this & that: May 2019

Hello lovely readers.

I hope your week was a good one and that you can enjoy these two days of rest, or whatever we Americans call weekends. They’re hardly restful. But hopefully they’re rejuvenating!

My week was … well … about the same as every other week. Kids do school, kids do soccer, kids play, we get outside, we see friends, I clean, I cook, I resolve conflicts, I negotiate hostage situations talk down toddler tantrums, etc. Some days I do it pretty well, some days I fall pretty low. Those highs and lows seems to be part and parcel of the gig. Sometimes it’s easy; other times, I’ll be honest, my love tank runs on almost empty. There’s a lot of self talk for times like that, but maybe the simplest is, well, someone did it for me. Maybe that’s what we can celebrate this Mother’s Day, that our mothers showed up even when they were low on sleep, stretched thin, over touched, tired of cleaning, or whatever it was. They showed us what it was to love even when they weren’t really feeling the love. I know that’s not the stuff of the grocery store flowers and sappy Hallmark cards, but it maybe it’s more meaningful for all that?

And now for some weekend links!

Apropos to the above discussion … cheerfulness. I don’t think this is an especially well argued essay, but I do often wonder about cheerfulness. Is a lack of cheerfulness wrong? Is it necessarily better to be cheerful than not? I think people correlate happiness with cheerfulness, and so if you are not cheerful you are not actually happy; and if you are happy, then you will be cheerful. It’s not clear to me either of those are true. And while I agree you can’t or shouldn’t force cheerfulness, I do think people can and should shift their perspective from negative to positive, and that this is neither false nor dishonest.

Not much to comment except that there are some very strange (and depressing) aspects of this age of social media.

If you’re fretting about the new WHO screentime guidelines, read this. I’m no scientist, and I’ve been through all the screen time paranoia that every modern parent has, but I do honestly believe that the more important issue is the balance of screen time versus play time - imaginative playtime. Outside playtime.

I found this article fascinating - an explanation of events that I’ve never heard of before!

When you see these drawings, you realize exactly how genius the final designs are in their iconic simplicity.

If your kitchen needs a little spring refresher.

Ohhh I hate to even admit that I could use this! Hooray for modern makeup.

What is the optimal number of children for the happiness of parents? Feels like the wrong question to ask, if I’m being honest. I feel like one shouldn’t approach the creation of a human life with the attitude of, will it make me happy? I also feel like it is a highly relative matter. BUT, the book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids has been highly recommended to me by a friend so maybe it’s time to actually read it!