Slice of April 2018

I’m doing prompts this month, but this is the last monthly update I’ll be doing. Instead, I’ll be doing quarterly updates. The monthly updates keep me anticipating the end of the month, so I’m not spending my time enjoying them anymore.

With this change, I’ll be contributing to Jane Lately more often and try to fill you all in on my life via other posts.

For references, this is how the quarterly posts’ll go:

  1. January, February, March
  2. April, May, June (just the latter two for 2018)
  3. July, August, September
  4. October, November

I also feel like I put way more work into these monthly updates than I do in other posts. I’ll find myself thinking, “Oh, I can just put this into the monthly recap and it’s taken care of.”

Notable things I did this past month:

I read Come to the Rocks, So Lucky, two children’s books, and Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku Vol. 1 & 2.

My carpal tunnel syndrome has been flaring up a lot lately, probably because I was reading more and still doing everything else I did before I started reading. It got to where I couldn’t hold the books, both without pain and in general! Blogging for Books shut down, and I feel shitty for not having gotten in my last review, but…ugh. My health comes first, but I’ll get around to finishing reading it and having the review up eventually…and maybe it’ll not be so bad!

I did start reading books via NetGalley, which isn’t too bad now that I know Adobe Digital Editions works OK with my laptop. NetGalley’s incompatible with the desktop Kindle app, so I was thinking it mightn’t be a viable solution to reading books. Eventually, I’d like to get an e-reader, but…I really love physical books! But it might be best for more than the environment (sorry; I love physical books too much, soz) if it means I can continue reading and not cause my CTS to get worse…because I really don’t want hand surgery??

People I met up with this month:

We had a family get-together (dad’s side) on the first, for Easter. I hid the eggs and got poked at least thrice by the yucca plant. My arm and leg were both bruised, though my leg—poked twice—got the worst of the bruising. I used to love that plant ’cause it flowered prettily and I admired the special snowflake it was[1. Similar to basil, only one insect exists for the sole purpose of pollinating the plant—and it’s not a bee!], but now I don’t care. Pain is not worth prettiness. I don’t care how much powder goes into the heels or the bra. Pain + pretty = NAH-UH.

Charlise had to do towels again for churches here in Dallas, and she employed me to help a cuz out. She’s a professional laundry person, and every three months, she launders ~600 towels total. I never thought I could hate white towels so much until I helped her the first time. I always thought the white towels from hotels elegant, but now they just annoy me and look cheap. Personally, I want dark grey towels and turquoise towels.

We didn’t meet up ’cause he’s elsewhere (can’t say much about this for privacy purposes), but I reconnected with my last ex-boyfriend (you may know him as CG) after signing onto my old Facebook to update people after not for nearly a decade (people thought I died, apparently) and to grab old photos. At the time of my writing this, it seems to be going surprisingly well. Despite everything that happened, and what people say about guys and gals being friends…maybe it is possible.~

This past month, I learned:

  • If a relationship (whatever the kind) starts to feel draining or like it’s interrupting your other relationships, it’s probably not healthy.
  • Rest is good.

My favorites from this month:

  • Clean & Clear Morning Burst — Got it in travel size ’cause I was curious, in March, and have been using it since. It’s helped clear up my skin! I use it in the shower, which I take at night before bed. Even though it’s marked “morning”. I read that skin regimes take 10 days to take affect, and it turns out that waiting out that 10 days for results was well worth it!Sadly, my Neighborhood Walmart doesn’t sell full-size, but it kinda works out because the travel size lasts me almost a month because I use pea-sized amounts…
  • Loaded baked potatoes (early April)— By “loaded”, I mean everything EXCEPT what picky eaters leave off it. So, really, my loaded baked potatoes are simply baked potatoes + butter + cheese + bacon bits.

A photo from this month:

Photo of me taking a photo of a baby whose arm I'm holding to keep her from smashing the cake too soon
Solara’s first birthday photoshoot—you could you say it was smashing.~

Something that made me smile this month:

Binging Grey’s Anatomy. Season 14 is so hilarious, and emotionally and politically charged. I feel like it’s one of the best seasons yet! Between the flashbacks and reminiscing of M.A.G.I.C. and references to previous seasons, I feel like my many years (since late 2009) of keeping up with it have totally paid off. I think my favorite most hilarious moment is when most of main surgeons got high.

Currently:

  • Listening to: Ready for It
  • Reading:
  • Watching: THE 100 IS BACK! a lot of nerdy CW shows you don’t need to know about (unless you want to know in which case I WILL DIVULGE AND WE CAN CHAT ABOUT THEM), stuff on Hulu (because free trial)

I started watching Siren (Freeform), and I was tweeting about it, but I have this tendency to trip the Twitter spam catcher algorithm when I do this, so…I stopped. It’s a pain.

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Comments on this post

I used the Clean & Clear Morning Glow moisturiser at some point! It was one of my favourites. I haven’t used it in probably a decade but I distinctly remember liking it. 🙂 At the time I don’t think I used the corresponding cleanser, I might have used a brand like Pond’s.

I like the idea of a quarterly review/update. I’ve never thought of that before, but I keep forgetting to do my own monthly post. It doesn’t make me anticipate the end of the month but I just grumble at the fact that I (yet again) forgot what happened during the month. I should probably stop doing them altogether? I dunno. 🤷🏻‍♀️

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I think I used Pond’s once and it was okay until it made me break out all over. 😅 I stopped using face wash for several years, because it kept all messing my face up (which didn’t help my respiratory system, either). Ah, but I had had to stop using face wash because Neutrogena stopped selling my usual one—the only one that worked for me at the time—only to bring it back on a seasonal basis, during which it almost always sold out or was about twice as month as it’d been before. And so I just stopped. Because no. I feel like that’s exploiting a customer base just ’cause you can. I went back to using diaper wipes on my face…I’m not sure if I ever told them that, but I was like, “I don’t need to spend $16.96 on the only face wash that doesn’t make my face break out when I can use cleansing cloths created specifically for babies’ butts for the same original price—for a longer time.” And obviously those wipes were sold year-round, because peeps need cheeks soft year-round, not just during spring. 👌

I don’t know why I just told you all that. 😳 I’ve never told anyone all of it, actually.

I considered removing the monthly updates altogether, but I do like them to keep record of things. Having monthly updates and a life updates series seemed a bit redundant. I would start doing a life updates post and then be like, “Oh, but…the monthly review is literally next week?? So?? the point??” But also, in months like March, quarterly may be better for me in the long run. Sometimes I’m just like, “Well, this month just happened. That’s it. Moving on.”

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