Life Lately | August 2024

Hello out there!

It’s been A Month! Both in terms of time but also with how busy the month was. Shortly after I wrote the last post we took a 5 hour flight south, crossed the equator, and landed in Quito, Ecuador to kick off a 2.5 week adventure around Ecuador! I’m still reeling from how awesome our trip was and just how much we saw and will eventually write more here. We spent 3 days in/around Quito before taking a short flight east to Coca where we then boarded motorized canoes and took a boat ride up the Rio Napo where we got on our floating accommodation for the next few days, the Anakonda river boat. I hated leaving the Ecuadorian Amazon but we had to fly back to Quito and get ready for our next adventure: the Galapagos! We flew west over the Pacific and landed at the Baltra airport where we boarded our other floating accommodation for the next 8 days, the Galapagos Legend ship. It was our (Chris and me) second time in the Galapagos as we had been in college back in 1998. But this refreshed our memory and took the adventure even further. I didn’t want to leave! But we flew home very late one night from Quito where shortly after we arrived home I walked upstairs and took out a Covid test to verify my suspected Covid, which had manifested in a sore throat, cough, and laryngitis type symptoms. Chris, Forest, and my mother in law had all had this mysterious illness before I did and suspected it was probably Covid but had no way of testing, and they had mostly recuperated before the end of the trip. I had only had some sinus pressure mid-way through but nothing significant but I think where I went wrong was when I ran out of my own toothpaste and proceeded to use Chris’ tube, which was our shared tube from home, but of course he’d been using it when he was sick. That was about two days prior to me having symptoms…so, my guess is if I hadn’t done that I may have escaped being sick.

Anyway, so I was sick for the remaining part of the week when we returned, which meant I was working from home, which wasn’t much because I was in bed sleeping between coughing fits. Then we had to take Forest up to my parents for a planned week visit with them (plus it was my mom’s birthday and we also had to deal with some stuff pertaining to Chris’ dad’s apartment since his death back in June), which by this time I was Covid negative but still having a very phlegmy cough, something I haven’t had with any of my other two Covid illnesses. It took nearly a week for it to dry out a bit but I’m still coughing phlegm at times and my voice has not recovered and is still gravelly and gets weak if I hold long conversations. Then Chris and I came home to do a week of hell field work. Ecuador had the most amazing weather and coming back to Texas’ humidity and heat was obnoxious. I wasn’t hating summer until suddenly I was!

Then this weekend I had to pick Forest back up from my parents and my niece’s 16th birthday party was this weekend. Chris ended up staying home because he’s had a bit of a relapse of symptoms from his Covid, with a return to strong coughing and an intense tiredness. I’m concerned this is the beginning of Long Covid but I guess time will tell. Everything I’ve read in the last four years has said to rest, rest, rest and do nothing for weeks after having Covid in an effort to prevent LC, not even working out, but it has been practically impossible this time around with work. I’ll refrain from complaining about work but I’m very frustrated right now with things on that front. Chris is back in the field this week and has a very full schedule of travel and field work this month. School starts later this week.

And I need to start outlining hikes for my book for fall. I haven’t done anything hiking wise with that since June and need to get out at least twice this month if I can. I missed a penciled in hike I wanted to do to see an orchid that blooms this time of year along one of the trails I am highlighting and am going to have to get that one next summer now. I probably need to write a more dedicated post to updates on the hiking book soon.

So yeah, life has been extremely full the last 4-6 weeks. I don’t see many signs of it slowing down either, though we have nothing on the horizon for next weekend. Oh, and we had hurricane Beryl while we were away so we still have a couple of down trees from that we haven’t even cleaned up and I don’t know when that will even happen.

We’ve been home for nearly two weeks now and I am just now feeling like I can get my head on straight. I’m craving routine right now so school starting will help a lot with that. In between all of this I’ve mostly been whiling about my time scrolling on Instagram and watching Dexter on Netflix. It’s time to end my two week Reels addiction and slow down on the Dexter binging. I only caught a couple of episodes here and there when Dexter originally ran but after finishing Killing Eve back in late spring I needed something else to watching in the evenings and saw Dexter and gave it a go. Since it takes place in the time period I lived in south Florida, it has been really fun to connect with some of those aspects of place within the show. I roll my eyes at some inaccuracies pertaining to the Everglades and one particular set of scenes about Pembroke Pines and an officer talking about traffic on Brickell—those are each in different counties! Pembroke Pines is nowhere near Brickell! Overall it has been a very interesting show!

Reading wise…I read one fiction book during our trip. All Fours by Miranda July. It was bizarre but good! I am long overdue on a book report update here so I’ll try to work on that soon.

This has been the summer of Gen Z inspired pop music for me. In mid-late June I started hearing about an artist called Chappell Roan and so I listened to a few of her songs on Spotify and was instantly hooked. She’s rocketed to stardom this summer with a few of her songs and so I’ve had her latest album on repeat. Then when looking up one of her songs on YouTube I came across a cover sang by Sabrina Carpenter. Carpenter started off on Girl Meets World, the Boy Meets World reboot, and then produced some teeny-bopper type music about a decade ago. Since then she’s made more adult pop and has a new album coming out this summer so I’ve been listening to her more recent back catalog and some of the newer songs and am also addicted. Throw a few Olivia Rodrigo songs in there and I’ll just pretend I’m 24 and not 44! And Charli XCX dropped her album Brat recently and there are some good bops in there! Mix in the Swedish folk duo First Aid Kit into the rotation and that’s the summary of my summer music listening right now!

And before I go: Let’s go Kamala!

More soon, friends!