Category — Microblog Mondays

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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The twins’ school recently had an open house, and I swung by when I could slip out for an hour.  I ended up in their French class, which is one of their favourite classes.  Their teacher is fantastic, and it’s a pleasure to watch her teach because she clearly loves the language and passing it along to the kids.

I took French for many, many, many years.  Being in that classroom brought out my French panic.  My body was on high alert that the teacher could call on me.  And I would be asked to speak in front of her students.  And… emergency emergency emergency.

I don’t feel this way about any other subject.  I couldn’t always do the math problem, but I wasn’t worried about getting called on in class.  The same with every subject; I was okay being called on in every other class.  But there was something about language classes.  I was so worried that I’d be asked to speak aloud.  And while I’m okay reading things in another language, I feel this panic come out every time I need to actually speak to another human being in that language.

Which language did you study in school?  Do you also have language panic?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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I don’t like the idea of reading challenges because I never want to rush through books I love, but I am very excited that I’ve consumed 27 books this year. Plus, it’s only October. I could definitely hit 30 before the year is out. Considering I only read 17 books in 2017, I am pretty damn proud of myself.

And only two or three of them have been duds that I kept reading because I was too far in to stop. I quit one because the typos made the story confusing.

Favourites have been Little Disasters (Randall Klein — my brother, but I can still put his book on my list), The Last Policeman trilogy (Ben Winters), Us (David Nicholls), and Crazy Rich Asians (Kevin Kwan).

What are your favourite things you’ve read so far in 2018?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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I am still mentally regrouping after the Kavanaugh vote.  Analysts are stating that things are calming down, but… I’m not feeling that.  I don’t feel like I’m settling.  I feel like I’m sinking.

(You too?)

There was a Carolyn Hax column this weekend.  Hax was trying to give pregnancy after infertility advice without definitively understanding the situation (the asker was extremely vague with her pronouns), and she coins/uses the term “alpha feeler” to describe the only person’s emotions who matter.  Meaning the alpha feeler feels something and everyone else around her needs to feel it, too.  In this case, the alpha feeler is not asking this, but the mother is asking one child to treat the other child as the alpha feeler.  Anyway.

The point is that considering another person’s feelings is complicated business, and yet, we still have to do it.  It’s a key piece of being a family member/friend/community member.  Trying to honour the feelings of a country is even more complicated, and yet, lawmakers still have to do it.  The public offered their feelings through polls.  The majority consistently did not support the confirmation of Kavanaugh.  The lawmakers chose to ignore feelings.

And this is where we are.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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I really love this idea: If you can’t coordinate dinner to fall for everyone in your home at the same time, set up a family snack.  Like let’s say your partner always needs to work late.  Have a snack with them when they return home.  Or if you have kids and they’re ensconced in evening activities, don’t stress it.  Just plan a family snack.

I wish I had read this years ago when we couldn’t get family dinners going because of bed times bumping up against work hours.  Instead of feeling like we were failing, we could have shifted the focus to a family snack and accomplished the same thing of talking about our day over food.

Does everyone in your home eat a meal at the same time?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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So I should begin by saying that I spent a chunk of the summer reading an “end of the world” trilogy (The Last Policeman — so good!), which thoroughly freaked me out.  The world was ending.  People were awful, making the end of the world even worse.

And then the Guardian ran a piece about the super wealthy preparing for this inevitable event: “The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr Robot hack that takes everything down.”

It’s less about the tech itself and more about predicting how humans will behave.  It’s about people thinking how to continue to survive when the fragile social rules that govern are world are useless.  The article (and that book series) will terrify you, but it will also make you think long and hard about how we’re treating each other in the here and now.

How do you think people will behave after a world-ending event?  Will we bond together, or will all hell break loose?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.