TWTW - July style

Friday I started work early, then headed to the shore around 10. Ridiculous traffic. I stopped to pick up a library hold, hit my corner store for sustenance for the weekend, and finished out the workday. I set up my new foldout desk that will move to an upstairs bedroom when rental season is over. Your girl is too old to work from a not ergonomic position. For $50 the desk is perfect for my needs and I love that it folds totally flat and can be stowed if necessary. My big ass office chair which obviously does not fold flat and cannot be stowed but does have wheels so can be easily moved was also supposed to arrive but alas it did not. Allegedly it's coming today. I hit the beach at 5:45, which is a great time to do so in the summer. The tiger lillies are in full bloom down the street hanging out over the sidewalk like a riot. Tomato sandwiches for dinner, this week the tomatoes should be perfect. MFD and all the dogs arrived after 11. We did a final walk and then fell out.

Saturday Ben's Bark Box unboxing is a big event in our house. He likes to sit with all of his hoarded toys after. We did turnover and there were food in bedrooms again. Why why why. We packed a cooler and went down to the North End for the day. It was great when the boat was not docked on the beach blaring its music out. We came back and I painted my nails (Zoya Brandi and Essie tide of your life), finished my book, and started another.

Sunday I lazed around with coffee, did the business of vacation rentals by updating listings and photos, made potato salad, did some clean up, and hit the beach for two hours. I was annoyed with all people so I headed back home, lay down and read and took a small nap. I made chicken thighs and oyster mushrooms in the air fryer, took a quick shower, caught up with my neighbor, then biked over to see Joyce Maynard discuss her new book in the parking lot of the public library. Love my library here for getting a big ass tent so they can still hold events but not rely on the indoors as Covid is not magically gone. MFD met me there and I got my book signed and photo taken and talked with her a bit, then we biked to Aunt Betty's to get ice cream for National Ice Cream Day.

Send up a flare that FedEx finds my freaking chair so I can make my way back to Philly on a schedule that in any way resembles the one I had planned on. 

TWTW - the one with the books

Friday Work work work from 7 am on, with a nice freezing as hell lunch time beach walk. I went to see my mother in law in North Wildwood in the late afternoon and caught a sunset on the way home. I was in bed reading by 8.

Saturday Sunrise was cold AF and not picturesque. You'll have this. I did some shore chores in the house before going to the library and grocery store and taking a walk on the beach that was much, much nicer than the morning walk. I scored some minor finds and the dogs did as well. I dropped them at home, dropped some unused placemats off to another owner, and got some slices to eat at Tony P's counter.

Super freaking pumped to see Delia Owens at the Music Pier. She is very smart - I don't think I knew she was a biologist who had written numerous nonfiction books about her 23 years of work in the wilds of Africa - and had a great dry sense of humor. I loved her talk, and the Q&A. I told her I had an ARC from Netgalley when she was signing my book....freaking talking about Netgalley with an author, fangirl heaven. Author events are like meeting movie stars to me.

I was done after that and my boardwalk bike ride. I got on the couch and didn't move for the night, just finished up my book and ate a big ass slice of carrot cake for dinner.

Sunday I was tempted to sleep in and man I'm glad I didn't. No one else did either so the dogs couldn't run off leash and were pissed.

I read for most of the morning, packed up and showered, then headed home.

I forced myself to do weekly food prep even though I did NOT want to. I mostly lounged and read while MFD worked and watched two Matrix movies which I loathe. I fell asleep on the couch and didn't get up to go upstairs until 3 am. 

Weekly food prep: Breakfasts are greek yogurt with granola. Snacks are red grapes, pretzels, sunflower seeds. Lunches are buffalo chicken spaghetti squash. Dinners are chicken (fried on Sunday, air fryer buffalo wings othrewise) and spinach/argula salad with steamed red potatoes, and probably a pasta.

Speaking of books, Show Us Your Books is tomorrow. See you here for that. 

Today and every day, thank you to our veterans. 

The rest of the day has to be better than the morning, in which I had to split an Uber with three stranger ladies from the train station to get to work because SEPTA had sent no trains in over an hour. 

Thursday Thoughts: vacation countdown

1. Allow me to remind you that I once had a Pete Rose haircut, wore short things, and posed with pumpkins. Basic bitch from 1977 on. My mom always posts throwbacks on Instagram. Follow her here.

2. Is there anyone out there who has everything they need before a long trip and has to buy absolutely nothing? If so, I want to meet you. Call me. And by call me I mean text me, of course. Also, is there anyone who has figured out how to beam their dogs wherever they are? I want in on that too.

3. Jana and I saw Jodi Picoult at the library! She has great energy and is very engaging and talked a lot about the conversation on race we desperately need in this country but fear having on a lot of levels. I appreciated her honesty and frankness. I bought a copy of her newest, Small Great Things, and I can't wait to read it...but it's heavy so I'm not hauling it to Ireland and it's signed so even if I did haul it I couldn't leave it behind there which is my M.O. on trips. Local friends, check out Author Events at the Free Library - some are free, some tickets cost $15 or $30. There's usually a book signing to accompany it but not everyone does photos so it was awesome that she did. They have an eclectic and impressive roster of writers in.

4. We walked out of the library and I was enamored by this little urban arty thing affixed to the light pole.

5. Center City has been feeling a little edgier lately, so I took an uber to the train station. My uber driver was old, listened to smooth jazz, and drove a pickup truck. Every time I have to take the train home late, I feel like I'm in the bus station scene from Adventures in Babysitting. As I was sitting there waiting on a train Tuesday night, trying to keep my eye on all the people around me and googling an image to use here, I came upon the perfect one...from my own blog last year. LOL. I guess I am perpetually Brenda in the Bus Station.

6. I did the thing: 10 full days and two half travel days packed into a 21 inch carry on. I'll report back on how this goes.

7. My brother is house and dogsitting for us while we're on vacation. Sorry for the blurriness but Mae is quite pleased.

8. Just in case you were thinking your candidate is going to win so you don't need to vote. Obviously this is skewed the way I like it but the same applies to all elected positions at all times. Tinfoil hat your vote doesn't matter conspiracy theorists, I'm not entertaining you at this time.

9. Reminder. Anything that's in your life is there until you let it go, and you are responsible for what stays and what goes.

10.  E-card of the week: Right about here right now.

Hit me with yours.

Linking up with Kristin

Some of the best friends I've never met

I was an only child for six years, with a lot of aunts and uncles and hands on grandparents and parents. From what they tell me, it made me a bit of a tyrant and one of my frequent demands was that books be read to me again and again. Hum the hamster was an early favorite. Gamma hunted him down for me a few years back at an obscure book site. I can't remember a time when I couldn't read.

I always had friends from the neighborhood and school, but I wasn't a kid that needed to be entertained. I was frequently off living a very full and exciting life inside the pages of my books, which I read insatiably as soon as I was gifted with new ones or returned from a library trip with my mom or Gamma.

Ramona, Beezus, Peter Hatcher and his annoying little brother Fudge. Laura and Mary Ingalls. The Boxcar Children. Sheila Tubman. Claudia and Jamie and the mysterious Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

I remember agonizing over not being able to just read Christopher Pike's party series all day. Andrea and I discussed the fate of our older friends on the bus on the way to school every morning.

No one ever monitored my reading, so I was shocked and intrigued by the Dollangangers and Casteels in V.C. Andrews books early on. I breezed through The Babysitter's Club. I came of age with Margaret and some other Judy Blume girls, as well as the Wakefield twins. I remember reading countless Sweet Valley High books during the summer weeks I spent at the shore with my family.

In Mr. Epting's ninth grade english class we were reading silently and I cried my eyes out at the end of Great Expectations even though it seemed that Pip and Estella would end up together. The melancholy uncertainty got to me anyway.

The day I met Jane Eyre changed me forever. What a girl, that Jane. I could carry on through my teens and adulthood, but we'd be here for days and days.

Some days I can remember more things about characters in books and how I related to them than I can remember about myself. I've frequently spoken of book characters as if they're real people. There is nothing like a book where the character comes alive for you. Authors who excel at characterization rock.

Books have given me so much and opened up ideas and worlds to me I'd never be aware of otherwise. What are some of your favorite characters?

If you like book talk, consider linking up with Jana of Jana Says and me on Tuesday, November 11 to share your recent read (s).

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Haikuesday

You mean more book talk?

Sorry not sorry, my friends. 

Book nerds, represent.

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Linking up with Kathy for Humpday Confessions 

 Linking up with Shanna for Random Wednesday














Linking up with Liz for Fitness Blondie's Blog Hop: