Ahhhhh, I had such a good month! I deep rested on Memorial Day and limped through the rest of that week including the first few days of June; and then starting the first Sunday of June, it was ON.
June picks:
HOME: Cleaning and decorating
1. Throw some shit out for the love of god.
PHWOARR, I have been ON FIRE with this! STILL so delighted with my bed six inches away from the wall and the bags in the red dresser and the ladder thingy in the foyer for my backpacks. Moving the bed is what forced my hand to deal with all my bags—three of which I sold, thirty bucks to Gryffindor! Really I think not having all my bags hanging off the footboard is what makes the bedroom seem so much calmer, that and finding a place for the laundry bag i.e., an IKEA bag, off the floor at the foot of the bed. It's so nice in here, I am writing from my calm bedroom. Plus, Mitch put in the A/C just in time. Also side note, the first Sunday of June I suddenly just stopped watching TV to fall asleep. So it's nice and cold and dark in here, I have been sleeping great.
But wait, there's more! Bunches of stuff got sorted to be trashed or donated (or sold!) or saved, I'm down to three bankers boxes of craft materials that I have definite plans for neatly stacked in the kitchen. Der schweetums has six bankers boxes similarly neatly stacked in the kitchen. And the rest of the house is clear living space! Almost. I still have more fitness equipment than space to keep fitness equipment in, and I re-messed up my project cubbies clearing off my drawing table, but look!
A while back I had raised this table so that I could have a standing desk at home, and then proceeded to do all my desk work sitting on the couch. I mean, home days are really gym days. I'm going to start calling them that, as a level up from not saying anymore that I work part-time. Anyway I'm plenty active those days, a little couch time is so necessary; life is balance. On the other hand I had a block about having to get out my sewing machine if I wanted to sew, not to mention finding or making a clear space to set it up. Which the table was the opposite of, because I wasn't using it as a desk and was using it to pile things on. So here I have a clear space and my sewing machine already out, see what happen.
Also I massively cleaned out our suitcase of office supplies, I can't even imagine why I thought I needed three boxes of #1 paper clips and three boxes of jumbo paper clips squirreled away and that wasn't even the half of it. Not to be morbid but if I were to measure out the rest of my life in paper clips, I'm pretty sure that what's left is less than one box:
So pleasing, that empty space in my desk drawer has actually always bothered me. And I found the round labels, so I was able to relabel all my spice jars. And I found the stack of kraft cardstock that I've been going bananas looking for on and off for the past ten or so years, it's been in the suitcase all this time :/
Just one more thing: der schweetums liberated a file cabinet from his closet and I reclaimed it for myself, thus liberating my two file boxes from their restless wanders around the front room floor. OMG SO MUCH FLOOR SPACE. SO TIDY.
ETA: AND ANOTHER THING: I really thought I was going to spend this morning baking a cake and instead I found myself defrosting the freezer, it sounds much happier now.
BODY: Healing my body
2a. Get mammogram.
Done, easy peasy. I also took a peek at the primary care practice that's on the Rush campus, but I think I will stick with Dr. Goldfarb for now. I have it on my calendar to get a physical in fall... man I love my body and all, but I really could use a break from taking it to doctors and fluffing its pillows and bringing it flat 7-Up with a bendy straw. I mean, I had a break this month. But like, a longer break.
2b. Draft a plan for doing taxes better.
YATTA!!! So done! So at work I get this small business newsletter as a perk from one of our insurances, we're a bigger business than that but, hello, I'm a small business; so I actually read the newsletter quite a bit, and there was this really helpful article about how to get a handle on your business cash flow, my technique up to this point having been winging it and hoping for the best. So, I basically followed those steps and now understand my cash flow for the first time basically ever, oh man it's so great. Knowing removes so much fear, and gives you so much control! And after doing all that, figuring out a plan for my taxes was like Duh: finalize last year's expenses in January, receive tax documents in January, fill out tax worksheets in February, and send to Elliott to prepare and file tax return in March. BOOM.
In addition to this, there was a lot of shmooing (see PASTIME below) that resulted in me finally canceling the ad-free service on my rocketmail account that I haven't even been using for past three years ::gun emoji:: just in time to save $20 this month. I mean, twenty dollars is twenty dollars.
PLAY: Studying movement and muscles
3. Let's just see what happens in June...
Last month I was feeling very wobbly in this area, this month I feel SOLID. So it goes like this, my #1 favorite trainer is Naudi Aguilar and as you can see right there, he has a YouTube channel with lots and lots of videos that I was always pinning or bookmarking to watch when I had time and never having time to watch them. And, I have Tuesday mornings blocked off to study. So finally, those two ideas came together, viz., Tuesday morning is when I watch Functional Patterns videos. It's so awesome, I feel like I'm screwing around! But it's what I'm supposed to be doing, I wear headphones and everything! And I'm getting pretty good at drawing stick figures:
PASTIME: Writing
4. Let's just see what happens in June...
Lordy, my brain has been a shmoo about this. Not so much the helpful aspect, more the changing shapes bit:
Well also, helpful. I'm happy with my brain. But like no sooner did I think I was giving up on Nom, brain shapeshifted into Let's do THIS with Nom! So okay then I think let's take a little leave from alla Poppy to do that and then brain goes boing into No wait, let's do that BUT WITH ALLA POPPY!
That kicked up a whole side thing about what to do with my Flickr, and transitively, my Yahoo account (see above), and did I want to start a Google Photos account, all of which ended up with me figuring out how to cancel the ad-free service on my rocketmail, and otherwise staying the course just so I can move forward with my writing, instead of getting bottlenecked by photos again, and anyway it's not as if Google doesn't giveth and then taketh away, so I don't want to dump a lot of work into that.
State of the Blog
So who knows what shape brain will be in next month, but right now I'm up to my armpits in editing the recipes that were going to be published in Nom, but publishing them in alla Poppy. When that's all done, I will be shutting Nom down (not that I ever started it up) so it's going to be all alla Poppy all the time for me. I'm allapoppy on Instagram, too. I love Instagram, it's soo much faster to get pictures out. So then I have this idea that I will do little monthly sum-ups like here's my June Eats and eventually when my recipes are in situ, I will link out to them. This makes me so much happier, it seems more flexible and less like always feeling like I'm behind the eight ball trying to cook and photograph and process and write up recipes. This seems like a more natural way to cook and eat, insofar as it's natural to take pictures of everything you eat, well, we'll see if this lasts the month.
Going out
I started a group! Actually that's two groups, the Sunday supper club and now the 6:06 Sunday 606 Skate. What I really needed was just that little umph to achieve escape velocity from my house and to make skating the 606 on a Sunday evening a thing that I do, well, being the unmoving target for people to aim at is exactly that umph (that and the fun wordplay on 606 that I was so proud of I had to share). If I get out of the house and end up skating by myself, I have achieved what I wanted; having people to skate with is gravy. But, I skated with Sparty and Jammy the first week and with Jammy the second week. So, good gravy! I did skip last Sunday, which I also liked; it's a fine line between making things non-negotiable to save on decision fatigue and, you know, The Red Shoes. I had four things to do Sunday and three time slots, and I got to choose!
Then, this kid:
Has graduated from high school! And is going to the Naval Academy. Man, I feel like this solid twelve years of my life were really tough and then I think, he had the same twelve years but like in the first twelve years of his life. His sister, too; they're incredible kids. Sheesh his dad put together a video for his graduation party and the first two pictures were my sister and my mom with Josh as a baby, idk why I wasn't expecting that, and I burst into tears. Ah well, good times! Okay Josh so far so good, don't try to slide down the laundry chute at the Naval Academy like the kid in my dorm who broke all the bones in his body! (I am not remembering this right, there was no laundry chute in my dorm; it must have been some other dorm. Still, solid advice.)
And, this girl:
p: i hope you are ready for your selfie
p: i am practicing
p: ...
s: you have to turn the camera around
p: ah
Staying in
Sleeping and working TV are NO MORE, at least this month! It's so weird: at bedtime after I do my gratitudes, I shut my computer, take off my glasses, shut the light... and go to sleep.
Watching TV
That makes actual watching TV more fun, I think. We watched the first season of Blunt Talk, which a) stars Patrick Stewart, and b) is really singularly funny and smart; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, which blew the top of my head off and made me want to do a stage adaptation (I got better); Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I liked more than der schweetums did, I'm more familiar with Jane Austen's ouevre and could appreciate more how nicely they dovetailed in the zombies; and Orange is the New Black, which—meh.
Reading! What? Yes!
Well, Watership Down. Again!
So, July picks:
1. I think I'm at a stopping and smelling the roses point with the front room. And it has been a year since I started this Whole Apartment Big Clean, the other rooms could probably use some love again by now? Or maybe now I can use a little of this time to get crafty? On my new sewing machine setup?!
2a. Woosh speaking of cash flow, I have an eye appointment coming up and I need new glasses and new contacts.
2b. Get new passport, this has been on my list forever. But cash flow :/
3. Keep watching Functional Patterns videos.
4. Keep editing and publishing recipes.
