May 2026 Accountability Buddy

Friday, May 1

Day off

Saturday, May 2

45-minute yin yoga

Sunday, May 3

30-minute full body compound strength workout

30-minute yin yoga

Monday, May 4

Stupid unplanned day off. The dog was sick and it sort of upended my entire schedule. 

Tuesday, May 5

45-minute body blast class at the community center after work

I yelled "SHOES" at the end of class and literally EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THE CLASS came over. I love it. This is probably my largest foot selfie ever.

Wednesday, May 6

15-minute stretch class at lunchtime*

15-minute evening yoga flow - This week has been endless and it's only Wednesday. I needed chill.

20-minute evening yoga stretch - Okay, I wanted to chill, but the full body scan thing does not resonate with me. Be aware. 

Thursday, May 7

30-minute yoga video at the student union

Friday, May 8

15-minute stretch class at lunchtime

Saturday, May 9

30-minute functional full body and core

10-minute full body stretch

Sunday, May 10

15-minute dance cardio

15-minute standing ab workout

15-minute full body yoga stretch

Monday, May 11

30-minute yoga video at the student union

Tuesday, May 12

15-minute yin yoga stretches in the middle of the damn work day because all I did was sit at my desk and I was DYING

45-minute body blast class at the community center after work

Wednesday, May 13

15-minute stretch class at lunchtime

Thursday, May 14

30-minute yoga video at the student union

Friday, May 15

15-minute stretch class at lunchtime

5-minute warmup (scam)

27-minute abs and upper body strength training

Saturday, May 16

15-minute dumbbell leg workout

15-minute low-impact cardio

15-minute post-workout stretch

Sunday, May 17

15-minute standing abs workout - This is really good. It's a good balance and shoulder workout, too. 

10-minute foot and ankle mobility

20-minute full body yoga flow

Real talk: A bird pooped on my mat. 

Monday, May 18

45-minute Park Fit class at a local park

Tuesday, May 19

15-minute office break yoga

5-minute ankle mobility

Wednesday, May 20

15-minute stretch class at lunchtime

15-minute ankle mobility stretches

30-minute total body dumbbell workout

Thursday, May 21

35-minute deep fascia stretch yoga

Friday, May 22

15-minute stretch class at lunchtime

30-minute total body dumbbell workout

Saturday, May 23

30-minute grounding yoga practice

Sunday, May 24

35-minute standing HIIT (no jumping) 

15-minute after workout yoga

Monday, May 25

30-minute no-repeat full body dumbbell workout

15-minute yin yoga (I was going to do the whole 30 minutes, but I got really frustrated with child's pose (it's supposed to be a "resting pose," but it's agony for my bad leg and I try all the modifications, but they don't really get the back stretch I want and I have to admit that I let the frustration win today. I'll try again tomorrow)

Tuesday, May 26

Day off

Wednesday, May 27

15-minute stretch class at lunchtime

40-minute yin yoga for stress - Sometimes you half-ass a workout, you know? 

Thursday, May 28

10-minute upper body dumbbell workout

10-minute standing lower body workout with dumbbells

10-minute standing abs

Friday, May 29

15-minute stretch class at lunchtime

25-minute yin yoga - I'm really getting stressed out over how not in the zone I've been feeling in yoga. Yoga is my go-to happy place and the fact that I can't just sink into these last few practices is really and truly frustrating me. If I don't feel like lifting on a given day, oh well. But I feel like I can always count on yoga. Ugh. I'll keep coming back to the mat until I get back into the groove. 

Saturday, May 30

30-minute no repeat - There's no time to switch out weights in this one, so I had to pause it a lot. Like this really took me 45 minutes to do.

15-minute full body stretch

Sunday, May 31

20-minute walking workout

15-minute standing abs

15-minute yin yoga for legs

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*Our local healthcare organization does free stretch classes virtually three times a week. Sign up here! It's free. It's fun. We regularly talk about candy and what's for lunch. It's a delightful break in the middle of the day. You do not have to have your camera on. She has the classes out there for the rest of the year, so you'd only have to register ONCE. 

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Total: 25/31 (80.6%)days doing thirty minutes or more

Cardio/strength: 16 days

Yoga: 10 days 

Short stretch classes at lunchtime: 7 days

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Did you meet your fitness goals this month? 

What I Read: May 2026

5/1: The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Vol. 1 (The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion #1) by Beth Brower  (library, 2019) - I know this is a beloved series, but I'm here to tell you that it was a real snooze. Not my type of book. 2.5/5 stars

5/2: Cherry Baby by Rainbow Rowell (library, 2025) - There's a dog. That will make any book better, won't it? 4/5 stars

5/7: Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn (library audiobook narrated by Nicol Zanzarella, 2019) - I stand by my original review. This might be my favorite romance novel ever. 5/5 stars

5/9: Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum, narrated by Shanna Tran (library, 2022) - Look, this book was boring, preachy, and made me sort of hate life. Don't read this. What a waste of a good premise. 2.5/5 stars

5/9: American Fantasy by Emma Straub (library, 2026) - This was so readable, but isn't a good book? Whatever, it was fun, I think? 3/5 stars

5/9: One Fell Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles #3) by Ilona Andrews (library ebook, 2016) - I do find this series to be absolutely charming. There's a killer dog and a smart cat and werewolves and vampires and I think I'm just going to keep reading this series because I like it so much. It's not going to win a Pulitzer, but I don't need it to be a prize winner. 4/5 stars

5/13: On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandara Horowitz (library, 2013) - This is a good starter for someone who walks the same block over and over and over again (ahem) to look at things through a new lens. 4/5 stars

5/16: Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (ebook I own, 2026) - I did not care for this It Book everyone else loves. But I would kill for a tell-all written by Leta Armstrong. 3/5 stars

5/16: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (library audiobook narrated by Bernadette Dunne, 1962) - I always want Jackson books to be slightly better. The writing is really good, but there's just something chilly about the writing that means I feel like the author's holding me at a distance. 3/5 stars

5/23: Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History by Lea Ypi (library, 2021) - I don't know. Memoir isn't for me. This girl grew up under Soviet-style socialism and Albania until the turbulent 1990s changed everything in the country. It just wasn't for me. 3/5 stars

5/26: Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson (library, 2023) - We read this for my IRL book club. I thought it was a pretty good read, although it wasn't particularly memorable. 4/5 stars

5/28: Platform Decay (Murderbot #8) by Martha Wells (library, 2026) - The early books in this series were such a joy for me. Murderbot was hysterical and there were a lot of lines that made me laugh out loud. As Murderbot develops relationships with humans, they are less sarcastic and misanthropic and I enjoy the series less and less. I'm probably going to stop reading here. 3/5 stars

5/31: The Appeal (The Appeal #1) by Janice Hallet (library, 2022) - Two first-year law students are digging through emails and other documents to try to figure out how a theater company is involved in a death. It was fast-paced, but I was super confused by the transition from the English version to the American (they used dollars for everything, but America was "across the pond" and it made everything kind of confusing). Enjoyable mystery, I thought. 4/5 stars

Total: 13 books (but at least two are really novellas)
Average star rating: 3.46/5 stars

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Did not finish:

Lake Effect by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney - I was listening on audiobook and, frankly, marriage in peril makes me exceedingly uncomfortable. This is a me problem, but I was raised in a family with domestic violence and when parents are fighting/cheating, I get suuuuuper anxious. DNF at 13%. 

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I'm ready to get slammed because I know Yesteryear and Emma Lion are super beloved. What is a book you don't love that everyone else does? 

May 2026 Photo A Day: Week Four

Saturday, May 23 - Look at this cat!! I can't stand the cuteness.

Sunday, May 24 - It was our anniversary. I forgot about the yearly photo until it was nearly bedtime. We took a selfie. It is horribly unflattering to both of us, but I guess in the interest of keeping this tradition alive, here's a terrible photo.

Monday, May 25 - Two photos that sort of touch on how weird it felt to be "celebrating" Memorial Day today. 

First up, $2.79 for a pint versus $1.50 for a pint is a difference that makes a difference in whether or not I'm going to buy these raspberries. WHAT'S THE PRICE, GROCERY STORE?

Then there's this. If there's never been a sadder execution of patriotism, I haven't seen it. Happy Memorial Day, America.

Tuesday, May 26 - My Tuesday night fitness class has ended for the summer, but we all walked over to our local ice cream stand for some sweet treats. 

Wednesday, May 27 - Tomorrow is our first registration event at work. It's a lot of work on our end and it meant we spent much of the afternoon in one of our academic buildings getting things ready. The theme: random animals. Also, the internet and phones went out for HOURS and we had no idea because we were busy cleaning, writing on whiteboards, and taking photos of random animals.

Thursday, May 28 - Zelda is basically allowed anywhere downstairs except for the table and stove/countertops. Anywhere else? Fine. Guess where I found her when I came out of the shower tonight?

Friday, May 29 - For the last two weeks, we've had to give Hannah this antibiotic that comes in a powder and is really bitter tasting. We have had to do this twice a day. It involves copious amounts of pumpkin and chicken HANDFED TO THE DOG. Today is the last day we have to do this. Now it will be a couple of weeks of once a day and then a couple of weeks of once every other day and then once every two days and then "as needed." 

I wish I could take a photo of Hannah's face as she eats this stuff. (I can't because my hands are covered in pumpkin.) She hates it so much. I haven't been to work on time in weeks because it's taking me twenty minutes to get her to eat two tablespoons of this what I can only imagine is a gross pumpkin mixture. Anyway, here's to only having to do it at dinnertime from now on! I can (maybe?) get to work on time. 

Saturday, May 30 - It's peony time!

Sunday, May 31 - Gratuitous photos of my girls. 

New Hannah habit: Doesn't want to be on a walk, but also doesn't want to come inside when we get to the house, so she just lays down on the driveway. 

Are you familiar with the rescue dog internet meme where they take photos of dogs before and after being told they were good. Here's Hannah's version.

Before:

After "you're such a good girl for eating that yucky pumpkin":

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What flowers are in bloom near you? Could you draw your favorite animal? 

Happy Birthday to Elisabeth!

In the early 1990s, there was a popular children's show in America called Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (entire episodes available on YouTube - is this legal? who knows?) and the a cappella group Rockapella provided the most amazing soundtrack. I was not really in the age group for Carmen Sandiego in the early 1990s, but even now, I'll sometimes start singing the theme song. 

So, when Elisabeth and her family started doing their gap year traveling across Europe, it shouldn't come to anyone's surprise that I regularly found myself singing that song to myself with alternate lyrics.

Today is Elisabeth's birthday. Where is she? What exciting adventure is she on? WHO KNOWS?

Elisabeth is our fearless Nova Scotian blogger (see her Top Twenty (er - Twenty Four) Favourite Things to See/Do in Nova Scotia post from my 20th Anniversary series if you haven't ever seen some of her gorgeous photos). She's the mother of two and she and her family are on an EPIC ADVENTURE. 

If you have not been to Elisabeth's blog, she's known for posts about her Top/Bottom Fives, Frugality, and inspiring Happy Things Friday posts. She's honest, but keeps it light and upbeat even as THERE'S YET ANOTHER SNOW DAY. 

Everyone head over to her blog and wish her a happy, happy day!

Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History by Lea Ypi

Tobia introduced me to the Read Around the World challenge in which you attempt to read a book from every country in the world. This isn't a priority for me, but I have started a list and every month or two I'll try to read something off it. Free by Lea Ypi is something that wouldn't have landed on my radar had it not been for this challenge. Lea Ypi was born in Albania, so I guess I decided to start at the top. 

 

Lea is a young teen living in Albania in a Soviet-style socialist nation. She takes everything at face value, so finds discussions about politics in her family confusing since everyone is seeming to talk in code. The early 1990s brought democratic elections and Albania attempting to form closer ties to the west. What happened was a rise in pyramid schemes and by 1997 there is a civil war that required international intervention. In Lea's life, she's attempting to finish high school while the sound of Kalashnikovs echoes through the city. Her mother and brother flee to Italy, leaving her with her father. Meanwhile, Lea's just a typical teenage girl, trying to figure out who she is and what she wants her life to look like, although the future looked bleak and hard to imagine.

I think I have been utterly ruined by fiction. I generally find memoir underwhelming. And this was the case in this book. The events Ypi went through are unimaginably harsh and scary, but I was still mostly underwhelmed. This is obviously a me issue. It was neither minute enough about the domestic details (what did their meals look like? how did they do laundry?) nor was her unreliable teenage narrator self detailed enough about the political environs to invest me in the outcome of national events. I mostly just read this book in a sort of trance, trying to figure out what was going on, even though I knew nothing about Albanian history and finally had resort to looking it up in Wikipedia to figure out what was going on. 

If you're into this sort of memoir, you'll like this. If not, you can probably skip it. 

3/5 stars

Lines of note:

In my family, everyone had a favourite revolution, just as everyone had a favourite summer fruit. My mother's favourite fruit was watermelon, and her favourite revolution was the English one. Mine were figs and Russian. My father emphasized that he was sympathetic to all our revolutions but his favourite was the one that had yet to take place. As to his favourite fruit, it was quince -  but it could choke you when it wasn't fully ripe, so he was often reluctant to indulge. (page 88-89)

There were a number of funny moments in this book and this whole fruit/revolution thing did make me chortle. 

Worrying was the default condition of his existence, a predicament as natural as beathing and sleeping. (page 190)

I felt personally attacked by this sentence. 

One might killed by a car, like my classmate Dritan, who was walking by the beach one evening and got run over by a young man teaching himself to drive his uncle's Audi. Or one might disappear without a trace, like Sokrat, Besa's father, who suffered from a limp and worked with a dinghy. Each night, he helped smuggle people to Italy, then returned to sleep in his bed, except for the night he didn't. And all sorts of small accidents could happen to you, like hitting a broken lamppost on a dark street while walking or falling into a manhole whose cover had just been stolen for its steel. Or one could be harassed all the way home by hungry stray dogs. Or it could be drunken men, or boys placing bets on how girls would respond to catcalling. (page 216)

I always look back fondly at the 1990s. In the US, there was no concern about war, the biggest scandal was Clarence Thomas and the Coke bottle and if Bill Clinton had indeed had sex with that woman. But reading this does make you realize that your position at birth is just an accident. 

Things I looked up:

"If" by Rudyard Kipling - Here's a link to this poem. 

Hat mentions (why hats?):

fat top hat (page 76)

I liked the sun hat. (page )

cardboard hats (page 97)

bags with hats and kites (page 98)

worn a hat (page 126)

the hat was probably still hanging (page 126)

straw hat (page 201)

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Have you read a book by an Albanian author before? 

May 2026 Photo A Day: Week Three

Saturday, May 16 - It's too hot for Hannah. We are literally less than a block from our house and she just can't do it anymore. 

Sunday, May 17 - Anne and Birchie came over to visit! They bribed Hannah with chicken and we worked on a jigsaw puzzle. And Hannah and I are not as good at doggy selfies as Birchie is.

She looks so worried!

Monday, May 18 - For exciting reasons, I cannot attend my regular fitness class tomorrow after work. My fitness instructor holds a class at a neighboring town on Mondays, though, so I left work early and attended that one instead. There was a yellow goat at the park where we were throwing ourselves about.

Tuesday, May 19 - I went to an author event with Sarah and her friend Shannon at the Madison Public Library. It was so much fun!

Wednesday, May 20 - Listen, friends. An old dog does not want to go for a walk. An old dog wants to lay down in the sun. 

Photo credit: Dr. BB

Thursday, May 21 - THIS CAT. I can't tell you how much I want to squeeze her because of her cuteness. 

Photo credit: Dr. BB

Friday, May 22 - This area was underwater last month! I love how grumpy Hannah looks in all these photos. She's SO SERIOUS. I frequently wonder what it would be like to have a goofy dog. 

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When's the last time you were at the library? Took a picture of a dog?

Five for Friday #44: The Happy Things Edition

There will not be one unhappy item in this entire list. NOT ONE. You will not bring me down, 2026!

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1) Puzzling - Last weekend, Birchie and Anne came to see Hannah and Zelda hang out with me in my town. The most exciting thing I could offer them on a  rainy Sunday was to do a jigsaw puzzle on my dining room table. We did a bit of it and then my husband took over.

Tuesday morning

Wednesday morning

 Wednesday evening

Bonus puzzle photo: When I put puzzles away, I separate the edge pieces. Do you do that?

Thursday night

2) San photos - There is a lot of construction happening in my town. They're putting in fiber optic cables or something. That means there's a lot of digging and marking of where underground lines and pipes are located on the ground. Meanwhile, I keep spotting spray paint that reads SAN and immediately think of San. You're welcome for this little peek into my daily walks.

 

3) Book event - On Tuesday, I met with Sarah and her friend Shannon to go to an author Q&A with Caro Claire Burke, the author of Yesteryear. Then we went out to eat tacos! I didn't get home until ten, which is insane for a school night! It was so much fun.

4) Snail mail - I have been so remiss in thanking everyone for sending me snail mail! Postcards! Little notes of encouragement! I really appreciate it. And look what Tobia sent me! These little purple bracelets make me so happy. I wear them every single day.

5) Mystery book reveal - Dulcie sent me an email with the reveal of the mystery book from the giveaway I did a few weeks ago!

I've never even heard of that book!

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Anyone read Kitty Karr? Do you like jigsaw puzzles? What do you consider "late" on a worknight? 

Happy long weekend to my American friends. Happy regular weekend to my international peeps!