Category — Uncategorized

We’ve been watching a show called Unacceptable, where comedians express and defend their unacceptable opinion. They poll the audience when the opinion is first stated to see how many agree, and then poll them after the comedian has defended their position to see if they’ve swayed any hearts. The opinions are usually ridiculous. It’s a lot of fun.

You know what isn’t a lot of fun?

Music at the beach. That’s my unacceptable opinion. I think music played in public from speakers (vs. privately via headphones) should be banned, or if it can’t be banned — because let’s face it, smoking is banned at the beach and so many people around us were smoking — there should be a silent section of the beach similar to the quiet car on a train.

Who is with me?

When I go to the beach, I want to hear the waves. I know I’m also going to hear children shrieking and people talking loudly, but I still want to be able to hear nature along with those sounds. We had a family set up next to us and start blasting folk music. This was a day after a person set up speakers to blast opera — OPERA! — across the sand. Anyway, the family was blasting folk music, and the boy between us turned on his phone and started blasting country music back at them, and they both kept turning up the volume until I picked up my chair and moved down to the water.

There are so many ways to privately enjoy music in public, and plenty of private spaces to enjoy music collectively. But listening to music from a speaker in public? I think it should be banned. That’s my unacceptable opinion.

Pixel Thoughts has been around for a while, and it’s pretty simple. You type out your worry, and it floats off into space while you’re reminded of how we’re insignificant. Which is true, but didn’t make my worries go away, even though I appreciated the perspective reminder.

But now it’s an app. You can still use the general version, but you can now personalize the messaging to your worry. You can turn on “auto” and allow it to choose what it thinks will be the best message, or tailor the message to one of acceptance or “this too shall pass.” You can choose how long you’d like the message to run (30 seconds to 3 minutes), and choose gentle music to play in the background. Or leave it random. It’s really up to you.

I found it went from a nice idea to a brilliant meditation tool. It has yet to say anything earth-shattering, but having what I sense to be true reinforced in a message has a calming effect. Yes, my brain knows that this worry is based on fear vs. fact, but having the app gently point that out and reframing the worry instead of asking my brain to come up with the same emotional response feels like having a little invisible friend supporting you for a minute.

If you like it, you may also like trying his other tool, which has you breathing with other people in the world at the same time. I found it oddly emotional.

If you get the app, get the correct one. The real one is made by Marc B. There are a bunch of fake knockoffs that look the same, but I have no clue what they do with your data.

Sometimes when I sit down to read, I open an app to check something quickly before I get started, or I Google something that has been on my mind so I can put it to rest and enjoy the book, and then I look up and a half hour of rabbit-hole scrolling has passed.

It happens.

Naomi Alderman, creator of Zombies, Run! and writer of numerous books, has started a Couch to 5K program for reading. She writes, “The whole point of Couch to 5k is that it picks an amount which is doable for a lot of people and tells you how to go from ‘I can’t do that yet’ to ‘now I can do it’!”

I keep seeing the program pop up in newsletters and on blogs, which makes me happy. I’m not happy because we need it, but because people clearly want to get back into reading. They want to concentrate again. They want to get lost in a story.

I love that she meets people where they are with the amount of time they have.

Passing this along in case anyone needs help bringing balance to screen time and reading time.

I was alone in the house and anxious, so I cleaned out the refrigerator. I took everything off each shelf, bleached it, and then put things back in the correct place, dumping anything expired. I pulled out the drawers and bleached the area under them. I checked every piece of fruit or vegetable, making sure everything I returned to its place in the refrigerator was something we would eat this week.

I took everything off the outside of the refrigerator and bleached the doors, too. And then I sorted the magnets and lists and photographs into piles. I didn’t need to keep old Bat Mitzvah invitations, a calendar from 2019, or coupons that expired half a decade ago. I threw out the magnets from two different power-washing companies, a school calendar from a real estate agent for a school system we no longer attended, and a jury summons that had already been filled.

I looked through the old meal plans from the pandemic when we would shop once for two weeks, and I had to plot out fresh vegetables for the days after the shop and frozen vegetables for the days close to the end.

And in the end, instead of anxiety, I just felt sad. It’s strange how a cleaning session can do that to you.

I had Acts of Cupidity on my TBR for so long that the second book in the series was on the shelves before I could pick up a copy in Belfast. I knew within a few pages that it was the perfect book for me and that I would want to continue with the second book in the series. The only problem was that the bookstore was sold out of the book.

No worries. We would pass dozens of other bookstores on our travels, and I would pick it up at another one. But it was sold out throughout London. Sold out in Exeter. Sold out in every bookstore in Cornwall, except there was one copy for a hot minute in Truro, which disappeared before we could take three modes of transportation to stop at a bookstore. The ChickieNob ran into a bookstore in Oxford, which had a few copies, but they refused to sell them to her. They said it was embargoed, which made no sense because the second book had been out for months.

Not being able to get it just made me want it more.

I ordered it when I got home, after finishing the first book. (My instincts were correct! I knew I wanted the next book from the first few pages.) I was able to order it, though it got lost in the mail, and meandered across the states until it finally landed in my hands.

It was a rare case where a long-awaited story met expectations. I’ve been reading it slowly, only allowing myself a chapter each night, which means I have to balance multiple books at once. But I love being in this world.

And a third book is on the way in 2027. Something to look forward to when this one is done.