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My Perfect Fall Day Cutting School in 1992
I’m in the midst of a nostalgia kick, which always happens at this time of year. Autumn seems to have been when a lot of huge life events happen for me – my kiddo was born in August, so I will always associate autumn with sleepless nights, and figuring out breastfeeding. I got married in October. I met my hubby at the end of August, so autumn was when we were in those heady first days of romance. But I always go to this wonderful perfect October day in 1992 when I get super-nostalgic. My parents were going through their divorce, so I was on my own a lot of…
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Big Projects, Big Freakouts
I used to struggle with Finishing Things. I would get really great ideas, start to act on them in the thrill and excitement of starting something new, then I’d get distracted by a new shiny object, and the original project would slide by the wayside. Every once in a while I’d pick it up again and examine it. wondering whether I should start the work on it again, which I might do for a day or two, but invariably just as I was nearing a good completing point I’d quit. This became so much a part of who I was that I knew before I even began a big project…
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Life Update September 23
So, an update on life from Spain when I haven’t blogged in a month (note to self: seriously, write every day. It makes you feel so much better). Covid cases in Spain are still going up, and in the middle of that they decided to open schools. Not only did they decide to open schools, but home schooling is basically illegal here, and they prosecute truancy really strict – parents have lost custody of their kids for keeping them home too long – so there is some uproar over the whole school-situation. We’re okay with it because our kiddo goes to a school out in the countryside with small classes…
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It’s that time of year: Music and Memory
It’s mid-August, almost two months after the summer solstice. The days are getting shorter, and the mornings have a distinct hint of nippiness in them. Not enough to actually warrant wearing more clothing, especially when the Spanish sun rises and the days heat up to nearly 100 degrees. But the early mornings, right before the sunrise, do have a freshness about them that I haven’t felt since April. I have mixed feelings about the changing seasons. Change has always been hard for me. I’m a Taurus. I like things fixed, and solid, and dependable. But I also move around a lot, having lived in 3 countries and 4 states in…
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I was made for Frolicking
It’s total bullshit how little frolicking I get to do.I was made for frolicking. I mean… right? I am writing this with music (Marsheaux) playing in one ear. The other ear is cocked, straining to make sure my daughter isn’t getting into any trouble in another part of the house. This is how I live my life – like so many moms I know – and after seven years I’m just now realizing how draining it is to my spirit. The thing that no one tells you before you have a child – seriously, no one tells you this – is how it feels when your time is not your…
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Mid July Check In
Well, Dead Reader, after a small lull in which normal life seemed tantalizingly close, I am back to checking the worldometers numbers each day for Spain. Fortunately for us right now here in Andalucia, most of the cases in Spain are up north, and we are relatively unscathed. But who knows how long that will last? It feels so similar to the feeling I had towards the end of February, watching what was going on in Italy, and wondering if and when it would hit Spain. Of course, now we have masks, and gloves, and everywhere we go there are buckets of hand sanitizers, so hopefully it won’t catch us…
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#FeministFriday, Women who rock my world: Julian of Norwich.
I’ve had several signs pointing me to the writings of Julian of Norwich lately. She was a fourteenth century anchoress and Christian mystic, who, when she was 29 years old, fell deathly ill. While on her sickbed, she had sixteen visions of Christ, starting when she saw the garland wreath in her room literally bleed, the way Christ’s crown of thorns would have made Him bleed. After she had her visions – and survived her illness – she wrote about them, and was the first woman to publish a book in the English language, right around the same time as Chaucer, Revelations of Divine Love. She also devoted her life…
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The Week in Books: Hilary Mantel, and series reading…
I’ve been doing books in units the past few months, immersing myself in a topic or series. I haven’t read this way since I was a kid with series like The Babysitters Club, or Anne of Green Gables when I got older. As an adult, I just drift around from topic to topic, with no structure other than the huge To Be Read list I have (which, thanks to NetGalley, grows at about 15 books a week! Gah!). But last year I started doing immersive series reading again with the Poldark books. First I binged on the series, then I binged on the books. The TV shows had been recommended…
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The Art of Routine in a Pandemic
I’m not a big fan of prescribed routines in general. I do have a morning ritual (Morning Pages as suggested by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way), and I write out a gratitude list at the end of the day, that’s it. I see bloggers and YouTubers with these elaborate morning routines of juicing, and meditating, and sun salutations, and ginger shots, and chanting, and cold showers, and I think, “yep, they don’t have kids.” In general, I find that having so many things to remember as part of your routine adds to the pressure of said routine, thus making the routine another Thing To Do Right, negating its entire…
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Newton and Goal Setting
Isaac Newton is the symbol of an enlightened 17th century scientific revolution, having codified the laws of physical and motion to the extent that humans were able to observe them. Newton’s Laws of Motion only work on Earth, and it wasn’t until Einstein, 300 years later, when we began to understand the forces working on bodies in space, and where earth’s gravity isn’t applicable. But Newton’s Laws are perfect for studying motion on our planet. I also extrapolate them out to help me understand why achieving goals can be so damn hard. So let’s look at Newton’s Three Laws, and how they can relate to setting and achieving goals. The…
