I was standing in our dining room with one of my older daughters. We were having a conversation when we heard a loud noise. The door of our china cabinet, inches away from our elbows, flew open. A cascade of china fell to the floor at our feet.
While we were standing very close to it, neither of us had been touching the cabinet. My having seen what happened with my own eyes took away the anxiety I usually experience when I find something broken. I knew no one was at fault, so I was able to skip the Who Is To Blame step of dealing with brokenness.
If I hadn’t been in the room the moment the accident happened, I would have spent serious bandwidth trying to figure out how an accident like that could have happened without human interaction. Yet it clearly had.
Stamped was on my reading list before I saw it was the Nonfiction title for our library’s virtual book club in September. I meant to read the paper version, which I had out from the library, but listened to the audio instead so I could multitask.
I would leapfrog my bookmark forward in the paper version as I made progress. This helped me keep track of my progress visually so I could pace myself to be finished before book club, but also made the audiobook feel more like cheating than audiobooks usually do these days. I was reading a book that required a ton of emotional labor, and I was letting someone else do the reading for me.
Even listening to it rather than reading it myself, this is a really tough book to get through.
I hopped onto Instagram for some pretty pictures this weekend and found a lot of melancholy. People were taking stock of their lives and feeling sad and discouraged. It seemed to be a theme.
It makes sense. It’s Labor Day weekend, and according to a book I just read, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, by Daniel H. Pink, we tend to assess where we are and make big changes on significant days in our lives.
For me, fall is a heavy hitter – it’s the beginning of the school year, Labor Day, and my birthday. Three opportunities to launch into a fresh start, or flop over sideways with a weak wave.
It was fascinating to be reading about this phenomenon of significant days in our lives being a catalyst for change while seeing the real-time effects of Labor Day weekend play out on social media.
Have you ever watched the show Burn Notice? It’s a USA show about a burned spy’s adventures. It featured a fantastic cast, great friendships, lots of C4, a slow burn romance, strong female characters, and a man who loves and respects his mom.
The Chaplain and I binged through Burn Notice a few years ago, and it’s remained the stick by which we measure all the shows we watch.
A prevailing theme in the show was that the protagonist would be presented with a job that sounded impossible. He would then come up with an elaborate and risky plan that would only work if everything went right.
As he ate a spoonful of blueberry yogurt from the ancient fridge in the converted warehouse he called home, he’d say, “It’s the only way.”
Parenting in regular times is challenging. Parenting during a pandemic when we’re all isolated and chronically stressed often feels like a never-ending nightmare.
Sometimes, naming the good and bad things in life helps us remember the good, and make the bad seem less threatening.
