5 things for Friday (vol. 13)

It’s been a really uneventful week, and I felt like I was scraping the bottom of the barrel to come up with something to write.

So I decided that this week I would share what I’ve been listening, watching, reading, and thinking about.

Listening

Working from home, I always have to have noise in the background. Enter Spotify.

(Side topic: I wish you could claim Spotify as a necessary WFH expense. But myyyy wouldn’t that piss off all the folks who hate the idea of working from home in the first place?)

Although I have a gigantic starred playlist, my mood varies a lot. Most of the time I start a radio based on a single song. Or a mate at work recommends something, I play it, get focused on work, and Spotify just keeps doing its thing after. Sometimes, if I’m having a bad day, I intentionally choose a rock or punk playlist.

This week, it’s been a lot about Amy Lee, of Evanescence.

She’s been on high rotation, and sparked discussions of who had the better voice – Amy Lee, Hayley Williams (Paramore), or Kelly Clarkson. So far Amy has won the vote for being able to give you emotional chills from her voice alone, Kelly for more mainstream power.

The song I have stuck in my head right now is Broken, which she actually recorded with Seether. I had been living under a rock and didn’t realise she and the lead singer were dating at the time. The song is about his daughter, who he had to leave behind in South Africa when he went to the US to try and break into the music scene.

I love this song. It definitely brings the feels when you’re feeling sad and missing someone.

Reading

I was shocked to realise that I spent the entire month reading a single book. No spoilers, I still need to post my monthly reading roundup. But what I can say is that I was ready for something different and compelling.

Last month I joined a new book club called Smut Club. The name made me laugh. There’s no pressure to read the books, but it’s mainly just a way for women to make some new friends and have a bit of a laugh together.

The book they’re reading at the moment is The Poison Daughter, by Sheila Masterson.

I’m really enjoying this. It’s romantasy, and the risk with new fantasy books is the pain of trying to understand all the world-building. Some books you pick up and it feels like the first few chapters are trying to create a mind map, or you’re flicking back and forth to maps at the start of the book to work out where everything is.

This feels a bit easier than that.

There are still a lot of main characters, and a lot of moving parts, but it feels reasonable. And it’s also easy to fall in love with the two main characters and root for them.

This is a book I look forward to reading each night in bed. I’m actually taking my lunch breaks away from my desk and sitting there reading instead of eating at my desk while working.

You know it’s a good book when you’re already spamming a friend (who thankfully doesn’t mind spoilers) with a bunch of theories.

Watching

When I was a kid, I grew up watching fun, silly family shows on TV. One of my favourites was “It’s a Knockout!”, where teams would represent the Australian states and take each other on in random obstacle course challenges. It was silly, harmless, and a lot of fun to watch.

(Oh my god, watching that and seeing a completely unnecessary close-up shot of a cheerleader’s butt, whaaat?! Wonder how many other things I missed as a kid?)

As an adult with a child, I’ve been looking for something similar for us to watch for some family TV time.

The pickings are slim, you guys!

We’ve watched some non-silly amazing shows, like Alone, where people are dropped off in remote conditions until it’s the last one standing. We’ve also watched the cooking shows, like Is It Cake? and Nailed It.

And I highly rate those.

But they’re not silly.

Enter Wonka’s The Golden Ticket.

Our son has seen the original Willy Wonka, and he loves it. So when we started watching this and saw a lot of the throwbacks to that movie, it was a lot of fun. There are a lot of fun and silly challenges that made us laugh.

But then the usual politics and social games started, and it stopped being as much fun.

sigh.

So if anyone has a good, family-friendly, silly show we could watch, please let me know!

Buying

This year I became a laundry addict.

Meaning, my sister introduced me to Spa Day on Reddit. I became obsessed with soaking things, buying Omo Ultimate laundry powder, and building my collection of Cloudy Ammonia. I’ve also talked incessantly to people about it, and got a few of them addicted too.

Monday mornings became exciting because it meant I had cricket whites from my husband’s game the day before. Getting them sparkling clean became my new personal challenge.

If you thought I had an exciting life, you thought wrong.

My sister has spoken up again, and once again, I’m invested.

Enter Gear Guard.

KismaiAesthetics, the Reddit god of laundry, has reviewed it here. Essentially, it’s a liquid that targets biological residue – think sweat, skin cells, etc.

Now, I love my husband dearly, but it drives me nuts what shirts he chooses to mow the lawn in. Or fix chainsaws, or a number of other things that cause him to sweat. Basically, he’s a laundry addict’s dream, because there’s always a backlog of insanely stinky shirts to soak.

My bottle of Gear Guard arrived this week, and I had been stockpiling his shirts in anticipation. I didn’t soak the shirts; I put them straight in (with Omo Ultimate, of course) to wash with a capful of Gear Guard.

NO. SMELL.

GONE.

It was so, so easy.

(I just realised how many words in this post I’ve dedicated to laundry – whoops. Told you I was addicted).

I’m only going to be using this when I’ve got some serious stuff to clean, and not with everyday loads. We wash too often for that.

But I am so, so excited for this.

Doing

I’m walking! This month Elisabeth over at The Optimistic Musings of a Pessimist is hosting the 6th Cool Bloggers Walking Club.

The goal is 10 minutes of intentional movement each day for the month. I’ve got some very cool places that I intend to walk this month, so thought it would be super fun to join in.

We kicked things off this week with a family walk to drop my son to vacation care. It’s school holidays, but unfortunately we still have to work. It also means that I can’t walk our dog every morning, since I have to go inside to sign my son in. But since my husband joined us, it meant our dog could come with us, and he was SUPER excited. There were quite a few zoomies around the house before it was time to leave.

What are you listening to, reading, or doing this month? Any recommendations for a good family TV show?