Tag: travel

Crafts, Essays, Everywhere But Home, Family Time, Friend Time, health, I Am Traveling, Lifelong learning, My Own Personal Weirdness, My Writing

March 2026 Stats

In March, I wrote 6037 words. Of those words,

  • 416 were for this blog (2 short posts),
  • 2474 were for my journal,
  • 0 were for handouts, scripts, and slides for lessons
  • 2744 were on various social media accounts,
  • 168 were poetry (2 short poems),
  • and 651 were in short stories (4 pieces of flash fiction).

There were only 9 days that I didn’t write anything, but my word count was low due to several things. It was a whirlwind of a month. I participated in both my first Trivia Night and a BYOC Night (Bring Your Own Craft) with local friends. I have a new favorite Ice Cream/Coffee Shop. Our family had two car accidents, and while we are all unharmed from them, our poor cars were, and so we played musical cars for several weeks. We also had time with family and friends and soon-to-be family. One week we had a special brunch/lunch/dinner/activity out every single day of the week. I saw nearly all of my specialty doctors, got to watch The Nugget once (and saw her another day), took a bookbinding class, and got addicted to playing Pokopia. We also traveled some more, this time to San Antonio for our youngest son’s WGI competition. We made it my birthday trip (a month early) and splurged out on touring the San Antonio Zoo, the Botanical Gardens, and eating at a Food Network highly rated burger joint. It was all fun and delicious and I even managed to go to a marvelous bookshop that is now in my Top 5 of Bookstores Ever. Comment below if you want the name and location of any of those things. 🙂

As for reading, I read parts of:

Defy or Defend by Gail Carriger (audiobook; Fantasy)

…and I finished reading:

  • A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher (audiobook; YA Fantasy)
  • Braiding Sweetgrass by Robyn Kimmerer Walls (audiobook; Non-Fiction)
  • Curtsies and Conspiracies by Gail Carriger (audiobook; Fantasy)
  • Waistcoats and Weaponry by Gail Carriger (audiobook; Fantasy)
  • Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger (audiobook; Fantasy)
  • The Curious Case of the Werewolf that Wasn’t by Gail Carriger (e-book; Fantasy)
  • Meat Cute by Gail Carriger (e-book; Fantasy)
  • Poison or Protect by Gail Carriger (audiobook; Fantasy)

As you can see, mostly audiobooks. I started having trouble with my eyes months and months ago, but they were getting worse, fast, and I was waiting out my next eye doctor appointment. Once there, I was pretty quickly diagnosed with Binocular Vision Dysfunction (I was sitting there minding my own business and the eye doctor said “OOoooh…do that thing with your eyes again.” Me: “What thing?” She paused and while she waited, my eyes did the thing again, so there was a bunch more testing than usual.) In any case, I have new glasses on order that have special prism lenses in them and hopefully these terrible migraines and eye strain feelings will go away soon. 🙂 (Also, can I say how excessively lovely the Gail Carriger books are in audiobook form? I love the voices and the music and of course, all the steampunky weirdness and adventures!)

So I have finished 22 books so far this year (and read parts of another 5, mostly for research, but also a couple of things I’ve had to mark DNF.). 

Okay, I think that’s it. It was a super fun month! 🙂

Around the House, Everywhere But Home, Family Time, Friend Time, Parenting, Saving Money

Feast of Tabernacles

You know how we thought the Feast of Tabernacles last year was weird? Yeah, this year is weirder.

If you are new to this blog and do not know: we are an interfaith household. My husband’s family belong to the United Church of God. More info on the Feast of Tabernacles can be found here.

David is headed off to Utah with church friends from all over. I dropped him off at the Tyler airport today after spending all day with him yesterday trying, and failing, to get his phone fixed before he left. We ended up getting him a new one instead, as T-Mobile doesn’t recognize Sprint’s care plan after their merger.

David waited til the last minute to tell us what he was planning, then the pandemic threw a wrench in things as well, with some locations deciding to limit visitors all together. So Utah was super last minute, which meant getting him a reasonably priced airline ticket was going to cause some issues. He ended up on three different planes with one eight hour layover in Dallas and one twelve hour layover in Phoenix.

He was totally calm about all of this. It was me wracked with worry. What if he missed a flight? What if the Phoenix Airport wouldn’t let him spend the night inside? What if he forgot to pick up his luggage in Phoenix and ended up in Utah without it?

My anxiety levels were already crazy, but sending my 19-year-old off on his own for the first time drove me over the edge. Hence the All Crochet All Weekend confabulation.

He got there just fine. His friends eventually picked him up at the airport. He’s great, he says.

Meanwhile, the other four of us are at home this week. Nick and Greg are going to watch videos livestreamed from other locations. They can do it in the morning with a Florida site or in the afternoon with the Utah site David is at. (Ree and I? We are doing school work or writing or practicing instruments. We’re fine.)

I Am Traveling, Parenting

Enchanted Rock

  • 15:39:18: Just climbed up & down Enchanted Rock with 4 adults & 6 kids age 10 & younger. All of us still alive.

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

Around the House, Everywhere But Home, I Am Traveling

back to normalcy

Yes, I am still alive. No, no one asked. I just assumed someone out there might care. Hmm.

In any case, I’m home again. I’ve actually been home since Friday night, but my best friend came up for the weekend and we spent the time playing instead of doing useful things.

Last week I flew to California to meet my birthmother and my half-brother. The week went really well, much better than I expected. They’re very nice people. We exchanged gifts, did some much needed talking about important things, had a few meals. It was nice.

The weird part is that I felt like I was gone for six months and my outlook on life has totally changed. I hadn’t thought much before about all the things I have and all the wonderful trips I’ve been on and stuff. Now it’s all that I think about. I am so totally blessed in life. It could have been so very different for me. I just…wow. Yeah.

We’re all going to keep in touch. It was a nice visit. Hopefully they’ll come out to visit me once I’ve moved into a house.

In other news, we’re house hunting again. We have an awesome realtor and we know where we’re looking and what kind of house we’re looking for. We think we’ll prolly find one within the next month or so. I have no idea how we’re going to get out of our apartment lease early, but we’ll deal with that when the time comes.

I spent yesterday redecorating my bedroom. It needed it. I repainted some picture frames, framed some other art, hung it all up. I also made a canopy of sorts for my bed, which looks awesome. I’m working on painting my dresser blue. I’ve got it half-way done and Nick is bringing me more paint when he comes home tonight. 🙂

Today I’m working on a picture album for last year. Yeah, I know, I should have had that done before my trip to California, but some things just take longer to get to than others. Oh well.

Have a great day!

Everywhere But Home, I Am Traveling, My Own Personal Weirdness, Parenting

I’m here in B/CS now.

Ok…I’m here in B/CS now. Excitement, excitement!

David has a walker now. My mom got it for him. He’s so cute in it. He doesn’t quite touch the floor, but he’s having fun exploring all the buttons and knobs on it. It’s nice and noisy. woo-hoo!

🙂

That’s about it…other than the fact that it’s been a bad food day and I hate Boston Market and trees in the road are just a VeryBadThing.

Yeah. it’s been one of those days.