This is one of those weeks were time has just flown right by. I’ve been very busy at work, similar to the early days of the pandemic, fielding lots of phone calls and trying to create plans that are safe and sustainable. It got me thinking, though, about how much has changed since March. And I don’t mean the big obvious stuff like not traveling or going out to eat. I mean the simple daily stuff that is just . . . different. Since it’s Thursday I came up with 3 things that I have pared down since the pandemic.

1. My makeup routine. I always wore foundation every day. Or at least every day that I left the house. Primer, liquid foundation, powder. It was how I rolled. And also eye make up and lip gloss. Now, though? I wear a mask a lot at work and the foundation, well, not only does it get all over the mask but it’s also just not that necessary now that people can only see my eyes and forehead. Same for the lip gloss.
2. The jewelry I wear. I have always worn my wedding ring and engagement ring along with my grandmother’s wedding ring on my other hand plus earrings and several bracelets on my left wrist. When we were first shut down and I was working from home I stopped wearing everything but my wedding band and those bracelets. No Apple watch. No earrings. No extra rings. The first time I wore earrings and then put on a mask the earrings caught on it and I haven’t worn them since. I mostly don’t bother with my engagement ring and grandmother’s wedding ring either. I do wear the Apple watch pretty consistently now, though.
3. Weekly grocery shopping. I went to the grocery store every Friday (with Jackie once he was old enough) whether I really needed to or not. Sometimes I bought a lot, sometimes a little, but I always went. Since the pandemic I can stretch out my grocery shopping to last 2 or 3 weeks. Once I even managed to not go for 4 weeks. It does require having someone fetch milk but otherwise I can manage. Sure, there are often things I want but the truth is there are rarely things I truly need if I plan ahead and watch my supplies. Not going every week has saved a bunch of money, too.

Have you changed your habits and routines in unexpected ways since March? I’d love to hear about it. And don’t forget to link your post below if you wrote one for today.

I held back 3 photos from my post yesterday so that I could use them for today. Behold, three sunrises from our house in Maine:

Same location. Mostly about the same time of day (between 4:55am and 5:10am). Yet vastly different.

I don’t have a favorite, do you?

If you wrote a post for this Thursday please include your link below and thanks for joining us.

I saw this photo on Facebook the other day and that woman reminded me so much of my grandmother that I immediately decided I would use it for a Three On Thursday post. Here are three things I remember about my grandmother’s house:

1. Going swimming. My grandparents lived a block from the beach and when I visited them in the summer we would walk to the beach after lunch (after we waited the required 30 minutes, of course, hahaha) to go swimming. I remember catching tadpoles in milk bottles. I remember listening to my grandmother chat with her friends while they watched us swim. I remember hanging out with my cousins from Maryland and Virginia when they would come for vacation every August.
2. Sitting around her kitchen table on Sunday nights. My parents split up when I was 2 and my brother and I spent Sundays with our dad. My favorite Sundays were the ones where we visited my grandparents. We would go for Sunday dinner (always a roast of some sort) and then spend the afternoon playing games, going for a walk, visiting the next door neighbor’s farm animals and more. Before we left my grandmother would put out a light Sunday supper. It was often left overs from dinner or sandwich makings and it was always delicious and fun. I can remember feeling like all was right in the world when I sat in that cozy kitchen with my family.
3. Sleeping on a cot in my grandparent’s bedroom. They had twin beds (I know, right?) and would set up a cot for me in their room when we stayed over. I loved being in there and seeing my grandmother’s things on the top of her bureau. I loved waking up in the morning and seeing my grandmother putting on her robe and slippers as she headed to the kitchen to make coffee. I remember they had a cat that liked to sleep at the foot of my bed but she would pounce on me if I so much as moved a toe and her claws were sharp!

There are lots of other things I remember like blueberry picking (and my grandmother’s amazing blueberry cake), watching fireflies in the backyard, running for the ice cream truck, block parties and Labor Day parades, Christmas Eve smorgasbords, learning to braid cardamom bread, and more. But the thing I remember most is that I always felt loved there. I always felt safe there. And it was one of my favorite places to be.

If you wrote a post for today please share a link with us.

Do you ever have those nagging things that you should do but you just don’t make the time? I’m talking about simple things that might take a moment longer than you’d like but in the end will actually save you time and/or money? Yeah. Me too. And today I’m thinking about 3 of them in particular.

1. Fixing the receipt printer at work. Right now it doesn’t advance the paper as much as it should when printing a receipt and that means we have to hit the button to advance it by hand. Normally this isn’t a big deal but these days we need those receipts to be long enough to go into the books and not fall out. Have we made the time to figure out how to program the printer to automatically make the receipts longer? Nope. Because it’s a pain in the ass. But would it save us time if we just spent the time making it right? You bet it would.
2. Installing my new Quip toothbrush head and battery. Are you familiar with Quip? It’s a great electric toothbrush and a great price and they automatically send you a new head and battery every 3 months. My latest refill came about 3 weeks ago. It literally takes less than 2 minutes to take out the old brush head, clean it up, install a new battery, and attach the new brush head. Have I done it? Nope.
3. Cleaning my make up brushes. I have an awesome cleaner that I buy from Senegence, it even works to remove built up foundation on my foundation brush. And it takes minutes to clean my brushes and I know I should do this once/week. My make up goes on easier and looks better when I just take a few moments to clean the brushes. But do I? Nope.

Hopefully writing this post will inspire me to get these things (and others that I’m sure I’m ignoring) done!

If you wrote a post for today please include your link below. Thanks for participating!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!Click here to enter

The other night (err, morning) when I was lying in bed awake I was thinking of beauty products I loved as a teenager. (Don’t even try to figure out why I started thinking of this, I have no explanation for you.) I remembered, not surprisingly, three in particular.

This shampoo:

Just as it claimed, it smelled great! I actually went back and forth between this one and Lemon Up (remember how the cap was a lemon?) and Earth Born Strawberry Essence. My hair was long and straight (it was the 1970s) and I smelled fruity.

This deodorant:

I lobbied hard to get my mother to buy this for me. I remember that I was in 7th grade and I was convinced I must have BO (I’m pretty sure I didn’t) and I wanted this in blue because it (get this) matched my bedroom. Yep, I had a blue dotted swiss bedspread. So I finally got the okay to get this and I bought the blue and then . . . the joke was on me because the colors were actually representative of the scent and the blue was . . . unscented. Damn. After about a week I tried to convince my mom that I had used it all up, I even went so far as to wipe a lot of it on tissues (I think I went through a whole box of kleenex) but my mom was wise to my tricks and it was a long time before I got to buy deodorant again.

This perfume:

I literally remember when this ad was in Seventeen magazine and I chose the dress I wore to my junior prom based on this photo. Yep. White eyelet and off the shoulder with a blue ribbon running through it. Talk about sentimental memories! Was there a teen girl alive who didn’t wear this in the 1970s? The marketing was spot on and I had not only the perfume but also the powder and the lotion. I took layering scent very seriously, apparently.

This was actually a really fun post to write and it brought back not just memories of the products I used but also memories of my mom using Jean Nate after her bath and also Enjoli – the perfume for women who could bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan! Hello women’s liberation marketing. I hope this sparked some fun memories for you, too!

If you wrote a post for today please include a link below and thanks for joining in.