TWTW - well, the week that was

Mon - Wed I was off, but not much in the way of rest. Monday I headed back to Philly and got some Christmas stuff happening and errands run and chinese food for dinner. Tuesday the funeral services for my oldest friend's dad, a great man who used to lift me over the fence at three, four, five years old to play as our yards butted up against each other. Jen's family has always been so great to me, and I am sending all the love to them as they are hurting over this huge loss. I hightailed it back to the shore Tuesday to prep for Thanksgiving, running my final errands Wednesday morning to the grocery store and two corner stores to pick up. MFD arrived with Gus and Billy in the afternoon, and my brother and Aub and the kids shortly after. I prepped compound butter, had salad for dinner, and caught the sunset. 

Thursday Banger sunrise to start the day before prep work started. MFD was on stuffing and gravy, I was on turkey and sweet potatoes, Aubrey was on mashed potatoes and green bean casserole, Stephen was on kid games, entertainment, and sommelier. We took a beach walk while the turkey was in the oven and had snacks. Sam the bird (named by Lola) was out by 2:30 and we ate and lolled around for the rest of the day. 

Friday Dad & Carol arrived by about 8, and we set right to the turkey cookie decorating event...after Aubrey figured out how to make them stand up LOL. MFD was a late entry but he did his also during a break in his program. We took a family beach walk but didn't last long due to the wind. I dropped my brother off at Xfinity for the Flyers game and came back to do the art kits Cici got from my friend's studio Shades of Orange - they come pre-drawn with paint, buttons, and instructions you can follow or go on your own. You just need some glue. Christmas-themed and not. They make great gifts and support a small business! Mine is the pug, and Lola added a sweater to it. We bundled up to kick off the holiday season with my favorite tradition - Santa on the top of City Hall. We came back and ate Aubrey's delicious lasagna for dinner with salad and watched Big. 

Saturday Meat-heavy breakfast is how we rolled. Stephen, Aubrey, Dad, & Carol went to the Cape May Zoo with the kids. I cleaned up and read. Carol, Aubrey, Lola and I did some small business Saturday shopping on Asbury Ave. with traditional chocolate covered marshmallows on the way home. I was glad for the mask outside at that point as it was freezing and it's a great face warmer. App and leftover general chaos and Clifford the Big Red Dog movie to close out the day.

Sunday We painted some shells, Aubrey ordered us breakfast from Deadend Bakehouse, and we visited the North Street Tree to leave out shells and admire others. It was beautiful so we lingered a little on the jetty. MFD headed back to Philly with Gus and Billy. After a playground interlude, Aubrey made nachos, I used leftovers for brie bites, and we put out leftover snacks for the Eagles game. Aubrey and my brother left with the kids in late afternoon, I took the dogs to the beach for sunset, and I watched Hallmark movies with Carol and Dad until I threw in the towel a little after 8.

Thankful for another great holiday weekend with the fam at the shore. I hope your weekend was great, however you spent it. 

Happy Hanukkah wishes to my Jewish friends!

Staring down the last two days of November, I'm trying to think about what I want the last month of my year to look like. 

Have a good one! 

Thursday Thoughts - with a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather

1. I have issues with the time change in the spring, but I have been killing it in the mornings this week because Bruce gets up at 5:00, which he thinks is 6:00. Full dark by 5:15 pm is hard to bear though. Why do we still do this?

2. Gather 'round, children, and let me tell you a story of a first world problem: last week I got an email saying Amazon Fresh is no longer delivering to my area after 11/30. I've tried other grocery delivery services, and I will go back to one of them and also try Fresh Direct, but what I loved most about Amazon Fresh was the ability to schedule a delivery I did not have to attend. So I could wake up to groceries on my doorstep at 7 am or come home to them waiting for me at 7 pm. Damn you, grocery delivery world. If you told me in 1998 that I'd be bitching and picky about grocery delivery in 2017, I would've laughed at you.

3. What are you reading? Show Us Your Books is Tuesday! I started three books this week and discarded them all because I only want to read the books I'm getting from the library Friday (The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine and Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark T. Sullivan) and the ones coming from Book of the Month Club (Bonfire by Krysten Ritter and Turtles All the Way Down by John Green). Impatience kills. I did settle on The Seven Rules of Elvira Carr on my kindle for now.

4. I crafted shit last night. Who am I? I consider myself both not interested in crafts and not creative. But the craft was painting a freaking CERAMIC CHRISTMAS TREE of the kind that I am obsessed with. I think this is like number nine or 10 in my collection? I will count this year. It was a good, fun, funny Wednesday night with girlfriends. Thanks for letting me crash your event Lauren, Jill, Dot, & fam! And thanks to Dot for securing the tickets.

5. Sad news for Philly fans this week. We claimed you as our own Roy Halladay.

6. Eat 10 dicks, guy who referred to himself as Virginia's "chief homophobe." I needed this Election Day. The resistance is real. Lots of wins were historic: Andrea Jenkins is the first openly transgender black woman elected to City Council in a major U.S. city - you go, Minneapolis; also in MN St. Paul elected its first black mayor; NJ elected its first female black lieutenant gov; Charlotte, NC elected its first female black mayor; Framingham, MA elected its first mayor since becoming a city, and that mayor is a black female; Manchester, NH elected its first woman mayor in the city's 266 year history; Erie, PA has the distinction of electing the first openly transgender person in the state to its school board; Hoboken, NJ elected the first Sikh mayor; Elizabeth Guzman and Hala Ayala defeated incumbents to become the first two latinas elected to the VA House of Delegates; a refugee who arrived from Liberia 23 years ago is Helena, MT's first black mayor; Seattle elected its first lesbian mayor - and the first woman mayor in 92 years; Kathy Tran, a Vietnamese refugee, became the first Asian-American woman in VA's House; Lancaster, PA, has its first latina member of city council; Philly elected an extremely progressive anti-mass incarceration DA in Larry Krasner...on and on. I am thrilled to see more women, more black and brown people, and more LGBTQIA people in offices. I want diverse people of all backgrounds at our tables. Rooms full of older white men do not fulfill that desire. Look at the photos below of the before and after of the VA house seats flipping. The difference is incredible. Women are stepping up to lead and I applaud them. Especially the black women who have been stepping up for years in communities with no acknowledgment. A staggering 91% of black women voted for Northam to take the VA Gov seat. Thank you, ladies, for not voting against your own interests. You lead, I will follow. Trust black women.

7. I have a hair appointment tonight, and seriously not a moment too soon. The grays are nuts. Probably because of things like MFD not going through his paper hoarding boxes or things like the most recent slide into authoritarianism list or things like...

8. Another mass shooting, barely any coverage since the shooter was white. White people! Stop blaming black and brown people for ruining this country. We're doing it. We are content with doing nothing? We don't even want to TRY a study on gun violence? Did people recognize that thoughts and prayers are not a fucking solution to the cycle of every two months/mass shooting so they just stopped mentioning it at all?

9. Reminder:

10. E-card of the week: I keep looking at messages and responding in my head but never actually responding. What the hell. 

I feel like I just ran a race. No slowing down until after midnight tonight for me. 

We can't be good at everything

I am fierce with myself. Like everyone, I show my strengths more than my weaknesses, but that doesn't mean I'm unaware of the places where I fall short or the character flaws that I have.

This blog naturally gravitates to a lot of things that are my strengths: productivity, organization, cooking, saying no, dissing Justin Bieber. A lot of people have said to me,  "How do you do all the shit you do on a weekend?" To them I say, "How do you take a spin class at 5 am or run a 5k or divide a check by seven without using a calculator?"  Your triumphs could very well be one of my hot mess disasters. We can't all be good at everything, and if we were all good at the same things, that would suck. Because who would assemble furniture for me? I actually hate when people say, "Stop! You CAN do it!" One, let's be honest: I don't really want to. Two, no, I can't. Just like I can't hop on my purple Unicorn Wanda and take a quick ride to the moon.

If I try something a few times and don't get better at it, I say good day to it. Some things you just know in your gut you're not ever going to get the hang of, and when that happens to me, I'm okay with it. I don't beat my head against the wall or try it 59 more times. I'm not going to be good at everything I do. Part of life is playing to your strengths and knowing your weaknesses so you can avoid them. These are some of mine.

1. I am not arty or crafty. I am afraid of hot glue guns. I spaz when creation is in the air. I like to pin shit on pinterest and imagine myself standing calmly before my assembled materials, wearing crisp white pants and a slim finely striped button down accessorized by a complementary chunky necklace, with my hair in a topknot I effortlessly fashioned myself. I gaze around serenely and pick up a tool to begin. Then I wake the fuck up and go look at something someone else has made.  Because it isn't happening. And I'll never wear white pants.

2. Blow drying my hair. My arms get tired, I always have resulting Uncle Larrys, and I'd rather just skip it. So I skip it. Every day.

3. I am very very bad at dealing with weak people and attention whores. I feel like punching them in the face. Sweet Brown ain't got no time for that.

4. Getting up at the crack of dawn to exercise. I lack the willpower and desire, and I am not going to be acquiring either of them. I can't even walk a straight line that early. Once I busted out some Billy Blanks at 6 a.m. and nearly broke my face and some glassware in my living room. I'd rather stay in bed for my own safety and to preserve my belongings.

So would Geege. Obviously.

5. My self pedis leave a lot to be desired.

6. I am unable and unwilling to keep my dogs off of furniture and beds. I'll deal with the hair, and so will you if you come over.

7. I can't hang anything worth a damn. Michelle has hung pretty much every picture and curtain rod in my house. The ones that are crooked are my masterpieces.

8. Using power tools. I'm like a baby trying to pilot a rocket ship.

9. I know every word to a lot of songs, but you don't want to hear me sing them. It's not a pretty sound.

10. My gift wrapping is an atrocity. Bags are my friend.

11. 5 + 3 x 12 = hand me the calculator. Math is a foreign language to me.

12. I'm impatient to the max and will lose my shit over it.

So there you have it. Some of my shitshiney qualities. And I'm okay with being bad at stuff. I like to know and acknowledge my blind spots so they don't bite me in the ass. Then I spend 98% of my time accentuating the positive: the things I'm good at doing, my natural proclivity for certain tasks and ways of thinking. I hope you do too.

It's sunny  here today in Philadelphia, the first time since last Wednesday? Or Tuesday? I can't even remember.

Have a good one!

Linking up with Helene for Tell Me About it Tuesday.