Sunglasses Always Fit

Highlights of the week: Today I asked cute munchkin Julia to count from 1-10 for me. She paused and then said “MondayTuesdayWednesdayThursday.” Also, I was helping a student who, God bless his heart, has been exposed to four languages and has a host of diagnoses, how he was going to spell “wolves,” for his book recommendation assignment, and he says “F….U….F F U? No, F….U.” This is the same class where a kid tried to convince me the drawings in his agenda were smiley faces, and not the penises they clearly were. So many moments where the lead teacher and I have to hold in laughter and eyeroll together. My fav class to work with, to be honest.

I TURNED IN THE YEARBOOK. If you have been within a 6,000 mile radius, you know how happy this makes me. I’ve been in pretty much “nothing hurts and everything feels good” mode since I clicked ‘submit.’ That thing was a beast, and editing the work of high schoolers in a pass/fail semester class, with zero photography or journalism experience, with only one native English speaker, a few mouth breathers, and a general sense of “what is yearbook?” I have been counting down the days until this project was turned in. Turns out that understanding what looks good on a page in terms of layout and fonts is not, in fact, intuitive. Nor is it easily teachable in a semester course. Like, remember how much we all loved WingDings when that came out? I’ve been fighting something similar for the last year. And high schoolers need a LOT of help. I threw a lot of chips and chocolate at them to make them like me. I think it worked.

Plus, yearbooks aren’t really a thing in Brazil, so there hasn’t been the element of anticipation and excitement about it at our school that I feel there normally is in the States. I hope to change that this year. I’ve worked really hard on it. Like, eyes blurring and hands shaking, late nights on the computer, stressed to the max. But the thrill in turning it in and saying “welp, nothing to do about it now!” is amazing.

My roomies have been kind enough to celebrate for about a week straight. First night was margaritas and sweatpants at the only passable Mexican restaurant in this many horse town. Where we all ordered enough food for ten people (and got judged for it by our servers but MY LIFE MY CHOICES), because we are still without a working stove or oven. No oven since November 2014, actually. I’ve had cottage cheese for dinner for about three weeks.

Tonight I tried to be healthy and chop up vegetables and make a salad but oh, man. That is the biggest problem with eating healthy. So much chopping. You get to the end of it and you need that feta and avocado and croutons and that just defeats the purpose. Good thing there is no Ranch dressing in this country or I’d be really making backwards progress on this five hour health kick. Even the organic radishes I purchased were over the preparation – about half of them turned out to be moldy, so. Could not be chopped. They were sacrificed to the garbage can gods.

We also did a roomie night on the beach with sunset and snuggles and drinkies and playlist. I had to go potty in the bushes and a night beach owl hooted at me from like five scary feet away and then flew at me, so that was fun. There were also ROUSes.

And we’ve been enjoying living room dance parties, being the responsible single Christian gals that we are, and staying out the club and off the street and in our sweats. The new game is to use the projector to show music videos of 90s and 2000s hits. You can check out our playlist here, as we finally decided to get smart and start saving them. TLC, boy bands, Whitney, NKOTB, etc. It’s the bees knees.

AND on Saturday we did a sunset night at one of my fav places – Arporador, a first for both my roomies, and then churrasco’d, a first for me, and then went to the Copacabana Palace, walking in like we owned the place, to have a drink just to say we did! We caught a wedding with some fireworks as some rich peeps were getting married and we watched them having a photo shoot in front of the sparkles across the water. Semi-charmed kind of life, baby, baby. Also hashtag life goals to have fireworks at my wedding.

BREAKING – Dolly Parton has a twitter account. !? I’m so happy.

Lowlights of the week: one of my lovelies has Chikungunya  from a super mean mosquito and poor darling is suffering and I miss her. My hate for mosquitoes grows. And I don’t know if this is science – but are they more attracted to you when it is your shark week? Because I have killed SO MANY in the last few days and I’m over it. Also this photo shows what was in my sink and I thought it was the mother of all cockroaches coming to claim vengeance but it was just string. I left it there for a few days. Fun to get a nice adrenaline rush every morning when I lean down to splash my sleep away.

And, heavy sigh. Orchard Supply Hardware is sending me emails saying they miss me. My ex and I used to wander there for hours, kissing in the flower aisles and eyeing tomato plants. I was in a gardening phase.

Fav song at the moment: “Piece by Piece,” Kelly Clarkson. So. Good.

This week I watched: Finished the second fabulous season of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” and they favorited one of my tweets. Also working through “Grace & Frankie,” which can be slow but my fav line is “I saw him at the Farmers Market when I was stalking him at the Farmers Market.” too close to home, to be honest.

This week I read: still trudging through Lorna Doone. I cheated and looked up the ending. Can I call it a win? My kindle says I’m 83% done. That’s a solid B- and I think includes the post scripts. I’m chucking it. Need to get back on Poldark and some books on Patagonia I dl’ed.

All the feels are from: I am starting to get sad about my roomies leaving! Who else will find it endearing when I walk through the halls singing songs about my uterus destroying my will to live? Who will binge watch youtube videos of newscaster fails with me? Who will remind me to take my Lactaid? I’m going to have to train someone new in all my weird ways. Gah.

I’m looking forward to: slurpees. For some reason everyone’s photos about Memorial Day make me think of slurpees today.

If you haven’t heard it yet, and you need to today: UR2QT2B4gotten and HAGS.