Fiber maxxing

 Minnie and I running errands in our athleisure on Saturday. We went to our old Kroger (next to our current Target and our future IKEA) to get the stuff to make more cookie dough for the freezer and a roasted tomato pasta sauce.

Which? THE EASIEST WAY EVER to make pasta sauce. I just roughly chopped 2-ish pounds of tomatoes and one giant onion plus 6 garlic cloves, covered them in olive oil, vinegar, and Italian seasoning (plus fennel seed), cooked them at 400 for 40 minutes, and threw the whole pan in the blender with a handful of fresh basil.

We served it with rotini (I had whole wheat) and turkey sausage, plus an arugula and beet salad. The kids also had French bread and butter. Delish!

Other easy aback-to-school food wins? Cookie dough from the freezer, take and bake pizzas (Hyvee pizzas are fine, but the kids like Whole Foods the best), and Whole Foods prepared family meals-- sometimes all at once,

Cooper actually LLOVES the salmon, green beans, and sweet potato meal, and I like that all I have to do is put in in the oven, and we both also can eat it for lunch the next day. (only $30!!)

Please enjoy this photo of Minnie leaving school on the first day and just imagine my delight at seeing her like that. With a bag of laminated sight words her teacher asked me to cut out at home-- which is exactly the kind of work I love to do. Bonus-- Minnie got to read all the sight words (which she can, flawlessly. I hope she shows her teacher those skills. Last year, she acted really shy and was afraid to show her stuff, and her teacher was FLOORED at conferences when I asked Minnie to pick a rando book off the shelf and read it to me. Minnie scores really high on assessments but does not always perform at that level in the classroom...)

It's getting dark so early, you guys. We can barely make it to the park after dinner before the sun goes down. Also it is frog (toad?) season in our neighborhood, and they jump constantly over the sidewalk at might which is gross. Sometimes they land on my feet, and sometimes we step on them. It is very old testament plague-y.

Also! Minnie is staying up until 8, which really cuts into my couch time. Cooper is in bed before 10, but Dorothy stays up with me to take the dog out closer to 10:30-- she's the new Jack. SPEAKING OF JACK. YOU GUYS. HE IS PLEDGING HIS UNCLE JON'S FRATERNITY and just absolutely LOVING HIS LIFE in college. We get to see him this weekend, and I cannot even wait. 

He and Ben jog on campus-- how cute is that?

Annabel misses Dorothy so much you guys. Minnie and I coukd not find her anywhere the other afternoon on our way to pick Dorothy and Cooper up (TWO DIFFERENT SCHOOLS. TWO DIFFERENT DISMISSAL TIMES. WE ARE FIGURING IT OUT). She was definitely hiding:

I only have 9 weeks of a calorie deficit left to go!  This first week was fine. I stopped eating sweets, except for sometimes (depending on my saturated fat intake for the day) 2 pieces of dark chocolate. The only supremely shitty thing about that is that when I am done with my calorie deficit, I still need to watch my cholesterol, so I probably won't be adding regular  consumption of sweets back in even though I will be eating more overall.  I am an ice cream every day kind of lady, so that really does suck. Some swaps were easy-- skim milk instead of chocolate full fat Fairlife in my coffee, plain nonfat Greek yogurt instead of flavored Chobani, cheese as an occasional ingredient or add-on, not as a meal (lol this is a WI problem). I am also looking at the WEEK not each day, so next weekend, for example, we are going to Pekin, and I will FOR SURE be getting a cookie dough arctic swirl at my hometown ice cream shop. So, this means I will probably NOT be eating chocolate the other days of the week, and I will probably trim my overall calories from 1550 to closer to 1400 Monday-Thursday knowing there will be Cubs game food (going to Chicago "on the way" and Peoria food and just generally restaurant food (definitely harder to track).

If you need me, Il'l be here fiber maxxing.

Pop

 I know I am beating a dead horse here, but the dance placement thing (or, um, lack of dance placements, I guess) is making me foam at the mouth. All I want to do is PLAN MY AFTER SCHOOL life, and... I can't.

I have tried a million different ways to look at this as a positive, and... not finding them. Maybe it's another lesson in control what you can control? Dorothy is stressed about it from a what-team-am-I-on perspective, but we have been with this studio long enough t now that the season will be great no matter what-- I just want to get my carpool on.

The kids finally all went back to school, and I am not going to lie, I am relieved.

Do you love Minnie's bob? I definitely do!!

Before:

During:

After:

Annabel is bereft, but I am loving the quiet house-- might be worth the morning scramble and the terrible drives to and from campus, actually. So far life with 3 kids is incredibly easy, even by myself.

Our internet was out on the penultimate day of summer break (meaning NO TV!!) so we bought some coloring books because we had to delay pool plans while we waited on the internet guys.

A mouse(?) chewed through our fiber optic cable... somewhere? and they hooked up a new one.

The only concerning thing about that (because we have seen mice in the yard and on the school prairie recently) is that the other day when Ben and I came back from walking Annabel-- a walk during which we left the garage door open like IDIOTS-- a weasel you guys omfg was sauntering into the garage as we came up the driveway. DID A WEASEL WEASEL HIS WAY INTO OUR WALLS AND EAT OUR INTERNET?  

Ben and I only communicate with each other via weasel GIFs, BTW.

Wake Me Up When September Ends

 Actually? Wake me up after the second week of NOVEMBER if you don't mind because I am going to spend the next 10 weeks in a calorie deficit. Whomp whomp. And also! An LDL-reducing calorie deficit. How incredibly middle-aged am I?  I'M SO MIDDLE-AGED YOU GUYS.

See ya later grilled cheese. Boo hiss.

Other September things?

Use cuticle cream (I put it by my bathroom sink, even)

Bring back the much-maligned weighted vest (not to replace weight training, but to maybe make my walking more intense?)

Ease into a semester workflow that lets me stay on top of week-to-week course management and grading and also makes time for deeper thinking work.

Take a workout class somewhere doing something

Ease into our after school routine (dance does not start until 9/21-- still no team placements)

Adjust slowly to life with 3 kids instead of 5

Visit Pekin

Visit Jack at school

Visit Eau Claire

Celebrate Cooper turning 15 and take him to get his driver's permit and collect his online course certification form

I know people find diet talk either boring or triggering, but I will likely talk about it a little bit here because losing weight in middle age is a pain in the ass-- not as big of a pain in the ass as being sandwiched in the waybackseat, but close.

August: What I Read

Oh, August. I loved you in so many ways, but reading? Not one of them, despite my productivity in that space. I was underwhelmed by Jane Harper, Riley Sager, Kate Alice Marshall, Lisa Gardner, and Lisa Jewell this month.  But! I was proud of myself for scoring ALL OF THEM via the library! Sometimes on the DAY THEY CAME OUT EVEN. ALL ON LIBBY as either ebooks or audio reads. Talk about an old lady flex!

And. You guys. It pains me to say this, but I was also disappointed by my very favorite author in the entire world, Richard Russo. His new books was... not my favorite. I bought that one ahead of time so it would e on my Kindle the second it came into the world, and it just... was not the best.

(I have the new Liane Moriarty on my Kindle from Libby right now-- came to me ON PUB DAY you guys I am killing the library holds game.)

Here's the month in books from worst to best, with stats compiled at the end:

📱The Heartbreak Hotel by Ellen O'Clover: Why was I on the waitlist for this for so long?

📚🥳 Clutch by Emily Nemens: I wanted to like best friends dramZ book, but there was so much telling and so little showing. Or dialog. Many sentences that started with AND SO

🎧🥳Anatomy of an Alibi by Ashely Elston: I DNF'd this thriller on paper but then thought I'd try the audio book. It was... fine?

📱🥳The Unknown by Riley Sager: This is the second one of his scary books that I have NOT LIKED. 

🎧🥳The Girls Before by Kate Alice Marshall: Liked but did not love this thriller.

📱🥳The Last One Out by Jane Harper: She does such a good job of describing late stage capitalism and small scale social collapse and making the environment a sinister character. Lover her.

📚🥳Cleanup on Aisle Five: Essential Work, Poverty Wages, and the View from Behind the Supermarket Register by Ann Larson: Listen, she is no Barbara Ehrenreich, but I liked this one and liked talking about it with NGS even more.

📚🥳The Divorce by Freida McFadden: Yep. No notes.

📚🥳Transcription by Ben Lerner: I like a book that I have to read slowly and think about. SOMETIMES.

🎧🥳It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell: I have not been a fan of her last 2 books, but this one was good.

📱🥳Look What You Made Me Do by John Lancaster: Ooooh, you should read this one.

📚🥳Arrivals and Departures by Amanda Eyre Ward: This was charming and delightful-- I really like this author.

📱🥳Famesick by Lena Dunham: I have mixed feelings about this book, but it made it to the top-ish of the list in a meh reading month.

📱🥳Under the Falls by Richard Russo: This book! It featured some of his perfectly flawed people and some snatches of the dialog I love so much, but it was a weird plot for him, and the emotional parts just did not land for me. I wanted to love it though.

📚🥳Ghost Town by Tom Perrotta: This was quick and fun but also sad-- recommend. 

📱🥳Into the Blue by Emma Brodie: This was extremely long. I liked it, but imagine if it were like 150 pages shorter.

🎧🥳 You'll Be Sorry by Lisa Gardner: I liked this better than the Frankie Elkin series but not as well as the DD Warren books. But! I do really like her. Gardner, Slaughter, and Cornwall are my thriller faves. Plus Louise Penny.

🎧🥳The Secrets We Hide by Karin Slaughter: YES I sure do love this Sara-Linton-free new series.