Linking up with K Manto for some quick takes, because formatted blogging can be fun.
1.
After this week, I am done with social media. Just done. I’m still going to share new blog posts to FB/Twitter via Hootsuite or some similar platform, but man, the time suck and the negativity and just how vapid it makes me to spend so much time in the echo chamber. . .Things have got to change. I’ve quit Facebook before and I can quit it again. But it sure is the Hotel California of social for me. So if you don’t see your comments answered there, forgive a tired mom, but there’s not enough of me to go around. And if I have to choose between managing existing content and creating it fresh, I’m going to choose creating every time.
2.
This seems like the best TV season in a loooong time (says the woman who doesn’t actually have a TV set up in her house). We’ve been enjoying “This is Us” (well, one of us has, anyway), the new seasons of “Madam Secretary” and “Poldark,” and I’m pumped for the Crown to start on Netflix pretty soon. And then in January, “Victoria” on PBS. After years of wandering in the wilderness of having only Downton Abbey to look forward to, it’s a nice change of pace. Especially since Peyton Manning took all my enthusiasm for football season with him when he retired last year.
3.
Books. This week I’m starting: “Deep Work” and “Gifts from the Sea” (all my library holds always populate my Kindle simultaneously, it seems) and I’m about 1/3 into my second reading of “I believe in love,” the excellent, life-changing written retreat based on the spirituality of St. Therese. It is possibly one of the best spiritual books in print. Get yo self a copy.
4.
Still chugging along with the Catholic Mindfulness course. It’s really changing my hair trigger response to stress from immediate ignition to “huh, that feels ____, I wonder how I can respond to it.” In sum? It’s giving me pause to act like a grown up. I love it.
5.
I am soooo ready for this election to be over, as I presume the rest of America and possibly most of our neighbors are. Proposition 106, a sneakily-worded measure to legalize physician assisted suicide in our beautiful state is expected to pass by a wide margin, which just makes me so sad.
Dave and I were talking about it this morning and how powerful language is, and if it were worded more honestly and more explicitly, would so many people be checking “yes?” Because “medical aid in dying” is a much more pleasant euphemism for “your doctor writing a prescription for 100 barbiturates that you will have to take home, break open, mix into an apple juice sludge and use to commit suicide in the comfort of your own home.” What a time we live in. And what an impoverished understanding we have of suffering, dignity, and the meaning of human existence. JPII, we desperately need you.
6.
I’m sitting at about a 19 pound weight loss from a couple months of Trim Healthy Mama plus avoiding high histamine foods and gluten. Because your mid thirties turns out to be all about food sensitivities and crow’s feet. Awesome. But don’t get me wrong, being almost 20 pounds down from a post 4th pregnancy plateau is a welcome change.
There’s only one little problem, and it’s my sad, sagging wardrobe. I’ve been able to wear a couple things that haven’t fit since we lived in Rome (yay!) but a lot of clothes in that size and from that time period already got purged because they were either threadbare or I gave up that I would ever fit in them again. Joke’s on me, I guess, because I am spending my time these days either in baggy jeans or workout clothes or the 3 outfits that do look like they belong on this body. It’s a good problem to have, but it’s also an expensive problem to have, and I’m not quite ready to bite the bullet and invest in this particular size. Happily, capsule wardrobe is still thing, yes?
7.
Yesterday, I got my first Christmas card in the mail. On November 3rd.
I’ll just let that sink in.
Every year I toy with the idea of making an Excel spreadsheet of addresses, and every year I guess I must decide in some haze of holiday confusion and chaos that “surely this won’t be a thing again 12 months from now” and fail to do so. So if you’re my friend and think you’d like a Christmas card this year featuring me in one of my 2 outfits, maybe email me your address?
Happy weekend.
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