What Happened in August?
Hello everyone! August has been a surprisingly busy month for me, so first off: my bad for not posting last week! I didn’t plan ahead for how busy I’d be! That being said, I’m gonna write about how it’s been this month and hopefully you’ll find it double entertaining to make up for the lost post!
Birthday Shenanigans
My birthday was the 15th, so you know it was all about what I wanted to do that Thursday! I ate a lot, which is exactly what I wanted to do. My husband and my best friend went with me to Katalina’s (all hail those pancake balls tbh), and my dad, his husband, and my sister took me to Brassica for lunch! If you’ve never been to either of those places, I highly suggest going to both sometime soon.
I usually reserve Brassica for special occasions because it’s a bit out of my price range, but it’s worth spending a little extra on it. The closest thing I can compare it to is a Mediterranean Chipotle. I love the bacon sandwich with extra veggies!
Katalina’s is known for their Pancake Balls (which you can get filled with Nutella and other yummy fillings), but they have other delicious breakfast and food choices that are almost all sourced locally. The highlight besides the obvious is their coffee. Thunderkiss Coffee is what they sell there, and it’s very strong. In theory, I would use more sugar to offset the strength of the coffee, but I actually really enjoy the rich, earthy taste of it. Plus, the name of it is cool, so you know I’m all about it.
My next stop on my birthday adventure was an all-you-can-eat sushi place called Sushi Time. Erin, one of my best friends, was also born in August. Her birthday is four days after mine, so we always try to do something together in between mine and her day. She came up with the idea of sushi, so the friend group got together and absolutely destroyed multiple platters of sushi the day after my birthday. It was probably the second best day of my life, right after my wedding day.
My mom came into town complete with cake and cookies the Sunday after my birthday and we went to the mall together with my sister. As always, we had way too much fun. I love when my mom comes into town because it gives me an excuse to go to the mall, something that Matt absolutely detests. I’m convinced that Matt would be happy never leaving the house, but I digress…
The Monday after my birthday (which is technically my Sunday), I got to go to Stump for the first time! Stump is a plant store with two locations. I went to the one in German Village and got two new plants: a new succulent and a jade plant! The people there were so nice and loved hearing about Matt and I’s adventures in plants and Mondays. If you’re interested in a small, locally owned shop that sells trendy and unique plants alike, I would suggest checking them out!
Twins?!
The night I was shoveling sushi down my gullet, my sister-in-law was giving birth to her two new babies. They are her fourth and fifth child, but the first set of twins and the first girl she’s ever had, so I think she’ll be facing a whole new set of challenges this time around.
We met them the Monday after they were born, and they are so dang small! They were born a month early, like me, so I was interested in seeing babies that were similar in size to my birth weight. My parents always drove home the fact that I was small enough to fit in one hand, but I couldn’t imagine palming a baby like that until that Monday. I didn’t get to hold them, but they were indeed small enough to fit in one hand each.
These twins will be the first of the nephews (and niece) to know me as Aunt Mary, since the other four boys just call me “Mary”, and always have. Will I just have them call me “Mary” as well? Or will they call me Aunt Mary, since Matt is Uncle Matt? I guess I’ll find out when they can talk!
For now, the two of us have to go visit them as much as we can! We’re all hoping they get to come home soon, but for now they’re in the hospital. Matt and I will hopefully go back this coming weekend and get to be with them and their parents for a bit longer than we were last time! Last time, we were Fools and parked at a meter because the road to the garage was blocked. We only got to see the babies for a handful of minutes! I still cried all the same at their cute little faces, but hopefully next time I can hold it together, and maybe even get to hold them as well!
Work work work work work…
This month has been very fruitful, work wise. All month I’ve been working with my GM for the annual Big Meeting we have at the beginning of OSU’s semester. As the Administrative Assistant, I get to write (and rewrite, and rewrite again) the meeting notes and make sure we keep to time. It’s been admittedly fun to keep up with the mind of my GM, who is very all over the place when it comes to her ideas. As someone who is also all over the place, it’s interesting to see someone else’s organization process.
I’ve also been doing lots of orientations because with the new semester comes new employees. I like doing these orientations now; when I first started doing them, I knew people could tell I wasn’t comfortable with what I was saying. Now that I’ve had time to practice, my orientations get done a lot faster and they’re more precise and to the point. It’s helped that all of the people we’ve hired this summer kind of already know the drill when it comes to Skyline. I try to bring some of my own personal humor to the orientations, just so people aren’t bored with the content (because it is kind of boring if we’re being honest). I’d like to think that people think I’m funny enough to keep making jokes while I’m telling them how the job works, but I usually don’t ask for a review at the end of the orientation, so I don’t really know if they like my goofy approach to the monologue. To me, I just wanna have fun doing whatever, so I always have a good time with the orientations.
As for the serving side of my job, it’s been pretty great there as well. Big tippers, college kids coming back, and huge groups of families dropping said college kids off have really helped my bills this month.
A lot of my regulars heard that it was my birthday a few weeks ago, so a few got me cards and little gifts. At first, I couldn’t believe that they would not only remember my birthday, but like me enough to buy me something. The more I thought about it though, the more I realized that I would most likely gift them a meal on their birthday, so why is it any different that they would buy me something small? Obviously, I am very grateful and still a little surprised that strangers would come to care about me enough to do something so thoughtful! It really made my birthday that much more special.
I also got the news this past week that I’m officially getting a manager shirt! Everyone already thinks I’m a manager, but I’m just in a general leadership role. From now on, however, I think that this means my extra titles in the workplace have more weight. I’m pretty pumped about it, and I know I’ll probably have a moment as soon as I get my new fancy shirt!
My Girl is Growin’ Up and Destroying People
One of my longest and dearest friends, Kara, is moving to Boston in September, so my friends and I threw her a surprise going away party this month! I was honestly surprised I was able to keep the secret from her, seeing as I’m the worst secret keeper ever. Luckily, I have the memory of a goldfish, so I had honestly forgotten it was a surprise party until a few days before the event.
We ended up pulling it off, and she was surprised! Yay! The night was very chill and relaxing, but since I had to be up early the next day, I left the party early. Boo. According to them, they had a really good night! I’m happy we were able to have a special night for Kara before she starts her Big Girl Job in September. It’s bittersweet, but mostly exciting! She’s worked hard to get to where she’s about to be, and I know she’ll thrive down there, doin’ big things and such.
Music Obsessions
Active Child, one of my favorite artists, released a new single called “All Eyes On You”, his first single since the birth of his daughter and the first with his new label, Sony Masterworks. I can’t begin to express how excited I am to have new Active Child music! He’s one of those artists that’s too unique to describe, and that’s mostly why I haven’t written about one of his albums on my “Top Albums” series. It would just be a lot of “this is just SO GOOD go listen”, so honestly, just go listen to the single, it’s so freakin’ good. Maybe when his new album comes out, I can write a review? We’ll see!
There’s a few new-to-me artists on this month’s playlist, such as Joji and Late June, that really caught my ear this month. Most of the new-to-me artists are focused on electronic/dreamy pop, which is a genre I’ve been getting into slowly over the course of this year.
The other artists are my tried and true artists, such as Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy (who’s solo stuff is seriously so good, go check it all out) and Björk, and then other songs you may have heard on the radio this month from Five Seconds of Summer and Cardi B. If you’re interested in listening to what I’ve been into this month, go check it out!!
Two Things I Thought I’d Never Get Into
This summer, I got into two hobbies that I didn’t think I would really like too much, but ended up loving. My family is very artistic and my dad in particular has the biggest green thumb I’ve ever seen (y’all should see his garden!), so I figured why not try my hand in both raising plants and painting a few cool things?
Turns out, I really enjoy both of those things! I have lots of plants now that I didn’t have at the beginning of the summer, and I really got into buying more this month. I was gifted a snake plant from my dad, who’s already growing a lil baby up in the new pot I put it in. I also bought a jade jewel plant (I think that’s what it’s called!) from Stump for my birthday, which I talked about earlier! I’m also propagating one of my succulents, and this month they’ve finally started to grow lil buds, so it’s pretty exciting.
I also have been painting a lot more as well, whenever I have the time. It’s a fun activity I used to do when I was little that now I want to get better at. It’s relaxing to come home and paint a picture, something I thought I would never really like to do. The other day, I took a class taught by my longtime friend Asher and we ended up painting for seven hours. It was so much fun! I learned so much from him that I can’t wait to explore on my own.
I’ve always said that hobbies are important to get into in order to keep life from being too stale, and I think that these two particular hobbies are pretty fun! They’re something that I can truly appreciate after I’m all done with the project, and I think that’s pretty cool.
So that’s it! I’ve had a full August and a fun summer, but I’m excited to jump into September. I’m 100% looking forward to the cooler weather, and maybe I can even get into some apple picking (my favorite autumn activity)! We’ll see where the wind takes me…in the meantime, follow me on Twitter for Daily Mary Shenanigans!
