The Weekly Ramble – August 1, 2025

August 1. I loooove the first day of the month. Don’t you?

I mean the bill pay isn’t as exciting as a clean planner page, but still. The start of a fresh month is a fresh start. New goals. New ideas. New chances to be faithful.

Here’s what else I’ve been doing, eating, listening/watching, reading, and/or writing this past week.

What I’ve Been Doing

We’ve got just a few more weeks until my two college kids and one high schooler go back to school. (Can you believe I just said, “one high schooler”? Wild!)

So, I’ve been working on an ideal week that will fit our fall schedule. That has some bugs in it. Monday and Tuesday went pretty well, but Wednesday and Thursday slipped off the rails. I’m not even sure about today.

I did not get the publishing house job I applied for. I’m pleased to report that I’m not devastated by the two job rejections I got this summer. Instead, I feel like that is making things clearer.

I’ve been praying that God would give me direction. Closed paths narrow the options and should lead to the right one.

One of my big take-aways of this last attempt was the time commitment. That job was 30 hours a week remote.

I’ve endeavored to include 30 hours/week in my ideal week and it’s kinda tricky right now. But, what if I invested that time into my own projects? Surely, I’d see good fruit, right?

I’ll let you know! In the meantime, thanks for sharing Good Cheap Eats and Life as Mom and my books with your friends. That means the world to me.

What I’ve Been Eating

I drove three cities east to go to the orthopedist and treated myself to lunch at Chick-fil-A. Normally, I would have gotten a salad, but I was eating on the road and stuck to the plain stuff.

I was really looking forward to their bringing back the Honey Pepper Pimiento Chicken Sandwich, but the inter webs is saying it’s not coming back. Since I made an August goal not to eat processed food if I can help it, it must be for the better. I’ll have to make a copycat recipe. Whaddya say?

True confessions: While I did a good job cooking dinner every night this week, I pretty much failed on the dealing-with-leftovers thing. Oops.

Another goal to add to my list for the month.

What I’ve Been Listening/Watching

I saw this show called Art Detectives show up on Prime Video and assumed it was a documentary. I read nonfiction but really don’t enjoy watching it.

Turns out while there is a doc called The Art Detectives, there is also a crime series called Art Detectives. I binge-watched it while cooking this week. It was very good!

I continue to listen through the archives of What Have You and am immensely enjoying it. I wish I had discovered it when it first started, but better late than never. Episode 100 had a lot of a-ha’s for me.

I also enjoyed listening to my friend Allison interview Bess Hawthorne on the Art of Home podcast. I had never considered their strategies for when you’re behind on Bible reading. Mind-blown.

What I’ve Been Reading

I ended up reading 13 books during the month of July. The most excellent of them were:

• The Winter King by Christine Cohen
• The Weight of Glory by CS Lewis
• The Business of Being a Writer by Jane Friedman

The others were good. I enjoyed the Christian elements in the Baack and Millet books. St Amant and Kinzer are both Christian writers but Jesus was an after thought in those books. I was disappointed honestly.

The others I read were decidedly secular. Read at your own risk.

I particularly enjoyed the Bybee series, though, because it was set in my hometown of Santa Clarita. The author lived there for 20 years and did a good job of capturing the experience of being a longtime local there, especially from the POV of those who lived there before the City exploded in size. The language from the characters is pretty spot-on for the town, too. (Read: it’s not PG.)

Since my fiction is set in North County San Diego I wanted to see how other writers capture modern day real places. It annoys the heck out of me when a writer makes up fictitious islands off the coast or it’s clear they’ve never been here.

Anywho, that brings my yearly total to 108 books for the year.

Here’s a peek at my TBR for August, always subject to change: 4 are already started, 2 are rereads, 2 are advance reader copies, and 2 are just books I’ve wanted to read.

What I’ve Been Writing

Recently, I spent some time revising the Fresh Start Planning Guide. It was interesting to review something I wrote EIGHT years ago and see how my ideas have evolved and changed.

I think I was in the throes of “give yourself a break” when sometimes you need to “give yourself a shot in the arm”. Life is nuanced. Sometimes you do need a break and sometimes you need to exert yourself.

Check it out and let me know. I’ve included it in this month’s Back to Organizing Goodie Box, along with the Print & Go Planner for the rest of the year, TWO meal plans that cover 7 months’ worth of meals, a couple other guides to help you organize the daze.

I’ve shared new posts on Good Cheap Eats:

• How to Eat More Vegetables With Limited Time & Money
• How to Warm Corn Tortillas So They Don’t Break When You Fill Them

There are also these new and improved posts here on LAM:

Travel Essentials for Family Trips

How to Improve Your Life when You Don’t Know Where to Start

The Weekly Ramble – July 25, 2025

Planner Ideas for Beginners

Alrighty, that’s it for me. See ya in the comments!