Fall break for Jack, a new recipe, and more miscellany

Minnie was a clutch baking assistant this weekend. Jack came home for fall break (YAY! WE MISSED HIM SO MUCH), and she helped me make delicious pumpkin bars (we added chocolate chips) and also pumpkin muffins. She's the best. (They're both Jack's favorites).

In other food news, I made THIS minestrone, and we lurved it. We had it with tiny ham and swiss sanwiches because HyVee gave me 1.75 lbs of ham when I asked for just .75, and they Door Dashed me the ground beef they forgot to give me-- only first they door dashed me SOMEONE'S ELSE'S GROCERIES that we had to keep since they were going to give her brand new ones, and she ordered A LOT of Swiss cheese. And dijon mustard, BOTH PERFECT FOR OUR TOO MUCH HAM.
 

I think one of my goals for next week is to do a better job with groceries. It has been MONTHS since Ben and I had time to go shopping in person, and my slap-dash meal planning is stressful.  think part of the HyVee problem was my last-minute ordering. Bah humbug.

This woodpecker has spent all morning beating its ponty little beak against a rock (?) outside my window. I think the person next to me thinks I am tapping on something because there's no way she can see the bird from her window.

My main job in life according to Dorothy and Cooper is to mail their clothes that they're selling on Depop. Dorothy sold some White Fox sweats in 5 minutes. Because I paid $70 for them initially,  and she was only asking a mere SEVEN DOLLARS.  No wonder they sold quick. **eye roll** That shopping bag is full of mylar envelopes, each containing a single item of clothing. The kids text me a QR code with a note telling me what item of clothing it corresponds to, and the person at the PO scans the code and prints a label. I smack the label on the envelope and seal it up. AND THAT'S IT. Depop is pretty great.

I sweated literal BUCKETS at hot yoga and then came out of the studio to my Ugg slippers and was VERY annoyed at myself. 

Dorothy had a 9-hour dance intensive on Sunday, and I got Starbucks for her and our neighbor who is also on the team since I drove the first leg of the carpool. And! I also got myself a pumpkin spice latte, and you guys! IT WAS THE BEST PSL EVER. Not too sweet. Perfect temp. Ideal swirl of pumpkin spice, erm, spice. THE BEST. Plato's PLS. I took a selfie to commemorate.

Dorothy forgot her lunch, so I dropped it off with "everyone else's" Door Dash. Honestly, while I was packing her lunch, I rolled my eyes when she told me EVERYONE ELSE got takeout at these things. But maybe she was right. I texted her a photo, so I feel like she got the Door Dash experience anyway.

Annabel did her part to help Harry's new mattress find its shape. It boggles my mind when mattresses arrive in little rolled-up tubes and then get huge. I am a simple soul, what can I say?

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.

Feeling funky

 Ugh I feel so scattered and crabby. I have barely been reading, and my stack of library books is starting to feel very judgy. I have barely taken any pictures, even! 

Part of it is a let down from All City-- it really was sort of all-consuming there for a hot second. 

Some of it is the change-up at Cooper's dive club and not really knowing what that experience is going to be like after 4 seasons with his old club.

Then there is just the general schedule uncertainty for fall--we have no idea what Dorothy's schedule will be, and Minnie is trying out for a swim team. 

Jack moves out in 11 days. ELEVEN DAYS. And Harry right after. And neither of them will be around to close down the pool, and that just feels wrong.

So. Anyway. That's why I have been MIA, not just the utter insanity of my schedule-- but that, too.

I need more of this:

And also this:

Wednesday Whines

 It's like, I love summer so much you guys. And also? Summer is WILD. WIIIIILD. Every second of every day is absolutely spoken for (but I do have time for a Big Love rewatch here and there).

Something that at least makes me feel like I have no time is that we go to swim lessons and then just.. stay at the pool. So I have to all the other non-pool parts of my life in like 3 hours a day. And sometimes we go back to the pool for Minnie's water ballet practice and stay until close.

So I mean. Maybe my real problem is a time management one?

Typical day:

5am-7am: Watch Big Love and work on various things

7am-8:15am: Exercise (run, weights, yoga)

8:15-11: Pack lunches and snacks for pool and activities, make sure Dorothy and Cooper are ready for their days, house tidy and laundry maintenance, emails and classwork as needed. Get Dorothy and Cooper to the pool for dive team

11:00: Ready Minnie for swim lessons, gather giant bag of towels and snacks and books and sunscreen plus Dorothy''s dance lunch and bag and drop Minnie at the pool with Cooper. Pick up Dorothy and take her dance a little early (she gets ready at the pool post-diving and eats lunch in the car). Race back to the pool to catch the end of Minnie's lesson. Cooper is relieved from babysitting duty and bikes home to get ready for afternoon diving on campus.

12-3-ish: POOOOOOL (I often work in the shade here). We also have to pick Dorothy up between 1-3 depending on the day. Usually a boy is around to help, or Minnie and I will leave our stuff and go get her and come back.

3-4:30: Laundry and house work blitz

4:30-5:45: Pick up Cooper and friend from diving and take friend home

5:45-7-ish: Dinner and clean up

7-8:45 POOOOOOOOL

8:45-10:30: Make sure Dorothy, Cooper and Minnie are in bed (really, Minnie should be in bed before 8, but what are you gonna do?) and collapse.

Sometimes there's water ballet. Sometimes Dorothy brings friends to the pool after dance or goes to their pools. Sometimes I have meetings. Sometimes Coper has a private dive lesson at our pool with another coach. But the basic structure of the day stays the same. 

For like 3 more weeks-- then diving is over! Til fall! When I will be the onl driver home 3 days a week and we will have kids at 3 different schoooooools.

Sunscreen is FSA approved! Why did I not realize this $ooner?

POOOOOOL, dive nats, and some general complaining

 I had so much fun getting ready for pool opening last weekend. I love hauling my super giant Lands End bag out of the storage room and going through all of our pool junk from last year to see what makes the cut. Minnie is too mature for her heart-shaped goggles (**sob**), so she put those in the NO pile, along with these little stacking cups she has been playing with since babyhood and and princess-shaped dive sticks, plus these little wobbly penguin and polar bears and all her Bluey people.. This year, she is all about diving for rings and treasure, plus playing water balloons and water squirters with friends. 

She did keep the ancient Beauty and the Beast plastic tea cup and random paint brushes so she can paint the concrete during adult swim, so there's that vestige of babyhood at least

I have been buying either Hawaiian Tropics lotion 2-packs or Neutrogena spray 2-packs at Costco for months, so we are rich in sunscreen (the boys and Dorothy will basically ONLY use a spray **eye roll**). Dorothy also really loves this ELF shimmer sunscreen stick for her face, and Minnie uses a Cerave stick on her face. I use Hawaiian Tropics face sunscreen, and the boys have Target brand sticks, but I think they just go with a sunburn **more eye roll.** NONE of these makes the EWG cut, by the way. But a sunscreen you will USE is the best one...

In a burst of decide-once genius, we have a ton of THESE striped towels, so it's always easy to spot any that are left behind. (they are not currently in stock, and we always lose a few over the summer between the boys working at both pools and Coop diving, etc, so I guess I need to start thinking about a plan B...)

I put cash in my bag to ward off charging our account and threw some tiny bags of pretzels and goldfish in there. I also stocked up on junk food to make a snackle box for Dorothy and her rotating cast of pool  guests to eat at the tennis courts, plus I packed a tiny insulated lunch bag with cheese sticks, apple slices, and teeny frozen Hershey bars for Minnie.  (I bought a huge box of Drumsticks at Costco for $9, and I swear to you we are not buying individual Drumsticks for $4 at the snack shack-- Minnie can have a post-pool treat at home-- and we will see how long this lasts...)

Not the most popular box of the weekend:

My only beef with opening weekend (besides Cooper and Ben not being there)** is that the pool is crazy crowded, and I have to emerge from the shade tent to keep and eye on Minnie, which means I get tan despite my best efforts. I bought THESE pants to wear over my suit (SIZE DOWN YOU GUYS. MINE ARE TOO BIG, and I already wore them and just look kind of dumpy), but I think I also need a shirt, and it is HOT on the pool deck. (I might be better off IN THE WATER with a rash guard on...)

I also wore a giant old shirt of Ben's to protect my old wrinkly chest (not at the same time)

Pretty sure my face is red from being hot since I was pretty slathered and shaded. I actually LOVE Sephora water proof mascara fro the pool because it get all smudgy and I look like I maybe did more makeup-- thinking of getting it in blue, in fact).

They were (almsot) the first kids in the water!

First slide of the season:

LOL at the newly posted slide rules. Number 1 is silly-- alcohol is the ONLY REASON I go down the slide...

Day 2, more of the same:

Plus some diving board action

And a night swim

Bringing a kid home showered and pajama'ed is my FAVORITE SUMMER THING.

(Also, really, it was SLAMMED between 1-4-- like, nowhere to even sit. But I was too busy making sure my kid didn't drown to take pics of that).

Speaking of SLAMMED. We got to the pool 15 minutes after it opened on Monday, and it was SO CROWDED that we couldn't even get a CHAIR. It was, like, public pool crowded. My goodness. But! Minnie had fun, and so did Dorothy and her friend, and we all went home for dinner and came back at 6:30 when things were dead and once again closed the place down.

**Ben and Cooper were at AAU Red-White-Blue NATIONALS for dive, where COOPER! Placed 5th in 1-meter, 4th in platform, and SECOND in 3-meter!! In all 3 events, he was second going into the final dive. In the first two events, that final dive was... not his best, but by event 3, he was handling pressure like a PRO. SO AWESOME!

A few dives from the weekend:

Next up, Cooper goes to Iowa City  the first weekend in June to attempt to qualify for USA Diving nationals (THE BIG SHOW). The org has changed the qualification process this year, so it is MUCH HARDER to qualify. Please keep your fingers and toes crossed for him for the next couple of weeks.