Category — Uncategorized

I’ve always loved kintsugi — the Japanese art of repairing objects by mending them lacquer that contains gold or silver. A broken bowl comes back together, crossed with beautiful lines.

I recently learned about visible mending, the act of repairing holes in clothing so they can continue to be of use, but making the repairs visible. The mending speaks volumes: “This item is so loved that it was fixed instead of tossed aside.”

It feels like a good metaphor for living life. For making the most out of crappy situations and brokenness. But doing so openly; in full admittance that life is not Instagram. Even though visible mending is well represented on Instagram.

I have a pair of yoga pants with an enormous hole in the knee. I’ve continued to wear them, and the hole has grown bigger and bigger. I wish I had found this earlier when the hole was still a tiny patch of thinned fabric. But doing this is kind of a Valentine to your favourite things.

I’m still thinking about Ina Garten’s commentary on doing less. We’re all clearly feeling it, though it feels like a lot of the grace we were feeling toward ourselves and each other at the beginning of the pandemic has dried up.

There was a great piece in the Atlantic recently on productive leisure.

“On the scourge of “productive leisure” and the very American conviction that even our free time should generate — at the minimum! — an enviable Instagram.”

Free time doesn’t feel very free when it costs a lot of mental and emotional energy.

And yet life is short. And there are so many things I want to try. So many things I want to learn. If this all ended tomorrow, would I be happy with the time spent staring at the ceiling? Scrolling through GoodReads? Going down random Googling rabbit holes such as: “How long does it take to get from New Zealand to Antarctica?”

[7 days. I was thinking Mali was so lucky to live close-ish to Antarctica. It turns out that it’s not that close. But still.]

Maybe I should turn off the computer. Pick back up my book.

There is this man who worked at the post office, who watched my kids grow up and always chatted with me while I mailed a package. I didn’t know him well — for instance, until this week, I didn’t know he had a kid a little older than the twins — but I saw him every time I got the mail.

He died this week; a heart attack a few months before his retirement. I read about it on a town listserv; following the story from his hospitalization to the funeral announcement.

I told Josh that I felt unreasonably sad. Why unreasonably? Because he wasn’t a close friend or really any friend at all. He was just someone I liked. Someone who added to my day. Who was amused by the twins when they were little and calmed my fears when my passport went missing in the mail. He was just a good person, and the world was a little colder without him in it.

I felt it would be unreasonable to ask for time off to watch the livestream of the funeral. Again, how do you say that you want an hour to watch the funeral of a town member? I could imagine the question: “Oh, were you close?” And then the answer is no. We weren’t close. I just cared.

I will have the funeral playing on mute; off to the side of my computer, known only to me. I would like to say goodbye, even if I can’t hear the speeches. I kind of know what they’re going to say. That he was a kind guy, full of patience, who made the world better. And now he’s gone.

There seems to be an explosion of fun games at the moment. Some are inspired by Wordle. Others are their own thing. This first one is one of the latter.

You have to put events pulled from Wikipedia into a timeline. Put three things out of order and the game ends. I’ve gotten to seven points. Which is probably not that great, but I’m pretty proud of my score because it is pulling from every. single. wikipedia. event. From Juan Perón’s birth to the Serbian empire established in 1346. It is tough.

If you are still loving Wordle but are more numbers-oriented, you should try Nerdle. There is a daily equation, and it’s delightful.

Consider this my weekly game PSA.

You know I like the word games…

There have been many takes on Wordle. And Guess My Word. But one that is actually a fun remix (vs. a duplicate copy) is Absurdle. I wasn’t playing it because I didn’t totally get it, but my friend explained it to me, and now I will explain it to you.

You start with a word, just like Wordle, and it tells you whether any of your letters appears in the computer’s chosen word. But then everything changes with the next turn. The developer explains it best, but the end result is that you’re chasing the algorithm into a corner, sort of like a game of chess. But with words. It follows its own logic, but it changes the word and removes options behind the scene until you end up with only one possible word left.

My best game was six tries. My worst was eight. I tend to end on seven. You can play it as many times as you wish; a nice distraction while you wait for the next Wordle.