Category — Uncategorized

My heart wasn’t into watching the opening ceremony, but it also felt wrong to skip it. You only get so many Olympics in life, and I can’t ever remember missing one.

But it’s frankly hard to sit down and pretend we’re one big friendly world, united in our love of sport. I mean, I know that’s the point. That we set aside our differences for a few weeks and remember that we all like to shoot ourselves very quickly downhill over the snow. But there is also something a little disingenuous about it.

Still, Sabrina Impacciatore was amazing. And I loved the tubes of paint pouring ribbons onto the stage. And the lighting of the torch always makes me feel weepy.

Every once in a while, I think about spending a year or so living in another country — think of it like an adult version of study abroad. I would plant myself in one town and just… live life. Go to the grocery store, write blog posts, go to work, and read books. Just in another place.

I have places I would like to do this, but those places aren’t keen to have people just plop down and rent a cottage for a year. So I always bookmark articles that I find that talk about this concept for a place I may not have considered.

Enter Croatia.

I have not given a lot of thought to Croatia as a place to live for a year.(Visit, yes. live, no.) But Croatia has a program where if you pre-pay your rent for a year, you can stay for a year.

Croatia offers a little-known “apartment visa” that allows foreigners, including Americans, to establish residency simply by showing they own residential property or hold a long-term rental lease. Applicants also need to demonstrate sufficient funds and health insurance. The visa is generally valid for a year.

It doesn’t say it in this article, but more poking around turned up multiple spaces that said you need to pre-pay the rent for the year. There are likely other rules, but it was an interesting idea.

Every time the kids leave, I think to myself long before the moment, maybe this will be the time you do this calmly. Where you don’t cry on the walk back to the car or wail once you get inside. When it doesn’t feel as if you are being turned inside out.

I did not succeed in this again. Better luck next time.

The ChickieNob missed her train due to the snow, but miraculously got on the Wolvog’s train, so we got to have two extra days with her in addition to the longer visit we knew we were getting with him.

At least I’m not the only one who is miserable. Quentin face-planted into his bedding and looked up mournfully at me, as if it had been my choice that he didn’t have his friends. I gave him too many blueberries out of guilt.

Lauren Bravo is one of my favourite writers. I’ve only read one book — Probably Nothing — but it was that good. One of my top books of 2025.

Every month or so, I look up writers I like on Goodreads to see if they have a new book coming out. Every once in a while, I’m happily surprised to see a new book listed. But her next book never popped up because she has been dealing with two miscarriages.

It’s secondary infertility, and while she knew that being pregnant used up your time and brainspace, “what I didn’t know then, privileged as I was, is that being not-pregnant makes its own demands – on your body and your time, as well as your heart.”

My throat got tight with that.

And this:

It is work, but it feels the very opposite of productivity – tending to your body as it unravels, diligently unpicking traces of the life that might have been.

What is it called to feel gutted for someone you don’t know and will likely never meet, but their words touched you and made your life better at one point and now you’re so sad that they’re part of a club you never wanted to be part of yourself? That needs a word.

Go read the whole thing. And then buy her book because it is as wise as this piece.

When I first heard about the game 2025, I checked it out and then quickly closed the screen. The goal is to make 45 groups of 45 entries, pulling together the groups from the mixed-up options on the screen, which are all buttons with a word (or words) on it.

For instance, you may see two animals (donkey) (horse). You click one and then click the other, and if they go together, they snap into a single block. Now you find another animal. You click that animal and then click the square with the two animals, and now you will see the list form and a red number appear on the square so you can know how many you’ve found in that category.

Of course, you don’t know the categories. You figure them out as you click options together. While some are easy to figure out, others are words I didn’t know and had no clue what else would belong in the same group.

I kept seeing people posting about the game, so I opened it again and wasted a few minutes of my life forming groups. Then I set it aside and went back to it that night to waste more of my life. Then I told everyone in the house about it, and everyone rejected the game. But the ChickieNob left my room and admitted a few minutes later that it was strangely addictive and she was going to play. Two down. Two standing strong.

When I went to say goodnight to the Wolvog, he had it up on his computer screen. He was well beyond where I was and continued to clean up the board. By the second day, he no longer had to scroll all the way to the right. Three down. One standing strong.

Josh is the only one who hasn’t given in to the siren song of 2025. He has stood behind the Wolvog and pointed out Tom Hanks movies, which we appreciate because we all suck at that category. But he has not started playing himself once he observed how we all disappeared into a fog of options, the Wolvog crying out: “Is it a cheese or a Muppet? A cheese or a Muppet?”

The Wolvog cleared the whole board in two days. The ChickieNob took a few more. I finished last. It took me about six days to complete, but I had the lowest number of mistakes (908). I had to do a lot of guessing with the final 123 options.

This is what I’ll say about the game and its addictiveness. In a chaotic world, it is soothing to group together things, clean up the screen, and make everything neat and organized. There is no timer, so you can work as quickly or as slowly as you wish. There is nothing at stake.

And I now know a lot of Tom Hanks movies.