Long, Hot Summer

It’s so hot!!!! I know I just had some nice summer days, but this is the part I really don’t enjoy. It’s hot and dry and on fire. Once it’s past 9 am I just don’t want to be outside at all and getting in and out of a car for errands is so awful. Guess I shouldn’t complain since where I live, we are set up to have this kind of weather and I have a great 1 year old air conditioner. Other places with record heat are truly feeling it. 

Still, this summer has been flying by. I can’t believe it’s almost August. I’m heading to Cedar City again this year for the Utah Shakespeare Festival. It’s going to be even hotter there! And then I have to go to Charlotte for work. Not really looking forward to it. From the news, flying sounds like not a lot of fun and dealing with airports and then humidity is not something I would choose to do right now. At least the flights are direct. Flight delays won’t result in other missed flights. I’m trying to appreciate the now and not long for Fall. I think I manage most of the time. 

So lately I’ve been indoors in my air conditioning, doing puzzles and chilling. I’m sure my power bill will be outrageous this month. 

July 4th Weekend

These last few days have really felt like summer. I had a few days off from work and spent the first one on shopping and errands and lunch with a friend. Yesterday, I met my sisters and mom and all the younger kids (i.e. the ones without summer jobs) at the river to play in the water. We probably looked crazy sitting there under the trees in our camp chairs but I don’t even care. It feels good to sit next to the water and we can eat our snacks or get in and play and cool off. 

After we got tired of the river, we went for snow cones. After the snow cones, we decided to stop at the new Asian grocery store not far from my house. The kids had eaten all of the Pocky Sticks and we needed more. Plus that store is just fun and I see tons of things from Korean web comics in there. LOL Then we decided we needed Chinese for dinner so we all went to my mom’s house. We had food from the grocery store to cook up and then ordered a small amount of takeout to supplement what we cooked. I took my giant outdoor connect four game (covid purchase) and we played outside some more and had dinner. We were trying to wait for it to get dark to get out the glow sticks but instead around 7:30 we shut the blinds in a room and got them out anyway. 

This morning we met up at the farmer’s market. I got fresh cherries and peas. Plus, we have been wanting to try the donut truck and it did not disappoint. Fresh (and still warm!) glazed sourdough donuts that were the perfect mix of doughy but completely cooked. So, so good! No wonder I’ve been seeing a line at that truck. 

Now I’m finally home relaxing with a cold drink and my air conditioning. It’s hot and dry and a bit windy outside. It’s been a great couple of days and the holiday weekend is just getting started. It’s crazy how fast the days go by when I’m not at work. Happy 4th of July. 

June

Well, summer is in full swing. I’ve been looking ahead at my calendar to plan some things and it’s really going to be over before I know it. That’s fine because it’s not my favorite season. Hot and dry. However for all that, we’ve had some really beautiful mornings lately and everything is still green. The wind coming from the canyon smells like camping and I’ve been taking pictures of wildflowers on my walks. I’m trying to enjoy this part of summer before everything dries out. 

I’ve been feeling extra tired lately so I’m trying to not drink caffeine, especially later in the day so I can sleep, along with making sure I get some exercise.  I win some days and lose some days. I’ve also cut down on my web comics reading. I’m still following all my stories, but I haven’t been getting on every day and I’m letting some of the series I read go back to regular release instead of fast passing. I was spending too much money there and it’s actually been a nice thing to consume less of. Well, maybe not less because I’m staying caught up, but I’m taking breaks. Life is just cycles and I’ve cycled to fewer days of webtoons at the moment. I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump anyway and that is normal too. Anyway looking forward to the July 4th holiday in a couple weeks. I’ve got some time off and I need to plan what to do with it. 

Happy Memorial Day 2022

It has been a cool and wet holiday weekend. I am not complaining. I love it. The mountains are so green and the clouds are down so you can’t see the top. When the clouds move, the parts you can see have snow on them again. It’s just been so pretty. 

It’s been a pretty low key weekend. We waited to do our cemetery stuff today. My sister had covid again and today was her officially over it day. It was a bit cold and slightly rainy off and on while we were at the cemetery. We didn’t stay super long and there did seem to be less people out. I’m guessing a lot of people went on Saturday morning before the rain really set in. We did get to hear/see the gun salute and Taps played for our armed forces veterans. My mom cleaned up dad’s headstone a bit and there is a big bush next to him that she cut back. And the kids ran all over and had fun. We aren’t a very sentimental family. 

On Friday after work I had made a quick trip to the Wellsville cemetery and there were two men sitting there enjoying the nice weather and the peaceful atmosphere. They told me they were from Colorado and they drove here just to enjoy the cemeteries. In their experience there aren’t a lot of places that decorate graves like we do in Utah. I wouldn’t know, of course. It’s just what we do on Memorial Day and what my mom expects us to continue when she’s gone. It does make me think though that these were real people with real lives and while I have memories of many of them, some of the older family I didn’t know at all. 

Not long ago I watched something about family history work on the church website and one girl said she’s been uploading pictures. It occurred to me that maybe that is something I could do. I never know where to start but I could start looking at my pictures and working back. I know I have some pictures of some of my grandparents. At least it’s something. 

Weekend

For sure the weekend went by too fast! Friday night I went to see my 2 nieces in a local community theater production of James and the Giant Peach. They both did a great job and even though that’s not my favorite production by a long way, it didn’t drag and was fun to see. 

Saturday my sister and I took 5 of my nieces and nephews (including the 2-year old twins) to the Treehouse Museum. We had planned on being there for 3 hours and I was exhausted after 1. The twins had so much fun, but they ran everywhere they went. The older kids had a blast too. We made it 2.5 hours before we packed up and went for ice cream. The 5 year old even fell asleep afterwards on the way to his soccer game. I’m glad they had fun. I spent Saturday evening in my pjs with a book. LOL

Yesterday I went to church with my mom since it was Mother’s Day and then we left and went for a drive to Park City. We took the back way and it was a really nice drive. It was cloudy and even tried to snow on us in Park City, but this is the time of year everything is green and it was so pretty.  I woke up in the middle of the night and it was raining and this morning when I opened my blinds, we had snow on the mountains and rooftops. It won’t last, but I did put on a long sleeve shirt this morning. I was late for work and it’s definitely a Monday but I’m telling myself now: It’s going to be a good week. 

Mascara

To date, mascara is the one makeup item that I always wear no matter what from the time I started wearing any makeup in 7th grade (the year I went to Jr. High and mom let me start wearing makeup at all). It truly became a bit of a security blanket for me and except for rare instances of outdoors activities, I always wore it. Didn’t even matter how early I had to get up to make sure I at least had that on. I do feel more confident with make up on. Funny though because I don’t wear that much makeup in general. Eye liner and mascara, either some liquid or powder type on my face to even the skin tone but not caked on, and concealer. I’ve never gotten the hang of eye shadow and my eye lids are so oily it is gone by mid-day. 

So in my un-scientific endeavors to try and make my eyes feel better, I’ve been experimenting with how I wear eye makeup. I just feel like mascara exacerbates the issue when I’m having “bad eye” days. So I’ve been trying to do without it sometimes. On my work from home days I don’t wear eye make up at all and have been running errands that way. I went to the theater in SL without eye makeup on one night when my eyes were killing me. I already knew that nobody else cares. I’m only the center of attention in my own world and mind. When running errands nobody knows the difference. And my friend with me at the theater certainly didn’t care. 

My eyes were killing me this morning so I didn’t put any mascara on. I used a little bit of eye liner and a new type of eye shadow stick I recently bought. It’s a neutral color and doesn’t have to blend with anything else. Then I went to work. And I’ve been fine. I have to wear my glasses to read the screens and it’s not like I get out of my office all that much anyway. I’m the only one that actually cares. But regardless of what I tell myself, I’m a little bit proud that I did it. I’ve been telling myself one thing for most of my life even though it wasn’t true and now I’m doing something different. It’s not that I’m never going to wear mascara again. I might wear it to work tomorrow. But I am dealing with and changing a lie I told myself for years: I have to wear mascara to look (nice, like I tried, like myself?). 

This morning my eyes were dry and burning and they are still dry and burning. What they are not is swollen and I think it’s because they are mascara free. This is just one day and I’m not done experimenting but I feel I’m making progress. My goal is to feel comfortable with whatever my eyes are going to do any given day and just roll with it. 

April Odds and Ends

I had a really nice weekend. It rained Friday and Saturday morning, but it turned out to be really nice. On Saturday I went with my sisters to my local library where they were giving out packets of ladybugs for earth day. The twins love ladybugs and my nephew Owen, went through a huge bug phase one summer and still likes them. A local aquarium brought some exhibits and let the kids touch a snake and see some baby sharks swimming. It was kind of fun.

 

My flowers outside are starting to bloom and I was so pleasantly surprised when I saw that my new succulent already shot up a bloom. I was not expecting that at all. I can't wait for it to open.

I have been borrowing books from the library again which is kind of nice. I felt like I had spent less money on books so far this year, and it’s possible, but I have still bought quite a few. 10 paper books and 12 kindle. Only 3 of the 10 paper books were actually new to me. I had already read and decided to buy the other 7, mostly because the paperback version was released. And a few of the 12 kindle books were free, I picked them up on a deal. So I’m probably really not spending less money on books, it just feels like it. I’m pretty sure I’m not doing as much impulse book buying after reading reviews. I’ve been checking the library first and waiting for sales. And that is because unless I start reading it right then, it will just stay in the pile of unread books and right now I just don’t want that. I have too many of those as it is. Of course, I’m still spending a lot of reading time on Webtoons and Tapas. That’s not going away.