Yooohooo, Big Summer Blowout!
Discover more from Kaitlyn’s Stream of Consciousness
Yooohooo, Big Summer Blowout!
Another SALE and the July-August '23 Stream of Consciousness 🏝️
Ciao, y’all! 👋 It’s been a minute, huh?? I started writing this a while ago when I was actually in Italy and while I am now back in my home in Kentucky, I’m keeping the greeting, lest anyone forget I was there. (Jokes! If you follow me anywhere on the internet, this fact was shoved in your face.
)I have so much to catch you up on in this July-August combo edition of the newsletter, but first! We have another ebook sale today and tomorrow!!
Sales? I LOVE SALES
Me too, dearest reader! Today and tomorrow (7/26 and 27), the Not Here to Stay Friends ebook is a Kindle Daily Deal for the first time, going for only $1.99!!! Find it here! If you don’t have a Kindle, you can also download the Kindle app on any device and snag yourself a copy there. So excited to see NHTSF on sale for its lowest price yet yaaaayy!!
(and pssst if you get your ebooks somewhere else, I believe the price should be matched on most platforms for today, but you didn’t hear it from me 🤐)
Once you’re done reading your new ebook,
I’ll catch you up on all that’s happened since I last wrote! We’ll mostly hit the highlights, as we’re all busy people, plus some photos so it’s like you were all there with me
🥲Around (some of) the world in 20ish days
When I last wrote, husband and I were about to leave for his work trip in Italy and France! It already feels like ages ago somehow, but I had a truly wonderful almost-three weeks abroad.
Eat-aly: We went to Naples first, where I’d never been and he’d been once for work. My last and only time in Italy was a weekend in Rome during college, while I was studying in Germany for the summer. I remember Rome in July being hot and crowded and hot first…exciting and interesting second 😅 Naples in June was, spoiler alert, also hot! But still amazing—gorgeous scenery, so much history to see + learn about, and the FOOD ooooof. That line from Eat Pray Love (movie because I haven’t read the book oops) when Julia Roberts is like “I’m having a love affair with this pizza” or whatever, I felt that. While eating pizza at least once per day. I think by the end of our week there, I was more dough/tomato/cheese than human. My other favorite parts were visiting the archaeological site of Herculaneum
, getting sunburned riding around town on a hop-on, hop-off bus by myself for a day, seeing husband at work in the National Library and meeting his wonderful Italian colleagues, and being looked at like I was an alien whenever I ordered tea at restaurants. Big coffee people, those Neapolitans.
Fraaahnce: Then we went to Paris, where I ate a couple vegetables and turned back into a full human instead of a walking carb, like a reverse-Cinderella’s-pumpkin-coach-at-midnight situation. I’d been to Paris once
and loved it just as much as I remembered! Which is a lot of love! I fully buy into the Paris hype. I did a lot of sightseeing last trip, so on this one, I felt a little less inclined to go go go all day every day, more inclined to sit in parks and cafes, wander aimlessly looking at pretty stuff because there is pretty stuff in all directions at all times, and take naps and/or work on my copy edits in the heat of the day. It was delightful!! Mr. KHill also had fewer work obligations on his schedule for this part of the trip, so we got to spend a little more time together, slowing down and taking things in. I feel ridiculously lucky that I was able to go along on this trip!
A bookish highlight: I took a copy of each of my books with me, mostly to take pictures of them in beautiful places, which I didn’t end up doing much 🙃 but on my last day in Paris, I decided to go on a walk and hit up a few bookstores I hadn’t made it to yet, and also look for someplace Little Free Library-like where I could drop my copies. The last bookstore I stopped at was the absolute best! It’s The Abbey Bookshop, an English-language bookstore on an adorable little side street in the Latin Quarter. I loved the cozy, laid-back vibes, did some browsing for a while, and was about to just quietly leave when I decided at the last second to (eek) work up the nerve to talk to a human and asked someone if they knew of any place where I could drop my books. Turns out, the nice Canadian man was the shop’s owner and possibly the friendliest person in Paris?? He was excited to learn about my books and writing, then invited me to sit out on the street and have a drink with the booksellers and him as they were celebrating someone’s last day of work. Everyone was so lovely and welcoming, they took a video for their social media of me talking about my books and probably looking very harried and sweaty, and in the end, I just left my books with them to do with as they please. The moral of this story is talk to more humans because you never know when they’ll offer you free champagne!
It’s all been downhill since then
Just kidding! I mean, the impromptu party with extremely kind Parisian booksellers was probably the peak, but other great things have happened since we’ve been back stateside.
Like concerts: I went to see a show on this pretty low key tour by a little known artist who’s highlighting all ten of her albums a.k.a. Eras…yes, I am still deeply devoted to Taylor Alison Swift and super enjoyed seeing her perform live again! My favorite “eras” of the concert were Reputation and Fearless. Tears might have been shed but that’s between me and 80,000 of my closest friends who were in that stadium. Then just last night! I got to see The Chicks at the Kentucky stop on their world tour!! I hadn’t thought as much about this concert leading up to it as I had Taylor’s, there’s been a lot going on lol, but it really blew me away. They’re incredible performers and played all my favorite songs from childhood to the present, and their show was also filled with the kind of bold statements on social issues that they’ve been making for decades
. I just have so much love and respect for this group and this night was on my shortlist of all-time favorite concerts!Family vacations: I spent a week in the mountains with some of my family followed by a few days at the beach, and both were fun and relaxing! I got to tag along with my grandma on her early morning turtle patrol, caring for the sea turtle nests laid on the island, and learned so many interesting things about that process. This may or may not have overlapped with some book research? Stay?? Tuned???
A whole PhD: I reference my husband’s work a lot, because it’s really cool and he’s really cool and it’s given us both amazing opportunities for travel, etc. But recently he’s hit some extra awesome career milestones, like finishing his dissertation and defending it successfully to get his PhD! He’s a doctor of computer science!!! I’m so proud of him and in awe of his hard work. We’ve taken to using his new title whenever possible, such as:
when he gets home from anywhere, “the doctor is in!”
when a package arrives for him, “just what the doctor ordered!”
when I want him to leave me alone so I throw an apple at him, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” etc etc
More KHGTV marathons: I’ve been in my gardening era, with varying amounts of success. My seed trays that I planted seeds in way back before leaving for Europe, for example, did not yield any plants 😂🪦 but I think I know what I did wrong and pobody’s nerfect. I did, however, successfully grow a patch of wildflowers from seeds I scattered! Yes, wildflowers will grow in sidewalks and medians and forests without human intervention! But we take every win we can get! This week, my project has been getting rid of two dead trees in our yard, which turned out to be way more intense than I expected. Lucky for all of us, this was a set of the very specific circumstances under which I’m psychologically incapable of quitting, so the trees are gone! So is most of the strength in my body and the ability to turn my head side to side without going “ouch” “owie” “oh no.” But per usual with projects like this, I’m proud of myself for stubbornly tackling something that probably wasn’t meant for one spaghetti-noodle-armed woman and getting it the f done!
Books are still good: I’ve been reading a lot while on this summer’s adventures! Mostly audiobooks, but also several ARCs, which are advanced copies of books coming out soon. A few upcoming titles to put on your radar and/or preorder, all of which I’ve been loving recently:
The Someday Daughter by Ellen O’Clover
Caught in a Bad Fauxmance by Elle Gonzalez Rose
Every Time You Hear that Song by Jenna Voris (with whom I had a very cute café date in Paris 🥲 r we cultured n glamorous or wat)
That’s all for now!
Thank you for reading this looong newsletter
, for buying the Not Here to Stay Friends ebook on sale wink wink, and looking so cute today! You always do!
xoxo,
Kaitlyn
If a lot of you buy the NHTSF ebook, though, maybe I can afford to fly you over next time
Mr. KHill’s research work stems from scrolls found buried in this town when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. It’s like Pompeii’s less famous sister who I maybe like even better than the famous sister but we probably shouldn’t pick favorites of sites of ancient tragedies
Where I was when I started attempting to write this thing L O L the most important scholarly work ever done in Italy’s National Library!
The last of husband’s work trips that I went on, in 2019! I documented it heavily at the time in my then-blog, Adventures with KHill, may she rest in peace 🙏
I think we all know which one of these won out more often than not, but I DID get copy edits done by my deadline 👊
Even when it nearly cost them their career! No, I’m still not ready to make nice!!
At what word count does it become a news-novel?