Category — Uncategorized

I am I-don’t-know-who-Billie-Eilish-is years old. I know she’s a singer, but I don’t know what she sings.

The point is that you don’t need to know who Billie Eilish is to find the Vanity Fair interview video fascinating. “Vanity Fair has time capsuled Billie Eilish’s responses to the same questions for the last three years and tracked the almost-18-year-old’s swift rise to pop super stardom.” The magazine interviewed her three years in a row and ran the interviews side-by-side:

You don’t need to watch the whole thing, but jump into the first two or three minutes to get a gist of the layout. She answers the same questions each year, sometimes looking back and commenting on her previous answers.

The answers change (sometimes) drastically because her life has changed drastically year over year. The average person probably wouldn’t show deep changes over the course of 12 months, but I think this would be fascinating to do in five year intervals on the same date, answering the same questions and looking back on all of your previous answers.

It’s a little bit like a video version of Loribeth’s “Right Now” posts. It’s watching a life lived but also capturing a mind’s thoughts.

I stumbled upon the best advice post I’ve read in a long time. (And that’s saying a lot because you know that I’m a Carolyn Hax superfan.) The advice came from Seun Adebiyi, an Olympian and cancer survivor, who kicked off his list with this nugget:

“Never confuse who you are with what you do.”

He explains the danger of tying self-worth to accomplishments. Think about where you are drawing your self-esteem. And then ask yourself if it’s who you are (a good listener) or what you do (get straight As). So simple. So smart.

And this: “Fortify your village, then build a moat.” We sort of forget to mention that part when we talk about gathering people around you. Of course people need other people to get through life, but we also need to know how to shut out people from time to time and build those ever-important boundaries. We teach kids how to make friends (sort of), but I think we also need to teach them how to build that moat if there are toxic people around them.

What do you think of his thoughts?

Carolyn Hax recently had divorce advice which also applied to infertility. A woman is in the middle of the grieving process after a divorce, but she’s terrified that she will still be angry 20 years down the road plus she is annoyed whenever people tell her that she’ll find someone else. She doesn’t want to focus on someone else; she wants to focus on the situation in front of her: the divorce.

Hax points out that “The sense that you were treated horrendously can give way to the excitement at the promise of Life II: The Sequel without his selfish self as a co-star. Or just the promise of having any weird thing for dinner without having to factor him in. It’s okay to start really, really small.”

Okay, so clearly divorce-focused, but I started thinking about how much of my initial anger with infertility was tied to a feeling that my body (or the universe or whatever I was promised would happen when we tried building a family) was treating me horrendously.

Hax continues:

You can see either a life plan wrecked behind you, or do-over opportunity ahead of you — into which you build any joy you can. Even the idea or intention of joy, before you’re actually able to feel it, will help shift your center from regretful-then to hopeful-now. After you sort through the grief, of course; it’s normal and healthy to be as mad as you want to be.

A life plan wrecked or a Plan B formed. It’s just a tiny shift in thinking. Something comes next; not everyone gets that next moment, that next day, that next stage of life. So how do you look forward into it? You can either look backward at that old life plan, or (once you are ready) start charting out the new life.

Here’s to paths forward.

Remember last year when we surprised the ChickieNob on her floating birthday with a trip to see the costumes from The Crown? We did it again over winter break, this time with the set of Downton Abbey.

We told the kids we were finally seeing Foamhenge––an inexplicable, long-running desire––which isn’t even open in January. It took them about an hour past Centreville to comment that Centreville certainly was huge, at which point we queued up the opening music from Downton Abbey and announced we were going to Asheville to see the exhibit at the Biltmore.

This sounded like a fantastic idea when we first made the plans. Sure, Asheville is a little far from DC (about eight hours), but I was so pumped to see Mrs. Patmore’s kitchen that I thought the hours would just fly by.

That isn’t what happened.

It wasn’t that the ride was too long. I mean, it was too long, but that wasn’t my real problem. It was that we were going through the mountains, and I thought I was going to have a heart attack as we twisted up and down the Blue Ridge hills. By the time we got to Asheville, I was completely wrung out from holding my body in the same rigid position for six hours.

It was like that time when I freaked out on the mail boat to Smith Island because I realized I was stuck on the bumpy ride for 40 minutes. Once I realized I couldn’t drive the mountain roads, we were deep in the heart of the mountain roads. Which meant more mountain roads, even if we turned around. Which we didn’t want to do because we had Biltmore tickets.

The end of the story is that we made it to Asheville, we made it to the Biltmore, and we made it to the Downton Abbey exhibit, which made me cry at least five times. Especially the moment when I turned a corner and was facing the back stairs with the servants’ hall to the right.

After the exhibit, we toured the rest of the Biltmore, which is an obscene display of wealth…

…but also very pretty.

And then we had the trip back; a different route up the coast so we could avoid a bulk (but not all) of the mountains. The Wolvog already knows the date and activity for his special day because we needed his help to purchase tickets correctly. (“Surely, son, it doesn’t mean that we’re stuck in this e-sports arena for twelve hours. Oh wait, it does?”) So one floating birthday down and another floating birthday to go.

It may or may not be International Blog Delurking Week. The first full week of January is when we’re supposed to slither out of the reading closet and check in with an “I’m here” comment. I’m not sure if anyone does this anymore. Back in the olden days, people would pop up out of the woodwork. Nowadays, not so much.

So let’s see what happens.

So welcome to International Blog Delurking Week. I make a badge every year to mark the occasion, and I give you full permission to right click and grab it for your very own.

My reward for remembering to do this (when I could have just as easily forgotten) is that you have to delurk for this worldwide holiday, which is super serious and important. Right?

It is fairly easy. Leave a comment in the comment section below admitting that you’re here. You can simply raise your hand and meekly admit that you’re here with a simple, one-word “here” comment; or you can proudly raise your hand and tell us all a bit about yourself (my preferred method); or you can tell me what type of cookie you’d be if you were a lump of cookie dough (see, I’m trying to make it easy for you by even providing a comment prompt). The point is that I want to know about the people who read me, since there is a huge discrepancy between the number of readers in actuality and the number of readers I actually know are reading. Or a tongue-twister like that.

And that’s all you have to do to celebrate.

So (clears throat to nudge you along), who is here?