*Better late than never!
Shout-out to my fellow moms who are 50 and still have an elementary schooler at home. Well, no more of that for me!
As of May 22, my daughter has leveled up to the junior-senior high school in our district. She and three of her peers were honored last month at the Banquet of Champions at University of Nebraska – Lincoln for placing in the Stock Market Game. My daughter and her teammate won 2nd place out of 16 other elementary school teams. The field of competition definitely got bigger at the middle and high school categories. The high school teams that placed 1st, 2nd and 3rd did so against over 500 other teams in the state!
Because the 1st place winners in the elementary category couldn’t attend to present their winning strategy, my daughter and her teammate were asked to present instead for elementary. I was nervous about them because these are two pretty humble kiddos. But they got up there in front of 125+ people and did it without any hesitation! I truly hope we can leave a brighter, better world for the Class of 2031, as well as those who will come before and after. Speaking of the Class of 2031…
Cross-Stitching
My focus piece is Addie’s Window, artwork by Scott Gustafson, charted by Heaven & Earth Designs (HAED). I’m stitching this pattern one over one (that is one strand of thread over one square of fabric) on 25-count Easy Grid Lugana with most of the called-for DMCs. The goal is to complete 1 page a month. I fell a little short of that in April, but completed page 3 by May 3. Now page 4 is just about done!
My lunch break/on-the-go stitch is Tokyo’s Haunted Store by Cross-Stitch Curiosity, stitching two over one on an 18-count navy Aida with all the called-for DMC colors. I have also focused on it on Friday nights, so it has gotten more progress:
I’m looking for the perfect fabric to start a birthday piece for my boss. Preferably a cream-colored fabric with some green mottling. I’ll be visiting my local needlework shop for that soon!
Reading
This month I finished That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly Lemming. It was just the kind of silly book I needed, especially since our county Democratic party started a book club to read more serious fare. I’m not counting book club reads toward my reading goal this year, so they won’t show on my StoryGraph.
I also read Drop Dead Sisters by Amelia Coombs at such a fast pace, I think I finished it in a week or so. Probably because I wanted to know what happened – and I was right about who moved the body – both times – as well as pleasantly surprised about the final reveal. It was a good time.
I finally also read Sigil Witchery by Laura Tempest Zakroff (it had been sitting on my bedside table for quite some time), and marked it up with sticky notes for future reference. Highly recommend to anyone who wants to start working with sigils.
Gaming
This is something I haven’t done much of lately. Without a TTRPG currently going, I should probably pick up my Nintendo again. I’ve had Pokémon Arceus open on my Switch, but haven’t touched it in months. Oops. Probably time to close the game, check the Switch for updates, restart it, and then get back to Arceus!
Genealogy
I realized my list of brick walls and research questions needed updating, so I did that. Now it’s so much smaller than the original list, thanks to all the Italian vital records I found recently. However, the questions that remain are still big, difficult ones. I need to look at my timelines on each ancestor in question and brainstorm all the places I haven’t conducted research yet.
For now, I can’t wait for the end of the school year, big progress on projects, and long, lazy (I hope) weekends!
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