Happy Things Friday: 9 October

Wow. Canadian Thanksgiving really crept up on me this year.

John arrives home later today from a work trip to Helsinki, and tomorrow my father-in-law arrives for a week-long visit. A turkey has been purchased! Pies (pumpkin and pecan) are in the freezer! All the ingredients for a variety of beloved family favourites are at the ready (most importantly: a traditional Portuguese codfish dinner, seafood casserole, and turkey dinner with all the fixings).

The last week has been… a lot.

Last Friday after school we had a friend (*clears throat*) of Belle’s over for dinner which was lovely. Indy biked to a friend’s house (rather spontaneously) for some trampoline play and ate his supper there. We played games (I am highly competitive when playing both Codenames and Scattergories, and I lost at both).

Then we headed out to a multi-generational church event and didn’t get home until after 9:00 pm. It was amazing (more on this below). It was also Friday night and my dream for Friday night is to be in my PJs by 7:30 pm.

Saturday involved several hours of driving (to accommodate kid plans), and some unexpected socializing. Sunday was church, John’s departure mid-afternoon, and then an evening meeting (in a large group environment which is exhausting for my introverted self) outside the house from which I didn’t return until after 9 pm. Indy was still awake and keen to be tucked in and read to. This is sweet. Also, Mama is tuckered.

Monday night was pickleball (not home until after 8:30 pm, then tuck-in, teeth, snack, reading and all that rigamarole).

I could go on, but you get the idea and likely can match and raise me. The short version is we had something every. single. night. this. week.

On the one hand, I feel like I shouldn’t be so tired and overwhelmed. On the other hand, there are days when I literally feel like I do not stop—until I have an energy crash around dinner time. And then there is usually somewhere to go, dinner dishes to deal with, bedtime routines to oversee.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

It’s all good, in a way. Meaningful activities, intentional time spent with friends and kids, the daily routines of keeping our house and family functioning, which mean I have the blessing of a home and family.

But boy howdy… IT NEVER ENDS. The second I feel quasi-on-top-of-things, some unexpected happens, a practice gets added to the schedule, or an appointment needs rescheduling (requiring dreaded phone calls). Laundry seems to multiply in the baskets, food seems to magically disappear from the fridge but never magically appear, garbage cans that were just emptied need emptying again, floors never look vacuumed even though they were A MERE FEW MINUTES AGO.

Also, my blog is getting attacked by bots, causing it to go down temporarily, which is… annoying. I’m currently with Bluehost which has been a great starter host, but they basically said to avoid this issue I need to buy a security package and… there are no guarantees it will work. Kristen uses Deep Roots and while they’re on the pricier side, apparently you ALWAYS GET HUMANS. (When I call Bluehost it takes a while to get past the AI agent which is frustrating because the AI agent—who has a very soothing voice, I will add—is not actually able to solve any of my problems and “she” also got my name wrong and kept calling me Alvira… hey, at least it’s not Anne.)

PSA: if you get a 429 error (“Too Many Requests”), unfortunately it’s because of bots inundating my site and I am working toward a solution. But one measly human against the AI machine does not feel like an equal match. I did alter something ever so slightly on the backend and we will see if it helps at all.

Moving on.

There were playdates and birthday presents to wrap and library books to return and bills to pay and dishwashers to empty. And despite occasionally getting a hit of dopamine that my list was looking quasi reasonable, life is mostly a Sisyphean trek uphill.

Thankfully, there are very Happy Things along the way. Let’s discuss.

THRIFTED DRESSES

I have had great luck updating my dress collection. I’ve found three new-to-me options at thrift stores. The one I frequent sells dresses for $5.95. That price is hard to beat!

I needed to be quasi-presentable on a video work call (also last Friday; it was two hours, fun but exhausting, and once I hopped off I immediately got in the car and went to pick up kids at school and then launched directly into supper prep when I got home before leaving for church) and dresses are the path of least resistance for me.

The next one is GREEN VELVET!!! It makes me feel a bit like Rosemary Clooney in White Christmas. (Minus the dancing ability and proximity to Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby.)

Okay. Maybe anything associated with Rosemary Clooney is a bit of a stretch but the fact remains that this is such a great fall/winter dress! This was my outfit for church on Sunday.

My Wednesday evening volunteering at church youth group (there was a lot of time spent at church this week: Friday, Sunday, Monday, AND Wednesday night) outfit was not a dress, but it was all thrifted (over a year ago… so none of this is “new”): the shoes, earrings, pants, sweater, tank top underneath and sports bra below that.

Why are my eyebrows raised in this photo? I have no idea.

BELLE’S ENTHUSIASM

We had an aforementioned worship night on Friday evening. It was great. In one row you had a 90-year-old woman swaying to the music, toddlers sprawled on seats in PJs, and 70 teenagers forming a tame Baptist version of a mosh pit at the front of the church.

At one point we broke into groups and were supposed to retell a specific Bible story in our own words (I happened to be in a group with the 90-year-old and perhaps the most adorable 10-year-old to ever walk the face of this earth). Belle was off in another group and at one point the speaker called everyone’s attention to the fact that Belle was ACTING all the key details of the story. She got a round of applause for that. And I’m still laughing about it.

Speaking of her enthusiasm… she sent me this the other day.

(And yes, she prefers 24-hour time.)

COOL BLOGGERS WALKING CLUB

Huge thanks to everyone participating in the Fall Edition of the CBWC. It’s always so much fun to receive photos and updates from various spots around the world.

The recap from Week 1 is live!

BONUS HAPPY THINGS

• E-mails from readers. I receive so much helpful advice (most recently with regard to staying warm this winter). I read each and every message and truly appreciate people taking the time to engage!!

• A good sandwich. I was on a sandwich kick this week. One day I had a tuna sandwich (John makes the literal best tuna filling) on an Ancient Grains bread that was delicious. Another day, I used a homemade cheese scone and panini-pressed it with (more) tuna filling and a few slices of bell pepper… SO GOOD!

• Instant Pot beef, veggie, and barley stew. The lighting is terrible, but the house smelled so good and this was yummy. One child (who has gotten progressively pickier as she has gotten older—oops, let that cat out of the bag) even went back for seconds.
• Coffee. When John’s away I tend to revert back to pour-over; one morning I treated myself to a full coffee maker brew and drank… a lot more coffee. Maybe not a great thing in terms of caffeine intake, but delicious.
• My kids’ love of oatmeal. It’s the one breakfast meal they enjoy that I know is actually filling them up for a long day at school!
• Sewing projects. Okay, the sewing part isn’t a Happy Thing because I despise all handwork. BUT, I had four different repairs that needed to happen and I not only got those done, I organized my little sewing kit.

• Trampoline time! This hand-me-down trampoline has brought so many hours of joy to Indy (and his friends). One day this week he and a friend were outside in the pouring rain playing volleyball (while jumping). They were soaked and covered in grass clippings—this is why my floors never stay clean—but had an absolute blast.
• Cold water. What a gift!
• Fresh-from-the-oven ginger cookies. I haven’t made my favourite recipe since last Christmas and they were every bit as delicious as I remembered, quick to make, and my secret is doubling the spices.

• John texted me a picture of our beloved Taiga rollercoaster at Linnanmäki when he headed past en route to the airport. What a happy memory for our whole family.

• Our fridge freezer was in SHAMBLES. Everything was a mess, the bottom was covered in crumbs and it just gave me major ick vibes. I finally pulled everything out, reorganized things, added a second riser and little storage bin… and I smile each time I open the freezer. It will look like this for approximately two days—and that’s being optimistic—and then start a quick and steady descent back into chaos, but it looks nice while it lasts.

• I read this tiny memoir yesterday and WOW it packs a punch. I had it confused with My Left Foot (I clearly remembered watching Daniel Day-Lewis—he won an Oscar for his role) where a man with cerebral palsy is able to paint (and do all sorts of other things) with his left foot. Wrong story! The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is written by Jean-Dominique Bauby who was the former editor-in-chief of the French fashion magazine, Elle. He had a rare form of stroke and ended up in “locked-in syndrome” and could only communicate and write this memoir by blinking his left eye to signal letter selection based on a modified alphabetical ordering chart. In case you were curious, the final version of the memoir required about 200,000 blinks. Equal parts fascinating, heartbreaking, and beautifully written. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was also made into a film (Mathieu Amalric plays Bauby).

And that’s a wrap. To all my Canadian friends, safe travels and have a wonderful holiday weekend! To everyone else, Happy Normal Weekending.

Your turn.

• What are your weekend plans?
• What one house chore seems especially Sisyphean to you?
• Best meal you ate all week?