2026 Goals - October Update

October!  Pumpkin everything!  Apple everything!  Hot Apple Cider!  Hay Rides!

What are you looking forward to this summer?

1) Lose 25 pounds.  Gain 10% muscle mass.

I changed this goal over the summer.  I am concentrating more on gaining muscle and worrying less about the stress of losing weight.  For right now, that goal is gaining 7 pounds of muscle by the end of the year.  

As of this writing, I have gained 2 pounds of muscle.  That 2 pounds took way longer to earn than I thought it would.  I'd like to think I will gain 5 more pounds of muscle by the end of the year, but at this point, any amount of increased muscle mass is a win!

2) Visit 1 new to me state.

Hawaii

We thought about visiting a new to us state this fall, but we are going to take a staycation.  Everything is so expensive.  Once we worked out the cost of hotels, airfare, car rental, etc, it was difficult to justify the expense for just 5 days.

3)  3 repairs/improvements to the house.

Project #1: Add surge protectors to the heat pumps and the house.  It's not a sexy fix, but it will definitely keep the heat pumps around for a longer period of time!  We've noticed an increase in the number of power surges we've had lately. The newer HVAC systems are very sensitive to power surges and they can damage the equipment. Honestly, who wants to spend to replace an HVAC system?  They are not cheap. I want them to last as long as possible.

Project #2: We are getting the basement waterproofed.  We've had leaks in the basement for a while now.  We currently have standing water in one corner. The contractor who remodeled the main floor was supposed to fix that, but ended up not doing it.  So now, another not so sexy fix.  But, it's important to the overall health of the house! 

Project #3: New storm doors for the front and basement doors.  Finally! An aesthetic repair!

4) 40 Bags in 40 Days Challenge

It's been a while since I've done this.  You get 40 bags or boxes of stuff out of your house over the 40 days of Lent.  I did NOT get 40 boxes out over the course of Lent.  I got rid of 6 boxes.

I'm beginning to realize that I did this a little backwards.  My goal is to empty out the storage unit - and I'm making excellent progress on this particular project.  Once I get everything out of the storage unit and really begin purging things, then I will get the 40 boxes (and then some) out of the house!

Boxes out of the house during March: 6

Boxes out of the house during April: 4

Boxes out of the house during May: 2

Boxes out of the house during June: 6

Boxes out of the house during July and August: 21

Boxes out of the house during September: 34

Total to date: 55

5) Organize old correspondence/letters

I found a treasure trove of old letters and notes from high school.  I have them in a box to sort through next month.  The bigger question is - what gets kept and what gets thrown out?  Do I really want to save any evidence of high school me?  Most likely, NO.

On the other hand... I was given a box of old papers from a historical organization that I volunteer with to organize.  I was in my happy place, organizing that mess!  Many of the documents were of historical value, and there were a lot of photographs.  The photographs have been placed into acid free albums and labeled to the best of my ability.  The documents were sorted and organized into binders in acid free pages.  The next step - for someone else - is to digitize those documents so that back up copies exist somewhere.

Update on this: the letters are somewhat sorted.  I thought I would put them in binders and shove them away somewhere.  Some of them have been organized and put into binders.  This is a much bigger task than I originally anticipated.  I'm not certain I'm going to get this finished this year.  This might be a 2027 project.

6) Big backyard garden project.

I want to put in some sort of shelter for the local pollinators.  I've been searching through the garden catalogs for just the right thing.  I saw something when we were in England a couple of years ago that really tickled my fancy!  I have thoughts.  I just need to make some things happen!

I found the first part of my thoughts on this while in Old Ellicott City last month.  Once the weather cools down a little bit, we're going to look at finding a way to install this in the backyard.

7) Finish the cross stitch project I've been working on for 3+ years.

This is finished! Well over 3 years after I started, the project is finally finished!  I need to block this out and get it professionally framed later this year.  

From the end of February.

End of March

Finished!

8) Transfer Dad's slides to digital.

See my post here about transferring the slides!

9) Put those images into an album.

See my post here about the album.

10) Fill my America 250 Passport with lots of stamps!

No stamps this month. I've got a plan to get some more stamps next month!

11) Clear out the storage unit.

Done and done.  4 years after we started clearing out the house to get "a little" work done, we moved most of our possessions out to a storage unit.  And now, almost 2 years after the work was finished and we moved back into our house, we finally got all of the detritus out of the storage unit. Much of what was left went directly to the dump.  Rodents had been all over what was left, and there was mouse excrement everywhere.  It's all gone now. 

Being perfectly honest - there is still some stuff laying around on the carport.  Okay, a lot of stuff.  And no porch pirates have bothered to relieve us of our miscellaneous junk.  

As of October, this pile is mostly gone.  I have a handful of stuff that I want to make go away by the end of the year. The middle child will be home this month, and I've got plans for him to help me get rid of the last of the things.

12)  Do one totally irresponsible and fun thing each month! 

I took one of my Fridays off and went down to have lunch with my oldest son.  We enjoyed tacos al fresco. After I left his house, I ventured over to a Spice Store, where I picked up some desperately needed spices.  I stopped in at a park on the way home and moseyed around the flower garden before heading home.

13) Go see Falling Water. (Frank Lloyd Wright) 

This is a Bucket List item. Time is ticking down on getting this done in 2026...

14) Visit 12 new to me bakeries.

I'm falling behind on this.  I need to put in a concerted effort to rectify this sad situation!

        1) Eli Mochi Donut

        2) The Reister's Daughter

        3) Leonard's Bakery (Honolulu)

        4) Tour les Jours

        5) Paris Baguette

        6) The Bake Shop - Williamsburg, VA

        7) Raleigh Tavern Bakery - Williamsburg, VA- not new to me - it's a lifelong favorite!

The Money Pit, Part the Next

 It's been about 2 years since the last major house issue, so you know it's gotta be time for the next thing.  I can see you now, sitting there and wondering "what broke down now?" It's not that something broke.  It's that something failed.

To catch you up - we bought this house from my in-laws.  The house itself is 57 years old. They owned it for the first 35 years. Cool, right?  Well it would be if they had ever once, in the 35 years they lived in that house engaged in any form of home maintenance whatsoever.  I assumed that they had.  I mean, I grew up with parents who were constantly upgrading and fixing issues around the house. They never let issues fester in a home that they owned.  I assumed that everyone else did the same.  But, you know what they say about assumptions.  The last 22 years have been filled with misadventures as we have triaged problems and then attempted to fix long standing issues that have mushroomed into more because they weren't dealt with when they first appeared.

The latest problem is water in the basement.  A lot of water in the basement.  It's coming up under the floor in the basement, around the seams in the wall, and under the basement door.  We don't have a sump pump.  My in-laws left us with the parts for a sump pump, in a box.  I remember unpacking that box.  The parts were from something that my FIL dismantled in the 60's.  It had clearly been used before.

So.... water in the basement.  It's been a problem over the past 20 years.  Some  years are better than others, but this has been a very wet year.  It is no longer something we can ignore.  So, we are going to have someone come in and waterproof the basement.  

Step one is moving everything in the basement at least 5 feet away from the walls. Over the past month, I have been moving everything away from the walls.  This has necessitated me going through boxes, sifting through stuff I haven't sifted through before, and getting rid of the stuff we no longer need.  

As of this weekend, step one is now completed.  The permit has been approved and we have scheduled step two.

I really, really hope that this is the last of the legacy problems with the house. 

Gods of Jade and Shadow

 Gods of Jade and Shadow, written by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.    

I didn't know what to expect when I pulled this book off the shelf.  The cover was so very intriguing. When I read the back cover, I was even more intrigued "A young woman and a Mayan death god embark on a life-changing journey in this one of a kind fairy tale inspired by Mexican Folklore."   I'm a die-hard fantasy lover, and this book checked all of my personal "This is going to be a great read" boxes, I checked it out.

I was not disappointed.  I enjoyed every minute of this book, and heaved a deep sigh at the ending.  While one adventure ended, the end left us with another adventure beginning.

My thoughts on the book:

The beginning of the book felt a little bit like a Cinderella story - beautiful main character - Casiopea - who has been taken in by her grandfather and is forced to do menial labor for the grandfather and her cousin, Martin. 

But the story took an unexpected turn when Casiopia opened the locked wooden box kept at the foot of her grandfather's bed. She found the bones of what turned out to be a Mayan death god who reassembled himself.  Cassiopea was then held in service to the death god, as he had to find the missing parts of himself that were scattered when he was dissassembled by his brother and placed into the wooden box.

I know, it's a wild twist, isn't it?

Set in Mexico in the 1920's, this story follows Casiopea on her adventure across Mexico to help reassemble the death god, Hun Kame.  Along the way, she meets ghosts, spirits, necromancers, and various other members of the underworld.

But what role does her cousin Martin have to play in this saga?  What is the allure of mortality? Given the choice between true love and despair, what will Casiopea choose?  

Author Website: https://silviamoreno-garcia.com/

The 6888th Postal Battalion

You may have heard of the 6888 Postal Batallion.  During WW2, this troop of all Black Women was sent to Europe and assigned the monumental task of sorting a backlog of mail that was intended for front line troops and for the folks back home. In that era, with no cell phone technology, and no internet, snail mail was the only way that people could determine the status of their loved ones.

The women who were sent to straighten out the mess worked around the clock, sorting mail.  They managed to clear out a backlog of 6 months of mail - 17 million individual pieces of mail - by working around the clock, 7 days a week. The job was completed in 3 months.  After cleaning up this backlog in Buckingham, England, they were sent on to Rouen and Paris, France where they cleared up even more backlogged mail.

When the war was over, the women quietly disappeared back into their lives.  While friendships remained, their work was largely forgotten by not only the people who sent them there, but also by the people who direcly beneffited from their work. Their own families did not know what they did in the war.

This past summer, I visited the 6888 Memorial at Leavenworth Army Base.  I wanted to pay my respects to these remarakable women who made such a difference in the lives of so many with basically no recognition until they were honored with Congressional Gold Medal in 2022. The actual medal presentation took place on April 29, 2025. (That's 80 years after the fact.)  

If you want to find out more about the 6888 Postal Battalion, I have included several links at the bottom of this post.

In the meantime, a handful of pictures from the 6888 Memorial:

The front of the Monument.
On the back is the list of every woman who served in the 6888.

A little closer up view of the words on the right.

And of the words on the left.

The actual Congressional Gold Medal.
I got to see it in person (and even hold it) when I met the daughter
of Indiana Hunt Martin (6888 Member) earlier this year.
What an absolute honor to have met her and heard the stories
that her mother had shared with her.

Resources:

Truman Library Institute: https://www.trumanlibraryinstitute.org/6888th-battalion/

The National Archives: https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/2022/02/08/no-mail-low-morale-the-6888th-central-postal-battalion/

The National Park Service: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/6888th.htm

The VA News: https://news.va.gov/102004/six-triple-eight-women-to-receive-congressional-gold-medal/

Arlington National Cemetery: https://education.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Search/Post/11048

Book: No Better Time, by Shelia Williams

Movie: The 6888, a Netflix Original.

The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King

Have you read this book yet? 

The Phoenix Pencil Company is a magical realism novel, written by Allison King. I don't know if I can adequately capture the absolute magic of this book, but I am going to try.  If you haven't read it yet, it is worth your time.  The themes of love, memories, and family ties existing across generations and time run throughout the book.  I found myself deeply attached to the characters and the story.  

The premise of the book is unique. I'm trying hard not to give away too much of the book, but I feel that the magical pencils are key to the story and what makes this tale so unique. In this world, magical pencils exist.  Pencils that can be reforged to bring back the memories they contain.  But - this is an important clause - not everyone can reforge the pencils.  Only those gifted with this power are able to reforge the memories. Not every pencil is capable of reforging memories, either.  Only those forged by the Phoenix Pencil Company.

There are several characters in the story.  Monica Tsai is a computer coder who is working on a program that connects strangers online.  These aren't just any strangers - they are related to each other.  Her grandmother, who currently lives in San Francisco, grew up in China and survived two wars before coming to the United States. Her grandmother, Yun, has been searching for her cousin Meng since she left China.

The computer program connects Monica with a young woman in China who is connected with her long lost Aunt.  The young woman sends Monica a Phoenix Pencil, which leads Monica deep into the past, where she discovers the secret magical power that her family possesses. 

I loved how the story gently moved back and forth in time - between Monica and her grandmother.  The author does not flinch when telling of life in China during the wars.  The pencils - and the role that the pencils played in the grand scheme of the war... I know the story is fiction, and yet I could see it also being very true.  Part of me wants to believe that this particular type of magic exists in our world, hidden away somewhere, deeply guarded and protected.

Does Monica's Grandmother Yun ever connect with her sister?  Can everyone come to peace with their past and make terms with what has happened to them?  What happens to Monica as she deals with the realities of aging grandparents?  You'll have to read the book to find out! 

Author Website: https://www.allisonjking.com/phoenix-pencil-company

Remembering Sept. 11

25 Years Ago Today.

Do you remember where you were?  I do.  I was discussing this with a young friend who had not yet been born earlier this week.

I vividly remember the day.  The sky was that beautiful blue that only happens in the fall.  It felt like you could see a million miles that day.  It is my favorite sky color in the fall.

At the time, I was working from home.  I was on the computer, when the screen changed and looked like it was melting. Think crayons running down a screen, with the black moving from the top down.  To this day, it remains the strangest thing I have ever seen in my life.

Just a week or so before, we'd had a train crash in one of the tunnels in Baltimore that impacted the telecommunications on the East Coast, and I remembered thinking that "Folks in New York at the Trade Center commented on how weirdly their computers were acting in the wake of that."  Keep in mind, the news stations had not yet picked up the news story that the Trade Centers had been hit.  

Since it looked like my computer would be down for a while, I shut it off completely and headed to the gym.  I was there, at the Y, watching the horror unfold.  We watched the fires burn.  We watched the horror continue to unfold.  We heard that the Pentagon had been hit, and we all looked at each other with an "oh sh--" look on our faces. I remember driving home, wondering how such a beautiful day held such absolute horror.

My Mom was living in Virginia at the time.  Her house was 18 miles from the Pentagon.  She felt the impact when the plane hit the Pentagon.  She said that the house "jumped".

The days that followed were so filled with sorrow.  We knew people who were lost that day.  The world was forever changed.

In place of pictures of the horror of 9/11, I am posting pictures that we took a few years ago in New York City around the 9/11 Memorial. 

Flee North by Scott Shane

Flee North, written by Scott Shane completely changed my world view and challenged some long held beliefs and assumptions. This book is a Non-Fiction History, written by a newspaper writer who has written for both the Baltimore Sun and the New York Times.

In this book, set in Baltimore and Washington DC, we learn the true story of some of the people behind the Underground Railroad in the Mid-Atlantic.  

Thomas Smallwood was born into slavery in Prince George's County Maryland in 1801.  In the 1830's, he educated himself and bought his freedom.  He moved to the Navy Yard area of Washington DC and opened a shoe repair shop. By night, he spirited entire households out of slavery and moved them north towards Canada. In his spare time, he wrote dispatches to an Abolitionist newspaper in Albany, New York, taunting the enslavers and police - using the real names of the enslavers and those who he helped escape.  Most notably, Thomas Smallwood penned the phrase "Underground Railroad" to describe how abolitionists were helping enslaved people to escape.

Scott Shane is a gifted author who captures the story of the men and women involved in this previously unknown story of one of the most significant players in the Underground Railroad in the Mid-Atlantic. 

I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone.  

Scott Shane website: https://www.scottshane.org/

New York Times article about the Underground Rail Road: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/opinion/man-who-named-underground-railroad.html?unlocked_article_code=aT-JOE56I-XYNjVAR34FNCbfozz964z9f5SdOR2J6LIUlXAZPuA7ZoR4A0ZzSb_IrTe3-LF2XA4uMbAsVvOabWA1WxHF8xSEcWodmId7LsOt2uHXnv6WsrN6Gn8SlEHUAP-l5y-9DiGje4bPD44mNBQFbVvAPg6OdnTCinhq77l1O5Z2o_jNxIZw1pIbzhtRVclYjo5N8mShG4sm0C96NzcsIEXm0Lolvs1VaddsQa-TnqNAt9hGxC4YPDZ8DXx-HfGPaw4FzZoSYcsMEzgwgu3lK3BUpq5PyjivZocoxxd3BMcxf7pKwEslEGJLyWFkzSUx_CEYkYitTzd819kyPjor12q8h_5gX4P95Q&smid=url-share

Random Pictures

 Some random bits and bobs from this summer!

I hosted many library programs this summer.  It's summertime at the library.  For one program, I froze a lot of plastic toys in ice, and then the kids had to get the toys out of the ice.  In the picture below, you are looking at yellow building blocks encased in ice!  This was part of a larger Dog Man program.  This particular activity was entitled "Save the Town"! (If you've read Dog Man, you know.)

Bubblepalooza!

We found this old movie projector at a museum.  

It's a Kodak, and at one time, it was in a small movie theater.

Modern projectors are so large, this one kind of blew my mind.

Obligatory July 4 fireworks photo!

The welcome to the World Cup Games at the Kansas City airport.

I Ran Away for a Day

Okay, not so much ran away as "abdicated adult responsibilities for a day".  It was around my birthday.  My Mom passed away 2 years ago - 2 days before my birthday. So, I went out to visit the cemetery on the day after my birthday.  The cemetery is out in the mountains of Frederick County.  It's a lovely, beautiful spot.  I took a lunch with me, sat beside her tombstone and caught her up on all of the things that have been going on with me and the kids since the last time I was out there.

It was a gorgeous day!  When I was finished, I drove home the long way.  I stopped by a couple of orchards and picked up Apple Cider Donuts, and the absolute BEST peaches I've had since this time last year! 

When you drive home through the mountains of Maryland, you know you're going to have a great time!

Birthday cupcake!

View towards the mountains from the cemetery.

I stopped by the covered bridges on the way home.

2026 Goals - September Update

How is it already September?  How did this happen?  

BTW, Happy Birthday to my sister!

1) Lose 25 pounds.  Gain 10% muscle mass.

I changed this goal last month.  I am concentrating more on gaining muscle and worrying less about the stress of losing weight.  For right now, that goal is gaining 7 pounds of muscle by the end of the year.  

2) Visit 1 new to me state.

Hawaii

We thought about visiting a new to us state this fall, but we are going to take a staycation.  Prices are up everywhere.  Once we worked out the cost of hotels, airfare, car rental, etc, it was difficult to justify the expense for just 5 days.

3)  3 repairs/improvements to the house.

Project #1: Add surge protectors to the heat pumps and the house.  It's not a sexy fix, but it will definitely keep the heat pumps around for a longer period of time!  We've noticed an increase in the number of power surges we've had lately. The newer HVAC systems are very sensitive to power surges and they can damage the equipment. Honestly, who wants to spend to replace an HVAC system?  They are not cheap. I want them to last as long as possible.

Project #2: We are getting the basement waterproofed.  We've had leaks in the basement for a while now.  We currently have standing water in one corner. The contractor who remodeled the main floor was supposed to fix that, but ended up not doing it.  So now, another not so sexy fix.  But, it's important to the overall health of the house! 

4) 40 Bags in 40 Days Challenge

It's been a while since I've done this.  You get 40 bags or boxes of stuff out of your house over the 40 days of Lent.  I did NOT get 40 boxes out over the course of Lent.  I got rid of 6 boxes.

I'm beginning to realize that I did this a little backwards.  My goal is to empty out the storage unit - and I'm making excellent progress on this particular project.  Once I get everything out of the storage unit and really begin purging things, then I will get the 40 boxes (and then some) out of the house!

Boxes out of the house during March: 6

Boxes out of the house during April: 4

Boxes out of the house during May: 2

Boxes out of the house during June: 6

Boxes out of the house during July and August: 21

Total to date: 39

Just 1 more box to go.  One of those is a box of shredding, waiting for shred day at our local library this fall.  Seriously, I've got a LOT more stuff that will leave this house over the next few months.  I think I'm going to keep tracking this number through the end of the year.  It reminds me that I am accomplishing things!  (Even when it doesn't feel like I'm doing anything!)

5) Organize old correspondence/letters

I found a treasure trove of old letters and notes from high school.  I have them in a box to sort through next month.  The bigger question is - what gets kept and what gets thrown out?  Do I really want to save any evidence of high school me?  Most likely, NO.

On the other hand... I was given a box of old papers from a historical organization that I volunteer with to organize.  I was in my happy place, organizing that mess!  Many of the documents were of historical value, and there were a lot of photographs.  The photographs have been placed into acid free albums and labeled to the best of my ability.  The documents were sorted and organized into binders in acid free pages.  The next step - for someone else - is to digitize those documents so that back up copies exist somewhere.

Update on this: the letters are somewhat sorted.  I thought I would put them in binders and shove them away somewhere.  Some of them have been organized and put into binders.  This is a much bigger task than I originally anticipated.  I'm not certain I'm going to get this finished this year.  This might be a 2027 project.

6) Big backyard garden project.

I want to put in some sort of shelter for the local pollinators.  I've been searching through the garden catalogs for just the right thing.  I saw something when we were in England a couple of years ago that really tickled my fancy!  I have thoughts.  I just need to make some things happen!

I found the first part of my thoughts on this while in Old Ellicott City last month.  Once the weather cools down a little bit, we're going to look at finding a way to install this in the backyard.

7) Finish the cross stitch project I've been working on for 3+ years.

This is finished! Well over 3 years after I started, the project is finally finished!  I need to block this out and get it professionally framed later this year.  

From the end of February.

End of March

Finished!

8) Transfer Dad's slides to digital.

See my post here about transferring the slides!

9) Put those images into an album.

See my post here about the album.

10) Fill my America 250 Passport with lots of stamps!

Gettysburg - the Battlefields and the National Cemetery.

We went and heard the Lincoln Brigade play taps as the sun went down one Friday night.  No, I didn't take any pictures.  The moment felt sacred, and I wanted to be present.

11) Clear out the storage unit.

Done and done.  4 years after we started clearing out the house to get "a little" work done, we moved most of our possessions out to a storage unit.  And now, almost 2 years after the work was finished and we moved back into our house, we finally got all of the detritus out of the storage unit. Much of what was left went directly to the dump.  Rodents had been all over what was left, and there was mouse excrement everywhere.  It's all gone now. 

Being perfectly honest - there is still some stuff laying around on the carport.  Okay, a lot of stuff.  And no porch pirates have bothered to relieve us of our miscellaneous junk.

12)  Do one totally irresponsible and fun thing each month! 

I took a basket weaving class!  Oh my goodness, that was so much fun!  

13) Go see Falling Water. (Frank Lloyd Wright) 

This is a Bucket List item. 

14) Visit 12 new to me bakeries.

I think I'm falling behind on this.  I need to put in a concerted effort to rectify this sad situation!

        1) Eli Mochi Donut

        2) The Reister's Daughter

        3) Leonard's Bakery (Honolulu)

        4) Tour les Jours

        5) Paris Baguette

        6) The Bake Shop - Williamsburg, VA

        7) Raleigh Tavern Bakery - Williamsburg, VA- not new to me - it's a lifelong favorite!