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Happy June, everyone! May flew by, and I have a feeling June will be gone before we know it as well. I do have an exciting update: we have signed a lease and will be moving on June 27th! Now that we are within a month of moving, I’ve allowed myself to start packing, filling nail holes, and purging on Facebook Marketplace. But the moving process will not stop the content! Let’s get into it.

Pilates Review

New format alert! Now that I am a certified Pilates Princess, I am kind of getting tired of reviewing every class. It’s hard to come up with something new to say for each one, so we’re switching it up. From now on, I am going to write one review from my whole week.

This week I had classes on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. I was supposed to have one on Monday, however, I instead spent the afternoon at Urgent Care getting my ears irrigated like those cool TikTok videos. Last Friday, I was suddenly struck deaf in my right ear and went through the whole weekend blissfully unaware of anything that was happening to my right.

The classes this week were all solidly difficult, with Friday being the toughest. It was a level 2 with Wade, and we were really going after our legs, which was unfortunate for me, as I had accompanied Boyfriend Alex to the gym the day before for leg day. I also discovered in this class that my mental block is still firmly intact. We were going for some side crunches on the box, and my body said, “No, thank you :)” and straight up refused. I’m not sure how I will be getting over this mental block. Maybe I’ll have to do some exposure therapy and purposefully fall, but I have to do something because this is getting old.

Entertainment Weekly

Movie(s): Lilo and Stitch (3D)

On Monday, Boyfriend Alex and I hit up the AMC that will be closest to our new place and saw Lilo and Stitch in 3D. I loved it. I’d forgotten how much I love the original, and the remake was just as good. They did take out the heartbreaking scene of Stitch in the forest looking at the photo album in the rain, but they replaced it with some other heartbreaking scenes that made me cry. I did not expect to be wiping tears from under my 3D glasses while watching Lilo and Stitch, but there we were.

I haven’t been to a 3D movie in forever, and I’m a little shocked that they haven’t figured out a way to make it 3D without those glasses. I think the first 3D movie I ever went to was Sharkboy and Lavagirl, and it blew my mind. That movie came out in 2005, and we’re still here? I wonder if the kids these days still keep their 3D glasses and pop the lenses out to make nerd glasses.

Book(s): City of Women

One of last week’s “outs” was finishing books that you don’t enjoy. I ignored my own advice and decided to finish City of Women purely out of spite. I could not allow myself to abandon two books in a row. I am not a tough critic – I have enjoyed pretty much every book I’ve ever read, so when I say this, I say it with my whole chest: This book was trash. I was intrigued by the premise – in 1943 Berlin, most of the men have been called to war, leaving Berlin to be mostly a city of women. The story follows Sigrid as she turns from an average German housewife to an accomplice in hiding Jews from the Gestapo. Sounds like a good story. Wrong.

When I start reading a book, I rarely consider anything about the author, but when I was about 20 pages in, I flipped to the author page to see who was responsible for this mess. I thought that maybe this book had been originally written in another language and translated into English, because the dialogue was so bad. It seems like English is his first language, so it wasn’t that – I just think this man is not capable of writing realistic dialogue, or women, for that matter. Which is kind of important for a book with mostly female characters. Not saying that men can’t write realistic female characters, but this man definitely can’t. And honestly, it kind of grossed me out a little bit. It kind of felt like a fan-fiction about the Holocaust.

Every character was unlikable, but Sigrid, the main character, was the worst. Before her husband goes off to war, she starts an affair with a married Jewish man with children whom she meets in a movie theater and immediately sleeps with on the spot (in the movie theater). The affair is taken out of the movie theater and into a hotel that, somehow, a Jewish man in Berlin during World War II and a housewife can not only be allowed to book but also afford. Here, Sigrid tries to get information about his wife and children and sulks in her jealousy over him loving another woman (who was there first and is also the mother of his children). The affair continues until he has to go into hiding from the Gestapo, and she loses contact. A lover in hiding doesn’t stop Sigrid from her affairs, though. Once her husband is away at war, she is propositioned by her neighbor, a German officer who has returned from the war with one less leg. She immediately jumps into bed with him, and this affair continues until her lover suddenly reappears. She then uses this man to help her hide her lover in his apartment, directly next door to her. Which makes it super convenient for her to pop over for a quick rendezvous when her wounded husband returns from war.

“Wait,” I hear you saying, “isn’t this story about hiding Jews from the Gestapo?” Oh, yes, she gets pressured into doing this as well, basically against her will. But when she discovers that the woman and two children that she’s helping to hide could be her lover’s wife and children, does she tell her lover? Of course not. She seriously considers turning the women and children over to the Gestapo so that she can have a clean slate with her lover while his family rots in a concentration camp. Oh, and turns out his wife and children have already been killed, and the people she is hiding are of no relation, so she almost turns over a random mother and two daughters for absolutely no reason.

Every other character also fell into an archetype of a woman who was either hypersexualized, a lesbian, or a prude. The characters are also very cavalier about affairs, casual sex, and abortion, which seems historically inaccurate for 1943 Berlin. Again, it felt gross to me. 0/10.

TV: Secret Lives of Mormon Wives

I have finished Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. First off, where is the rest of it? I was utterly shocked when my Hulu started autoplaying Keeping Up With The Kardashians instead of the explanation for this Jessi and Marciano rumor. I have a lot of thoughts on this season, and I think it’ll be easier to break it up by person:

• Taylor Frankie Paul: Taylor went a little off the rails with the CMA post, but I am kind of on her side. This group is on a reality TV show and is very public – to have no one in the group comment publicly? Shady. I support Taylor and firmly subscribe to the idea that there is no MomTok without Taylor Frankie Paul.
• Leann (Taylor’s mom): The reason Taylor needs therapy. Absolutely deranged behavior to show up to a Christmas party that your daughter was uninvited to. I appreciate the support, but you could have come with some better ammo than “Taylor’s a good person.” I feel like we had the makings of a good fair fight, but Leann dropped the ball again.
• Mayci Neely: Perfect baby angel. Don’t change a thing. So excited for her and Mikayla to be pregnant together, and I will be reading her book.
• Whitney Leavitt: Whitney is the epitome of Millennial Cringe – I cannot watch her videos, it makes me uncomfortable. Have Whitney and Scheana Shay ever met? I feel like they’d like each other for how much they flip-flop. “I don’t even want to be in Mom Tok – I want a homestead. Actually, if you guys are letting people in, vote on whether I’m in or not. Taylor voted for me, I’m on her side. Demi has been giving me attention, so actually, Taylor, I hate you.” It’s exhausting.
• Layla Taylor: I saw someone talking about how they think that Layla was a producer plant this season, and I can’t agree more. Layla showed Taylor the secret Taylor-less group chat. It was “Layla’s idea” to do the pregnancy test roulette when the producers knew Mikayla and Mayci were pregnant. Layla told Taylor she was uninvited to Demi’s Christmas party and that Demi said that if Taylor was in, she was out. Layla also randomly had Marciano fly out to Utah to have a sit-down conversation about whether or not Demi cheated with him. Sus.
• Jessi Ngatikaura: Never knew that was her last name, don’t ask me to pronounce it. Jessi said it herself that she has been Demi’s lapdog for a while, and I was happy to see her come to her senses a little bit by the end of the season. It’s sad that she wasn’t able to stand up to her when they were hurting Jen, or the first time Demi stabbed her in the back, but apparently it’s “two strikes, you’re out” for Jessi.
• Jen Affleck: Oh, Jen. I feel so bad for her! I feel like she was getting attacked on all fronts this season from the girls, her weirdo husband, and also a baby. I’m glad she took the rest of the season off for her mental health. I think that shows how much she needed it.
• Mikayla Matthews: I like Mikayla for the most part. I think she’s holding the grudge against Whitney a little too tightly, but on the other hand, if I were forced to be around Whitney, I would also jump at the first opportunity to keep her at arm’s length.
• Miranda McWhorter: The other half of the swinging scandal returns. She was barely there this season, but I loved that she was wearing lobster hands during the drama at the Halloween party.
• Demi Engemann: Last but not least, we have Demi the villain. From setting up Jen to receive a public lap dance in front of her jealous husband, to accusing Chase of laying hands on her and starting a confrontation that got the cops called to a Mormon Halloween party, to attempting to kick Taylor out of MomTok, then cussing out her mom, Demi was off the rails this season. Oh, and not to mention, being willing to kick her “best friend” off the show so she could get a bigger paycheck and then discouraging people from going to said best friend’s business. I want to say I hope she’s out of MomTok, but I would like to see Taylor kick her ass.

I got caught up on The Valley but honestly, I’m kind of over it.

Apartment Steading

Since I am now a breadmaking expert, I decided to attempt to make another staple of our household from scratch: Greek yogurt. The process sounds simple. You basically heat up whole milk, add in some starter yogurt with live cultures, incubate it, then separate the yogurt from the whey. I had high hopes and was imagining lounging in the Olympic-size swimming pool filled with the money we would save from not buying two to four $5 tubs of yogurt every week.

Unfortunately, I did not set myself up for success. The first issue arose when the recipe told me that I would need to incubate the milk mixture in a warm oven with the heat off but the oven light on to keep it warm. Turns out our oven light is burnt out, so that didn’t work. I then tried to incubate it in the rice cooker, which seemed to work okay, but I then needed to strain the mixture into another bowl for 6 hours. The only strainer I own is teeny-tiny, so I tried to speed up the process by mixing the yogurt in the strainer. With this technique, I was able to yield about a 1/4 cup of yogurt that was nowhere near thick enough to call itself Greek.

I ended up throwing it out, but I refuse to give up. I ordered a properly sized strainer and will be trying again after we move to our new apartment, because I don’t know how to change an oven light, and I don’t particularly care to learn.

This week, I am going to tackle sourdough starter, so stay tuned for that update!

In’s and Out’s

In:

Ghosts turning the lights off for you when you fall asleep

Spackle

Signing leases

Out:

The Valley

Reputation (Taylor’s Version) (I don’t want to talk about it)

Five day work weeks

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Until next week, ILYSM,