What's happening in my world, here and now:

clock and book

On my mind...

My taxes. Not because I need to do them, but because I just finished them. Filed them yesterday morning. My brain is still mulling over numbers, deductions, credits, and crap I really don't like to think about. Jim is the numbers person in our relationship; I'm more the words person. But because the majority of the messy parts related to filing are due to my freelancing and because I have more time to dedicate to the task, I'm the one charged with doing the dirty deed each year. With the help of tax software, of course. Because, as I mentioned, I'm not a numbers person.

Reading...

Last week I finished a lovely book titled As Close To Us As Breathing by Elizabeth Polinar, a bittersweet saga about a Jewish family and the love and loss throughout generations. I highly recommend it.

Now I'm reading The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Steadman. I first became interested in the book after seeing the trailer for the film based in it, which comes out in September. I shared the trailer with Brianna (my oldest daughter), who immediately bought the book and devoured it.

I'm 100+ pages into the book and the movie, so far, follows it closely. Brianna and I agreed we'll have a mother/daughter date to see it together.

Watched...

Last week Jim and I watched SPOTLIGHT, winner of Best Picture in the 2015 Oscar race. My intention was to feature it as a Saturday movie review then found that although it's a stupendous film, I couldn't wrap my head around how to share it with readers, how to say "you gotta see it," due to the subject matter. It's a heavy, heartbreaking — and important — film I'm glad I watched.

So instead of a movie review on that last week, I quickly found something sweet and lighthearted to share instead. That being A ROYAL NIGHT OUT.

Watch for this week's movie review on THE JUNGLE BOOK, which I also recently watched — and will publish tomorrow, as will be the case with all future movie reviews now posting on Friday instead of Saturday.

Working on...

Figuring out and collecting all I need to pack in my Grandma Bag packed for my trip to the desert. I leave Saturday for a 10-day stint with my grandsons, with me in charge of the boys six of those days while Megan and Preston attend a conference in Nashville. I cannot wait! I haven't hugged my boys since leaving them after our Disney Grand Adventure.

Looking forward to...

The aforementioned time in the desert.

And no longer thinking about taxes.

The last photo I took...

Not really the last photo I took (that would be the one you see in the sidebar to the right, from my Instagram account). This one, though, is the photo I last marveled over.

See, I was testing out a new photo editing technique and pulled up a photo from my phone to mess around, choosing one I took from my living room the other day when I noticed a squirrel emerging from its home deep inside the fence post by my gate. The "marveled over" part came when I increased the size of the photo and realized I'd taken a photo of not one squirrel, but two.

brown squirrel and black squirrel

My intended subject was the brown squirrel sneaking out of the space but the enlarged photo showed there was also a little black squirrel, too, following his roommate's lead — a co-habitation situation I hadn't considered, hadn't realized at the time I'd snapped the shot. Funny how such things go unnoticed when focusing on only the expected.

I didn't learn the new technique I set out to try, but I did learn I need to pay more attention when snapping pictures going forward... and expect the unexpected.

Today's question:

What's going on in your here and now?