If only we could choose a single moment in time to represent our entire lives. ~ ME

If you could do that…what would the moment be?

MONDAY

It was like The Perfect Work Day. Just the right amount of work so it was steady throughout the day but nothing was a panicky last minute thing. I LIKE having work to do…but I hate when things end up having to be done (or redone) at the last minute or when there’s a big-time crunch. I try to avoid that but I am not The King and it doesn’t always work out like that. But THIS day was just right (for a workday). Grateful.

A friend came over for an event photography refresher and then we went to dinner. More outdoor dining. Yay.

A little brag, Katie did an engagement shoot for friends and the pictures are SO GOOD. I’m so proud 🙂 There’s something about your kid liking/appreciating/excelling at something you do/like that is so…OOH. Parentally Rewarding.

Oh, and she sent a picture of her new Puppeh-to-Be and STOBBIT!!! He’s like a lil plushie. I can’t. Doesn’t he look like a devilish little kitty??

Plus, I hit 49 jumps AGAIN. I am THISSSS close to getting to 50 AND OH WHAT A TIME THAT WILL BE. Ha.

What a week this is so far!

Old Bettye would say “well, it’s all downhill from here.” New Bettye THOUGHT it but…not gonna stay there.

TUESDAY

I headed to work this morning feeling a little meh but. But THEN. I remembered I had a bottle of grapefruit juice in the fridge at work. Grapefruit makes everything better. What IS that??

AND…my favorite podcast goes live on Monday nights, so I knew I had that Car Ride Fun to enjoy on my way to work. I love this podcast SO MUCH. She is so…DAMN I WISH WE LIVED CLOSER CUZ I KNOW WE WOULD BE BESTIES EVEN THOUGH I’D ALWAYS THINK I WASN’T QUITE GOOD ENOUGH FOR HER. She’s smart and funny and so well-informed about…uhm….Asian pop culture? For lack of a better term. She’s like a marketing analyst (I could totally be making that up but let’s just go with it for now) or something by trade, so has a lot of insights into the inner workings of the kpop machine. She validates so many thoughts I have about the whole BTS THING…makes me question things…and her “theories” about behind the scenes (<- see what I did there?? Behind the Scenes? BTS? ha ha I crack myself up) goings-on are highly entertaining.

It’s a LONG podcast…so it takes me like two days of driving to-and-from work to hear the whole thing.

Gosh, last year during the height of covid/Black Lives Matter/Trump I was a podcast ADDICT. I was waking up at 4 or 5am and lying in bed listening to one podcast after another. For the first time in my life I felt I had a slight grasp of what was going on in the world. And now? If it’s not on TikTok or BTS/kdrama-related…it doesn’t exist.

WEDNESDAY

Patting myself on the back, HARD, for keeping The Boys alive over the winter. At one point, the guy on the right lost ALL his leaves and was just those awkward stick stem things…but I didn’t kick him to the curb…and eventually he rewarded me with many new leaves. Now I wish (and know for next year) I’d cut the stalky stem things way down so all the leaves were coming from the base not from the tops. But I don’t want to do that NOW as it’s just getting to be time to put them outside. I’ll start now putting them out on warm days while I’m at work and bring them back in before night and cooler temps, just to reacclimate them to the real world.

I never even set up the grow lights. They lived in the bathroom all year (we were a little crowded in there!) so it was easy to plop them in the shower for bath time. The elephant ear guy on the left is a little loose in the pot…and his new growth is a little spindly cuz there’s not good light in there. I guess I need to repot and stake him up. Any planty types out there have any advice for me?

THURSDAY

So, I’m reading about this “plus-size” boy band out of China. And by “boy” I mean men. I think they’re all in their early 30s. But they’re adorable and I love the concept. The kpop industry is SO “looks-centric,” and Korea, especially, has VERY (read: unrealistically) high beauty standards.

Did you know in Korea they actually have a formula for what is the highest beauty standard? It’s like “distance from eyes to tip of nose,” “distance between eyes,” asymmetry of facial features, shape/size of eyes, elevation of nose bridge, etc. I know we HAVE “conventional” beauty standards here, but it’s not like IN WRITING. It’s not a formula.

Anyway, back to Produce Pandas (the band’s name, ha ha). Yay China for promoting some “other than stick-thin” entertainers. I hear so many horror stories about band members (especially the girl bands) getting sick, passing out on stage during performances, etc., because they’re required to stay a certain size (and it ain’t 16). Whether it’s for health/normalizing larger bodies or just “let’s do something no one else is doing” to make some unsecured dollars, I don’t even care. The result is large bodies being more acceptable in different arenas of life. And making more opportunities for large-bodied people.

FRIDAY

OHMYGOD IT’S THE BEST DAY EVER.

A) Mid-day when I was hitting the HOLYSH*T THERE’S A LOT LEFT TO DO BEFORE OUR BIG EVENT OPENS NEXT FRIDAY terror wall, I remembered GRAPEFRUIT JUICE IN THE FRIDGE! Seriously, who knew the secret to happiness was THIS EASY??

B) When I WENT to the fridge to GET said grapefruit juice I was SHOOK with the MIRACLE that there was a CHOCOLATE PROTEIN SHAKE leftover from yesterday when I decided I DESERVED Burger King and broke my “protein breakfast/healthy shake for lunch” regimen…leaving yesterday’s chocolate shake untouched. This morning at home I opened the fridge to get today’s shake and realized that OH CR*P I’m all out, damn, I’m gonna have to one of the yucky latte ones (that SOUND good, but are not half the man that the chocolate ones are). So I thought I was gonna have CRAPPY lunch and instead, I’m having HAPPY lunch 🙂

c) And the REASON all these miracles of the world are just falling at my feet today is cuz this morning when Other Girl in My Office (OGIMO) walked in, I said, “Today’s gonna be a good day. Easy. An easy and good day.” She said “okay,” and it was confirmed. A good day was to be had by all.

It’s actually a CHALLENGING day with many many many last minute and end-of-month things crashing into us…BUT. We’re pretending it’s good, so it’s good.

I can’t ALWAYS make that work. But once in a while I can put that “let’s have a good day” energy out to the universe and I actually get it back.

Also, I’ve had my music on all day and that helps me. I keep it low so OGIMO can’t hear it WELL…and I can just bop a little bit under my desk. It keeps me saner. Relatively speaking.

PLUS. It’s Friday. So there’s that.

PLUS I got to drive home with windows open and that’s a favorite of mine. And it doesn’t happen every day. It has to be Just the Right Weather (and mood) for that to work successfully.

SATURDAY

Today I did a TikTok live (a couple people from here showed up – Hi Deb & Joan! Was nice to “see” some familiar faces!). THAT was slightly unnerving. I mean, it wasn’t too bad. In the way that being social on the internet is NEVER that bad…cuz I can’t actually see or hear people’s responses behind their screens…and if anything got too uncomfortable, I could always just click “off.” But it didn’t come to that, thank goodness 🙂

I definitely rambled a bit (have you READ my writing??) especially when there were awkward silences…I felt compelled to fill them with long long stories, ha ha. Sometimes I’d lose my train of thought (as I do) and be like blah blah blah blah blah blah oh wait, what was the question?? Ha.

But overall it was kinda fun. In all, like 48 people showed up (not all at one time) and I stayed on for an hour and people were lovely to ask questions and say nice things.

I can file that under “Doing Things That Scare Me…and Surviving.” I’ll do it again but I think I need to have some sort of theme or project so there’s no “dead air.”

SUNDAY

Pulled an all-nighter, finishing TWO series I’ve been watching. I didn’t realize how late early it was til I got up to pee at one point and thought it must be a full moon cuz it seemed so bright out…and then I was like, oh. No. It’s just getting light out. Ha. Around 6:30 I finished the last show, slept til around 10, then lay in bed til like 1pm, first trying to read, but my vaseline eyes were not having it so I went back to TikTok which is delightfully easy to see. THEN got up and started my day.

Sunday at its Finest.

It was such a warm day. I went out around 5 to run some errands and it was nice to just drive around with the windows open, even though I didn’t go anywhere that interesting. Traders for birthday flowers for OGIMO, a stop at a health center parking lot that had a cherry tree in bloom for some pictures…the usual.

Oh, so these pictures are from a TikTok account, this darling girl who cuts her own hair and she makes it look So Easy and I love that style, been saving pictures of dozens of iterations of it for months, just can’t pull the trigger yet (especially not with Haircut Boy still MIA, although in March Salon Guy DID SAY he’d be back in May – though he’d also previously said he’d be back in March and THAT didn’t happen). If he doesn’t come back (and maybe even if he does) I am THIS CLOSE to just doing it myself.

How Bad Could (I can’t even say this without laughing) It Possibly Be??

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

And that’s the week that was…