Five for Friday, Edition #46

Let's see if I can come up with five topics. Can I do it? 

1) I was driving to work earlier this week when a sedan heading in the opposite direction flashed its headlights at me. The driver was warning me about a sheriff's car parked on the side of the road. How kind! There are nice people left in the world. 

2) Friends, the air quality is poor here right now because of wildfire smoke. I am struggling. That is all. Even in the house and at my office, I feel slightly nauseated and there's a smell that is permanently in my nostrils. I can't imagine what it was like at the point of origin in Canada and I have so much sympathy for people who work outdoors and the poor animals who live outdoors. I have taken to wearing a mask when I'm walking around campus and taking Hannah out these days. I feel like I have a better understanding of The Road now. 

3) This weekend! It's a big one in our town. There's a big fundraiser situation at the local community center tonight and Saturday there is an Adult Book Fair and there are lots of activities around town, including vendors, local author book signings, "Bookish Pilates" (I have no idea what that is, but you better believe that I signed up for it), DIY bookmarks at the library, and BOOK TRIVIA. My excitement about the book trivia is pretty high. I'm trying to get the best trivia team possible, but people keep telling me they "have other plans." *sigh* I guess that's allowed.

4) One of my goals this month was to text at least one person every day and that person could not be my  husband. This means I have taken to just randomly texting my friends and family random questions. What was the name of the dance club we went to in college? What is your interpretation of the song "Don't Take the Girl" by Tim McGraw? Do you think that she died in childbirth? How many mittens could we make from the fur I brush off my cat in a week? 

Hey, if I text you a random question, it just means I love you.

5) Random songs Spotify has recommended to me in the last two weeks:

"Love Song" by Tesla - Do I secretly love this song?

"Hey Cinderella" by Suzy Bogguss - It's not even a secret that I love this song, but I had forgotten its existence. How did Spotify know?

Every fucking George Strait song in the world until I finally blocked him as an artist. I just feel like he's a second-rate Garth? 

"The Irish Rover" by the Pogues - I have to admit that my Pogues knowledge is pretty much limited to "Fairytale of New York," but maybe they are my new favorite band?

"The Unicorn Song" by The Irish Rovers - At this point, I thought Spotify was punking me because this song is such a throwback to my childhood. HOW DID IT KNOW?

"If I Had a Hammer" by Peter, Paul, and Mary - Speaking of throwbacks from my youth, this gem was immediately added to my daily playlist. It's the hammer of justice/It's the bell of freedom - Listen, I can pretend to be Mary Travers when I'm driving to work. 

I just looked up my top song for the month and it's Billy Ray Cyrus. I'd be embarrassed, but Some Gave All is a dope album and he had some great singles. ("Could've Been Me" is the song, but "Words by Heart" is also up there.) Speaking of embarrassed, as soon as Toby Keith died and I wouldn't financially support his anymore, I immediately unblocked him on Spotify and started listening to his songs again. The musical heart wants what the musical heart wants.

Okay, great, that was five meaningless things. How's your air quality? What is your interpretation of the song "Don't Take the Girl" by Tim McGraw? Would you do book trivia with me if you weren't busy tomorrow? 

Photo Every Day: June 2026, Week 2

Thursday, July 9
When I took Hannah out this morning, it started raining on us. Hard. I got her to do her business, we raced home, the rain stopped 30 seconds later, and it rained no more for the rest of the day. Just our luck, I guess. I had to dry Hannah off with a towel and we made it into a game where I covered her and asked "where's my puppy?" and her little tail would wag and she would throw the towel off. I'd cover her again and the whole thing would repeat. 

I follow a lot of pet rescue places on social media and there have been a lot of "look at my rescue dog coming out of its shell" posts recently and, while I am so happy these dogs are happy, I sometimes wonder if Hannah might have been better off in a family with kids and other dogs and less neurotic humans. But then she plays with me like this and realize that Hannah is better off with us than she would be with so many other people. But I still wish she didn't look so worried all the time. 

Friday, July 10

Whoops. I forgot to take a photo. Enjoy a picture of lilies I took on Saturday instead.

Saturday, July 12

I had to pick up Zelda's steroid at the vet and as I was coming home, the gas tank fell below a quarter of a tank, which is when I feel like I need to fill up, as a responsible adult human. This was in the parking lot of the gas station where I stopped. USA! USA! Ugh. 

Sunday, July 13

I see that I keep forgetting I'm doing this photo every day exercise. I finished the graphic novel Raised by Ghosts today. The only photo I took all day was of the artwork at the front of the book. I love a pig, you know? 

Monday, July 14

There have been some very lame photos this week, so let's try some better ones? Maybe better ones?

First up, sunrise over the Rock! There's a mama duck with her ducklings. I was cooing over the ducklings. Hannah was not impressed. (We are standing on a dock. This is as close to the water as Hannah will get.)

It's crazy hot here this week and Hannah does this thing where she pretends she's super excited for a walk, but as soon as we get to our neighbor's yard, she lays down. IN THE DIRECT SUNLIGHT. When it's in the 90s. What a dog.  For anyone keeping track, note how Hannah is once again refusing to make eye contact with me. 

Who made homemade ice cream this weekend?! IT WAS ME!! YOU GUYS, IT WAS SO EASY. We have a KitchenAid bowl thingy and I chilled that bowl for about 48 hours. Then I made the ice cream base which I took from a random Reddit comment: 1.5 cups milk (I used whole), 1.5 cups heavy cream, 1/2 cup sugar, 2ish tablespoons vanilla extract (measure with your heart). For fun, I also split open two vanilla beans and threw them in. Heat this over medium-low heat until the sugar dissolves. Then you let that base chill for at least three hours. I put a piece of saran wrap right on top of the liquid mixture and then covered the bowl with a lid. 

When it was done chilling, I took off the saran wrap and the gross film stuck to the saran wrap! Win! Then I put the freezing KitchenAid bowl thingy on the KitchenAid and turned it on to speed 1. I dumped in the base and let it churn for 23 minutes. It was probably done at 20, but I wanted to be certain. It was a very soft serve at that point, so I popped it into a freezer safe container and froze it overnight before I took it to book club. 

It's a LONG process, but it's very very easy. 

Tuesday, July 14

This is what I saw as I was leaving for work today. MY PRECIOUS BABY GIRL. May we all be as relaxed as my cat someday. 

Sometimes people ask me if the dog and cat get along and I have to say that they sort of coexist in each other's world without much interaction except for when we first come downstairs in the morning and we greet them and Hannah gets so excited that she tries to stick her muzzle in Zelda's belly. Zelda does not care for that. But, look, if the cat were scared of Hannah, she would not be passed out like this at a height that Hannah could easily get her.

LOOK AT HER BELLY. (It's a trap. Don't touch it. You will get bit and/or scratched. She has all her teeth and all her claws and she's not afraid to use them.)

Wednesday, July 15

I went to the bookstore after work. I got a book. And some tiny books!

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Have you ever made homemade ice cream? What's your favorite recipe? Do you buy a lot of books? What's the last book you bought?

Kittentits by Holly Wilson

We read Kittentits by Holly Wilson for my IRL book club. Wilson is a local author, as in, she lives in my town and works at the university where I work. I consider her one of "my" faculty, since she's in one of the departments that I collaborate with regularly. So I'm going to be honest in this review, but I want you all to know that I know Holly and like Holly and we had her come to our book club to talk about the book.

It's 1992 and ten-year-old Molly is struggling. Her mom died when she was a baby, there was a fire at the last place she lived that killed people, including her cousin, and now she's attached herself to an ex-con who lives with her family in a halfway house. I don't want to talk about the rest of the plot of this book, but it is absolutely batshit and I honestly did not know what was happening half the time and the other half, I had no idea what was about to happen. There is a World's Fair in Chicago, a hot air balloon accident, a lady in an iron lung, conjoined twins, lots of tween cursing, and a seance co-hosted by a real ghost. I mean...this review says it all:

Here's the thing. This is not necessarily a book meant for me. Molly's really grieving and there is not a single responsible adult who is helping her out. There are some people who might be offended by the language Molly uses (as a 10-year-old!), but that language was pretty common in the 1990s, at least with a particular class of people in some geographic circles. It felt like this book was a bit of a fever dream to me and I honestly felt like after about 60 or 70 pages, this was just a story Molly was telling herself instead of real events. It hasn't been since The Library at Mount Char that I felt so off-balanced by a book where I couldn't possibly predict what insane thing was going to happen next. 

Kevin Wilson (he of Nothing to See Here fame) wrote in a blurb on the back that Kittentits was "wildly funny" and I have to admit that I found it unbearably sad and not funny at all. I just kept thinking about how Molly really needed just one person to pay attention to her. BUT! I also did not find Nothing to See Here particularly funny, so if that is a book you enjoyed, maybe you would enjoy this one. 

There are many things I did like about this book. Molly's voice is crystal clear. The cursing is creative. I really loved how many interpretations of the book there are.

1. Holly herself said that the events in the book happened in her mind. Molly may not reliably retell the exact details, but the events happened.

2. I think Molly's mom died and then she was involved in a fire and the rest of it is just a dream Molly had. 

Is it weird that I disagree with the author's interpretation of her own book? Maaaaybe. 

It's really an interesting book and I thought we had an interesting discussion about it, so it might be a good book club book option if you're looking for one. Just, you know, with the caveats about the things people might get upset about. 

(Also, does anyone want to get sad that this book - set in 1992 - was tagged as "historical fiction" in Goodreads? The 1990s are historical? I'm basically prehistoric at this point, I guess.)

3.5/5 stars, but 5/5 for having Holly come to our book club

Lines of note:

The VCR's built in and there's a chair and study table, a READ poster with Bo Jackson reading The Old Man and the Sea. (page 34)

Why is this a line of note? Because I talked with Nance about The Old Man in the Sea just last week (the comments of this post). Also, do you remember when I down a rabbit hole about READ posters when I reviewed Dear Fahrenheit 451?

I've been staring at the sky waiting for the mail guy for hours. Now I'm on the porch floor gargling my spit and scissoring my legs. (page 56)

Gosh, do kids even know what it means to be this bored in this day and age?

One day I ask Evelyn where does wind come from and she says the ocean and I say Eff no, I say it blows from the vast flatness of the Great American Plains. (page 62)

Who can possibly know where wind comes from? It is one of those things I will never understand. 

But the camp brochure, the Quaker girls: they wore their hair in beautiful smoothed ponytails and carried what I discovered later were lacrosse sticks. Behind them were other nice-haired girls eating apples, like they had gotten back from picking these apples then spread out these blankets to sit. Their teeth were big and white biting into the apples, two or fewer cavities in those mouths for sure.

In real life I'd never seen girls like this before, all cereal with no sugar, no marshmallows. Girls I knew were white girls like me, all ratted hair and pebbles sunk deep into the skin of our knees. Or Black girls, cleaner but lippy. Not afraid of anything. (page 263)

I loved this description so much. Do you ever remember looking at college brochures and thinking "I do not look like these people"? Or how all wedding photos looked glamourous and perfect and thinking that you would never having those types of photos? But then!! I was in a college brochure! I was in glamourous wedding photos! But I still sort of see myself as the white trash girl with the ratted hair, too.

Then after he's done Bozo the Clown will come out and make jokes to the audience, he'll go down our line and shake each one of our hands. (page 311)

Bozo the Clown recently came up in the comments section of Elisabeth's post. I just did a rabbit on Bozo and learned a lot. Strap in.

The character was created by Alan W. Livingston, and portrayed by Pinto Colvig for a children's storytelling record album and illustrated read-along book set in 1946. The character first appeared on US television in 1949 portrayed by Colvig. After the creative rights to Bozo were purchased by Larry Harmon in 1957, the character became a common franchise across the United States, with local television stations producing their own Bozo shows featuring the character. Local TV stations could put on their own local productions of the show complete with their own Bozo. Harmon bought out his business partners in 1965 and produced Bozo's Big Top for syndication to local television markets not producing their own Bozo shows in 1966, while Chicago's Bozo's Circus, which premiered in 1960, went national via cable and satellite in 1978.

YOU GUYS. THERE WAS MORE THAN ONE BOZO. 

Obviously the one in Chicago was the best and most famous (say the Midwesterner). 

Things I looked up:

Blue Sunshine (page 49) - Blue Sunshine is a 1977 American horror film written and directed by Jeff Lieberman, and starring Zalman King, Deborah Winters, and Mark Goddard. The plot focuses on a series of random murders in Los Angeles, in which the only common link between the perpetrators is a mysterious batch of LSD that they had all taken years prior. There's something about bald people? This film has a cult following and I sort of feel like I want to watch it? But that's crazy because I've watched a total of two movies in the last five years.

ear trumpets (page 58) - I had NO IDEA this was a thing. a tubular or funnel-shaped device which collects sound waves and leads them into the ear. They are used as hearing aids, resulting in a strengthening of the sound energy impact to the eardrum and thus improved hearing for a deaf or hard-of-hearing individual. Ear trumpets were made of sheet metal, silver, wood, snail shells or animal horns. They have largely been replaced in wealthier areas of the world by modern hearing aid technology that is much smaller and less obtrusive, albeit more expensive.

A sound trumpet does not "amplify" sound. It takes the sound power received over a large area and concentrates it into a smaller area. The received sound is louder, but no power has been created in the process. DID YOU ALL KNOW THIS AND NOT TELL ME?

from Cattle Kate to Sheriff Bridger (page 68) - Cattle Kate is a western wear store in Boise, Idaho. It's named after Ella Watson, a woman who was lynched after being accused of cattle rustling, but was probably killed for standing up for herself in a male-dominated world. Sheriff Bridger may or may not be made up.

Wolfgang Paalen fumage (page 182) - Paalen's technique, which Paalen described as “dictation by candle,” in which he would hold a candle flame up to a treated canvas while the paint was still wet, marking the surface with soot; painting with smoke

Paalen, 1937

Anton Chekhov's The Seagull (page 316) - a play by Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov, written in 1895 and first produced in 1896. The Seagull is generally considered to be the first of his four major plays. It dramatizes the romantic and artistic conflicts among four characters

Hat mentions (why hats?):

Resident Friend Liesel was here before the fire, a snub-nosed woman who wore braided wicker hats. (page 57)

green pointy hats (page 68)

white paper hats (page 73)

sea captain's hat (page 145)

fat guy wise men with hats like giant red pin cushions on their heads (page 303)

winter hat (page 305)

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Have you ever had an author come to your book club? Do you think this seems like a book you would enjoy? 

Photo Every Day: June 2026, Week 1

Warning: A lot of caps lock in this post. I feel PASSION. (And I learned blogging from this lady here and reading her Instagram post that included caps lock and parentheses made me feel SEEN. This post is dedicated to Amy, she who has no idea who I am.)

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Wednesday, July 1

Driving home, I saw a family of sandhill cranes. I didn't get the whole family because they were scared of me, but what a pretty sight. You can see two big ones here and a baby's head!

Thursday, July 2

I drive by this beautiful church on a hill when I drive from work to the place where I get my hair cut. Today I had a few extra minutes and I stopped to take a photo of it. 

Friday, July 3

I went to our new local bookstore after work to order a book. I bought a book! Woot woot! Anyway, at the register, there were teeny tiny things and I could not resist. The quarter is obviously for scale. (What am I going to do with these things? I have no idea. I give it a week before the cat has batted them under the fridge or something.)

Look, the title Moby-Dick should technically have a hyphen. I KNOW. 

Saturday, July 4

For non-American friends, this is PEAK USA. We were celebrating 250 years of the Declaration of Independence, which is when my good friend TJ (Thomas Jefferson - known as a rapist of women who he enslaved) told the British to suck it. I went to a parade and a cookout AS IS MY AMERICAN RIGHT. Do I sound obnoxious? This is how I think the rest of the world thinks about us. And the rest of the world is right, I think? 

Anyway, THE PARADE. I have thoughts about parades. You need to be ON THEME. What I mean by this is that, if you are doing an American Independence Day float, you need it to be red, white, and blue OVER THE TOP. I want flags and bunting. I want streamers. I want the vehicle pulling your float to be one of those colors. (A black pickup on the Fourth? Pfft. GTFO.) I want music* BLARING. I want some sort of crowd participation. Chucking candy? Great. T-shirt cannon? Very on theme. Dogs teaching children a dance? AMAZING. 

*What I really wanted was Sousa marches. What I got was a lot of "God Bless America," "Proud to be an American," and the national anthem. Fine. I guess. Also, THIS IS THE YEAR CHICAGO HAS BEEN SINGING ABOUT. 

Hey, if you are doing a float for a parade and want me to consult, I'll only charge $100 an hour because you're a loyal blog reader who is reading this absolute trash nonsense I'm writing. But, for real, for real. I have parade thoughts. 

This one is visually pretty good (SMOKE! ROCKETS! black pickup pfft), but there was no music or crowd work. 

Also, this might make us all feel a little better about the world, but the Republican float had a giant inflatable DT and when it went by, there was a notable chill in the air. And this is a Republican stronghold. No chill in the air for the Democrat float because the people on the float were too busy handing out candy for anyone to realize they were Democrats. 

(I have such complicated feelings about this country.)

Sunday, July 5

Is this the ONLY photo I took all day? Yes, yes it is. I guess if you're going to do only one photo, you do a good one. My precious, precious baby KITTEH. 

Monday, July 6

I went to a fitness class at a local park after work. Was it in the high 80s? Sure, but I had plenty of water with me. This is our view. Can you even imagine? So beautiful.

Tuesday, July 7

A note on platforming. Getting Hannah to climb on things is one of the greatest joys of my life. BUT. There are so many caveats. Because of her dodgy back, I don't want her to jump very often. Because of her innate timidness, she doesn't want to climb on things that are much taller than this rock she's posing on below. Because we don't want her on furniture in the house, we don't want her to think she can climb on just anything. So this is sort of complicated.

I basically only have per platform on rocks and tree trunks. If she were a different dog, I'd have her up on picnic tables and chairs and the like, but I have This Dog and I have to work with her physical limitations and fears. But if you heard a woman squealing with joy in the six o'clock hour this morning in a park in southeastern Wisconsin, it was me BECAUSE LOOK HOW ADORABLE SHE IS. Those ears! The absolute sass of refusing to look at the camera! That grey muzzle! This is why I think it's okay to spend hundred of dollars a month on my precious girls. 

Wednesday, July 8

Friends! The price of a first-class stamp (and postcard stamps, if that's something that you are interested in) from USPS is going up by FOUR CENTS on July 12. If you are anything like me, this news sent you into a state of PANIC. 

Yes, I went to the post office after work and purchased TWO rolls (100 each) of first-class stamps and 30 postcard stamps. JUST BECAUSE. I'm hoping these rolls get me through the end of the year. Sorry, friends, you'll be getting flags on your holiday cards because I am not buying fancy ones just for that purpose. 

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Okay, who wants a teeny tiny book? Tell me what book you want in the comments and I'll try to find it for you. They had all sorts of books, not just classics. Do you have parade thoughts? What role do horses and cows play in the parades you go to? (There was also a BABY GOAT.)

The Spellshop (Spellshop #1) by Sarah Beth Durst

Cozy fantasy is a tough genre. You have to have some stakes, so it's not boring, but the stakes have to be relatively low so that your readers are not stressed out. I feel like House in the Cerulean Sea and Legends & Lattes pull it off. Notable, I did not find either of their sequels particularly engaging, though. You can't always make magic twice, you know? 

So I went into The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst with some trepidation. It comes up as a suggestion A LOT when you start searching for cozy fantasy. Could it possibly be a non-boring, but somehow hopeful and safe feeling book? At the end of the book, the author wrote "This book is my gift to anyone who wants to escape and sink into a world filled with kindness and enchantment." (location 6191) Did she pull it off?

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Kiela is a librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium. Her assistant is a sentient spider plant named Caz. When rebels set the library on fire, Kiela and Caz escape with a handful of spellbooks to Kiela's childhood home on a remote island. She finds life there has changed because the sorcerers are not controlling the weather. Crops are failing, the merhorses aren't breeding, and Kiela decides she can do something about that with the help of her spellbooks. Only that's not really legal. What's going to happen to Kiela and Caz?

Let me tell you, this was the perfect amount of tension and lightness. She's making jam and talking to a spider plant? SIGN ME UP. I want to live on this island and do spells on trees to make them stronger. There are cats with wings.  She falls in love with a handsome stranger WHO BUILDS HER BOOKSHELVES? Heavens. I'm getting verklempt over here. 

Look, this isn't great literature. I probably wouldn't recommend it to Uncle Rick (sorry! but it's true), but if you like gentle stories with happy endings and nice people and magical creatures you'll like this. 4.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

It wasn’t that she didn’t like people. It was only that she liked books more. (location 133)

Well...I mean...huh. Who here doesn't agree with this?

Her father had once told her he hoped she found someone who made her smile. Just that. No fireworks like in tales and ballads. He didn’t wish her the shiver of romance or the endless ache of desire. “You should marry your best friend,” he told her. All those grand emotions, he said … they’re fun, but eventually they fade. They always fade. What was better, he’d said, was companionship. He’d wanted her to find someone who would be there for her, who’d laugh with her through the years. (location 1464)

Sheesh. My father just wanted me to get out of the house.

His relentless chatter reminded her of a bird excited for spring. (location 1622)
I always like a description of a person with an animal component. I especially like this one because it isn't mean. 

Hat mentions (why hats?):

She wore a wide red dress and a matching red hat with a brim. (location 655)

Kiela had seen one once, in the hat of a library patron—brighter than peacock blue, with a shaft that looked to be made of gold. (location 1416)

She was wearing a wide-brimmed purple hat on her human head...(location 2896)

Eadie in bright green with a matching hat...(location 3686)

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Are you interested in cozy fantasy? Would you like one of your houseplants to talk? How do you feel about cats with wings? 

2026 Goals Update, Quarter 2

It's the most fabulous time of the quarter in which I update you on how well or how well or poorly my 2026 quarterly goals are going. 

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At least one trip with Dr. BB and Hannah

   No progress made.

At least two trips with friends

    April: Yes! I went to Chicago with Bestest Friend.

At least two trips to Michigan to visit my high school friends

  No progress made.

Make homemade ice cream

     No progress made. I am making a note in my July and August goals to prioritize this. It's summer!

Do one creative thing a week

    April: Not really. I went to a museum and filled out a page in my journal by coloring it every day to track CBWC participation, but I didn't really do much. 

    May: Just a journal page. Why did I put this on my goal list again?

    June: Egads. I filled out a page in my journal by coloring it daily to track if I lifted ten minutes every day. This goal is not going well so far this year. 

Become a regular reader of at least five new blogs in 2026

    April: No progress

    May: No progress

    June: I added a blog to my reader, so that's 20%.

Leave an average of five blog comments on other blogs every day

    April: 19/30 - Egads.

    May: 19/31 - At least I'm consistent?

    June: 20/30 - Well, sorry friends. Some days I truly don't have the time.

Send at least five postcards every month

    April: The sum total of mail I sent in April was three birthday cards. That's all! 

    May: Five birthday cards, a happy new job card, the mystery book package, and three pieces of bureaucracy for the month. Not a single postcard. 

    June: Three birthday cards, a Father's Day card, and a bill. That's it for the whole month. Should I just send every blog reader a postcard in July to get this average up?

Track how many people come to yoga this semester

    April: We met seven times in April (5, 4, 4, 3, 2, 2, 1)

    May: We met four times in May and there were 2 people there each time.

    June: No meetings in June because my work is nuts in June. We'll pick back up in July.

Use a new journal to track goals, plan out the year, and take time to notice things I'm grateful for

    April: Yes, I do like this journal format a lot. 

    May: Yes, it's great. 

    June: I've been slacking on planning every week, but still tracking goals and doing a grateful list every day.

Take a good photo every week and print them out once a quarter 

    April: I ordered photos on May 1. It's so fun to look back at the photos I choose. 

    May: Photos ordered on June 6 and placed in my journal on the 7th. 

    June: YES!! I really am loving this part of the goal. So many photos are just on phones these days, but these one see the light of day.

Take photo of five places at least once a month

    April: Two of the places I take photos of are flooded, so I did what I could. 

    May: I did it!

    June: Done.

I sort of hate doing this goal, but I think I'll like the results. This is January - June of the water tower. January - March on top and April - June on the bottom.

Pay myself and charity first

    April: No progress

    May: I did add to savings, but didn't do any charitable giving. I'll make it a priority in June. 

    June: Nothing new, just regular savings. But my husband and I had a talk about splitting things differently, so maybe in the next quarter.

Reread

    April: I reread two books this month!

    May: I reread Love Lettering. 

    June: Not a single reread.

Do a buddy read 

    April: Sarah and I read Kin!

Gratitude practice

    April: Since I have been consistently using my new journal, this has been incorporated into my evening routine and I love it. 

    May: Yes! Still using my journal for this.

    June: I love doing this every night.

 

Be consistent in working out (at least 80% of days of 30 minutes of intentional movement)

    April: 24/30 (80%) days - Nailed it.

    May: 25/31 (80%) days - Yes!

    June: 26/30 (86.7%) days - Now we're doing it.

Spend 750 hours outside

    April: 45 hours, 33 min

    May: 48 hours, 37 minutes

    June: 46 hours, 8 minutes

I wanted to make this goal work, but it just isn't going to. If I want to do other things, including working out and cooking, this time goal is just not going to be met. I'm going to keep tracking for the rest of 2026, but if I can't get to sixty hours in JUNE - peak OUTDOOR TIME IN WISCONSIN - I can't make this goal work in my life.

Get on the same page as my husband about home repairs, investments, and a will

    April: New fact to me: my husband is horrified by our yard. Guess what moved up in our list of priorities? 

    May: We did something about the beds around our house and fenceline. Now we have do deal with a water softener and the crumbling retaining yard in our backyard. These are not things I necessarily had in mind at the beginning of the year. 

    June: Water softener installed. The retaining wall is still a discussion. We've gotten two quotes, but really need to talk with our neighbors so no one is surprised by it.

Do two more iterations of CBBC on my blog

    I have no intention of doing this until fall.

Date night with Dr. BB every month

    April: We went to see a friend's band play one evening. 

    May: Literally nothing. *sigh*

    June: We went to Frostie Freeze? Does that count? (I'm counting it.)

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Just April goals:

Complete journal project through 2020: I only did it though February.

Figure out taxes: We figured it out. It wasn't pretty and it felt gross to write such a big check to the federal government in 2026, but it's done.

Participate in CBWC: Done!

Organize one tote from my mom's house: Look, I know the totes have been there since October or something. I KNOW. I just...don't want to deal with it. 

Clean out the photos in my phone gallery: You would be horrified. I'm horrified. And yet there still remains 4165 images in there. 

Just May goals (every single one is a rollover goal):

Complete journal project through 2020: Done. 

Organize one tote from my mom's house: I think you all know this didn't get done. 

Clean out the photos in my phone gallery: I got it down to just over 3000, but there's still a lot to do.

Just June goals:

Complete journal project through 2021: I did through June, so this will have to be a rollover goal to finish in July. 

Organize one tote from my mom's house: I did it! I cleaned out one tote and now that (empty) tote is in the basement. The second (and last tote) is harder because it's photographs, so that's a larger organizational project. Maybe over the winter?

Clean out the photos in my phone gallery: I didn't do this at all. Rollover goal to July.

Lift weights for ten minutes every day: 26/30 days. Not too shabby.

Message my accountability buddy every day: 25/30 days. I'll take it. 

No candy: There is so much candy at my job in June and the first year I worked here, I was on a sugar high all the time because I kept helping myself to candy. So no candy. I had ice cream three times and a cake ball someone made, but that was about it as far as desserts. I immediately ate a chocolate Lindt ball on July 1, though, so I don't think I've learned any real restraint.

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I don't think any of this is terrible. It is sort of fun to look at it every month/quarter. 

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Do you think you could get 750 hours outdoors in a year? When's the last time you sent a postcard to someone? 

The Unseen World by Liz Moore

I read The Unseen World by Liz Moore because the guest on Sarah's Bookshelves really recommended it. I cannot resist it when people are enthusiastic about their favorite books. I have read The God of the Woods by this same author in the past and really enjoyed it, so I thought reading an older book by the same author would be a fun thing to do.

Ada is raised by her father, a computer scientist named David who is working on a very early AI named ELIXIR in 1980s Boston. David's past comes into question just as his health and memory begin to falter. Ada is taken in by one of David's colleagues and together they begin to unravel the mystery of her father's life. 

In The God of the Woods, I thought it took a bit (70-80 pages) to get into the thing. In this book, the first fifty pages were a real snoozefest. I found myself starting to think that the person who recommended this book was insane. And then I was crying on page 111 and full out sobbing by page 140. 

In same ways I have been lucky. My parents died at relatively young ages (56 and 67) and I never had to watch them go through a mental decline. My mom did suffer some brief hallucinations towards the end, but she knew they were hallucinations and honestly had so much fun with them that I couldn't help but wonder if my mom would have enjoyed psychedelic drugs when she was younger.

(This is a funny story, I think. But maybe it's only funny to me? I don't know. I'll tell and you can let me know. My mom lived on a tiny house on my sister's property and right next to her tiny house was another tiny house that my brother-in-law's mother lived in. My mom and my BIL's mom - let's call her C - got along well enough, but C found my sister challenging and didn't leave her cabin very often. My mom frequently hallucinated a man who would come and gossip about C. He called her names and was often unkind. My mom sort of knew this man wasn't real, but she would repeat the gossip as if it were from a trusted source. When I'd call my mom, this is what she would talk to me about. You know what? This story isn't funny. I'm leaving it.)

So I was caught by surprise at how emotional this book made me about aging parents. Maybe because I never really got to see it? (Add this to When the Cranes Fly South as books about aging that have made me sob.)

Anyway, outside of the slow start and the epilogue, this was such a lovely book. (Much like in Harry Potter, you should skip the epilogue entirely and let the book stand on its own without that tacked on garbage.) (How many parenthesis can I put in one post? Can I set a record?)

4.5/5 stars

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Things I looked up (I might be on some list at Homeland Security after this):

There had been suicides already since the HUAC was formed. (Among themselves, they never called it the House Un-American Activities Committee, they called it the Inquisition.) Five, ten, fifteen suicides within the State department alone. (page 380) - I'm just going to leave this link here. 

Thomas Patrick Cavanagh (page 393) - an aerospace engineer who was sentenced in 1985 after being convicted of trying to sell stealth bomber secrets to the Soviet Union. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Robert Cordrey (page 393) -  a Marine private who was convicted of attempting to sell classified information about nuclear, chemical and biological warfare to the Soviet bloc and sentenced to 12 years by a military court.

Ernst Forbrich (page 393) - an East German spy who was arrested in Clearwater Beach, Florida in 1984 after he paid an undercover agent posing as an Army intelligence officer for a classified document. He later admitted selling documents to East German intelligence over a 17-year period. Forbrich was convicted of espionage and sentenced to prison.

Bruce Kearn (page 393) -  a Navy operations specialist assigned as command Secret control officer on board the USS Tuscaloosa, was arrested in March 1984 and convicted at a general court-martial for dereliction of duty, and willfully delivering, transmitting or communicating classified documents to unauthorized persons. While absent without leave, Kearn left behind a briefcase which was found to contain 147 classified microfiche (copies of nearly 15,000 pages of Secret documents), seven Confidential crypto publications, and child pornographic photographs and literature. He was sentenced to 18 months based on a plea bargain.

Karl Koecher (page 393) - usually referred simply as Karel Köcher, sometimes written as Karl Koecher (born 21 September 1934) is a Czechoslovak mole known to have penetrated the CIA during the Cold War. The Guardian wrote up a long article about his batshit life. 

Alice Michelson (page 393)- Michelson was arrested in 1984 for trying to deliver material she obtained at Baltimore-Washington International Airport from an American double agent to the Soviet KGB. She was later involved in a spy swap. 

Richard Miller (page 393) - an American FBI agent who was the first FBI agent indicted for and convicted of espionage. In 1991, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison but was freed after serving less than three years.

Samuel Loring Morison (page 393) - a civilian analyst with the Office of Naval Intelligence, was arrested in October 1984 for supplying Jane's Publications with classified photography showing a Soviet nuclear powered carrier under construction. The photographs were subsequently published in Jane's Defence Weekly. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment.

Charles Slatten (page 393) - an Army PFC who was arrested in 1984 for stealing military devices to sell to the USSR. He was sentenced to nine years in prison and given a dishonorable discharge. This was not the end of his criminal career, though, and he later set off a pipe bomb and was convicted of making, possessing, and conspiring to use a “weapon of mass destruction.” He was sentenced to another 24 years in prison in 1996.

Richard Smith (page 393) - Smith was a former army counterintelligence agent who was arrested in April 1984 for passing classified information to a KGB officer in Japan on several occasions. He claimed he was working for the US government as a double agent. He was found not guilty on charges of conspiracy and espionage.

Jay Wolff (page 393) -  former Navy enlisted man, was arrested in 1984 in Gallup, New Mexico, for offering to sell classified documents dealing with US weapons systems aboard a US Navy vessel. Wolff, who was discharged from the Navy in 1983, met with an undercover agent and offered to sell classified material for $5,000 to $6,000. According to the FBI, a tip led to the meeting with Wolff at a convenience store where he was apprehended. Wolff pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to sell classified documents and was sentenced to five years in prison.

fontanelle (page 408) - (colloquially known as a "soft spot") is a normal anatomical feature on an infant's skull where the bony plates have not yet completely fused

Hat mentions (why hats?):
Santa hat (page 62)
knit black hat (page 269)
hat and parka (page 271)
took her hat off (page 273, 321)
red winter hat (page 312)
overcoat and hat (page 321)
knitted Red Sox hat (page 356)
wearing his hat indoors (page 372)
hat rakishly askew (page 398)
pilgrim's hat or a Santa hat (page 406)

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Have you read other books by Liz Moore? Should I be reading more of her books?