Good Wednesday morning to you, friends!  How go your weeks so far?  Catching up and doing my weekly check-in midweek instead of on Monday – no reason except that Monday was the anniversary of the Declaration of Sentiments, and I felt like posting some excerpts both to celebrate how far we’ve come since July 20, 1848, and also to call out how far we have yet to go.

Anyway!  It is weirdly quiet around here without the kids.  I really miss them!  We all needed a break from each other, so this is definitely a good thing, but I would dearly love to hug each of them right now.  They’re having a grand time with Nana and Grandad – Nugget can read three books now, no big deal! – and Steve and I are getting some time to decompress, catch up on work, and knock out a few house projects.  Steve ordered us a dumpster and we have embarked on a massive garage clean-out and de-cluttering project; we spent most of Saturday morning gleefully throwing full trash bags into the dumpster.  We made time for some fun, too – exploring our neighborhood park (pic above!) and hiking at Lake Fairfax and Seneca Regional Park.  It’s nice to have this time to catch up on things and enjoy each other’s company without 80% of our brains being devoted to parenting – but I am looking forward to having the little boogers back, too.

Reading.  Still slowly working my way through books.  I finished up Sword of Bone over the weekend and moved on to one of the newer reprints from Persephone Books – Marghanita Laski’s Tory Heaven, or, Thunder on the Right.  Sword of Bone was wonderful – the end, especially, was gripping and completely riveting.  And I’m really enjoying Tory Heaven so far, too – just finding it hard to make myself sit down with any book.

Watching.  Steve and I finally finished up season three of The Crown last night – so good!  I can’t wait for season four to drop; bring on Diana!  We’ve got to figure out what our next show will be.  On my own, I started watching the new Netflix adaptation of The Baby-Sitters Club, and it is WONDERFUL.  More about that below.

Listening.  Lots of podcasts this week and last!  I drove into the office a couple of days and listened to about six episodes of The 46 of 46 Podcast – all about the host’s section hike of the Northville-Placid Trail (which is on my list, but not especially high up there).  Also listened to a couple of episodes of The Slightly Foxed Podcast while organizing my books and re-stocking my shelves, because it seemed like the appropriate choice.

Making.  I’ve been doing a fair amount of cooking without the kids around.  It’s been nice to cook with some more grown-up flavors and ingredients without worrying that half the family is going to complain vociferously.  Steve and I even collaborated on grilled ginger-miso marinated shrimp skewers and zucchini noodle salad one evening.  Look at us go!  I have also been making progress on various grown-up responsibilities – not as much work product as I was hoping to churn out, but I went to the dentist and filled out registration paperwork for the kids’ school.  Next up: a much-needed, long-overdue, HAIRCUT.

Moving.  Again, not as much as I thought I might do, but more than I have the past few weeks, so: winning.  Since the kids embarked on their grandparent vacation, I’ve gotten out for several runs – including a some time on the dirt in my new trail-running shoes!  (If they look familiar, they are a Merrell collaboration with Dogfish Head, designed based on the can design for SeaQuench, my most favoritest beer.  I love this.)  And Steve and I have hiked a few times, and I made it to a Zoom flow hour with my favorite yoga instructor, Angelina Fox.

Blogging.  I’ll have a garden update for you on Friday.  Spoiler alert – not much has happened; I’ve been busy.  And one of my tomato plants was viciously murdered, but you’ll have to wait for the post to find out who the perp was.  (You’re probably thinking that it was a squirrel, my arch-nemesis, but you’d be wrong.)

Loving.  So, I teased up above – I am absolutely loving the new adaptation of The Baby-Sitters Club on Netflix.  I was skeptical, because the premise of the books, after all, centers upon a landline phone; how on earth was Netflix going to update that to present day?  But they did it seamlessly – keeping the landline and easily explaining why Claudia has it, and updating the rest of the show to be very of-the-moment for 2020.  The cast is wonderfully diverse and the girls deal with present-day issues like social media harassment.  Mary Anne finds her voice while advocating for a little girl who is transgender, there are same-sex parents calling the BSC, and there are pop culture Easter eggs hidden throughout – for instance, in one voiceover Kristy reluctantly admits that her mom, played by the legendary Alicia Silverstone, “isn’t completely clueless.”  It’s rare that I find a show I’d like to binge-watch; I don’t have the time for that, unfortunately, but I could easily sit down and watch every episode of The Baby-Sitters Club back-to-back.  It’s THAT good.

Asking.  What are you reading this week?  And have you watched The Baby-Sitters Club yet?