Like I mentioned in my dinner post, I am finding that with our fall schedule, a routine that I can mostly set and forget is really helping life feel easier-- and not just at the dinner table.
I have started using Notes on my phone to mange my blog content ideas-- I have never actually managed these in any systematic kind of way before, and I like how cute Notes can be. I have a one note with headings for each month, and I have even already started on NaBloPoMo:
Other decide once/set-and-forget things I am loving right now:
(I basically aspire to be a human crockpot or the person equivalent of hot rollers. THIS IS MIDDLE AGE)
Picking out clothes for the week. Minnie does this on Sunday night with me, and we have actually cleared out a dresser drawer to stage her outfits. She selects clothes, any accessories she might need, socks-- everything for each day. We fold it neatly, stack by day, and stash it in her dresser. When she wakes up on school mornings, she can start getting ready for her day all on her own. I am choosing my teaching outfits and potentially clothes for other days I HAVE to be on campus on Sundays as well, which is when I do any ironing, track down belts that go with dresses and locate any shoes that might be hiding on the shelf. Dorothy has also been getting in the act, but she only picks like 3 good outfits and then runs out of steam and tosses whatever in her pile. SPOILER: when she gets to the "whatever" clothes at the end of the week, she doesn't want to wear them and scrambles for other options. Soooo she is working on tweaking her process.
One plan for Friday nights: scary movie and poker-- this is **chef's kiss** and something we all look forward to.
School lunches on repeat. When everyone wants the same-ish thing every day, shopping and prepping is a BREEZE. Same for after school snacks. Cooper always gets a chicken apple sausage, a fruit, a protein drink, and a pouch of Yoggies, and whatever leftovers we have on hand (if there are no leftover, perhaps some chicken nuggets). Dorothy brings an apple with caramel dip, string cheese, and chocolate-covered pretzels OR if it is a dinner-at-dance night, she packs 2 school lunches-- one for school and another one that I bring her after school to eat at dance. SO EASY YOU GUYS.
Coffee Fridays-- such a fun treat for Dorothy and Cooper (and me!)
If you must know, it was the barrel jeans' fault.
And! What the hell is even up with barrel jeans anyway? Like, are they really a trend, or is somebody just messing with us? WHY DO I WANT MY LEGS TO LOOK LIKE BARRELS?
I was scrolling Instagram on the way to my car yesterday after I taught my criticism class and watched a TA teach a section of public speaking, and I saw a super cute influencer I follow talking about Target barrel jeans being restocked and to size down. I clicked through her links to the jeans in question and immediately ordered them for pick up (in green and pink).
I had a TON of stuff to do when I got home, but of course, the FIRST THING I did was try on my jeans, WHICH WERE HUGE.
I feel like every single influencer hocking cheap clothes says to SIZE DOWN, but I never take them seriously because they are so tiny and the clothes are so cheap. Anyway, if you buy these jeans (and I kind of think you should because 20 bucks to try a trend is Not Bad-- I understand Target is not for everyone right now), SIZE DOWN.
So, next, instead of ALL OF THE WORK staring at me and ALL OF THE HOUSEHOLD maintenance tasks, I went to a different Target to return the jeans and buy smaller ones. Only! That Target didn't have smaller green jeans, so I ended up with these as well as the pinks. Then, of course, I had to try them on and think very seriously about all the outfits I could make with them.
And then! Before I knew it! The pick-up, drop-off, snack-prep onslaught slaughtered me. I snagged Minnie, got her ready for jazz and acro, and loaded up Cooper's dive bag, Dorothy's dance bag (both of which needed to be stocked with some clothes, etc), Dorothy's snack, Coop's bento, Minnie's snack, and a snack for Jack who was slated to be in loco parentis during the dance class change up. Then Minnie and I collected Dorothy and Cooper from their school, battled through traffic to the dance studio, and unloaded Dorothy and Minnie, barely even idling in the parking lot long enough to kick them out of the car. Next up, a slog to campus that was like swimming in very honky, stressful applesauce. It is a 6 mile drive that takes about 25 minutes. When we were almost to the gym where Cooper dives, I got a text that the kid he rides home with on Tuesdays was not going to be at practice, so someone (SOMEONE IS ME) would have to battle BACK to campus and pick Coop up in just 2.5 short hours.
At this point, I should have just flipped a bitch and taken Cooper back to the dance studio with me to wait out acro and tap class and bring everyone home to the taco dinner Ben prepped for us. But! The drive to campus was so arduous that I dropped him off anyway.
I called Jack on my way back to the dance studio to tell him he was off the parenting hook since I would juuuust barely be back to help Minnie switch classes (FORTY FIVE GD MINUTES TO CAMPUS AND BACK FROM DANCE OH THE HUMANITY), and I spent a really pleasant 45 minutes during acro and tap reading Katabasis. But I SHOULD HAVE BROUGHT the Chromebook I use to do my adjunct online teaching-- and would have, had I known there was no carpool.
After class is when I made my next mistake. It was 6:20-ish, and Cooper gets picked up at 7:30. I should have taken the girls through a drive through and gone straight back to campus to wait for him or even snag him a little early before dry land practice. Instead, I took them home for dinner. And realized once I got there that I would only have 20 freaking minutes before I needed to GO BACK TO CAMPUS OMFG.
Sooooooooo there I was at 11:30 STILL WORKING on the couch after doing a TON if cleaning up and putting Minnie to bed late (8:15 instead of 7:45, not bad considering I was still driving across town for like the 6th freaking time when she would usually go to bed, and she was dancing to Opalite with Dorothy while Jack played video games).
TERRIBLE TUESDAY YOU GUYS. (For me. The kids had fun).
Next week, Jack is going to have to miss crew entirely and drive Coop to practice. If his teammate is not there, I will FOR SURE grab fast food and take the girls to pick him up.
AND ALSO. I am going to do my work first and save the ridiculous side trips for spare time just in case there doesn't end up even being any spare time and I am pretty sure there was a childhood fable or two about this very thing. Gah.
The day started out SO WELL. Ben and I ran together before he left for Peoria. Jack got his official Bradley acceptance packet in the mail. I had time to walk the big kids to the bus (Coop is taller than me) AND look cute before I went to work. AND THEN THE BARREL JEANS HAPPENED. It really is all their fault.
Ah, the dread question.
First of all, family dinner as a performative nostalgic spectacle is definitely a tool of the patriarchy. Also, things are so much easier than they were 11 years ago in most respects.
But still, there is the question of what to feed everyone. Every single day. And! We are almost never all home at the same time. Bah.
Here's what's working right now:
1. A compulsory dinner on Friday, even if that's grilled cheese sandwiches on the Blackstone, so we can sort of touch base and hear about everyone's week and do something fun to kick off the weekend. (Coop sometimes rides the bus home with friends on Friday because it is the one night he doesn't have dive practice, but we still make him come home for dinner because we are terrible)
2. A fun dinner on Saturday. Maybe that means Ben and I go out and everyone else has pizza. maybe we all go out. Maybe we have a quick dinner and a smorgasbord of movie snacks-- you get the idea.
3. Big dinner on Sunday that will yield leftovers for a couple of days: burgers but make extra burgers and a huge salad and cut up tons of veggies to eat with dip, pot roast with potatoes and carrots, huge pot of spaghetti sauce and lots of meatballs with stuff to make meatball sandwiches with the leftovers, double the pork chops with extra sides, etc.
4. Ben makes Tuesday's dinner on Monday and also grills a bunch of chicken what we can eat in salads and wraps for a couple of days.
5. Skating by on leftovers and breakfast for dinner until Friday when we make dinner and start with whole process over again.
What about you? How are you answering the dinner question lately?
1. Baking
FALL. I love FALL. Especially fall baking! Behold, some ugly pictures of some delicious things I baked last week (and cracked the code on indulging in. I ate them when I made them and then... not again. EASY PEASY).
Oatmeal raisin cookies (some for my TAs and some for home; I add a good slug of molasses to the linked recipe)
2. Thinking ahead to the holidays. Do I need 8 of these for my couch? MAYBE.
I read some good books this month-- and some real stinkers (Elizabeth Gilbert I am looking at you. Seriously, I disliked this book so much I stopped following her on IG, even).
My top book this month is, perhaps, my BOOK OF THE YEAR (although there are some excellent reads still to be published this final quarter, and the Booker Prize longlist books are excellent)
Random snap of one week's ambitious TBR (and then I got Katabasis on my kindle and returned the hard copy-- I am getting the hang of my Libby Kindle requests!!)
Here's the list from worst to best:
All the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilbert: No thank you. **2025
Tilda Is Visible by Jane Tara: A bit heavy-handed with the metaphor. **2025
The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus by Emma Knight: Liked this but did not love it. *Audio **2025
The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren: Cute but very very very predictable. **KINDLE
My Friends by Fredrik Backman: I usually love him, but this was too Hallmark movie for me. **2025
The Guncle by Steven Rowley: Liked it so much, I snagged the sequel immediately. But then I listened to one million podcasts instead of it... *Audio
Home of the American Circus by Allison Larkin: I liked this, but I would have liked it 100 pages lighter, too. **2025
Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson: YIKES YOU GUYS. *Audio **2025
Sounds Like Love by Ashley Poston: This was sweet and sad and cute. I liked it! *2025
Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done by Laura Vanderkam: This was fascinating and made me want to read everything she's written. *Audio
I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time by Laura Vanderkam: This was terrific-- I loved all of the advice and the reframe. I do have time to do the things that matter to me. If I don't have time, then maybe if was not a real priority. *Audio
I'll Follow You by Charlene Wang: DARK. LOVED IT. **2025 **KINDLE (Amazon First Read-- these are rarely awesome, but this one is).
Life and Art: Essays by Richard Russo: There is a whole essay where he talks about writing Straight Man (my favorite book ever written) and the character of Hank Devereaux (my favorite character in all of literature), and I was RIVETED. **2025
Maggie; or a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar by Katie Yee: THIS IS WONDERFUL. A BOTY contender for sure-- great story, wonderful narrator, funny and sad-- loved it. *KINDLE **2025
Flashlight by Susan Choi: Booker Prize longlist book-- so good. Sad, harrowing funny-- thick. A delight. Not a pool book, though, but that's where I read it. **2025
I'll Come to You by Rebecca Kauffman: This is one of the best books I have read this year-- such a simple plot but such wonderful characters. I highly recommend it. (Also the cover was not appealing to me, so I checked it out and didn't read it and then re-requested it and did';t read it and then finally listened to it). *Audio **2025
Book books: 7
Kindle books: 3
Audio books 6
2025 books: 11
Book books: 79
Kindle books: 9
Audio books: 59
2025 books: 88
I have fallen in love with the Edit Your Life podcast recently, and I listened to an episode on minimalism (LOL that will never be me) that contained the advice to curate a love list. This was in the context of shopping online-- like, instead of immediately buying something, put it on your love list and see if you still want it or if the act of creating a list satisfies your shopping urge.
But! I love the idea of a love list (kind of like Nicole's favourite things or Elisabeth's happy things Friday) each month where I reflect on the micro delights (another Christine Koh term) that got me through.
Here's what I loved in September:
1. Kodiak Nuts and Seeds Oatmeal: A lot of people said they eat oats and whole grains to get their fiber, and I do, too, but I find myself wanting most of my fiber to come from fruits and veggies because you gotta eat A LOT of whole grains to hit the 30 gram goal, which means there's less room for eating other stuff. Enter this awesome instant oatmeal with 14 grams of protein (more if you eat with 1/2 cup Fairlife milk) and 4 g fiber. Add an apple, and you have a nutritionally dense and super filling meal. The other day, I also mixed in peanut butter, and for under 500 calories, I was full until dinner time. (24 grams of protein and 10 grams of fiber)
2. JOGGING: YOU GUYS. I LOVE TO JOG. And I am in good enough shape to just lace up my shoes and do it. It's wild.
3. Sunset on the prairie: We are soaking up every single second of the most delightful fall weather imaginable, including outside play time after school and after we do dance and dive drop off.
