Life in Denim and Flip Flops

I don't know what was different about today, but I really struggled. A headache sidelined me for part of the day. Then I got hit with an overwhelming wave of sadness. And there were tears today. Definitely a crying jag. At some point today I moved past the point of being able to be angry. I just feel sick to my stomach again. Something I haven't dealt with since being on anxiety meds. I'm ok. I think everything just caught up to me today. Hoping sleep grants me some stress-free down time for my brain at least. My heart and stomach are going to need a bit more time I think.

View this post on Instagram I was craving sweets so I made homemade nutter butters from @hedygoldsmith’s Baking Out Loud cookbook. Only tweak was using Calico Bean Market’s butterscotch peanut butter. Absolutely fantastic. #baking #notjustbread A post shared by Becky (@msbeckiejean) on Mar 30, 2020 at 5:43pm PDT When my hands are idle, my mind is busy. But when my hands are busy, I can find a way to quiet my mind. Baking and cooking are one of the ways I do that. Now it's one of my signature hobbies and skills, but it wasn't always that way. I know for some people that's seems very weird, but in fact, about ten years ago I blogged about the very short list of recipes in my repertoire. Since then my cookbook collection has more than quadrupled, I eat at home or cook for myself like 6 days a week (even before social distancing), I handmake pasta, I've made my own ice cream, fried donuts from scratch, made my ...

I've never been good with change. I think that's putting it lightly. As anyone who has met me can tell you, I'm a type A control freak with a major worrying streak. I don't like when I can't predict what will happen. I don't like not knowing or having the ability to fix something. So as you might imagine, I'm kind of struggling with all this. I'm grateful now more than ever that I sought out professional help to deal with my generalized anxiety. Eight months ago I got on meds and found a therapist. But even with those tools, it's taken every trick I've learned over the past 20+ years of dealing with anxiety before I even knew to call it that to deal with the world and reality right now. I'm trying to take whatever this is right now one day at a time. I'm not even sure where to start one of the count of days of this. I'm not in quarantine; I'm not entirely working from home; My state isn't sheltering in place. We went fully...

It had been so warm this week. Had, is apparently the key word in that sentence. Today was not so warm, and the wind picked up. My time on the riverwalk this morning was slightly less pleasant than I was hoping for. Windchill was just 32 degrees. Sadly I didn't think to check this out until after  my walk. Oops. Thankfully temps will be a bit warmer tomorrow when I have strawberry shortcake to make. :)

I have spent a large chunk of my evening troubleshooting audio issues for recording and streaming video games over Skype. It has been interesting. And frustrating. But it made me think about the first world problems of it all. I've been in communication with my friend in so many different ways tonight. Texting, tweeting, text via Skype, video chat, audio via Skype, and even screen sharing. At one point I was even using basic sign language over video when he couldn't hear me, while in the opposite situation I was reading his typing while he shared his screen with me before I saw it show up on my end of the chat program. I remember as a kid trying to build or fix things without directions with my dad. We started that way tonight. Then to understanding the basic strategies. And then progressed to text tutorials.  And now we're just trying to recreate exactly what someone has done on YouTube. We haven't found a solution. Despite me on my phone and my laptop simitaneously,...

What is it about April that drives me to start new projects? Or resurrect old ones. I honestly think it has a lot to do with the weather. Anything seems possible when you finally feel like you can be outside for more than a few minutes without a coat or 3 scarves. Maybe that's just me. I'm not an outdoorsy person by any means, but I love  being  outdoors. I can spend hours at a park reading or writing or playing on the swings. (Sidenote: I love swing sets. Like  love  them.) In the winter I go stir crazy being indoors all the time. I want to go on walks or sit at the park and read a book outside. Or write. I don't know that I've ever really considered myself a writer, per se, but I've done a lot of writing in my day. And oddly enough, a good chunk of that writing has taken place outside. This has definitely been aided by the fact I love to write long hand. Don't get me started on all the 8,000 journals and notebooks half (or barely filled) with random musings, o...

Today at church the opening hymn was You Are Mine one of my favorites. I haven't been to church in a while so getting to sing that today was a bit like coming home. I spent a lot of time growing up singing in church choirs or cantoring for service. Certain songs, composers, or arrangements bring me right back to my home church or my choir in Madison. It was just what I needed this morning. If you don't know the song I've posted it (and another of my favorites) below. You Are Mine Deep Within

Figuring it out. Today I spent some time evaluating things and starting anew. Most of my day was spent in various coffee shops across the city. I contemplated what I needed to do to get back where I need to be. I wrote lists. I adjusted schedules. I made plans. And then I wrote. I have a story I've been working on, writing, picking away at for a while. I sat down with it again today and finally pushed it over the 6,000 word mark. It's a random and arbitrary number, but it felt good to see an indication of forward motion. And I forgot how much I love those characters and the set up and the energy and catharsis it brings me to write again. After the internal and emotional issues got the once over, it was time to get to the outward and physical, staring with a haircut. It had been way too long since I'd cut my hair. I got complacent and lazy, so I went in and cut it off and colored it today. I needed the change. It looks like forward motion. It is forward mot...

I'm not sure how I got here, but somehow I'm a bit lost. Emotionally drained and frustrated. Not having bad days, just not really having good days. I need to figure out how to find myself again. I have routines, but I'm not in my own routines. I need to intentionally put myself back into the mix. I've spun out a bit and need to push myself back in the right direction. I will get there. This is just step one.

Five years ago I was sitting in a graduate school classroom listening to professors introduce guest speakers. Tonight I was that guest speaker. I never imagined I would be asked to talk in a library school course. Much less after just five years in the field. I'm still trying to wrap my head around that idea that tenure and previous experience do not make one an "expert" or an "experienced or seasoned" professional. I have always tied length of time to expertise somehow. I am just now learning that those don't have to be mutually exclusive. In addition to speaking to a reader's advisory class about YA lit for adults (and some of my programming hits and misses), I also co-lead a 2-hour workshop discussion about instruction yesterday. Afterwards a colleague from another librarian came up to tell me that I did a good job. I thanked him for the compliment and didn't think twice about it. It's what you say after something like that. It's not t...

I should know by now that blogging when I know I will be away at a conference is a bad plan. I always intent to write something witty and intelligent (like every post on here right?), but inevitably I end up too busy being witty and intelligent in real life to remember or actually follow through online. Sigh. But you've got to dream big right? The preconference went well!  Great attendance and interaction. Not many people brought ideas with them, but a few people told us afterwards how they were going to come better prepared next time. I love that we were doing this again. Pretty stoked to see a brainchild of mine actually come to fruition and succeed!

Today was one of the first warmish days we've had this spring. I have been itching to wear dresses for so long. It was finally warm enough to do that yesterday. I wore one of my favorite black and white dresses. (Don't even ask how many black and white dresses I own...) But today I pulled out a new dress, a pink and brown flowered one, with pockets!!! I got quite a few compliments today, because the dress was new. And the best part? It was cheap. One of my favorite fashion secrets is to buy clothes out of season. I bought the dress super cheap last fall. It's a summer weight dress so by the fall it was marked down quite steeply. I bought it and then threw it in my closet to wait for spring so I could pair it with leggings and a cute cardigan for a "new" 6-month old dress day. Same thing goes with consignment stores. We've got a few in Dubuque and I know for a fact that the one downtown deeply discounts their clothes just as they are trying to put out clothes...

I just solidified plans for this weekend today when it hit me: my April weekends are all over the place, and well so very me. Keeping with my new reality of being around Dubuque much more often than I have in the past, I'll be here for 3 of the 4 weekends. Ok, and by here I mean mostly here. I'll explain below. April 6-7 Julien Dubuque International Film Festival --I went to the festival last year with Gretchen. We had so much fun! We ended up seeing a different set of films than we originally thought, but it was still a blast. I was lucky enough to attend the Beloit International Film Festival with Kyle and his family last month, and this year he's coming down to spend the weekend watching films with me. Plus Nicole will be around for the weekend so she's coming along too! April 13-14 Twins game with Amy--We've got tickets to the Twins-Mets game on Sunday so I'll be driving back up to The Cities (I was just there over St. Patrick's Day weekend). I have...

A happy return and a sad farewell. Every year since 2009 on this date I pledge to try (and sometimes succeed) to post a blog every day of the month. This year is no different. I solemnly swear that I am up to no good and will do my utmost to post something at least slightly entertaining each and every day this month. But as I say hello again to you lovely (and let's be fair...few) readers, I'm still reeling from a goodbye. Today may be the marker of new beginnings, BEDA, April, spring (finally!), and the baseball season... but I think more significantly it's the first Monday post-Lizzie. Post-Lizzie you ask? You might remember me blogging about a new vlog-style webseries last April. It debuted April 9, 2012 and I was hooked from Day 1. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is...was...is?..more than just a video diary adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. It's a new way of story telling. The story unfolded over 100 videos on Lizzie's YouTube channel every Monday and T...

I cannot believe it's almost April again. And if you've been around for a while, you know what that means. BEDA is back. That's right. Once again I'll be attempting to blog every day in April. Yes it's crazy. No, I probably won't actually make it. I'm not doing any sort of organization or running or coercing other people into doing it with me. Nicola, one of my original BEDA buddies, asked last minute on Twitter and I thought why not? I'm always up for a good challenge. So get ready, get set....here we go!!

Because every other time I point out I'm going to try and blog and do better about keeping this up I fail in some sort of epic fashion, this time I'm not making any promises. I'm currently working on a library instruction blog which means I'll be guilted into seeing how rarely I update this blog on a much more frequent basis. And we all know that I work on guilt/reward system so maybe it's just what I need to get myself motivated to post here more often. Probably not, but we'll see. To all of you still actively reading this blog, kudos to you. I owe you some chocolate or baking. Or both.

I'm going to try something a little different here. Let me first say this blog isn't going to turn into a book review blog. I am not nearly a fast enough (or dedicated enough) reader for that. And we all know you don't want to read my thoughts about every book I read. (Because if you did, you'd ask me for that. Right?) But there are a few things I've read recently that I just need to talk about. And it won't surprise anyone who knows me to find out that one of those things is Morgan Matson's latest Second Chance Summer. So let the review commence!! Second Chance Summer-- by Morgan Matson This book is everything Amy & Roger was not. While Amy & Roger (A&R) physically traverse the country, Second Chance Summer (SCS) spends 97% of its time at a summer lake house in Pennsylvania. In A&R, family members couldn't be further apart physically or mentally. SCS looks at grief when the family members are all in the same house, literally una...

Today marked the opening of our inaugural summer reading program at my library. We're calling it the YA Reading Round Robin. Last year some of the YA Book Club members wanted to meet over the summer, but logistically that was going to be a nightmare. So we just went on break over the summer and picked it up in the fall. This year, Diana and I decided to be ambitious. We wanted to run a program that people around campus for the summer could participate in that required very little day-to-day work on our part. Also, we were aiming for something that would be flexible around everyone's schedules. This fall/winter I was a part of a long-distance book club. We modeled our program after that experience. In that group, each of 5 women picked a book and annotated, doodled, commented, and responded to what they were reading along the way. Then they mailed that book to the next person. That person would do the same, replying to the first person's comments and makin...

Last week was the first week that I failed to watch a "new to me" movie this year. It was one of my resolutions this year. And I think it was the last one I broke. Mid-April's not too bad. But I promise to make up for it this week. You know why? This week is the inaugural Julien Dubuque International Film Festival. After Kyle got held up by family obligations (totally forgiven because I adore his grandmother), Gretchen came to the rescue to be my house guest and film date for the weekend. We bought the 10-pass pack (we'll split it for 5 films a piece). We went to town today tearing apart the schedule to figure out what films we wanted to see, and then if we could find a way to do that without double booking ourselves. We ended up with: Searching for Sonny Route 66: Ten Years Later The Forest Prince and the Pigman: Hitchhiking in America Thespians And a collection of shorts that includes Cab 57 The shorts we'll see Friday night when Gretchen gets here a...

I'm blogging from my phone tonight because I can. For those of you who have had to deal with me during this craziness, thank you. I really should have tried to fix it sooner but you know how I am. Plus I figured I was due for an upgrade soon. And I was the day after I get back from my conference. Thankfully the guy at the verizon store talked me into a new battery instead. So far it looks like it solves the problem. Doesn't mean I won't upgrade to an iphone in May. Just means I won't cost me 700 dollars to do it. I'm looking forward to having a phone that will talk with my computer. And I'm secretly hoping it will make me want an ipad less. But I'm not holding my breath on that one. Either way I got great service and advice at the Verizon store. I've never been less than happy with them....when I finally suck it up and show up to fix things or make them happen. Back to your regularly scheduled computer-based blogging tomorrow.