1. Days Off. Y’all, I never take days off unless I’m having one of those “too sick to lift my head” days. But for whatever reason, these past couple of weeks I just could not with adulting, so I just… didn’t. Instead I caught up on crazy things like laundry and grocery shopping and email and watching too much YouTube. I need to fit in a lot of extra writing over the next week to make up for it, but I think that actually resting for once was a good idea and I’m glad my weird freelance work life gives me the freedom to do that.
2. I bought some awesome things on Etsy this week which I’ll show you when they arrive (excited!), but I seriously need input on which of these two awesome shirts I should order next payday. I want both SO MUCH.
But here’s the thing… I added that to this post last week before totally slacking off and not ending up posting anything on Friday, and that majestic tweet has now been outdone by the best tweet in the history of ever:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve looked into the future and you will not believe this shit.” pic.twitter.com/MRhKWgXAYI
5. I got this necklace on the Wish app for like $2 and it makes me happy. I never really wear necklaces, so I might make it into a keychain? But I do like the idea of having my city close to my heart.
A Bonus: I didn’t think I got any eclipse photos, but… LOOK AT MY FOREHEAD!
Go forth and have an awesome weekend! I’m hoping to head down to Eureka Springs again to go wander around Lake Leatherwood and also buy some fancy olive oil.
I haven’t had a chance to make a fancy Friday Favs August graphic yet, even though it literally takes like two minutes in Canva, so just imagine something really snazzy at the top of this post, ok? Thanks!
As usual, I’m working on this post while also actually working. I always tell myself I’m going to add to the list throughout the week so that when Friday comes it’s all ready to go, but LOLOL no. It’s always late Friday afternoon when I finally roll it out. I ran out of patience for fellow humans earlier this week (I’m looking at you, teenage boy who brought a freaking LUNCH BOX to the library and kept pulling out loud things to eat.), so I’ve started sequestering myself in a corner next to THIS!
Missouri libraries: Keepin’ it super high tech!
The desk is waaaay too short for my Amazon woman self, but at least it’s quieter over here. And I have my own power outlet, which is pretty baller.
The emergency exit door doesn’t care if I take weird library selfies.
ANYWAY. Friday Favs!
1. I’ve been on the lookout for an alternative to Pepto Bismol for AGES because you’re not supposed to take it if you’re allergic to asprin (which I am.) I finally found these chewable tablets for like $4 at Walmart. Also, you know that you are very old and falling apart when nausea medicine tops your favorite things list.
2. I was looking for cheap but good mattresses on Amazon (the one I found this on is only $159) and found the best review:
3. I also came across these on Amazon, and now I must have them:
4. The weather finally chilled out (literally!) a little bit this week, with highs in the 80s instead of the “Let’s be 96 degrees every day!” thing we had going on throughout July. That means I’ve been able to go back to my evening walks at the lake without passing out! Hooray!
5. I have sucked at blogging lately because I’ve been working almost literally non-stop because even though I’ve said “This is totally the time it’s happening!”about moving back to Florida a million times now, I’m determined that this fall really IS the time. I actually applied for part time merchandise at Universal the other day, so we’ll see if anything comes of it. (I just want to get paid to be a Ravenclaw, let’s be honest.)
A post shared by The Beat With Ari Melber (@thebeatwithari) on
ABOUT FREAKING TIME! I hope he gets spectacular ratings!
2. Merriam Webster has a cool new feature where you can see which words were added to the dictionary the year you were born. A few added the year I was born include aerobicize, body double, boombox, camcorder, French manicure, infomercial, sleazebag, spreadsheet, stonewashed, uninstall, unsubscribe, waitstaff, and warm fuzzies.
Yup, camcorder, aerobicize, boombox, and stonewashed. Definitely the 80s! (Amusingly, spellcheck now does not recognize aerobicize as a word.)
Couldn’t resist also checking the year after my birth since I was born in mid-December, and found that 1982 brought us such classics as cyberspace, codependent, barista, couch potato, face plant, flip off, hard drive, phone sex and G-spot. Um, and also AIDS.
Leave me a few from the year you were born in the comments if you go check it out!
3. So, I originally tweeted this because I thought it was hilarious that the thrift store wanted $12 for a framed jigsaw puzzle…
But the more I look at it, especially that one huge, disgrunted cat, the more I feel like I NEED IT. It’s like his face is saying “I, too, am a tiny fluffy kitten.”
4. I’m still editing photos for my post about the Gaylord Texan Resort, where I stayed the night of my friend’s wedding in Dallas, but I have to go ahead and mention the awesome bath products. (Yes, I swiped them all.)
I rarely like hotel shampoos and such because they usually have heavy fragrances that make me sneeze, but these are amazing. Go book a $300/nt hotel room immediately just for the bath products. 😂
(Speaking of heavy fragrances, I’m writing this post at the library as a break from my actual writing work, and a dude just sat down like 20 feet from me but his cologne is SO STRONG that I feel like there’s a giant invisible cloud of fragrance filling the entire room. Send help and gas masks.)
5. There are so many crazy political stories that I could pick as a favorite this week, but I have to go with the email subject that made me laugh the most while trying to picture the scene:
Oh, 2017, you are crazy-go-nuts and a new level of horrifying every day, but at least you’re amusing.
Happy Friday! Yet another week has flown by. Stop doing that, weeks! I need to catch up!
Could we please start a petition for an International Catch Up On Your Life Day? You get a full 24 hours to catch up on ALL THE THINGS from overdue blog posts to that Netflix show you’re three seasons behind on to sleep.
Okay, maybe it should be International Catch Up On Your Life Week?
Anyway, here’s this week’s list of favs!
1. I’ve been sick this week and finally had to give in and get some antibiotics. Despite asking the doc for an affordable option, when I picked them up they were $50. LOLNOPE. Enter the GoodRX app, which gives you a coupon code the pharmacy people can enter to drop the price down. It brought mine down to $21, which is still way more than the $4 generic I meant when I asked for “affordable”, but significantly better than $50! (And nope, this isn’t sponsored, I just hate when pharmaceutical companies charge way too much for things just because they can.)
The app shows the price available at your local pharmacies so you can make informed choices. Yay!
2. I posted a song that I fell in love with via Spotify last week, and I have another new one that love this week!
Yes, same musical vibe as last week. I’ve been in a weird mood.
3. If you’re anything like me, you usually kinda vaguely notice the refrigerated section of the pet food aisle or store, but never really stop to investigate.
However, FreshPet recently sent me some coupons so I could try out their cat food on the house (Yes, my cats are spoiled.) so for the first time I actually explored the refrigerated stuff!
This one was a big hit! It’s easy to feed like dry food, but it’s softer and moister. The resealable bag made me ok with sticking it in the fridge and not feeling weird about cat food being in there with my food. (Refrigeration is required because they don’t use preservatives.) This was awesome when one cat would miss meal time (there always seems to be one off doing their own thing!) because I could grab them a good meal without the sound of an opening can alerting everyone else to the possibility of food.
I believe this was around $5 for a 1 lb bag. Not bad at all given the high quality ingredients, but also not something I could afford to feed them daily. It was so handy for a quick meal, though, that I’ll probably purchase it occasionally in the future! You do need to use it within about a week after opening, or else I’d just keep some on hand most of the time.
Okay, not the best photo ever, but I think anyone with pets knows what happens when you try to photograph something for your blog or Instagram!
This one is a pate from FreshPet’s “Vital” line, which is grain-free. The cas LOVED this stuff – I think they would have happily eaten the entire 1 lb package all at once. (It suggests feeding 1/4 – 1/2 lb per day depending on the cat’s weight, so I guess multiple cats splitting one would be totally normal, but it FELT like so much!) There was a learning curve to figuring out how to slice it up. At first I went with actual slices, but they seemed to struggle with those so I switched to chunks that they could get their mouths around better. Success! This one was also around $5, which is pretty budget friendly since if you only have one cat you’re getting 2-4 days out of it. Again, though, if you live in CatLadyville like I do, it may fall into the “special occasions and occasional splurge” category.
I found these at PetCo, Target, and Walmart, but their website also has a store locator if you want to track them down. There are WAY more options available for dogs, so I’d love to see the cat food varieties, expand, too! They do also sell single resealable cups of cat food that are under $2 each, so that’s next on our list to try!
4. I’ve been in hardcore cleaning and decluttering mode because I’m determined to move back to Orlando this fall, and I feel like the less stuff I bring along with me (literally and figuratively), the better. Strangely, this has gotten me hooked on YouTube videos of other people cleaning. Can’t decide if this is a step up or down from watching Hoarders?
Speaking of video consumption, I’ve been on a YouTube kick again lately. Leave a comment to let me know who your favorite YouTubers to follow are!
5. If you’ve been visiting my blog for very long at all, you know that a) I love cats and b) dot-to-dot books for adults are my jam. As much as I love coloring books for adults, sometimes when my brain is totally exhausted from a long day of work, even picking out which colors I want to use feels overwhelming. Dot-to-dot is way more relaxing. I can just put on a good podcast and kind of zone out as a cool picture forms.
I was recently sent a copy of the new Where’s Kitty? Dot-to-Dot by its publisher, Thunder Bay Press, and I’ve definitely been enjoying it. In addition to unwinding at home, it’s also come with me to Arkansas to help turn my brain off after a long day of exploring.
Like most dot-to-dot books for adults, each page is pretty intricate and the dots can be pretty tiny and close together.
Definitely not as tiny as some dot-to-dot books I’ve seen, though, and the numbers all being black also make them easier to read than some other books. I think it would be impossible to have intricate designs where the numbers don’t stand out like a sore thumb if they weren’t quite small.
As you might guess from the book’s title and cover, there’s a kitty hiding in each page! Something about this turns me into a small child and I get all excited when it shows up, “OMG, THERE’s kitty!” (Look, I live in a very small town right now. This is about as exciting as things get sometimes.)
Each image has a clue about the setting, which is super cute.
Kitty chillin’ on a gondola in Venice
Since I’m also a travel nerd this book was a perfect fit for me, since the designs each feature a famous world landmark or destination.
Happy weekend, all, and good luck if you’re entering the giveaway!
I spent most of the latter half of June asking, “Is it July yet?” because I was so looking forward to plans to head down to Dallas for a friend’s wedding and quality time with other people I care about. And now, somehow, I’ve already been back for almost a week and the time has flown by. Most of this week’s hours have been filled with work, which is lovely in the financial sense and not so great in the catching up on blog posts (and life!) end of things.
My brain hasn’t wanted to focus on anything productive all day, so this poor Friday Favs post is going up well after 9 p.m. Better late than never? I’m going with yes on that question.
1. Getting to spend time with incredible people while I was in Dallas has to be #1 this week. I’ve known two of the friends I got to visit since I was about 14, and another since 18. I hadn’t been to Texas in at least a decade, but I feel like I might need to go back in the relative future. Maybe a year? Maybe sooner? Life is weird and unpredictable, so I’m leaving it as a big question mark for now.
2. The meowers were treated to this delicious (their opinion, I didn’t personally try it) Blue Wilderness wet food from Chewy.com this week. The variety pack had chicken, duck, and salmon flavors, which were all a hit.
I often tell Bear that as a bear, he should be off catching salmon from a stream. Canned food made of salmon seems like the next best thing, so he got to be my model this week. Yes, I know, the black cats are impossible to photograph and these photos never turn out great, but Bear deserved that fishy deliciousness.
3. While writing a suite description for work, I made what is arguably the best typo of my life:
4. I came across this statue while wandering around the historic district in Grapevine, TX last Friday and it just struck me for a lot of reasons.
