Midlife Sarah

  My September reading experience felt so odd!  Every so often I run up against a pesky readerly problem. Things like DNF'ing a long string of books, boredom, or being able to decide what to read next. In September I experienced the confluence of two others: A lack of focus and an abundance of library holds coming in all at once. I still find myself in that spot as I write this. While I'm currently reading two different books, four others are waiting on deck. I can hear these four titles whispering to me softly, "Tick-tock, tick-tock. Only 8 days to read me before you have to start the holds process all over again." At this point I have been waiting months to read that book and don't want to miss out on the opportunity, but know that there's just no way I'm going to get there early enough. So many books, so little time. Another hiccup has been my continued back flare-up. The constant pain in my back makes it difficult for me to focus on anything deeply or ...

A new month filled with a new to-do list, new weather, and best of all, new books! Although I'm not sure how much reading the month will contain because I'm knee-deep in garden harvests that need processing and preserving. So far I've finished pickles, green beans, tomato sauce, coleslaw mix, leeks, pickled jalapeños, zucchini, potatoes, onions, and one big batch of carrots.  I will have more tomatoes, carrots, coleslaw, and green beans plus a blessed ton of butternut squash to contend with, but otherwise I think that's it for preserving.  Going into the 2024 growing season, I knew that family life was going to be busier than ever and wondered if it would be best to skip gardening altogether. After throwing that idea around for a while, I decided to instead do a limited garden and stock up on whatever I didn't grow at grocery store. Instead of growing a little of everything we like, I grew a lot of a select variety of fruits and veggies. In September and October I...

  If I only judged August by how many books I read or how much I liked the books I read, this would be my worst month of 2024. Thankfully, life is made up of more than the books I read! Taking everything else into consideration, I feel great about last month. It was so full of adventure and hobbies.  The Things I Did: In the first week of August, my Dad visited for the week. He replaced the sprinkler heads in our backyard and taught me all about how to adjust, clean, and maintain them. Now everything back there is green and lush. (For the record, I asked him not to do any work and admonished him to rest, but he ignored me flat-out and now my back yard is gorgeous.) In the second week of August, our family had a week-long "staycation." I put that in quotations because it really wasn't a stay-anything! But we got into the habit of calling it that after canceling our original plans to trek to the Oregon coast and deciding to stay closer to home. We visited the bison and gey...