This has been a short “week” since my last update was on Monday after our week long camping trip above the Methow Valley. The week absolutely flew by, and it is somehow already Friday again. Time is strange right now – both so fast and so disjointed. A bit like time with a newborn, except I have even less grasp on what day it is right now.

PS. there are federal officers headed to Seattle to “deal with” the protests. After what has gone down in Portland, I am so scared and angry to hear that they are coming here. It is not okay. Then again, nothing about this administration is okay. We just continue to hurtle down the path of a dystopian novel. I’m glad we don’t live in the city proper, but sometimes I wish we lived even further out.

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Friday’s Frugal Five

1. We harvested our homegrown garlic this past week. I’ve spent a lot more time in the garden this year, and it absolutely shows. The garlic I pulled up is so huge, as well as easy to peel and super tasty. There’s a reason I’ve decided to call our little homestead Allium Acres – I definitely grow garlic and berries better than anything else.

Local food is especially a priority for us right now, growing our COVID victory garden for food security, and this summer is shaping up to be by far my biggest harvest yet in the nine years we’ve been in our home. With continued information where we learn that essential agricultural workers – almost all low income, POC – are especially high risk, it makes me that much more interested in opting out of the conventional farming system we have in this country. It isn’t sustainable, it isn’t equitable, and it will continue to become more problematic as time goes on.

(another plug for Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, especially now)

2. I sent the email to his preschool, and the kiddo is officially not going back to preschool before kindergarten starts.After four and a half years of his life spent part time at that same place, it feels a bit heart-wrenching to have no closure in his leaving. I’m hopeful that at some point we can go back to say goodbye to his favorite teachers, but for now, it seems for the best that we keep him out.

With that, the school district has finally announced that they are beginning the school year remote. That said, I’m hesitating starting his K-12 experience in the situation we are in with the uncontrolled pandemic in this country. I’m leaning toward just homeschooling him on our own this year, and beginning public school once things get back to “normal.” If anyone has input or advice here, I’d love to hear it. There seem to be no good options.

3. Through lots of hard work with the restaurant itself as well as focus groups, my restaurant Facebook group, and the city staff and council, the City of Redmond has a ribbon cutting this afternoon for their very first “Streeterie” at the Redmond Bar and Grill (4:30pm if you want to join us – with a mask!).

In order to support socially distanced outdoor dining (shown to be the safest beyond take out), they were able to build up a patio space in lieu of two on-street parking spaces. I am thrilled for this option to create spaces for people not vehicles, and I hope this spurs more businesses to create similar set ups (and maybe even for future summers, even without COVID to factor in).

Want to help support this kind of thing? The Greater Redmond TMA is a nonprofit board I serve on whose goal is to advocate for better walking, biking, and transit in the city.

4. I am in a friend’s wedding later this year and we went to try on and pick out bridesmaids dresses. I never went to try on wedding dresses myself since my mother in law made my dress, so it was definitely interesting to have my first experience be one during COVID where we were all required to wear masks, distance, and not touch any of the dresses other than the ones we were trying on.

All that to say, I made my first clothing purchase in almost three and a half years. It is a bridesmaids dress though, so I feel that the spirit of the ban still holds. What do you all say? It definitely holds with my original reasoning for the ban back in 2017. And, of course, it was on sale, so I saved forty dollars over the original price, and my mother in law will make the alterations instead of the $140+ we were quoted.

5. I took our dog to the vet for a cardiology check up, which is a whole heck of a lot more expensive than a regular vet check up. It’s been three years since she was first diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy, and we are so lucky to still have her around.

She’s doing well still, but her heart was a bit enlarged since things were first fully under control in 2018, so the vet recommended that we up her dosage to three times a day from twice a day. I asked to see if they had another option that might be more affordable, and while he said he doubted it, he checked. It turned out that there is another online pet med pharmacy that will save us twenty five dollars a month over what we were previously paying, including the 50% increase in pills. Absolutely worth the ask.

Exercise Update

I went for a run Wednesday, and while it was cooler than the earlier days this week, it was quite humid and it wasn’t the most fun run. I meant to run with the kiddo on Thursday, but he didn’t want to go in the morning and then we just didn’t go, though we did go for a walk.

Otherwise, I have spent a serious amount of time in the garden this past week. I have been attempting to pull a ridiculous number of dandelions out of our front lawn – clearly our priority is on the food plans and not the grass. We have so many right now that our roommate thought we were growing them on purpose. Oops. For the bees?

How was your week? How are you all holding up?