August and Back to School

The month had already started when we got back from our Utah road trip, and it gave us very little downtime to recover from vacation and get ready for the start of the school year. We squeezed in a few more trips to the trampoline park, a morning showing of LEGO Batman (I'm so happy that cheap summer movies are still a thing), and tried to relax at least a little.

Wildfires in the region made the beginning and middle of the month smoky and sneezy, which was extra fun for Oscar, who had to take a week off of his allergy meds before getting allergy tested. (All the trees, all the grass, at least some of the cats.) Since we don't have AC, we keep the windows open all the time, so luckily it hasn't been too dramatic.

Oscar started fifth grade (impossible, I know), and this year he's changing rooms and seeing different teachers for his core subjects for the first time– kind of easing into the more official middle school model. His class grew by several students after one of the other Catholic schools in town closed down, so we're interested to see how that changes things, but they seem to be off to a good start. One of the only hiccups we ran into was finding book covers, but the good news is that we now own three of these beauties:

School starting and trying our best to get back into a routine sort of sucked up the rest of the month, which– like all of 2025– flew by at an alarming and frankly quite rude pace. As if to remind us that summer is wrapping up and hibernation will be starting before we know it, a bear decided to visit our front yard one morning. Oscar spotted him from our living room window, and he and Jeremy got a good look at him from the deck before this absolute unit decided to start ambling up the hill. (Bear sightings are not unheard of in this neighborhood, but usually they take place much closer to dawn.)

We also started a crazy busy concert season that will extend through the next month because shows kept popping up and we kept buying tickets without acknowledging how many other tickets we already had. So we got to see Counting Crows up in a lovely venue on a night with perfect weather. This was my third time seeing them, but the first time in the twenty-first century, and it was wild seeing Adam Duritz with straight hair and a full beard. His voice is just like I remember it, though, and they played a great set that pulled out the expected hits and also let them play a few songs that they wanted to play, whether the crowd knew them or not. (Come back next month for the rest of our poor planning.)

We wrapped up August and kicked off September with a quick trip to Texas, which was kind enough to tone the temperatures down for us (but not the humidity, gah). It was a really quick trip, but getting to be with family was a lovely way to spend the holiday weekend.

Books

• Knife by Salman Rushdie: As a reflection on the assassination attempt that almost killed him, this doesn't actually provide a great deal of insight; it feels very much like a book he thought he was supposed to write to confront the trauma, but that raises all sorts of questions about whether that's a productive move for anyone, including the reader. There are some really compelling moments, but I personally found the section where he imagines a conversation with the attacker to be boring and self-serving at best, deeply problematic at worst.
• Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Changed America by Bridget Read: What a fascinating, engaging history. I assume that basically every woman my age has gotten the random Facebook message from someone they kind of knew in high school offering "a great opportunity to share a great product!" Likewise, many of us have bought at least one pair of Lularoe leggings or one essential oil or one eyeshadow because we want to support friends. This book explains how we got to this point and reveals some of the large- and small-scale tragedies that have happened along the way.
• Gingko Season by Naomi Xu Elegant: What a lovely little book with one of my recent favorite narrators. The plot itself is fairly slight, but Penelope's observations about her friends, her efforts to unpack her complicated relationships with her far-from-perfect parents, and her struggle to navigate a potential new romance while still recovering from the pain of the last one carry the story along.

TV Shows

• Overcompensating: I watched the first episode by accident when it autostarted after the show I had on for background noise ended. The previews for this show had left me pretty uninterested, but the first episode hooked me.
• The Runarounds: A weird little throwback of a show that seems to be set both now and in a nostalgic version of the recent past in which no one has cell phones. (I think they're going for the same kind of timeless teen thing that Sex Education cultivated, but I'm not sure it works as well here.) It's not reinventing any wheels, but the loose structure and strong musical performances make it fun if not memorable.

Movies

• KPop Demon Hunters: I have been hearing people talk about this movie since June, so we finally got around to watching it– and it's great. High energy, smart use of (amazing) music, excellent voice work. It's from the same studio that does the Spider-Verse movies, and you can see some stylistic influences, but it's by no means a copy. It does leave a few unanswered questions, so I'm hoping there will be sequels (and more songs. Seriously, the songs are so good).
• Bad Guys 2: The first Bad Guys was our first family movie post-pandemic, so we have warm feelings for this franchise. This sequel wisely does not try to copy the formula of the first movie, though one sad consequence of that is a dearth of Shark Disguise Moments. It's a great example of how to introduce new characters– not too many at one time, distinctive stories and voicework– so that they feel as much a part of the story as the original cast.
• Superman: In case you thought we watched nothing but cartoons. On the other hand, this movie basically is a cartoon, and that's fine. The movie's fine! It's definitely better than the last two attempts at Superman movies, in no small part because of casting. Best Superman since Reeve, best Lois Lane since Kidder. It would be nice if there weren't eleventy billion other characters to distract us from them. However, I am a sucker for dogs in movies, so I give the movie bonus points for Krypto.

And here are the latest in stitching news: a whitework project I've been doing through an online class and the most recently completed month of my temperature stitch.