Happy National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day! Would you care for one? They’re still warm!

Most people would be surprised by how many colors of nail polish I own. Rudi would be surprised that neither do the bottles multiply when we close the bathroom cabinet door nor do they lie in wait for when he next opens it.

Shekerbura from Sharbat, the Azerbaijani bakery that opened the next neighborhood over from ours last month. We also sampled two types of savory pastries and two types of cake.

I mean, it’s as good a reason as any. Also, we were impressed with the percentage of people we saw wearing masks while we were out.

I won’t get out to the sunflower fields in Maryland this year, so this was a nice yard to come upon.

Be a beautiful cupcake.

How was your weekend?

August 1st has pretty much arrived, and now I will finally get to find out if I really forgot to do something!

Other things I’m going to work on this weekend are:

• Going to the farmers market. Did you know it’s National Farmers Market week? Please support your local agriculture. As we’ve seen earlier this year, local food sources are crucial to keeping people fed.
• Video chatting with friends. A bunch of us who live or used to live in D.C. have a monthly video chat on Saturday evening.
• Making ice cream. The leading contenders are peach, root beer, and peppermint stick.
• Baking bread. Also, I need to be brave and see if the old fridge killed my sourdough. Rudi kept it in a cooler with ice, but not everything we put in there made it through. I know I can make a new starter if I’ve killed it, but still…
• Finishing my sock. You saw how close I am to being done. If I’d just put my phone down while watching tv, I’d be done already.
• Watch The Goldfinch, which is due back to the library.
• Plant the last group of seed potatoes I found when we reorganized the kitchen. I keep forgetting to take them to the garden.
• Check out a new Azerbaijani bakery that opened recently.
• Listen to some baseball, because who knows how much longer they’re going to let that experiment go on.
• Reorganize our dvd collection. We pulled most of them out earlier in the pandemic, and it’s time to get them back where they belong.

How about you? What’s on your weekend to-do list?

Do you ever have the feeling you’re forgetting to do something really important? I’ve had that sensation for a week now and I just can’t get past the idea that suddenly August is going to arrive and I’ll be furious with myself…

A friend’s anniversary is this week and another’s birthday. Taxes were due earlier in the month, and I’ve paid all my bills. (doublechecks notes — yup, paid them all…) Summer is a third’ish over, but what is time even?

Is there a work deadline? I mean, there’s always a work deadline, usually behind me. We have several events next month — a virtual work retreat, a virtual summit, a virtual conference — but right now none of those have any deadlines that require work from me…

August 1st was the random due date all the library books were assigned back in March. Could it be as simple as that?

I just don’t know. But at this point, I kind of just want August 1st to arrive so I know what I forgot.

How is it the last weekend of July already? Wasn’t it just March?

This workweek was so much better than last week in terms of stress and work-life balance, but I still seem to be fighting off exhaustion. So I’m going to try to take this weekend easy again:

• Buy cherries. Sours are already gone and I hear this is the last weekend for sweets.
• Find quarters. Did you know we’re having a nationwide coin shortage? So many businesses had already switched to a cash-free model during the pandemic and now I’m having a really hard time finding places where I can get quarters for laundry. A friend reminded me the Metro machines used to be a reliable source, so I’m going to give that a shot. I welcome any other ideas you may have, commenters.
• Do some online shopping. Maybe check out. Maybe just browser window shop.
• Finish my Smock Madness socks.
• Listen to baseball.
• Read.
• Make more ice cream. Maybe chocolate chip this time.
• Plant some more potatoes and beans. (I found another bag with sprouting potatoes in it when we cleaned the kitchen.)
• Send some mail.
• Back up my phone. (I don’t think I’ve done that this year.)
• Catch up on sleep.

What are you hoping your weekend will include?

I finished an audiobook last night, which means a new one was started while I was doing the dishes tonight. I’ve ended up with too many out at once, all of which expire in less than a week. I decided I’d start several of them to get a sense of which ones I like enough to want to keep going with, rather than either letting them expire untried or just requesting them again in the hopes of more opportune timing.

Tonight’s audiobook sample came from Field Notes on Love by Jennifer E. Smith, who specializes in y.a. romances told from both perspectives.

Also checked out to me in audio format are The Bride Test by Helen Hoang (which had reached a cringey moment the last time I had it out), Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (which Rudi and I are listening to intermittently after having enjoyed the small screen adaptation), Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert (a British romance I was enjoying that expired before I could listen to the last several chapters), How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi (which I should probably just give up on in audio format in favor of print, since that tends to be my preferred way of processing non-memoir nonfiction), and The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi (which will be what I sample during tomorrow night’s chores).

What are you listening to these days?