Category — Uncategorized

I trimmed my to-read list the day after my second vaccine shot. I was mentally empty and exhausted, but it seemed like a simple housekeeping task. Remove the books that no longer look appealing. Add the new books I’ve been bookmarking on my phone. Decide on the next buddy reads with my cousin. Cancel holds I have no intention of getting to in the near future.

I have a tab on my TBR spreadsheet called “Changed My Mind.” Instead of deleting, I move books onto that list. It’s an interest graveyard; the corpses of things that once upon a time piqued my interest.

Maybe it was the fact that I’m running on empty, but the task made me feel weepy. Life is full of too many interesting books, too many interesting places, and too many interesting people, and I will never get to all the things I want to read, or places I want to go, or enough moments with all the people I want to spend time with because that is the way reality works. No surprises there, but seeing it all listed out in a spreadsheet made me feel profoundly sad.

The alarm on my phone works. It wakes me gently, mentally bringing me into a world of magic with the opening bars of “Hedwig’s Theme.” I bought the song years ago for this expressed purpose, and it has been bringing me out of sleep ever since.

But I decided that I needed a change. Why? I’m not sure. It was just an impulse that I needed a different alarm. I considered a few options—the music from “A Very English Scandal” wasn’t sold on the iTunes store.

“It Happens Every Day” by Dar Williams would be perfect except that it reminds me of miscarriage.

But I ultimately landed on the song that plays before and after movies at the Scottish Seabird Center. It’s happy, and it reminds me of a happy place. I reset my wake up alarm to play this theme and went to sleep, excited to start a new day infused with happiness.

But the moment it started playing in the morning, we jolted out of bed, our hearts pounding. Beyond having cold water thrown over your head, it may just be the worst thing to use for wake up purposes that I’ve ever encountered. I turned down the volume for the first snooze and jolted again when the hands started clapping. There is no volume where that song becomes a happy way to wake up. I know because I set multiple alarms with this music, so we had to endure it two more times that morning. Josh made me promise that I would change it immediately.

I’m currently back to “Hedwig’s Theme” for the time being. It works. But I’m thinking about buying this song from an old, favourite video game. It would be good… right?

My second pandemic birthday coincides with the date that mask restrictions will be lifted in our area. Of course. It feels like each change in the pandemic makes the maze a little more twisty to navigate. We had a great system with takeaway, knew which restaurants took masking seriously, and now we need to see which ones will keep up masking because there is no way to know whether or not someone is vaccinated. The only thing we know is whether or not they’re wearing a mask.

So.

We’ll figure it out. Either we’ll get takeaway because one of the restaurants we’ve been patroning will continue to mask, or we’ll skip the takeaway and eat cereal for dinner instead. Cereal and cookies. All things tan.

Because we’re still masking. Because careful is cool. Because it feels right. Because we like to live in a zero regrets zone, and removing our mask—especially indoors—would fill us with regrets. Emphasis on the us. We’ve read. We’ve thought. We’ve decided. And we know everyone else is doing this, too, and may come to a different decision. We all see the world through our invisible lens.

Ten Percent Happier had a great piece on predatory listening, which in blog form would be more predatory reading. It’s that idea of forming how you feel about the words on the screen (or the words coming into your ears) before you’ve read the words on the screen or heard the words. It’s forming your response before you even know what you’re responding to.

Every stage of the pandemic has been a whirlpool of predatory reading—myself included. It includes listening or reading “with a hypercritical focus rather than with curiosity. If I don’t pay attention, my mind switches into offense mode, poised to build a case, selecting only things that validate my narrative.” To continue to mask or not to mask. Most people—like the election—have already decided what they’re going to do. They relax into reading what confirms their decision. Form arguments while reading (or, in some cases, before reading) what they suspect or know goes against their decision.

I like the end thought in the article—how to get out of the cycle of predatory listening and reading. It was food for thought in stressful times.

My Sweet Dumb Brain had a beautiful essay unpacking an idea from Glennon Doyle’s book about life as a game of chutes and ladders, and how social media amplifies the squares we’re all on.

She was on a figurative high square moving towards the next milestone when her husband died suddenly, sending her down a chute that changed her relationship status, friendships, career, and adoption application. And then there were all the “ladders” that friends were posting on social media:

While I was coming to terms with the fact that my husband was dead, everyone else seemed to be living their best lives—and making sure the world knew about it … all of these posts made me feel woefully alone. While I had fallen down a never-ending chute, it seemed it was all ladders for everyone else I followed.

The point, she explains, is that “I usually focus on the chute part. I forget to look for the ladders.” Because it’s easy to feel the impact of a chute. Your stomach is plummeting. Your heart is in your throat. You are upset, and it blots out everything else. It is much harder to feel the elation of a ladder. We climb them, enjoying the fact that we’re going up while simultaneously looking for the next ladder. Climbs don’t have the same physical response.

Anyway, I love her essay. Give it a read.

I sent the ChickieNob outside last week to meet up with a friend. There is a clearing between our houses, and they can remain 12 feet apart on picnic blankets. An hour or so later, she came back into the house. “They are here. They are here. They are everywhere.”

The cicadas.

I had been looking in our yard, assuming that if they weren’t in our yard, they weren’t in our neighbourhood. Not quite. It turns out that they were just a few streets away. Some of my friends’ yards are swarming with them.

We had our first on the front step this weekend—both the actual cicada (which I mostly missed as Josh nudged it away with his foot) and its shell (which I jumped over, shrieking). And I saw them on some of the trees while we were driving.

Since then, I’ve been standing by the window with my birding binoculars, searching the trees like a curtain twitcher (a term I learned from fellow former blogger, MsPrufrock, aka BarrenAlbion, that I think of any time I stand by the window). The twins tell me that I’m creepy, and if anyone looked at me while I was standing at my bedroom window, binoculars glued to my face, they would think I’m weird. Think I’m weird? Is that the worst that would happen? Because do you know that the alternative is that I will not know when the cicadas come to our actual yard?

I forgot that they emerge slowly at first and then pick up steam.

I took a few minutes to sit outside yesterday. It may be the last time for awhile.