March: What I Read

 I am wrapping up the first quarter with FIFTY BOOKS, which feels like a ton for me, and I wonder if I can keep up thus pace the rest of the year. What has changed? The way I track, actually. I look at books read each week, and this is super motivating to me-- who knew?! Previous years have seen me track only at the monthly level, and I would read a lot in the first and last week but slump a bit in the middle.

Here are my March reads from worst to best:

📕What Have You Done? by Shari Lapena: Literally do not even remember what this book is about.

📕🎉Wildwood by Amy Pease: A forgettable thriller.

🎧 The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins: Another forgettable thriller.

📕🎉Served Him Right by Lisa Unger: The best in this month's string of meh thrillers.

📕First Time Caller by B.K. Barison: Cute romance. Nothing special, though.

📕🎉Get Over It, April Evans by Ashley Herring Blake: Cute!

📕Dream on, Ramona Riley by Ashley Herring Blake: I liked this one better than book 2.

🎧 Awake by Jen Hatmaker: This is a really great audiobook because Hatmaker reads it, and she is so charming.

🎧 🎉Judge Stone by Viola Davis and James Patterson: A predictable but also wildly entertaining courtroom dramZ. Davis reads the audiobook!

📕Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt: Minnie and I have been reading this middle grade book for MONTHS and finally finished-- adored it.

📕Too Old for This by Samantha Downing: This was a gory delight.

📱Spectacular Things by Beck Dorey-Stein: THIS IS SO GOOD YOU GUYS. Sister dramZ.

📱These Impossible Things by Salma El-Wardany: I loved this story of three best friends and their families.

📕🎉A Box Full of Darkness by Simone St. James: Totally terrifying.

📱🎉All the Little Houses by Mae Cobb: SO ENTERTAINING. Gobbled it up. Literature? Well, erm, no.

🎧 🎉Judy Blume: A Life by Mark Oppenheimer: Now that I am done with the book, I am going to catch up on the controversy. It was kind of boring, and he made her sound kind of nuts, so I wonder if either of these facts are part of the dispute? Will report back.

📱🎉The Night We Met by Abby Jimenez: LOVED IT. A companion to Say You'll Remember Me.

🎧 🎉Lake Effect by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: This is delightful--sad, smart, funny-- the total package.

5 on a Friday: Fun things we crammed around work this week

 1. Hosting ALL OF THE CHILDREN. Well, all of the middle schoolers. WHY NOT, you know? Kid math is often wild. Dorothy had friends over and took a friend on a random adventure with me and Minnie, and Coop had a bunch of bruhs who showed up with duffel bags full of Nerf guns and ammo-- very fun.

2. And! The flip side is SENDING THE CHILDREN OFF WITH THEIR FRIENDS! Dorothy went shopping with a bestie, and Cooper spent 2 whole days with friends wandering around a neighborhood close to shops and restaurants.

3. THE LIBRARY. TWICE. And! We took a bunch of Minnie's learn-to-read books to her old preschool and stocked its Little Free Library.

Enjoying her library spoils

4. Lots of running. I ran a 5K every morning and also got a fabulous new headband that really keeps my hair out of my face (and the best yoga pants ever).

5. Mini golf one afternoon and FIVE parks in one day another (only 4 pictured-- the 4 we WALKED to (about 2 miles in all-- go Minnie!) and yes, Jack picked us up from the last one but only because I had to drive Cooper to diving-- no spring break for that. We hit up park 5 right before dinner).

(I read a whole book at all these parks!)

Mini golf (not my fave but Minnie had fun, and this place has 3 different courses, so Minnie and I could play and be totally separate from Dorothy and her friend)

WE MADE IT YOU GUYS.

Spring "break"

 Oh, hi. It's my least favorite time of the second semester-- when none of us have spring break at the same time!. Ben has no spring break because he is a campus administrator. Harry had his break last week (he came home-- it was fun). Jack, Coop, Dorothy, and Minnie have their break this week, and I am on break next week. (When everyone else has work and school-- it will be a great week, TBH).

Dorothy had dance for 3 days last weekend. Cooper has dive for 3 days this coming weekend, so even if we tried to travel on the kids' break, we had THREE DAYS. **whomp whomp.** SO, I am just living vicariously through friends' vacay pictures and complaining about the weather.

Which! Has either been lovely

Or horrifying

Or! MUDDY AF!

Annabel got a haircut (LOL for days)

Whatever I planted in the fall (literally no clue-- bought a bunch of rando bulbs from Costco, and these are the ones the bunnies haven't eaten yet) is starting to bloom

Jack won another speech tournament, and we visited him so Ben could watch his final round (the girls and I went the other week). The school (Sun Prairie West) was so awesome that I truly feel like I am doing my kids a disservice by not living there. (But we are west siders, so...)

... aaaaaand that's it. Lots of jogs, dog walks, and scooter rides.

Dance is back!

Dorothy has SEVEN dances this season

1. Commercial company 

2. Hip hop supergroup

3. Hip hop club

4. Tap club

5. Lyrical company

6. Hip hop trio

7. Jazz company

She's having SO MUCH FUN!

MUCH NEEDED

She had a team dress rehearsal (all of the above pics) and her first competition (in Madison-- phew!) that also had a convention component.

She did 6 of her 7 dances in literally 3 hours (trio was up first DURING the call time for the other 6, just to add to the crazy), so I have ZERO PICS from the competition. Well, that's not true. I have a few:

SO MUCH DANCE. And! We even went back at night to watch the teens and seniors compete.

Up next, a little break before 2 more in a row. And by break, I mean, a travel dive meet. Hashtag BUSY SEASON.

5 on. Friday: Weird Things I've Searched for and/or Bought Lately

 1. A collapsable stool. This is for Dorothy's dance bag, so she can sit on it while I do her hair.

2. "books for kids who like To Kill a Mockingbird" because Cooper read that one randomly at school (in his downtime, not for class) and told me he wanted to read more "actual literature." I ended up handing him Go Set a Watchman from our bookshelf in the living room and ordering Lord of the Flies and Project Hail Mary (prolly not actually literature, but whatevs) and finding Harry's copies of The Catcher in the Rye and Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl.  He returned Watchman because he said he didn't think Harper Lee would really want him to be reading it and started LOTF today.

3. "is there a Dotti patch shortage" THERE IS MY GOD THERE REALLY IS. As every GenX woman gets totally and completely fucked by perimenopause, the FDA has removed the black box warning from HRT, and IT IS SO HARD TO GET A PATCH REFILL. But also, I am so happy all of my sisters are taking a restorative estrogen bath, you know? TGF Walgreens-- I do not have to worry about it for 84 more days.

4. "Hillary Clinton bejin" because my eyes are getting worse everyday and also I suck at spelling. Was trying to find a high res pic of her speaking to the UN for a course promo poster our comms person is making for next semester. I am teaching my Great Speakers class, which is always fun.

5. I did not buy this one, but I did text a photo of it to Ben as I walked through Von Maur the other day. Tupperware is not the only thing on my bday list

Aging

 I broke my yoga every day streak last week. Lemme tell you about it.

On Thursday, March 5, I used my 15-pound dumbbells to do a chest fly in a glutes bridge (I usually use 8 or 12). At the time, during the second set (of three!), I was like oh shit that felt really pull-y. I need to remind myself when my chest hurts that I am NOT having a heart attack.

I felt OK that day and the next, but I did feel some muscle tightness and tenderness on Saturday. And Sunday. Worse on Monday. Really painful despite a couple ibuprofen around the clock on Tuesday. Ditto Wednesday, when the pain crept from the right side to the middle of my chest and woke me up in the middle of the night. On Thursday, it was more of a stabby pain any time I breathed too deeply, coughed, or laughed really hard (which I did when I volunteered in Minnie's class because those kids said some ridiculous things), plus when I straightened up after bending or leaning forward.

Did I stop doing weights or yoga, you ask? Well, no not really. I did yoga every day until Thursday, and I lifted weights (different workout but same weight range and upper body all of it) Monday and Tuesday.

I also ran every day, figuring if I could run and not feel worse, I was probably fine.

But! On Thursday, walking home from Minnie's school after volunteering, I called Ben to tell him the silly things the kids said and laughed again, and it really hurt to laugh. Sooooooooo, I thought about my dad's history of DVT and death from pulmonary embolism, my estrogen patch, the fact that the pain was weirdly worse for a second every time I stood up from bending over--- and I called my doctor.

Apparently when you are 47 years old with a family clot history and borderline high blood pressure from your estrogen patch, when you say chest pain, doctors do not fuck around. 

Within HOURS, I had a chest x-ray, a shit ton of labs, an EKG, and a thorough examination by a really smart urgent care doc who def did his homework and had read my chart so carefully and knew everything I talked about with the triage nurse on the phone, including my troubling family history that he was very sweet and sensitive about-- seriously A++++ beside manner.

(I should have made a note to self to also not worry about blood clots)

I was really sweating it because I always think there is something wrong with me, like as a baseline, and because my chest really hurt.

The x-ray results came to my phone while I waited, and they were fine-- but an x-ray would not show a blood clot. My CBC was fine. My metabolic panel was fine. But! The D-dimer test (used to rule out blood clots) and troponin test (used to detect heart muscle damage) were not released to me before I saw the doctor, and the nurse said nothing about my EKG, but I knew my pulse and BP were not ideal since I was actively losing my shit.

Plus! I missed picking up Dorothy and Cooper and Dorothy's friend that we drive to dance and had to text her mom to swoop in and save the day. Also! I had a meeting in the afternoon right before I darted into urgent care that was later than Minnie's pick up time, so Jack picked her up, but then he had to cancel his plans and hang with her until after my appointment. And I was REALLY WORRIED that I would actually have to go to the ED, not home.

Based on one million tests and my general presentation in the clinic including the fact that I ran three miles no prob every day the week of the chest pain, the doctor could confidently say... I am fine (better than fine, he offered kindly) and pulled a muscle in my chest.

I will likely experience chest pain for maybe weeks as my muscle heals and should take handfuls of ibuprofen at regular intervals. Which! When it is a knee or a hip or a shoulder that hurts, I totally know that the pain will linger and is NBD. But a chest??!! Not as easy (for me anyway) to be chill about. Except! My chest has definitely started to feel better, and I wonder if my worry was making me all stiff and weird-- like, my posture is even relaxed now.

 BUT MAN DID I FEEL DUMB for making all that fuss over a strained muscle my goodness. The doc was my same age, and he said we are old enough that stuff like this-- especially chest pain of any kind-- has to be checked out and peace of mind is the "price of admission." Which of course made me wonder how much all of these incredibly fast and efficient tests will cost me...

Speaking of being an old lady, you guys! I took a pic of this and texted it to Ben because it is genuinely something I want for my birthday

DOROTHY IS 13!!!

 CAN YOU EVEN BELIEVE IT!

She is currently THRILLED by her absolutely beautiful new necklace and also kind of pissed at us for not letting her get Instagram. Which pretty much sums up the age.

We had an excellent time taking her on her annual birthday shopping spree (a day early because BLIZZARD on her birthday), watching the Oscars with appetizer dinner as a family, having dinner out as a family on Saturday to celebrate both her and Ben, and hosting 9 of her closest friends on Ben's birthday (LOL LOL LOL) to kick off the weekend.

Earnest homemade bday cake for her actual bday (Sunday)  (the same one I made for Ben, actually-- made 2 in a row!)

Ben's cake on Friday:

Minnie, the best helper on Sunday:

She also helped on Friday:

Dorothy got a bonus bday gift of a day-after-bday-snow-day from her school district

Presents on Sunday AM (she got a gorg necklace and then a bunch of little things, since the necklace and her shopping spree were her main gifts). The Sol was from Jack-- the only one she didn't have, which was super sweet.

This is her favorite t-shirt from Target 2 summers ago that got horribly stained by ink in the wash. I found the exact one in the exact size NWT on eBay!!!

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Birthday morning!

She spent her birthday cash from my mom at Ulta (you guys! the SUPER CHEAP brand Essence has THE BEST mascara and liquid eyeliner. We are talking a FIVE DOLLAR price point, and the liquid liner has a stamp on one end to do a perfect wing) (She also got Drunk Elephant skincare and more Sol LOL LOL LOL)

Her other grandparents gifted her an Aerie card, and I augmented it slightly because she found SO MUCH cute stuff for spring!

Lulu because of course

Free People (she is finally an XXS there!!) (It is hard to have the style want of an adult-sized person but actually be the size of a 9 year-old) (Especially when you have really long arms)

Shopping spree a decade ago

Necklace!

(Random interlude of Annabel someplace she is def not supposed to be and acting sneaky about it)

Cookie cake for her Friday night bash

The place where I got the cake also has boba tea, and this was my very intense party order:

Such sweet girls

Birthday boy Ben quietly cleaning up trash. LVING THE DREAM

Yay!

A super nice bottle of red to really cheers 47  after the girls went home

She's THIRTEEN you guys!!!

(Also I won the Oscar brackets-- HA!)