the rest of it

A second gratitude note in a week! Heavens, it's almost like the old days. I find myself up later than the rest of the family, not quite ready to go to bed, but feeling like I shouldn't be getting stuck into anything too involved.  G stayed home from school with a cold today. I don't think it's anything worse than that—it's very, very snotty. We've run out of home Covid tests, so will have to get some tomorrow. Now that our rooms have their new shape, it's so much easier for me to imagine what will work in them. This provides an incremental buzz of frustration for Phil, who gets me saying things like "This would work better if we got rid of that radiator and replaced it with a low one." To which he inevitably replied "I asked you if you wanted to keep the radiator AND YOU SAID 'YES'!" Well, yeah, but I also told you I can't imagine spaces very well.   So today I am grateful: 1. For a little commission from the Guardian and the...

I've had 'write gratitude note' on my to-do list since the weekend. While I'd not found the time to write one properly, I have been jotting down things I'm grateful for along the way. This week, I got to the point where I had to retire (to the laundry hamper) the tunic and the dress I've been wearing for most of our non-laundry time. So I'm wearing one of the dresses I've ordered and not worn during lockdown. And I was going to get my hair done. And so I decided that today was the day to wear my watch and my wedding ring—for the first time since the first lockdown. I am re-entering the world, a bit. Today (this week) I am grateful for: The Allusionist Eclipse expansion episode, in which Helen Z talks with Lauren Marks about her experience of aphasia. It's absolutely the right aspect of aphasia for the book I'm working on, and Marks is so eloquent and interesting. My homemade wrist rest (made of hand-me-down curtains and lentils). I didn't kno...

Every once in a while, I google people I'm sad to have lost touch with, just to find out if they're findable. Either I find them and think "Ah, that's nice" or I don't, and then I wonder that it's possible to be hard-to-find in this day and age. One who had very little online presence was Alex Guest, the other half of my first real, "grown-up" relationship, and so it was a surprise to find him this time. And very, very sad .  Alex and I were together for nearly five years, the first three in person, the last bit long-distance, with a prolonged and not-very-nice break-up. He remained one of the most important people in my life, nonetheless. This is perhaps inevitable, seeing as we got together when I was 19 and he was 20. I learned a fair amount about being a grown-up while with him (or at least about pretending to be a grown-up, which is mostly what I did in my 20s) and I learned a huge amount about a huge number of things from him.  Alex—which i...

Let's try writing a gratitude note when I haven't thought of anything to be grateful for today. It hasn't been a bad day, mind you. Just a day. I am stream-of-consciously grateful: 1. For a conversation with my dad before he goes out to play bridge.  2. For Timehop, which showed me that a year ago today, we made a video to wish my dad good luck before surgery. That adds a bit of resonance to the previous item.   3. I believe it was Michelle O. who recommended Timehop to me, so I'm grateful for her and more broadly the phenomenon of getting to know people over the internet. 4. For the postponement of a seminar, which helped my day a bit. 5. For another false alarm re needing a new boiler. Or rather, for the guy who fixed our boiler this morning. (No particular gratitude for the plumber who messed it up and then claimed he hadn't!) 6. For Sewing Bee (and the right person going home this week). 7. For a little time with G at the office and a good chunk of time on my ow...

Term-time left me no room to think about anything, but writing time opens the mind, so I am thinking more thoughts these days. But I'm posting less here and on Facebook because the current set-up means I'm not going onto the computer after working hours. Some might think this is good work-life balance, but it isn't. It's just having no place good for doing anything while the house is a building site. All we tend to do in the evenings is watching tv (and a little reading) because it's just not comfortable to do much else at home.  Yesterday we had a belated burger in the Pavilion Gardens. (That had been the plan for Mother's Day in March, but on the day it felt too cold and windy for it to be fun.) While it's not particularly warm out, the sun has been shining brightly all weekend, and Brighton felt almost back to normal, with lots of people milling about, at cafe and pub tables outside and picnicking in parks. I'm missing all the food vans that were arou...

We've had more than a week of 'minimum service days' at the University, meaning we're not expected to work at all. Of course I've been working—but not full days. Though I've been doing some marking, it feels like all my time is taken up with the journal I('m learning to) edit.  Today we discovered that the plans for our kitchen were based on bad measurements, so we'll have to get back to the design drawing board tomorrow, but at least this discovery was made before the order was finalised.  I am grateful: For being able to take the days at a more leisurely pace and no alarm clock (just builders coming in). For very little Zoom and nearly two days on my own in the office. I needed that. For Caroline Criado Perez's newsletter pointing out enraging gender data gap problems. Extremely eye-opening.  For Google Scholar Alerts and the little ego boosts they bring. My journals and gratitude notes from last year coming up in my Facebook memories. I'm so g...

My friend Magdalena has stopped numbering the nightly notes she's been writing since the first lockdown, and I've considered doing the same. I don't know when it will be right to stop counting, but I've decided on 'not yet'.  A couple of weeks ago, I said something to Phil about 'when we've had both our jabs we can start going to restaurants again' and he played the role I usually think of as mine: being more cautious with the optimism. I immediately knew he was right. Hope is the basis for disappointment. Pessimism leads to preparedness.  Lockdown eased a bit more this week, and we're allowed small-group socialising out-of-doors. Because I've got myself into this "Can't let my guard down; things might get worse" mindset, I didn't take the opportunity to socialise with colleagues today, which I regret. I have been feeling more hemmed-in than previously. The limited space in the house is a big deal. Thank god I'm renting ...