At the end of August I got an email from Typepad, the platform I have used to host my blog for 20 years, telling me that they were shutting down at the end of September. I had 30 days to come up with a plan for 20 years worth of content. COOL, thanks, I hate it. I haven’t posted to my blog with any consistency in ten years but those first ten years? I wrote over 3000 posts. It was my public journal in the early years and my carefully curated resume (still with some personal journalling) in the later years.
At this point, I have a 34.9 MB exported .txt file of all the posts saved to my computer. It’s possible someday I can import it somewhere else, but the photos will be gone (Typepad has not responded to my request to download my image files) and it’s hard to think about all those broken links. I asked Chat GPT to copy the whole blog into a .PDF for me but it will not due to copyright reasons (which is really rich considering the AIs were all trained by scraping content from my blog and millions of others). I tried to upload it into a book, but even when I selected only specific personal categories to print, the “book” kept timing out in design and was 5 volumes and counting. (I can’t think of anything I want less than the weight of 5+ volumes of chaotically formatted blog posts.) So finally, I went through and individually saved the few dozen posts that mean the most to me (my small business story and posts about Paul, deployments and motherhood) as PDFs until I can do something more meaningful with them for my family.
I am sharing this right at the top here in case you have a favorite recipe or a tutorial you refer to often. Now would be a great time to copy that post or take screenshots. What a mess, right? But it’s okay. I like to remind myself that it’s the work that matters, not the documentation of the work. Onward.
In brighter news, my zinnias are still flourishing. It’s late September and they have never looked better. I am crediting the cover crop I planted last winter, how tightly I packed them in (I think it made them grow taller to get to sunlight) and a better watering plan. Zinnias are a Sacramento area dream flower (they love our heat) and I may dedicate three beds to them next year (the dahlias are out, I am sorry to say). So far, my “epic garden era” has been about learning what grows easily and doing more of that.
I listened to astronaut Scott Kelly’s memoir, Endurance, on audio this month and loved it. Kelly weaves together his journey to become an astronaut with his year in space incredibly well and his matter-of-fact writing style felt perfect for the subject matter. I laughed out loud and learned a lot about the space program. I also found the ending, where he prepares to return to earth and recounts what he has missed over the year, deeply moving. He talks about emailing his partner a list of things he wanted at their house when he got home and I was transported instantly to the three times in my life I got to grocery shop and stock our fridge for Paul’s return from deployment. What a trip.
About once a week we make shredded chicken and get at least two dinners and one lunch from the results. The recipe couldn’t be easier. Preheat the oven to 300*. Into a dutch oven, put 2-4lbs of thawed boneless chicken thighs (we often do 4lbs but please adjust based on how many family members or how many meals you are cooking for). Pour over the chicken 15 oz of store-bought fresh salsa (something like this will work great) and add in ½ tsp of salt for every pound of chicken. (4lbs = 2tsp). Stir up the chicken, salsa and salt, cover with the lid and bake for three hours. (It’s easy to remember…”3 ingredients, 3 hours, 300 degrees”). After three hours, open the lid and stir to shred the chicken. We eat it over salads, in tacos, with veggies, on open faced sandwiches and over nachos. I also throw the chicken in with eggs for lunch. SO EASY AND SO GOOD.
I vividly remember my junior year of high school when our cheer team switched from quarter length socks to no-show socks. At the time, I hated the no-shows. TWENTY-FOUR YEARS later, after resisting the pull of any and all sock trends, I made the switch back. These from Bombas are just right and I look forward to wearing them with my gym shoes until I turn 64 and once again my sock life shifts dramatically.
Our book club read The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett this month. First off: cover art 10/10. When I started it I felt anxious — there were so many great details on every page! — how would I remember them all to mention at book club? (I almost wanted to start highlighting which I rarely do with fiction but then I realized that the whole book was just one great detail after another.) The themes were dark (addiction, murder, so much death) but it was incredibly tender, smart and funny. When our book club met last week we all agreed it was a hit. (Bonus: heavily features a lovable orange cat.)
Estate sale hunting remains one of my favorite hobbies but I haven’t been in six months. This morning Piper and I went to one just down the street for 50% off day and struck gold (the lower my expectations for a sale, the better we do). I managed to collect all four of my favorite things to look for at estate sales — vintage taper candles, a low wicker basket, small flower vessels and original art. This 4×5 painting is extra special because it has a handwritten note on the back: “Sid — Just wanted to do one for you and the time is right. No problem for you to find a place to hang a big one like this. Luv + stuff, your brother, Stan. 1972.” Luv + stuff is right.
Over Labor Day weekend, Paul and I attended the wedding of our friends’ Woody and Duncan in Red Rocks, Colorado. It was the best wedding we’ve ever been to without a doubt. The ceremony took place during a break in the rain and the after party was a four hour event complete with four themes (we changed costumes every hour on the hour) and a show-tunes sing-a-long. We laughed, we cried and we laughed until we cried. We also loved Woody’s dad’s reception toast — “May your marriage be modern enough to survive the times but old-fashioned enough to last forever.”
