Category — Mental Sampler

I usually do not use the toiletries provided by hotels. I like my shampoo and my moisturizer — why would I want to use an unfamiliar product with an unfamiliar scent? The one exception is soap. I’m a soap generalist, at least when it comes to hand soap.

But this fall, we were at a hotel we stay at several times per year, and I noticed that the sample toiletries were made with goat milk. I sniffed, I tried, I fell in love. Like hardcore begged Josh to take a vacation so we could return to the hotel, and I could get more goat milk hand cream.

We found it online, sold in a 1 gallon bottle. The version in stores has different ingredients, but this is the one we had in the hotel. I’m considering getting the gallon. It’s less expensive than continuously going back to the hotel.

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Do you sleep with earplugs? I am considering getting Loop Quiet earplugs, which are supposed to block out sound and be okay for side sleeping, with the idea that I could also use them during the day if I had to work out of the house.

But I don’t know anyone who has Loop earplugs. Do they work? Do you like them? And how do you hear your alarm if you sleep with them in?

A friend and I were talking about bucket lists, and I admitted that I only had one thing on my bucket list. One thing I would be super bummed I didn’t do while I was on earth. There are things I would like to do. I would like to see my immortal quokka, Akiva. I would like to go to the Magic Castle in Los Angeles. But if I don’t meet my quokka, and I never see magic tricks, I will be okay.

But I will not be okay if I don’t do this one thing.

Go to Efteling in the Netherlands.

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Every time we go on a trip, we buy trip insurance. It has saved us twice, and it’s a huge weight off my mind. But did you know you could get annual trip insurance? I had no idea this service existed. Instead of getting insurance for each trip, you pay once, and it covers you for all trips you take that year. When you’re about to travel, you add the new trip to the site so it’s covered. Isn’t that brilliant? We’re going to explore it the next time we have a trip on the horizon.

Like to Efteling? Hint, hint, hint, family?

When Alexander Scriabin composed the piece Prometheus back in 1909, he wrote down notes for an instrument he called clavier à lumières. According to Wikipedia, “The instrument was supposed to be a keyboard, with notes corresponding to colors as given by Scriabin’s synesthetic system, specified in the score.”

The performance I went to last month hired a lighting designer to create tubes over the stage that accomplished this, so as the musicians played the piece, the tubes filled with the colours listed in the score. You got to see the music as well as hear it. It was so cool.

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Last winter, the day before we travelled, I was kneeling on the floor and then scooted back to be able to open the drawer underneath Beorn (and now Quentin’s) habitat. I immediately felt something pop in my foot, and within minutes, a knot formed on the top of my foot. I iced it until we left, and then limped along, thinking it would heal when we got home, and I wasn’t walking that much.

That didn’t happen.

The pain mostly went away, though it was definitely still there from time to time. And the knot was there all year.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I was doing yoga, and I was backwards in ustrasana, which is a back bend. Your weight goes onto your heels because you’re pushing down on them to hold it. I’ve done this back bend every weekday from the time that we returned to the trip until November — almost a full year — and nothing has ever happened. But this time, I felt something crack in the top of my foot, and when I came out of the back bend, the pain was gone, and the knot was disappearing. It took a few more days to disappear entirely, but now my foot is completely back to normal.

Strange.

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My body does not react well to junk food anymore. This is a sad discovery. But it’s not enjoyable to eat chips at the beach if I’m going to feel terrible for two days after.

Many years ago, my brother introduced the kids to Trader Joe’s cat cookies for people, and they immediately became a shopping trip staple.

When we dropped the kids off at college this year, we swung by their local Trader Joe’s for cat cookies and Bamba, and they were sold out of both. Panic! They grabbed other snacks, and I said I would pick up these treats at our local Trader Joe’s before our October visit. That way, I would be sure they would have them.

While Bamba was quickly back on the shelves, there continued to be a blank space where cat cookies should be. Every time we asked about it, the person would check the computer and tell us they would be back in stock X days later. We would return, the shelf would be empty, and we’d be told there was a delay, and now it was Y says later. They have not been discontinued. They’re just having trouble getting them in stock.

We tried up until the trip, tried random Trader Joe’s along the way, and tried up in their college town one last time. No cat cookies.

I haven’t given up. The Cat Cookie Crisis of 2025 has only made me more determined to keep at this until I can present tubs of cat-shaped cookies to the kids. Making me a hero.

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The kids also taught me the term “rubberducking.” It comes from computer science, where coders are encouraged to “explain their code, step by step, in natural language—either aloud or in writing—to reveal mistakes and misunderstandings.” And they do this to a rubber duck or other inanimate object.

I needed it explained because a person said to me, “I’m not a rubber duck!” And I didn’t understand the reference. It’s when another person uses YOU as their rubber duck. They’re not telling you so you understand them better. They’re using you as a rubber duck to talk through their problems so they can hear them outside their head. And the point the person made is that humans absorb emotions, rubber ducks do not, so talking at someone for a half hour while listing out all of your issues is not a productive conversation. It’s rubber ducking.

So now you know, too.

When I saw my name on the hurricane list this year, I feared that if it made the news, it would be a terrible one because it would be later in the season. It was a strange premonition because the name had been used in other storms, though none like this.

My heart hurts seeing the destruction and reading the death counts.

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I read two books set in Oxford at the same time. The first was The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman, the 9th book in Lyra’s world, an alternative, steampunk-ish Oxford. The second was Susie Dent’s Guilty by Definition, a modern mystery in actual Oxford.

As I switched from book to book, I kept landing in the same Oxford places. Lyra was staying at The Trout. The characters in the other book go to The Trout. Lyra visits Godstow Abbey, and so do the other characters. They both walk up Cornmarket and cross Port Meadow. It made me confused every time I ended up reading about the same place in two different books on the same day.