Weekly Ramble 7/13/24

Hello! Hi! How are you?

I shall start this ramble with a clean kitchen. Doesn’t that make you smile? It took me two hours to get it there yesterday. Even though I hadn’t cooked in over 24 hours.

Kids had been cooking and baking and ran out of time to clean up after themselves before they needed to get to work. I honestly don’t know who, but I know it wasn’t all five. Ida Know. Like in those old Family Circus comics.

That said, when I woke this morning, I found that Someone had stayed up late to clean up Pizza Night, so it goes both ways.

My initial idea is to have a Mess Bank. If you leave a mess and can’t come back to fix it, you need to leave some money in the Mess Bank. The person who ends up cleaning gets to keep the cash.

My housemates are all honest to a fault so I think it could work. We shall see…either way, it was a good experience for me to lean into a new habit of cheerful homemaking/grace giving that I’m trying to cultivate. It’s not a coincidence that I was listening to this podcast while doing it. Ha!

Why hadn’t I cooked? We had date night on Thursday. And my sweet husband who really would have preferred a burger treated me to my craving for Italian. It’s so expensive, but we both really like it.

This particular place is uber casual and not hip at all, despite being featured on Food Network, but man is Spirito’s good! I love the manicotti.

Anywho, I’ve been up since just before 4. I’m typing this in the 5 am hour on Saturday, hoping I’ll be able to hit publish before I get up from my chair again. It’s been a weird transition season for me.

• Bryan and I are working to orchestrate our weeks so that we can both take Sundays off, this includes meal prepping all our Sunday meals before Saturday night.
• I am leaning in to more home care after a season of illness and before that a Hawaiian vacation and my new year identity crisis. (Did I tell you about that yet?)
• The girls just finished up a month of really intense work for them as leaders at a children’s summer camp.
• I just finished a month of really intense to-and-fro-ing in traffic taking them to summer camp and back.
• Our church blip appears to be ending. It’s been 17 years since we had a church to call “home”. I’m cautiously optimistic that after many seasons of visiting churches, we’ve landed. Building relationships for this introvert is a little rough.
• It’s probably not a coincidence that in the weeks and months leading up to landing, we’d ramped up our study and conversation along theological lines, so all the ideas are also swirling in my head.
• I’ve returned to more physical activity and am reminded how much darn time it takes. Ugh. I have to remind myself that it’s okay if steps and yoga take time.
• School begins in just a little over a month, so we really have just 5-6 weeks of summer before our routine shifts again.
• We haven’t heard yet if our lease will get renewed, but I’m thinking it must be a yes. Wouldn’t you tell someone if you knew you wanted them to vacate? I sure hope so. I love this house and do not want to move again.

So, it feels like a lot going on right now, even though there isn’t. It’s just regular life that I’m trying to tame in a reasonable way. I’m excited for all the things going on, so I think I just need to pace myself.

Thoughts? Ideas? Jump to the comments and lay it on me. Meanwhile, here are five favorite things…

Five Favorite Things

Another Driver in the House

While I don’t love the increase in insurance premium, I love having another driver in the family. We don’t do the typical drive-at-16 thing, mainly for financial reasons, so when another driver enters the rota, it’s a very welcome thing!

Fisherman20 got his license, and it’s awesome for him to be able to tool around town and act as Uberman for his sisters. Love.

The What Have You Podcast

I am late to the podcast game. I mean, yes, in the early 2000s when the iPod came out, I listened while nursing my babies. However, something that is instinctual for most people like listening to music or podcasts takes effort on my part.

In the past (read: last two years) I’ve listened to mostly neuroscience (Huberman Lab) or business, but this month I’ve dove into something different. The What Have You podcast is a mix of theology, homemaking, and mom rambles. You know how much I love rambles!

My favorite episodes so far are here and here.

I’ve listened backwards — I’m now in last fall — and have learned lots of interesting tidbits. The podcasters are sisters and are hilarious. They also don’t pull any punches. If they’re critiquing a resource, they are brutally honest.

Since they do a lot of cooking, I’m cringing at the thought that maybe they’ve already explored Good Cheap Eats or one of my cookbooks and I’ll find myself listening to a critique of me. Yikes!

Bubble Breaker

Remember how I was looking for a substitute for the Starbucks summer game? Bubble Breaker is a close approximation — and a little addictive. I’ve loaded it and deleted it from my phone several times in the last two weeks.

It’s a fun diversion, to be sure, but I’m thinking it will have to go. It is super fun though!

La Croix Hibiscus

Normally, we buy whatever soda water is cheapest, but there have been a few times at Costco Business that the fancy pants La Croix (pronounced “la qwah” in my head because I was a French major) has been the cheapest.

This is how I discovered the Hibiscus flavor — in a variety pack. I never would have bought that on its own. It is delicious, though!

Unfortunately, the variety in the variety pack recently changed. Unfortunately, I wasn’t on the shopping expedition when it was purchased. And now we have a lot of limoncello and watermelon which are not my faves. Ugh. That second case is going back on Monday.

Christmas Planning

Yes, really!

I’ve been slowing working through setting up a new half year in my planner, complete with revisiting the things I was thinking about at the first of the year. It’s so true that your brain will look for what you tell it to look for!

I wasn’t even trying and was sick for a good portion of the first half of the year, and yet, the things on my What I Want page are tooling along. Praise be.

One of the things I had forgotten about, though, was the desire to enjoy Christmas in a more relaxed way. Last year was a blur! Clearly, my brain knew I didn’t need to look for that just yet.

Bryan and I both commented in late December that we regretted not having been more intentional with Advent and other things, so I’m planning ahead now. Or should I say we?

My husband has his PMP so I decided to make sure I was speaking his language. I created a project charter to start our conversation about holiday planning — in July. I hope to have some more things to share by the end of the month.

In the meantime, I’ve browsed through recipes, watched a Christmas special (ha!), listened to the What Have You Advent series, started rereading A Simpler Season, and dusted off my Holiday Success Kit.

(Find more holiday resources here.)

I love the idea of extra taking time off in December, so I’m starting there on the calendar and working backward.

Alrighty then, that’s it for me, about an hour since I started typing! I hope you’ll leave a comment and let me know what’s going on with you!