Category: Adulting

Summer, is this our final fling?

In true Midwest fashion, the weather has been all over the place this past month. We’re past our first and second frost, and my maple tree stands bare, yet I was able to pick a fresh strawberry yesterday afternoon. I haven’t drained my rain barrels yet, and there are a few branches still to trim before the final brush pickup of the season.

Sunrise over the bare branches of an autumn maple tree.

Today’s high was 76 (around 24 if you think in Celsius), and I took probably the last opportunity to walk out to the mailbox barefoot for this season… tomorrow’s forecast is promising a high of 40 (4.4 Celsius), followed by comparably cold weather into the foreseeable future. We have not, however, had snow yet, and I recall that my first Thanksgiving weekend in Illinois was sweatshirt weather, so it really could go either way at this point.

Either way, we are seeing beautiful sunrises and sunsets this time of year (OK, only one of us usually sees the sunrise), and look forward to those cold days in winter when we look out at the pawprints in the snow.

United States citizens: remember to vote in the 2022 midterm election

As United States citizens, we have few obligations, particularly since military service is optional. While voting is also optional, I would suggest that it, jury duty, and paying taxes (whether income, property, or sales) are part of our obligation as citizens in this democracy.

Midterm elections – scheduled for November 8, 2022 this year – are overlooked by some voters because they don’t usually include the hype that presidential elections do. This is a flaw in our process, every election matters. Our U.S. representatives are elected every two years, our senators every six (on a rotating schedule, so one-third of the Senate is running for office in any given election), and state and local officials are almost always on the ballot.

If you’re not sure what’s on the ballot for your location, you can look up a sample ballot on Ballotpedia, and your county website may also have one available. Once you have the names of candidates or issues on the ballot, you can research them using Ballotpedia’s information, Google, and other sources to ensure you have the necessary information when voting.

Go vote!

Jurassic dreams and missing shoes

I had a strange dream the other night, of which I only remember snippets, just enough to be interesting. It started on an airplane, where I learned that the flight was free for anyone willing to assist with host/ess duties. While that seemed like a reasonable offer, somewhere in the process, I lost the sandals I had been wearing when I boarded the plane. I’m reasonably fond of my Tevas, so I proceed to take another flight on the same plane in an attempt to find them.

By the end of the second flight, I had realized that each flight was a separate movie theme. Not the movies they were showing during the flight, rather the plane was actually part of the movie’s story. That said, I don’t recall what the first two “movies” were about. I do recall that when the third flight started, as I was still searching for my sandals, I glanced out and saw a humongous shark launch out of the water and bite a blue whale in half. I turned to my friend, who was not on the previous two flights, and said “This is a shark movie, stay out of the water.”

You may be wondering how I knew it was a blue whale. Really, I have no idea… my brain just said it was. And since a megalodon (such as in The Meg) is estimated to be around 60 feet, compared to a blue whale’s 90-100 feet, I’m guessing the shark in question was closer in size to the mosasaurus seen in Jurassic World; size estimates for those vary from from 55 to 120 feet.

Own your mistakes

As Billy Joel says in You’re Only Human, “You’re not the only one who’s made mistakes, but they’re the only things that you can truly call your own.”

Everybody makes mistakes. Unfortunately, as a culture, we tend to spend a lot of time looking for someone else to blame instead of just owning our mistakes, learning from them, and moving forward.

Yellow crocheted Duplo brick, folded over and stuffed with catnip

This is the result of a mistake I made last week while crocheting. I’ve been working on a series of “Duplo” bricks – rectangles with bobble stitches in a two by three pattern. I was super excited about it, since yellow was the last color before I started assembling my various pieces. Then I reached for this piece, already tied off, and realized that I had left off a pair of bobble stitches. Whoops! I grabbed the yellow yarn again and made a replacement, which is easy enough when I’m crocheting something small.

But that left me with a crocheted brick that had no purpose, a waste of yarn if you will. It’s too small to take apart and reuse, particularly knowing that I’d be a little short on yarn for assembling a brick.

I initially flung it to the cats to play with, and they weren’t particularly interested in it. Then I realized I could improve on my mistake by folding it over, filling it with catnip, and crocheting it shut. I’ve seen three of the four cats playing with it, so I’d say that solution worked.

Be creative, if it’s an option, and turn your mistakes into something that makes you smile.

Do you ever wonder when you started a habit?

I was flipping through the newspaper the other day…

“Wait,” you say, “an actual newspaper?”

Why yes, that’s a funny story. I looked outside Sunday morning just as the lady who delivers the newspapers on this block backed up to my neighbor’s and tossed his two bundles mostly onto his driveway. I wondered why she was backing up, then realized there were two bundles on my driveway. I suppose she has extras in case of mistakes, because she didn’t bother to pick them back up.

Anyways, I noticed that while I read most sections of the newspaper like a book or magazine, from front to back, I treat the Sunday comics differently. I read the front page, flip them over and read the back, then open it up to read the insides. I have no idea when I started that.

Other habits are easier to pinpoint. I started carrying a spare pair of reading glasses in my purse – previously reserved for computer use – the time we ate lunch at a dimly lit TGI Friday’s and struggled with the menu. I started enjoying gardening (as opposed to just seeing it as a chore) when I was introduced to vegetable gardening; before that was just weeding and tree trimming. The inevitable gardening planning (a necessity for a project manager’s large garden) followed as the vegetable garden expanded, and is now scheduled for late winter/early spring every year. And as a habit, I sometimes just stand at the window and smile at my garden. (Really, I should go outside and pick some snow peas.)

If you take a moment for introspection, whether you recall how it started, what habit makes smile?

Who will you march for?

There was another shooting today (9-Jun-2022), this time in Maryland. Early reports say that 3 people were killed. We have enough “mass shootings” (loosely defined as at least 3 victims) in this country that there’s a Wikipedia page specifically for mass shootings in the United States (here), and it includes a link to a “more comprehensive list” of the 2022 shootings (here).

March For Our Lives, a group organized by survivors of the 2018 Parkland, Florida shooting, is organizing marches around the country on Saturday, June 11th, calling for reasonable gun safety laws.

Will you march in the hopes of saving someone’s life?

Thoughts on Leave Only Footprints

Behold, a non-fiction book on my reading list! Yes, it’s a rarity. This particular book has been on my wish list since it was released, both because it’s about the US national parks and because the author, Conor Knighton, was on our Galápagos cruise along with Efrain Robles, the video journalist mentioned repeatedly in the book. When we met them, they were working, exploring nature and documenting the (50th? I don’t actually recall) anniversary cruise along with the owner of the cruise line.

In his book, Conor, reeling from a break-up, set as a goal to visit every national park (but not monument, trail, or site) over the course of one year. This book has fascinating details about each park he visited, but should not be mistaken for a travel guide; it’s clearly a deeply personal memoir of a geek searching for direction in his life. By all accounts, he found it: he convinced CBS to pay for his travels, and was rewarded with a deeply reflective experience and additional travel assignments. As I said, we met him the following year in the Galápagos, where he was working… I had to use more than half of my vacation time for that trip.

Despite being deeply personal, Leave Only Footprints is a light read with plenty of funny moments. From the way it’s written, I suspect Efrain rolled his eyes when he asked if the photos Conor requested with the Denali puppies were for Tinder. You’ll have to read it yourself to find out what the “nerdiest” thing Conor said when comparing national parks to dating. And I recommend not making a drinking game out of finding the geeky references that are thrown in, you’d probably stumble to bed before finishing the book.

Now the question… which national park should I visit next, and which ones should I add to my bucket list?

What made you happy today?

That seems like a simple question, doesn’t it? But when you’re busy, especially when you’re stressed, will you remember the good things as well as the bad? Or, as you look back on your life, do the embarrassing moments stand out to the point where you forget that you had good times as well? Memory is a fickle thing.

I don’t recall who saw me start awake when I was in the children’s choir, seated only a couple people away from the priest and realizing immediately that everybody else was standing again. I know somebody in the pews noticed, though not, perhaps, my parents. That’s not something that I would have written down in a Happiness Journal. (Though as a parent, I totally would… different perspective, obviously.)

I would write down that Zuko sat himself down on the treadmill last week, just as I was preparing to walk on it. I turned it on, at the lowest settings, carefully stepped over him, then watched his bewildered face as he slid further back, finally moving off it just before he reached the end.

I might not write down that I made pizza again, though I do quite like the recipe we use. But finding out that my homemade pizza always makes someone else’s Happiness Journal is worth remembering.

You can buy a Happiness Journal if you want something structured, but you can just make your own by grabbing the nearest blank notebook or journal, or go digital and start a Google Docs file for it. As a bonus, you can add photos to it when relevant in either format. (I use a Sprocket printer to add photo stickers to various paper journals.)

Even if you don’t write it down, try stopping at the end of the day and asking yourself what made you happy. And if nothing jumps out, well, you’re still awake and have the opportunity to hug a cat, eat a piece of chocolate, or another option that works for you. I’m going to step outside and see if any more daffodils have flowered.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) can affect your health

I recently had lunch with one of my favorite people and she told me about a TED talk titled “How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime,” available on YouTube. I’m not sure I’ve ever watched a TED talk before; I generally prefer to read information. But after our lunch, I asked her to send me the link so I could watch it. The doctor presenting delves into how exposure to adversity affects the developing brains of children, and her colleague’s discovery of a study on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).

In the study conducted, they found “that 67% of population had at least 1 ACE, and 12.6% (1 in 8) had 4 or more”. They also noticed a correlation between ACEs and several common medical conditions, regardless of whether people engaged in behavior that’s commonly believed to cause some of those diseases. There’s science that I won’t even try to explain – that’s why the TED talk is presented by a doctor, not an IT person.

A couple weeks later, I stumbled onto a similar discussion on Twitter, including a link to this ACE quiz. By both accounts, this is something doctors should be taking into account as they diagnose and treat patients.

My primary thought beyond the effect these experiences have on people in my age group is that, knowing this, it’s now the responsibility of the older generations to do everything possible to reduce the ACE scores of the next generations. We have an obligation to make the world a better place for our descendants.

Living through yet another historic event

The last couple years have certainly been memorable around the world, and not in a good way. We’ve lost friends and family to a global pandemic that has killed almost six million people (and counting). In the United States, we’ve seen an armed insurrection against a co-equal branch of government inspired by a failed president who refused to acknowledge he’d lost the election by both millions of votes (again) and the Electoral College count, and subsequent voter suppression laws across the country. Now we’re watching Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, desperately hoping that the Russian government will come their senses and withdraw rather than risk starting World War III.

In the midst of these historic events, it can be hard to sort through all the various media, whether audio, video, or written, and recognize which are accurate, and which are presenting facts versus opinions. (Just for clarity, this blog features my opinion; get your news from professionals.) In many cases, it’s a fine line because facts are presented from someone’s perspective, such as referring to the current conflict as an “invasion”; presumably in Russia, it’s being worded differently, I’d guess with some hogwash like “liberating” specific areas while targeting the entire country. (For example, using “hogwash” is an example of deliberate phrasing to push my opinion along with the information.)

Assuming all news is biased one way or another – because we’re all people with opinions – I’d recommend finding news sources that present a mix of opinions, or multiple reliable sources. The All Sides website features a Media Bias Chart categorizing various news sources based on their leanings on US politics, and let you follow current news by presenting it from multiple sources. If you read another language, find at least one source in that language, preferably from a different country.

Personally, other than glancing at CNN and BBC as needed (at least for English), I’m a fan of Heather Cox Richardson’s daily letters, which summarize significant news items and explain historical context of some, providing an analysis of current events. I can’t begin to fathom how many different sources she sorts through on a daily basis – she includes links to sources relevant to the day’s letter – though I appreciate her hard work.