Week in Review: Week 200

Woohoo! 200th Week in Review post!

Okay, settle down.

Monday

I did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and it was heaven. I moved from the bed to the sofa around 11am and read and napped all afternoon. I think I might have gone out at some point for food.

Tuesday – New Year’s Eve

Ran some errands in the morning. Got a slice of pizza for lunch. Piddled on the computer most of the afternoon til I remembered I wanted to finish Anna !!! Karenina before the year was out, so…while I did stay up til midnight, it wasn’t to watch the ball drop, it was to finish that book (which I did, yay) so it wasn’t hanging over me in the new year.

Wednesday – New Year’s Day

 

Met friends for a short walk around a pretty pond. Had lunch/early dinner out. Came home and washed dishes. 2020 is off to a PRETTY exciting start!

Oh! I am doing A Thing. A 20×20 challenge, which means I select 20 clothing items to wear for 20 days. In all honesty, I’m feeling more challenged just to come up with 20 things! It’s taken me two days of thinking about this and standing in my closet staring at clothes, to get just 18 things on the list! I’m wondering if it’s a breach of the rules to leave two slots open as “bonus” items that I’ll just add later if I have some specific clothing need. Like we have a 70 degree day or I get invited to see the Queen.

I’ve followed bunches of people on their 10×10 challenges and always wanted to do one but could never get myself together in time. This one was started by Katie at @whatkatefinds, my new bff in my mind. Don’t tell her I said that, she’ll think I’m scary. But you should follow her – she’s on Instagram at @whatkatefinds and YouTube at What Kate Finds. She’s so fun and is talking a lot about shopping consciously and responsibly from ethical brands. I’m still working on a blog post (which has turned into several blog posts) about those very matters which I’ll share just as soon as I think it all makes sense…and is useful information!

Anyway, I guess I’ll be sharing the 20×20 outfits in my Instagram stories. I posted today’s outfit in my feed but now that seems weird…and I may switch to stories…and do a blog post at the end? I don’t know. So many decisions to make at the start of a new year.

THURSDAY

I’m doing another thing. I’m keeping a little daily log in my phone of what I did each day, what I wore and what I spent. In THEORY I will then enter all “what I spent” into a spreadsheet, but we’ll see how that goes. Actually, we KNOW how that goes, ha. I know for a fact that when I track my spending, I spend less. When I just go “oh, well, I think I have $200 left for the pay period so I can buy this $xx sweater,” it usually ends badly for me because I forgot about the website thingie renewal for $96 and the dinner I put on the credit card and I really DON’T have $200. So. We’ll see how this works and how long it lasts.

I think I could really call 202o The Year of Tracking. I might just do that. I’m tracking things you haven’t even heard of yet! So much excitement still to come!

Anyway, I went back to work today. Was not so bad. Everyone was in stunned “wait, we’re back here already?!?” silence so everyone left us (when I say “us,” I mean the 3 of us in the main office) alone. And I feel that a 2-day workweek is the perfect length. Because on Day 1 you’re already like “just one more day” and then the next day IS the last day, so. Yeah. Who can I suggest this to?

FRIDAY

Hey, it was Friday. I worked then I went to the laundromat. 2020 is awesome.

SATURDAY

I slept til almost 1:00!!! Those two workdays apparently took more out of me than I thought!

sunday

Today I tackled the 2-day long To Do list I had for this weekend (that I should have started yesterday but instead I slept). The heat has been out in the apartment since yesterday so I had to move some things for someone to come in and look at things…and I wanted to get my clothing rack set-up and IT was buried under a small mountain of boxes AND I was determined to find a grey cashmere turtleneck that I’ve had for years that I think might fit again so I took EVERYTHING out of the “under the stairs” closet in search of it – to no avail. So it was one of those days that I repeatedly made Big Messes…and I don’t have much to show for it. Heat is still out, sweater is still missing…clothing rack is set-up but I know as soon as I start putting clothes on it to photograph them (some for Poshmark, some for #Jan20x20), the Heat Guy will come and I’ll have to move stuff again. AND I should take the Christmas tree down tonight 🙁 cuz Mr. Landlord bagged a ton of leaves yesterday and it’s the perfect time to get the tree out with his leaf bags.

So for now I will tell The Library Story…and maybe by the time I’m done the heat guy will have been here and I can get back to doing my stuff.

THE LIBRARY STORY

I have always been a library lover…and abuser. Not intentionally, I just always loved the books so much I couldn’t bear to part with them and I would rack up huge overdue book fines. When I was young, my father and I were on the same family account and one time my fines were over $20 (small potatoes) so HIS card was restricted and boy did I hear it about that! He paid the $20 and made me feel horrible. “DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG IT TAKES ME TO EARN THAT MONEY?” Which now seems sort of weird, cuz really…how long COULD it have taken him to make $20? He made it sound like it was DAYS (I was like 9 so what did I know from salaries?) when it was probably more like 30 minutes, but still…I get the point.

When I sold my house in Islip in 2009, there was a small stack of library books that had been overdue for a LONG time…like, one of the books was on vegetarianism that Katie took out when she was 11. That was 2002. Ha. The books had just sat in a pile on a bookcase all that time.

I kept meaning to drop them at the library on my way outta Dodge but it got so hectic I just never got over there. So on Moving Day (which was fraught with enough anxiety as it was – did I ever tell you the story of how I sold my house, moved to Brooklyn, and within 24 hours was told I had a WEEK to get out?), when I was dropping the animals (Caleb, Jane, and Madison) at Russell’s for a couple days while I got myself settled in I realized the books were in the car so I told him I was leaving them on a shelf in his shed for now. Ten days later (!!!) when I went back for the animals, the books were nowhere to be seen. Dunno. They were gone.

There was a small library incident when I lived in Brooklyn (ha, I’m incorrigible, I know) and I’m probably banned from the Brooklyn library system as well.

ANYWAY, when I moved back to LI a few years later I tried to get a library card in my new town and was told NOT UNLESS YOU RETURN THE BOOKS OR PAY THEIR VALUE OF $260. Uhm, well, the books are gone. And I would be happy to REPLACE the USED books, knowing I could replace them from Amazon used books at a fraction of that price. No, they said. I said, well, I’m not ever going to pay $260 for used books (some were 10-year old magazines!), but…I am happy to replace the books for the library at reasonable cost. Nope. It wasn’t about the books. They wanted the money. She printed out the receipt for me -$260 and some odd change. I kept it in my purse for years (this was 2013ish) and it faded more and more til you couldn’t even read it. And I threw it out. So. They get NOTHING. They could have had the books, but…OH WELL.

That’s the story. My picture isn’t up on the library wall or anything (that I’m aware of!) but now that everything is computerized, all the town libraries know what’s going on with all the other libraries.

So, probably until I someday move out of state, I cannot be a book borrower from any Suffolk (or probably Nassau) county library…or Brooklyn (and possibly Queens).

The End.

What I’m Reading

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. FINALLY. Done. I stayed up late on New Year’s Eve…not to watch the ball drop at Times Square, but to finish this %&*$^! book before the new year started. How many times have I read “greatest book ever written!” but…who said that…and when? In the late 1800s when it was written? At that time, maybe it was. I will say, Tolstoy had great insight and sensitivity in the understanding of both men and women’s insecurities about relationships. I was impressed with that. There was Just. Too. Much. Too much “other stuff,” too much farming talk and Russian politics and repetitive conversations between characters. SO much repetition. No wonder it was 5,000,000 pages long (read: 30 HOURS on Audible). I would never have finished it if I had been reading a book in my hands. It literally took 2 months to get through…I had to take a week off here and there to listen to light-hearted podcasts cuz at certain points I just couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t really know how to rate it. I’m glad I read it (so I KNOW) but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it (to someone I like).

Do any of you use Goodreads? I like setting yearly reading challenges for myself. In 2019 my goal was to read 30 books and I read 66. I like to see what friends are reading or recommending. For 2020 I’ve set my goal at 48. Let me know if any of you are Goodreaders and we’ll be friends!

Okay, time to take the tree down, boo.

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