Snapshot Sunday Volume 2

Annabel, telling Minnie firmly that Minnie is wrong, and she (Annabel) absolutely MUST bark at that dog who is always standing nose-to-nose with her when she looks out the front door at night.

Soapbox Saturday Volume 1: I WILL HAVE A PRODUCTIVE NOVEMBER

 I am not doing the daily photo clean up because I have apparently lost MANY YEARS of photos, and it makes me feel really sick. I would rather bury my head in the sand,

I WILL, though:

find a couch and a lamp and maybe an ottoman for the bedroom

schedule carpet installation for our room and Minnie's

finish holiday shopping

prep for Ben and Cooper to go to Texas for a dive meet

take Dorothy to the Chicago burbs for a dance convention

complete spring course prep

run a turkey troot and maybe sign up for a silly Cousin Eddie holiday run

remember to sign up for a yoga class through our community rec program when registration opens (only $60 for 15 1-hour classes! would be a great addition to my fancy hot yoga membership, especially since I only spring for the "cheap" once a week option).

THE CARPET THING THOUGH YOU GUYS. It is such an ordeal. We have looked at carpet. We have had people come measure our house. We have changed our minds about carpet. We have looked at more carpet. Ugh.

I had a great meeting with a course designer about my asynchronous online course and how to design it to make it less tempting for students to use AI. She had so many awesome ideas. I am really excited to dig in! 

Here's to a month of delicious food, family hangs, and extra prep work to give future me a break.

5 on a Friday: 1/4

 1. Book fair season! My very favorite. Minnie was a great volunteer with me and then collected her payment in the form of books, natch

2. It is dark all the time. Here I am walking the dog in the middle of the night. At 5pm.

3. She's always crafting

4. It's my mom's 74th tomorrow, and I shopped at her favorite store.

5.  Buddy the Elf had a couple days off school for conferences, and she made a ring chain with mre than 50 rings to count down to Christmas. Anything to keep her busy, right?

ALSO! I GOT TURKEY MUGS AT WORLD MARKET!!!!!! Thank you for the tip. Blogs are magic.

Throwback Thursday Volume 1

 November 5, 2006

Baby Harry with Uggs in a Bumbo seat

TWENTY YEARS AGO. Omg.

We were all babies.

Wednesday Whines Volume Eleventy Billion

 

I had to put away my beloved ghost mugs, and now I am holiday mug-less.

Dorothy tells me this is silly because I can just get out my Christmas mugs, but this is what she wore to school on Monday, so...

Anyone have an darling turkey mugs they want to recommend? Should I be looking for a pilgrim's head I can sip my coffee out of for the next few weeks? Just bust out the Santa mugs and Spode already?

Tuesday Trends Vol 1

 To be clear. I know nothing of trends. I can only tell you what's trending with me this week. I have a couple things.

Trend #1: MASCARA. I have always been a fan of the fancy stuff, including primer. BUT THEN. Dorothy asked me to grab her a L'Oreal Telescopic tube from Target (my rule is that any makeup or skincare stuff she wants on the drugstore-level is a basic household necessity purchase that I will grab with our weekly order, but the pricey stuff we gotta talk about), and I threw one in the cart for myself, too.

IT IS AWESOME! The brush is teeny tiny, so I do not even need to use my Lancome primer-- every single lash gets coated.

I have started using that first and then applying a thick coat of BLUE MASCARA, and I am in LOVE.

Together, these two products cost less than either the primer or the mascara I was using before. Win/win! (Also that Sephora house brand mascara is great-- I also really like it in brown).

Trend #2: NOT IRONING and then trying to make it look cool. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.

The built-in slip of this dress is literally HANGING OUT below my wrinkled hem because THAT IS NOW WRINKLED THIS DRESS IS. Gah.

Mindset Monday Vol 1: A RESET

 I had the best day eating ALL OF THIE THINGS on Halloween. 

Actually, it started on the 30th when Ben and I had a dinner reservation at this new chain in our fancy mall that had CALORIE COUNTS on the menu, which I always HATE. I do not need to know that my SALAD is going to be ONE THOUSAND CALORIES, thank you. (I added chicken (+300) but also did not have dressing or cheese, so I don't know what the final tally was. Since dinner was going to be ridic, we also had spicy broccolini (330 cals), and I contented myself with just one Sicilian marg (240 cals).

The tl; dr is that if I want to spend $150+ on dinner out (AND I DO), it will not be at a chain restaurant and certainly not one with calorie counts on the gd menu.

Halloween, though, was glorious. I had two donuts from ym fave bakery after a downtown jog

And then there was candy. So much glorious candy.

All I ingested yesterday was donuts, beer, and candy. Plus half a piece of Costco pizza which made me feel so gross. I am not used to that kind of sodium content. And a tiny bottle of Fireball.

BUT (and this is where the mindset Monday comes in), Sunday, I got up and had my usual 170 grams of nonfat Greek yogurt with a handful of blueberries, a diced pear, and 15 grams of Purely Elizabeth chocolate chip cookie granola. I had a mid-morning snack of 1.4 cup of Cracklin Oat Bran (I freaking love that stuff). For lunch, I got some leftover Skinny Taste taco chicken chili out of the freezer and ate it with a delightful honey crisp apple. Dinner was chicken breast, SO MUCH roasted broccoli, and a baked potato with Franks hot sauce in it (nothing else-- it's actually pretty good). Plenty of calorie budget left for wine with The Diplomat after Minnie went to bed and grapes and a Kirkland granola bar for another snack. Just like that-- BACK ON TRACK.

I think I will keep my calorie deficit going through the end of this month because I eased up for a few weeks and ate a more comfortable maintenance. My clothes all fit way better except for my barrel jeans from last season that are still too tight. I'd like to wear them to Thanksgiving dinner, so we'll see how it goes.

How about a few ins and outs, since I feel like I want to stop doing this but also need to FINISH THE YEAR?

Halloween 
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