Hiiii!

We’ve been busy lately, but things will finally start to slow down this week because Cameron’s work will slow down. I’ve gotten 10 Christmas gifts so far, and I hope to finish that this week so that I can take it easier between now and 2025. Beatrix is 4 months this week- whoa! The big 2 are great. Charlie’s as chatty and funny as ever.

In the last email, I shared a list of things I was going to put in this email and, spoiler alert, I didn’t do them all. 😏 But there’s some other fun stuff instead. Hope you enjoy!

The add-on is basically finished. They need to hook up the toilet and clean up the yard trash, but that’s it. And it’s been pretty anticlimactic. All this build-up and stress and frustration mixed with excitement and anticipation, and it’s fizzled out.

Now what?

The way I feel is the same as the days after a big vacation, or after Christmas, or after I’d trained for that triathlon and then completed it. It’s a sigh of relief mixed with a feeling of being directionless.

I found this article from Psychology Today that explains the feeling! It seems like it isn’t everyone who gets this way, and it’s more likely to happen with Type A folks.

Totally random story that just came to mind…

Back in 2007

I was living in NYC but was back in Shreveport (where I went to college) to visit friends. Back in those days, I loved reading Psychology Today and Scientific American magazines, so one day, at Barnes and Noble, I was just skimming through one of those magazines.

To my right, I saw Shooter McGavin from Happy Gilmore! This was a time when they were shooting a lot of movies in the Shreveport area.

Anyway, I only knew him as Shooter McGavin; I didn’t know his real name. And I didn’t want to go up and say, “Hi Mr McGavin!”, I wanted to find his real name. Back then, though, I didn’t have a smart phone: I only had a little Nokia with the T9 texting 😄 I figured, though, that Barnes and Noble was a good place to figure out this guy’s name.

I don’t remember all the places I looked, but eventually I found myself in the section with reference-type books. All in all, it only took me about 10 minutes, but I found a section in a book on pop culture about Happy Gilmore. And there it was: Christopher McDonald.

At that point, I wasn’t even sure if he was still in the store, but sure enough, he was still looking at magazines. I went up to him, said, “You’re Christopher McDonald! What are you doing in Shreveport?” He told me was filming something. He asked why I was in Shreveport, and I told him I had gone to college there and was visiting from NYC. He told me he loved New York and (I think) lived there usually.

Imagine how much easier that would be now, haha! I could just quickly look him up on my phone and then snap a picture with him. But alas, I just have my memory. 😁 

Apple music vs Spotify

I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about this, but back when I was a kid and up through college, I bought tapes or CDs. And that money would go to the artist (ok I’m sure it was split among artist, label, retailer, etc). And I feel like people went to concerts more? I remember going to live music shows sometimes; I saw My Chemical Romance for $25 I think?? I’ve not been to a concert in ages, but I hear they’re WAY more expensive.

Anyway, all this to say, I’ve wonder how artists get paid through streaming services? This article explains it some. And I’ve got a friend in the music industry who told me a lot about it and how he’s affected by it. Something to think about, how to support your favorite artists if you don’t really buy CDs or records or go to live shows!

We’ve used Spotify for a long time. Cam and I had Spotify premium for years. Here are some pros (no cons that I can think of):

• Listen to any song you want, as many times as you want

• “Go to radio” - you can take any song you like, and it will create a radio station based on that song

• Easy to add new songs to your favorite playlists

• Easy to swipe left or right on a song to either add it to or remove it from your liked songs, or add it to your queued songs

Now, to save some money, we decided to switch to the free version of Spotify. The noticeable differences:

• You can add songs to your “liked songs” playlist, but you can ONLY shuffle through the list

• You can not listen to any song in any order

• Limited amount of skips, and you can’t repeat a song

• Ads! That doesn’t bother me so much, though.

• There is no “go to radio” feature, and there’s no queue.

When I am on praise team for church, we get a list of songs to practice. Using the free version of Spotify was really not working for me. If I want to practice a new song, I want to listen to it over and over, but I couldn’t do that. I tried creating a playlist of just the 4-5 songs in the set, but Spotify added about 15 extra songs that became part of the shuffle. It was frustrating!

We decided to get the family plan of Apple Music. It is cheaper than the family version of Spotify premium, so we’ve been using it for the last month. Here are some of the pros and cons:

• Easy to swipe left or right on a song to either add it to or remove it from your liked songs, or add it to your queued songs

• “Create station” - you can take any song you like, and it will create a radio station based on that song

• The song lyrics automatically pop up on most songs, which is handy

• There’s a karaoke feature that lowers the volume of the vocals, though it doesn’t completely cut it out. It helps when I’m trying to learn a new song because I can’t hear the vocals over my own voice.

• If you want to jump to a particular part of a song, you don’t need scroll to a particular time stamp - you can tap the words associated with that part of the song, and it jumps seamlessly to that section. That’s also handy for me, if I want to hear only the chorus over and over, for example.

Now, last big note: the price. Spotify premium for a family is $19.99/month. Apple music for a family is $16.99/month. That’s not very significant. However, through our phone plan (Verizon), we’re able to get the Apple family plan for just $10. And that is more significant!

If you’ve got any questions about any of that, let me know!

Apple and pumpkin recipes

I haven’t made any of these, but I plan to!

1. Apple Cheddar Biscuits

2. Pumpkin Mac and Cheese

3. Pumpkin Bread

4. Apple Cinnamon Rolls

Eyeglasses update

It was time for new glasses - I get new contacts every year, but glasses, just every few years since I only wear them at night. When I got my new Rx, I ordered some glasses online, but when they came in, they looked…off. It felt like I was in a fish bowl.

After contacting the company, they suggested getting my glasses Rx double checked with my eye doctor. The doctor did a check and said my PD was off - that’s the pupillary distance (the distance between your pupils). It was a tiny difference, but maybe it would make help.

The company (Warby Parker is where I’ve bought my last 3-4 pairs!) sent me a new pair of glasses with the new PD. And wouldn’t you know it, I was still in a fish bowl.

I figured it must just be that I’m not used to them, sooo I’ve kept them. It isn’t perfect, and I’m pretty much used to the way it looks now. A handful of folks wanted an update on the whole fish bowl thing, so maybe getting your PD checked will help you! It just didn’t really help me. 😅

DIY Connections

The NYT Connections is incredibly popular. If you haven’t heard of it, let me explain: For each day’s puzzle, you’re shown 16 words. Those 16 words can be grouped into 4 categories of 4 each. The only trick is that a lot of the words can be placed in more than one category, so it’s your job to figure out which category each word belongs to. You get a few mistakes before you just lose for the day.

I recently came across a website that lets you make your own Connections games. I made a few for my kiddos, if you want to try it yourself or with your kids. And at the top, there’s a button that says “create” where you can make your own!

Here are a few I made: puzzle 1, puzzle 2, puzzle 3 - There’s one category in the last one that I’m not sure today’s kids will actually know! If you do it, let me know if your kiddos know all the categories!

Meal plan

Here’s our plan for this week!!

LUNCHES

• Chicken salad with crackers

• Ramen noodle soup (I’ve shared this one a bunch of times! I should put it on my blog so it’s just a link I can share! Maybe next week…😇)

• Leftovers

DINNERS

• Chicken tetrazzini with Red Lobster biscuits

• Chick-fil-a copycat strips plus waffle fries

• Black bean enchiladas

• Vietnamese meatballs with broccoli & rice

• Pork chops with potatoes & asparagus

• Tuna cakes with green beans

BAKING

• TikTok brownies

• Lime cheesecake

Til next time…

If you’d like to support me and my content, then here are three ways:

• Send along an encouraging note, here or on IG or even snail mail!

• You can “Buy Me a Coffee” - it’s a virtual tip jar!

• And finally, here is a link to my Amazon wish list! 🙂 Also, my PO Box is still open, through Christmas!

  • Bethany King

  • PO Box 8152

  • Shreveport LA 71148

Much love,
Bethany

PS If you want to see old emails, here’s a link to all of them!