Not really. There’s plenty else going on, too, but 3 hours of dance a week sure does feel like a lot (in a good way). Please enjoy my outfit from ballet last night; my sister got me this sweatshirt for Christmas one year and the cute li’l skort I got for ballet just about matches! I didn’t last long, of course, I very quickly had to take it off and just dance in my leotard because I get hot so easily.
Things have overall been busy but good; work is a bit nuts, I’m taking ASL classes on Monday and then dance Tuesday/Wednesday, the animals are as usual a handful but fun. I got a Litter Robot 4 thinking it would be a good move, but while Romeo uses it sometimes, Tabatha apparently thinks it’s haunted and gave herself UTI symptoms (actually FLUTD/FIC) so I had to take her to Tufts one night. 🤦🏻♂️ gotta love it.
Remember how last month I said I’d stepped down from the Norton Singers board because I had too many commitments? Wellll of course shortly after that I was invited to join the board of a new Pride org in Norton…and shortly after that, Wheaton’s LGBTQ+ Network asked me to join as an alum/community rep. So here I am overcommitted again, haha. I had to make a list of all the boards I’m on and what nights they meet to see if I could make it all work (sort of…sort of not, there’s one that conflicts with dance, oops). It’s felt really nice to be more connected to Wheaton, as a formerly not-so-proud alum, and to try to connect it with the town more.
We took my birthday week off, and on Monday went up to Maine for my niece’s 4th birthday! It was a really nice visit and she’s just so DARN CUTE. Her current obsession is space, so I got her a couple of books and a little set of cards to learn the constellations. When we pulled the car up she was jumping up and down excited to see us (Sam, my dad, and I all drove up together) and I threw it into park so fast so I could get out and scoop her up. I did also get to see my OG niece, my best friend’s daughter, the week before, which was great- we spent the afternoon at the mall, like old times when that was a thing people did. (She’s almost 18 which means I’m 97 years old so get digging my grave already, wouldya? Sheesh.)
The rest of my birthday week was UHHHHHH well I got a massage at the place I go in Norton (Haines, always relaxing) and a haircut (Hair Therapy in Norwood, if you’re local please try it omg- what a great experience) and nothing else happened, right? Right. In all seriousness, we did a bunch of things but also relaxed a bunch and it felt very balanced and restful. Also Sam bought BG3 on the Xbox and I played, like, 8 hours in 3 days or something lol.
I have been back to cooking more; if you’re familiar with the “aggressive tutorials” lady on YouTube, she does a lot of one-pot pasta/meat/veg dishes and that has felt like a great way for me to both use up all the zucchini my mom’s been giving me and get a bunch of meals cooked all at once.
We’re also doing a big house project right now: replacing all our gutters and downspouts (in reverse order). The project started this week, and in a day and a half they (one guy on a mini excavator and one guy helping…and a very cute pug supervising) had all the downspouts dug in. It was wild to watch. Now we know how deep our leach field is, which is cool, and also lol so many rocks and old irrigation piping…not sure when the gutters will be done, but very excited to have new ones (and hoping the soffit’s not already rotted out from how janky the old ones were). Did you know there are residential and commercial gutters? And that if you have a big house with a lot of roof, residential won’t really cut it? Yyyyyeahhh.
That’s all for now, I think. Hope you are all doing well in this dystopian hellscape, please feel free to reply and let me know how you’re doing, and happy new year to my Jewish friends!