June 30th

lil Canada Day tease on the clifftop.





It took me literally hours to clean up this mess on my patio. HOURS.

OH MY GOD, I am like totally dead. This morning Taylor and I took the baby around the Seawall (no otters this time, boo) and after we got home and everyone else went to bed I thought it’d be the PERFECT time to do some garden work*. I mean, I HAD to do some because I discovered that raccoons dug up my Corsican moss last night, those little shits. This is a problem I often have with my garden, fucking raccoons digging up my plants over and over until they (the plants) are dead (also the time they dug up my dead hamster, that was definitely a problem). Anyway I had to re-plant the Corsican moss so I figured I’d put in my little brick path as well. I had nine bricks and was planning on put them together in threes to form a little stepping stone-type path from my patio into the garden. Nine bricks, how hard could it be?

AHAHAHHA omg it was a literal nightmare. I only had a little trowel to dig with and there are two well-established bushes at that end of the garden with roots all over the place and the whole thing was just. UGH. Plus I was super tired and my legs/back hurt before I even started. I managed to get it done and moved a couple groundcover plants near the bricks and hopefully they’ll start to cover the ground (AS ADVERTISED) and that part of the garden will no longer be just dirt and dead leaves and crud. I’m also planning on foraging for some moss to put there, although we all know how it went last time I tried to put down moss**.

Since it’s summertime now we’ve been eating hotdogs a lot, more so than other years. Usually I serve them with tater tots, or corn on the cob, or a salad I make with corn, cherry tomatoes and cucumber. I think what I really need though, to take hot dog night to the next level is a good potato salad recipe. Gwen loves potatoes, and I like the idea of potato salad in theory but in practice it usually grosses me out. I’ve actually been having lots of weird food problems recently, like about texture or smell? The other week we had burgers, with just like frozen hamburger patties, and when I was cutting Gwen’s up the texture of the patty grossed me out so bad I couldn’t even eat mine. I think from now on I’m going to have to be more hands-on and make my own burgers from scratch.

ANYWAY if anyone has a line on a good potato salad recipe with no mayonnaise or mustard or dill (idk if those last two are even things people put in potato salad but JUST IN CASE) then hook me up!

It’s the last of the month, let’s see how I’m doing with my goals…

I’m still trying to quit pop. Trying and not succeeding. IT’S JUST SO DELICIOUS. Anyway I think I’ve convinced Taylor to join me in quitting, so hopefully once he stops filling the fridge with ice cold Cokes and Dr Peppers I won’t have so much trouble sticking to this!

Sunscreen is a bust, I have a terrible Birkenstocks tan on my feet. BOO. Obviously I’m going to keep using sunscreen because I’m not an idiot, but I have definitely failed in my goal to not get a stupid shoe tan. Better luck next year, I guess.

In brighter news, my hair is now TECHNICALLY past my chin. I haven’t gotten a trim in idk, months? I feel like I’m being very strong in my resolve to grow it, even though it is a very annoying and unflattering length on me right now.

*I hope y’all aren’t getting sick of my garden talk! I’d say I’m going to stop soon but for some reason I’m like SUPER COMMITTED to making the garden nice this year so probably I will never shut up about it.

**Poorly. It went poorly. The internet and also irl people told me the way to encourage moss growth was to get a lil bit of moss, blend it up with buttermilk and pour the resulting slurry where you want the moss to grow. So I did that. And all that happened was I broke the blender, my garden stank of old buttermilk, and it attracted even more raccoons that dug everything up even more than usual. NEVER AGAIN.