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

 

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.

 

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?