While DD is working on her handwriting copywork, I am taking on the challenge of a daily gratitude journal.
The Sisterhood suggests pairing this with reading a chapter per day of The Book of Awesome. In good faith, I skimmed a library copy, loved the premise, but found Pasricha's style grating after a couple entries. So for this month, I am savoring a chapter a day from the Book of Delights instead.
1/12/2025- Persimmons.
I discovered persimmons late in life. Our neighbors to the west plied us with some from their tree shortly after we moved into the Steamstead in 2011. I couldn't believe such a sweet vanilla custard could come out a fruit that was so forgiving of extended countertop neglect. As we planted our east side urban orchard, I smuggled in a persimmon tree so I could bedazzle the fruit bowl with edible gems. We make plans but God laughs and snaps my sapling down to almost the graft line with the first Santa Ana winds of the season. I still managed to coax a few fruit from my stump this year, ripening at the perfect time to deter from the more processed desserts on offer during the Thanksgiving to Christmas gauntlet. I supplemented my home-grown stash with a few from the grocery store, refining my trick of freezing and thawing them to remove the astringency, like tonight's freshly thawed dessert... Though not quite as sweet and nuanced as home grown. Those neighbors have long since moved on but as I come and go through the back door, I still admire that gateway persimmon tree, overburdened with orange ornaments hanging from its nude branches and wonder if the new neighbors appreciate the treasure they have.
1/13/2025 Cali "Kuvia."
At undergrad, we had a tradition of waking up at dawn in the depths of Chicago winter to do calisthenics with classmates. It culminated with rolling around in the snow, saluting the sun as it rose over a frozen Lake Michigan. While it is still hard to get out of a warm bed, I love my mellower California routine. No alarms needed, I wake up naturally a couple clicks before 6 and at this time of year that means the sun's rays are just creeping over Silverado canyon (which thankfully, is not burning today despite several fires around LA) as I make my way to the garage gym for 3 sets of bench, lunge, row. But first, the cats demand satisfaction. As I pour kibble behind the tire of my husband's pickup so they can snack semi-sheltered from the wind, I reminisce about the many patient days invested luring them into feeding on a schedule, then into crates, then off to the vet for cut rate hysterectomies. This is delight in the gratitude for having done and continuing to do hard things.
1/14/2025 Rosacea
Not a condition I would choose for anyone, to be sure. But the relief was palpable in the dermatologist's office learning that I wasn't trapped in teenage purgatory as I entered perimenopause; that this was a condition that could be managed! Gone are the counters strewn with cosmetics and cover ups I thought could help but only aggravated things, replaced with a few bottles I reliably empty. And with a clearer complexion came a clearer perspective on the flare up triggers. While my husband's stress simmers until it explodes into a full case of an excruciating and disfiguring shingles, forcing him to take time off work and recover, I get a more gentle reminder that maybe I overindulged a bit in desserts, caffeine, stress, sun or exercise. I prefer the early warning. Plus now I have a medically valid excuse to take a break and lounge in the shade devouring page turners on outdoorsy family excursions!
1/15/2025 Bananas
Reminiscing about a favorite local Youtuber who embarked on an Apocalypse Grow 30 Day Subsistence Challenge. As a person of Irish descent, I was amused to see he pulled it off largely on a surfeit of potatoes. At the Steamstead, bananas have become our potato equivalent. At any given time, I have a several gallon freezer bags filled to the gills with bananas. One Christmas, my in-laws gifted the best sorbet maker that can convert these air potatoes into a delicious n'ice cream. They drink our laundry water and repay us with dessert. And yet I still can't manage to eat my way through them all. They go to work, they go to school, soon, we will need to establish a "take what you need" produce stand to contain their bounty.
1/16/2025 Health YouRu's
On the whole, my life has become more enjoyable since I started curating a cadre of health and well-being focused YouTube "gurus" and prioritizing their uploads over the doom scroll. In this case, it was a perfectly timed 30 min Huberman "short" on stress management to listen to as I jogged through the neighborhood awash with the orangey glow of sunrise. +5 recovery check! Chirps my watch, probably in part thanks to the tips I've gathered from Huberman. I define health broadly as anything that puts my fears in a more workable/humorous perspective, or informs/inspires me toward improvement and expansion. So I count artists and comedians in this set-- Adriene, Rajiv, Wheezy, David Nihill, Siloe, Lindsey Sterling. I should also note it is delightfully gratifying to periodically declutter your YouTube subscriptions.
1/17/2025
Nostalgia"It kind of looks like an oil slick..." Ironman was hard on my toes. One big piggy has never been the same since coming back from the war, even after a trip to a podiatrist and a stint in liver-damaging antifungal rehab. So maybe this particular polish isn't perfect; it doesn't advertise itself as 5 free or made in artisanal small local batches with proprietary voo-doo that allows it to easily wash off textiles while also being long-wearing, but I love this mercurial color and the compliments I get on the rare occasions when I am showing some toe. I love that my husband has gotten in the habit of doing pedicures and the conversations we have over the chilly acetone and waiting for coats to dry.
1/18/2025 Bodily Movements
Crude one. Pushing off a bit chilly and preoccupied with maneuvering in my new clips, some alchemy with the temp, exertion, and allergies left me in a sniffle battle with gravity for the whole 90 minute bike session. I hadn't packed a tissue and things never got so dire I felt I needed to get dropped by the group and resort to a sleeve or an experimental snot shot into the sage. But what an incredible relief to rifle the glove box of the car and find a half-forgotten packet of several soft Kleenex. Emptying my nose was a 3 tissue job that left me giddy and so unencumbered I felt ready to do an extra credit workout. Note to self next ride, pack a hankie.
1/19/2025 Lapsang Souchong in the beat up tin
LS has twice been my underground railroad to a freer life. First with booze being the social lubricant it was in my 20's and 30's, I slowly descended into whiskey and mezcal snobbery. The smokier the better. Over elaborate cocktails in a SF speakeasy after a hard day of gamer conference networking, a friend mentioned his twin taste for LS when he was operating in a responsible adult capacity. Sure enough, you could replicate the smoky flavor without a hang over. The second salvation came when I confronted my caffeine dependence and the prospect of managing it on a backpacking trip (plus the small but annoying toll of arranging my daily life around it). I'm still not fully out of the woods with that, but I have tapered to the point where withdrawal symptoms without 2 morning brews (and the attendant multiple pitstops) are no longer a lifestyle liability. Sometimes a semi-leaded cozy smoky beverage helps fill the void I would otherwise have filled with higher calorie, lower-joy alternatives.
1/20/2025 Heat Window.
It was not easy to get central air installed in a 130 year old house. There were many HVAC company ghosts after groking the massive no longer standard square heat registers and the one that did eventually put the units in did not pull permits for doing so. The delightful technician who services them emphasizes the return on investment we'd see with insulation and the unit that was craned onto the roof is unlikely to see its full lifespan, despite our only intermittently using it. But when my feet go numb feeding the outdoor cats, it is delightful to open the door and be greeted by substantially warmer air and a kid lolling around in the dog bed strategically placed in front of the heat window with her hair whipping around her face.
1/21/2025 Morning Pages with Fountain Pen
It had been a while since I took a crack at Morning Pages. This is a concept introduced in all Julia Cameron's Artist's Way workbooks about tapping into creativity and getting unblocked. I still do MP from time to time, particularly when I feel I need to dial up the self-care but am not in any way consistent about it. My morning essay from the Book of Delights was a panegyric to writing compositions (particularly poems) out long hand. So I decided that an a cup of salty chocolate were the way to start the day. Oh, and as long as we are dialing up the fun, why not refill the iridescent fountain pen I bought in the heady days of starting correspondence with my two Daily Connoisseur penpals? With satisfyingly inky finger tips and writer's bump which will likely haunt me all the way to school pickup, I cross the finish line of the 3rd half page and am off to the next item on my to do list. Will I cross it off with the fountain pen as well?
1/22/2025 Bedtime Stories with Boogie
In a hormonal fugue of a migraine, I tell my kid she's going to have to sort out her bedtime herself because I need to lie down. She cozies up on this ottoman and reads me a few pages of the Boxcar Children to lull me to sleep (or at least take my mind off the waves of nausea). When husband arrives and finds me shivering on the tiles, he offers to pick up the kid activities shuttle the following day and pries a deep frozen ice pack out for enough relief to finally drift off. At 2, Boogie climbs in with us and adds her little kid breathing to the symphony. What I wouldn't have given for this family when I had a rough night in my 20's and had to nurse myself back to health before the 7AM appearance at the client site.
1/23/2025 Barristas that know your name
Sure, this one probably gets mentioned on gratitude lists a lot, but it is novel for me this month. I am in the habit of wearing my "mom nametag," a pink baseball hat on errands about town which makes life for barristas a bit easier and inches me closer to honorary junior cougar membership in the
RHS (bucket list item?). But I'm also trying to limit my meals out to 3 or less per week, with coffee counting as a meal in a cup. So I am super impressed that today's barrista was able to recall my name without a hat and with what must be pretty sparse patronage data points to go off of (considering I don't remember hers and was too embarrassed to ask). Do better next time, Belle!
1/24/2025 Updated traffic punctuation
On the 2 mile stretch into old town I drive several times daily, there are two sketchy patches that have gotten sketchier as density and traffic patterns have evolved. This morning, I was thrilled to see a protected green turn light added on a street I had long since abandoned hope of being able to turn left on. Yesterday, two blocks further up I saw rigging going in for a stop light at a white knuckle patch with a poorly marked lane reduction that felt like being a roller derby pack, meanwhile the wealthy-oblivious-not-yet-local cars from the new high rise (and their attendant army of Amazon and Uber eats shuttles) are coming off the frontage road with limited visibility of the cross traffic and your jammer situation. Three cheers for safer streets!
Once upon a time this was a kegerator that could handle 2 different styles of beer, but I like it so much more as a water chiller and carbonator. It feels so fancy and helps us garnish our way through aging citrus in the fruit bowl. I also love that DH can micro-dose caffeine with powders rather than having a lot of aluminum cans to contend with.
1/26/2025 Rainy day under a reinforced roof
An unusual belay request as DH bum shuffled along the ridge lines of our 3 storey house, "Bad luck" Social distortion T whipping in the breeze as the sun set and the ominous thick grey clouds moved in. But about an hour, a lightly tarred climbing rope and one lost hammer later, we had a fresh strip of ridgeline shingles tamped down and this morning a triumphant update of "no leaks!"
1/27/2025 Homeschooling on sick days
The decision to homeschool was complicated and still not one I am entirely at peace with, but in no small part informed by our experience of Covid and wanting to decouple formal education from the immune system education students get in close quarters. So here we are, a family with full blown colds, but we still had a productive math discussion about symmetry, learned about the preservation efforts of Minerva Hoyt in a national park we plan to camp in May, and had a few opportunities to practice tricky cursive letter connections. There was no squabble over who would stay home as we all work from home. Today is a good day.
1/28/2025 Accountabilabuddies
Many moons ago, I asked the /getmotivated subreddit if anyone wanted to check in periodically over diet, Spanish and garden goals. I'm so lucky Ben responded. He's the perfect balance of encouragement and tough love. It has been so fun to see his baby cabras, grinning gym and date night selfies as he gradually morphs into Wolverine. Hopefully he sees some progress in my updates as well.
1/29/2025 Pet sitters
It wasn't until Kim quizzed me on how limiting full time parenthood was that I realized that actually, the kid is driving us to get out of town and go on adventures and scratch more states and countries off her map. Meanwhile, concern about our aging pets puts a break on trips. Are inlaws available to watch them? Over the last couple weeks in trying to make a bucket list excursion work for DH, I renewed the Rover pet sitting service and made the acquaintance of Diana. Hopefully all goes well on this first sit and we can scale it up to longer adventures in the future.
1/30/2025 Expansive vocabulary
It started when I asked ChatGPT what level Spanish fluency it would peg me at. To gauge, it asked me for Spanish synonyms for words -- truly a mind-stretcher of an exercise after the speed-based multiple choice drills of Duolingo. I realize I delight in writers whose diction gives me pause- "callaloo," is amaranth- possibly specifically the inflorescence of it (today's Book of Delights essay), a "garret" is a tiny room in the attic and all this time when I read that word, I had been picturing those semi-submerged basement-level apartments with maybe a single awkwardly high and small window (yesterday's Wise Man's Fear joy read). I've been talking a lot about antonyms and synonyms with my daughter. "Yorba Linda, pretty Yorba, 'Linda' is pretty in Spanish, 'hermosa,' 'bella,' ..." "... 'pretty' and 'beautiful' are cinnamons?" a still small voice queries from the backseat of the car.
(Bonus) Serendipity
Those weird coincidences that make you think everything happens for a reason, you're on track. The two completely unrelated authors both mention a character named Auri. To see a teacher friend at Legoland.
1/31/2025 Legoland
Often in ethical dilemmas, I catch myself thinking "what would Dude do?" GranDude is my laid back surfer father in law. His 79th bday is coming up so what Dude did was join us for an uncrowded Thursday/Friday in Legoland when kid's school was observing a random "mid-winter break." The lines were minimal, grandkid took this coaster 10 times with combinations of her 4 adult-sized chaperones. The Castle Hotel was convenient, cute, full of cool perks like a treasure hunt to get a code to unlock the safe. She even scored a super rare collectible badge from a groundskeeper. Does Dude intrinsically love Lego? I'm not sure, but I am sure his wife sure does and so does his grandkid and Dude usually does the thing that creates the most joy and comfort for the people around him.
2/1/2025 Beginnings
I love rolling the calendar over to a new month. The flurry of "monthly" to do's I try to tackle on the first of the month which are so quick and satisfying to dispatch-- change an HVAC filter, make sure the dogs swallow their heartworm meds. This is a particularly fresh beginning, having just returned from travel, getting what felt like the first good-uncomplicated-by-sleeping-on-the-hotel-room-floor-or-suffering-cold-symptoms-or-hearing-bedmates-suffer-likewise in a very long time. February is the shortest month too, so a new beginning is just a short sprint away...
2/2/2025 Snarky signs at race day
"Run faster! They only validate for 2 hours!" "Keep chafing your dreams!" "Worst parade EVER" "You're almost there"+"<-- bad at math" (at the 2 mile mark of 1/2 mara) "Tap here for a boost" "Pain is just French for bread" ... Also delighted in a 'can relate' way, the guy who was in the home stretch stopping, screaming at his watch, "F**ck! I ended my run!" And the Tijuana barrel runners who managed to do the whole thing pushing a wheelbarrow/carrying a log.
2/3/2025 Theragun
My mother in-law elatedly opened one of these at her family's consolidated holiday, "Merry New Thanks Christmas." As it was passed around the circle, I wasn't sure what all the fuss was about. Later, my erstwhile personal trainer got one out of his car to demonstrate its effect on my perpetually tight calves. I was sold. I researched a BIFL/affordable option on reddit and haven't looked back. What I appreciate the most about these is that you'll need an assistant to access most achey muscles. So this becomes a pro-social activity. Mine now has a patina of Lush "lord of misrule" massage bar grease on it, like a well-loved cast iron skillet.
2/4/2025 I had left my camelback with my phone and my keys somewhere. Maybe the waiting area, maybe the carpool van. I was riffling through all the things I could do to mitigate- have hubby find my phone before the battery wore out to narrow the search, use the spare house key, do we have a spare car key fob? Again and again this carousel of thoughts cycled through. Then my alarm began its gentle plunking hopeful tune. I disabled it on my prodigal phone, grabbed my keys, and headed out the door for a relieved Dexa scan at dawn.
2/5/2025 Rain
And the potential for snow in the mountains. Permission to have a hygge day and not beat myself up about deferred yard work and workouts.
2/6/2025 Beausage
The portmanteau has stuck with me ever since stumbling across it in Petersen's Just Ride book way back in the early days of triathlon. The idea of something becoming more handsome with regular use versus believing everything is at its peak when it is new and then it is just a downward spiral. How many thousands of training miles it took to perfectly break in that bike saddle.
2/7/2025 Friends of Bill
This is Bill (Bailey), a nepenthes I ordered from Carnivero in September of '23. It shares an aquaponics tray with an equally striking Gaya. It took a while for us to get comfortable with each other. They had transplant shock, dropped their pitchers and withered down to almost dead on the back porch. But I am glad I didn't pitch them because they rallied in the shrimp aquaponics set up. Now I may see a few drosophila buzzing around produce I just picked up at the store, but they don't linger and I have a suspicion as to why. I peeked into one of Bill's pitchers and found a full sized house fly lost in the drink!
2/8/2025 muscle memory
I was overly worried hitting the Big Bear snow summit bunny hill after a several sabbatical. My aging body would tire faster and bruise more quickly. I wouldn't say the handful of runs I took today were elegant or advancing my capabilities beyond my most accomplished reference points. But I handled myself well, stopped with control, had a good time and turned in before it was injurious or arduous.
2/9/2025 Home sweet wet room.
It was a multi-level slumber party-- daughter commandeered the bunk room and recruited her friends to sleep in it with her which worked astonishingly well. At a meta-level, the adults were doing the same thing-- Janelle booked an airbnb and we had split it 3 ways. I had to keep pinching myself and asking whether I was pulling my weight on collective household chores-- meal prep, kid supervision, clean up-- the efficiencies you can achieve with a group of 5 kids that get along pretty well is impressive and requires trivial effort if split across 6 adults. I managed to read almost 100 pages of my page turner and get in a couple fun snowboard runs to boot! After the bunk room lights went out, one set of friends mentioned they refuse to do family reunions that don't allow them to have their own self-contained space. I used to joke my own mom was too particular in looking at reunion hosting sites and rejecting any options that lacked en suite bathrooms for each couple's room. Now I get it. 2 sleeps sharing a bathroom with 5 kids under 7 and an inability to lock the door resulted in no showers. Maybe the slate bathroom floor is falling apart and not exactly perfect, but I'm happy to be home with memories of the fun we had as a group but were prudent enough to end before our little socialist utopia fell upon harder times.
2/10/2025 Page-turners
Most of my travel these days is by way of teleportation through books. The world Rothfuss has built is captivating. The short action-packed scenes are the perfect respite while stirring a pot of pasta, waiting for the dog to decide it is time to come in and leave you on your toes, dying to know what happens next. He has such punchy but plausible dialog, such evocative figurative language. I fell asleep last night reflecting on what it would feel like to be a reused page of velum, the words slowly scraped off with a knife and what creative process he followed to arrive at such a metaphor.
2/11/2025 Garmin "Step Pals"
About a year ago, I participated in a penpal assignment using a Secret Santa app that was coordinated by a youtuber I followed. As you might expect with Secret Santas, I scored two. We quickly learned it takes a few days to deliver a letter to Virginia over a month to get to Poland. We covered many topics from parenting neurodivergent kids, the decision to work for corporate or double down on home-making, to comparing fitness watches and step counters. Life got busy and we lost our momentum a bit. But the compromise we arrived at was to do a weekend step challenge and share a couple comments of encouragement or commiseration in the process. It may not be as elaborate of a self-care ritual as writing out a letter long-hand, but both of us come away with it slightly lighter spirits and a little bit more of a bounce in our step.
2/12/2025 Sisterhood mail
Having grown up with brothers, I'm still learning how to be at ease around women. It reminds me a bit about the not-at-all comprehensive lessons in business school about being sensitive to cultural differences. Something that "Is very difficult..." in Japan might garner a, "No, are you out of your f*ing mind?!" in a more direct culture. I feel like making female friends is a bit like deplaning in the Haneda airport. You suspect you'll need to be on your best, most polite behavior to clear customs, but once in a while, you stumble upon a kindred spirit who has the same 1950's vaguely rockabilly aesthetic or a soft spot for sepia circus tent stickers... Or maybe they don't, but know that these would be just the thing to delight you?
**Hiatus** My daily dispatch from the Book of Delights is paused on chapter 33. Another library patron is waiting to be delighted. :)
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