jillsalahub

Image by Eric, sunrise over the Poudre

1. Lines in the Sand: When the Beach Becomes a Canvas a video from Great Big Story. “Anyone can write their name in the sand, but Jim Denevan uses the beach to create stunning large-scale art. What started as a hobby over 20 years ago has resulted in worldwide recognition, and he’s created masterworks from Russia to Chile to Australia. At the end of the day, though, Jim’s just happy to find a new beach to make his canvas.”

2. Old Man Blogs At Cloud, a great post about blogging from Chuck Wendig on his blog Terrible Minds.

3. Good stuff from Dances with Fat: Stealing from Fat Positivity to Sell Diets – Looking at You “Biggest Loser” and Jillian Michaels Continues To Be A Horrible Human Being, This Time Dragging Lizzo Into It and The Minnesota Starvation Experiment Was Less Strict Than Modern Diets. In related news, Lizzo Issued A NSFW Clapback After Jillian Michaels Commented On Her Health, And I’m Clutching My Pearls.

4. Reading lists: I Read More Than 100 Books in 2019—Here Are the 10 I Recommend and The ZORA Canon: The 100 greatest books ever written by African American women.

5. The Next Generation of Meditation Teachers. “These eight young meditation teachers are so gifted, bringing a unique integrity, open-heartedness and wisdom to their work, that they’ve already earned a strong following.”

6. Grove Collaborative. “Grove started as an idea between three friends talking in a spare bedroom in San Francisco: ‘what if it was easy to find healthier home essentials?’ The belief that what we bring into our homes contributes to that homey, cozy feel prompted them to try to make their idea a reality.”

7. EP52 – The Diet Binge Cycle with Isabel Foxen Duke: Intuitive Bites Podcast.

8. Thanks for coming to my TED talk, an actual TED talk from The Bloggess.

9. advice to your high school self from Karen Walrond on Chookooloonks.

10. “Home” by Warsan Shire, (video).

11. 80-Year-Old Tortoise Becomes A First-Time Mom.

12. A letter to…my angry father. “What I do know is that you have never dealt with it, never sought help. Your deep feelings of loss and hurt come out at night, during family dinners, and instead of addressing that trauma, you blame yourself: you hate, you spit and you rage.”

13. A staggering 1 billion animals are now estimated dead in Australia’s fires.

14. She’s 7 and was born intersex. Why her parents elected to let her grow up without surgical intervention.

15. Haut-Relief Portraits of Animals Come Alive in Detailed Paper Sculptures by Calvin Nicholls.

16. ‘Star Trek: Picard’: Patrick Stewart on Why He Returned to the Final Frontier.

17. Here’s How the ‘Health at Every Size’ Movement Made Me a Better Trainer.

18. The Secret We’re Keeping from You. “Listen, your friends are hiding their mental illnesses from you.” In related news, Woman Explains A Lesser Known Symptom Of Depression And People Are Thanking Her.

19. Smirking All the Way to the Bank: Nick Sandmann Settles Lawsuit With CNN. Gross. He needs to divide the money up and compensate all the people he’s bullied and trolled online, because you absolutely know that the suffering he claims to have experienced is nowhere near the suffering he’s caused. In related news, His reaction when asked to name something President Trump has done well…

20. This Husky Picked Out Her Own Kitten To Take Home From Shelter

21. Recipe I want to try: Old Fashioned Buttermilk Sweet Bread.

22. How to Break Your Single-Use Plastics Habit.

23. The Meat-Lover’s Guide to Eating Less Meat on The New York Times. “Reducing your meat and dairy intake can help mitigate climate change. Melissa Clark has ideas for how to do it deliciously.”

24. America Has Never Cared About Sacred Sites. “Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian cultural sites is a dark national tradition, with the desecration of sacred tribal sites offering the blueprint.”

25. I Remain A “Catfish” Queer: On Love, The Midwest, and What We Think We Deserve.

26. Installation Reveals the Metaphoric Power of a Single Book Distorting a Solid Brick Wall.

Image by Eric

1. The Colorado sky. I love it so much because it’s blue so much of the time, but in the winter it is especially magical.

2. I’m still here. For real, this week was HARD. A dear friend got awful news, Sam hurt his back worse than we thought, Eric’s mom ended up in the hospital, and we dealt with a few other things I won’t talk about here, (don’t worry, Mom, I’ll email you all about it later today). Thank goodness for my tiny family, my friends, joyful movement, good books, good food, sleep, practice, and therapy. Also, clean water and biscuits & jam.

3. I finally finished my Curvy Yoga teacher certification. I got sidetracked finishing my 500 hour certification, quitting my job of 19 years, and coping with burnout, but I finished. Now I’ve moved on to getting some of the foundations for my new “business” set up, (I don’t know why, but to say I have a “business” sounds too weird, so I have to put it in quotes).

4. We got new furniture! You might not understand what a big deal this is. We’ve never had furniture that was new and matched or was any kind of intentional design. We still live like we are college roommates renting an apartment rather than a 26 year married pair of 52 year old home owners. We bought new rugs (so Sam won’t slip on the hardwoods and if he lies on the floor, he’ll be on something softer), a mini sectional, and new bookshelves this week. We are also going to get a console table to put our TV on. I hadn’t realized until we got it all set up how much I needed a fresh start, how much I’d appreciate the comfort and beauty. Of course, we ultimately ended up keeping one of our old sofas and a “vintage” mustard yellow velour recliner we inherited from Eric’s parents (they bought it new probably over 50 years ago) that Ringo loves, but it all works in the way we need it to work. Now if we can just keep Ringo from doing too much Parkour on and off the new couch. And also, WHY so MANY pillows?! Who uses all those?

5. My tiny family. The keep me sane and safe, and they make me laugh.

Seriously though: why must he insist on trying so hard to wreck himself?

He likes coffee

“Helping” me make biscuits, or rather waiting for me to drop some butter

Bonus joy: a warm shower, clean pjs, pjs that are decent enough I can wear them out of the house as pants, tea with Chloe’, hanging out with Mikalina, writing in the morning with a hot cup of cocoa coffee (half cocoa with marshmallows, half coffee), sitting in the sauna with Eric, clean sheets, a book so good you try really hard to stay awake so you can keep reading, good TV, clementines, going to the movies and getting popcorn, clarity about what I need, being able to afford new furniture, our “old” furniture becoming someone else’s “new” furniture, other people’s dogs, yoga taught by good teachers using props and good cuing, new to me music, good podcasts, baking, getting all the laundry done and put away, my new pen, being retired.