It’s officially the end of 2026 Q2! Oh boy. Is it spring? Summer? Is the old world dying and the new world struggling to be born? No idea. But I do know that I’m glad to be done with the last 6 months.

Are the trials and tribulations of these past months wrapped up? Not in the least! But it at least feels like things have reached a stable point. I’ve signed a lease to stay on in my current apartment for another year… which, tbh, I kind of hate, but I’m not in any position to upend my entire life and settle somewhere new with how this year has gone. Fingers crossed for next year. In the meantime, renovations on my dead neighbor’s unit have started, my downstairs neighbor is moving out, and I have new neighbors who share a wall but do not yet understand how the sound of 3 youths and 1 large dog transfers in an old converted industrial building. Oof, it’s going to be a summer.

Though, for the sake of balance, I feel like I should affirm that there have been good things in this first half of the year. Like, after years of urgent care and mystery illness Irma is finally on a path toward recovery, and she has the energy to get out and be active again (which is good for me because I sure need the nudge!). And I finally have that new ceiling fan after a year+ without, which is doing a solid job at keeping my upstairs tolerable even on the hot days. Plus I’ve gotten to have some fun travel adventures, get out to see new movies or try new restaurants, and spend some great quality time out with friends, with plans for much, much more in the months ahead. It always helps to have something good to look forward to.

June itself is wrapping up nicely for me. It helps that it’s raining this weekend… any rain we get this year should be considered a blessing, what with how warm/dry it’s predicted to be. At least, that’s true for up here in my part of the country; ymmv. I’ve actually set a proper schedule for myself for the week ahead, for the first time in months. Once I realized I was in burnout, I deleted alllll the recurring items from my calendar so that I could focus on recovery instead of being reminded of all the things I was failing to do (haha FUN). But, it helped, and now I get to reset (or redesign) all those productivity hacks that I know work for me, when I’m not being messed with by outside forces.

There’s a lot of ambiguity in my life still, which does make me anxious. But, six months down and six more to go, and I feel encouraged about the back half of the year. But I’m still keeping my fingers crossed behind my back as I type that, and knocking on wood, and doing whatever else I can to ensure good things come my way.

☑️ Done and Done - Didn’t make it to the coveted noon-time yoga class due to disruption from renovations at the neighboring apartment, so it’s been at-home bodywork this past week. Except for one very reasonable big walk/run with Irma after the temps dropped. Had a few productive work sessions. Starting prepping my next crafty project. Did some online gaming with a friend during the high temps, went out to a nice dinner and drinks later in the week, and met up with a friend for some rainy-day cocktails to close things out.

📋 Coming up - Spending time early in the week wrapping up loose support and communication threads. Scheduled a big plant day for myself, as my houseplants sorely need some attention and that sounds like a lovely way to start the new month. The bestie is turning 40, which will require tacos. And most likely staying in Friday-Sunday and keeping Irma rich with gabapentin due to the holiday weekend (but maybe a happy hour on Friday before I go hermit).

📺 Watching - This week I watched two TV shows. One was Off Campus, based on a book series of the same name (aff link). It’s kind of like if She’s All That was set in college and Freddy Prinze Jr. was captain of the ice hockey team, and Rachel Leigh Cook was completely aware of being both hot and nerdy, and then they process their traumas together. The other was Citadel season 2; I had really enjoyed season 1 and the related series, and was looking forward to getting back to that main plot. As the season started, the score seemed to lend more toward comedy than action drama, which seemed odd until Matt Barry showed up. But by the end of the season it’s mostly back in serious action territory.

🎵 Listening - Another excellent new release dropped in the realms of dungeon synth this past week: VII by fief. Fief is a favourite and leans in to the “doot doot” medieval-type of synth, and I found this album to be particularly upbeat but having a lot of nice variety.

👾 Gaming - I jumped back into Diablo IV for a bit this past week, and realized how very far behind I am on the season. 😅 So while I sadly won’t be finishing the current one (which is too bad because I was enjoying the story line, but some of the mechanics were iffy) I’m looking forward to the Season of Death Awakening that starts in a few days. It’s also the Steam Summer Sale, wherein we Steam aficionados add 3-17 new games to our library that we probably won’t play any time within the next year, if ever.

☕ Drinking - I’ve had two mezcal-based cocktails this week, and both were delightful in different ways. One was the Pandan Old Fashioned at Scotch Lodge (smokey with a sweet but light coconut twist). The other was the Mezcal Negroni at Side Eye (not as smokey, balanced with pomegranate and a light rose element). This can only mean one thing: I’m in my mezcal cocktail era, so if you know of others in the Portland region, or have a good recipe, hmu.

👕 Wearing - Started the week wearing backless dresses and tank tops, ended it wearing a raincoat and sweaters. Welcome to Oregon?

I haven’t posted any sticky notes for a while—the random links to interesting things I’ve come across online—since my newsletter platform stats show me the links are rarely getting clicked. But I realize a lot of y’all are using VPNs or apps that might be blocking tracking links, so maybe you are clicking through? Idk! But I hope you do? There’s a little poll at the bottom of this section; please do let me know.

🖥️ The kids are alright building cyberdecks! I have seen some amaaazing examples on IG. And, idk, literally every cyberdeck I’ve seen was built by a woman? Maybe my algo just has a bias for hot femmes and their cyberdecks. Gods I want to make one, but I can’t decide what I want to make it in. (The kids building cyberdecks are definitely alright, imo.)

🧘‍♀️ I think this article about why it’s good for everyone to sit on the floor for 30min a day is spot on, but it’s also trying to be so accessible it’s missing a key influence in the practice: floor sitting is super common in autistic and neurodivergent people (esp. children who haven’t yet been conditioned to “sit like a normal person in a chair”). The article talks about floor sitting enhancing proprioceptive grounding and also encouraging fidgiting which is good for your musculoskeletal system… something autistic bodies inherently struggle with due to a high comorbidity with other chronic issues like Ehlers Danlos. Floor is good, floor is safe, floor is cozy.

🥚 Why are we growing chicken embryos in translucent 3D-printed eggshells? Is this something we need to be doing?? I’m sure it’s super interesting from a scientific perspective in terms of documenting embryonic development, but also. This is how you get Jurassic Park. This is how you get those goo tubes in the Matrix. Do you want to be grown in a goo tube? Me neither.

📚 As someone who spent most of April just disassociating via one of the best-selling romantasy series out there, I found a lot to agree with in the essay “How I Learned to Read Way, Way More.” While I haven’t been able to maintain the pace of that month in the weeks since, I am pleased to be consistently opting in to reading being part of my daily routine again.

🪭Speaking of ceiling fans. If you enjoy a super interesting deep dive on a topic that won’t demonstrably provide any usefulness to your life, there’s this great hour-long video on the history of ceiling fans, on YouTube.

Well I probably won’t get any more rain this week, alas, but at least it will still be mostly overcast with cooler temps. Yes Mercury is about to go retrograde until late-July, but I remain hopefully about not just the week ahead but the whole month. Praying for no surprises that aren’t obvious blessings.

Whatever you have going on in the week ahead, I hope it too feels like a blessing. Don’t forget to clean out the filters on your air conditioner. See you again next week.

xox,