September 2024 in review

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September is busy. I don’t know why I thought life would calm down once the kids were in college.

Can anyone tell me why I thought that would happen? I clearly was delusional.

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Week 1​

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This is going to be all out of order in my telling.

I’ll start ith the big picture. Our homeschool co-op, which I stayed in, because as I told Jeff, they’re my friends too and I want to hang out with my friends still, for their field trip for September went to the Austin Aquarium.

So I happily went there all by myself with all of the other moms and the kids and just hung out and talked with the moms and looked at the animals. It’s not so much an aquarium as it is a small zoo. At least half of the animals there are not fish, over half of the animals are various zoo animals.

Over at the top of the collage is the popcorn tub. So that’s a funny story. We had some leftover popcorn and it was sitting at the back of the stove. I heard a sound in the kitchen and went running from the office shouting, “No Leezard, NO!” To see Leezard desperately trying to get to the popcorn, and in the process she turned on the stove in the back where the popcorn was.

Now, this is where I was a very mature individual. I grabbed the popcorn and put out the fire before getting a picture. I will stick with that claim.

That maturity had nothing to do with the fact that I had no idea where my phone was at the time and it wasn’t in my pocket to be able to get that picture.

Either way, Leezard now has a very nice tub of popcorn I will be feeding her as treats, as I have zero interest in burnt popcorn.

The bracelet is a very cool concept. One of the ladies from my Precept Bible study made bracelets for each of us, the concept is we each grab a bracelet for the week, and pray for the person whose name is on the bracelet we are wearing. The next week we trade bracelets and pray for the new person. It’s been fun to have a reminder to pray for my friends each day.

The final picture is of our Sunday School lesson, the Kings of Judah, and the kids had a blast coloring in the hearts and adding in little details like who what happened to the king or things the king was known for. They particularly enjoyed coloring in the destruction of Jerusalem. In case you are wondering, they are a blood thirsty little group.

Books read:

  • Easy as Pie– this loosely connected series of books were all on sale for 99 cents each, so I picked them up and had fun reading them rather quickly this week, they were a fun quick read
  • Not So Fictional Fall– I think this was my favorite of these, but probably because it was a book store owner, oh wait, there was another I read next week I also really liked
  • Absolutely Not in Love– Overall I enjoyed this one, but I felt like some of the problems were resolved a little too neatly and that annoyed me because it didn’t feel like it was solved completely
  • Chasing Down Her Highness– I’m very meh on this one, I didn’t even have a strong dislike, I’m just meh on the book. I struggled to finish it. The book couldn’t quite decide if it wanted to be a cozy urban fantasy or a cozy fantasy, or just something else. I kept trying to figure out how to place it and that kept taking me out of the book, and then you pair that with characters who never quite clicked with me, and that leaves me without a desire to read anything else in the series. Especially when the book doesn’t follow any formats for any of the types of books it’s trying to be. It doesn’t end with a Happily Ever After like a romance. It doesn’t have a slow-burn over-arching storyline like many gas lamp fantasy books, and it’s not a gas lamp fantasy at all. Nor is it a cozy fantasy because it doesn’t follow any of those tropes. I don’t know what to do with the book. It has a smattering of many different things and it frustrates me.

Week 2​

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Okay, I completely recognize this is a very weird combination of pictures. That’s because I didn’t really take many pictures this week, next week is going to be even worse. I have another picture I could have included that’s a selfie, but it’s a horrible picture, I’ll include the story, but not the picture.

First starting with the big picture. Years ago I started making daily paragraph writing bingo for the kids. I planned to make it into a product, but never did for years, and then a friend asked about anyone having something like this and I did, I just didn’t have it ready made. So I finally got it done, and took all the pictures. I was glad to get it done. FINALLY.

Next up, so I found this laundry basket of Superman’s clothes while I was cleaning, in it were some socks. I texted him asking if he needed the clothes and he said no, and then Leezard was chewing on her feet, so I came up with the genius idea of putting the socks on the dog.

In case you are wondering, it took approximately 5 minutes for the dog to slowly walk out of the socks. I was rather surprised she didn’t try to get them off faster. She just looked at me in confusion as I put them on her.

The middle picture is the craft for our Sunday School lesson, we made a sundial for King Hezekiah, and I now need to make that into a nice little craft card, which will soon turn into a post. I have so many Bible crafts I need to write up… Focus Ticia, so much to focus on.

Now that bottom corner, that’s a fun one. See we went to lunch with someone I’ve known for decades. They’re my Mom’s age, and as we were out to lunch, they said to the waitress, “now we’re about to pray for our lunch, is there anything we can pray for you as we pray?” I thought that was the coolest thing ever, so I wanted to make sure to write that down, and it turned into a fun set of drawings I shared on Instagram. I’m trying to create fun little drawings like that every now and then, but I’m not super consistent with it.

Before I talk about the giraffe withe the bow tie, let’s talk about my terrible selfie I’m not sharing.

Okay, so we have a family call every Thursday night so we can all talk together, and we were talking about something. I forget what it was, but someone said something that was horrible, that shouldn’t exist, and everyone knew it was something I wouldn’t want, and wouldn’t think should exist, and I got several comments of how they could just see my face, so I took a quick picture and texted it to everyone. And the face was just hideous.

But that picture of the giraffe, we had a fun discussion with the gaming group asking where would giraffes wear a bowtie? This turned into a 20 minutes discussion, including finding pictures on the internet, research papers being posted on Discord, and more. It was so over the top.

Books read:

  • Faking the Fall– Oh wait, this was also a really good one, so now I have three favorites, so the book store, the fake celebrity relationship, and
  • Can’t Help Falling– I’m amused at the different scenarios people come up with here for these books
  • Fall Back Plan– Cute fun enemies to lovers
  • Hmmmm, there was another one in here that I must not have written down

Week 3​

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The big news for the week was my sewing machine was sent to the big sewing machine retirement in the sky. I was kind of surprised by how emotional I was about it.

Thankfully, right now Bernina has a trade-in event so I was able to trade in my non-functional machine to get a new machine that is very fancy and colorful. I’ve sewn my first project, I still have to take a picture of it, but I do like the ability to just push a button and it trims my thread to stop sewing. So it’s pretty cool.

So funny story, we got Leezard a new bed for in the office, so she can hang out in there with us, and she stubbornly refused to use her fancy new bed, but instead flopped down on the floor RIGHT BEHIND MY CHAIR, so when I turned around I hit her in the head. It’s a choice, a choice you can make, I don’t know why you would make it, but she did.

Books read:

  • Amish Vampires in Space– Yes this is a book, and it’s actually good and has some interesting stuff to discuss. As the author’s note says: Author’s note: As many reviews here state, this novel presents a HARD SCIENCE FICTION take on the premise. Though not without humor, a “campy good time” was never the intent of “Amish Vampires in Space” or its sequels. If camp is what your searching for, please look somewhere else. (You’ve been warned.)
  • I read something else that week, but I kind of accidentally wrote books down on the wrong week, so I need to go back and figure out what I read when later.

Week 4​

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Funny story, The Artist came into town for the weekend as the month ended and I didn’t get a single picture with her, now partially that’s because she doesn’t like taking pictures with me, and partially that’s because she was here to get her Board of Review done for her Stars and Stripes and so was out for most of Saturday, but it’s still kind of funny.

But, this week I reorganized the pantry, which doesn’t sound like it should be a big deal, but that was a major ordeal taking up most of two days to get it all organized.

It was so much work I got sick the next day after getting it done. Okay, I was probably just bordering on sick already, and that had nothing to do with it, but it’s fun to blame on that. I found several cans and various boxes I’m sending off to the serving center to donate, and so many half-empty boxes or just outright empty boxes I threw away.

It was kind of depressing.

I finished my first sewing project on my new machine, a Bible case for my niece’s Legacy Bible. Next I need to make one for my other niece and then find my nephew’s Bible and make one for him. I also made a cover for the dog’s bed, which you can see airing out because it smells. We’re going with the theory that sunshine will help kill the germs that cause the odor.

Of course ironically I ended up washing the foam insert in my bathtub tonight (September 30) with some kind of pet odor removal. It was rather depressing how gross the water was after washing out the foam. Also how much water it soaked up.

Now I’m washing the bathtub with bleach because again, really gross.

Our craft for Sunday School was making cloud dough since we learned about Jeremiah and he compared Israel to clay and how hard it is to work with clay to how Israel does not listen to God. I am horribly mangling that analogy, but I’m tired and trying to finish writing.

But the really cool part was part of the way through the craft one of the girls realized the connection, how making the cloud dough is similar to the struggles God has with us.

Be still my happy heart.

Books read

  • I kind of forgot to write them down, I need to go back and remember this.
  • Which I will totally do
  • Really and truly, or at least I hope so.

The post September 2024 in review appeared first on Adventures in a Messy Life.
 
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