Yesterday was The Longest Day. It happens once a year when we come back from our trip to Tobago. We fly in to JFK, then drive back up to Albany, and no matter how wonderful the weather is or how smooth the drive, it seems to take forever.
This time, everything went nearly as well as it could have. We made it through the whole process and home sooner than we’d hoped, on a beautifully clear sunny day.
At a rest stop on the drive home, I ended up stuck in a bathroom stall with a two-year-old who was terrified of the toilet, and discovered too late I was in a stall with no toilet paper.
Personal growth.
You realize there is something in your life that you want to change.
You’re aware of it for months or years. You do a ton of work.
That thing you want to change doesn’t budge.
Some other things get better – you’re more authentic, less reactive.
But that thing you would really like to change? Still there.
The most challenging posts I write are the reflective ones that pop up between the sewing and book posts every so often. Sewing and book posts follow a kind of formula – I just tell you what I did or read.
Translating thoughts and feelings into something readable isn’t easy. I didn’t start this blog because it’s easy to write, though, and I’m trying to use this year to challenge myself to do things that I’m afraid to do, like write, possibly badly, to express ideas and truths I’ve discovered.
In that spirit, I am rounding up three books into one post – three books that are so unlike one another that they usually would have each have garnered their own post. I’m combining them so I can spend more time writing those other, more difficult posts that force me to work harder and hopefully challenge you, the reader, to do some mental exercise as well, at least once in a while.
I used to have a weighted blanket that I used to chill at the end of the day.
Except I wasn’t chilling, I was roasting a lot of nights. At some point, I realized I was experiencing peri-menopause, and it wasn’t the blanket that was causing the night sweats.
I spoke to my endocrinologist about it. He was the doctor I saw the most often, and he ordered unnecessary hormone tests that confirmed that I was not menopausal. Which wasn’t even my question. But, men. Alas, they are helpless in the face of a woman in distress and sometimes they do foolish things the woman must then pay for. In this case, literally $300.
It has been over five months since we gave up Amazon Prime and Netflix.
The rapidly escalating content on Netflix was leaving the adults in our family feeling gross after watching our shows, and we squirmed at the content the kids kept finding.
There were some great shows, but our tweens kept finding stuff that was rated for their age, but was full of bigger kid content that we weren’t ready to expose them to, at least not on the screen. I’d much rather have my kids read about something than watch it and have everything spelled out for them.
Amazon Prime? I was sick of paying to shop at a specific store, especially one that was invading my privacy and was my first choice when I was shopping or just looking for something. With the ease of ordering, sometimes, I clicked purchase before I even realized what had happened.
