oh katie joy

45.

  1. Stay cigarette free. (3+ years and counting!)
  2. Get the second floor remodel finished. (Please let this be the year.)
  3. Hang the family wall.
  4. Unpack and organize arts and craft room.
  5. Continue to practice unapologetic self-confidence.
  6. Take impeccable care of myself.
  7. Celebrate my people.
  8. Tend the garden.
  9. Go to Michigan.
  10. Go to Italy.
  11. Work on confidence in skiing blue squares.
  12. Invite people in.
  13. Get V their license.
  14. Frame & hang embroidered cities.
  15. Start another x-stitch project.
  16. Get a mole screen.
  17. And a mammogram.
  18. And a colonoscopy. (Yay 45!)
  19. Read.
  20. Make artistic messes.
  21. Embrace work.
  22. Take V on college campus tours.
  23. Purge bookshelves and reorganize.
  24. Set up a home gym area.
  25. Use it.
  26. Earn at least silver in monthly Peloton challenges.
  27. Purge/deep clean basement storage area.
  28. Propagate and repot the windowsill cacti.
  29. Repot the monstera.
  30. Practice identifying bird calls.
  31. Knit Jesse socks.
  32. Knit the sheep pillow to learn bobbles.
  33. Buy no yarn (excepting yarn club renewal).
  34. Continue to develop comfort in all things boat – docking, driving, trailering.
  35. Start step one of the backyard landscaping project.
  36. Clean out the garage.
  37. Find a record stand for the office.
  38. Attend the local knit night at least three times.
  39. Meditate.
  40. Sew the recreation blanket.
  41. Fix the family room cabinet.
  42. Keep practicing manicure skills.
  43. Take a class.
  44. Renew kids’ passports.
  45. Leave room for surprises.

I love making these lists every year. I surprise myself with what I do (and don’t) manage to check off them and what I find myself repeating year after year. I wonder at what point I’ll stop adding numbers to the list despite adding years to my age. I’m not there yet. Here’s a look at past years: 44, 43, 42, 40, 39, 38

On Rage

“Men are just different”, my mother says.
How do you say boys will be boys without saying the words boys will be boys?

Teach boys to go after what they want.
And girls not to.
Men to worry about themselves.
While women worry about everyone and everything else.

“Don’t say we don’t teach boys to think about others! That’s just not true.”
Have you seen the divorce rates of cancer patients?

If reincarnation is real, I want to come back as a white, cishet, Christian male.
“No, you don’t. They can’t win,”
By what metric are they not winning? They do less and get credit for any.

I was not born to be a wife and mother.
I learned to be. The way people learn to do the things that are important.
I would make the choice to be again.
But I would dig my heels in at the line that everyone told me I should be happy to cross.
I was born to be a wife and mother and still myself.
Jesse left for a weekend, two days after telling me he was going.
I missed him, but nothing about the day to day changed.
No mother I know can fathom that kind of luxury.

I am not bitter.
“Don’t lie”, my mother says.

Tuesday Things

Oh friends, I’ve missed you. Every week I think about how lovely it would be sit down and chat and then, it’s May. I know going in that I’m headed for a whirlwind marathon of a month, and every year I’m still surprised at how whirlwindy-marathoney it ends up being. And I, ever brilliant, decided to start a new job in addition. I’m behind on laundry, and gardening, and catching up with friends, and every single television show. Last night, I went to Abe’s last choir concert as a middle schooler. I cried. Tonight, I will go to his last track meet as a middle schooler, I will cry. Tomorrow, I will drop Violet off at orientation for their first job. I will cry. If you see me and I’m not crying, I’m at work, smiling ear to ear because I get to talk about books, and unpack books, and enter books into a software system, and shelve books, and talk to book minded people about things that aren’t books (and books).

Let’s talk things in brief: I started a pair of socks for Jesse because it’s been since before Christmas since I’ve knit a pair and it’s well past time. Our craft room is still not unpacked or organized (see the remodel that STILL isn’t finished) so that and garden plans are all I’ve been making. (Note: PLANS. I haven’t put one thing in the ground yet and I need to get my butt in gear).

I’ve been watching (no spoilers in the comments, please, I’m behind at last two episodes in all my shows) Ted Lasso – this season is disappointing me. Still love all the characters. Still sweet. Just wish it was…better. Ghosts (American version) – it’s sweet and funny and I hear this season ends on a cliffhanger. Vanderpump Rules – I can’t wait to get all caught up before the reunion. I mean, THE DRAMA.

What I have been doing is reading and reading and reading. Last month’s 30 day challenge of reading for at least 30 minutes, in addition to my job, has gotten me back into a reader groove. Since last time: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith (I loved this one so much.), Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur (a preprint for work – feeling very ambivalent), Sea Change by Gina Chung (recommend), The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (Beautiful and HARD.) The Society of Shame by Jane Roper (good, funny satire), The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich (middle grade, alternative to Little House series. VERY GOOD), and Tastes Like War (ambivalent again – really didn’t love this one). Heartburn is on my bedside table to read next. In other reader news: Abram told me just last night that I did a really good job picking out a book for him to read (The Maze Runner) and he regularly stays up a little later to sneak in one last chapter. I just ordered the second in the series.

That’s me. I apologize if this sounds a bit…manic. I just really wanted to say hi and how are you, but now I need to get a dishwasher emptied/loaded, laundry folded and put away, pack a snack bag for Abe, pack my bag for work tomorrow before picking up V to drop off V, before I head to Abe’s track meet. It’s May. What a whirlwind marathon.

Tell me what’s new in your world? What are you -ing? I hope this finds you well!

Friday Finds

Source
  1. Fungi is pretty.
  2. Ed Emberly’s home. (I can see his books in these pictures.)
  3. Journal ideas and writing experiments by Bernadette Mayer’s.
  4. Radio spectrum.
  5. This is so cool.
  6. Cooking trends in 2023 (the cilantro and lime flavor combo is big in our house).
  7. Top 100 lists in reading.
  8. Speaking of, Behind the Scenes of Barack Obama’s Reading Lists.
  9. Made me smile (and ALMOST want to learn crochet).
  10. I’ve been practicing this for a few months now and it’s helping.
  11. I want this.
  12. On being perfect.
  13. It goes so fast.
  14. These are beautiful.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Tuesday Things

It’s spring. The snow is mostly all melted. Windows have been opened and will continue to be throughout all of this week. Abram beats me at chess at least once a day. He’s been watching YouTube videos and playing against friends and bots. He uses words like “file” and “fork” – words I know only from watching/reading The Queen’s Gambit. On Friday, I played him to a draw (I had him in perpetual check but didn’t know how to actually beat him) and it felt like such a victory.

I took a part time job at a local bookstore. I met my coworkers last week. We talked War and Peace and Jane Austen – about teachers and writers and writers who are teachers. I came home with a stack of books that I had ordered the week before and another stack of pre-published works. Jesse and I laughed when I curled up on the couch and said, “I have to get to work”. In the end of March, I decided my 30 day project would be to read at least 30 minutes every day so the timing of everything is quite fortuitous. Abram’s more likely to read if he can do it alongside someone and my goal is to make a reader out of him yet.

I breathed a sigh of relief on Wednesday last week, but not too big of one. We still plenty of things to be worried about, but I’m trying to focus on my corner of the garden.

Let’s talk some things.

Watching: I finished The Last of Us (so many feels) and watched the first couple episodes of Ted Lasso. I’m behind on that and Succession because I’ve been watching Vanderpump Rules reunions (I’m on season 8) My arm has been twisted into watching all of season 10. (It didn’t take much of a twist to honest.)

Reading: Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller (so good), The Winners by Fredrik Backman (I’ve loved this series, but this was probably my least favorite of them), The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel, Bride of the Tornado by James Kennedy, Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (this took me a long time to get into and I almost quit, but am so glad I didn’t. Definitely one of my favorites), and I just finished The Fall of the House of Tatterly a middle grade book that I think I’ll buy for Abe when it comes out in August.

Knitting: I’m working on square 105 on my blanket. I have a half finished scarf that I really need to get done before I switch from knitting to gardening mode.

Making: A recreation of a favorite blanket. My grandmother had this blanket I loved as a kid – I used it whenever I stayed over at her house (which was a lot) – and when I was telling my mom about it, she told me it was a home ec project she made from a set sheets. A search of vintage sheets (these are the same style), an Ikea duvet, and I’m ready to make my own version. I just need to get the boxes from my office unpacked and dig out my sewing machine. Garden plans. We renewed our plot in the community garden and it’ll be 80 this week before it drops back to more seasonable temps. I know where we live and know better than to get too far ahead of myself, but I am thinking about what will go where once we are planting out.

So that’s me. I hope you are well. I’d love to hear what you are -ing when you have the chance!

Decisions

A few years back, I learned the easiest way to achieve a goal is to make it not something I should do, but something I WANT to do. So when I started to think about a 30 day challenge in April, I knew that it wouldn’t be “eat a salad every day” or “delete all social media”, but something that lit me up. I’ve brainstormed a list and narrowed it down to things I know I’ll delight in doing every day for a month.

Once a top 10 list, but in the typing process some didn’t feel very delight-y, so here we are:

  1. Make just for the fun of it art
  2. Meditate
  3. Walk outside
  4. Read
  5. Organize, purge, spring clean
  6. Knit
  7. Photograph
  8. Stretch

I don’t know which one it will be.

We’re almost done with the bathrooms. We have some bits, bobs, and fiddly things to take care of, and plenty ahead in terms of staircase and what not, but we’re settling in and it feels lovely.

I have things I would do differently with the information I have today, but who knew that the toilet I really wanted with the a 12 month lead time would have been a realistic choice back when I was deciding those things?!? This remodel was almost comically cursed, but Violet and Abram were wonderfully good, we survived, and c’est la vie. I’m enjoying the process of slowly unpacking and moving back in, daydreaming about the details of organizing and decorating.

Outside of my little corner, I am sad and angry and frustrated. I wrote a whole thing about genocide, and Nazism, and how I remember being in 4th grade and thinking Mr. Wyns was wrong when he told our class that despite thinking we would stand up to the Nazi’s, most people actually wouldn’t. Then I hit publish, panicked, and am publishing this instead.

We’re watching how a genocide happens in real time but if you say that out loud, at least in certain places, you’re deemed uncredible. And so I’m scared and sad and angry and frustrated. While also being joyful and hopeful and silly. Feeling all of that is a lot. So I’m exhausted. I’m scared and hopeful and sad and joyful and angry and frustrated and silly and exhausted. That’s a lot, but I can handle a lot.

And while I want my family and friends to feel joyful and and hopeful and silly and happy, I need them to feel sad and angry and scared at what they are seeing. AND I need them to speak to that (and vote against it). Because what’s happening is hurting people I love, while other people I love are staying silent, which means I feel joyful and sad and scared and hopeful and frustrated and angry and silly and exhausted and alone. And that…that alone part? That is too much.

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