-
Still reading books in the year of our lord 2023
Every year my friend gently bullies me into setting a “reading challenge” goal on Goodreads. This year I did not achieve my goal of 50 books, landing hard at 47 (prime number!) instead. The shortest book (144 pages) I read this year was All Systems Red by Martha Wells, the first book in the Murderbot
-
Frazzle
I always feel frazzled this time of year. I need to find homes for the piles of new stuff sitting around the house. The kids are out of school and will be for another week. This year I have a job I’m trying to apply for that closes in a day. I need to go
-
Crying in Church on Christmas Eve
Despite serial sickness (cursed Christmas), most of us made it to church on Christmas Eve. My mom still goes to the church I grew up in. The pianist at Christmas Eve service this year was the same woman who played the organ in church when I was a kid. She moved away, they took out
-
A week before Christmas
It’s a week until Christmas. My youngest kid puked at school this morning and had to be picked up from the nurse’s office. I have an awful cold, and vertigo stacked on top of that. It’s great fun. Have you ever had vertigo? It’s the stupidest thing you can have wrong with you. Tiny little
-
A two field trip kind of week
I went on two field trips this week, one with each of my kids, because this is the sort of thing you feel compelled to do when you are an unemployed mother of two. Actually, both field trips involved tromping around in the forest, and mid-December is, in my opinion, the perfect time to be
-
Kid Casey Was Confused About: Geography
As a child I was often flummoxed at hearing China and Japan collectively referred to as “The East.” I grew up on the west coast of the United States; China and Japan were very clearly to the west, not the east. Chapter labels like “Eastern Art” led me to expect Roman sculpture or portraits of
-
How is the media fast going?
Well, it’s been about two weeks since I shut down my personal Instagram and enacted new rules about watching TV. I’m reading a lot more. The first week was weird. I panicked at least once a day thinking that one of my favorite influencers had stopped posting and are they sick? Are they depressed? Are
-
What it’s like to play Animal Crossing for a year.
(If you do not play and are not interested in Animal Crossing I suggest you skip this entire post. I am going to write it as if the reader also plays ACNH.) I’ve been playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons daily for almost exactly a year, like a sucker (who needs a real job). I’ve done
-
40
I recently turned forty years old. Apparently this is a Big Deal and I’m supposed to have a lot of feelings about it. I am not having a ton of feelings. Forty feels about right. When I was a kid I had trouble even picturing myself as a teenager and I interpreted this as proof
-
Abu Simbel
Have you heard about the temple complex at Abu Simbel in Egypt? It’s one of those things I get really excited about, and I just read a book about it so I want to talk about it! The temple complex at Abu Simbel is a magnificent set of two temples on the edge of the