Weekend Things

LaurenLeave a comment

I’m searching for a common thread to tie this weekend post together, but honestly, all the days felt very different.  Friday was spent with Hannah, Josh and for a little bit, Favorite Baby Mason.  Saturday was cool and I felt sort of sleepy all day, which I totally blame on the Royal Wedding.  And Sunday was packed with “get ready for the work week projects,” that took up the whole day.  At the end of it, I told Joey, “we should have had more fun today!”

img_4502img_4499img_4498

Yes, yes, Little Man’s Space Junkie ice cream and amazing beer + taco dinner but most importantly, that smiley little babe that I love so so much.  Do you see all that fluffy hair he has now??  I asked that he please not grow between my visits but I’m not sure he was listening because he was busy putting a plastic football in his mouth and watching Avery dog run around.

After we got some Mason time in, we dropped him off with his grandparents and headed to Liquid Mechanics for a drink and hit up the Butcher and the Blonde food truck outside for dinner.  I think we’ve been talking about chasing down this food truck for three years.  Finally!  Everything was so so good and the carnitas on both the street fries and my tacos were my favorite part.  I also decided to venture outside my comfort zone and order an IPA.  Oh wait, that’s what I get everywhere 😛  It was straight delicious though!

img_4500img_4501img_4509-1img_4541img_4506

If you thought I wasn’t going to wake up at 4:30 AM to watch the Royal Wedding, you’re wrong!  But if you thought I was going to wake up at 4:30 AM to watch the Royal Wedding, you’re only half right because I think I was still mostly asleep while I watched it.  I liked Kate’s dress a lot more but if seeing Harry and Meghan look lovingly into each others’ eyes with nothing but pure excitement and happiness didn’t touch you, your heart may be made of ice.

When we woke back up, we had banana pancakes then went to the grocery store.  Later on, we tried Andi’s new bandanna on.  For the record, I don’t condone this but it’s also a cute little dog bandanna so I might sort of condone it.  We took a trip to Home Depot then came home and made some Mediterranean Eggplant and Halloumi Bowls with Lemon-Dill Sauce for dinner and I loved every squeaky bite.  Clearly, Andi was tired after our early wake up call too ♥

img_4518img_4523

Ha, why am I so bad at taking Sunday pictures though??  Between that first picture — Joey made me an egg sandwich! — and that last picture — Summer Chipotle Chicken Cobb Salads almost make you forget it’s rainy outside — was me pressure-cooking some Navy beans, baking some beet brioche slider buns and brewing kombucha and Joey making us Superfood Salads for weekday lunches, giving Andi a bath and grilling chicken in the rain (hero!).  Plus we both went on a run, watched the Rockies lose, read on the couch and ate freezer cookies for dessert.

Mostly, I am just ready for good weather and sunshine and am feeling sort of uninspired without it.  Luckily, we are supposed to be in the 80s all week and heading straight into Memorial Day Weekend.  I can’t wait!  Happy Monday 🙂

Recent Reads

LaurenLeave a comment

I have finished three books recently and haven’t even mentioned them… what am I doing??  What can I say except that I’ve been distracted by Marvel movies, summer daydreams and pondering what my dog is doing while I’m at work.

img_3979

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

I’d been wanting to read this one, so imagine my delight when it turned out to be our April book club pick.  I even won a copy of the book in our raffle!  Not going to lie, it is LONG.  And about three-quarters of the way in, it started to feel long.  But up until that point, I enjoyed it.

It begins as the story of a Korean girl moving to Japan and though her life remains a constant thread throughout the story, it does expand past her and manages to find a balance between telling the personal stories of its characters and the larger picture of life as a Korean in Japan.  I was completely ignorant to that narrative so I found this book so informative and eye-opening.  The characters go through so much pain and keep pushing on in such an inspirational way.  However, towards the end, there was A LOT of jumping from character to character and generation to generation in a way that left me wishing I was hearing about the characters I had spent the previous 300ish pages with instead.

For what it’s worth, the rest of my book club loved it!

img_4148

Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala

I love a good coming of age story but they can be very heartbreaking and this one certainly is.  I’m at a loss for how to describe the plot of this book because, honestly, I was caught off guard by how it ended.  I’ll tell you that much of it is about a high school senior named Niru, living in D.C. with his devoutly religious Nigerian parents and their discovery that he is gay.  I cringed through the following chapters, where his father hits him, his mother takes him to church and then both parents decide a trip to Nigeria is necessary.

The story twists toward the end and the last chapters are narrated by Niru’s best friend, Meredith.  While I sincerely felt for Niru and didn’t mind the writing, the plot of this book felt a little too complicated to fit into such a tight frame.  I don’t regret reading it though!

Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris by A.J. Liebling

Can I just start by saying this memoir was not what I thought it was going to be?  It’s just over 150 pages but the language is smart and complex in a way that had me re-reading passages quite a bit.  It also gave me the impression of a work in progress that someone had pieced together.  Each chapter read like an essay that may have mentioned things from other chapters but could have just as easily stood on its own.  The first chapter could just have easily been the last chapter and vice versa.  Also, there was a lot of talk of food (and wine), but I didn’t find any of it all that descriptive.  Maybe I’m not cultured enough, but Liebling lists a lot of French dishes that I had no familiarity with and he offered no explanation, so I sort of glossed over it.

All this being said, I got absolutely lost in writing that seemed from another time and a version of Paris that will only ever exist in memories and that was a pure delight.

What are you reading?