It’s been a month. With a capital M. Man oh man am I glad to have August behind me!

Reading and Watching
August was a slumpy kind of book month, with me sending back to the library several books that I know I want to read. But in the end, I still finished six (thanks RIP!), and I actually enjoyed half of them. Half really is low for me. I tend to DNF books that aren’t really working for me. Not sure why I didn’t on several occasions. Favorite of the month is probably All Our Hidden Gifts.

Goals
Time to make new ones, I think. I have a personal challenge for myself designed for the next 100 days. Mostly as a way to elevate my mental health a bit as I go into the part of the year I love the most. I’ll talk about that in its own post at some point in the future.

Health
A lot of this month has been consumed by depression and lethargy. I haven’t done as well with keeping coffee out of my diet, which I will rectify going forward. I also had another Urgent Care and ER visit earlier in the month with a suspected blood clot in my leg. Thankfully, that ended up being nothing (though the area that was swollen, red, hard, and painful is still painful and hard to the touch – there’s clearly damage there, though it’s likely fascia damage). I’ve also been doing regular physical therapy for my feet and hips, which so far isn’t really helping (sigh), plus I had a “fun” follow-up visit with my GI doc, which I’ll dedicate to its own post because GRRRRRR.

(at least my feet always look fun after therapy!)

House
No actual construction/work this month (we’re trying NOT to do any of this right now!), but I did rearrange my bedroom as a way to help get my headspace into a different place, and I enjoy the new arrangement.

Favorite photos
Same caveats as usual – all photos taken by me, not necessarily great photography, just the photos I ended up liking the most. Full photos available in a dedicated story on my Instagram.

Top, left to right: spider after molting (I got her dropping the shell off her web on video, too!); Angus being held in my arms like a baby (his favorite position); checkered skipper butterfly. Bottom, left to right: the neighbors’ new birdhouse; pipevine swallowtail resting in our wildflower garden

Left to right: Ghost staring out the window (his gorgeous amber eyes!!); an orange in the rain – a fluke shot that I ended up loving because it felt so nostalgic and as-the-summer-dies-away; cicada shell in the front garden (I had to laugh because it was posed just like this, as if expecting a photo!)

Highlights of August
Here are the good and fun bits for my month:

• birthday dinner out for our hiking group founder, Mari
• discovering that a story created by the Weekly World News in the 80s is now being discussed online as “fact” and “government cover-up” ha!
• Angus wanting to be held like a baby on his back
• seeing tons of deer right behind my yard
• kitten zoomies throughout the whole house after we had enough interaction between the two sets of cats that they could be trusted around each other
• passing along the Gordo tradition to my little sister as she leaves for college (long story, slightly touched on in this old post)
• my hiking group got featured in the local “around and about SA” newspaper
• the “careful, I scream” paper towel dispenser video
• the kittens all trying to sleep in my lap at one time
• Jason brought me a little “sound machine” toy and every sound is a different Halloween/spooky sound
• dying my hair purple!
• rearranging my space
• my friend Kristina liked one of my butterfly photos so much that she printed it out and used it as a template to paint!
• getting my Journey Before Destination bumper sticker on my car
• new green anoles in the garden, including a little female on the deck with a split tail just like Neko had!
• the absolute cutest blep ever –>
• One of my old high school friends visited the old pool we swam at, and our old record in the 800-yr freestyle relay from 1995 still hasn’t been surpassed. Our names are still on the wall. Which is nuts, because our time was TERRIBLE, ha! But our school never had a big swim team, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find that there hasn’t been four swimmers able to compete for that particular relay in the last 25 years.

Coming up in September
I’m begging Texas for a cold front sometime soon. This heat and humidity is killer. Last Sunday, I was so excited to look at the weather and see that it was only 71 degrees out. Then I saw that it was also 97% humidity. It felt like 80+ degrees already. Sigh. So…yes. Cold fronts, please, and spooky books that go better than 2/3rds of what I’ve started for RIP, and hopefully better news on the school/covid front, and less depression, and more energy, and a solid beginning to my new personal challenge. Fingers crossed!