Well. February was a brutal month here. I think probably half a year’s worth of happenings was stuffed into these few short weeks. To give you some idea:

Social
February began right after a whirlwind trip to Dallas to celebrate my nephew’s second birthday. The next weekend involved shopping for wedding dresses with my sister, followed by a Super Bowl party I held for my cousins, and Jason’s dad arriving from Wisconsin for a few days. There was, of course, Valentine’s Day celebrations, then a giant birthday celebration for one of my uncles, and then a few other health- and book-related events that will be discussed below. Beyond all that, I think I spent half of the month heading out for one doctor’s appointment or another (the five of us had a total of 21 doctors appointments this month!!), and the other half running errands. By the last half of the month, I couldn’t even fit in time for my daily walks!

Construction
We discovered mold behind one set of kitchen cabinets back in November, and have been saving up to replace them (saving up more in time than money – we have been BUSY!). With Jason’s dad coming in from out of town, we thought it would be a good time to work on them, since he and Jason often did this kind of project. Ambrose is also interested in this kind of thing, so Jason took a few days off work, and the three of them worked on ripping out the old cabinets, killing off the mold, and putting in new stuff. It’s not entirely done yet. We have a few little touches (like handles for the drawers), and in all the construction, we discovered that our soffit cabinets were held up with finishing nails, with no studs to attach them. So we had to pull those down, too, and are still trying to figure out what to do with the damage left to the ceiling and wall. Not to mention the loss of a lot of cabinet space. Sigh.

Health
I already talked about all the health stuff I’m going through, but you know how I mentioned those bajillion doctor appointments above? Many of them were Laurence’s. The poor boy inherited from his mother the tendency to get badly ingrown toenails. He already had surgery on them once, back in the fall, but it was through Urgent Care and they didn’t do a good job. We had to shuffle through several podiatrists (really, if you don’t treat children, you shouldn’t make appointments for them and then call an hour beforehand to cancel…), and then we had to make three different attempts at surgery before it actually happened. Laurence is still recovering, but he’s doing much better than in the beginning, and thankfully had no poor reaction to surgery/anesthesia!

Books
I didn’t read much this month – or rather, I read a lot, just a lot of the same book! My book-world wasn’t suffering much from this, though. Book Blogger Appreciation Week and my eight-year-blogoversary kept my blog busy, and I had a couple big book events outside the blog as well. I hosted a book club to discuss Howl’s Moving Castle, which was awesome, and I hope the group continues to grow and flourish. I needed a book club again! The second was an event called Library Palooza, where I got to meet Leigh Bardugo and Brandon Sanderson!! More on this in a forthcoming post of its own.

So it’s no wonder that a big chunk of my brain just wanted to read/listen to the same books over and over and over again, often while crocheting! Those were sometimes the down-moments I got! I’m looking forward to this month being over, to my birthday on Tuesday, to having a fresh (and hopefully less stressful) start to a new-to-me year!