MONTH IN REVIEW: APRIL 2020

🌸 April in Review

So… April was a weird month, eh? I’ve been working remotely since mid-March now and have basically been home except for important errands like groceries and prescriptions. I am both loving being home and going stir crazy / feeling useless. I am working on finding a happy medium between being productive and being lazy and relaxing. It’s tough. Some days are harder than others, and I hope to find out this month when I’ll be returning to work. Anyway, here’s the month in a nutshell. Lots of books and shows and movies since we’re home all the time. That’s a silver lining, right?

📚 Books Read

• The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson (book club)
• Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu (book club)
• If You Were Here by Alafair Burke (book club)
• P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han
• Always and Forever, Lara Jean by Jenny Han
• Big Girl by Kelsey Miller

🌟 Favorite Book of the Month: The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson

📺 What I Watched

🎬 Movies

• Impractical Jokers, The Movie: I am obsessed with the show, and we even went and saw Sal do stand up last year. Jerry surprised me with this movie one night and we were kind of disappointed. We didn’t realize it had a story line, which was cheesy. We liked the parts with the skits though, which is more like the show we’re accustomed to and love.
• I Trapped the Devil: good idea poorly executed.
• To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before: I read the book last year for my book club and loved it. Finally got around to watching the movie and loved that too. This prompted me to finish reading the series this month. So good.
• Doggy Daycare: we started a Saturday night movie tradition with Caleb and this movie was… not good. Low quality, bad acting, etc… but it’s for kids so whatever.
• Patrick: a movie night pick with Caleb about a lady and her pug. It was adorable and good for all ages. It’s on Netflix!
• Abominable: another movie night. Cute movie and Caleb really liked it.

📺 Shows

• The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez (Netflix): documentary about a child who was abused and killed. Absolutely heartbreaking. I had to stop in between episodes and take breaks because it was so awful.
• Evil Genius (Netflix): I started this one awhile back but never finished. Jerry and I binge watched all 4 episodes in one night. It’s SO good. It’s a documentary about a bank robbery / murder set up. Crazy.
• American Idol (Dish): forever a fan.
• The Good Doctor (Hulu): I finally started this show and it is SOOOO good. I didn’t get far because Jerry and I got sucked into The Handmaid’s Tale (see below), but I look forward to watching this one more.
• Coronavirus, Explained (Netflix): a short show on Netflix about Coronavirus. Does anyone know if there are / will be more than the original episode? I need to check.
• The Circle (Netflix): I need to finish this one still. It’s pretty good but not captivating and I can go days / weeks between episodes and not care. I do plan to finish it soon though because it’s entertaining enough.
• The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu): I read the book last year for book club (didn’t want to!) and ended up loving it. I chose this on a whim one night for Jerry and me to watch. He was apprehensive at first but we quickly became OBSESSED. We finished season 2 last night and now just need to watch season 3. I am already dreading finishing it because I love it so. C’mon season 4!
• Making a Murderer (Netflix): I am very late to the party with this one, but have been working my way through both seasons of this one. As a true crime junkie, I am very intrigued, and am almost done with it. After I finish, I have a stack of books about the case to read.
• Others: a few episodes each of America Says (Dish), which is my all time favorite game show, Death Row Stories (Dish), The Innocence Files (Netflix), and one episode of The Staircase (Netflix).

📌 Happenings & Tidbits

• We started a Saturday night movie tradition with Caleb after Holden goes to bed. That’s fun bonding time for us and our bigger boy!
• Easter was very uneventful. My mom put together some little baskets for the boys which was sweet, but no family dinner or Easter egg hunts, of course. Weird / sad.
• My aunt has been dropping off activities and surprises for the boys which is so cute. One week was a movie kit, another week was a gardening kit with seeds, so Caleb had fun planting those in an egg carton. A wind storm blew it away, but we’ll try again!
• Holden’s 18 month well visit in March was canceled, so I was shocked when they called me in early April to re-schedule. I was hesitant, but we ended up going because he needed a shot. We wore masks (made by and mailed to us from my colleague!) and the whole office was wearing masks and face guards, so it was fine.
• It was National Library Week, and we celebrated at home the best we could. The New York Library Association wanted us to share our librarian stories (why and how we chose the profession), so I shared mine to our Facebook page, as did a bunch of my colleagues. It was a nice day! I run all of our social media and it was fun gathering, reading, and sharing them all.
• Speaking of work… I got to go in one day! My office mate and I got split up (wahhh) because they needed our office for something else, so we had to go in and set up our new work spaces. It was nice to finally be back in the library again, if only for an hour!
• Remember our big author event that got canceled?! Well, we rescheduled it via Zoom and got to chat with author Zoje Stage one night with 50+ library patrons. It was a good night! Not what we wanted or expected for our “visit,” but fun nonetheless.
• Speaking of work, my colleague and I are running a virtual mystery book club via Facebook. We have 75+ members, and held our first “meeting” in April. We posted discussion questions into our Facebook group, and it went really well! We read If You Were Here by Alafair Burke. I’m looking forward to our future monthly meetings.
• Big news, I did a foot peel mask for my awful feet and it worked SO WELL!
• The power was going on and off in the kid’s room (WTF), so we got that fixed for $100. PHEW!
• We finally felt safe enough to let Caleb visit his grandparents, so that was nice for them, him, Holden, and us. Caleb asked again this month why we haven’t gotten rid of Holden because he’s “bad” and he “doesn’t like him,” because he “throws shit.” Words directly from Caleb’s mouth. Sigh.

… and that’s it. My month consisted mainly of stressing out, chilling at home, corralling the boys, attempting to work and Zoom from home, lots of books and even more TV. Will May look the same? Most likely. 😉