A Heart's a Heavy Burden

I am still so very angry. To help soothe my rage, I took pictures of things throughout the day yesterday that gave me joy or made me smile.

To start, wanted to show you guys one of Nero's favorite spots to lay:

You can find him so often at the top of the stairs. XD

( More cat goodness and lunch stuff )

Got some yarn goodies! Happy to support these guys. <3 <3 They threw in the big tote as a gift!! I love it XD
( Lovelyyyyy )

Steve and I went for a leisurely, short walk. The city is FINALLY redoing our neighborhood roads, aafter 30 years of slapping pavement on top of the cracked stuff. The roads are getting torn up and are all hustle and bustle with big machinery, but I still got some pretty pics!

( Nature! )

Nero was very stubborn and ridiculous about being on my lap in the evening.


Bad pic but a bunny was helping out, eating dandelions in the yard:


It was Day 2 of my workout program, "Fun" day. So I did the walk and played lighter-hearted/less intensity ITG (because ITG will also be my day 3, Interval cardio) AND traded off with Steve every few songs.


Workout outfit:


( Workout! )
After showering, Steve and I got up to some fun even though we were both SO tired. I'm happy about how into me he seems lately! I'm always surprised! But omg we were both so sore. It was hot though! Then we made a pizza - it was a "croissant crust" from DiGiorno he wanted to try. He said they really lost out not calling it something like "CRUST-ssant!" XDD

After that, played a bit of Hearthstone battlegrounds together. This match here - I think this screenshot was the first time I went up against them. I was certain I'd lose - look at his board and health compared to mine! We ended up going head to head at least 6 times, tying most games and the rest I wore them down. I ended up taking first somehow!! It was awesome. My opponent also was having a silly fun time at the ridiculousness of our matchups, because it NEVER goes on that long. By our last matchup he had the one Big Boi up to over 100 attack and health!


Separately, in a meeting this morning, Mike told me that SPPS (Saint Paul) teaching staff received a gag order to not talk about the incident at all - with students or with staff. The FUCK. If they did that to us when Philando Castile was killed, I would have quit immediately.

In a meeting this morning, Mike, Jake, Alex, Sandy and I all talked about the shit going on in Minneapolis. Jake and Alex are on the up and up, Sandy's almost there, and Mike is focusing on the wrong thing ("Losing the contract with the U won't hurt the police force financially") - but Jake really nicely educated him on the "message" it sends, and Sandy pointed out that she used to work at a bank, and cutting off the relationship with the police force does hurt individual officers who used it as a part-time job.

Even though I was super tired and sore from ITG last night, I needed to go to yoga for sure today. So I got up and headed to yoga at 9:30. I was super crabby, as I usually am when my body is still exhausted/not recovered from the day before. There were two older ladies (like, 60s for sure) who were super good at everything. This class was with a teacher I’m not familiar with, Becka, and I think it’s the kind of class that Haley loves - constant movement and like a thousand chaturangas. I would not stop dripping waterfalls of sweat and I appeared to be the only one lol. I wasn’t the only one getting tired by any means, but god do I sweat so much. During the lame ab work that I can’t do anyway because of my spine curve, I just swayed my legs back and forth. I did appreciate the challenging poses Becka made us try, such as 8-angle pose (astavakrasana).

After yoga I went home and showered quick before heading out to meet Steve for lunch. I was super hungry from not having eaten plus the yoga, so when we got to Jamba Juice, I decided to order a smoothie bowl for more substance. While we were eating/drinking, we sat in this random courtyard at the U of MN and did a couple raids in Pokémon Go and chatting about Steve’s day. And of course, because the world is weird and small, we ran into my old coworker Janice from Nokomis, the speech pathologist. She was apparently there with her daughter. We talked awkwardly for a minute and then she sat by herself and we sat across the courtyard. lol. I was there to hang out with Steve!!!!

When Steve went back to work and I went home, I was just waiting for him to come home. I ended up napping for a couple hours until he got back, and he was self-proclaimed crabby and I was worried about him! I tried to make him feel better with low to mixed success, and he decided to play a bit of ITG while I knitted and watched Parks and Rec. He had an okay day... at the very least he got some exercise in, which was good.

Nick came over soon after he finished playing and showering, and we went to pick up Naf Naf. I had eaten my leftovers from Olive Garden so I didn’t get anything. I spent the rest of the night finishing my sock #1 with the Totoro colorway, and I’m so excited to get started on the second one. It fits perfectly and looks so cute! Pics when I finish the second one. During that time, Steve finished Yakuza Kiwami and it was amazing. A+ game. The second one comes out at the end of the month, and Steve will def get it right away.

Sleep was difficult again, tossing and turning for hours, super anxious.

Last week I was really feeling like I wanted to do something with Steve on Saturday morning. I initially thought Minneapolis Farmer’s market, but we weren’t sure if there’d be time after he got back from garage sale-ing. Then on Thursday or Friday I got the notification that Saturday was the beginning of the East Side PEEP Shawl. PEEP is a thing where 6 of the east side (of the twin cities) shops hold 1 of 6 pieces of a shawl pattern and yarn, and you travel to each shop picking up the pieces. You even get 1/6 of a digital code if you don’t want 6 pieces of paper. Each shop also makes a sample of the shawl, and you can buy that particular color base if that’s the shawl you want to make. I’ve never actually participated, mostly because I’d miss it or wasn’t sure about the final shawl. I thought it was perfect timing for this year though. So instead of farmers market, shawl!

I started in the nearest town, and made a loop. The trip for me is 66 miles, and some people BIKE their route. Crazy!!



I’m so glad I went to my closest shop first, because they cheated and made TWO of the shawls, and their second version didn’t make it onto the picture of samples, and that one was my favorite, so I bought the base color from there. Then I went to Stillwater, which wasn’t that far but took a really long time due to construction, a wedding, and general idiocy of the people in town. Parking was a nightmare but I parallel’d my way in. I did get a great view of the St. Croix river and the weather was gorgeous.


This was cute.

One of the women said she thought my shawl “looks like a StevenBe original.” I told her the pattern was the local yarn shawl but that the yarn did in fact come from StevenBe!



After Stillwater was White Bear Lake. This shop turned out to be near Andy’s old tattoo studio, so parking was easy, though it was Dog Days so still busy, with the added bonus of puppies everywhere. The shop was not a shop I’d ever go to again, with grouchy signs about cell phones (Steve called me while I was in there and I started sweating) and a grouchy old lady running the place.

I talked to Steve while I headed to the next place, an area of Mahtomedi (mah-toe-meed-eye) I’d never been to before and super close to my house. Beautiful backwoods drive. Got lucky with parking. Enjoyed the shop, will go there again. Lots of compliments on the shawl, friendly people, good snack and drink selection (though I didn’t take any, I made a note for the future).

Ben and Sean had been in contact with us about possible hangouts, and after I stopped at home they confirmed they wanted to hang because they were in town for the weekend. I mentioned dragging them to two yarn shops and they were in favor of the detours.

After they picked us up, to Grand ave in St Paul we went! Got my yarn, bantered about the best color on the wall (Steve and I chose the same color - a teal - though I didn’t know his choice prior), and Sean argued the case of a burnt sienna and Ben voted for a navy blue. We determined there was hunger and walked over to Brasa. I’d only been there once before for my grandma’s birthday several years ago but it left a bad taste in my mouth because there are no vegan options and my mom complained about the lack of even vegetarian options (the logo IS a rooster, to be fair). Knowing that I could probably find something to eat as a vegetarian vs vegan, I wasn’t concerned. I chose the one vegetarian sandwich and the group got a bunch of sides in addition. I got the seasonal mango lemonade to drink, and I don’t even like lemonade but this was delicious. I was only able to consume half my sandwich, some plantains and chips, and I was bursting full.

Last yarn stop, 3 Kittens in Mendota. Another cute shop, signed up as interested in a shawl class by an intense old lady who was incredibly interested in a lot about me. She wrote down the name of my shawl and talked to me about the shop expanding. It was another good shop I’d like to take more time in. Sean and I walked around commenting on the yarn before the group headed to our actual destination: Mall of America of course.

For some reason, 5 star raids on the weekends always start later in the afternoon, but during the week they’re ready to go promptly at 8am. So weird. We got to the mall around 3pm, and after everyone went to the bathroom there was a raid ready to go right by us! We were all able to catch crappy Registeel, and then we sat at a table chatting and Pokémon Go-ing for like an hour. I was talking to Bethany and Haley about wedding stuff and to my cousin Morrigan about food stuff (he wants to lose weight but doesn’t want to try hard at all, mostly it was me confirming that NO KETO and giving suggestions). Eventually we got coffee (and Ben went and got Sean some Very Bad Tea because they screwed up her order) and wandered around the mall. We did stop into Air Traffic for awhile and Ben tried some of the juggling bags and we looked at the various silly puzzles. Soon after, I was feeling soooo tired and suggested we get moseying. I wasn’t trying to end hangouts by any means, but I wasn’t wearing the best walking shoes (converse) and my pinky toes were hurting. Steve reminded me that I needed to pick up my bridesmaid dress, and the lady made me try it on. It fits so much better with the strap shortened by like 2 inches and the hem brought up like 6 inches. The Asian lady said she loved the lace on my waist and said it made my curves look good, Steve and Sean approved, and Ben said it “is a very purple dress”. Hahaha.

When we got to the van, Sean mentioned something about wanting shelving from Ikea, and I was like, “well IKEA just so happens to be RIGHT THERE, wanna go??” And after some discussion about whether Ben’s friend/coworker Dustin was still playing in a magic: the gathering tournament, Ikea it was.

We wandered slowly around the living room and bed section, trying like every single couch and bed and chatting. Steve and Ben apparently talked about ITG and friend stuff (like that Ben wants to stream to ONLY US and why he doesn’t like other people, even other friends, to view the stream), and Sean and I talked a lot about housing desires, locations for living, future plans, and of course, The Compound*.

We cut the IKEA trip short when Dustin announced he was ready for dinner, and Ben drove us to Minneapolis to a place called WSK (World Street Kitchen), another place with basically one thing on the menu I could eat and yet sounded amazing (a crispy tofu dish). I was still somehow incredibly full from earlier even though it was like 9pm, but I suspected it was in part due to the fact that Steve ordered me a large coffee and I drank all of it. We met Dustin and Stacy, who were kind of geeky and maybe not the kind of couple Steve and I generally hang out with, but they grew on me over time for the most part. Mostly it was that Stacy made a few lame comments indicating her disdain and boredom while Dustin played in his tournament, and Steve and I are not the kind of people who participate in disparaging each other’s hobbies and interests and don’t like when people in couples do that. Be with someone you can support!!!! Otherwise, though, the conversation was good.

After we ate, it was noted that we were DEFINITELY getting ice cream, and the place to get ice cream was attached to WSK. It’s called MilkJam. And it is top tier ice cream. They have rotating flavors of amazingness, and the line was out the door. Ben said that the line was pretty short, less than 50 people, probably because it had just finished raining. Because we couldn’t each just try one flavor, Steve and I opted for the “flight of 4” which were smaller scoops to sample. You COULD order a scoop of all the flavors (like 12) for $58. We agreed on all the flavors to try, and in order of favorites: Cereal Killer, Mango Sticky Rice, Thai Tea and Uma Thurman. The cereal one surprised me at how good it was. It was a lightly orangey/milk flavored ice cream with crunchy (NOT stale or soggy) fruity pebbles in it, and I was brought back to my childhood so hard. The mango sticky rice was exactly like it sounded but the rice was firm and delicious. The Uma Thurman was a tart passionfruit something, and it was good, but it wasn’t my favorite. Now. The ice cream was suuuper creamy and yet not so rich it would give you a belly ache, and I definitely wanted SO much more immediately. Sean got the “dark” which was a decadent dark chocolate that tasted like the most perfect brownies you’ve ever eaten (again, smooth and creamy and yet not bellyache creating). I can’t believe I’d never been there or heard of it!!

Finally it was time to go, and Ben and Sean dropped us off. We weren’t ready to give up on the day though, so I worked on my current sock (using the Mei/Satsuki from Totoro colorway by Canon Hand Dyes) and he played some more Yakuza Kiwami. He’s made a lot of progress and is definitely getting close to the end. We finally called it around 12:30 and hit the hay.

*The Compound is a gigantic homestead that the four of us invented for our Ideal Housing Needs. It’s small enough that we live in the same area and can hang out all we want, but big enough where we can have our individual privacy and aren’t expected to spend all our time together. The idea is that with four of us, we can afford exactly what we want without breaking the budget, and because we’ve already tested (several times) smaller living together scenarios and they’ve been successes, we think we could actually be viable housemates.

I’ve been getting into more of a gaming mood lately. Steve gave me a stern lecture the other day about how I’m just wasting my summer doing nothing, and he’s right. It’s like I get so paralyzed worrying about wasting it that I just... waste it. Ugh, it’s the worst, I’m the worst sometimes.

So I started a bunch of laundry and played Hearthstone. Hearthstone is great, but it’s not finite. You can’t “beat” it. I felt like I should choose a game I can beat. I decided I wanted to keep playing Persona 5, as it was just getting good and I had beaten the second dungeon, but I was surprised to find that my save data wasn’t on my profile. I thought it was because we upgraded to a PS4 Pro and my data just wasn’t downloaded yet. I figured I’d wait until Steve got home to figure that out, and looked at other games instead. I seriously considered playing Bloodborne, but I was in the mood for a pretty, ambient game. I settled for A Girl and Her Robot because it looked like a pastel-y version of Ico.

I played a decent amount of it, and Steve got home right as the game switched from being a gentle, quiet game of exploration and puzzles to an impossible action game. After getting literally nowhere with the boss, I looked it up, and someone wrote my exact fears out. The game ruins itself by becoming focused more on battles and talks about how the boss fights are insanely difficult for no reason (not fun and challenging but because of bad and clunky controls and the way in which you have to start over). I quickly decided that was as far as I’d want to go in that game.

I asked Steve about my save file and...he discovered that WHOOPS. He only copied HIS save data over. Uh ohhh. I got some decent autism because I just cannot imagine starting all of that over again. My lost social links and, to a lesser extent, personas. And the beginning of the game is SO TEDIOUS with the handholding. I really need to mourn and process, and Steve does not handle guilt very well, so he needed tending to at the same time I was trying to wrangle in my grief. So he kind of melted down, frantically putting the game in and saying he was going to play up to where I was (lol I was definitely over 20 hours in, probably even over 30). I kept telling him it wasn’t the same and wouldn’t be the same, but I appreciated his willingness.

Eventually I talked him down enough from the ledge not to kill himself while I was at yoga, but not THAT far from the ledge. It’s just a game, I’m sure I’ll get enough steam to start it over eventually. But I had two hours of yoga planned for tonight and I needed to leave. I called Steve on my way there to check in, make sure he didn’t nope off into the sunset like he was at high risk of doing.

First up was Brittany’s Hatha class. It ended up being just me and one other, who is another instructor there. It’s nice to be comfortable with the teacher, because on days like this when no one shows up, I can get targeted attention. Brittany really pressed me to push out of my shoulder sockets and worked my arms so hard in various poses while in plank. We also did a ton of half-moon/Warrior 3/standing splits stuff. Brittany is a gymnast and obsessed with handstand, so everything we do with her really works towards that. Which is fine for me because even though I’m terrified of handstand, the stuff I do with her is really challenging and makes me feel like I’m trying for something.

Right after that was Hannah’s tune-up class. Thank god it wasn’t demanding because I could barely hold myself up on all fours - my shoulders and arms were just DEAD from Brittany’s class. It was a good way to spend the hour. Prior to class I talked with that other instructor, whose name is Brandi, and she is a special ed teacher in SPPS, at one of the high schools. So we have a lot we can talk about. That was cool.

After yoga, I went home and immediately needed food, so I whipped up some (yep) fried egg sammies and simple fruit smoothies, and Steve showed me his new trick in Mario 3. He and Noah are trying to learn to speed run that game, and Steve wanted to start by learning the fastest, silliest way as a means to get acquainted with the game. He is hilariously bad at the general game, but he’s decent at the wrong warp (look it up, it’s very entertaining and takes only a couple minutes). I asked if I could try the first part, and omg the controller he was using was weird! It wasn’t an originally controller and it felt like the inputs were slightly off. He gave me a regular controller and the B button basically did not work at all. Ugh. Come ON controllers!! But it was really cute and I was curled up in his lap while we played.

After that we spent the rest of the night enjoying Super Monkey Ball speedruns. So fun, so good. After all that yoga and late-night eating though, my processing and memory were SUPER off. It was really silly. I kept asking questions about the runs that they literally had just talked about, and I kept forgetting or mishearing what Steve was saying (in a funny way). At one point Steve spluttered, “What is the MATTER with you?? You’re like, Flowers for Algernon!! Get it together!!” Which caused me to laugh for like 5 minutes straight, and laugh about every time I thought about it for the rest of the night. And when we were getting into bed, I took out my hair, which had been in a bun. Steve took one look at it and notified my that I looked like Solid Snake. Which elicited another huge burst of laughter because I knew EXACTLY what he meant. God I love him. :D

My morning was spent much the same as yesterday morning, so I’ll skip over that, but I did need to wait for the new TV to arrive and sign for it and direct the guys to where to put it. That went off without a hitch, and then I asked Steve if he wanted me to come out for some Jamba lunch and walking, and he of course agreed enthusiastically. Before that, I RACED to the park to catch a random wild Lickitung, mwahahaha.

I started to leave, then when I was trying to take a Pokémon gym I realized it was colder than I anticipated and was threatening rain, so I went back home to get my windbreaker, and then I stopped for gas and tried to do a 3-star raid but was unsuccessful solo (I got really close though). Then! Onwards to the University. We got Jamba and I stopped to pee because I learned my lesson from last week and didn’t want to ruin my own day.

After that we started wandering around campus, and Steve asked me my plans and I told him I planned to grocery shop. He then made a comment to me about not spending a lot of money and that I purposely buy the more expensive of a product because I think money equals quality, and I interpreted the tone as attacking, so we got into a tiff about it. This looked mostly like tense silent with brief word exchanges, and after like 10 minutes of me seething in my autism and his own feelings on the matter, we were able to discuss our points - Steve doesn’t want me to spend a million dollars shopping and reminded me that we had developed a weekly budget several months ago (which I obviously forgot about). Since I do all the shopping and cooking, it’s very upsetting to feel like he genuinely believes I buy the most expensive thing on purpose, when in all honesty I don’t look at price basically ever and go off of what I want - whether that is ingredient list or the item of produce or whatever. A specific example of this is wanting 100% buckwheat soba and not flour/buckwheat soba. In the end I agreed to stick to the original budget, now that I was reminded and remember it, and he expressed his appreciating of the fact that I want us to eat good food and do the making of the things. The rest of our walk was back to normal, good and fun.

After he had to go back to work (boooo) I headed to the Wedge. I was able to find most of the things on the list that I wanted, but still needed a few things from Whole Foods. I drove to Woodbury and got the last few items I needed before heading home.

Once back home, I set about making lunches for the rest of the week, which didn’t take long as I was using a Rawvana recipes. I love her recipes because they are delicious and usually 5 ingredients or less. The food always has a lot of flavor and strikes home the beauty of using only a few ingredients. The problem I have with her recipes is that she expects you to consume 200-300 calories for a meal, which is ridiculously unhealthy. I think she tries to balance this out with salads and fruit as snacks, but it still works out to like 1100-1300 calories per day, which does not work for me and certainly doesn’t work for Steve. So I usually end up either doubling the recipe, or taking a recipe that says it serves 4 and making it serve 2. That sort of thing.

After the food was done and dinner was had (if you guessed fried egg Sammies and rice, you’d be right!), I played Hearthstone all night, finally beating the Witchwood solo adventure and playing some constructed. Steve okayed Shadow of the Colossus and Nick was playing Demon’s Souls. A good night.

Ben and Sean asked if we wanted to go with them to Mall of America to do some raids and walk around, and that they had Mike in tow as well, and of course we agreed happily. I wanted to spend the day walking around the mall with Steve today anyway! I gave Sean the weaving supplies back, showed her my scarves, and we talked about how amazing the colors ended up working together. We tried to do a legendary raid by ourselves, but we just barely couldn’t do it. If we had one more person it would have been perfect. Oh well! We decided to wait until the mall to try again. It was raining pretty hard, but we must have driven out of the rain cloud when we actually got to the mall.

Since it’s still a weekend, of course the mall was packed. Sooo many people. The good about this is more likelihood of people to do raids with. The bad part is always needing to be distinguished others. Lol. First thing: food. I was quite hungry by the time we got to the mall, and suggested BurgerBurger. It’s like our go-to place now for food at the mall. It’s just so good and meets the requirements for both Steve and myself. Sean got food at Chipotle and brought it back. I ordered an impossible burger with onions and a side of fries. It was so delicious. The fries in particular were amazing. I ate slightly too much, but I didn’t completely overdo it. As a result though I was full for quite awhile after.

We did a ton of walking around, spun lots of stops, dealt with issues of too many items, complained about the trading system, and did two raids. I only was able to catch one Regice, and it’s not very good, but at least I got one. Roselia’s are also more likely to be shiny, and I caught three. Eventually everyone had at least one, yay!

When we decided to leave, I realized I was super tired. Like, the food and the walking and the excitement really tuckered me out! So when Steve and I got home I requested a nap watching GDQ VODs. And it was a gooood nap. I slept so well. After I woke up, Steve suggested we watch some of the runs we missed that we wanted to catch. I suggested the Mario block, and that ended up being really good. It also made me want to run Super Mario World again, and Steve mentioned that Noah wanted to try to learn co-op Mario Bros. 3 together. We ordered a pizza and that was tasty. We also finished the Pokémon Blue/Yellow run.

I noticed that this year, there were a lot of runs that weren’t “official” - for example, the run failed or the rules were violated, and everyone was so gracious about it. Like they’re not taking them as super serious as years past. Which I love. Like, a marathon run is NOT supposed to be a world-record run. It’s cool if it happens, but it’s supposed to be more of an opportunity to talk about and show off all the hard work these runners put in. For example, on the finale, Puwexil forgot to grab a character in Final Fantasy 6, thereby nullifying the 100% run. Or in the race between mitchflower and grandpoobear, if they had different attitudes, the run would have been an awkward disaster instead of a cute display of comraderie and enjoyment. But because they were able to think on their feet and Mitch knew that Poobear didn’t fuck up his game on purpose (twice), they were able to find a way to make the race fun. Like, it’s okay to make mistakes and no one’s gonna hate you for it. It really made this year feel like the best event yet. Plus, the room was packed. A lot of people were there consistently, and the hype in the room was infectious. :D

When it got too late, we came upstairs to fall asleep finishing the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe 48 tracks run (which was amazing, by the way. She is really good at Mario Kart). It was such an ideal night.

This week is SGDQ, Summer Games Done Quick. GDQ does two charity 24/7 marathons per year, where people speed run games to earn money for Prevent Cancer Foundation (January) and Doctors Without Borders (June). SGDQ typically raises about $1 million USD, and AGDQ raises up to $2 million USD. This year they’re also going to do another one in the fall, but I haven’t researched it yet so I’m not sure what that’s for. Steve and I stared watching Games Done Quick in January 2013, and we’ve made it tradition to watch them all since.

Beginning with probably the last month of school, our house began to experience an increasing decline in its upkeep. I go through cycles of organization and slobbery, and it usually slowly builds up until it basically looks like Steve and I live in a state of squalor. Clothes end up everywhere, laundry doesnt get done, and when it DOES get done, it sits in baskets gaining wrinkles and soon it becomes impossible to remember which clothes are clean and which are dirty. Dishes begin to pile up, both in the sink and around the house (particularly our coffee and tea mugs)... my shoes end up all over the house, because usually I feel like I can’t stop on the landing, and instead wear my shoes to whichever room of the house I’m going to sit down in. It’s a terrible habit that I should fix. Mail ends up all over the place, yarn and projects are in randomly spots, cat food all over the floor........ you get the idea.

To combat this, I usually take a room at a time. When I decided to clean and organize, I CLEAN and ORGANIZE. Having grown up in Paul’s Cleaning Bootcamp TM, I tend to approach cleaning in a militant kind of way. I think this also helps explain why I avoid cleaning: when I clean, I am compelled to do it extremely thoroughly. I can’t half-ass it, or it’s not even clean and I wasted my time. So. I started with the kitchen, because a messy kitchen keeps me out of it. I deep cleaned both the coffee maker and the teapot, and now both run so smoothly. I reorganized the counters - they now have a lot of space. I moved the tea bag holders around and found new locations for the cooking utensils and noodles. I swept the kitchen, took out the trash, and did all the dishes. There honestly weren’t too many dishes, as we have a dishwasher, but many dishes failed to get clean because the wait to rinse them was too long. So I washed everything by hand and put it away. I also made some food, yay!

Noah and I have kept in touch about our food and exercise habits, as he experienced a rough week last week emotionally, which caused him to hate on himself a lot and try to sabotage, but he continues to lose weight, and has stayed under 300 pounds. I’m supporting him as best I can at jumping back on the wagon, and managing myself as well. Because of excuses and reasons, I didn’t do yoga for 2 weeks. In order to get that discount in the fall I need to attend 7 classes per month this summer, which means... I need to get in 5 classes this week. Perfect, honestly. Even though I’m cutting it down to the wire, I like the motivation to HAVE to go. To add in a layer of accountability, I signed up for classes for the first time since joining my studio. I have avoided booking classes and instead preferring to just show up, just in case I get lazy or something comes up. I’m the kind of person who typically does worse when people are watching, because the anxiety of letting people down becomes too great and I self-sabotage to the highest degree. If I outright fail people it will feel less bad than if I try and fail right???

Today’s class was Twilight flow, which is different depending on the instructor. Brandi is a woman I’ve emailed with, but never had a class with. I like Twilight class on Monday because that means I can go game shopping, and then go to class at 8pm. Steve, Nick and I went (haven’t seen Tyler in like a month, too busy being Stepdad of the Year) to LevelUp, but no games of note. We ate before we went, to hopefully allow me to digest before yoga. That was unsuccessful, and I spent the entire class feeling like my quesadilla was in my throat.

I loved Brandi’s class. She has a good energy, had really good words for us, and wasn’t as woo-woo as the other instructors. She’s still relatively new to the studio, so she was more hands-on and took the time to give little massages on our backs halfway through, and on our faces and shoulders at the end of class. Hannah used to do that, but then she stopped.

Since this is a class I’ve never been to, the people in there were all new to me. This means that I got several compliments on my hair and tattoos, both of which I am unaware of during yoga. Yoga is the only time in my life that I can tune everything else out and focus solely on my breathing and postures, so it’s really funny to remember that not only am I seeing other people, but they see me too. When I was walking out, a Mom commented on my hair and mentioned that her 10-year-old daughter asked for highlights and she was really nervous but bought her a semi-permanent dye. She relaxed into the conversation considerably when I told her I teach middle school, and I gave her some suggestions and tips (she surprisingly didn’t know that you can dye hair with kool-aid, which is the most common way I’ve seen younger kids get color in their hair), and she freaked out a little about her son turning 13 - I assured her 7th and 8th grade are so the best. So I guess I have a new Monday friend. Yay!

When I got home, Steve and Nick were watching SGDQ, and I played Hearthstone and talked to Ben Holland. Hopefully he’s coming over this weekend! I beat all of the bosses of the current solo adventure except 1, and I think I keep getting bad card choices because she is like everyone’s fave. Steve said something about how so many of our friends can’t get past early bosses, so I should be kinder to myself because I’m actually pretty decent at Hearthstone. Lol.

Oh man you guys, one more week of school left... two more teaching days, two days of retreats, and a field day. It’s all happeningggg!! I’m of course suffocating on all the work I need to do, and I spent my afternoon at Nokomis freaking out, doing testing, typing things up, and generally panicking.

My old co-teacher Jenny reminded me that she was having her annual end-of-the-year get-together at her place, and encouraged me to come. I felt like I should, partly because I haven't seen Jenny in so long outside of work and I know she's gonna miss me, and also partly because I'm not gonna be here next year so I really should get my face time in and not look like I've completely abandoned everyone. I invited Steve along, because he's come before so he knows that it's not demanding, just probably pretty boring for him listening to us talk about teacher stuff the whole time.

I came home and I was so tired and exhausted from not getting enough sleep the night before, so I laid down and snuggled with Nero and napped intermittently while Steve played a game on VR called something like "The American Dream," which is an Australian-made game that parodies the obsession America has with guns, set in 1950's style. You use guns for everything - cooking, watering the garden, pressing buttons, changing diapers, etc. It's like kinda funny but sooo embarrassing. It's dripping with disdain and is very cringey when you think about it, but it was entertaining.

At around 4:30 we headed out to Jenny's. Kristin, Allison and her husband, Denae, Todd, and Jenny's husband Toby were there when we arrived. I made sure that Steve set up our spots NOT by Denae, and Jenny sat on my other side, thank god. We spent most of the time talking about work, as usual. The conversation meandered around, and was pretty relaxing in general. People asked questions of me a lot more than I expected, and it was weird having so much attention on me about like, my knitting and tutoring and stuff. Jenny's so cute and I know she's interested in my life because we worked together all year last year. Later Todd left and Andy showed up. We ended up staying until past 7, and right when we were leaving, Sean called me to ask about yarn for the weaving class next week. She ended up facetiming me, and I had just pulled out from Jenny's, so we had to pull over and swap spots. We talked about the suggestions for the class and I ended up picking a yarn that looked kind of rainbow-y and I told Sean I trusted her judgment for the solid color, and she didn't disappoint. I cannot WAIT for the weaving class, I am so very excited to learn how to weave with a loom!!

On the way home, Steve and I went back and forth about what to eat, realizing we were both so hungry. I was willing to get food from somewhere just because we were so hungry, and I was trying really hard to think of places we could eat without overdoing it, but Steve said something about hummus and crackers, and I remembered that there were a couple of Perfect Bars in the fridge, and voila! A meal. Hummus and crackers were procured from the store, a quick dinner was had, and a cuddle with some Hearthstone rounds out the day.

It was a bit of a lazier day, getting up later but not too late, still before 11. Noah wanted to maximize his game time and probably ease the strain on his budget, so he requested a quick breakfast. They went out and got BK, and brought me home a bagel from Caribou. I really took my time easing into the day, reading PostSecret and journals/blogs, and getting my list for meal prep for this week. We agreed that beginning tomorrow we’re gonna tackle the correct eating HARD and I like to support us by finding delicious and not-too-complicated of recipes, though I’m still struggling to find enough food in a day to support a grown man vs an average-sized woman.

After I caught up on my entries, I went downstairs and joined the boys in the rest of the day of gaming. Steve continued to play random games, Noah continued to play Dragon Warrior 3, and I continued in Persona 5. Noah got to the almost end of his game, and I beat the second dungeon in Persona 5. We ordered a pizza a few hours before Noah had to go home, and Steve and I went to pick it up together. We of course then played a little Pokémon Go on the way. I kept my pizza consumption relatively low, 2 pieces of pizza and like 4 pieces of the breadsticks (they’re smaller). I always think about when I was growing up and we basically rationed our food - a Jack’s pizza with the fluffier crust would feed me, my mom and sister. Bethany and I would each get two pieces of pizza, and Mom would get 3, and if one of us was still hungry MAYBE they’d get the last piece, but we’d often either split it or Paul would eat it along with whatever he ended up eating. I think about how Mom was always only eating the 3 pieces and how I should also be fine with that many, not more, when eating pizza. Lol.

Eventually Noah randomly announced that it was time to go. He packed up his stuff, put the couch back where it goes, and we headed out. We stopped at Starbucks for some iced drinks (green tea lattes for me and Noah and an Americano for Steve) and hit the road. I finished the thumb on one of Mom’s gloves and spent the rest of the time telling the boys about memes and other things on my Facebook page.

We went to find a couple stops and a gym after dropping Noah off, because Steve had a Pokémon Go quest to spin stops he hadn’t before. That was fun. Oh hey, do you notice when my entries have the accent in the word Pokémon and when they don’t? That’s how you can tell whether I’m typing the entry up on my iPad or my work laptop - iPad autocorrects and the laptop doesn’t. :P

Steve and I talked a bit on the way home about how we’re feeling about the relationship, when Pat’s name comes up in conversation with friends and how it makes us feel, and what direction we feel like we are moving. It was a good conversation... we talked about striking the balance between moving on and not pretending like it didn’t happen, and how we are making the relationship stronger and some things we have noticed in the positive. I apologized again and tried to impress upon Steve just how much he means to me. We talked a little about how the other day he made some comments that I felt blindsided by and I had gotten really upset, and how we can handle the situation better moving forward.

Steve just notified me that he makes fun of me in his entry about being so hype for grocery shopping, so that’s cool, lol.

So after we got home Steve put on some Hearthstone and I entered in the recipes into MyFitnessPal. I also had been entering the food eaten this weekend and came up with 2400 calories per day for myself. Whoops. I should definitely be consuming between 1700 and 1900 per day, depending on if I’ve exercised. I KNOW I’ve been consuming at least this much on average, which would easily explain my weight gain. Not that I’m surprised in any way, and I’m sure there are plenty of days it gets even higher than that!

Seeing that info really helped me feel like it would be good to go for a walk. We didn’t take our whole route because Steve was getting some chafey legs, but we did about 3.5 miles. The local middle school just got a new playground installed at the end of last summer, and I’d only been there once with Haley and Steve hadn’t seen it at all, so we climbed the high tower and went down the slide, I pushed him in the fun slidey swing and we took turns on the rope swing. It was sooo fun. Then when we got to the field path, we saw the first fireflies of the season!!! Fireflies are so hype. They’re romantic and pretty and make it feel like you’re somewhere magical. In the peak of their season, the completely dark field (there are NO lights on in that area) is just lit up with sparkles. Steve showing me his firefly field is one of my most favorite memories of our relationship. Today it was like 10 fireflies, but they’ll get there.

I was more tired than I thought I would be once we got home, so we settled into bed after putting the groceries away, and watched Kripp play Hearthstone. All in all I’d say it was a solid day!

Today was definitely a lazy Sunday, considering we went to bed so late. I woke up a bunch of times in the morning but was far too comfy cuddling with Steve to bother actually getting up. At 11 I felt guilty enough to FINALLY wake Steve up. We took our time but I'd say we were up by noon. Lol.

To ease into our day, there was coffee and Rummikub. Perfect. It looked like I was going to win for the longest time, but Steve pulled it out in the end, getting a solid 29 points from me and pulling ahead on the leaderboard. Oh well, that just means that his embarrassing picture is up on the board and not mine. Hehehe.

Hunger struck about then, and Steve was jonesing for some Naf Naf, so off we went. But not before stopping at the park for a little Pokemon Go. We were just gonna spin the stops there, but there was a raid at the police station across the park, and I needed 2 more raids to complete my next Mew quest. Now I'm down to 1! Getting closerrrr. It turned out to be a LOT nicer today than it was yesterday, sunny and decent temp and only a little windy. It was definitely far more ideal for eating outside.

Naf Naf was delicious as always, and the guy making our bowls was either new or feeling particularly generous, because my bowl was basically overflowing. Needless to say, I took home a ton of leftovers. Naf Naf is right by Whole Foods, and we needed some necessities. I ended up grabbing a bunch of fruit (summer weather really gets me craving fruit), a few other random things and we decided to take a tour of the mochi. My flavor preference went: 1. Strawberry 2. Mango 3. Pistachio 4. Red Velvet 5. Chocolate Mocha 6. Passion Fruit. Steve's favorite was mango. They were very good.

After that, Steve asked if I wanted to accompany him to scout for another media shelf for the game room. Of course!! So that took us to Savers, where he didn't find a shelf, but DID find a couple games - one for reselling and one for silly curiosity play. Next was Goodwill, which was a total bust and we were out within a few minutes, and then we went to Gamestop because it's Nick's birthday today and Steve wanted to look and see if there were any games he might want to get for Nick. He did end up buying the remastered Shadow of the Colossus, not entirely sure if Nick owns it already or not, but saying we can just take it if he does, and get him something else. He ended up getting a few other games, including one called Snipper Clips.

Suddenly, from all that activity (lol) I got tired and really wanted to snuggle on the couch and maybe nap. So we went home and put on some Hearthstone and I dozed in and out. Steve didn't fall asleep as far as I know, but he lay with me for awhile, and that was really nice. I really felt good nestled against him with his arm around me and it was just what I needed. Eventually he decided to sit up and played some Hearthstone on his phone while I napped some more with my head in his lap. That was also quite nice.

Neither of us were super hungry for dinner so I just cut up some fruit and Steve had a muffin and we snacked while starting Snipperclips. The game is for the switch and is ideal for 2 people, because you work together to solve puzzles. Each person is this like kind of wine tumbler-shaped paper guy, and you can like, cut each other into various shapes (circle, bowl, pointy object, etc) to fulfill whatever purpose is given. So, for example, if you need to get a ball through a hoop, the easiest way is to cut one of you into a bowl shape to catch the ball and then dunk it. To pop balloons, you need someone to be pointy. Etcetera. They require you to work together to solve it, and it's already made for some really fun puzzles. We beat the first world tonight and I can't wait for more!!

Tomorrow is gonna really blow, so busy with IEP and eval meetings after school and Tealie is gone again. Trying not to panic with suffocation. Only three weeks left until the end of the school year, and I'll have two more days off next week. I can do it. But it's sooo stressful. Ugh. This is why I need relaxy ideal days like today. They're so nice and fill up my soul. I'm really looking forward to summer with Steve, it's gonna be awesome.