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Every month I "recycle" my monthly logs. I look over my posts from a year ago, reflect on them, and decide what to keep and what to discard. (This is the plan, anyway.) Here's where I will keep my monthly reflections.

2025

I weeded along the garage door and back corner up to the lawn. But this year (2026) I already did that in July! So I'm ahead of where I was last summer! That's good, right??

On August 5th, after two days of weeding, my back was stiff and I was worried about major back pain. I had a bad episode just a couple of weeks prior in July (could not move to get out of bed for several hours). My neighbours lent me their back massager thing. I completely forgot about this! Now that I'm reading my note about it I totally remember. It was awesome. I want one.

Wrote a long post about my bad (?) habit of picking up free books and not having any more space for them, plus picking up books faster than I can read them. I still have this habit and I'm still struggling to read faster/more often. However, I've since purchased another bookshelf (though it's already full 🤦‍♀️🙈).

Decluttered some things and found this DVD I had picked up, Lost in Translation. Loved that movie. It's because I lived in Tokyo for a year in my early 20s, so that movie reminds me of my time there.

Also found Lonely Planet guidebooks I'd picked up and came to the realization that I am now collecting them. Wrote a post to try and explain why that is. I have since collected more 🤦‍♀️

Also found three Nancy Drew books I had picked up. Wrote a post about it. I did read them and I didn't end up keeping them. I put them back out into the wild. Yay me! ✌️ I have not come across anymore ND books since then.

I spent the rest of the month developing checklists for deep cleaning the front areas of the house (entry way & living room areas). I have to say I've done a good job keeping up with these areas since then. Dare I say that deep cleaning these areas every month has become a bit of a habit? 😲 Maybe not quite a habit, but I definitely get through the steps of the checklists faster now. I'm improving! ✌️

On the last day of the month, August 31, I wrote a post explaining to myself why I was feeling so tired. Spoiler alert: it's because I had more social demands than I have bandwidth for. It's interesting how I know this about myself and yet it still does me good to re-read this post and remind myself about myself.

And that's August 2025 done and reflected upon!

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Vacuumed in basement around the water meter area. Lots of cobwebs 🕸️

Removed another little book from the basement and dropped it in the LFL✌️

Laundry.

Swept basement.

Left one book at LFL.

In the process of clearing a path in the basement I saw this book my brother once gave me for Christmas or my birthday. It was a long time ago, I must've only been about 12 or 13, maybe 15 tops. It's a book this guy wrote about his alleged encounter with aliens, basically. (The book is called Communion by Whitley Streiber, if anyone is interested.) My brother was, and still is, really into that sort of thing. Aliens, space travel, the supernatural, sci-fi. He was really excited about this book and thought I'd be really excited too. But I wasn't, and am still not, that into it. He was a bit disappointed and surprised but undeterred and basically got me to agree to just give it a read. And then life went on, graduated high school, went to university, graduated university, moved out of the house, little by little packed up and moved more and more of my things from my childhood bedroom in my parents' house to my own place. This book was part of the little book collection I had by then and which moved with me several times.

More years passed, got married, had children. Now I had children's toys and books that needed to be on the shelves so some things ended up in the basement. And now I find this book in the basement and realize for the first time how long I've held onto this book without even thinking about it. Why? Because my brother spent money on this book as a gift to me once and was a little hurt that I wasn't super excited about it. And so I've always had a bit of guilt about it and this vague plan to read it "one day" to ease the guilt.

But I had a moment of clarity this afternoon as I stood in the basement with this book in my hand. I will never read this book. I never was going to read this book. I have no interest in this book and will not develop an interest in it in the future. And by now my brother has completely forgotten that he ever bought this book for me. This book is just taking up space in my life.

And with that, I decided this book needed to be gone. Dropped it off at the nearest Little Free Library this evening. Just like that.

It's weird how good it felt to let this one little book go. But the thing is, I have so many more things like this. Things I've been hanging onto, year after year, without really thinking about why.

The basement is overwhelming to me, when I think about decluttering it. But I just decluttered one item, and it took me mere seconds to decide, and the decision was so easy. I just need to repeat the process with each item, one by one. It doesn't have to be overwhelming. I can let go of things.

Work in the morning, afternoon free. Been doing laundry and dishes. Got the boy to do some much needed vacuuming. Most importantly, I've basically cleared a path in the basement to the water meter for the worker on Wednesday. I thought this would be much harder to do than it was. There is a mess of things in the basement but mostly they were put haphazardly in the middle. I was able to stack things to the side. Still haphazard but at least the middle is clear.

I cannot worry about what everything is right now, I just need to clear the space. I want to sweep and vacuum up a bit before Wednesday. I still need to move things that are in the way by the back door. But I'm going to move a few things to the garage, like my suitcases for example. I won't be needing those before next February.

Making progress.

Happy birthday to me 🎂

Morning busy with work.

Got a card + 💵 from client! Total surprise!

Got fancy chocolates from client but she didn't know it was my birthday! Just a coincidence!

Got a card from new-ish local friend! Total surprise!

Long walk in nature park with the boy after lunch. Saw many birds: egret, hawk, grackle, blue jay, cardinal, redwing blackbird. Hot in sun but pleasant in the shade. Beautiful weather!

Chocolate cake with buttercream frosting.

Long email from bro; phonecall from sis.

Long text from mother's friend whom I haven't seen in too long.

Message from HS bestie; hilarious as usual.

Overall, a lovely birthday day. 🎂

📖 The Janson Directive by Robert Ludlum, 🔖 p. 418.

📖 Set in Darkness by Ian Rankin, 🔖 p. 211.

* No spoilers. *

Took the boy to see The Backrooms. I don't like horror/thriller movies (triggers my anxiety) but it was rated 14A so I figured I could handle it. Plus I had already looked up the plot summary a while ago so I already knew what was going to happen lol.

But can we talk about the theater seats? I rarely go to the movies and haven't been to one in ages, and I've never been to one that has all these smaller theaters! There were only 4 rows and, like, maybe 50 seats in total. The seats were so comfy and they reclined and had foot rests and adjustable head rests. Like a lazyboy! And the tickets only cost about $10! I could go to this theater just to have a nap in their seats! There were only us and two other people there.

I remember when movie theaters changed from just regular flip-up seats on a mild incline so you invariably had someone's head in the way to these massive seats on a steep incline with surround sound blasting your eardrums and the screen so massive you get vertigo. Well it gives me vertigo, anyway. I fucking hate it. I think that's one of the reasons I stopped enjoying going to the movies. The whole experience used to trigger my anxiety. That was before the movie even started. Sitting through twenty minutes of trailers.

But this little theater, I could enjoy going to the movies again in a theater like this.

We have an old school theater in my neighbourhood, with the flip-up seats and people's head in my way, just like I remember it as a kid. A relic. I've been a few times but not often enough.