Grocery shopping seasons

 Ahhhh, grocery shopping.

 For literal YEARS I was ordering a Metro Market pick up order very single Sunday-- before the panny, even. I liked the app, enjoyed the money off on gas, and had a pretty routine grocery order. Over the years, we also shopped at a variety of other places-- Costco, Whole Foods, Aldi, Trader Joes-- it all depended on our schedule and menu, etc. We usually ended up with a Metro Market order to pick up, a Target order to pick up, and a visit to another store as well every Sunday.

 It has been hard for us to be one-store shoppers-- but that is, sort of, the dream.

Metro Market has been getting SO expensive, though, since January 2025. The app still gives access to good coupons, but the everyday prices are increasingly bad. I would run in the store midweek and spend over $100 no matter what I was buying. Ben and I even started grocery shopping in person because our usual $300 grocery order was getting smaller and smaller every week, and we wanted to see what the heck was going on in there.

We realized that right now, when we have a teeny bit of schedule margin on the weekends, we like grocery shopping together. It's fun to go on a run and then go to the store.

For a couple of weeks, we went to Aldi then Costco right after-- but this was inconvenient because we needed to go to another store to get name brand stuff, so we either added it onto a Target pick up or still found ourselves at Metro Market.

This was not only super expensive, but it was also just kind of a bummer. Our Metro Market store is old and small and dim and ... not fun to shop.

So, we've (temporarily?) switched our loyalty to Hy-Vee, which is big and bright, and airy and pleasant. And sooooooo expensive. But! Sometimes, we can only shop there with no need for Costco at all, so maybe, eventually it will be more convenient AND more pleasant?

We have fun exercising early and going straight to the store. Our store has a dietician, and there is a rack of recipe cards at the front of the store, which is clutch when I have holes on my weekly menu calendar. When Ben was out of town with Cooper, I did online shopping from HyVee and was charmed by the meal suggestions on the website, too (I decided I did want pork chops, potatoes, and green beans and rigatoni with peppers and lean ground beef in a jar of premade sauce, plus broccoli and crusty bread).

A money saver? No. But I can pay with Apple Pay and get 2% back! More fun? YES. And! Minnie found the style of cake she's like for her bday party (in 11 days **gulp**)

August GOALS **strong emoji**

 

Some of these are silly. Some of these are aimed at instilling good habits before the back to school schedule punches us in the face. (We do not go back to school until September! YAY!). Some of them are honestly stuff I just have to do, so why not get the dopamine hit of checking a little box?

Caveats/ tl;dr:

I am not concerned about sticking to a certain calorie goal on MFP, but I do want to track every single thing I eat (even the stuff I wish I hadn't) and see where I am at in terms of calories in. I also want to eat 100 grams of protein and 25-30 grams of fiber every day, so it will be helpful to track these things. It would be so nice to know what's maintenance for me, versus a starve and binge cycle that is probably actually maintenance calories but makes me feel like crap.

The new restaurant is a chain, and I know that makes me the most basic bitch ever.

The Apple Pay goal was OG something about not buying coffee on campus, but I have TA training at the end of the month, and I know myself.

I have always been a slow waker, but these past few years walking with Minnie have made me someone who just sort of oozes along like a freaking glacier. I need to  NOT lag blocks behind my fam when we are out and about. I am going to start by picking up the pace on dog walks and move on to walking from my parking garage to my office in 5 minutes or less.

July: What I Read

Here are my July reads, in order from least favorite to most favorite. The top 3 this month are EXCELLENT.

📓🥳When I Kill You by BA Paris: Totally meh thriller.

📓🥳Meet the Newmans by Jennifer Niven: Meh.

🎧Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler: The firs tone was way better and can stand alone.

🎧The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano by Donna Freitas: I read this on Nicole's recommendation and liked it.

📱🥳Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer: Adorable, but not as good as Less

📓🥳Land by Maggie O'Farrell: Exactly why everyone loves her.

🎧🥳Molka by Monika Kim: So weird and good.

🎧🥳Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy: So spare! So sweet!

📱🥳Down with the Shipmans by Meg Mitchell Moore: Liked but did not love this summer family saga.

📓🥳The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson: Perfect summer read.

🎧Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan: LOVED IT.

📱🥳Girl Dinner by Olivie Blake: YES YES YES.

🎧🥳The Reservation by Rebecca Kaufmann: I adore her.

📱🥳Whistler by Ann Patchett: YOU GUYS.

All City DIIIIIIIIVE

 Ok. So. Our pool hosted the All City Dive Meet which is usually a once-in -a-dive-life thing because there are 13 pools in the league, and hosting duties rotate on a schedule. I am so so so so happy we hosted on JACK'S SENIOR YEAR! How magical and special and delightful.

Also! Cooper was able to compete for the first time since he was a 10U because the USA Diving schedule gods smiled upon us.

I was on the planniung committee heading up awards and senior recognition, and I have been working on this beast for a literal year. We had the most wonderful 48 hours of hard work and awesome dives-- it was a core memory for all of us. 

I was at the pool for 10 hours on Sunday for set up and warm ups, 14 hours for comp on Monday and 16 hours for comp and clean up on Tuesday. Then I vegged all day Wednesday and Thursday and am just now crawling out.

Also! I am solo parenting because Ben and Coop are in WVA for nationals. They left from the All City boards and drive straight there for warm ups.  Cooper dove badly in 1 meter and finished 25th (top 12 go to finals). Then he was FREAKING AMAZING through 5 (out of 8) dives on platform and FELL APART SPECTACULARLY to finish 19th. Tomorrow he dives on 3M, and there's no way to know if Jekyll or Hyde will show up. Fun to watch both of them on TV tho!!

Back to All City!

DAY 1

97 degrees and so humid I literally thought I was going to die.

My friend and I announced the whole meet-- we switched off each age group, and we annonced awards for the group we were not announcing dives for. It was fun and also hard work.

THE WHOLE FAM!

YAY COOOOOOPER

Sibs

LOL Minnie. She donated her giant blow up sprinkler for tent city, and everyone had fun running through it.

COOPER WON 13-14 BOYS!!!!! ALL CITY CHAMMMMMP!!

I jumped in the pool in my sports bra and hotty hots

Then I remembered I had a swim suit, so I  jumped in again (NOT ALLOWED but who was going to yell at me?) and did some paper scoring in the shade.

DAY 2

Better vibes because it was only in the mid-80s. Phew!

Jack got to wave the flag during the national anthem.

Senior recognition was a slideshow on our awesome scoreboard, and I introduced each senior, read their slide, and asked them to do their favorite dive. Everyone loved it :) Jack's was epic, naturally

He made it to boys' 15-19 finals (natch) and had one last warm up with his coach who has been on the team as a competitor or coach since he joined 9 years ago **sob**

Boys finals are always epic and everyone screams and cheers and it's just a freaking magical diving wonderland. Jack dove SO WELL and took 7th to end his dive career on the absolute best note. He and his teammate won the high point award for their age group-- it was perfect.

Dorothy had a total blast diving and hanging out with her pool friends for 48 straight hours

After the boys' final while awards are getting prepped, the seniors and coaches start diving on the host pool's boards. It gets VERY ROWDY very quickly with kids taking 5 bounces and trying crazy dives and coaches showing off their skills (some of our league coaches are d1 college divers, so it's always a good show). Well. Our award label printer was having issues, and the crazy diving time was getting VERY ROWDY because it was lasting so long and I started to worry someone would get hurt. I was about to jump on the mic and use my best mom voice to make everyone stop diving when I noticed that our meet official, a homegrown college diver who is a member of team USA and currently training for the Olympics, was in his Team USA speedo doing a FRONT THREE AND A HALF, so we let it ride.

One Very Dumb Thing I did was not look closely at the box of medals I had (the pool who hosts the swim portion of the meet orders awards for both swim and dive, so all I had to do was pick up a box of ribbons and medals from the other pool). All I could see were gold, so I figured they were all the same, and we put a sticker on the back of each one with the kid's name and score. So we gave the top 3 winners in each event gold medals. Until we ran out and starting pulling out silver. OOPS. Let's just say by the end of day 2, everyone got rose gold (bronze lol).

Oh you also want VIDEOS? Sure.

I will remember this meet forever-- what a gift!

Life According to my iPhone

As always, I look to my camera roll to tell me what the heck has been going on.

First off, big news for a new tiny diver:

Speaking of the pool, I AM IN LOVE WITH SUPER GOOP.

All City Dive preparations ate in full swing (that's me on the podium that came to the pool IN MY CAR from the pool hosting the swim portion of the meet)

One of the kids had a video doc visit early in the AM, so I wore tinted CeraVe sunscreen on my run and felt almost camera-ready

We had time after dinner the other night and before we needed to pick Cooper up from work (lol how all good date nights end), so we went to a local conservancy to take a walk.

Cooper is way taller than I am now

Minnie adored her water ballet performance.

Her dance was to "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" obvs

Dessert party afterwards

The only thing more ill advised than this pattern mixing combo was running during an AQI alert.

Last Friday's dive meet had face painting

I figure fried is the best way to eat veggies right now.

Wearing my swim suit as clothes. THAT'S WHAT THIS SUMMER HAS COME TO.

Make it Monday

Hottest baseball tourney EVAR. (Coop's team won and got rings as trophies-- super cute)

Reading material I found on Minnie's bed

HER FACE

Senior night at the pool!!

This is one of the rare large toys I have bought at Costco that isn't actually too big IRL

She's got the Lego bug

 

Money Wednesday-- not as catchy

 When I bought Jack's MacBook Neo for school last week, Apple was Very Insistent that instead of just BUYING the computer, I open an Apple Card and pay for it over the course of a year with zero interest. I asked my BFF Chat if this was a good idea, and, because he is a very neoliberal bro at his titanium core, he was like yeah bruh and if you buy your groceries on your apple card, you'll end up getting that computer mostly for free. 

Normally, I am anti more monthly payments, but the idea of barely actually paying cash money for a computer was tempting. With an Apple card, you get 2% back on purchases made with that card via Apple Pay and 3% back at certain stores-- meaning the amount I spend in gas and groceries (Mobil is a 3%  place) will give me enough daily cash every month to pay for the computer without changing my spending habits. The biggest catch is that you can't pay the balance of the computer off early, but since you can save your daily cash and apply it to the monthly balance in increments, you are essentially doing the same thing but with more clicks. **shrug**

Giving it a shot-- hopefully I won't forget when I charge things because the only thing worse than spending $600 a week on groceries is paying 27% apr on those groceries.

Did you miss me? I actually didn't go anywhere

 Oh wow-- I accidentally forgot about the blogosphere for a whole week last week. YIKES.

Things are BUSY over here, and that's saying a lot because my baseline tolerance level for daily activity is pretty high. Ben's work has been busy. Harry has been out of town for his work, too. My online class started up, and I got an extra adjunct section this 8-weeks from the online school I have been teaching at since 2009. Plus I have had tons if meetings for fall. The All City Dive Meet is happening at our pool, and I am on the planning committee, so most of what would have been spare time has been devoted to dive things. And! We've had bad air quality, so the pool has been closed intermittently, throwing everyone's schedules into a tizzy. Also! It has been in the high 90's here, and I have been yelling at everyone to keep the damn door shut which has honestly taken more time than you'd think.

Don't worry, we've been up to our usual bullshit, too.