Category: compendium

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errative compendium – july 7

it would seem that summer’s when i roll back around to wanting to publicly write.

read

for this month’s book club selection, i’m in the middle of Four Treasures of the Sky by Jenny Tinghui Zhang. the audiobook is well done — Chinese words have proper intonation, that sort of detail. since i’ve been mostly reading-while-driving, i haven’t been able to follow my curiosity around on the mix of history and fiction to try to sort out what’s what, but i look forward to taking some time to do that.

meanwhile, i’m poking along through The Tenth Island by Diana Marcrum. i realized i had the ebook through Amazon’s PrimeFirst program after i’d bought tickets for the Azores. i got to the part about bullfighting in Terceira on the plane before i -encountered- bullfighting in Terceira. even now that i’m home, i’m enjoying her voice and her experiences in a place that’s become suddenly special to me.

listen

podcasts that rattled around my brain some this week:

watch

i’ve finally been watching Ted Lasso. all i can say is that the people who told me that i should were right.

seen

i’m still struggling with the backing up and organizing of photos i took on vacation in Madeira and the Azores. but here’s one from those. taken here on June 17.
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errative compendium – june 28

i spent this weekend on a beach day with friends and a day of running around working on first steps toward getting the house back in order since ex-to-be moved out Friday, so not so much writing or media-ing.

read

i finished reading Etaf Rum’s A Woman Is No Man and wow. it’s unabashedly looking at how cultural norms are transmitted across generations and ultimately manages to be both empathetic and damning toward those who are complicit in abusive, misogynistic ones. all without losing track of some of the root causes in systemic violence and the trauma of uprootedness. again, i’m looking forward to seeing what my book club has to say.

new audiobook of the week: Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. i’m not sure how, but pronouncing “patriarchy” as “patriarchyugh” has consistently managed to make me chuckle even though it’s used enough to be potentially really annoying. the whole book seems to be an uptempo, feminist take on the best we know about how to process stress AND an exploration of the underlying causes for women having an extra-big dose. the chapter i just finished was a giant rant against the “bikini industrial complex” and its actual health effects… immediately followed by the author (Emily, who’s mostly a sex educator) admitting that she spent three hours writing about it and went upstairs to weigh herself because she knows she’ll be taken more seriously professionally if she comes closer to conforming. and framing that as part of the mess to accept — that the feelings and actions while fighting the patriarchy WILL be contradictory sometimes. anyway, ultimately charmed even if it’s in many cases information and research that i’d heard about before, and i won’t be surprised if i wind up gifting it to a few people. (i mentioned it to my therapist, and she had not read it yet… but was given a copy for xmas by her boss. i let her in on the fact that they have a tldr at the end of each section, since we have already laughed over reading habits and ADHD and how much less fun the self-help section is when you’re a professional helper. side note: i love how much laughter there is in my therapy sessions.)

seen

i’ve been carrying the camera that i bought as mourning-the-DSLR-passing-from-the-household/anticipation-of-travel-someday-soon. a lot. vowing to learn how to use it before i can actually travel. i discovered that zoo membership is not nearly as expensive as i always assumed. i live about a mile from the zoo. i’m trying to post a photo a day on my personal instagram and a photo a day on the one that i set up for this blog, but there are still some extras that make me happy.

i’ve threatened to start taking ENDLESS photos of the giraffes so i can get them out as “my pets” for proper conversational fodder when the dogs and cats photos come out. but really. i love watching them.
finding myself chasing around birds and butterflies a lot. not necessarily exotic ones. just things that move.
according to wikipedia, these aren’t really mimosas. still pretty.
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errative compendium – june 20

pretty minimal list of things i’ve bothered to copy-paste/embed this week, but i’ll go ahead and hit post and start afresh.

read

why Americans don’t use bidets – i have to admit, despite a year as an exchange student, me neither. but it’s one of the fun little house upgrades i’ve been contemplating.

Girl Scouts have too many cookies – today in problems where i feel i can be of service.

A Woman Is No Man – i’m not done with it yet, and i may publicly engage with it more later, but this is my audiobook of the moment. contemplation of immigrant life through the lens of three generations in a Palestinian-American family seems highly timely. i’m hoping my book group can have some spirited discussion around this one. multi-generational trauma and it’s certainly not a cheerful beach read, but i’m appreciating the space for thought.

listen

Dear Therapist podcast – a friend recently linked a column from Lori Gottlieb. i loved her book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone — it was one of the inspirations for getting myself into therapy despite no real personal crisis about a year ago. the column included an ad for her new podcast with another advice columnist. i’ve only listened to one episode, but i got a lot from it… does it make me a junkie if i don’t just want my own weekly therapy, i want other people’s too?

watch

i went to see In the Heights with some friends friday night. a movie in a theater! …i think i was more into it than the rest of the crew, but i loved John Chu’s directorial style in Crazy Rich Asians and i love it here. i can’t resist the combination of whirling color, dancing, and a fascination with cultural specificity — specific products in the mini-market, the clothes on extras and dancers that look like a slightly overheated version of what you might see on the streets, the general joy at shots of people going about their everyday lives. i know the movie’s gotten significant flack for not including enough Afro-Latinx people, but it got enough of the feel of a Latin family party enough to put me in tears a few times over the “barbecues” i’m not invited to anymore. i have had problems with adjusting to some cultural differences within my marriage over the last several years, but i loved the incorporation of music and dancing in nearly every celebration.

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errative compendium – june 11

how about i keep a post in drafts to see what all caught my eye or ear this week?

listen

i loved the regina spektor original. now i’m enjoying kishi bashi’s cover so very much. here he talks about reclaiming the fiddle and featuring powerful songs written by women.
i think i first listened to olivia rodrigo’s sour after running across one of the articles on how millennial olds “stanning” for the gen z queen are so so funny. i guess i’m a geriatric millennial now (even if gen oregon trail’s still my favorite designation for us in-betweeners), AND THIS IS MY FAVORITE SONG OF THE MOMENT TO BLAST IN MY CAR. yup yup.

read

hot divorcée summer – as someone with an ex-to-be, i declare this essay superior to the vanity fair piece on the topic that it links.

look

https://what3words.com/ – i’m way too enthusiastic about this. like wanting to announce location words enthusiastic, and seems dangerous to do on social media and such. but telling people a three-word code for the back patio’s precise location seems neat.

CovidActNow is still one of my go-to sites for COVID stats. today it strikes me that the vaccination rate in my typically 80+% democrat-voting metro area is almost on par with the rate in my parents’ super-conservative rural county. it’s NOT just a politicized thing; i suspect general trust in government is playing a major role. but thank goodness the rates are down enough EVERYWHERE in the US that i’m no longer compulsively checking on a daily basis.