July 2023 in review

This has been an emotional month and I’m less than halfway into it.

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Also, this is not strictly divided by weeks, more of eras.

Era 1: Batman leaving

Though technically the pictures for it start almost halfway through that week….

For Independence Day Batman wanted to launch fireworks and watch ALL of the Scream movies since we had missed seeing the new one in the theaters.The apple pie army picture is from that movie marathon.

We started July 3, and in honor of watching Scream, I bought some Jiffy Pop, which are apparently horrendously overpriced now since they are primarily a novelty item bought for nostalgia. It was still fun to make them try out that bit of nostalgia from my teen years (though even then microwave popcorn was a thing).

Then they got to launch various fireworks, as always happens we had a few times where one went slightly wrong and we got a surprise. The Artist had a fountain she got that was a little bigger than we realized, and we all very quickly backed up quite a bit.

The next day was pool day and Batman had a lot of fun organizing all of the kids to play various games and get another great canon ball picture (why can’t I remember which one is cannon and canon? I’m not bothering looking up which should have 1 n), which I didn’t include this time because I had so many other things to include.

That afternoon was game club and the boys happily expanded the time ever so slightly so they could get away with playing some longer games and they split up into two different groups, I’m not entirely sure what games they played, though I’ll try to write them all down.

Thursday several ladies from the co-op came over and cleaned the downstairs of our house. It was amazing. I got home and cried because they were able to clean things I’d been struggling to figure out how to get the stains out, and organized some areas of my house that were a mess. It was an amazing gift.

Friday Batman had his final Nerf war, which you can see the picture where I got a group picture and then Superman said, “Charge Mommy!” I just sat there taking about 2 million pictures. I would include that hilarious grouping, but I would have to spend so much time adding smiley faces over the faces of so many kids…

After the Nerf War, he had his last Bible study with everyone, which is that picture in the top left corner.

Saturday we had a going away party and there were a lot of people, but the pictures are not particularly interesting as it was just lots of people talking, but it was cool to have all sorts of people from their life come, including the camp leaders from the camp they used to go to several years ago (the leaders were also my youth leaders when I was in high school, so I’ve known them since I was a young teen).

The night was full of more board game playing

Sunday we went out for breakfast together, then spent the day playing a D&D campaign we came up with completely on the fly of what would happen if someone from a D&D world came into our world, how would they adapt?

Basically, it looks like, after we were very confused by all manner of things, we were briefly committed to somewhere because it was clear we were not from where we appeared, but we also were generally very confusing, so they were trying to figure out who we were (especially since one of the people was furry, but looked human).

Monday, that was when Batman left. Originally he was supposed to leave on Sunday, but it got pushed back a day, so Superman was scheduled to work. They said a not-emotional goodbye on their part, for me I was emotional, then the rest of the family headed off to breakfast where I did my best not to cry.

Spoiler: I was no always successful.

We came home and spent the afternoon playing the board games Batman picked out, and then we drove him to the recruiter office to drop him off. That’s that big picture at the bottom.

I was emotional getting him there, and then the bus was late, so we sat there for two hours before finally just leaving him.

It was weird, very very weird.

Games played:

• Cthulhu Death May Die
• Tiki Topple– apparently there are people who play this game and don’t shout “TIKI TOPPLE!” as they play the card, I am very confused by this
• Codenames
• Pandemic: World of Warcraft
• Destinies– it’s an interesting game, that I’m still trying to decide if I like it, despite having won it twice
• Shadows of Brimstone
• I think that’s it, but I didn’t catch all of the games the kids played together

Books read:

• Wonderland Trials
• Ummm… something else, I don’t remember

Okay, got this off my to do list, now to move on to the next thing! Oh crud! I just remembered something I NEED to get done before I leave today. Better go do that.

Era 2: recovery

I could also call this settling into a new routine.

We started off this new era with a college visit for the two remaining kids (big picture on the left), we visited my alma mater, with a rather medium visit. There wasn’t anything great, and there wasn’t anything terrible. Sadly we didn’t get particularly helpful counselors to talk through applying and financial aid, since it is a private college and costs more we were looking to find out more about financial aid and the first person we talked to basically said, “Just apply and see what you can find out.” Not at all helpful.

Before Batman left he wanted to make goat cheese, and I took his cheese he made and turned it into a delicious pasta dish.

The picture next to that is where I accidentally left my tea, a chest of drawers in my closet, which I found after searching for it for a ridiculously long time.

The top picture on the left is when we went out to lunch on Saturday after fixing the gate.

Oh! I need to tell that story.

Right before we left for the college visit I asked Superman to take in the trash. As he closed the gate, which has been malfunctioning for a while, he accidentally tore the latch off completely. Just gone, so we used some cinder blocks we had and propped the gate closed because we had to leave. It worked until we could fix it.

Which was this past Saturday, Jeff and I spent the morning putting the gate back together and to celebrate and because no one particularly wanted to cook, we got a late lunch at a Pho restaurant. I’ve been working at getting random pictures more, since the teens are not a big fan of pictures it is harder.

That night we went to go see the new Mission Impossible movie, which was okay. It’s a good action movie, but the villain either knew everything because that’s what was needed for the plot at that moment or it was stupid because the plot needed the villain to be stupid then. So, fun movie, but not great.

And the final picture actually goes with the next and final era… Shadows of Brimstone.

Games played:

• Shadows of Brimstone

Books read:

• The Bluff
• The Buy-in

Era 3: Shadows of Brimstone

This era is rather tongue-in-cheek, but we did play a lot of Shadows of Brimstone. There were also a lot of other games played for my birthday.

Ironically, the picture on the top is the last thing to happen, so I’ll start with the bottom.

The big picture in the middle is the “pool day,” which was at a splash pad near to a coffee shop so all the teens didn’t have to pretend to play at a splash pad and bake. Ironically, the only people who came were teens, so it ended up we were all sitting in the coffee shop just talking and playing various games.

Actually, now that I think of it, this might be from the previous era, and I just didn’t mess with the pictures early enough.

Sigh, I have not regained my balance from May and June clearly. It’s obvious as I’m sitting here typing this up at 9:37 on August 2, and I still don’t know what our plans are for this month. So discombobulated.

Getting to the Shadows of Brimstone.

The Artist went to pre-teen camp as a counselor. She tasked me with taking care of her plants. Which I did, and obnoxiously texted her pictures of them. I texted tucking them in to bed and wrapping blankets around them. I texted they got a morning cup of coffee and sent a picture of a coffee cup next to the plants. I texted about spending quality time together as I took the thyme with me for errands, actually that one I went above and beyond and said, “The thyme and I are having some quality time.” She was not outraged by the pun but by my buckling the plant in and taking it with me. That was the only one she responded to.
Oh, wait no! She did respond to my saying the cactus was playing games with us, she corrected me, it was a succulent, not a cactus.

So, the cactus got to play Shadows of Brimstone. The big reason we were playing so much is because we FINALLY got the shipment of the game, The Artist was not home, so we weren’t excluding her as we played, and we had fun eating large amounts of the foods she hates.

We played through about half of the missions for one of the new expansions, what they did with this expansion is create teams that work together, and there is a story for all of the missions together, which is kind of cool to see how that works (I wonder if they’ve been looking at some of the unofficial expansions created by fans (we found one that creates a story campaign).

It was a lot of fun, and was perfect timing as it got us excited for the game again just as the new Kickstarter came out, just as I thought I got out, they reeled us back in with an Egypt expansion.

The picture of me with what looks like a black beanie, is actually a picture of an “anti-headache” mask my Mom got me for my birthday to see if it worked. I think it probably does, but at the same time I also don’t know how well I would use it because it requires you to lay there with this mask and not reading or doing anything, which is sooooo hard to go.

The bottom right picture is of my new secretary desk, and I’ve cleared it off, again, so I can work on writing letters or other things there. I realized if I keep it closed, people are less likely to just drop stuff on there and force me to have to clean it again to use it. I’ve been working to write Batman letters as he’s at basic training, and they’re usually small stupid letters that are about nothing. Stupid stories going on, which to do it well, I really need to work on writing down things that happen as they do, because I’ll think, “I should put this in a letter,” and then by the time I sit down to write a letter, I’ve forgotten what I want to say.

And the final giant picture is from going to see the Zilker Musical for the summer, Matilda, which has me wanting to read the book again and make an actual real book club for it…

Someday, I have so many things I want to do.