Monday, August 20, 2012

Dog days


August has not been the most relaxing month ever here in Misophonia Land and full-day summer band did not go as well for C as expected. We made accommodations, we tweaked (and are still tweaking) meds, we made many many phone calls and sent many many emails and, you know, we all survived.

This is our last week of summer here; school starts one week from today. Band is only a few hours in the evening all this week, and in the meantime there are textbooks to pick up and lockers to be assigned and ID card photos to be taken and new therapists to meet. H has "fish camp", the crash course in all things high school that is presented to incoming freshmen, this week and she could not be more excited.

It's finally hit me that I will have TWO in high school this year; both kids at the same school again for the first time in two years. And they won't be at different schools EVER again until C graduates (please God) in two years and goes off to college (please oh please oh please) or stays here for college (that would be perfectly okay, too).

Anyhoo, this last official week of summer seems like as good a time as any to check in with those summer goals I set way back when, eh? Let's go!

1. Lose 17 pounds. I've lost 14. Not bad, eh? I was hoping to lose the 17 by my birthday, which is one month from today. Not sure I'll get there at the rate I've been going, particularly this month with all the stress-snacking and stress-cocktail-drinking, but we'll see. (Also one month from today: the 20 year anniversary of my engagement to P. Best birthday ever!)

2. Read more. Books I've read since the last time I updated you on the progress of my summer goals:  Judith Arnold's Goodbye to All That (light and fun; good beach read), Ben Rehder's Buck Fever (very fun; takes place near where I live; first in a series), Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl (LOVED; extremely dark and twisted and hilarious), Ben H. Winters's The Last Policeman (also LOVED and very much looking forward to more from this author), Carrie Regan's Rumors of Savages (super fun mindless romp; again, a good beach/airplane read). Right now I'm reading Valya Dudycz Lupescu's The Silence of Trees, which is gorgeous and heartbreaking and strangely cathartic, at least for me. It's not often that a work of fiction helps me sort out some of my own emotional junk, but this one has. Go figure.

3. Make peace with the whole shorts thing and quit worrying about how I look in them. Who wears short shorts? I WEAR SHORT SHORTS.


4. Quit buying coffee mugs already (also cute drinking glasses)(also BPA-free reusable plastic cups with lids and straws). I am happy to tell you I have not bought a single drinking vessel in the entire month of August. Er, so far.

5. Shop at the Farmer's Market every week. Um, no. They open at 8:30 a.m. in the summer! All the good stuff is gone by 8:35! How am I supposed to sleep late AND get a workout in? (I like to think I make up for not shopping the summer market all that often by shopping the winter market like crazy, when all they have is kale, kale and more kale and I more or less have the whole market to myself. Yeah. That's the ticket.)

6. Eradicate hornworms from the face of the Earth. I found one on the remains of my Patio tomato plant the other day. Yeesh. I really need to pull out those tomatoes; they've been done producing for ages now.

Alrighty! Time to knuckle down, get busy, and try not to freak out about school starting next week. Yeah. Good luck with that, me.

7 comments:

  1. Happy end of summer. I hope the school year will go well for H and C. Our schools start today so the streets will be crowded with crazy drivers. No one seems to carpool the first day.
    My weight has yo yo'd but is still down. I need to lose 6.4 more so it's time to leave the computer and walk more.
    Our central CA garden is still going strong with tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant and chard. We had one onslaught of bugs when we were at the coast but now we are living in harmony.
    I am reading Gone Girl as well as The Kitchen House (book club). Wish I could just stick to Gone Girl.

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    1. I loved The Kitchen House! But yeah, it doesn't really pull you along in quite the same way as Gone Girl.

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  2. I finished Gone Girl at about 2:00 this morning. Loved the dark and twisty!
    I'm with you on the re-usable drinking vessels. When they're all clean they take up the whole top of the fridge and threaten to push the crockpot over the edge.

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  3. I loved Gone Girl! I felt so torn, because I wanted it to last as long as possible, but I also wanted to hurry up and see what happened.

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  4. Since I don't blog anymore, I have to tell you my similar life here. Boy meds tweaked again, now he's on Ritalin. Brilliantly, we started this the first day of school (last Thursday), so that keeps life interesting. I must note that he's still on his summer sleep schedule, nocturnal. He goes to school on an hour or two of sleep and 10mg of Ritalin. We're awesome.

    And please, ROCK those short shorts! Helpful hint for those of us over 19: Gold Bond powder on the inner thighs.

    Cheers on the 14 pounds!

    Happy one month before your birthday!

    Must go now, I've worn out the exclamation point key.

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  5. I have just started The Last Policeman and am enjoying it (I think I downloaded it based on your recommendation from your last entry?) and now, given all the excitement over Gone Girl, I can see I better download that too, before I forget :-)

    I hope the start of school goes a bit smoother than band camp.

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  6. 14 pounds is amazing, I think. And you look great in shorts, what stopped you until now?
    Summer is still FULL ON here ... I am SO done with it though.

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