Jessica's Friday Five: a kitten rescue left its mark

Hi Reader,

This week, I got some pretty gnarly scratches across my chest from a certain kitten that got into an unfortunate situation due to an...odd choice from one of my children and needed to be rescued but wasn't happy about it. So I've been grateful to have a few first aid items on hand that I didn't have on my radar a year ago - first, a roll of hydrocolloid bandage, and also hypochlorous acid spray. Hydrocolloid bandages are the material pimple patches are made of - but they're way cheaper to buy as a roll instead of as pimple patches - and they are incredible for healing cuts. And hypochlorous acid is so good for keeping skin clean (for cuts, for reducing stink by clearing out bacteria under arms, and more).

Now, on to your Friday Five:

1. New Google Calendar colors: I love color-coding things on my Google Calendar (I even have a script running in the background to automatically color-code things with certain cues, like "use this color if the event invite has the word Zoom anywhere in it, and this color if it has the word Pilates in it"). They just rolled out a ton of new color options, and they added the ability to pick any hex code you want as well. So I recently tweaked my colors to be even more aligned with my preferences and favorite colors. So fun! Click here, then go to the calendar you want to change, then find "Event labels" to edit the colors for your calendar.
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2. Even cheaper-than-normal groceries for next few days: Thrive Market's biggest sale of the summer ends this Sunday (I'm seeing prices up to 50% off), and it stacks with my link to get $20 off your first 3 orders, plus a free $60 gift of your choice. I can highly recommend the fruit circles, the Aloha bars, of course, Pirate's Booty, and those little MadeGood granola balls. It's amazing to me how much cheaper these products are than you'd see at, say, Walmart (where we get our other groceries). One of my favorite finds of 2026 is Thrive Market, y'all.
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3. Turn your Google Doc into a shareable template: Last week, in my Drafting Your Team Communications Expectations workshop, I shared a full draft of the communications expectations I developed with my team years ago (if you're a member of The Society, check your Resource Drops area for this!) by dropping a link in the chat that allowed everyone in one click to make their own version of the Google Document for private use, and a few folks asked how I did it. Here's how: if you want folks to be able to make a copy of your Google document/sheet/slides for their own use, just go to the URL of your document, delete the end part that says "/edit" and any text that follows it (e.g., ?usp=sharing). Replace that with "/template/preview" in its place. To see how it works from the perspective of someone getting your template link, I've done these instructions on this link (which is a document we made together as Friday Fivers last year about TV show recs). See how that little blue "Use Template" button shows up? So handy for certain situations.
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4. Before you take your next trip: Here’s a great podcast episode on how to come home from vacation. Kendra’s Trip Matrix is such a genius (pun intended) way to visualize and plan ways to make coming home from a trip less hectic.
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5. Backpack tips for the coming school year: Wearing the wrong backpack for too long can have a negative effect on the physical health of our kiddos, so it’s important to choose ones they like the look of, and that support their posture and spine health. I shared these ​backpack tips​ in Forbes if you need some suggestions.

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Last Friday's Most-Clicked Link: The "organize your papers" box I just bought for my in-laws after my own dad loved his so much.