It’s amazing how much of being a grown-up is an endless cycle of facing new things that I’m not 100% sure I’m enough of an adult to handle adequately. Luckily, I also have enough foundational decades of adulting my way through everything I’ve faced thus far in life as to face each new adulting challenge with a core sense of faith that I will find my way through.
And sometimes I come out the other side feeling kinda proud of myself. Which is how I’m feeling tonight.
My car emailed me this morning with a low battery warning.
And that’s actually more of true a statement than not.
You see, part of my multi-pronged Verizon package* is a device called the Hum. I think of it as the poor man’s On-Star: a gadget/speaker-box that would allow me to call out for road-side assistance in the case of breakdown or accident.
You see, when you’re classy, you get to have your tech built into the rear-view like in the photo above. Instead, my gadget just clips onto the visor like souped-up garage door opener. But even though I have the non-luxury version of this asset, it’s given me peace of mind to have this extra bit of equipment in the car as I’ve been commuting in snowy New England conditions these past several years.
But I hadn’t ever paid attention to this whole other diagnostic suite of features the Hum has.
That is: not until the Hum app emailed me at 16 minutes past midnight with a “Yellow” battery alert.**
Continue reading “The way we live now, part 2”
I finished my first winter puzzle tonight after work.
I can’t pat myself too much on the back for doing this one semi-quickly. I’m sufficiently out of practice that I’m deliberately grading myself on a curve by starting with 500-piece puzzles. Once I’m more in the groove, I’ll drag out the 1,000-piece examples and really dig in.
Still, completing this puzzle—and being reminded of the joy that puzzle-making brings me—has me feeling grateful and a little bit celebratory.
And like it may be worth sharing a bit more about why this activity suits me so well.
Continue reading “Piece by piece”
We got the Solstice tree decorated tonight.
Now, considering I posted a gajillion days ago about starting the holiday decorating, you’d think I’d be done by now. But no.
Some of it is my inherent laziness: after putting in a full day at the NPO, there’s some nights I have not been in the mood to work on things. And my general philosophy for all this year’s decorating is “only if it makes me happy.” So if it makes me happier to do things slowly, I’m A-OK with that.
We also hit a bit of a speed-bump with the tree.
Continue reading “Decking the halls”
There’s a meme that’s been going around FB lately:
A toy company makes an action figure of you. What two accessories does it come with?
I haven’t shared it yet on my own feed—I kinda feel as if I should be able to answer this question for myself before asking it of anyone else.* I have, however, been enjoying the threads on different friends’ pages, and even helped do some hypothetical problem-solving for someone who had listed “Bell, book and candle” as their accessories and hit against the arbitrary two items rule:
The bell is suspended from a ribbon of fabric also being used as a bookmark. #ProblemSolved
We pagan types gotta help each other out.
It’s the start of the weekend chez Mezzo. Not only do I have another 3-day weekend ahead, but I’m taking most of Thanksgiving week off, too.* AND Mr. Mezzo has tomorrow off so he can power through some more of his NaNoWriMo project.
So, even though we’ve been keeping a good habit of getting the TV off between 7:30 and 8 PM most nights, to support our separate writing habits—me here on JALC and him on his NaNo book—tonight we made an exception and kept watching later into the night so we could enjoy a movie on our “Friday night.”
Four thumbs up: would recommend.
Continue reading “Black girl magic, holiday style”
I’m moving back into the bedroom tonight.
Mr. Mezzo has been feeling a bit not-quite-okay since last week. As of Monday morning, the symptoms included a tiny bit of shortness of breath.
Cue the obligatory telehealth appointment and COVID test.
Now, I was cautiously optimistic that he’d turn out to be okay. We’ve been super-careful, what with only going out for essential errands and staying masked all the while. But, we’ve all seen stories about those rare cases here and there, where someone has done all the rights things and stayed masked and still gotten that 1-in-a-million chance infection.
So in the same way we knew that getting tested was the right choice, out of an abundance of caution, we decided to play it extra safe inside the house. Mr. Mezz stayed quarantined in the main bedroom suite, and I set up on our living room couch.
I started putting up our Christmas/Solstice village the day after Halloween.*
And I’m not alone in this. The Boston Globe has reported on this phenomenon all across our region—and, I’d suspect, more widely across the country, too.
So many people started decorating for Christmas on the Sunday after Halloween — before the foam tombstones had been respectfully packed away —that Nov. 1 has rightfully turned into the kick-off to Christmas this year.
And I don’t blame us.
Continue reading “Stringing the lights”So the race has been declared: Joe Biden is our president elect and Kamala Harris is the vice president-elect.
Honestly, I’d been cautiously optimistic about this outcome since I first thought through the vote counting trend lines mid-Wednesday. Of course, I had no desire to jinx anything, which is why I didn’t say anything here about that prediction/expectation.
I did, however, share that assessment with a few select friends and co-workers—basically as a way of explaining why I was able to focus on work Wednesday and Thursday and wasn’t feeling undue stress about things.
(Ah the hubris!)
Once the call was finally made late this morning, a friend of mine asked on Facebook,
Did everyone else just unclench muscles they didn’t realize they were tensing?
Yup. #ItMe
Continue reading “Winner winner cheesesteak dinner”
Self-Love: It's Just Another Lifestyle Change 