Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

Take the sick day.

I took a sick day this week. I woke up a couple times during the night feeling poorly, then a couple hours before my alarm that morning, unable to get back to sleep. I dragged my way towards breakfast and realized that I would have a terrible day if I attempted to work. I commuted my way to the living room, booted up my work computer, send out some “I’m sick” messages to team channels, posted an out of office message, and logged out.

I hesitated though, in making that decision, and I realize that’s a flaw in our system. In elementary school, we had awards for “perfect attendance” (it didn’t count excused absences, which I wondered about when I received one), though if you think about it, that’s mostly an award for your parent calling in when you’re absent. As an adult, my early jobs didn’t involve e-mail, so calling in sick was actually calling someone and hoping they didn’t object. (I don’t recall it being a problem, though there was one time when my car wasn’t working where I was asked if I had another way to get into work.)

We shouldn’t have to justify sick days. If anything, people should be encouraged to take them, paid, to avoid sharing their illness with co-workers and, depending on the job, customers. In my case, working remotely, I have to be fairly miserable to call in sick. Fortunately, my boss understands that sick days exist to be used when needed and has never questioned my need to use one.

A short(ened) trip to Virginia

We traveled to Virginia last week, originally intending to stay for three nights. For flight time convenience, we flew into Richmond and out of Norfolk, with a plan of staying in Williamsburg and exploring the area. Research into the area showed that public transportation wasn’t going to be an option, so I rented a car through Costco.

The Williamsburg area feels fairly tourist-oriented, with a plethora of hotels and resorts. While the Colonial Williamsburg is eminently walkable (as was our gated resort), the area from our resort to nearby restaurants was not – the lack of sidewalks combined with poorly lit roads meant driving to get dinner even if it was within our definition of walking distance. To be fair, that lack of ambient light meant we had fabulous views of the night sky.

After the timeshare talk that inspired our trip (the resort stay was free other than taxes and such), we explored one of the Art Museums in Colonial Williamsburg – despite different names, the museums are attached and you move easily between them. On our way there from the nearby public parking, we had noticed a section of street closed off (through February) for an ice rink. When we left the museum around closing, the ice rink was reasonably full with children who let up a cheer as a light snow started to fall. We finished off the evening with video games at the resort’s arcade – free play for everything – and some time in the indoor pool. (Yes, the outdoor pool and hot tub were open. At 30-some degrees, no, thank you.)

On what would have been our last full day there, I woke up to news of a winter storm heading towards Virginia and an emergency declaration from the governor, recommending anyone who was planning to travel on the Sunday more up their schedule. By a couple hours later, the airline app had updated to offer free changes, so we dropped our plan to explore the historic guided sites and gardens and moved onto our day of departure plan: visiting the Virginia Zoo. (To be clear, we were flying Southwest anyways, where changing flights is fairly easy under normal circumstances.)

There are pros and cons to visiting a zoo in winter… especially somewhere that experiences winter. The primary disadvantage is that many animals, especially those from warmer climates, are off exhibit, and only some of them have indoor viewing areas. On the other hand, other than the Reptile House – an entirely indoor experience for obvious reasons – you can walk through parts of the zoo without crowds. Or really, any other people for large sections, which gives you time to appreciate the animals (and a surprising amount of bamboo) without feeling like you’re monopolizing the space.

There’s a lot more we would like to see and do in the Williamsburg area. I suppose we’ll just have to go back at some point.

Goals we set are goals we get… sometimes.

I’ve talked about goal setting before, I find it’s a more useful approach to accomplishing things across the year than resolutions. That said, sometimes life throws some twists in that interfere with those goals. As an example, I returned to karate near the end of 2023, so had a goal of attending a certain number of classes across the year. And then I had hand surgery in March, which knocked me off the mat for a couple months, followed by physical therapy for arthritis in my knees for a couple summer months, and a whirlwind of travel in the fall.

At least that’s explainable… I’m not sure how I only tracked 42 books on Goodreads. After hitting my goal of 52 books multiple years, I had increased it to 54 for 2024. Even if I missed tracking a couple, that seems low, especially with all of the Hugo nominees I read before voting in those awards before attending WorldCon in Glasgow.

Regardless, I accomplished some goals – fixing up my master bedroom closet (which had been on my list for years), paying down my home equity loan, and, of course, writing my weekly blog posts. Now I reset, determining what goals I want to work towards in 2025. I’ve found 10 to be a reasonable number, and have made sure they meet the SMART requirement – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-based.

Having done that, I should decide what I want to work on… re-organizing my work desk or my reading goal, noting that I’m currently reading Wind and Truth, which is over 1300 pages. As one of my karate instructors says, start strong, finish stronger.

Art as a progression

There are people – presumably with skills – that make a living from their drawings, paintings, and other artistic presentations. Some are serious, some comic, some downright absurd (especially what people will pay for them). I am not one of those people.

I have a day job I enjoy, along with assorted creative hobbies, from crocheting to writing, that I occasionally present in a way that could supplement my income. Drawing and painting, however, are activities that I do simply for fun, or to extricate a stuck idea from my head.

The butterfly below, for example, is another iteration of Andrea Nelson’s activities that present a focus image divided into smaller sections for coloring. In this particular case, drawn and painted on Christmas Eve, I decided that the butterfly should be painted in red and green. For contrast, I selected blue and purple as the background colors.

A red and green butterfly with assorted squiggly lines drawn through and around it.

A red and green butterfly with assorted squiggly lines drawn through and around it, with a blue and purple background.

The process itself was fun, just sitting and painting for a while on a relaxing day off. The naming process can be fun too… I call this image The Very Hungry Caterpillar Who Ate the Christmas Decorations.

For myself, art is not a progression of skill – though there is a bit of that happening. Rather, it’s been a progression of appreciation for the creative process, knowing that whatever the result looks like, I had fun making it.

Happy Holidays!

As we approach Solstice, Christmas, and Chanukah (among other holidays), I want to wish a happy holiday season to all of you.

A painted holiday tree with a red ball at the top and three words down the middle, with photos to either side of each word. At the very top, cats Zuko and Arwen on opposite sides of the word "joy"; in the middle, humans Frances and Cassandra on opposite sides of the word "love"; and at the bottom, cats Diane and June on opposite sides of the word "peace."

A decorated tree!

Part of a holiday tree decorated with assorted ornaments, mostly crocheted. Also, there's a dinosaur attached to a stick on the tree, only because the stick is useful for opening and closing the curtain behind the tree.

We’re trying something new this year… putting ornaments on the tree! I don’t think we’ve had ornaments on a tree since we adopted Arwen back in 2017, since cats – especially kittens – and ornaments are a notoriously bad combination.

In 2020, Zuko moved in, postponing the possibility of ornaments longer. Even now, none of them are particularly breakable. We lucked out and rediscovered a bag filled with crocheted ornaments – candy canes, snowflakes, and tiny trees with wine corks – and have supplemented those with a couple 3D-printed decorations from a friend.

So far, only a couple of the cork-filled trees have gone wandering through the house. Next year, I may be tempted to dig out my animated character ornaments. They’re plastic, of course.

Adulting is weird

More specifically, the satisfaction from successfully adulting is weird. I suppose some parts seem more obvious than others, like finishing my holiday shopping early, and having holiday cards in the house already. (A few have made it to the mailbox.)

A new stove & oven, with five burner controls - the center one is griddle-shaped, with custom-sized griddle fitting neatly between the other four burns. The oven display includes an array of functions, including an air fryer setting.

But there’s the glee of having a new oven and stove, and it hits on several levels. The old oven had an intermittent heat sensor issue which occasionally made baking frustrating. It was the last major appliance in the kitchen from the previous owner, and we wanted to replace it before it forced us to (unlike the dishwasher and refrigerator). The new one is marketed as accessible; the major change from our previous one is that most of the pieces that can be removed are dishwasher safe. And, to my budget’s immense satisfaction, the range was purchased with a Costco gift card.

Now we’re hitting several celebratory firsts… each of those favorite dishes like the first pizza in the new oven, and the first pancakes on the built-in griddle. Yes, that center section of the stove is actually a griddle-shaped burner with a custom-sized griddle! See, that’s one of those weirdly satisfying bits from adulting, along with the warning beep a minute before the timer finishes.

That satisfaction comes from smaller things too, like the new-to-us set of craft drawers, or replacing the difficult to access garage light bulb. And it definitely comes from the new shower head that I installed in the master bathroom. Who knew there was so much water pressure? And the shower draws warm water faster… because there’s more water pressure!

WhiskyFest Chicago 2024

I have mentioned my appreciation for whisk(e)y before, in particular when discussing Advent Calendars last year. At the tail end of my five weeks of travel, I attended Whisky Advocate’s WhiskyFest in downtown Chicago, coincidentally at the same hotel that hosted Chicon a couple years ago, during which some friends and I held a whiskey tasting party. Each attendee at WhiskyFest was provided with a tasting glass, a pen, a bag, and a program book with the map and list of whiskies each booth was featuring.

A map of the Grand Ballroom at WhiskyFest, organized (mostly) by distillery.

On the map, you’ll notice three dozen booths; if you exclude the Whisky Advocate, tequila, and Bacardí (best known for their rum) booths, that’s still around 30 different distilleries to try, with at least 3 choices at most booths. A conservative estimate would be 90 different whiskies to try, and that’s not even counting the leftovers from the VIP hour that preceded general admission.

Wow, now that I’ve written out those numbers, I feel like an underachiever, having only tried 19 whiskies that night. To be clear, most of the servings are a sip or two, designed to provide a taste rather than intoxication. You’ll note that the map also shows several buffet tables, though it’s missing the food tables on the right side, as well as the plethora of chocolate desserts in the lobby. Attendees were encouraged to eat between tastings and provided with bottled water to stay hydrated.

My primary focus was the smaller distilleries, figuring they’re the ones I’m least likely to randomly encounter at a restaurant. And yes, I had checked my whiskey list before the event, making sure that every whiskey I tried was new to me (at least since I started tracking them). The two that stood out the most, in quite different ways, were the Mash & Mallow S’mores Whiskey – a fabulous liqueur – and the Praedictum 15 year Kentucky Straight Bourbon – a leftover from the VIP hour that retails around $600 a bottle.

Overall, it was a nice lead-in to this year’s Flaviar Whiskey Advent Calendar, which I’ll once again post to TikTok as I open them. Since I bought Costco’s Whiskies Tour of the World set as well, I’ll probably continue posting well into January to give each whiskey its chance to shine.

Five hotel rooms, a photo post

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been traveling a lot. All of the rooms have been nice and the beds comfortable (unlike one bed I slept on during a summer trip), but I do appreciate sleeping in my own bed, competing with my cats for space.

An array of plushies on a king-size bed in Madison.
A spacious room in downtown San Diego, featuring a large work desk, a king-size bed, and a small table with a chair by the window.
Not much room to spare in this downtown Chicago hotel room with a full-size bed.
A double at the hotel in Oakbrook with a plush on each bed.
This corner room in Philadelphia had beautiful wall art on the wall behind the king-size bed.