I am the Toadstool

It’s another Sunday morning – August has begun and we’re just 28 days to the “ber” months, which means that the weather needs to get it’s act together and start acting more like fall. While we wait, pull up a chair and pour a beverage and let’s get caught up on the week that was. 

I’ll tell you right off the bat that I didn’t have an amazing thrift shop find like I did last week, but there was still plenty of joy to be found. 

My work week was short; I took off Thursday in order to have one last extra-long summer weekend. We still have another week of summer hours, but since we’re getting into a busy season we really can’t take PTO in August except for emergencies. My coworkers actually encouraged me to take the time off, if only so that each of us would have taken a Thursday in July as PTO. 

Of course, since we’re entering a busy time of year, that also means more problems will inevitably pop up, because heaven forbid things run smoothly, but at least when I left on Wednesday things were better than they had been on Monday. We’ll see if the last issue we’ve been dealing with since July 11 – which we’ve been told will be fixed “in the next two or three days” every three days since July 14 – is finally fixed. It’d be nice; I think the day it’s finally resolved we need to get donuts or something. 

One of the highlights of my week came as a result of one of my coworkers telling me:

You’re like a toadstool: nonbinary and cool

It turns out she’d been watching a documentary about mycelium and everything they were talking about reminded her of me. This is the same coworker who, when we first started working together, described me as a mystical forest cryptid. 

Her compliments are nothing but bangers, and I now have “I am a toadstool: nonbinary and cool” written not only in my commonplace book, but also in large black letters as a daily affirmation. I’ll be internalizing her kind words and carrying them for years. 

On Thursday I didn’t sleep in; I got up to do my household chores so that I could enjoy the three days of my typical summer weekend. I cleaned the kitchen and did all the dishes and vacuumed the carpets and scrubbed the bathrooms and mopped the floors until at 1:30 PM all I had left was to fold a small pile of t-shirts. 

Along the way I found all the hair ties that went missing. It turns out that if all your pants look the same, even if you think you’ve checked all the pockets, you probably haven’t.

It was at that moment my willpower failed and I just crammed them into a drawer and called it good. 

Then I went out and went to some thrift shops (where I didn’t find anything this week) and did my grocery shopping. I bought some extra things like paper plates and plastic cutlery and a small bundle of firewood in anticipation of having a small “beginning of August” bonfire with some friends on Friday. 

I also started prepping the food; for weeks I’d been planning to make a mushroom pot pie. I decided that just having mushrooms would be boring, so I halved the amount of mushrooms in the recipe and substituted with carrots and turnips. 

Friday came, and with it came sever weather alerts. I watched the radar throughout the day, but by early evening it became clear that the bonfire would be a washout. We’ll reschedule for sometime in October or November. I went ahead and made my pot pie anyway, and though I messed up on the crust it still tasted good, and was the perfect meal for a rainy evening. 

The rains moved out by Saturday morning, and it looks like we might have cooler temperatures this week. By cooler I mean maybe 10-15 degrees cooler than the previous three or four weeks? They say the Heat Dome isn’t over, but it is beginning to weaken and shift. 

I had rehearsal Saturday morning, and while rehearsal itself went well, I found that one of my car headlight had gone out. No big deal – or so I thought. This car is new-to-me as of maybe three years or so ago, and I’ve never had to change the bulbs in the headlights. And it looks like I won’t be doing it now, either, since the entire bumper needs to be dropped in order to access the sockets. How this designed ever got approved I’ll never know – even the “shortcut” requires tools I don’t have and unduly risks shattering the bulb, so it looks like I’ll have to actually take my car to a mechanic just to have the lightbulbs replaced. 

To call that frustrating is an understatement. 

Saturday afternoon Krystal had her first aerial student showcase. She’s been taking classes since May and has enjoyed them thoroughly. Her routine saw her dressed up as Velma Dinkley and was set to Simple Plan’s version of the Scooby Doo theme song. I came dressed as Shaggy and carrying a stuffed Scooby Doo plush. 

Afterwards we were both hungry, neither of us had eaten anything that day so we left to go home and eat something. Well, we started to, when one of Krystal’s friends needed a jump start, which we were able to help with, and then we went home. 

Oh! I also forgot that one of the folks at the arial class gave all the performers kitchen towels instead of flowers – which was incredibly unique, and as Krystal told her I did most of the cooking I got to pick the design:  

Anyway, we made it home and I cooked up some steaks that I had marinating along with mashed potatoes. I was so hungry that I forgot to heat up some of the leftover mushrooms to go with my steak, but as I have both leftover steak and leftover mushrooms, I’ll get another shot at it today. 

I did use some of the mushrooms in my morning omelette, which I enjoyed with coffee and bread and butter. 

What do I have on tap for the rest of today? Writing: whether it’s a card for a friend or journaling or notecards for the Laramie Project, I’ll be doing quite a bit of writing. 

And that also reminds me that the other day I found a notebook while I was out shopping! 

Okay, I think that’s really it for now. 

How have you been?
What have you been up to?