May Mishmash

It's been a long month.

Hello! My May has had fun times and challenging times. Let me elaborate below.

Food!

• Using this recipe as a very loose guide, I made a great veggie pasta bake! Two zucchinis, a half pound of mushrooms, and a couple garlic cloves get chopped and sautéed (I also threw in some chopped up leftover steamed broccoli), and then tossed with half a pound of almost cooked through penne, a lot of pesto, a healthy glug of half and half or whatever other creamy liquid you have on hand. I put half of it into a large casserole dish and dotted it with cubes of mozzarella and dollops of ricotta, then topped with the rest of the pasta+veg mix, more mozz, more ricotta, and then covered it all with parmesan. Bake at 400 for about 25 minutes and it is so dang delicious. Sort of a lazy springy lasagna situation.

Books!

• https://bookshop.org/shop/michelleflook Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

  • I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home by Jami Attenberg is a memoir that I read (rather than listened to) by an author of mostly fiction. I have read two of Jami’s books, All Grown Up and All This Could Be Yours, both of which I gave a rare 5 star rating on Goodreads! I will read the rest of her books in due time. I also follow her on Twitter and she is a delightful human with a cute dog, and after reading this memoir I feel we really could be good friends. I love a memoir that really lets you get to know the person, you know? Oftentimes I feel that memoirs are focusing on one particular moment in someone’s life, or one specific theme that runs through their life, or some event that happened that affected everything, but rarely do they let you into the person’s head and heart and give you the impression that you know them and could be friends with them, in real life. So, in conclusion, I liked this book, and I like Jami.

  • Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, another book by an author whose previous books I have loved and given five stars to (Station Eleven!). I was surprised when the second section of the book started in with a scene and characters that seemed familiar to me. It took me a minute to figure out that this book was tying into her last book, The Glass Hotel! What a great surprise. This book is short (less than 250 pages) and is a fast read. I need to go back and read her earlier books, because she is a really wonderful writer!

  • Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson was a great palate cleanser after the above. Funny, weird, sweet, clever, and quick! Dark humor fans will enjoy it!

Projects!

• On the below mentioned trip to AZ, I re-learned how to make friendship bracelets! I want to call it Mini-macrame or Microme… if you need a very cool hanging planter for your dollhouse, hit me up!

  

Miscellaneous!

• I visited Scottsdale, Arizona with a group of girlfriends and had a blast. Plenty of sun, lots of laughs, the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in, great food, an epic spa day, and just an all around wonderful vacation.

  

• Got hooked on NY Times Spelling Bee, thanks to a couple of those ladies up there, so my daily game play goes like this: Heardle, Framed, Wordle, Quordle, Spelling Bee, and then when I finish that or give up, I do the NY Times Crossword. This is good for my brain, right?

• We watched Candy on Hulu and somehow I hadn’t heard of this particular murdery story, and it’s a wild one. Apparently there is another miniseries coming out soon on HBO about the same true crime story, and of course I will watch it also.

• We finished Ozark on Netflix and **SPOILER ALERT** my favorite tv character of all time died. I knew it would happen but it still bummed me out. The ending of the show was fine, makes sense and all, but dang.

• On a more serious note, I think most people reading this know that I had surgery in the middle of this month to remove a cancerous tumor in my right breast. The bulk of May was spent preparing for and recovering from this surgery. I don’t mean to include this as an afterthought, but I wasn’t even sure if I would share about this “publicly” on the internet. But I am learning more and more that I value transparency, and don’t feel right keeping this big life event to myself, or tip-toeing around it. The surgery went well, without any complications and incisions are healing well. We got a call from the surgeon a few days after surgery letting us know that the lymph nodes that were removed had no cancer, and the tumor was removed with clear margins, meaning no traces of cancer remaining! Woohoo!! Such a relief. I am immensely grateful for the support and generosity of all the people in my life, my chosen family, and feel quite lucky overall to have caught this early. Should be hearing from oncology soon to set up an appointment to discuss next steps (radiation likely, not sure what else yet). I am looking forward to a cancer-free summer of long walks with Remi, sunshine, and friends.

Remi!

Always Be Nappin’ is her motto.

I love your comments and messages, feel free to say hello and tell me how your May has been or share something you’ve enjoyed this month!

Goodbye, until next month!

xoM