Miscellaneous shit from the past month Vol 5

After a long hiatus from doing concerts and all via Covid and just general disinterest due to life stage, it felt good to be back this year since I intentionally tried to make it The Year of Live Music that turned into the Year of Live Things in General. I saw Jagged Little Pill the musical in January, Bruce & the E-Street Band in Atlanta in February, missed the goddamn Gin Blossoms in February due to Covid but they were booked, Harlan Coben in March, music in the park in Langhorne at the end of May, Elin Hilderbrand in June,  Bare Naked Ladies/Del Amitri/Five for Fighting in July, and of course I saw Bruce at the Meadowlands, which was a bucket list concert for me, with Melissa and Tris the week before Labor Day weekend. Bruce was scheduled for Philly too with my Dad & brother but that was postponed until August 2024. Today is Bruce's birthday. Happy birthday to the boss!

Anyway the Year of Live Things concluded its booked portion this week with Ray LaMontagne at the Met and Kate Baer in conversation with Jessica Knoll at the Northampton Library. I also saw Jennifer Weiner at Bucks the Thursday after Labor Day, and had dinner with my mom after. I'm on the hunt for some live music/things to do for the remaining three months of the year, preferably around the shore since I'll mostly be there with a few spots of Philly intermixed. The live music/event doesn't have to be famous so if you have suggestions especially near the shore, let me know

The end of summer at the shore was good - MFD’s fam was down, mine over Labor Day, his Aunt Maureen spent a few days with us and it was nice to visit with her. Mom and alRich were supposed to be down this weekend but switched to end of Oct due to weather. 

Have I mentioned stilt people are at the top of the list with clowns of things I do not ever want to encounter?

Isn't she a beaut? I actually got one of those Brads deals things in my signature color. This was a fucking steal. It's quite a bit bigger than the yellow one from Aubrey I've been rocking the past few years and will likely continue to use for my shorter beach trips.

I just need to leave this here.

This will never go out of style. Fuck him and everyone excusing him and everyone on the fascist down escalator to hell.

Random things that have been kicking around in my head.

My hand is raised.

In the past week the dogs went back to Dog Beach and loved it - still another week before they are allowed back on our regular beach - and Shittah went to the vet and hated it. He refuses to be in a carrier so he went on his harness. He was pissed regardless.

Covid pause killed all of my creativity including cooking but I'm feeling like I'd like to do it again. I made greek chicken bowls recently, and ground chicken with a cauliflower veggie mix and some sesame oil and soy sauce to clean out the freezer. On the last day of summer (yesterday) I finally had two really good pieces of corn on the cob. I feel like I didn't get enough fresh farm food this summer. Also Snoop has cereal and it's not good. 

We cannot get enough of topo chico in the glass bottles with a little lime over ice. 

Adult level joy is finding the tart cherry juice you flavor your water with on sale for half price.

The only time I would ever touch Hunt's ketchup is to purchase it for a blind ketchup taste test happening this fall. Heinz only, FOREVER

Are we all loving connections as much as me? I do Wordle, connections, and a daily crossword all on my phone (I also do crosswords by hand still obvi). Gotta keep that aging brain fresh to death

This is my perimenopause headshot. Do you like it?

We are one main mini split and one window AC unit down at the shore. We are in the make a list of things to do portion of shore time.

Happy first day of fall. This is my favorite type of pumpkin.

My weekend plans were changed due to rain so I figured I'd use the time to catch up on random shit I like to keep on the blog. Hope you're well

Snippets of the weekend 5.8.2023

Friday my car got serviced $$$$ woof, solid day of work, saw Dad & Carol off in the morning, and we had a family dinner for Rich's 70th (tomorrow) with a rainbow and Sadie joining from the living room. We got home at about 8:45 or 9 and then I drove to the shore. My second in the dark drive in a week. I talked to Kim for about 40 min of the drive which always makes it more bearable.

Saturday I checked out the completed shit pipe repair in the light, built a toilet paper wall, started assessing, sorting, organizing, ordering, and all that jazz for our summer rental supplies and linens. After that I did some of the spring block party real quick - hits this year were bags that have curses on them LOL and this homemade granola. 

MFD arrived later in the day. I took a solo walk to the beach and read a bit. Mark, Sarah, and Harry arrived later. Mark and MFD assembled my second go at a dining room chair replacement that is no good and being returned. I went to bed around 10. 

Sunday I woke up refreshed after a very good sleep.We went to Dog Beach for a while and everyone enjoyed.

Otherwise I got stuff out for Freecycle, pulled everything out from under the third floor beds and reorganized them, assessed what is missing/needs replacing and looked for quilts, MFD worked on cleaning the outside with assist from Mark. I read a bit on the porch. Sarah and I picked up dinner from the Anchorage which they grossly underestimated the timing of. We watched the end of the Sixers game and I was in bed reading by 9 - finished a book and started another. A good Sunday mix of productive and relaxing and social and not.

weekending reels on Instagram 

 

Today is Geege's birthday. He's been gone since September 2017 and I cried really hard about physically missing him just last week LOL. Happy birthday best good boy, I know you are still with me. 

Friday Files 4.28.2023

What it looks like on the bay and what it looks like less than 10 minutes later on the windows four blocks up the street. I have spent so much life chasing light without regret.

My shore corner store (Boyar's) is back, baby! I'm super thrilled. I ate meals from their hot case and ordered this week. They got new produce cases and I'm thrilled even though it costs a king's ransom for any of it. In the summer I'll pay it to be able to walk

Seen while walking

Imagine being this dog. A big galoot for a pug who still insists on being a lap dog. His feelings are very hurt because we've been walking for about an hour after work every night and he is a couch dog by now. I used to walk him miles all over this town when he was a puppy trying to get him to be less afraid of people. That didn't work, but it did encourage him to be more at home among pillows and blankets. Ben is the best good boy and would walk with me forever.

Travel is back back back. I did some more refining of Griswold Summer European Vacation trip this week and booked Vatican tickets. I also booked one of my top three must see before I die destinations for February: Morocco. I've wanted to go since I first set foot in EPCOT's version when I was like five or six years old, and it's been high on MFD's radar for the past 10+ years as well so it's perfect. Our travel priorities do not always align LOL. I got an absolutely tremendous deal - the total for flights/hotels/transfers/breakfasts was the same for two of us as I've been pricing out for one of us over the past 1.5 years, and in the pre-Covid years as well. I booked this trip as a one stop shop, where a company books your flights/hotels/transport between cities. I'm comfortable doing that but it's nice to take a break from that too, so when going to countries where I am less familiar with how the transit works - and where there is a language barrier I consider more surmountable than usual - I don't mind having a company do that. Especially when they run insane deals.

If you are free to travel whenever you want, there are some great deals out there for Europe airfare right now.

Speaking of travel...have you ever noticed that most of the complaining reviews of anywhere international - countries, hotels, services, etc - are made my Americans? It's like if it doesn't work exactly the same as it does in America, people lose their fucking minds. I hate it.

I have also ordered several dresses that I do not need for Europe, but want to try anyway. 

Billy Hicks the Creep lording over those of us in the backyard before I left Philly this week

Why I do not buy shit in stores anymore - nor do I buy it online of the stores that have locked every fucking thing up. What the fuck kind of country values corporate profit over health and has its citizens in a position where they don't make enough to cover necessities. 

Not interested in uniting with flag humpers who surely stand for law and order yet park in a fire lane and sit there while behind them the parking lot is a sea of empty spots. If you are with someone who needs door drop off, do that then park your car. 

No, I am not happy Joe Biden is running again. I wasn't happy he was running the first time, or that he won the nomination. Yes I will be voting for him because despite what internet commenters think, no one is going to challenge him. Not because there isn't someone better, but because we do not currently exist in a system where someone from within the party is going to challenge an incumbent president and the main reason we are not in that system is lack of campaign finance regulations and the existence of Citizens United. Get money out of politics, as I have said ad infinitum. And yes, not voting for Biden by simply refraining from the vote or writing in someone who will not win is a vote for fascism. Fascism as conducted by the GOP is unfolding in FL, TN, OK, and MT in ways we have not seen before - in the censure of democratically (the process, not the party) elected lawmakers at the state level. This is well beyond the fascist book bans, anti-abortion, anti-trans, anti-Black, anti-gay methodology we are more familiar with. This is very fucking serious shit and if you care about not living in a fascist country, vote for Biden or commit to the revolution, which will be violent out of necessity because things have gone well too far. Since no one could even commit to a national strike or halfheartedly throw a Molotov cocktail in response to a corrupt court striking down Roe or in response to the gun murders we are subjected to daily, both actions which would be and have been done in other countries for those things and much less, people who think they know in the comment sections can STFU. This is fucking dire. 

Coming to the end of dogs on the regular beach season in Ocean City. We are not okay. We can still drive to Dog Beach, but we are not okay.

The faces of the beach this week.

And the bay...they imploded boiler units on the former power plant that is across the bay from us. The smokestack is coming down in the future too and internet commenters are...lamenting this as a loss in the landscape? Just because it's always been in your sunset photos doesn't mean it belongs there. It is a fucking phallic smoke stack of a shut down power plant,  not a fucking lighthouse! What's to mourn?

Today is super rainy so we've not been out much...we're living on the memory of the previous few days, where we've spent at least an hour outside after work every day walking around.

Have a good weekend! Tomorrow is Independent Bookstore Day - support your local! 

Friday Files 3.10.2023

We do love a shirt that shines.

And a shirt that says exactly what we mean. Annual list of what women don't owe the world is in the instagram caption.

The worm moon before it was fully up Sunday night and when it was fully up over a parking lot Tuesday night 

Things I'm looking for...four decorative ceiling tiles, maybe some comfortable dining chairs for the shore. A slim cabinet for next to the couch of a certain height that is not wood colored, black, gray, a zillion dollars, and available. A winning lottery ticket, not big bucks just big enough. You know.

People in my neighborhood go so hard at some shit and it makes me laugh.

I've been thinking of virtually abandoning this space and starting a free substack newsletter. You can subscribe here and you'll get it whenever I push it out - I'm going to just be jotting shit down off the cuff and not formatting or being insanely photo heavy. I'll probably keep weekend stuff here? I'm not sure exactly, yet. 

Because I miss the jotting things down form of writing I favor, which I did some semblance of here on blogger like four to five days a week for close to 10 years, then twice a week once the surreal onset of the Covid pandemic wrecked all of the routines and thought processes, and now I’m barely making once a week.

Part of not posting a lot on blogger is me, no longer wanting to sit at a computer after sitting at a computer for 40+ hours working. I loathe doing it from my phone. I always worked a lot and still blogged but there is a difference now, with majority WFH. I feel both more and less in control of my time. It seems to flow through my hands and get away from me these days.

Part of not posting a lot on blogger is the world, specifically America as I live here. God the amount of fucking times I’ve written about social injustices and the world is still unjust. How absolutely rude that a small voice cannot make all the change people have been fighting for and dying for for years, amIright? I used to have more action items on that front and I just fucking don’t right now and that’s a little bottoming out feeling to sit with.

The anti-Trans and anti-drag (assuming you all know not all trans people are drag queens and not all drag queens are trans) rhetoric and legislation is particularly frightening right now. Do you know people would rather have people suffer and die than be who they are? And do you know a lot of people voted for those people? It costs all of us exactly $0 to live our lives and let people live theirs. 

But I’m still the person who likes to jot things down and document what I’m doing, if only to look back for my own personal reference. I’m still an observer, which I’ve been since I can remember cognizant thought, and I like to share observations in writing. And I’m still the person who believes we can make a difference in the world in how we are. Be a good human, think about things, let people live, don’t be personally racist or blind to systemic racism, don’t be personally misogynistic or blind to systemic misogyny, don't operate under the notion that your god and religion are the rule of the land or matter to anyone else, don't allow politicians to legislate on religion because you’d hate it if it wasn’t yours, stop believing in the criminalization of poverty, stop letting corporations dictate how we all live and how those we elect govern; take a fucking hard look at mass incarceration and how we got there. Etc etc you know the drill.

Whew, when I think of how I used to argue from a place of understanding and compromise on abortion. Proof we can look back on things we’d rather not be, also. Now I’m viciously abortion on demand without apology not your fucking business not being the one who might persuasively bring you around.

Birthday month in the house! I have been doing my annual HomeGoods trolling, I've got birthday massage and lunch scheduled, pedicure and hair the day before, something the day after, will see both of my parents on my birthday which never happens as an adult LOL. I turn 46 in less than a week. Wednesday night I was digging through old photos looking for pics of Mom Mom as her birthday was March 8 and that only added to my annual birthday reflections. I have big love for middle age and I want to make sure I say that out loud because the world would like women specifically to age in reverse or fade into obscurity once the societal notions of beauty in face and body start to sag and age, as if appearance is all we are. Middle age is cool, man. I'm digging it so much.

Getting out of here on old dogs and dogs eating bugles. Happy Friday!

Friday Files 2.10.2023

The  simple luxury of an everything bagel, toasted, with a liberal application of cream cheese, topped with a layer of cucumbers and sprinkled with Himalayan salt is chef's kiss. Happy Friday, everyone!

I switched to this brush a few months ago after my friend and hairstylist of forever Kristi at Salon Harmony used it on me while I was getting my hair done. I don't dry or style my hair and I certainly do not wash it daily so the brushing is important LOL. This really reduces static and helps with tangles which I always have in the back of my head. It's $10 at Target.

Once again I am a fool who is sitting at 50% read of a book at 11 pm and stays up to finish it. More of a fool last night because this was hair raising in multiple places. I know a lot of you love the thriller genre also. This comes out in May and you should know that I paused in several spots because the description of violence specifically regarding women and children was graphic - I read books like this all the time and if I'm pausing over it, I should do the courtesy of giving others a content warning heads up. 

Last night was the perfect night to return to the beach for the first time since January 29. 

I've got a lot of balls in the air personally and professionally but juggling schedules and sharing a car is no longer one of them. On the 55th day after his car was totaled, MFD purchased one yesterday and the universe wept with relief. I'm not a sharer in general, and I'm really not a check in with someone else before I schedule things person. I've also gotten used to being a person who does not live with their spouse full time and that has been a bit of a shock to go back to. Next week is a nightmare schedule-wise so this is perfectly timed. Say goodbye to your viewing post, Billy Hicks. Philly doors that were ordered in August - and have needed to be replaced for many years - are being replaced next week. 

It is clear that the person who feeds dogs off of plates does not eat in peace and the person who does not feed dogs off of plates does eat in peace.

I assume you've seen or heard of the absolutely unhinged blackface video courtesy of Northeast Philly white girls as it's viral now. I posted about it on Instagram as soon as I saw it and when I woke up the next morning the three stories were gone. Instagram had removed it for hate speech. No shit. White people wonderwhining(tm) why everything is still about race should pay particular attention. This is why, numbnuts. Because this shit still happens. Because this country was built off the backs of the unpaid labor of Black people who were enslaved by white people and we've never reckoned with it or paid for it. Because Jim Crow never ended it just became Jim Crow 2.0 and Jim Crow 3.0. Because the prison system in this country is the current iteration. Because we excuse and protect and tsk tsk white kids who do stupid shit and vilify and incarcerate and harm Black kids who do stupid shit. Because racist white folks elected by racist white folks are attempting to whitewash history and remove Black history from schools so what they teach their kids at home - that shit like this is acceptable or funny or excusable or kids will be kids - sticks and carries through the generations versus being ripped out at the fucking root and discarded.  

I am not going to go into how fucking unhinged Marjorie Taylor Green is, and how unable she is to function as an adult in society. 

My favorite sheet pan dinner is kielbasa, red onion, bell pepper, banana peppers, and sweet or red potatoes. 

Crew this week

Even I use the standard Go Birds greeting/pleasantry/hi/bye and watch the Super Bowl when the hometown team is in the Super Bowl.

Have a great weekend!