The image shows the paperback version of Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, by Jon Kabat-Zinn, but I actually ended up listening to the audiobook. The Chaplain recommended this book to me a little while ago. He didn’t say much about it. I just remember him telling me, “you should read it.” Since he doesn’t recommend many books to me and our reading interests don’t intersect much, I took him seriously.
If you follow me on Insta, you know that I participated in something called #memademay this year. This is an optional motivational tool and fun adventure for sewists who make their own clothes to wear what they’ve made and feature it on social media.
I don’t think most of my friends sew, so while I hope they didn’t get sick of seeing my face in May, there was also the bigger thing of maybe no one caring that I make my own clothes. And the sticky issue of who, exactly, our social media accounts are for.
Us?
Our friends?
Attention for us, from our friends?
*cringe*
Where do you shop for clothes? How often do you shop? Is it medicinal, or is because you have an identifiable need? Do you shop ethically?
I’m a medicinal shopper. I’ve historically been pretty good at making it seem at least part of the time like it’s an identifiable need, but usually, it’s just because I’m stressed out and looking for a way to control my environment.
As a lady in my Late Thirties, I’ve become a bit of a snob with my shopping. I don’t remember how I discovered Anthropologie, but their quirky, European-inspired, artsy offerings appealed to me immediately. I had realized the cheaply made, fleeting styles of third party sellers on Amazon were often disappointing.
I started with Anthropologie’s hand towels. On sale, they are often around $10-14. Which is pretty expensive for a kitchen towel, but these aren’t your average kitchen towel.
We fall asleep reading the classics at our house. Why this matters may make more sense if you keep reading.
I’m in a little tussle with my school district right now.
The way it stands, I provided the same end-of-year information in 2018 to my school district as I did the year before, and this time, they said it wasn’t enough.
Recently I was talking to another mom at an event and she was telling me a little about her teenage son. I said something in response to what she told me that indicated that I wasn’t quite as involved in my son’s personal life as she was in hers. In that moment I realized we were both judging each other.
I was judging her for letting her son date at such a young age. I was judging her for judging her son’s girlfriend for not being Good Enough for him. She was judging me for my lack of involvement in my son’s life and my not getting up in his phone frequently enough. And judging her son’s (now ex-) girl for growing up in an unstable household without adequate support, leading to emotional issues and self harming behaviors.
She said the girl would call her son at 3 a.m. because her parents were fighting and she didn’t know what to do.
My kids could have done that this year. Called someone in the middle of the night because his parents were fighting again and he didn’t know what to do.
