Category — Uncategorized

One thing I love is bothering Josh, and there is nothing better than making your own Wordle with a made-up word, texting it to him, and watching him agonize over trying to figure it out.

That’s love!

You can make your own with any 5-letter word, send the link to play to a friend, and enjoy being a master word game creator.

Or make your own, leave it in the comment section below, and let us all play it. Maybe more telling than anything else is seeing which word you chose to give us. Here is mine.

A video to watch before reading the rest of this:

How cool is that? I ended up seeing the video after I read most the article on visual stability, so I knew what to look for when the video started. But I love this idea of our brain averages what it sees in multi-second intervals and delivers something close to that average so we can handle it.

It goes hand-in-hand with the changing room illusion:

I only noticed two things change in the whole room. How did you do?

Back near the beginning of the pandemic, or maybe it was right when restaurants started to get their takeaway plans settled, our favourite vegan restaurant brought back their “chicken” sandwich. I had been waiting for this moment for years, leaving them helpful little nudges on their Facebook wall, and the “chicken” sandwich was finally back, but my heart wasn’t ready to eat it.

Getting takeaway from there felt like too much work. It wouldn’t travel well, and we were certainly not going to crouch in the parking lot, eating fake chicken. I mean, secretly, I was totally willing to do this, but the twins convinced me that this was “sad” and “unhealthy.” So we left it as one more thing we couldn’t do due to the pandemic.

And then this week, they posted that for two days only, they were bringing back their “chicken” sandwich. It was going to be a gorgeous day, and we’re vaccinated and boosted. We could do this. So Josh and I called in our order, picked it up, and went to eat it in the car with the windows down, enjoying the breeze.

It was the best fake chicken sandwich ever.

Mostly because while things still felt abnormal, eating a really good meal in the car felt like a triumph. We had done it — we had grabbed back a moment of normal life and done it as safely as possible. It was like having our cake/chicken sandwich and eating it, too.

Afterward, we drove to a park and walked around the fake lake — it was an ersatz afternoon — and talked about everything and nothing. A date day, instead of a date night.

Josh turned 50 recently. For his 40th birthday, we got together our friends and family for a massive all-day volunteer project downtown, repainting and repairing a building. In the summer, we went to London, which is what we’ve done to kickoff every decade.

This year had to be a quieter, COVID-cognizant affair — his second pandemic birthday since his 48th birthday was our last time going out before the shutdown — but we’re considering whether we can keep on schedule and slip away to the UK this summer. It will need to look different from how we originally planned it years ago. We asked the kids if they’d be okay doing only takeaway in the hotel room or wearing a mask if everyone else around them was mask-less. I think we’re okay with it. Maybe. It’s so hard to know.

But I do know that 50 sounds old. It sounded very far away at one point, and now it’s here. And we don’t feel old. We don’t feel 50, or however we imagined 50 feeling. I still have time, so perhaps 50ness will kick in as I get closer. But as of right now, it feels like everything is just starting. We’re still so young.

Happiest birthday, Josh.

I recently read about this idea to die with zero dollars. As in use it up or give it away before you die. I’m sure if I read the book that it would explain how to ensure that you don’t have zero before you die. And it certainly makes sense that waiting to do things until late in life means you may have the money and time but not the health or strength.

But I kind of love the idea of passing along wealth and not knowing what people are doing with it but getting to assume they’re happy and having a great time. Giving it away while I’m living means that I end up knowing vs. getting to believe the happy ending.

Plus, I kind of like the idea of dropping a big unexpected donation on a nonprofit. Making donations while you’re alive means being asked to make more donations, year after year. Or being asked to join a board or give your opinion. I would like to give a donation and have the development person not know where or how to send the thank you because I also make it under a ridiculous fake name. That would amuse me to no end.

What do you think of this idea of dying with zero?