Tonight, you guys, I did the thing I have been a little nervous about doing: I took my mandolin to the jam session at the old courthouse. Everybody was welcoming and encouraging, and it was big fun in a brain-bendy way. It's hard: there's no sheet music anywhere, so you just have to pick up the tunes by listening. And they move at a brisk pace, so it had my brain firing on every single cylinder.
I was inspecting my calluses at the end when a big bearded guy walked up to me and said, "So are you a nun?"
I said, "...No. Thirty years married, five children."
Today I am wearing a swingy black tank dress with a teal underlayer, like so:
I'm also wearing highly visible festive handknit socks, with shoes that show them off. Do these look like nun socks?
Apparently the nuns in his world wear stripy slightly mismatched handknit socks, maybe?
That's kind of a weird opener, is it not? I think I'll go back anyway, but who knew mandolin-playing nuns were a thing?
"How's your first week going?" my colleague across the hall asked me on Thursday. I told her the hot bananas story, and she laughed and agreed. I am hoping the bananas level will ease down to warm this week, but we shall see.
I did not work out all week (because: bananas, so many bananas and so hot), and then I waltzed into the gym today and pulled a deadlift PR: 160 for 2. Joe thinks I could get to 200 pretty speedily but I took a video of myself lifting 160 and I think he may be optimistic there. I took the video expecting the bottom part of each rep to be the problematic bit, but my form on the bottom half looks fine to me. The top half of each rep, however, looks like garbage: I am laboringto lock out 160. But lock it out I did! Nevertheless she persisted, huzzah!
Have you read This Is How You Lose The Time War? It was recommended by someone whose judgment I respect, and so I was a little surprised to find it pretentious, with a twist that seemed obvious from far away. There is a very emphatic community of people who love this book, though, so tell me what you liked about it if you have read it and disagree with my assessment.
I have the feeling that I was going to tell you some more things, my friends, but as I sit here typing I can feel myself sliding into a state of torpor that is unlikely to yield any especially scintillating blog content. I am going to throw up this quick and fairly random post, and come back soon.
I forgot that I pre-ordered Lauren Fleshman's Good for a Girl until it showed up in my Kindle library yesterday. I devoured it. I loved Fleshman's voice when she was writing for Runner's World and so the book was an easy sell. But it was a hard read. It was an extended reminder that we live in a world where people just keep looking at women's bodies and saying, "Hm, you know what would improve this situation? If there were less of you, that's what." In competitive running as in the rest of women's lives, weight loss might offer a small short-term improvement but it does so with enormous medium-term and long-term costs. Fleshman does a nice job juxtaposing the joy of running against the train-wreck-itude of vast swaths of women's sports. I found it both sobering and encouraging, reading about all the damage that has been done to female athletes, and her determination to put future coaches on a better path.
I also forgot that I pre-ordered Catherine Newman's We All Want Impossible Things until it showed up in my Kindle library, but I did not devour it right away. I read the first half of the first chapter a few times and then got distracted. But once I got out of the first chapter I couldn't put it down. It is riotously funny -- the kind of snort-laugh funny that I can't read in bed because I might accidentally shake my husband awake giggling -- which is a little weird for a book about a woman losing her best friend to cancer. It is also hauntingly sad. In hindsight there are some implausible parts (like the hospice doctor's on-the-clock extracurricular activities, excuse me? and also the whole setup of the book -- would this character really leave her kid to go to an out-of-state hospice facility?), but I enjoyed the heck out of it anyway.
On the last day of 2022 I finished Four Thousand Weeks, which I had seen recommended in a zillion different places and started a few times. I found the first two-thirds of it every bit as thought-provoking as promised, but then he kinda lost me in the last chunk. I'm curious about whether you've read it and what you thought. Biggest takeaways: I would like to travel more, and I would like to dedicate more time to creative pursuits (specifically, music and fiction-writing). This book was a factor in my decision to finish the recording I posted on Monday. In the sections where I am singing harmony with myself I just could not find the F♯ in the alto part. I got it wrong an exasperating number of times, but I stuck it out because it's too easy for me to say to myself, "I don't have time to become a better musician." This is a less vulnerable way to live, but it is not a true statement.
One more recommendation: it has been a month since I finished Demon Copperhead, and I keep meaning to tell you how much I loved it. It's one of the best books I read in 2022, my favorite of the Barbara Kingsolver novels I've read, and a really well-done homage to David Copperfield. If you had told me up front that the Dora character would be an opioid addict I would have given the book some serious side-eye, but it works amazingly well. I'd love to chat about it with somebody else who loves Copperfield, so say the word if that's you.
I have been in a bit of a funk, friends. My mood always dips in the short gray days of mid-December, but this year it dipped more deeply than usual and it has been taking longer to rebound. The day after Christmas we were driving to my in-laws' house and I could feel my anxiety pulsing, squashing me flat like a malevolent invisible anvil. "If I am not feeling much better in ten days' time," I said, "I should make an appointment to go to the doctor and request an SSRI prescription."
It is now 15 days later and I am definitely better, a largely-back-to-normal kind of better, but I am still riding intermittent swells of grumpiness, irrational anger, and melancholy. I do not really want to take an SSRI and, for separate (possibly dumb) reasons, I do not really want to go to the doctor. So for today I am just going to blog about it, and watch for a continued upward trend, and reassess as needed. So this is the frame of mind in which I am thinking about post-Christmas resolutions: they have to be reasonable and gentle.
Soul.
Elwood and I are going to join a small group our church is sponsoring? I am not sure how it is going to go? I will report back? This first resolution does not sound very resolute, I know, but that's where I am right now.
After 7 consecutive years of reading the whole Bible every year, I am taking a break from the law/history/prophecy parts of OT (see above re: reasonable and gentle; I can't deal with Judges and Ezekiel right now). The 2023 morning reading plan is NT + wisdom books + some other spiritual reading, currently Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa. (I am a total Fr. Cantalamessa fangirl, but his book is not stirring my soul at the moment. We shall see.)
Body.
Prioritize joyful exercise, including daily mobility work. Nobody else is going to prioritize exercise for me, my friends, and it makes such a difference in my mood, energy level, and capacity to take ridiculous emails in stride. I am going to try to focus on M/W cardio and T/Th lifting, with some of each on Sat/Sun and Friday as a rest day.
Make more yummy food that I enjoy. Each week, I want to plan a couple of dinners to look forward to, and make enough to pack leftovers for lunches. I also want to find a couple of appealing salad dressings. Recommendations are welcome.
Mind.
Keep going to bed with Victorians, with the goal of finishing another three Trollope novels and some Dickens novellas/nonfiction. This was an excellent 2022 resolution.
Read the Dorothy Dunnett Game of Kings series.
Prioritize writing at work. I feel SO MUCH BETTER about every facet of my job when every day starts with an inviolable writing block. Even when I have to get to the office at 7:15 to make it happen, it's worth it.
Wider world.
Maintain a small-tasks block à la Laura Vanderkam with the goal of keeping my household in order. So many frustrations can be diminished or eradicated with a modest amount of effort. It feels better to expend the effort than to live with the frustrations.
Take myself and my mandolin to a local music group that meets each week and see if it seems like a good fit. Don't be bashful about being a beginner.
Tomorrow is the beginning of Ordinary Time for Catholics. It's a little weird for the new season to start on a Tuesday, but that's how it goes when Christmas falls on a Sunday. This means today is the last day on which it makes much sense to talk about a Christmas carol, and so I am going to squeeze in some Christmas carol thoughts.
The nutshell version of the post is this: if you have any influence over which Christmas music will be performed live at a venue near you, be VERY CAREFUL about selecting What Child Is This. It is a pain to sing solo, because the phrases go on a leetle too long. But it is a MINEFIELD to sing with others. CAUTION NEEDED; hazards await.
By my count there are six different spots in What Child Is This? where the interval between two notes changes from version to version. Some sheet music will have half-steps in some of the spots; some will have whole steps in some of the spots. All of these divergences happen on sixteenth notes, which means that the dissonance between the half-step singers and the whole-step singers will be brief, but it also means it's very very hard to correct reliably. Here, I will play you a little sample to show you what I mean:
Yesterday I had agreed to substitute for the usual cantor at the early Mass. When I got there at 7am, there were two junior high girls who were planning to sing as well. Normally it's a more-the-merrier vibe, but normally we don't sing What Child Is This. I asked the accompanist to help us practice the tricky whole steps, but you guys, it's just really hard to sing the right notes in the right spots, especially as you wade into the verses where you to think about the lyrics as well as the intervals. I decided I would just fade out for the sketchy whole-step bits and let the girls sing what sounded right to them, but I didn't realize that this would mean a livestreamed clash between their voices and the keyboard. Was that better or worse than throwing my at-least-intermittently accurate vocal in the mix? Who can say?
The version that lives in my head is all half-steps, all the way through, all six times. I do not have a single sheet-music version that does it this way, but that's the version in my head regardless. So here on the very last day of the Christmas season, for those of you who are not too weary of Christmas music, I have recorded the Jamie Gladly All Half-Steps version.
And remember for next year: if you're picking Christmas music to be performed live somewhere, go with Hark the Herald Angels Sing over What Child Is This.
I was slogging through the pictures, three months per day, and I was finding it time-consuming and unpleasant, like always. It was satisfying, though, to be pushing through the backlog. I love having made photo albums; it's just the making of photo albums that I dislike.
On Saturday I noticed that Snapfish had an enticing coupon code: 65% off for photo books purchased by January 8. "Hm," I said to myself, "how much headway could I make by tomorrow if I really made an effort?"
A lot, it turns out. I just clicked purchase on a photo book that runs from September 2020 through the end of July 2022. There are three helpful things I want to remember:
Pete did a couple of two-page spreads with just a little input from me. I asked him to help with pictures from his 2021 Scout trip to Philmont, and he wound up being so independent that I asked him to do his 2022 trip to Germany too. It felt great to be able to delegate. I don't have to do it all myself these days.
The kids kept asking to see my progress, and laughing and reminiscing while they looked at the in-progress version of the book. This was much more motivating than solo late-night slog sessions.
I have figured out a method that works better than my old approach: if I keep uploading small batches of pictures, I don't have to scroll through a ton of images with tiny sidebar thumbnails. I use Photos to look at my pictures and decide which ones to upload, and copy them into a folder called "for upload," which I empty after each batch makes it into a Snapfish album. This gives me something like 5-10 pictures to pull from; I use them to make a couple of pages and then repeat the process. Back when we had slower internet, I used to do all my uploading at once because it took a while. But these days it is quick and painless, and the result is that I'm not wading through 80 itsy teeny thumbnails in the Snapfish interface to find one particular shot.
PHEW, I am relieved to have that item crossed off my list of nagging tasks.
I decided to make lentil bowls for dinner tonight, and the kids liked them more than I expected they would.
I put a cup and a half of little French lentils in the Instant Pot with two cloves of garlic and 3 cups of water. I gave them 18 minutes and let the pressure come down naturally.
While they were cooking I cut up the sad remains of a bag of Brussels sprouts (halved vertically, browned slowly in olive oil, tossed with salt and lemon juice and a spoonful of preserved lemon paste). I wanted something crunchy and tangy to go on top, so I steeped a grated carrot and a cucumber that I had peeled and seeded and cut into spears in a speedy mix of rice vinegar, lime juice, sambal oelek, and honey.
When the lentils were ready I added some Middle Eastern flavors to the pot along with salt and the juice of half a lemon: ground coriander, za'atar, a spoonful of NY Shuk's olive matbucha and another of preserved lemon paste. I also added a shake of Kafe Hawaij but I'd probably leave it out next time -- I didn't love the cinnamon.
We also had a sad little bag of wilting parsley in the crisper drawer, which I turned into a speedy dressing by chucking it in the blender with a clove of garlic, the juice of half a lemon, a handful of walnuts, salt, and enough olive oil to make it pourable.
I put everything on the table along with a dish of reheated leftover rice, some sliced avocado, and plain yogurt. I love meals where everybody can choose whatever combinations look tasty to them. Of the four kids at dinner, three were very enthusiastic. "It would be easy for lentils and rice to be really boring," said my most carnivorous kid, "but there are so many pleasant flavors here."
They ate up every bite, which probably means they thought it was delicious. But it might also mean that I'm out of practice cooking the right amount of dinner for 6 people.
The first time one of my kids came home with a result from one of those find-your-career quizzes, it was "taxidermist." We all laughed, because it was a ridiculously bad fit for this particular kid, and didn't think much more about it. When Pete's result was "mortician," we thought, "Hm, two weird results in a row." My great-grandparents owned a funeral home for many years (my great-grandmother was in demand for embalming women, as there were very few female morticians in those days), and one of my cousins still runs the business, but it's not a career any of my kids have ever considered. Again, we shrugged: there are so many factors that go into a career choice, and it's not surprising that a short quiz would offer up some surprising answers.
Today Stella came home with her quiz results. She is supposed to be well-suited for life as a pathologist.
There can't be a quiz question that asks "do you feel comfortable manipulating dead bodies?" -- right? What is happening here, exactly?
I will be back in the classroom two weeks from tomorrow, and I am making myself a list. The work tasks always get done because they have to get done, but the home tasks can swirl around and cause low-level "I should I should I should" kinds of thoughts for a long time.
Every day for the next ten days, I want to put 3 months' worth of pictures into a Snapfish photo book.
Every day until it's done, I want to repair one knitted item. Mostly these repairs do not take long. I just don't like doing them and so they linger. I think posting pictures will be motivating. I also want to finish up three lingering UFOs with a low volume of actual knitting/crocheting but a medium-to-high irksome factor.
I have some annoying phone calls to make but I am going to make them instead of thinking about how annoying they will be-- one set for home needs, one set for people needs.
And I am going to make time for music and exercise every day, because all work and no play makes Jamie a grumpy lady.
I have been nibbling away at the Princess Bride-inspired stole that I told you about back in November, and yesterday I bound it off and blocked it. (It is not actually trapezoidal, just asymmetrically positioned.)
This morning I trimmed off all the knitted-in ends and wove in the others. Marie was admiring it before she went to work this morning. "I've always loved purple and green together," I told her, "ever since I was young. Not a popular combo, but I love it anyway."
"Yes," she said, "I think most people associate purple and green with the Joker and Green Goblin and characters of that ilk."
So maybe it will read as a supervillain cape to the Gen Z-ers in my world, but I am pleased with it anyway. The pattern is clearly written and nicely structured, with a pleasant mix of easy and intermediate sections. It's a great choice for harmoniously colored fingering-weight leftovers, if you have a collection of your own awaiting their destiny.
If you are worried about slow weight gain in a breastfed baby, this is my most-viewed post — hope it's helpful to you. Want to read more? I have some favorite old posts linked here, or you can find my archives here.
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