System Status: May 2014

Summer at last! I have no high hopes this year due to the four-month-old who is currently passed out on my chest, but my high hopes for summer are usually dashed anyway, so maybe it’s good to just take it as it comes. Go with the flow. Roll with the punches. Etc. etc.

In the end of May I am….

…reading a lot. I started the month with The Sandcastle Girls (3/5), then moved on to The Weird Sisters (2/5), followed by Safe Haven (3/5), then Love Wins (5/5). I listen to the audiobook versions of all of these while I’m nursing C to sleep at night and just as I have favorite and not-so-favorite actors and actresses on the big screen, I have favorite and not-so-favorite audiobook narrators. Last month, I was introduced to Rebecca Lowman through The Rules of Civility (4/5) and the only reason I added Safe Haven, a Nicholas Sparks novel (I’m not normally a fan of his), was because she read the book. She has a very soothing, halcyon voice, which is nice while I’m waiting for a little girl to fall sleep. On the flip side, sometimes the narrators drive.me.absolutely.bonkers and I can’t listen to the book for more than a chapter or two. And then there are the ones who transcend both of these categories and the way they read is so mind-blowingly annoying that I can’t help but listen more. I think this was the case with The Sandcastle Girls. Love Wins was read by Rob Bell, who wrote the book, which added a nice touch. I really, really enjoyed it and all the perspectives it offered up. Maybe I’ll concoct a post full of my thoughts on it one of these days.

…watching not much. After waiting for it to come out on video (does that date me?), we finally rented The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It was a movie both of us had really wanted to see and while I think the cinematography and soundtrack were amazing, the story itself was eh. It had so much potential. We still want to see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and I in particular want to see Monuments Men (even though Rotten Tomatoes says all of the critics abhor it) because it’s about art so it must be good! Right? Right! Otherwise we haven’t been up to much in the watching department. Instead, we picked up a few board games last month (Castles of Burgundy, Firefly [I picked this one out…yes, I’m a dork], and Lost Cities) and have been exploring that world. There’s very little we can do in the evenings after the babies are (theoretically) asleep, so E came up with this idea as an alternative to staring mindless at our individual laptops or watching TV. I think he’s a pretty smart guy.

…loving this little printer. It allows me to print photos from my phone as Instax Mini polaroids. We’ve had an Instax Mini camera for a few years now and I love working with the polaroid format and all of its quirkiness, but it’s nice to also be able to print photos from my phone in the same format. Also: grocery delivery. Seriously. Whereas before, meal planning, list making, and actual grocery shopping literally took me hours, between Plan To Eat and the grocery delivery service, it now takes me less than half an hour. And for a girl who has to budget her time wisely these days in order to maintain sanity, that’s a good thing. I also know exactly how much I’ll be spending each week and am not thrown off budget by shiny SALE signs at the grocery store. Win-win!

…eating beef! We picked up our twice-yearly quarter cow last month and I’m thankful for the restock of beef. Being able to stick a completely frozen roast in the crockpot in the morning and have supper ready by six is the stuff that frazzled mama dreams are made of. Our raw milk dairy is also offering cream pretty much every week so the ice cream maker is getting a lot of use!

…looking forward to summer. As usual. There isn’t much we can do this year as C still detests the car, but at least we can make short trips around town and enjoy the sun. I’m actually sort of looking at it as a challenge to find things close by that we can experience together and potentially enjoy. Our little suburb of Denver is actually rife with possibilities! Also: finding a house. With everything that happened regarding Muse, we kind of put things on hold for a bit, but now we’re trying to look again. In vain, it seems, as the housing market is still pretty tough.

And there you have the state of the Reb. 🙂

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