Month: October 2020

My week can be pretty much summed up in the following Tweet:

I think our family’s experience is probably replicated in other families: One child kicks ass at math and apathetic at reading while the other abhors math and is a reading rock star. So … flashcards. The rest of the Tweet … WIG (Wildly Important Goals), 4DX, etc., well … that’s one of those ferrety wormholes that my brain went down earlier this week. I really love the idea of being an efficient workhorse and a brilliant business mind, but …  yeah. It hasn’t happened in my previous 42 years, I’m not holding my breath for a midlife miracle.  But it’s a hobby: Some people listen to true crime podcasts, I like reading business blogs and am sucked in by productivity articles.  (Wishful thinking, perhaps?)

Anyway, enough about those pipe dreams. My neck of the Minnesota woods got its first dusting of snow. My children have learned how to email me, which is equal parts hilarious and has blown any of my dreams of “inbox zero” to smithereens.  (Trust me, though … it’s worth it.)

On the cooking front, I made this soup from Giada DeLaurentis. It was fantastic and only got better on subsequent days.

Other links I adored:

“I saw this very gazelle-like creature leaping through the traffic in a rather dangerous way,” Cadell told me, “and the next thing I know, she’d leapt over the wall and was sitting beside us. And I was so impressed — with her exuberance and her folly all at once. I thought, ‘This is an interesting woman.’” The New York Times had a fascinating profile on Sigourney Weaver.

I also adored this New Yorker piece about Mandy Patinkin. (It went well with coffee and a lazy Sunday morning.)

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Listening: I still buy my albums on CD, because I have a CD player in my mom-mobile. And this song gets played regularly:

Reading: Remember what I was saying about how I like to read productivity books?  I bought Cal Newport’s “Deep Work” and am achieving productivity nerd nirvana. (And yes, if you’re wondering, the concept of “deep work” right now in the midst of a pandemic with every member of my household present … it’s pretty impossible. But this is my nerdy nirvana.)

Writing: I’m still trying to achieve peak nerd nirvana on my writing goals. I’ll keep you posted on that one, ‘kay?

Email someone you love, but don’t talk to often. Wear a mask. Encourage a friend to vote. And if you’re inclined/able, think about donating to a local food shelf/charitable organization that does good in your community. – Shelley

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What is Friday Fare? As a recap, on Fridays I post link love to the various bits of arcane shiz I discover on the Interwebs.  I liken it to a glimpse into my mind, but without the 80s song lyrics or mental cobwebs.

Not much to report this week. Mostly because my kiddos have a long weekend away from school and we’ve been hitting up local apple orchards like they’re my favorite microbreweries.We also took advantage of our time off by getting our flu shots. Woot! And necessary!

I also baked up a storm (because we saw my kids’ former nanny. She’s now a new mom and her husband is a farmer. Ergo, he has a metabolism that I can only dream of and he likes it when I bake.). Applesauce bread and butterscotch pudding cookies.

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Watching: I don’t watch a lot of TV or movies and am usually about a decade behind trends. To wit, I am currently working my way through HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire” courtesy of the DVDs from my local library. I am about to start the last season and it’s been a very interesting distraction (albeit violent one) from Covid life.

Reading: This week has been quiet on the reading front, but I did do a couple “bookish” things. One of the most enjoyable ones was a Zoom call with authors Jeffrey D. Briggs and James W. Ziskin.

Call someone you love. Be kind to everyone you meet. Vote/make a plan to vote. Wash your darn hands and wear a mask if you’re able. – Shelley

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What is Friday Fare? As a recap, on Fridays I post link love to the various bits of arcane shiz I discover on the Interwebs.  I liken it to a glimpse into my mind, but without the 80s song lyrics or mental cobwebs.

It will come as no surprise to people who know me, but I have a lot of quirks that I’ve developed in adulthood. My least favorite is a constant sense of time. Let me explain … if I’m sitting down with my morning coffee and scrolling through social media, I’ll notice the time. If it’s 8:06, I’ll tell myself that I can scroll until 8:10 and then I need to go about my day. Same thing with writing – I like to start when the clock is showing 0s or 5s, maybe the better for my reptile brain to be able to say “oh, I worked for 30 minutes” or “yeah, I clocked in 55 minutes of activity.” (Because it wouldn’t be as tidy in my mind if I started working at 4:28 … 32 minutes of progress? Shudder.) But because I am me, I just roll with it, because … well. We’re in the midst of a pandemic. There’s only so much self improvement work that I can do when I’m holding a full-time job, doing a full distance learning schedule with my kids, trying to be a good wife and cat mom. (Let’s not talk about the endless dishes because they are … endless.)

I mention my weird penchant for time, because in a perfect world, I was going to kick my blog off again on October 1st. You know … new month, new blog post. (Symmetry!) But October 1st came and went and I hadn’t wrote that first of month, “hey, I’m back!” post. Hmm … did I want to wait until November 1st? That, at least, is a Sunday. First of the month, beginning of the week. (Moar symmetry!) But no, I remembered a Post-It I kept on the edge of my computer monitor when I was a rookie reporter at my first job. The lyrics of a Red Hot Chili Peppers song where the lead singer says “Never been a better time, than right now!” That was a weird little mantra I’d chant to myself when I had to make those awkward phone calls that were constant as a cops and courts reporter. (Let me tell you how fun it is to call the county sheriff at home right after supper. Same goes for grieving parents or “important” folks who are going to get their names splashed on the front page for being baaaaaad.) The mantra worked and as I was procrastinating … erm, plotting … my latest blog post, I realized that there’s never a perfect time to restart something that you abandoned, so … I’m back.  Kinda. I love to blog, but I love my sanity even more, so if life gets busy (which it’s gonna!), this baby falls to the back burner.

But hey, let’s get this train back on tracks and you know … do this blog thing.

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Listening: I love sad 80s country songs. Sue me.

Reading: I crushed my Goodreads challenge during the first quarter of this year.  Everything else has been garnish. 😉 But just recently I finished a pair of damn fine books. Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye” and Megan Campisi’s “The Sin Eater.”  As a mystery writer, I should be embarrassed that it’s taken me so long to read Chandler, but man – that was just something I think I appreciate more that I’m older.

Writing Life: Well, I started querying in September and that’s been a slow process. Slow because I need to finish writing my synopsis for my book. But … it begins!

Call someone you love. Be kind to everyone you meet. Vote/make a plan to vote. Wash your darn hands and wear a mask if you’re able. – Shelley

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What is Friday Fare? As a recap, on Fridays I post link love to the various bits of arcane shiz I discover on the Interwebs.  I liken it to a glimpse into my mind, but without the 80s song lyrics or mental cobwebs.