Baking with my grandma, working on my tan, and other benefits of being home

I was home in Chicago for ten days this past week — I'm about to go to bed, so I'll make this quick. The highlight was making mamón with my gramma, which my sister filmed on my phone. 

I love my gramma. 

It was a family movie kind of week. My mom took me and my sister and my cousin to watch Freakier Friday, which was really well done. I normally hate sequels, and I was really nervous about this one being terrible, since I love the original so much, and I love Lindsay Lohan. It was really sweet actually, and it was the kind of Filipino representation I really fuck with — these people just happened to be Filipino. It was also the kind of LA depiction that felt really sweet to me: Larchmont Wine + Cheese mentioned, a couple of Silver Lake shots right near where my friends live. Made me really happy. Made me miss LA. 

We watched Spy Kids and Thunderbolts on my last night, which was awesome. I really loved the combat and Lewis Pullman and Florence Pugh's performances. I don't really give a shit who knows it — I really like marvel movies. I find them so comforting. Yeah. Even the era of Marvel we're in now has some good stories, one of which is Thunderbolts. 

These are my favorite things about being home: 

1. I don't have any friends at home, due to me going to boarding school and having fallen out of touch with my friends from middle school and early high school. I have two cousins that I really love, and a couple of aunts, and my gramma and my uncles. But outside of them, there's no one to see, which gives me a lot of time to...
1. Walk around my neighborhood with a book or on the phone. My neighborhood is just one big loop that backs up to another big loop neighborhood via prairie path. The part where the two loops meet is a beautiful pond with a bench, and it's nice to sit there in the summer and read. 
2. Spend the day at my favorite antique store, which is one town over, and within walking distance of the salon where my aunt cuts my hair, this amazing pizza place, and a bookshop in an old house. I go and I poke around until I've exhausted the entire shop and chatted with Dori, the lady who owns it, for an hour and a half. It is my secret weapon for gifts and jewelry, and this time I bought two rings.
3. Sit at my parents' patio, soak in the sun, enjoy the flowers, do my computer work, and sip my coffee. I could sit out there all summer long, all day. I love eating my breakfast out there, going for walks between meetings... I'm obsessed with the patio. 
4. Lay on my checked blue quilt in the backyard with Finn, my dog. He is perfect. He loves to picnic. We read together.