september stories
First things first, welcome to my 200ish new subscribers! I feel like Beyonce now. I truly didn’t expect much traction on my post about Charlotte, but it appears it struck a chord with hundreds of people, and I’m glad you’re here, even if you hate-read it. I’ll try to refrain from being inflammatory from here on out, but I make no promises.
We started the month with a kid-free weekend trip to St. Louis with friends to see one of my favorite bands, Citizens, in concert. Their music has more or less gotten me through the last 10 years. What made it even more fun is that I got to play their song In Tenderness (my favorite song!) at our church worship night, something I’ve always wanted to play, then I got to see them do it live 5 days later! So thankful for that quick trip—I didn’t realize how desperately I needed to just go have fun. My husband and I went out for an early breakfast the next morning where I had the best breakfast sandwich of my life, and we listened to Haunted Cosmos episodes on the 2.5 hour drive home. It was perfect, and it fueled me for the exhausting month ahead.
Just, whatever you do, don’t make dinner plans in downtown St. Louis on the same night as a Cardinals game and a Chris Brown concert or it will take two full hours to find a place to park, and you will still have to park illegally. And you’ll park illegally in front of the cops because you have given up on caring about anything at all (and apparently so have the cops, because we got away with it).
+ We went on a co-op field trip to an apple orchard. The owner had us all sit in a barn while she read the story of Johnny Appleseed and acted it out on a flannelgraph. My 90s Sunday School heart was exploding with nostalgic joy. They gave us fresh donuts and cider, we went on a hayride, and we picked apples. It was so much fun and peak early fall vibes, other than the 90 degree temperatures because this has been the stupidest hottest fall ever and I have seasonal depression-type feelings about it.
Does anyone remember what rain is? Is it a real thing, or is it just a fever dream?
+ City Alight’s song Ancient of Days has been on repeat. It is such a comforting song, especially given current *gestures everywhere* circumstances. It’s one of those songs I sing and play on the piano at home almost daily.
+ If you know me, you know that I have been deeply obsessed with the Titanic since childhood. My most cherished book is the giant fold-out book with a detailed diagram of the Titanic that I got at the Scholastic Book Fair in elementary school. The oceanographer who found the Titanic came to a local university, and a fellow Titanic-loving friend and I were there with bells on. It was such a fun night. Get you a friend that will gasp with you over topographical maps of the ocean floor and then get late-night (8pm) fajitas with you.
+ Speaking of the Titanic, my favorite book that I read in September was The Last One by Will Dean. A woman on an ocean liner (taking the same route as the Titanic) wakes up on the ship one morning to find that she’s the only one left on board. It’s a wild premise and the first half was a little slow at times, but weeks later I’m still thinking about the last sentence.
+ Like an absolute psycho who is drowning in co-op plans, homeschooling, and doubling my piano students, I decided now was the perfect time to start reading War & Peace. Someone posted a reading plan for it on Facebook that seemed reasonable, so I impulse ordered it and am several weeks into it. Some days I enjoy it and some days I’m not even sure I understand what’s happening, but just like the horrors surrounding us, I still persist.
+ I had my 6 month skin cancer follow-up, and everything is looking great with no sign of cancer returning, which was a huge relief. I did have a spot on my face frozen off, and now I have a giant red welt dead center of my forehead, so I’ve been walking around singing this little jingle:
+ I love homeschooling kindergarten so much. The stakes are so low and everything is fun and exciting. We learn the moon cycles using Oreos, we make letters out of acorns, we read stacks and stacks of books. It’s the best. My poor 5th grader just gets to hear me lecture her on all my favorite historical topics (today was all about Woodrow Wilson’s reluctance to get involved in WWI until the sinking of the Lusitania—I have thoughts!).
+ A cautionary tale on speaking up for yourself: I had a dentist appointment last week. I rescheduled it from the week prior, and when I called to reschedule, I sheepishly asked if I could maybe have a different hygienist this time. The hygienist I usually see is fine. She’s not unkind. The only problem is she talks about her dogs constantly. And she talks about them like they’re real people, she discusses their personality quirks, how she repeated obedience school 3 times with one dog, the DNA tests she ran on them, what her vet thinks about them, how she makes late night grocery runs to cook them steak, etc. I couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t dislike dogs, but I have never loved anything as much as she loves her dogs. I didn’t tell anyone that was the reason I wanted to switch because it’s extremely petty, but they did schedule me with someone else. She was very nice but went to the opposite extreme and didn’t say a word. I’m more than ok with that as all I want to do at the dentist is disassociate. The only problem was that meant it was silent. And even though it’s a large dental office, she sat me down right next to Dog Lady. So even though someone else worked on my teeth, I got to hear Dog Lady tell her patient all about her dogs four feet away.
Joke’s on me!
Also, I need to have another filling replaced. Not sure which was more annoying.
Maybe I should just start telling her my thoughts on Charlotte Mason.
That apple orchard field trip sounds awesome!!! I get what you mean about temperatures and falltime activities. There's a local cowboy-ish fall festival that we love attending, but since it's usually in the 90s, it just doesn't hit the same as falltime did when I lived in Ohio for college haha.