Here we go again – Monday.  They just keep rolling around.  I’m not ready – am I ever?  This weekend was just busy.  On Saturday, we walked down to the farmers’ market to stock up on produce, because we had literally none in the house.  (I have Thoughts, capital T, about our current grocery situation.  It’s causing a lot of strife in the house at the moment.)  On the way to the farmers’ market, we were brought up short – imagine Scooby-Doo ruhhh? noises – when we realized that our favorite Buffalo-based artist, Sean Huntington, had a booth at the King Street Art Festival.  Of course we had to stop and have a good catch-up session with him.  We exclaimed over his new paintings, he exclaimed over how much the kids had grown, and we promised to swing by on our way back from the market (we did, and bought a print from him – a full-scale original painting wasn’t in the budget this time, although we do have several of his originals at home).  Seeing Sean was the highlight of the weekend, and just a completely delightful surprise.  The market was lovely too, and we came home stocked with all kinds of green goodness.  Also – it’s Asian pear season!  My favorite.  The rest of Saturday was a mix of fun and blah.  A short but fun hike and playground session at Jones Point – fun.  Several hours of work – blah.  A first birthday party for a friend’s little girl – fun.  More work after the kids went to bed – blah.  On Sunday, we woke up to gloomy skies and drizzling rain: perfect weather for getting things done around the house.  Steve’s and my bedroom had become one of the dumping zones for miscellaneous crap, and there were mountains of clean clothes to fold and put away.  I spent the morning tearing through the mess, and it’s much better now.  The rest of the day was spent puttering around.  Steve watched the Bills’ game; the kids bickered.  The usual.

Reading.  I have surprisingly little to report this week; it just hasn’t been a reading-heavy week for me.  I’m still working my way through The Fortnight in September, which is starting to seem like it’s going to take a fortnight to finish.  That’s not a reflection of the book at all – it’s a joy to read and I am having so much fun peeping in on the Stevens family and their late-summer seaside vacation.  I just have zero attention span for printed material, apparently.  I am close to being done, though, so I expect to wrap it up in the next few days, and I think the next book on my agenda is Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.  I’ve heard great things about it.

Watching.  So, it seems a complete series re-watch of Parks and Recreation is a thing that we are doing now.  I can’t lie, I’m not sad about it.  We’re into season 3 now, and Chris and Ben have arrived in town – yay! – and the show is really hitting its stride.  I think it might be officially my favorite show of all time.  It’s just so perfect in every respect.

Listening.  As much as I have not been reading much, I have been listening to ALL the things.  Podcasts, actually. All the podcasts.  Every day on my way in and out of work, and for hours on Sunday as I tornadoed through the bedroom cleaning.  Some of the usual suspects – Sorta Awesome, The Mom Hour – but I recently added a few new-to-me podcasts to my rotation.  Last thing I need, I know.  The podcatcher is already bursting at the seams.  But I subscribed to a few ocean conservation podcasts: A-Pod Cast for Killer Whales; Speak Up for Blue; and Marine Conservation Happy Hour.  I’m particularly loving Speak Up for Blue, which is an approachable podcast about marine conservation issues, mixing science topics with issue-oriented coverage and content about how to live a more sustainable life.  There are a few years of back episodes and I went through the entire archives, downloaded everything that I wanted to hear, and have been listening in fascination all week.  The production is super professional and the content is really timely and relevant.  I love it and I predict you’ll see me mentioning it many more times in this section.

Moving.  I’m trying, as always, but it’s tough – especially in this busy season!  I went to my old favorite 5:30 a.m. yoga class on Friday and it just… wasn’t the same.  The instructor seemed nice, but I didn’t love the class, and there were some things that just felt weird about it.  I am cooking up some plans to get back to barre and running, though, and I’m excited about that.

Blogging.  Sorry I flaked on you last week – I know I promised a post about my book club and I didn’t deliver.  It’ll have to wait a few weeks, because this week and next, I’m planning to go through my summer list and share my fall list, and there are still vacation recaps to post.  But do keep checking in with me!  I’ll get caught up eventually.

Loving.  I’ve been exclaiming over kid art for a few years now, but I’d forgotten about the transition from scribbles to actual recognizable figures.  Peanut’s art skills have been steadily expanding for awhile, but Nugget has been a scribbles guy.  But lately he’s started drawing cetaceans – because he knows I love them, and can we just take a moment over how sweet and adorable it is that he wants to draw me pictures of something I love and not just whatever is in his head? – and I’ve received pictures of whales and dolphins that, dare I say, actually look like whales and dolphins.  Maybe I wouldn’t think “oh, that’s clearly a Pacific bottlenose” if I saw the picture with no context, but knowing what it’s supposed to be, I can totally see it.  And I just love it.

Asking.  What are you reading this week?