Aug. 31: Month in review

Here, in a nutshell, is my summary of August 2013.

Special days I celebrated this month and how:

• My in-laws’ fiftieth anniversary was in June but the family was all here to celebrate it this month. We had a big photo shoot, made gifts at the ceramics studio, and went out for dinner. I feel fortunate to have such lovely people in my life.
• Jack and Katie registered for middle school. There wasn’t a lot of celebrating, exactly, but we’re all happy about it, and for very, very different reasons.
• Dina’s husband gathered a few of her friends and took us out for her birthday. We went bar-hopping and generally made a lot of noise. We do excel at making the noise.

Movies and TV shows worth mentioning:

• Ever since we ditched the VCR many moons ago, we haven’t owned a watchable copy of The Princess Bride. Now we’ve got it on Blu-Ray. It was fun to introduce Katie to it—she liked; yay!—but Jack is still resisting a forced viewing. If we have to chain him to a chair, we will. OUR BOY WILL LOVE THAT MOVIE.
• We’ve been watching the James Bond movies, in order, on Amazon Instant Video. It’s amusing to see how they started off with Bond as a classic British spy and then veered way away from that into a campy, near-ridiculous, hardy-har-har series. Ugh. But for every stupid fake sound effect, there’s at least one memorable, ever-so-watchable moment—psychotic villains and shark-ful fight scenes, Q’s “futuristic” gadgets, and one absurdly-named Bond girl after another after another.
• Also on Amazon, I watched the miniseries Titanic: Blood & Steel. It focuses on the construction of the Titanic and the people who built it—from working class to financiers. Of course, there’s some romance and intrigue amid the strikes and religious prejudices. I thought it was a well-done series.
• Orange is the New Black sure is a fascinating show. I have no idea how close it is to reality, but fake or not, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to go to prison. I’ll be honest; I was pretty sure of that before I watched OITNB too.

This month’s disappointments:

• At least two friends lost someone close to them. So sad.
• Our sweet wheaten terrier niece, Finn (Sonya’s family’s dog) passed away. We were glad to see and cuddle her one last time.
• My 2½-year follow-up to cancer treatment showed that some lymph nodes have grown quite a bit since my last CT, and now I have to go through more testing. Boo.

My accomplishments:

• We painted the master bathroom, got new towels and hardware, completely re-organized storage, and changed up the décor. Freshening up a room that’s become boring is one of my favorite things. I still have some work to do, but the majority of the bathroom is done and I LOVE the way it looks.
• We re-did the cushions on one of our sofas and it’s like a brand new piece of furniture! The cushions were saggy and squashed and had completely lost their shape. Check out these before (gross) and after (new extry-firm support!) shots:

 

• I finally, finally, got all the PTO stuff turned over to Wendy, the new president. It kinda bummed me out more than I thought it would. However, I spent most of my free time in August doing non-PTO things and I haven’t had an August like that for at least five years. Awesome! It looks like I might actually enjoy a PTO-less life.

Anything else noteworthy:

• Taking Jack to and from his many football practice sessions will consume slightly less of my time starting in September, when his team goes to just three practices a week. Now, though, we’ll actually have GAMES to go to every Saturday! So excited!
• (I’m not really very excited.)
• OMG, I’m going to be a great-aunt! Erin, my former step-niece—who will always be my niece because she’s fab, duh—and her husband will be having a baby in February. Nowadays I find the whole thing so exciting when it’s happening to someone else.
• Here are some sillies because I think you need ‘em:

That’s it for August 2013, doods.