May 28: Month in review

Even though there are three days left in the month, I feel prepared to review it. I do.

Special days I celebrated this month and how:

• The end of National Screen-Free Week. Ugh. I celebrated by watching THE HELL out of Hulu.
• Teacher Appreciation Week at school. This is one of my favorite PTO recognition projects, and this year’s committee (Wendy, Dina, Jenn K) did a fabulous job spoiling our teachers rotten. They had a massage therapist come in for a day, lots of great gifts, and food food food. We have such huge classes this year that our teachers have definitely earned all the delights we can possibly think to give them—and a lot more often than once each school year, if you ask me.
• The end of our reading incentive program, in which we gave books to kids who met their reading goal. I love putting books in kids’ hands! We also put pizza, candy, and popcorn in kids’ hands. That’s fun too.
• Mother’s Day. We spent the weekend at my mom’s this year, and had a lovely, relaxing visit.

Gifts I gave and/or received this month:

• I made fun little gifts for the kids’ teachers and moms who help with PTO. The idea came from Pinterest, of course. 

Yes, those are pull-tab cans with presents inside.
How I made them is a secret.
(Not really.)

• The kids gave me three big hanging flower baskets for the front porch. I love that this has become my traditional Mother’s Day gift. So cheery, so colorful! Also, dead-heading petunias is one of my favorite gardening tasks—the “refreshing the plant” part, not the “sticky fingers OMG so sticky seriously this is gross” part.

Books I read this month:

• Oh, just a book that was AWESOME and, y’know, has MY NAME IN IT! (You Take it From Here, by Pamela Ribon. I recommend.)
• The Abstinence Teacher, by Tom Perrotta. Meh.
• Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri. I’m not usually a fan of short stories, but these are beautifully written.

Movies and TV shows worth mentioning:

• I finally got caught up on all the TV I missed during Screen-Free Week. It took FORever.
• Smash finale: seriously, we have to wait until NEXT mid-season for this show to start up again? DAMMIT.
• Modern Family: still one of the funniest shows on TV.

New recipes or restaurants I tried:

After passing Buffalo Wild Wings on the way to IKEA every couple months for [how long has IKEA been open?], we finally went there. As sworn carnivores, this was a place that left us all happy. Stuffed, too. It’s not the best restaurant ever, by far, but we’ll probably go back again.

Special or unusual purchases I made:

• New phone cases. Mine is fun. Vic’s is yaaaawn.
• Miche shells and stuff.
• Other top secret things (at least until Mother Mary’s birthday in two weeks).

This month’s disappointments:

• Sunshine moved far, far away.
• I miss my Sunshine girl.
• If I think about it too much, I cry a LOT.

My accomplishments:

• This weekend I sorted through the linen closet and got rid of two HUGE bags of blankets and towels—approximately half of the linen closet’s clutter. I did 14 loads of laundry, and my most proud accomplishment is that I folded and put it all away! I went through dresser drawers, shoe boxes, hanging clothes—and Victor did too, so we had quite the trunk-ful for Goodwill. I washed cupboards and doors. I vacuumed everywhere and repeatedly. We plant-shopped. It feels satisfying to have gotten a lot done; lest you think this is the new Jen, I assure you that I spent pa-lenty of time not doing anything productive—I mean, it’s a holiday weekend, isn’t it?
  
• My Miche Bag Relay for Life fundraiser on Thursday night earned almost $400 for our team. Woo-hoo! Of course, this wasn’t my own accomplishment… thank you to everyone who shopped with me!
• Along with a few other editors, we got the school yearbook done. Anyone who’s ever worked on a yearbook before knows how great it feels to finally have the year-long project in print-ready format.
• I might never stop saying that living through Screen-Free Week was a pretty darn big accomplishment. I think I have PTSD from it.

Anything else noteworthy:

• We spent a gorgeous day at the Oregon Coast. The good feelings just last and last. Yes, the Oregon Coast is that beautiful.
• Katie got her ears pierced again.
• Last week we saw Million Dollar Quartet, one of our Broadway in Portland shows. All four of us enjoyed it way more than we expected to. What a fun evening!
• For the most part, PTO is done for the year. For me, this is kind of a big deal. For you, it means a lot less PTO-talk on my blog, and that is also kind of a big deal.

Smell ya later, doods.