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We are slowly turning into the end of summer once again. Or, if not the end of the actual months of summer, the end of the twins’ break from college.

In May, I told myself not to think about it until August, but now that it’s almost August, I am thinking about it. A lot. We’ve already plotted out the fall visit, and they’ll be home for Thanksgiving and winter break. But it is hard to mentally stay in the now.

I love it when the kids are home. I love having them around and hanging out with them at night or on the weekends. They are the best company. And while I love catching up with them via FaceTime when they’re far away, it’s different knowing I can walk into a room and give someone a hug.

Two years into this, and I am still so sad.

But that is only because they are such cool human beings.

The Wolvog wanted a desk in his room, but had been dragging his feet on it because he didn’t want the room to look different. I got that. But I recently realized that if we gutted his closet, he could put the desk in his closet. The closet was mostly storage, so the rest of his room would stay as is, and when the door to the closet was closed, it would look exactly the same.

Win-win.

But cleaning out the closet meant dealing with a lot of empty fertility drug bottles and paraphernalia that I had shoved up there 16+ years ago to put off dealing with it. And if we were cleaning out the closet, we were cleaning out the entire closet. The Wolvog dealt with his things, and I was forced to open the box and look at papers and unused sharps and books. The preemie diapers and tiny nail scissors.

So much time has passed, but it still hurts in the exact same way that it hurt when we stopped treatments. It was as if no time had passed. I cried in the same way. It impacted my mood the rest of the day in the same way.

But it feels like I could have waited another 16 years and had the same result. The same feelings.

In the end, the Wolvog had an empty closet, feeling his own feelings about throwing out mementos from his childhood. It was an emotionally hard weekend, but he now has space for a desk.

This was a mind-blowing read.

I first read it on the day of my double vaccine session, when I knew that the best course of action would be to step away from trying to accomplish anything and instead allow myself to mentally disconnect and heal. And, clearly, I was not doing that because I was reading this essay.

I put the post in a folder, signed off the computer, and came back it after I had let myself not accomplish anything but just take care of myself for the sake of taking care of myself that weekend.

We’ve been talking a lot about how it’s not time for accomplishments (thank you, Middle Girl’s commenter, 8thday), and maybe I need to hear the message in multiple ways to really hear it.

I also love this:

So you don’t need to choose between peace of mind and the thrill of pursuing ambitious goals. You just need to understand those goals less as vehicles to get you to a future place of sanity and good feeling, and more as things that unfold from an existing place of sanity and good feeling.

Very wise.

I’ve been rewatching The Good Place, giving myself one episode a week each Friday. I’ve been doing this for years — working through feel-good series, one Friday at a time — and things land differently the second (or third) time around.

For instance, I noticed so many things I missed the first time around with Ted Lasso. Little moments happening in the background that I didn’t look at because I was so focused on following the story in the foreground. It reminded me a little of the end speech in About Time, where he talks about living each day twice: once with all the chaos of trying to keep up, and once by slowing down and really paying attention to the moments you miss while you’re running around.

I liked The Good Place the first time around — loved it, in fact — but I didn’t realize what an amazing show it was until this viewing. Seeing the episodes back-to-back, knowing what is coming next, makes me slow down and notice everything. And I’m also seeing it in context with the current world.

I love the part about how every decision is so complicated that even good decisions lead to bad outcomes. You buy vegetables so you can eat vegan, but those vegetables have an enormous carbon footprint because they came from far away, so this good decision — eat vegan to be good to the world — becomes this decision that harms the world.

Or I just read an article about shoes made from recycled plastic, and how it sounds like a great idea to keep plastic out of landfills. You feel great about your decision. But then those shoes will one day end up in a landfill. You’re just delaying the time when the plastic will be poisoning the earth.

Where am I going with this? I have no idea except that I’ve hit season 4 of The Good Place, which I know will be enormously moving because I remember it from the first time around. Though I hope that this time, I catch all of the tiny details I missed the first time along the way.

The ChickieNob and I were lounging around, talking about a snack we ate in Bury St. Edmunds at the Cornish Bakery, a bakery chain that sells cookies, pastries, and pasties. We had been in search of cake, but we ended up there and bought squares of Cornish pudding, eating them out of paper bags while we walked.

We loved this Cornish pudding. And quickly became obsessed with the idea of recreating this Cornish pudding or seeing if there was a restaurant in the area that carried it.

Herein lies the problem: There is no such thing as “Cornish pudding.” Yes, there are a bunch of recipes all labeled as such, but the accompanying pictures showed us sweet and savory bread pudding-like concoctions. There were many many many things called Cornish pudding.

The store described the dish on social media: “Layers of gooey pastries soaked in vanilla custard and topped with blueberries, raspberries and white chocolate before being baked to perfection.” So we started building a bread pudding recipe containing brioche, blueberries, raspberries, and white chocolate, all soaked in a vanilla custard.

The result was delicious but definitely not Cornish Bakery’s Cornish pudding. We are not deterred and are still trying to figure out the pastry part (croissants?) because it definitely wasn’t puffy like brioche. If anyone has reverse-engineered this or knows how to make something closer to the Cornish pudding at the Cornish Bakery, let me know.