Life Lately: Mid/Late May 2016

Been several months since I’ve done one of these! Thought it was time to do a good old-fashioned brain dump!

+In My Head
Summer’s here! So, mostly I’m now thinking about gardening, yardening, and keeping up with everything outside. It’s going to be a chore but we’ll see how it goes. Last September I joined a gym near my work so I could work out better/differently at lunch. It hit me a week or two ago that I really needed to quit the gym for the next three to four months so that I could work outside on my lunch breaks. I can still do some weightlifting here (when I think about it!) and go for runs after Forest goes to bed (if I’m not gardening!). So, I cancelled my membership the other day and now it is full-on keeping up with the yard mode now! It’s actually a nice mental shift for me.

+Watching
Big Bang Theory, Call the Midwife, and Outlander. The first two are about to wrap up for the season and Outlander is on until early July. I just saw the preview for the new season of Orange Is The New Black and I will be binging that mid-June. Other than that, I’m not watching much else!

Ooh, late movie additions: I have been battling a late spring cold/upper respiratory which has left me not wanting to do much in the evenings this last week. One night I tried finding something to watch on tv and found a bunch of dreck. I went to my On Demand and found Inside/Out, the kid’s cartoon about emotions. Very good! Definitely recommend it. Then, I found Imitation Game with Sherlock Benedict Cumberbatch about Alan Turing, the man who basically launched us into the world of computers and helped break the German Enigma Code during WWII. Also a movie I recommend! I don’t watch many movies these days but I’m going to have to remember to check our On Demand and Amazon Prime links this summer when I want to just relax a bit!

+Outside My Window
Right this moment I’m typing at the kitchen table while I finish my coffee and looking at the freshly mowed backyard and a calm pond. It looks enticing!

+In The Art Studio
Absolutely nothing. I need to get back in there and finish cleaning up some stuff I started months ago but I doubt I will be in there much this summer. The studio is a dark season affair.

+In The Garden
We’re about to hit peak blackberry harvesting! I can’t wait to have beaucoups of them and hope to make some jam, cobbler, and freeze a bit. Of course most will be eaten straight! Tomatoes are starting to do well but I think we’ve got a little while before they take off. I’m not sure how much they will take off this year because they were all planted in our hugelkulture-like perimeter beds, but we’ve had a few tomatoes here and there. There’s quite a ton going on in the gardens and I should start dedicating a weekly post to what’s going on out there.

+Reading
I’ll do a book review later on in the month but I’ve not read a ton this month. After reading, reading, reading for the last few months I decided to slow it down a bit. So far I’ve read only Lab Girl but The Penderwicks just became available digitally. I’m getting close to being up for a couple of books on my Overdrive so I’ll have to focus on those when I get them.

+Drinking
I just ground my last of the Ruta Maya coffee and it is time to get something else. I made Kombucha, what, almost two months ago now, and I have barely drank it. I’m so fickle with wanting it a lot and then none at all. I did read that I can take the kombucha brew that has basically turned to vinegar and turn it into a shrub. I did find recipes for using the shrub without liquor and using sparkling water instead. Who knows! I still need to get around to making mead. Soon!

+Loving
Our office! We really should have made this a project before we had Forest but we didn’t. Chris spent a few weeks this spring fixing the room up and we found desks on Craigslist that we both liked. And now, I finally have a space in the office! We’re a little behind and need to get the rest of the stuff we moved out and shoved into the guest bedroom to a more permanent homesite, whether that’s the office or somewhere else. Shouldn’t take but a few nights or a few hours on a weekend but it needs to get done. Chris did a great job with the office and I’m so glad to have the space now.