I'll fake it through the day with some help

Random thoughts in my head this week:

"Now that I'm drinking again, should I buy a bottle of tequila? Do we already have tequila? Do I even like tequila?"

"Why are all books terrible right now like you'd think a book about mysterious grizzly bear attacks would be good, right? Why can't I find a book I like? Why do I hate all the books that other people love?"

"Where was that Tig Notaro thing I wanted to watch, was that on Netflix or HBO?"

"Please oh please oh please let the weather stay sunny like this forever and ever. Please oh please. Amen and thank you."

"I swear to God if they kill Arya and don't bring her back with the Lord of Light's Red Dead Redemption ... I won't stop watching but someone will get a VERY strongly worded tweet."

"Do my boobs look as good as Emilia Clarke's? I think they do but I'm probably wrong."

"Why am I still having the high school locker combination dream 32 years after graduation?"

"Lily Tomlin's character on Grace & Frankie is basically me in 20 years so when can I start wearing muu-muus and dashikis all the time is it now can I do it now?"

"I'll never be enlightened if I can't extend lovingkindness to all the smug assface jerks but they just make me want to punch them so hard their grandchildren will feel it, help."

"Should I get my new passport photo taken while my  hair is purple or let it grow out? Are there international statutes against purple hair? What would P!nk do? They're not going to not let P!nk on a plane, right?"

"How is my tomato plant still producing fruit when it looks like something that dragged its blackened, shriveled ass up out of Mount Doom?"

"Given that you can literally die from stress, is it time to update my will?"

"Should I burn those old journals? I should burn those old journals."

Spring is coming (eventually, in its own time)

Hey, so I finished A Song of Ice and Fire FINALLY, and now we can all move on with our lives. This whole undertaking was starting to remind me of that time I decided to read the entire Bible, Genesis through Revelation, which took me six months. It only took me two months to read A Song of Ice and Fire because as it turns out, George R. R. Martin is slightly less verbose than God. But only SLIGHTLY. If Mr. Martin wants to start using "Infinitesimally More Concise Than the Almighty" as his new tagline, he can have that for free. Consider it payback for the enjoyment I've gotten from his books and insurance against anything really bad ever happening to Arya (don't read too far into that link if you don't want spoilers).

And also I have given up coffee. I felt you should know. I haven't done this voluntarily, and if coffee ever stops making my stomach feel like it's been gnawed upon by rabid weasels I am TOTALLY going back to my one 12 oz. cup of decaf per day, but for now I'm substituting roasted dandelion root and I don't hate it, maybe? It's not coffee, but once you throw in some grass-fed collagen powder and full-fat coconut milk (what? isn't that how EVERYONE drinks their coffee?) it's really pretty darn tasty. Yeah.

In other news, it turns out starting your own business from scratch is a whole lot of time-consuming work, WHO KNEW? I have been doing nothing* for the past couple of weeks since finishing that lengthy book series up there except working on my website and my professional Facebook page and Twitter and ordering business cards and oh yeah, still doing school, because I don't actually finish that and get my certification until September. But I start seeing clients in April. Let's pretend you care about that so I can promise to let you know when that happens, m'kay?

* Total lie. I also read three other books, took my daughter to the doctor 4,000 times and made about 27 batches of kale chips. And one batch of paleo waffles.

February (and part of January) in pictures

Yeah, so February (and part of January). I guess it's been kind of busy though I can't think what I've been doing apart from reading A Song of Ice and Fire (yes, STILL, though I'm nearly done with book 5 now, huzzah!), school stuff, helping H with her theater costume(s), cooking all the things, eating all the things, drinking sazeracs, occasionally sleeping in my office because it's snoring season, loving the sunny-and-70s weather, loathing the rainy-and-30s weather (we have had nothing whatsoever between those two extremes), and wearing leggings as pants but only around the house because I'm not a savage.

If you've been socked in with mounds and mounds of snow, I wish you sunshine and green grass. If you've been broiling in the Southern Hemisphere, I wish you cool breezes and gentle rains.

I do NOT wish rainy-and-30s on ANYONE.

And I am very ready for spring. Now, please.

*Cupcake recipe here. Sazerac recipe here. Everything else is just crappe I threw together and crammed in my pie hole.

My week of yoga pants

So this happened:

Yep. Tore the MCL in my left knee while moving a chair. (I've got to come up with a better story for that. Tore my MCL while kickboxing Chuck Norris? Tore my MCL while two-stepping with my movie star boyfriend Ted Levine at the Broken Spoke? Tore my MCL while jumping out of a helicopter, over a waterfall, to bring much-needed medicine to ... orphaned river otters? Yeah. Let's go with that. I'll send the otters a check; it'll be fine.)

I don't know how badly it's torn because I haven't followed up yet with an orthopedist AS INSTRUCTED but Doctor Google says the treatment is more or less the same, it just takes longer if it's a really bad one which I don't think it is, so whatever. All I know is that it is VERY VERY HARD to dress around a knee immobilizer that goes from your crotch to your ankle. I don't mean dressing UP, to look NICE -- I'm old so who cares -- I mean actually wearing clothing items that prevent me from flashing my granny panties at the world. IT'S HARD, Y'ALL. TINY VIOLINS.

I was supposed to wear this ferkakta thing through tomorrow but screw that, I graduated myself to a fairly sturdy drugstore knee brace as of yesterday and it feels totally fine. I still can't wear jeans over even this little brace, though. I miss my jeans, you guys. TINY CELLO.

It could be worse, I suppose. Six years ago this month, this happened:

TINY BASSOON.

I sprained the shit out of (I believe that was the official diagnosis) my right ankle (no followup again, DOCTOR GOOGLE IS MY PCP, quit judging) in October 2008 and that took a REALLY long time to heal and also I had to use CRUTCHES which meant I was catapulting myself all over the place because I am super bad at crutches and I COULDN'T DRIVE. For like a month. OMG. That sucked so hard. THE WORLD'S SMALLEST TUBA.

This time I can drive. It requires some whack-ass origami contortionism to make it happen, or it did before I ditched the immobilizer, but IT IS/WAS POSSIBLE. And thank God for that, because you wouldn't like me when I'm forcibly housebound. It ain't pretty.

Anyhoo, the point is that every six years or so, October tries to kill me. Good to know. If I plan ahead now, maybe I can spend October 2020 in a nice medically induced coma or something, just to be safe.

Meanwhile, right now I am ...

... reading Tana French's Broken Harbor. This is the fourth book in her Dublin Murder Squad series, the one that began with In The Woods, and I dunno, you guys. I love everything she does but this might be my least-favorite book in the series so far. It's still GOOD, it's just ... not In The Woods. Or The Likeness. Or Faithful Place.

... watching Live Free Or Die, and I am probably the only one, but I kind of love this show! It's about several different people who for whatever reason choose to live off the grid and off the land. Not in a weird Doomsday Preppers kind of way (I don't actually watch that show so I may not know what I'm talking about) but just because, you know, they like it.

... listening to Diane Sanfilippo's Build a Badass Business podcast. Because I guess that's what I'll be doing as a health coach. Diane is super rad and her tips are so amazing and they seem DOABLE, which is key.

... eating all the things. I don't know why, but this injury made me super hungry. I'm big on sweet potato noodles (made with one of these contraptions) right now. And kale! Which I used to not even like it, but now I love it, because I've become one of those annoying people! I've mostly been making chips with it, because CHIPS, but later this afternoon I'll be whipping up a kale salad with bacon and honeycrisp apples and pomegranate arils and probably pumpkin seeds and who knows what else. GOD I AM SO HUNGRY RIGHT NOW.

... drinking mineral water (this one specifically). I don't know why. I originally bought it to make fake martinis (mineral water, a drop of vermouth, a couple of olives -- it's vile, don't try it) but then I just started drinking it and now I like it and I don't know.

And that about brings you up to speed. I hope your month is going well and that October isn't trying to kill you. Because if it is, maybe we can form a support group.

September is my January

What the heck, how have I not posted at all this month? I don't know what to tell you. Things are sort of busy. H is back at school (she had strep the first week, did I tell you? that was fun) and C is doing some sort of cyber security certification course (I think we finally have a Plan there) and my health coaching classes have started and my birthday is this week and my parents' 50th wedding anniversary is next week and yeah. Busy!

I have been trying really hard to not be so busy, you guys. I realized that a lot of my busy-ness was self-generated hoohah that didn't need to happen, and as a result I have stopped following a bunch of people on Twitter and Tumblr and Instagram and unsubbed a bunch of email newsletters and rejiggered my newsfeed on Facebook such that I now spend WAY less time online and way less time worried that I'm missing something, except that I'm totally missing lots of somethings. But I've decided not to care. I've also stopped watching TV shows that make me feel unclean, so adiós, Sons of Anarchy. You were good back when you were all Hamlet-y but now you just make me feel like I need to take a shower and go to confession. And I'm not even Catholic! Something's gotta give.

I'm reading Kate Atkinson's Life After Life and boy is it good. I thought it was going to be some weird Lovely Bones thing, you know, like it would take place at least partially in the AFTERLIFE. But no, the title refers to multiple lives in succession, not the afterlife. Or multiple iterations, in succession, of the same life. I dunno. You'd have to read it. It's really good. After that I'm tackling Louise Penny's The Beautiful Mystery because the TENTH Chief Inspector Gamache book just came out and I'm still two books behind, quelle horreur! And then I'll probably read some more Pema Chödrön.

I get the itch to change things in September. Maybe because of my birthday, or the changing seasons, or the start of school or whatever. September is when I want to clean out closets and throw things away and do the whole "in with the new" thing. So far all I've done is start wearing jeans instead of shorts (I don't CARE if I die of heat stroke, I really don't, I'm done with shorts for this year) and start drinking hot coffee and tea instead of iced coffee and tea. But whatever. It all counts. Plus: pumpkin spice lattes! YES.