1. Morning walks. They weren’t all that exciting this week, short and sweet. Ringo strained his elbow on an early morning and very cold run on Saturday, got his limp back, so we’ve been taking it easy with him, only going around our neighborhood. He’s on the mend and we are taking it slow. Even if it wasn’t over the water, the river or the ponds, we can still see the sun rise in the sky over our house.
2. Trying new recipes. In particular this past week I was looking for baked oatmeal recipes to try. This strawberry baked oatmeal with fresh strawberries on top was super yummy. I also have a bunch of salad recipes saved on Instagram I want to try. I always follow the recipe the first time, to know how the author intended it to taste, and then, if I like it enough to make it again, I make tweaks according to my preferences. I love how cooking can be both creative and restorative.
3. Swimming laps. I have a goal to be able to swim a mile, which is 63 laps in the pool at my gym. I can currently do 13 before I get too tired, which for some reason when I swim translates as dizzy. I swim with a snorkel because with my anxiety about drowning and the claustrophobia of putting my face in the water, I’ve never really learned to both swim and breathe on my own, so the snorkel makes that part easier. I don’t have to worry about it, I just swim. Recently, since I recommitted to swimming laps, something shifted. I don’t really know how or why, but now putting my face in the water, having my ears under as well, feels really soothing where it used to trigger panic. I still use the snorkel because it continues to make things easier, but now the whole process feels a bit more like joy.
4. Ringo. Oh boy, can he be a real jerk, but he’s also hilarious and sweet. This week he found another friend while he was out on his walk. It’s so cute how happy it makes him, and he almost seems proud of himself. When he was a baby, he had a special love for water bottles. He once carried a baby doll for almost two miles. I think he believes he’s captain of the neighborhood lost & found or head of recycling.
5. My tiny family, tiny home, tiny life. The world can seem so big, so broken, but this safe haven, this big love, this soft place to land gives me reasons every single day to not give up.
Bonus joy: making art with Calyx, Hendrix’s first birthday, strawberries and raspberries, drive through pharmacies, tacos with Carrie, texting with Chloe’ and Mom and Chris, the 300+ people who showed up for my uncle’s funeral, kittens, other people’s dogs, hot coffee with hot cocoa and tiny marshmallows, aqua aerobics, vaccines and masks, good TV (Somebody Somewhere on HBO is so good), listening to podcasts, that corner of the couch, cuddling with Ringo and hugging Eric, sitting together on the couch doing nothing, sitting in the sauna, the hydromassage chair, my nutritionist, my therapist, my primary care physician, access to the support I need, watching Guy’s Grocery Games with Eric and making each other laugh, gummy supplements, down and wool, hot clean water, watercolors, house plants, naps, small group training with Shelby, meditating before the sun comes up in the morning, writing, Wild Writing with Laurie and my writing sangha, stickers, my HappyLight, clothes that are soft and loose, stretching, reading in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.
8. When an Ancestry Search Reveals Fertility Fraud on The New York Times. “Starting in the 1960s, three physicians in Rochester, N.Y., began secretly using their own sperm to help women become pregnant.”
13. The Path Home, a new podcast from Jamie Greenwood, “self care and leadership coach, faciliator and teacher. In this inaugural episode Jamie sets the intention for The Path Home as well as sharing her own continual journey of finding home in herself. She also discusses upcoming topics for podcast including boundaries, finding joy, self compassion, naviagting self doubt, and how we live into a future we want to see.”
21. The Good Life Project podcast: Bessel van der Kolk, MD | The Body Keeps the Score. “These last few years have dealt a lot of blows to our state of mind, body, and health. On some level, it’s been hard to escape trauma. Even if you can’t point to a big capital-T thing that happened, we live in a perpetual sea of micro-moments that unsettle, upset and shake us in a way that leaves a mark. Whether we know it’s there or not, whether we realize or acknowledge it, it’s affecting us. You, me, pretty much everyone on some level. Question is, what do we do about that? This is the very question I explore with my guest this week, Bessel van der Kolk, legendary trauma researcher, psychiatrist, and author of a book that has been locked into the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list for years now.”
26. Children’s Author Tells the True Story of Columbus’ Exploits. “Oriel María Siu’s new children’s book explodes the myth of Christopher Columbus as a celebrated explorer and re-centers Indigenous narratives of how the Americas were colonized.”
37. The RomCom is Dead, Long Live the RomCom, “a rom-com revival has been in the works for years, slowly gaining steam on Netflix and Hulu and other subscription services, where algorithms can override old-fashioned industry wisdom about who watches movies and what sort of movies they actually want to watch.”
38. Russell Barkley Coined a New Term and I hate it!!!! “The newest term du jour is Deficient Emotional Self-Regulation, or DESR, invented by one of pharma’s favorite Key Opinion Leaders (and my archnemesis) Russell Barkley.”
39. FutureMe: Write a Letter to the Future. “Send your future self a letter. Might be a prediction, a goal, or a letter about something that happened today you don’t want to forget.”
40. Joy on demand: the three second fix. “In his book, Joy On Demand, Meng gives practical advice on how you can easily and quickly access joy. He believes you can train yourself to experience joy with a few simple exercises.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 