Life

Currently, June 2021

June 2, 2021

Happy happy happy June – my favorite month of the year! The first Wednesday of the month brings the Currently linkup with Anne In Residence. This month’s words are: celebrating, collecting, gifting, thinking, and trying.

celebrating: our world opening up again. I’m being mindful that not everyone can be vaccinated right now, but watching the 7-day average for new cases drop each day for the USA is a thrill, especially after the prior management of this crisis. I am thankful for science, and for everyone who’s doing the right thing. Next week I’ll see my father for the first time since September, 2019. At the end of the month I’ll see some cousins for the first time since December, 2020. It will take everything not to start crying every time I “re-meet” somebody again. That’s a tall order for me, the Grim Weeper.

collecting: My unworn clothes to give away. I took three garbage bags worth of clothes to Goodwill on Monday. There’s room in my drawers and closet again. I kept looking at my winter pieces and thinking, “do I even want to wear this again?” For example, I can’t imagine cramming ass into a pencil skirt anytime soon. I’m glad the looks for summer (and hopefully fall) are loose and flowy.

a photo of three garbage bags filled with clothing. A scintillating photo, sure to draw people to my blog by the tens.
Yes, this is the best photo I could come up with for this post.

gifting: Erm, family birthday season is in its yearly hiatus. I have a wedding this weekend (food! dancing! strangers! structured shoes!) so that will be a cash gift. I’ll make the card myself.

thinking: a lot about my capital-F Faith and how every time that Faith is shattered by something (3.5 million dead from Covid worldwide, etc etc), I end up putting the pieces back together and trying again. I’ve been watching weekly church services on Youtube from a lovely, welcoming, progressive Presbyterian church in …. Oakland, California. Which is a bit out of my commuting range. Finding a faith home has been a lifelong struggle for me and some days I feel like I am the shaggiest, dirtiest, and slowest sheep ten steps behind the rest of The Flock. But I’m still here, clopping away, getting stuck in bushes and falling into crevasses. This entire paragraph makes no sense but neither does my faith journey.

trying: to grow a new sourdough starter because I miss baking bread. This one, Caren IV, is two days old and hopefully tomorrow I’ll see some bubbles. Caren III died when we forgot she lived in the oven and preheated it without taking her out. Caren II was my most successful starter, but a fruitfly found its way into her jar last summer and NOPE. Caren Prime passed at about a month old.

Past Currentlys (Pastlys?): May 2021 | April 2021 (erroneously titled April 2020) | March 2021

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Life

May 2021 Extras

May 31, 2021

Here are some photos and thoughts from May that were a little thin for their own posts.

But what a washout this weekend was. Teeming rain and highs in the high 40s. This sounds weird, but my ears are messed up from the pressure changes.

I am experimenting with pour-over coffee. So far, so good, but I still miss my usual Fancy Coffee Friday expeditions. Soon.

a pour-over contraption on top of a coffee cup
Anticipation

The garden continues to grow, and I may have some strawberries to show for it soon.

tiny green strawberries on a plant.
Three tiny strawberries!

A few years back we found a birdbath underneath the tangle of ivy in our back yard. We put it back together, added some soil, rocks, and one of WM’s Jizo statues, and now each spring Nature gives us a new little garden.

a birdbath garden of moss and tiny green plants
It looks its best in the damp, early days of spring.

A bird family built a nest above our porch and because my house is a split-level, we had a great view of the nest the entire time.They hatched four baby birds who all safely left the nest. I miss them!

one peeved baby bird peeking out of the nest at the weird lady who keeps trying to take their picture.
One hungry baby bird. The other three were hunkered down in the nest.

And two memes I saved and shared with others…

meme: getting one dose of Pfizer and one dose of Moderna is called an Arnold Pharma
I really had misspelled memes.
Housing market of 2021 - image of a child's plastic playhouse with "New Listing Coming Soon - $299,900"

We still do not have a third dog. We’re not applying for every single dog we see, but we have been rejected from every dog we’ve applied for. Fun. At least the latest rescue emailed a rejection. For the record, that was for a 15 week old black cocker spaniel pup named Murphy, which would have brought immediate and welcomed chaos.

The NYT Crossword puzzle streak, as of the end of May is 162 which blows my mind. I allow myself to Google 2 answers per puzzle, and I can’t remember when I last used both. I think it’s been weeks since I’ve Googled one answer. I estimate that there are about 150 stock answers to clues and once you memorize them, you’re pretty well on track to solve any puzzle. The Duolingo streak is up to 42. That streak I’m not as attached to. The week off of Duolingo at the beginning of April was muy bueno and I think it helped me not burn out altogether.

Onto June, where I have 4 social events, 2 doctor appointments, and 1 hair appointment and I’m more than a little worried about exhausting myself.

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Hobbies

What I’m Listening To: BTS Butter – Hot Remix

May 30, 2021

I said this last year about Dynamite too, but I think this is going to be the song of the summer. This isn’t the original, but I think I like this dance version a bit better.

The remix came out a week after the original.

And the video is adorable chaos.

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