October 2024 in review

I’m starting this on November 1, that tells you what the month was like. In my head I started this several times. I don’t know why I never actually typed it up.

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Week 1

Huh, I went to add in the collage I very much remember creating only to discover, that is another thing that apparently only happened in my head. Deep and dramatic sigh.

Let’s see, I started October by clearing out a couple of the cabinets and cleaning the pantry. Which was a major ordeal. This is where writing these posts is helpful because earlier this week I was sitting here thinking I just haven’t don’t all that much since the kids went to college, and I completely forgot how cleaning out the pantry was a three day event all by itself.

So I’m doing a lot, it just takes a long time and then there are just weeks like this one and last week where I’m not accomplishing as much as I thought I would. Just some accomplishments are not as visible day to day.

Then that bottom picture is part of my continual how life changes after the kids have left. I should make that an entire post. Now that I think about it.

I made some mashed potatoes, and my pot of mashed potatoes was only like 3 potatoes. That’s it.

Not five pounds. That’s right when I had the kids in the house, I would make 5 pounds of mashed potatoes because between how much the boys ate, and how much they would eat in leftovers we would eat through all of that before it went bad.

This time I cooked 3 potatoes for Jeff, and mashed them. That’s it.

Then, the other pictures are of our Sunday School craft for Ezekiel, we made skeletons, which the kids had a blast putting together and decorating. This got the boys involved for sure.

Books read:

• Binding of Silver– I got to beta read it so I could put an early review up the day it came out, and OH MY GOODNESS, the terrible part is I have to wait a year for the next book to come out. Which led to me rereading the other books because there are so many hints in the earlier books and I have so many questions, despite so many being answered!
• Tattoo of Crimson
• Ruins of Bone
• Falling on Main Street– after reading those super story-intense books I wanted something quick and easy to read, nothing about it seems to have stood out enough that I really remembered much. I’m pretty sure I got this on sale or free

Week 2

The two big things for this week:

• we headed up to visit the college kids because it was “Family Weekend,” which we fairly quickly figured out we did not need to time for coming up again because all of the things they did for that were things our family didn’t care about, namely sports.
• Batman’s unit got called up to help with hurricane relief. He played it off as no bid deal, and then in the conversation just drops in “I might be recovering bodies.” So I’m left wondering about that as he doesn’t have much ability to talk until my Mom sends me a text saying, “I found a FB reel with his unit, but I couldn’t figure out how to share it with you before it disappeared.” Which sent me down a FB rabbit hole trying where I found actual pictures of him helping as we drove back from San Angelo.

But, as to the actual pictures. We drove up to San Angelo to visit the kids We took the Harry Potter Battle for Hogwarts game and played it with Superman, which is the only picture I got of the kids because they continue to be like, “Why would you take pictures of me Mom?”

Another deep sigh there.

So a couple of fun stories from there:

First, Superman was just getting back from a couple of days trip to a fort up in Abilene for a living history event where he learned about fort life in the 1880s and how to march and live like an army soldier then. So he and The Artist were comparing how to stand at attention, marching, and all the different military orders since she is currently in ROTC for the Air Force. Every now and then Jeff would chime in with comments from his experience with the Marine ROTC. I just sat back and was greatly amused by it all while we waited for our table for breakfast.
That night we went to the ghost stories event at the fort Superman was volunteering at. Some of the stories were interesting, but the part I didn’t expect was when they had us all take part in paranormal investigations where they would invite any spirits present to talk to us. That part was… odd and uncomfortable because it was just all of us standing around in silence until he said, “Okay then, let’s move on.”
But we got some fun stories from that, and then some stories that were just, meh.

And then I had my proud Mom moment when we went to church the next day where we were meeting the kids, and the usher said, “I’m assuming you’re meeting your college kids here, what’s their name?” And we answered, and he said, “Oh yeah, he sits over there on that pew. Good kid, comes every Sunday.”

So, we had quite a fun conversation about Superman and how he enjoyed getting to know him.

That bottom right picture is of the hotel we stayed at. It was a very special hotel in the wrong part of town in San Angelo. As we drove up on Friday night I’m pretty sure there was someone who had the back of their trunk open just selling stuff that fell off a trunk out of it, and it was a special hotel. But it was cheap and one of the few places that still had a room available that wasn’t $400 a night which was way over the top.

The final picture was the game I got Jeff for Christmas last year that we haven’t played until now and I said let’s play it, but it was just not the night to play it because he was tired and I wasn’t feeling well, so while we played it, it was just not the best game. So we need to try it again sometime when we’re not feeling bleah.

Books read:

• Baptism by Fire-the first book in what I hope actually becomes a series of a buddy cop mystery books in an urban fantasy world
• Just Add Mischief– this is where I started writing down the books I read all out of order, because this is the second book in the series, and I read the first that was in an omnibus to raise money for the hurricane and then bought the other two books, it’s a stupid rom-com that as cute, this is the sister of the first book
• Loyally Luke– for about a year I’ve been hearing people rave about Authentically Izzy, which is an epistolary book about a nerdy fantasy book-lover who falls in love with another fantasy book-lover who lives in small fictional country something like Scotland, this is the third book and it was on sale so I bought it. I had read the first book after getting the library to buy the first one. This led me to go back and buy the first and second one and read the second one (I knew generally how it was going to end, I mean their rom-coms they’re kind of given how it will end)
• Positively Penelope– but I also love the storyline and the characters of each of them, and the idea of stories told through letters and emails, and texts, it’s a unique twist
• Authentically Izzie– And yes in re-reading the series I did end up accidentally reading it backwards. This is a series I would love to see adapted into a movie, but I also recognized part of the charm of it is the letter and text format, which would be lost in a movie adaptation

Games played:

• Battle for Hogwarts– you’ll see this more next week
• Tiny Epic Dungeons– at some point we need to try this again to see if we’ll like it better when we’re both feeling good

Okay, I’m taking a break from writing to get lunch.

Week 3

The two things for this week, Jeff’s birthday and we had arborists come out to trim trees and take down the kids’ trees. Which was hard. Their trees were at the point they were starting to not be healthy since we were getting landscaping done for our yard this was a good time to take them down so that their not being there was part of the plan for the yard.

I was rather emotional about it and kept wandering out into the yard to take pictures of the progress. At the end of the day, the trees were cut down, the random trees that had grown in our front and back yards, and a couple of larger bushes.

I was surprisingly emotional about it. I guess it’s not too surprising, but they kept several branches and slices of wood from each of the trees for us, so we can make something from them. I’m not quite sure what that something will be, but something. Batman is talking about carving a wooden mask.

It was Jeff’s birthday and he wanted to spend the weekend playing board games, so we played a whole slew of them, actually we mainly played Battle for Hogwarts, we figured out a fun variation that we enjoy that we played. I also got a Princess Bride board game that I saw some good reviews for which we played, and it was okay, but not one that we super loved. I’ll probably pass it on to someone else when we get a chance.

Our Sunday School craft was making prayer bracelets, which the kids had a lot of fun making as they happily grabbed all the beads they could put on those bracelets, and I was amused at how they made them.

Books read:

• Just Add Romance– book 1 to the Just Add Mischief up above, basically it starts as a fake boyfriend, and it’s a cute story that led me to buy the rest of the series
• Seed Money– part of the fundraising book, I enjoyed this book enough to look at the others in the series, and then saw that the rest in the series were totally different in concept and more than I wanted to spend, but a cute little story of how a couple make a bed and breakfast out of an older home
• The Day He Drove By– another book that I enjoyed, but not enough to buy the rest of the series at full price. I was also amused to notice how many books in this fundraiser featured a single parent in some way.
• Assisting my Bother’s Best Friend– A cute story, a little odd, I’m not a big fan of rich and famous storylines so I didn’t really pursue looking into the rest of the series.
• The Billionaire Love Match– this was the author who I knew from this book sale and I’d read this before, having bought it when it was on sale. I think this one is amusing because the female character comes on because she is an author originally coming on to get writing time, which amuses me
• A Thousand Words– Ummmm….. I didn’t like this one, I basically finished it more because I wanted to get it done, but I rather skimmed it towards the end. I didn’t see why they were in love. It’s just not that good, so I was not in the least bit interested to read the rest of the series

Games played:

• Favor of the Pharaoh– we figured out this does not work as a 2 player game, the first player just has too much of an advantage, especially since according to the rules there are so many cards that you are only supposed to have 1 of, and getting that card is just HUGE advantage; oh it may be out of print!
• Princess Bride board game– you’re trying to tell the story of the book before the grandson gets bored. It’s an interesting concept but it is very much just follow the concept of the movie, and if you are at all good at playing cooperative games it is not too difficult, so it was rather meh.
• Battle for Hogwarts– we’ve figured out a method of playing through the entire story of the game, but as we get further in the game you get to keep 1 card from the previous deck you bought, which is a fun way to keep playing the game together

Week 4

Oops, it looks like I still have the picture of the Princess Bride game in there, but we weren’t playing that we were continuing our play through the Harry Potter game. Oh well.

Let’s see, we had the Mom’s Night Oout for the co-op but only a couple of us showed up and we painted cups and had fun talking as we did. I made a flour jar to hold flour for those recipes that need just a tablespoon or two.

I made a little bag to hold plastic bags for the trash cans upstairs, which si that cute little flower bag up there.

Then, I’m trying to make recipes for some of the countries I never made recipes for, and I had a recipe for Sierra Leone that I never made a recipe for, so I made a rather delicious ginger cake that Jeff liked so much he really wants me to make it again. So I’m sure that will be made from time to time here.

And then on Halloween I went by myself to go see Wild Robot. When we were seeing something I saw the trailer and thought it looked really fun but Jeff had absolutely zero interest so I went to go see it by myself, which was fun because going to the first showing on a Thursday morning means there was no one else in the theater. It was just as good as all of my friends had said, BUT it also made me cry.

Books read:

• Just Add Friendship– the third book in this series, and it’s not quite as good, but it was still a fun book. There’s a fourth book coming out in a month or so and I don’t know if I’ll pick it up. I’m not quite sure where it’s supposed to go form here because it’s not like they left any obvious person in the friend group single or an obvious single sibling.
• Wanted a Roommate who Isn’t Evil– the third book in the Fae Cafe series came out, so of course I had to read it, this was a surprise because unlike the first two books it was shorter, only around 200 pages, AND it’s more of a buddy comedy instead of a rom-com. It’s definitely setting up for the fourth book in the series, I almost wonder if the fourth book will hop genres again and end up like a Shakespearean comedy or something like Jane Austen and end with a couple of weddings. This led me to
• Welcome to the Fae Cafe– reading the first book in the series which has a bit of the classic 90s rom-com vibes, I don’t know what one, but definitely that sort of feel, only with a fae assassin in it
• Sincerely, Secretary of Doom– I can’t quite decide what the vibe is of this book, again it feels like something, but I’m not sure what it is
• Locket’s Revenge– I need to go back and reread the first book in this duology, but in my head I was going to remember how the first one was going, and I did well enough, but not as well as I would have preferred
• Amish Vampires in Space– this one I was partially skimming since I was leading the book quest in Lorehaven guild.
• Wolfgate– I wanted something short to read before reading some books I said I would review, but I forgot it’s the start of a series, and so now I’m on the third book in the series, but they’re all really short.