June 2022
On the Journey 🥾
After one week at home, the kids and I spent the next two weeks traveling to and from Houston, Texas to visit friends and get some much-needed closure on a difficult move. Here are some of my takeaways from our trip:
What I missed about Texas:
Tex-Mex: Southeast Texas just has superior Tex-Mex. Period.
Academy Sporting Good store: Yes, I know, it’s silly to miss a specific store, but they were my go-to for running shoes the entire time we lived in Houston and I hate shopping anywhere else.
Taco trucks: They are on every corner, the quesadillas and churros are unmatched, and they are available all year round.
Pizza Zone: What can I say? Our favorite local pizza joint in Spring, Texas has superior standard pizza. We can’t find a replacement.
What I didn’t miss about Texas:
Houston traffic: We may still live just outside of a city, but it’s much smaller city with less concrete and fewer stoplights and Houston traffic is really just the worst.
The heat: We were in Houston during a heat wave. It was in the upper 90s to 100s the entire time we were there, in June. And at home, the temperatures were in the 70s and 80s. Ugh!
Fear of fire ants: I hated putting shoes back on when it was too hot for covered feet. Thankfully, I didn’t see many, but it was enough to just be annoyed by the fear of encountering them.
The distances: It takes forever to drive from point A to point B. I spent far too many hours on the road and accomplished little in the time I was driving. I really don’t miss it.
Watch the full video of our trip to Johnson Space Center below:
Soundtracks For the Journey 🎧📚
I consider the soundtrack for my journey to be everything that I’m reading and listening to that is giving me a boost. You can also follow me on Goodreads to see what I’m reading every month. So here are my recommendations for the end of June:
Top Gun: Maverick: What can I say? I’m a child of the 80s and grew up with a Tom Cruise crush and watched Top Gun for the first time at a friend’s slumber party when I was nine. I had been looking forward to this film for two years and it did not disappoint.
Pantsuit Politics Podcast: I love Sara and Beth for so many reasons, but their first summer series is important because it is important to all of us as citizens. They are breaking down the House January 6 Committee hearings. While I encourage everyone to listen to the hearings on their own, their summary and commentary also helps to better absorb all of the information that is coming out.
Writing Outside of the Journey 💻
I continue to freelance for The Educator's Room. In June I started contributing to an advice column and more pieces will appear in July.
I also started writing for our podcast, Lit Think, as we moved over to Substack for both the podcast and our new venture into writing content. These are the pieces I wrote:
What Is Coming Up Next? 🏕️
We’re on summer vacation!
On the podcast, I’m going back three years for our family vacation from Houston to Arches National Park and back. Once we return from our 2022 family vacation out east, I will be recording podcast episodes about those adventures. Most of those episodes will drop in September and October. In the meantime, you can follow us on those adventures by following me on Instagram.
This is also the video from our first major stay:
Hope you are having a great summer, everyone! I’ll be sending out a July newsletter right before I return to school.
Please “like” by clicking on the ❤ and share this post with your friends so that others can also follow me on the journey.