5 on a Friday: Getting back into the swing is HARD

 1. I joked last month when I got to my office and saw the hall drinking fountain outside my door had been ripped out (presumably to install a new bottle filler drinking fountain-- YES!) that there was asbestos in the wall. AND THEN I CAME BACK THE MONDAY AFTER BREAK TO THIS:

LOL. I mean DUH. I spent the day in the museum lobby and at the student center. Good views abounded, and it was lovely to walk around campus.

2. I have embarked on a new fitness routine centered around NOT BUYING ANY MORE GD CADBURY MINI EGGS. Things are not going super well so far.

3. I used Jack's breakfast sandwich maker to make Cooper an egg white and sausage English muffin sandwich after dive the other day and was TERRIBLE at it. I used 4 eggs to scramble the whites, but then I had the sandwich maker out together wrong, and when I poured in the egg, it ran all over the counter and cabinets. Then when I was trying again, I accidentally touched the hot part of the machine and flung an egg on the floor. Then I finally did it right, but I opened the cooker before the sandwich was ready and again got runny egg white everywhere. AND! Have you seen the price of eggs these days? That was a $12 sandwich.

4. Literally fed the girls Culvers in the car in the high school parking lot on Wednesday before we ran inside to watch Jack's speech performance.

5. This is the face of a kid who rolled her window down in the car wash.

Room Makeovers!!!!! WE ARE DONE! (except for one picture for over Minnie's bed)

 WE did it!! By WE I mean BEN who painted, laid laminate planks, and assembled the bed and vanity ALL BY HIMSELF. (Coop put together an IKEA book shelf).

Ok! First up, Dorothy's room. 

Here is the before:

And here's the after!!!!

I LOVE IT SO MUCH!

All the new stuff in Dorothy's room meant that Minnie got a glow up, losing her toddler bed and Newton crib mattress (LOL FINALLY) and gaining some cool stuff

Old Minnie room:

(Can you even with tiny Annabel??)

NEW MINNIE ROOM!!

I love both of them so much, and so do the girls

Next up: we make our storage room into a 6th bedroom/den, and the boys all shuffle-- stay tuned!!

March: What I Read

 

Solid Meh

Mercy by Jodi Picoult: I mean, even a bad Jodi Picoult book is better than most books. **Audio

Elphie: A Wicked Childhood by Gregory Maguire: I just... didn't like this or feel like it added anything to the story. And! I have seen Wicked on stage 4 times and read the OG book the year it came out. I AM A FAN. **2025

The Wife Upstairs by Freida McFadden: You guys know this is a weakness of mine, these terrible, terrible books. **Audio

Back After This by Linda Holmes: I really like this author, but this was not the book for me. **2025

Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney: I really could not get into this one. I might listen to it and like it better? **2025

Better than Meh but Worse Than Good

Close Your Eyes and Count to 10 by Lisa Unger: I liked but did not love this thriller. **2025

The Snowbirds by Christina Clancy: I liked this one sort of. **2025

Deep End by Ali Hazelwood: THIS WAS WAAAAAAAY TOO LONG. **2025 **Audio

Some Backlist Gems

Abide with Me by Elizabeth Strout: Oh this book!! I recommend. **Audio

The Senator's Wife by Liv Constantine: This was so entertaining because the bag guys were wretched people. **Audio

The Means by Amy Fusselman: HILARIOUS AND WONDERFUL. The author also writes for McSweeney's, and you can totally tell.

In the BOTY Race**

The Good Mother Myth by Nancy Reddy:  Part Madison memoir (that's the part I loved), part quasi scholarly writing on motherhood-- this is great. **2025

The Dollhouse Academy by Margarita Montimore: SO entertaining. I love this author and her wildly original books. **2025

Show Don't Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld: I am not usually super into short stories, but I can make an exception for Sittenfeld. "A for Alone" and "The Richest Babysitter in the World" were my favorites, but I liked them all. **2025

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks: This is just beautiful. **2025

The Three Lives of Cate Kay by Kate Fagan: LOVED THIS ONE!! **2025 **Audio

Three Days in June by Anne Tyler: What a treat it is to read a new Anne Tyler≥ She's incomparable, and this book is perfection. **2025

BTM: 17

Book books: 11

Kindle Books: ZERO **shame shame shame

Audio books: 6

2025 books: 12

BTY 44:

Book books: 24

Kindle books: 2

Audio books: 18

2025 books: 16

**I mean, listen. I always fall victim to recency bias, so probably my BOTY picks will all be from November.

Money Monday and Staycay Day 5

 Listen. This day was just errands with a couple pf fun things thrown in. What can I say? Solo parenting for 3 days just hits differently when no one goes to school.

Minnie has enough hair for just one braid again-- she was excited.

We drove to a nearby teeny town to hit up a truly bananas shoe store (parrots just flying around!) because Dorothy and Cooper needed new tennis shoes (Minnie needed no shoes, but she got some anyway because she could not resist the pink "birGenstocks" as she calls them.

But then! We added Culvers and a super fun park to make the day seem less errand-y

We park hopped when we got home and walked Annabel to the school playground

I listened to the news on my way to the grocery store and shopped accordingly.

And! I lucked into this at the library (the tl;dr is that it;'s not very good , but I was so excited to sang it**whomp whomp**)

I tracked my spending last week to see if I could put a price tag on fun, AND I CAN.

 

All in, I spent $684, which is solidly cheap, IMO, since it counts 3 pairs of shoes! But does NOT count the 400 other dollars of random spending last week (all that wine, some finishing touches for the girls' rooms, a water filter for the fridge that will probably die before the filter runs out, etc) and of course doesn't count the groceries I bought for the week, etc.

Even buying $6.35 movie tickets, we spent over $100 to see Dog Man and gorge on junk food-- not sure if that was a good spend or not.

We also spent another $160 for food (mostly pizza and ice cream LOL) out and over $250 on stuff (stuffies, 5 below novelties, sweats, shoes).

Definitely worth it, though, because the week was almost entirely stress free.

Staycay Day 4

 We kept our underwhelming pizza (except Ian's-- that pizza is **chef's kiss**) streak alive with some truly yucky pies at a completely random indoor pool (there were two large-ish slides, one that snaked outside the building and one that was a green version of the slide at our summer pool, neither of which warranted a picture or the label water park, IMHO) in the middle of nowhere. Yes, I was absolutely too cheap to pay spring break prices in the WI dells.

THIS IS FOR ONE NIGHT

I planned to take them to the Holiday Inn by our house that has a pretty great indoor pool, but it was completely full. Well-- not completely. They were out of day passes but had one single room left. But YUCK that sounded crowded and gross to me. So we tried a new weird little place, and Minnie especially lurved it.

Turns out, I did not even need to wear a suit because I didn't have to get in the water! YAY!

This pic perfectly sums up our terrible weather. Sandals. But also a fleece. Blergh.