Last year, for my birthday, I bought myself a subscription to Silk & Sonder planners, which are also self care journals of sorts. I loved it, and felt pressured by it, and felt much of the effort and information going into the planner was time and writing that should be invested in my journal.
So, at $20 per month, I decided the expense wasn’t as great as the reward and with my cancellation I encouraged the company to design a yearly binder and send pages for that binder to make the product sturdier and more useful for long-term planning.
For the start of 2022, I ordered myself and the teenager planners. She preferred mine, ended up with them both, and in the end decided she wanted an iPad. So, I gave her my iPad Pro.
This time, as I decided I really could benefit from a paper planner— something about old fashioned paper makes it easier for me not to overextend myself. Dots and colors on my iPhone or Google calendar just don’t have the same weight.
I ordered a prepaid three month subscription— reducing the cost to about $16 per month. Still ridiculously high for a paperback planner.
I started this entry when I filmed the unboxing video, but am continuing it on August 1. The first official day of my new monthly planner.
I have worked for the Stitch Fix Bizzy Hizzy for 19 months. This November will mark my two-year anniversary. I have done some shopping in the employee store, but I have never signed up for the service.
I first learned about Stitch Fix when they were brand new and I had renewed my subscription to Vogue magazine. You see, part of the reason my fiction takes place in the high fashion world is because I fell in love with the ideas of fashion as a teenager.
If I had more resources and hadn’t grown up in a family struggling to look middle class, I 100% would have been a mall-obsessed fashionista with haute couture aspirations. But my frugal nature and my minimalist desires mean I prefer thrift stores to fancy designers and weeding out clothes to buying them.
It’s one of the core dichotomies of my personality— perhaps that Taurus cusp Gemini natal sign— I want the opulence and beauty but am not willing to pay money for the experience. It feels like a waste.
Right now, I’m dressed in a Target basic white tank top, hand-me-down denim shorts, Dollar Tree socks and a brand new pair of Vans. That sums me up.
So I gave my 40% employee discount to my friend Joan, but if you assign your discount to someone else, you can’t change it for six months. And you can’t have more than one person using it at a time.
And I have had a great time watching Joan unbox her seasonal fixes. I am very glad she was the first one to take advantage of my discount.
Now that Stitch Fix has expanded their “Direct Buy” into the whole Freestyle experience (where I typically spend my Sundays packing orders and shipping them out to clients), it has become possible to order the items you want any time you want.
I asked Joan to use the brand navigation menu to order five or six specific pairs of shoes— one of them for the teenager. In the time it took for me to compile and send the list, one pair of shoes sold out in my size.
But Joan did manage to find three pairs of shoes for me—pink Toms, green Vans and a laceless DV by Dolce Vita sneaker— and one pair of old skool Vans high tops with a zipper for the teenager.
We ordered them Friday afternoon. On Saturday I saw Joan and I gave her money. On Sunday, I went to work wondering if I might see my shoes process out or if they had been shipped by the Saturday crew. The person at the table in front of me got a cart of shoes.
I wondered if she might have mine in there.
While I was considering this fantasy of sneaking my own shoes out of the building, I got a text from Joan. “Your shoes have shipped.”
Now I don’t know if clients are alerted when we hit the “complete” button and the mailing label prints out or when the post office gets their hands on them.
They arrived at Joan’s house on Tuesday, which we didn’t think to change the shipping. Despite having worked a ten-hour shift, the teenager and I headed to Joan’s.
Joan had never seen the large Stitch Fix bag and I was more than a little impressed that whoever packed them got them in there. And the postal carrier got it into Joan’s mailbox.
We placed the shoes in the back of the teenager’s new car and she dove right in. Neither of us knew her sneakers had zippers and she didn’t recall the color so those were fun surprises.
I didn’t have the strength to try on all my shoes— it was my bedtime by this point and we weren’t even home! I did however put on my DV by Dolce Vita laceless sneakers and wear them for the tour around Joan’s quaint home.
When we got home I piled my shoes on the table and my cat Fog made himself a bed on the Stitch Fix shoe duster bags.
Then yesterday I wore the laceless sneakers to work because my Vans needed the laces laced through and I just didn’t even want to untie and retie the Tom’s. But maybe I should have as today when I tried the Toms on my left foot was so tight I couldn’t wiggle my toes and my right foot couldn’t even get into the shoe.
To see me try these shoes on, click here for the YouTube video.
Shame as they were pretty. And had some nice cushy stuff in them.
But sadly I threw away the return label. And the garbage was at the curb. So, yes, I went through my own garbage. Digging through cat refuse to open the discarded Stitch Fix bag and grab the label.
But then I realized that I don’t have an envelope.
At this point, I think I’m going to slap it on the shoe duster bag and hand it to my former supervisor on Sunday morning. When we moved to day shift, she went to women’s returns.
I’d love to exchange them— but I don’t know if I need an 8W, an 8.5 or an 8.5W.
I listen to a lot of podcasts at work and one of them is “Why are people watching this?” This weekly podcast takes the top rated show on Netflix for any given week and reviews it among a group of friends.
They recently looked at Season Four of Stranger Things. Now, I first “tried” Stranger Things and couldn’t get into it. But I decided to try again, based on some comments made in that episode.
They reference how well the show captures 1980s nostalgia and comments on the good casting and talent of the young actors.
I am now starting the current season— and I’m curious where it will go because Season Three ended at a perfect point. So I think it will be hard to maintain the arc.
The series plays out like a comic book, often poignant, then funny, then over-the-top. It’s part teen drama, part horror, part sci-fi and in all honesty, the sci-fi/conspiracy horror/monster storylines don’t impress me. And the plot line of a government agency raising children with superpowers still feels like a rip-off of DarkAngel. Personally, the early episodes of Dark Angel captivate me and I love Jessica Alba in her lead role in that series. Just don’t watch the final season, it’s some of the worst television I’ve ever seen.
But anyway, the characters on Stranger Things keep me coming back. They are so interesting. And the essence of the eighties oozes out the pores. Their season three depiction of The Mall scene captured every detail— even the old branding of all the main icons of that era: Burger King, Orange Julius, the Gap.
It’s like the Buffy The Vampire Slayer of sci-fi/dark fantasy.
So I’m curious to see if Season Four will hold up.
Today is the teenager’s 18th birthday — she has a lot of dog walking clients so we stopped at her favorite gas station, the Penn Jersey mini mart, and I grabbed candy and sodas.
I meant to grab two “2 for $1.50” candies and “2 for $3.50” 20 ounce Coke products.
Instead, I grabbed one “2 for $1.50” candy and one “2 for $2” candy.
They didn’t have plain old Coke Zero— or perhaps I’m not used to looking for the new packaging— so I got “space tasting” Coke Zero Starlight and a Diet Coke for the birthday girl.
As for candy, I bought melon rings and colorful juju fish.
The teenager declared the red juju fish the best and the yellow, “nasty.”
Meanwhile, if I had to make what space tastes like according to Coke Zero, I would say cotton candy melted into their cola formula.
The teenager and I traded sodas.
Yesterday, my mother-in-law brought down a birthday cake for the teenager, a baked Alaska decorated like an igloo. The dessert featured layers of cake and ice cream sandwiching a strawberry filling like a big old Kaiser roll, but the Kaiser roll was meringue caramelized in the oven.
Speaking of rolls, I stopped at the little convenience store in my neighborhood— the one with the Latin vibe— and picked out these sweet rolls for a toasted treat. This morning I sliced one very thin and slathered it with key lime curd.
And for her birthday dinner, the teenager wanted to invite her father to Jasmine Sushi and Thai, where they always do such a magnificent job on presentation. My estranged husband had never had sushi in a restaurant before, so this was very fun.
We got the love boat for 2, which includes the Dragon and California rolls, the Hot Girl Roll, the Butterfly Roll, the eel and cucumber roll and the dynamite roll. These featured crab, scallops, salmon and tuna. Some spicy, some fruity, some crunchy.
We spent $175 for dinner once we got beverages and dessert and left a nice tip, but the teenager is our only baby and she’s 18 now.
I requested to join him on the podcast, thinking it would be a great way to promote my business and share my experiences. I wanted Andrew to know how much his honesty means to me and how much I leaned on his support– even though he didn’t know me– in my journey to accept my identity as a person with a disability, in this case spastic diplegic cerebral palsy.
I had to reschedule once due to a doctor’s appointment with my current hand injury, and he had to reschedule once due to his IBS flares. He even started a podcast to talk about various GI issues and he called it, “This Shit is Real.” And I admire him for that openness. A recent and very occasional complication with my CP has been incontinence. Sometimes I can’t feel when I have to pee until it’s the very last second. And that is scary.
We finally had our chat today, and we barely scratched the surface of what both of us could say, and I know by the end I was talking too fast. Nala even behaved, but then my parakeet Yo-yo starting singing.
I hope he can salvage the audio.
I was so excited to have that chat with him as I have listened to the podcast for more than a year now. And he asked if he could contact me again so we can talk about book publishing.
Andrew can contact me anytime! The world needs more people that force discussions that we all need to have. We need to release ourselves from sensations of shame, anxiety and insecurity and accept each other and the perspectives we bring to the table.
I had a notebook because I wanted to write down the brilliant insights I knew we would have together and we had a great, great talk. But I babbled. And now I don’t have much to share with you.
So I guess we’ll have to wait for Andrew to release the episode.
For those of you who know me or follow me regularly, I performed at 89% today after a month of short-term disability leave.
Short answer to how my day was: good. I felt pretty good and my aches and pains at the end of the day feel pretty normal.
Now, for those who want more detail, let’s start at the beginning.
On April 15, I ruptured a tendon in my left ring finger taking my socks off. The nickname for the injury is “mallet finger” because your finger looks like a mallet or “baseball finger” because if you catch a baseball wrong you can sustain this injury.
I worked with my hand like that for a week at the Bizzy Hizzy folding clothes for Stitch Fix’s clients, performing at a solid 90%. But… I realized I rely on my left side for balance and stability and using my right side to do everything exacerbated problems I was already having with my right hip and spine as complications of my lifelong battle with cerebral palsy. That has been another journey of mine— learning about my body and how I can work with it to age well.
I often wonder what I could accomplish if my body could do what other bodies do.
So I asked my family doctor if I could take a short-term disability leave from work and focus on building core strength and stretching my hips. Because with this silly finger cast, on top of all my other issues, I was falling twice a week.
Today I returned to work— one ten-hour shift in my home department (QC) before the holiday weekend. I work Sunday. We have a paid holiday Monday. And I have a doctor appointment Tuesday afternoon with the neurological physiatrist.
Returning to work today gave me a way to ease back into it, and allows me to gather data on how my body performs. I can give that info to the physiatrist. If I hurt again by Tuesday, it’s a sign that either:
I am moving wrong, or
I shouldn’t be doing this kind of work with my body.
I arrived at work for my 6:30 a.m. shift and friends greeted me that I haven’t seen. At first I went to the wrong table, but caught my mistake, and corrected myself.
I had a right table, good for my hand injury, and one at a good height.
But then they shut the line down and I moved to a left table that was a tad high for me.
For the first 60-90 minutes, I hit all my numbers.
Eventually, I got a text from Mr. Accordion. I hope he doesn’t mind but I’m sharing his photos because:
Mr. Accordion’s ingredients Mr. Accordion at workMr. Accordion’s Halupkis ready to go in the oven
A couple times today, I had to answer phone calls regarding the toilet explosion that happened in my house yesterday. The insurance adjuster will be here Tuesday and meet with the teenager. I am working on getting water remediation people in to make sure everything is dry.
At the end of the day, I have a weird uncomfortable feeling in my left wrist and the kind of typical aches and pains that come from being older than 40 and working in a warehouse ten hours a day.
I attribute some of my success today to my personal trainer Andrew at Apex. We did an exercise yesterday that was something he called a variation of a good morning. This had me holding a weight across the back of my shoulders and “hinging” at the waist while using my hips for most of the motion.
I tried to replicate those techniques when I bent down to get items out of the bottom of my carts.
Then, when I came home, the teenager had dinner in the oven. I received a lovely message from a former editor at The Morning Call’s short-lived weekly editions, Chronicle Newspapers.
He said I was a truly good person (for all my work fostering cats) and that he missed seeing me every day.
I thanked him and said he made my day.
He replied that there were many times when I had made his and my boss’s day.
That was my favorite job ever, and one I was very good at.
Also, I tried the blueberry muffin flavor of ready-to-drink Supercoffee. My initial reaction was that it was gross. Will give a more thorough review later.
The teenager got me a birthday present and it arrived today.
I didn’t expect it to arrive today so I asked her to pick up two items I haven’t tried from Dunkin: the pesto grilled cheese and stuffed bagel bites with chive and onion. Response here.
I found it very cool that product registration for this Cuisineart compact toaster oven air fryer from Target could be completed via text & mobile internet.
My first recipe will be air fried apples & dates.
The dates cooked way faster than the apples so the dog ended up with some charred fruit jerky but the apples were tasty. I would lower the temp for a more even and chewier texture but that could have been due to my cut of the apple wedges.
The machine itself was very quiet while running. It threw a lot of heat— I would even claim it threw off more heat than my traditional oven. It’s size and the recipes that came with it seem the perfect volume for the teenager and I.
Also: Foster Mars wanted you to know it’s going to be a hot one today.
I have a lot of little things to say that problem don’t belong together but today is the Lehigh Valley Book Festivalat Bethlehem Area Public Library and I’m excited, a tad nervous and a bit super-focused and scatter-brained at the same time.
Parisian Phoenix Publishinghas participated in events before but we have scaled up with our efforts and this event today.
So this post will cover:
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Health and Fitness
Pie
Cats
I think that’s about right.
So the teenager and I finally came to the current end of the Marvel Comics Universe movies with Spider-Man: No Way Home. Watchingthem sequentially, and for me, many for the first time, actually made a lot more sense than when I saw some of them the first time.
I got a strange déjà vu that I had seen some of these villains before, but at the same time I was confused because the memory was vague and distant.
So let’s just say, trying not to spoil it for others like me that are woefully behind in their pip culture, that this film incorporates some older films that will be familiar to Generation X.
The primary theme of this movie, in my opinion, is time travel. The actual plot is a tad weak and melodramatic but the homage made to the previous generation of Marvel movies, and the humor employed in this movie, make it worth it.
My favorite Spider-Man is Toby Maguire. I got to see him again. And that made my heart happy. (Toby is also the Spider-Man adored and referenced by supermodel Adelaide Pitney in my chick lit/horror fiction novel, Manipulations, the first in the Fashion and Fiends series.
I had a very good visit with my chiropractor Nicole Jensen of Back in Line. She’s impressed with my progress and got things to pop and move (my right ankle that I broke more than five years ago) that haven’t popped and moved in a long time.
My Later, Andrew at Apex Training worked out every muscle he didn’t the day before (okay that’s an exaggeration) and the teenager set a new personal record in deadlifting: 225 lbs.
Finally, I get to the part I’ve been waiting for: PIE! If only I weren’t trying to be so health conscious… Because I have been visiting the amazing pie ladies Anne and Lisa at Pie+Tart for three(?) years now and their pies (and flat white coffees) have nurtured my soul through some difficult times— and a very very toxically difficult boss.
I receive their weekly email and saw their “freezer section” of leftover discounted pies included a steak and Guinness pie and a matcha custard pie. A meal inspired by two of my favorite drinks.
I was so beyond excited to eat these pies I was vibrating at “the pie hole” which is what they call their window/doorway. It has allowed them to stay in business safely during Covid because how would we survive sans pie.
I can improvise plenty of solutions for lack of toilet paper but I can’t make pie like this— not even with my Pennsylvania Dutch family connections.
I couldn’t even wait for the matcha custard to thaw. I sawed at it with a knife, broke it in pieces with my hands and microwaved a slice for 30 seconds. It was delectable.
And the steak and Guinness pie? So rich and full of meaty goodness I didn’t even have a chance to take a photo.
Oh how I love my pie friends.
And finally the updates regarding some of the cats we are fostering through Feline Urban Rescue and Rehab, Mars has taught Khloe to play and Minerva is becoming much more social. As is Louise.
Angel Ackerman 