Category: Weeknotes

Win of the week: published my latest thoughts about authenticity in digital art, digging into what evidence makes us perceive cultural works as authentic — I don’t think we’re looking for the same evidence from every artist

Looking forward to: going to see my niece and meet her partner!

Stuff I did:

• 5 hours book proposal research and writing
• 5.5 hours working on Statement of Qualifications
• consolidated assorted junk into five big boxes now ready to donate! (I swear I don’t buy that much but somehow have a neverending Goodwill pile… clothes I don’t like, kitchen stuff I’ve upgraded, things we don’t use anymore, costume jewelry I’m tired of, books I’ve read or am no longer interested in…)
• baked lemon ginger scones – baked 15 minutes, used 1/4c ginger (try 1/3c next time), skipped powdered sugar topping — wouldn’t want any less sugar but good like this
• for whatever reason my printer would only ever offer me double sided printing from Word, but not Acrobat… a quick DDG search later and I told the printer settings I had a duplex thing installed and now it prints double sided everywhere 🤷‍♀️ I have been low key annoyed by this for years why didn’t I try this before lol
• my toaster oven door has been sticking and stopped closing all the way, but the oven won’t turn on unless the door is closed… kept it closed with magnets until the new one came 🧲 thought about getting it repaired but it’s starting to fall apart in multiple ways
• one weight workout — I feel a little silly using 3lb. weights but I can feel it in my muscles after!
• walked with a couple friends

Win of the week: printed off a bunch of PDFs I’ve collected because I am never going to get around to reading them otherwise — already have read two of them 🦾

Looking forward to: got some big ol peaches, hope they’re good ones! gotta binge on stone fruit in the summer

Stuff I did:

• 2 hours business development
• baked blueberry crumb cake (used the upick blueberries plus half a pack from the grocery store and some frozen berries)
• got my passport back already! glad I didn’t pay for expedited shipping 😂 also got a passport card because it wasn’t much more
• hung out with my sister
• walked with my friend — looked smoky but most of the particles are up high apparently

Highlight of the week: we were eating lunch when this family of raccoons — one adult and two little kits — came to look for figs (none looked ripe to me but they found a few they deemed edible)

Looking forward to: the wildfire smoke is supposed to clear out this weekend after a long smoky week, will be happy to have clean air again!

Stuff I did:

• 0.75 hours consulting admin — project officially on hold
• 4.25 hours business development — updating my SOQ for the state roster
• woke up with a craving for chickpeas so I made breakfast chickpeas for Saturday brunch — made wells and threw in some eggs which worked, though the sauce was missing a little something — I never ate chickpeas growing up but I could eat them every day nowadays
• our power went out unexpectedly on Saturday so we boogied downtown, grabbed a gelato ($7 for one scoop 😳), and wandered along the waterfront up to my favorite little flower garden 🌼
• pissed off my freezer so apparently it stopped working for an hour and my salmon started to defrost… so I cooked dinner immediately after finishing breakfast 😂 freezer was 34 degrees F when I pulled the fish out, it’s supposed to be 0F 😬
• flomped on the bed and my bed frame collapsed 😅 turns out two screws on the bracket by my head had fallen out completely and two more had come mostly unscrewed, so the bed was being held together by a single screw — we replaced the four screws but it might be time for a new frame
• power went out a second time on Friday in the ten minutes it took to drive downtown and we forgot to bring cash 😒 got stuck in traffic because the lights were out, but finally escaped beyond the outage to grab snacks, and the power was back on by the time we got home!
• two weight sessions — I realized that I’ve been putting off doing weights because changing clothes midday is annoying, so I’ve just been wearing my normal clothes — doing it shittily is better than not doing it at all
• a friend from college reached out and we caught up a bit

Win of the week: submitted my passport renewal application (I suspect it’s a law of the universe that your passport photo must be terrible)

Looking forward to: this week my mind is starting to come back to itself after a month of difficulty focusing on anything — I can read books again, and was able to write a couple blog posts — over the past month I’ve been wasting time on Bluesky to distract myself, but this week I finally opened it up and went, eh, I don’t need this anymore

Stuff I did:

• filled out my ballot and dropped it off
• date morning at the u-pick blueberry farm… unfortunately, everyone else in Seattle went on Saturday so when we went on Sunday it was all picked out… in half an hour we picked less than a pint for $1.11 — at least we stopped for a donut on the way 😄
• called my sister and got caught up on her news (recent move)
• called my uncle and got caught up on his news (upcoming move)
• picked back up my usual weekly hang with a friend that we haven’t been able to do for a month
• baked strawberry biscuits for the first time in ages 🍓
• walked with my friend — the Blue Angels (military propaganda in the form of an elite jet corps) were performing nearby and very disruptive 😒
• suffered through a full 24 hours of headache before admitting it was a migraine… still not good at recognizing them, I should just assume that sore neck plus sinus pressure will become a migraine because the meds work best when taken early… I don’t usually get very intense pain so I tend to just live with it 🙄 trying to not let myself do that anymore since I spent almost $1k getting the prescription (for my own records, took 3 sumatriptan this week — there’s a limit on how many you can take each month to avoid rebound headaches)
• somehow a whole month since we lost our boy 😿 feels weird to abandon the little habits we’d developed for his quirks: our other cat doesn’t raid the trash can, so we don’t need to lock it anymore; he loved to sleep on warm laundry, so I would go find him whenever I pulled out a load and put him in the basket (didn’t expect doing laundry to be a trigger) — every time I notice another habit we no longer need, it feels like another letting go of him 😔

Win of the week: finally sawed off the top of the apple espaliers that had grown up over the past couple years (should have done it a month ago but so it goes)

Looking forward to: blueberry picking sometime soon

Stuff I did:

• 0 hours consulting — both my meetings got cancelled
• 3 hours business development
• received a binding tax ruling from the state that my outreach work is not, in fact, advertising for tax purposes 🦾

Highlight of the week: went to Phillips Backyard Music Festival in Victoria to see Angine de Poitrine (and Modest Mouse)!

Looking forward to: chilling at home this weekend

1% nicer: pantry tidy-up and improved some kitchen storage

Stuff I did:

• 1 hour consulting
• followup appointment with the dermatologist — my moles have not changed since my initial screening in January 🙌
• we made it a long weekend in Victoria 👍👍 it was also nice to get away from the house for a few days so I could have a break from constant reminders about my cat 😭
• unpacked from trip, edited photos, did laundry, etc.
• walked with my friend at the State Park
• unsuccessfully attempted to unclog one side of my kitchen sink without taking off the p-trap, that will be tomorrow’s job

Win of the week: dropped off like 8 boxes and bags of clothes, bedding, and textile recycling at Goodwill! 🙌

Looking forward to: booked myself a relaxation massage, still very tense — I’m starting to see how much of my routine had become oriented around the cat and his care over the past year, and how much emotional energy and mental bandwidth that was occupying… but I’m also having a hard time setting down the vigilance even though he’s gone

Stuff I did:

• 5 hours consulting
• 2 hours business admin — called the Department of Revenue to try to figure out if my projects (which are neither advertising nor web development) are considered advertising and web development for tax purposes because the state decided to add retail tax to some services 🙄 they couldn’t give me a firm answer but advised me to request a binding tax ruling, which will take at least 10 business days but probably more… guess that July 1 invoice ain’t getting paid for a while…
• found another moth breeding ground in the donation pile — had to wash all the stuff we were donating — another 3 loads of laundry 😑
• got out my summer wardrobe and put away my long sleeve shirts
• had a ton of other shit to do, but when I felt up for it I dedicated a day to going through my photos of the cat and wrote up a memorial for him — I won’t get through the grief if I don’t let myself feel it, and this is what self-employment is for
• the automatic cat food feeder is a big hit — took her a few days but now she trots over to the feeder and starts eating as soon as it chimes — we are hoping she might harass us less before mealtime if she associates us less with feeding (fat chance lol)
• squeezed in a quickie weights session (just arms and core)

Another rough week — still coming to grips with last week.

Highlight of the week: our remaining cat is being a sweetheart — the night we had her brother put to sleep, she played with me for the longest I think she’s ever played with me before, then the next morning she snuggled under the covers with me which she doesn’t usually like

Looking forward to: long weekend

Stuff I did:

• 1 hour consulting + 1 hour business admin
• took Friday off for the holiday
• settling into our new one-cat life — she does her own thing most of the day, so I’m acclimating to not having a buddy around all the time — we’re also trying out an automatic (wet food) feeder to see if that will work for weekends away
• going through the stages of grief — denial and shock, guilt and regret, bargaining and anger — and sleeping like shit (I think I’m still on high alert mode) — I’ve been journaling to help process what happened
• our other cat has been bringing me the shark toy like he used to — I had a mini breakdown the first time she did — don’t know if she also learned that I would reward her with attention for it, or it smells like him still, or she just likes it
• rewatched Idiocracy — wanted to not think about the cat for a while
• weeded for an hour and a half over two blocks — hoped some manual labor would distract me
• went out for Sunday brunch — our town somehow only has one independent diner-y brunch spot, everything else is either a coffee shop or bougie AF — two plates and a coffee was $50 before tip, oof (I saved half my food and turned it into breakfast v.2 the next day, which helped with the cost in my mind)
• financial forecasting — read this article pointing out that our expenses are not likely to be the same for our entire lives, that there are different phases, if you will, of spending — had my husband create a mySocialSecurity account so we could check his expected payment — used this tool to estimate both of our Primary Insurance Amounts and this tool to evaluate when he should take Social Security and when I should (my highest paid years were at an org that opted out of Social Security, plus Social Security reduces your payout if you get a pension — yes my $800/mo pension is a “windfall” — so I will get basically nothing 😜)
• had a couple CDs come to term, and I made my IRA contribution, so invested those funds
• my doctor couldn’t get me to do it, my cardiologist couldn’t get me to do it, my physical therapist couldn’t get me to do it… but Annie helped me break the inertia and actually lift some weights this week! 🏋️‍♀️ Her reminder about weight lifting strengthening bones clicked with my mom’s recent osteopenia diagnosis that I would like to avoid that if possible — thanks and happy birthday! 😉
• walked with my friend — scoped out a new greenway
• baked up the remaining scones from a batch I made a couple weeks back

Win of the week: kicked off the new work project, finally!

Looking forward to: fun plans with a friend this weekend

1% nicer: quick reorg of the overflow food storage / pantry

Stuff I did:

• 3.5 hours consulting
• took Friday off work for Juneteenth
• baked sourdough cream scones
• shoveled and spread 1 load mulch + weeding
• pruning — pine and unwanted volunteers and the rhodie separating our house from the neighbor’s
• switched us to summer weight coverlet
• discovered we have a serious clothes moth problem 😑 washed two wool blankets that seem to be a major breeding grounds, put another blanket in the freezer
• washed my house and errands shoes + wool sneakers once I discovered the moth issue — between normal loads and moth response I think I washed 10 loads of laundry this week 🫠
• deep cleaned the vacuum
• walked with two friends, then hung out in the park chatting with a lovely breeze on a beautiful warm afternoon