Sometimes I think if an airplane thought too much about how it flies, it would never get up in the air. So much of life is like that, really.

We just do it.

Like the writing. When I think too much about it, I end up having nothing to say, but when that glorious brain to typing fingers superhighway opens up, it’s a whole different story.

Sometimes literally.

Literally.

Wow, I’m like the Inception of puns today.

Anyway, it’s gray, and possibly raining but if it not yet, soon. I’m fine with that, the rain will bring green and flowers. And we like those.

I wonder if, when it looks like this and doesn’t rain, the rain looks down.

You’re never supposed to look down.

And it thinks, if rain can think, never mind. Not for me.

It’s that hesitation that gets us, almost universally. Not that good-for-you kind where you stop yourself before disaster, but the bad-for-you-kind that holds you firmly in place.

Perhaps even for rain.

Have a great Wednesday.

Check out  my full-length novels: 
Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   
Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 
Her Cousin Much Removed
The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.
And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s quick and weird and FREE!
Peruse Montraps Publishing
See what I’m writing on Medium.

It’s sunny again today, cold but sunny, and at least the sunny is a step in the right direction. That heavy fog has lifted, both the literal one and the metaphorical one and I am, once again, able to string thoughts together at a pace slightly faster than a snail.

So good for me.

Though I won’t get too enthusiastic, there’s always more weather ahead.

Yesterday was a day of errands, and the things that had an upside before the pandemic, like a trip to Costco, just don’t feel the same anymore. There were too many people, and the variety has decreased, and it just doesn’t feel…

The same.

Maybe it never will. Maybe those little details of life are gone forever, the fun of browsing for example. While not looking at a screen away from maskless coughing people.

Certainly there were people in the store pretending it was the same, or maybe they weren’t pretending, maybe for them nothing ever changed. But it didn’t feel genuine.

It felt like the other side of the teeter-totter, defiantly opposed for those of us in masks, this air that everything is as it always was.

What’s the point?

Reality doesn’t care if you believe in it.

Let’s not pretend, let’s create new little joys, ones that acknowledge what has been while leaving room for good things in the future.

And with that, I wish you a wonderful Wednesday.

Check out  my full-length novels: 
Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   
Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 
Her Cousin Much Removed
The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.
And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s quick and weird and FREE!
Peruse Montraps Publishing
See what I’m writing on Medium.

It’s cloudy sunny today, or sunny cloudy, take your pick. Tomorrow there is supposed to be bad weather.

But that’s tomorrow.

I’m back on my Korean dramas, and more to the point, starring one of my favorites, Park Min-young. Since my last one, I’ve watched a French show, a British show set in France, and an Irish show as well as some American shows but whatever it is, these Korean dramas hit the spot.

Which, by the way, I just learned comes from archery and hitting a bullseye.

The more you know.

Maybe it’s the fear of the magical losing its magic, or maybe it’s the belief that we don’t totally deserve that perfect fit, but for some reason, we spend so much of our time not doing the exact thing that will make us happy.

So that’s your challenge.

Do something that hits the spot today, whatever it is. Order that food you never order, watch that show you’ve been saving, start a craft project you want to but haven’t.

You deserve it and if you need permission, here it is.

Have a great Wednesday.

Check out  my full-length novels: 
Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   
Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 
Her Cousin Much Removed
The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.
And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s quick and weird and FREE!
Peruse Montraps Publishing
See what I’m writing on Medium.

It’s raining now, with a heavy, gloomy sky, and it’s supposed to continue. Still, it’s better here than in other states around us, hammered with either snow or ice or perhaps both.

So I’ll take it.

Maybe it’s the weather, but I’m tired today, cocooned in that fuzzy gray outside. Maybe it’s something buried deep within our genetic code, to let storms like this pass, to conserve our energy for any potential aftermath.

It’s quiet, too. So I’m not the only one.

It’s weird how fallout can come from nowhere, just as much as that which you expect. And I’m being vague here deliberately, because we each have our own “afters.”

Our own befores.

Strangely spellcheck doesn’t think “afters” is a word, but it’s fine with “befores.”

Oh. Wait. No it’s not. It was only slow on the uptake. Or the undertake. The red squiggly undertake.

But I digress. Too bad, that felt like a deep metaphor.

So it’s ok to rest in the betweens, while we wait to evaluate the damage. It’s ok to take stock, to prepare.

To gather strength.

Because really, in the end, that’s what we’re doing.

Have a great Wednesday.

Check out  my full-length novels: 
Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   
Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 
Her Cousin Much Removed
The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.
And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s quick and weird and FREE!
Peruse Montraps Publishing
See what I’m writing on Medium.

It’s a super gloomy day, though the bad weather isn’t supposed to start until later. It’s fine, though, we all need some gloomy days like this with heavy skies and indeterminate temperatures.

I think I need new countertops but it’s one of those House that Jack Built situations. Once you start with one thing, then there’s another and another and another.

It doesn’t help that my place is old and everything in it is getting older.

Even me.

But that’s true for all of us, I guess. Must be the outside gloom leaking inside.

So I’m not sure whether to even start.

One of those things, isn’t it, when you know that like water, any job will expand and expand to fill the space around it.

Sometimes I think I think too much.

And sometimes I think it’s good I think ahead. Otherwise there could be surprises.

Or maybe I’m overthinking the overthinking.

It’s a conundrum.

I guess the wisdom today is double-edged; think things through so you are not surprised along the way, but don’t think so far ahead that you never get going in the first place.

And if I knew how to do both of those things, well, I’d be an entirely different person, I think.

Have a great Wednesday.

Check out  my full-length novels: 
Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   
Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 
Her Cousin Much Removed
The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.
And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s quick and weird and FREE!
Peruse Montraps Publishing
See what I’m writing on Medium.

Is it sunny? Is it cloudy? Only the weather knows for sure. Says we’re getting rain later, so we’ll see.

We’ll see.

My inspiration reservoir is so low today, you can make out the mud and the rocks and the forgotten roots beneath the shallow surface. I probably need some tea to compliment the coffee I’ve already had.

And this is where I’d normally excuse myself to put the kettle on, so at the very least it could boil while I chat here with you. But today is one of those days where making the tea feels like more work than writing without the tea.

We make choices.

Sometimes they’re so small and subtle we don’t even realize we’ve made them, not until we have to stop and force ourselves to analyze them while, I don’t know, just throwing out an example, we write a blog post. As small as putting the kettle on or not putting the kettle on.

And we can ride the escalator upward to bigger and bigger choices, from what we wear and eat to what we do and a million other things that can change everything that are different for everyone so only you can spell them out for you.

All along the way, decisions, decisions, decisions.

Choices.

I like the theory that there is a separate universe for every choice we don’t make, all those millions of branch points holding up space and time, a concept so beautifully illustrated in Everything Everywhere All at Once. The me who got up to make the tea might be in the midst of a completely different post.

Or she may still be standing in the kitchen, staring at nothing in particular, waiting for the pop of the kettle finishing its thing.

She made her choice and I made mine.

Have a great Wednesday.

Check out  my full-length novels: 
Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   
Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 
Her Cousin Much Removed
The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.
And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s quick and weird and FREE!
Peruse Montraps Publishing
See what I’m writing on Medium.

It’s the first day of February but it looks like January out there, very cold and very sunny. Though it’s warmer than it’s been the last few days, it’s still in the low 20s.

Yesterday’s Chat Tuesday was all about feeling stuck, so I do kind of wonder whether I have the insight to offer any wisdom at all today, Wednesday or not.

And that’s probably where it lies.

We spend a lot of our time proving we know things, showing our knowledge, trying to keep up, trying to show we belong. And sometimes.

Sometimes.

What we really need to do is listen. What we really need to do is understand…

It’s not always our turn to speak.

Especially when it comes to events that affect particular groups specifically. Sometimes our our opinions aren’t wanted.

Often our opinions aren’t needed.

There is strength in supporting others. If the spotlight isn’t on you at all times, you will not whither away.

I promise.

And that’s it for this Wednesday. Have a wonderful day.

Check out  my full-length novels: 
Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   
Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 
Her Cousin Much Removed
The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.
And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s quick and weird and FREE!
Peruse Montraps Publishing
See what I’m writing on Medium.

Note the image is another AI collaboration…I really like how it turned out, I haven’t had a lot of success lately.

Well the race is on. The kettle is heating, and the question is which will happen first: me getting a cup of tea or finishing this post?

Gut reaction is, of course, tea, but don’t forget it has to steep. So we’ll see.

It’s snowing today, real snow, the first one we’ve had that looks like it’s adding up to something. And outside the window it’s just white.

It’s not nearly so heavy or so much as other people are getting right now, though, and when I tell you it’s snowing in January in Chicago, I doubt that you’ll be surprised.

I wouldn’t call it remarkable, as a whole.

Kettle isn’t boiling yet. Tea is slower than you think. Ooh there it goes. I’ll be back. Steeping time.

Tea won. These days I use loose leaf tea from Tea Forte (love them) and their stainless steel pyramid infuser. It’s become a quick, tiny ritual, getting the dry leaves into the infuser, getting the wet leaves out.

We all need those, these quick small things that create tiny breaks in the day. Moments to focus only on the task at hand, not the task before, not the task after, just exactly what you’re doing right at this precise time.

Plus I get tea, so I think that’s an all-around win.

Anyway, that’s it for me here in this snow globe. Have a great Wednesday.

Check out  my full-length novels: 
Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   
Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 
Her Cousin Much Removed
The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.
And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s quick and weird and FREE!
Peruse Montraps Publishing
See what I’m writing on Medium.

The sky is clearing a little bit, though there are still stripes of clouds across the sky. Still, I’ll take it.

For today’s post, I played a little game with myself. I went to twitter and vowed to be inspired by the fifth tweet in my feed after a refresh, counting only tweets that were not my own.

Didn’t have any by accounts I follow, but here is the tweet:

Just a fun fact, the suit my kid is wearing was Scott Weiland’s suit from one of his solo album covers. Scott gave my husband, Martyn, that suit long ago in the glorious 90’s Also we were quite a pair last night. She fractured her ankle this week, hence the boot, and me…MS pic.twitter.com/5rqv7d4chb

— christina applegate (@1capplegate) January 17, 2023

I already saw the other tweet of Christina’s this morning, the one talking about a troll who attacked her appearance, and that this picture–the one that sparked that awful comment–is where I landed feels fitting. Because I have thoughts.

Perhaps they will lead to wisdom.

They say you never know what someone is going through, but this is one of those rare cases where we know a lot about what someone is going through. Christina Applegate has survived cancer; now she’s battling MS, and even with all that, she’s showing up for herself, for her daughter, and for her fans.

And yet there are always people who want to poke a bruise, who want to make people feel bad, to steal happiness and trample it.

Here is my wisdom for you: don’t be one of those people.

Of course even the woman who did exactly that probably thinks she’s not one of those people. She probably thinks she did some kind of good, settled some kind of score by criticizing the appearance of a woman whose talent far exceeds her remarkable looks, and her gumption exceeds even both of those qualities.

I mean come on. Christina Applegate is and will always be beautiful, no matter her state of health. But that’s not the point.

Don’t be the pin bursting someone else’s balloon. Maybe it gives a temporary sense of satisfaction; maybe for a moment it relieves continuous self-hatred. But you know what does both of those things for longer?

Kindness.

Being the type of person you can stand.

And with that, I wish you a happy Wednesday.

Check out  my full-length novels: 
Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   
Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 
Her Cousin Much Removed
The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.
And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s quick and weird and FREE!
Peruse Montraps Publishing
See what I’m writing on Medium.