storm easily causes issues).
I am considering reading Gone With the Wind but might make it a retirement project… It is such a long book so I’d have to stop borrowing books for awhile to make sure I could get through it in time. I read it as a teenager as it is my SIL’s favorite book of all time.
In September, I’m looking forward to the return to school. We are lucky that our summers do not really look different from our school years, schedule wise. We are all still out the door at 7am and home at 5pm nearly every day. I am relieved our schedule does not change! But we did make Paul do some math homework for the last several months and there was just wailing and gnashing of teeth over it… so I am ready to have him focused on a curriculum again because he does not take kindly to his parents trying to educate him…
What a relief it will be to have a new garage door. Those annoying issues that keep cropping up (but that don’t HAVE to be fixed) are so annoying. While it stinks to have to fork out $3K, it’s almost a relief your hand was forced and that going with a new door makes the most sense. What a happy day that will be to have the battery operated opener.
Gone with the Wind is DEFINITELY a reading project. And I stayed up way too late for most of a week to get through it. Major demerit for that, but it’s also fun to be so emotionally invested in a book that I act recklessly (recklessly being staying up beyond midnight multiple times).
I am so ready to have school routines again. It has been an exceptionally long time since we’ve had structure of that level.
Maybe GWTW will be my 2027 reading challenge. I haven’t been too keen on reading it, but it’s making the rounds in Cool Blogger Land and everyone seems to rave about it!
I am forever impressed at your thrifting prowess! Like-new Nike sneakers for $28?! AMAZING.
I’m looking forward to football starting in September! I love spending my Sundays at my mom’s house, watching the games and having lots of family time!
It is definitely an investment of time and emotional energy, but will inspire… a lot of thoughts for you, I think!