Snippets of the weekend 10.3.2022

I spent the weekend with my BFF Kim and her fam in Massachusetts. I got to walk my goddaughter to and from school on Friday, and we did a lot of lounging and cooking for the freezer and eating. It was a nice chill fall weekend that was actually borderline chilly temp-wise Sunday. 

It was grand until the shit weather drive from PHL airport back to northeast Philly. Poor visibility! At this age, who needs it.

If you are new to batch or freezer cooking, some easy ways to start: pluck a rotisserie and shred or chop the meat to freeze and throw in future dishes, then use the carcasses to make bone broth and base a soup off of that (I did chicken and rice this weekend); pulled pork - spice rub only so it can be used for carnitas or doused in BBQ for pulled pork sandwiches - when you liberate it from the freezer, you can crisp it up by throwing it under the broiler for a few; turchicken (mix ground turkey and ground chicken, it helps with the blah turkey flavor) and ground beef - brown and freeze plain for use in future dishes or do what I did here and season for use in tacos or enchiladas; chili; french dip sandwiches

Happy happy birthday to my fabulous niece Lola yesterday. 

In addition to snippets here, I've been doing weekending reels on Instagram if you are interested. 

Hope yours was good!

TWTW - the one with a good balance

Friday my motivation was scant but I struggled through. I painted my nails (Essie cashmere bathrobe, Essie no place like chrome, OPI Red), made salad and Aldi holiday shaped pizzas, and peaced the fuck out watching Great British Bake-off after a very fucking heavy news week while MFD put the Christmas stuff out.

Saturday MFD and I headed out for the day and it was so nice to be out in the world. We hit up Harriett’s Bookshop, had lunch at Martha Kensington, and stopped into a few places on Frankford Ave on the way back - Cake Life Bake Shop and Jeni’s ice cream. 

Harriett’s is black-woman owned, Martha’s requires vaccine cards and adds 20% to all checks so all employees are guaranteed $15, Cake Life is woman and trans-owned and has the freaking best slice of s’mores cake like I don’t Even like s’mores and I would bathe in the icing. I vibe with Jeni’s ownership. I voted freely with my wallet supporting small biz throughout the day and enjoyed being out and about in those areas of the city for the first time in a while.

We got into pajamas before 5 and camped out on the couches for the night. Dinner was the baked goods from Cake Life. We watched Beautiful Girls and The Big Chill then I read and fell asleep doing that and never left the couch. 

Sunday started at 4 then again at 8. I reorganized bookshelves, purged and moved shit around, did 383948 loads of laundry, finished a book, made up a casserole, threw an egg bake together, watched Yellowstone, and admired MFD's Friday night Christmassing handiwork outside.

I do love a mix of productivity, rest, and fun, the balance of which is hard for me to strike on a lot of weekends. 

Happy anniversary Dad & Carol, happy birthday to my uncle Billy on Saturday, happy birthday today Sara, and happy Monday to the rest of us. 

Thursday Thoughts: Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do

1. What is personal space?

2. Should we talk about the weather? Or just roast silently? Unless you're in my house, in which case you need blankets once MFD gets in front of the thermostat.

3. The kind people at Maple Holistics sent me their Apple Cider Vinegar Shampoo to try in mid-June. You know I never report back on things until I've had them in circulation for at least a month. I like this one as much as I like the tea tree shampoo, and I used the ACV with the tea tree conditioner. The apple cider vinegar shampoo is of course free of sulfates and parabens and is great for color treated hair - it does a great job of clarifying without stripping your head of color. My hair and scalp feel super clean post-wash. And one of my favorite things about this company is their recycling program - for every six empty bottles you return by mail, you get a free shampoo or they make a donation to the environmentally friendly charity of your choice. The returned bottles are chipped, melted down, and re-formulated into new bottles for their products. This.is.how.you.do.it, beauty companies. Come on. Get with this.

4. Steph and I will post about ways we're struggling with sustainability on Wednesday, 7/24, and how we did overall for Plastic Free July on Wednesday, 7/31. If you post about those things on Instagram, use the hashtag #sustainablestephs and tag us! Steph is here and I'm here.

5. I love seeing a Mural Arts project in progress in Suburban Station.

6. Love this sticker I saw yesterday while running an errand at lunch.

7. I've gone back to using old school blue tub Noxema on my face a few nights a week. I slather it on and let it mostly sink in for 15 minutes before rubbing it in and washing the remaining off. Bruce and Ben are so confused when it's on.

8. The demonization of brown people by this administration and the lengths that GOP congresspeople will go to avoid it and regular citizens will go to ignore or excuse it is fucking vile. Go back to your own country...said by a President of the United States, to members of Congress with the implication that it trickles down...while trump holds a rally and American citizens high on hate and what they have been told is righteousness chant send her back. It is so fucking fascist I have no idea how Congress is standing for it and the American people are not alarmed by it. Ugly and un-American too.

9. Reminder:

10. Ecards:

What appears after the hyphen in Thursday Thoughts is a song lyric to whatever I'm listening to when I start to write the post. This week is Space Oddity by David Bowie

Thursday Thoughts: I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy, A Yankee Doodle, do or die

Wishing you a Happy Fourth. Enjoy and be safe.

Doing non-celebratory things today because I'm not in a celebratory mood. Patriotism is complicated. You can love something and still see and acknowledge that it has serious flaws. I want life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be equal for all and for the flag to stand for ALL of us, to right the wrongs of colonization and the fact that this was all built on the backs of slave labor. Blind flag waving doesn’t make any problem go away, ask any fascist dictatorship that’s been and gone or is still operating to the peril of its people. There are fucking military tanks in the nation's capital more closely resembling military propaganda parades of dictatorships than an American parade and your president has a partisan perversion of the Fourth planned and I'm not fucking here for it. Add to that the fact that the National Park Service has to divert $2.5 million from its budget for today's D.C. shitdoggle + the report from the Department of Homeland Security on abhorrent conditions in concentration camps + a host of other things and I'm just not doing it today. Dissent is patriotic and if you don’t think so, you probably only like to acknowledge the parts of history that serve your narrow worldview because this country? It was fucking born of dissent. And if you are a “leave if you don’t like it here” person, I assume you would have said that to the revolutionaries and prefer God Save the Queen to any of our songs. Yes? If no, stop saying that. It’s ignorant of this country’s own history.

Picking up, packing up, and getting my shit together. It's nice to have a day off before vacation to get my shit together, and a holiday to boot. MFD does the mummery most of the day and I like to be home because of the fireworks/dogs combo.

Having a free extra day off tomorrow thanks to my awesome company. I plan to use it to run final errands and get a pedicure...I was going to do it myself but I need to call in the professionals on these feet since I am barefoot or in the sand almost 24/7 at the shore. They are not well and it is a S.O.S. situation. Plus Debbie and I are going to go together so that'll be fun.

Trying this new face wash from Farmacy. Every time I cheap out on face wash my skin goes berserk and I'm over it. The Body Shop made the cleanser I was using with success largely inaccessible so I started looking for something else and went cheap with a few and it's a mess over here and has been since the end of March. With the multiple reapplications of sunscreen on weekends, I really need a cleanser that deep cleans but doesn't dry me out. This is paraben/synthetic fragrance/phthalate/mineraloil/formaldehyde donor/cruelty free. I will report back.

Seeing remnants of street art this week.

Walking to the library at lunch

Marking my calendar for our Show Us Your Books linkup on Tuesday, and hoping you do too. Spoiler alert: add this one to your list.

Appreciating Michelle & crew taking care of turnover at the shore house for me on Saturday. It is stressful for me to go away in the summer because I have control issues.

Thanking Mindy for staying with los perros so that alleviates my other stressful going away thing.

Reminding whoever needs a reminder that how others see you is not the definition of who you are.

Laughing at

What's new with you?

See you around next week for Show Us Your Books on Tuesday definitely, but probably TWTW Monday & Thursday Thoughts Thursday also. We'll see.



Linking up with Kristen

Thursday Thoughts - How does it feel when there's no destination that's too far and somewhere on the way you might find out who you are?

1. You know how your brain gets jammed up and things take longer to process/tasks take longer to complete and you know you need a break? That's me right now. Vacation is coming! Signs of that are always on the spare room bed.

2. "It's a road trip but we are going in super light," she says, after she places an Amazon order to ensure the proper coffee is there the first day and takes up most of a bag with books.

3. I got to see Melissa and Evil Stephanie #1 and Alex for dinner on Monday. I always enjoy meeting up with them when Stephanie is out on this coast. Fish tacos and service at National Mechanics were both great. Originally built in 1837 as Mechanics National Bank, the building is pretty cool too. Good pic as well except Melissa's GD eyes are closed.

4. Not a mug you'll be seeing in my mug collection.

5. Things that have kept me up at night this week, causing me to write my congress people close to midnight, Item A: people caring more about the word we use to describe the camps or the fact that other presidents had camps or how the children got here. These are fucking children. They need adequate food, water, beds, soap, diapers. If this was your kid, what would you want people to do on your behalf? This is not a political issue. This is a human issue. Children should not suffer because of the actions of adults. I have to think anyone with a heart believes that. Action: call your govt reps, donate to RAICES , and be be vocal about this because staying silent or neutral is choosing the side of the oppressor. I always did like Highlights and that is the gift of the year this year to support them.

6. Things that have kept me up at night this week, Item B: When They See Us. All hard, but episode four was just...fuck. And this happens, more than we'd like to admit. Action: examine yourself and the systems around you. Read White Fragility. Speak up when you see differential treatment under the law and everywhere.

7. The big todo in our house this week is a bladder infection. Poor Mae. One zillion dollars later, she is on a shit ton of antibiotics and still uncomfortable but back to growling at the other dogs and eating food and treats. Not an expense or a worry you want before vacation. I hope she's back to normal by the time we leave.

8. Co-signed. It's crazy unrealistic to expect happiness all the time yet there are happiness and positivity pushers out there and just stop with that. That’s not real life, it’s smothering people so they can’t express the reality of where they are, putting on a false happy while inside they stew and stagnate instead of having the space to grow through pain and adversity. I have a sign with "Sunshine all the time makes a desert" in my house so you know where I stand. 

9. Reminder: I love seeing street art from one of my favorites in the wild.

10. Ecards:

Thank you and good day. I SAID GOOD DAY.

What appears after the hyphen in Thursday Thoughts is a song lyric to whatever I'm listening to when I start to write the post. This week is Living in America by James Brown

Thursday Thoughts - there's a room where the light won't find you

1. MFD has started watching The Great American Hero and I feel like moving. Few people are more annoying than this guy. Send help.

2. Tuesday night I went to University City to get a facial and eye treatment add on at Jean Madeline Aveda Institute. Prices are super cheap, services were great (all services provided by supervised students), and when you go there you are helping students get the hours they need to put in in order to take their tests and pass their exams. I left relaxed and am definitely going to return. So it's like help someone out and also treat yo'self and as the song goes, these are a few of my favorite things. In addition to facials, they offer back treatments, body treatments, makeup application, waxing, and hair (cut, color, style, updo, braid, rollers, etc etc). They're a block from the 40th Street el stop and it could not have been easier to get there and back from Center City. A list of services can be found by clicking here, and you can call 267.350.8800 to book in University City. Their hours are limited to weeknights in a certain time range so hop to it. While these are students they are also working in lieu of working an hourly job so TIPPING IS REQUIRED. Not by them, but by me.

3. When I was around that way I got to see a mural I've not seen before. Street art, another favorite thing. I saw a smaller version of one of the love letters for you series in the train station too.

4. I might be an outlier on this book, finished it last night and meh. Show Us Your Books is Tuesday!

5. I'm out here killing it on socks between the ones I was gifted Friday that say take no shit/give no fucks and these.

6. In typical me fashion, I have no plans to do something until I get a wild hair up my ass and then I go at warp speed. This time it was our bedroom. It was painted and it's bright AF and happy and I love it. In every room of my house, it's like color threw up. I am not a greige person. Living in color is sort of my thing. The side tables and shelves got painted cream, curtains were picked up last night, the 13 year old ottoman that is basically a scratched up mess from 13 years of dogs on it is getting replaced with a long cream colored one, and I'm shopping the rest of my house for wall stuff and a chair. While the colors were inspired by the summer bedding, the winter quilt Lori made us fits with it too so I'm quite pleased.

7. Happy birthday to my step dad today!

8. Things that have pissed me off this week: people arguing against plastic bag bans as a LIBERAL idea (like what, you want to protect your right to make more trash? this is fucking absurd); the dictator in chief invoking executive privilege over demands for the release of the full Mueller report, fighting subpoenas from congressional investigations, and blocking Mueller and McGahn from testifying before Congress; heartbeat bills and every fucking person who was all "women's rights are fine" before this fucking 2016 election that was a complete debacle in all ways and allowed idiot old white men to stack the courts at every level against the autonomy of women; everything about that toad William Barr; people thinking trump is some business genius playing the tariff game with China while he's lost so much fucking money personally over the past 10 years; people thinking prayers are going to stop school shootings. Fuck off out of here, everyone above.

9. Reminder: Mmm hmm.

10. Ecards.

I split the week of Father’s Day at the shore and have Friday night to Sunday night of Father’s Day weekend available if you know anyone looking. June 14-16. Sleeps 11, $500 for the weekend and you can find the listing here. 

What appears after the hyphen in Thursday Thoughts is a song lyric to whatever I'm listening to when I start to write the post. This week is Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears