Though we still have more than a month until it’s officially fall, the signs are everywhere. The days are getting shorter. It’s rare for the sun to be up before I am these days. And the desire to climb into bed before 9 PM doesn’t make me feel like I’m missing too much of the day. Though others may curse these shorter days, I love the shift of the light. I love being able to sip my coffee before the sun rises. And on the evenings I’m tired but not quite ready for sleep, it’s perfect for cozying up in my chair with my Kindle.
I ordered a slew of new tank tops to celebrate the season. Granted, I returned the majority of them, but happily kept four of them. This time of year, tank tops are perfect for layering with cardigans. This spring I invested in several new cardigans in a variety of colors but I don’t always want to wear a twin set or the same black sleeveless sweater under everything.
Wardrobe wise, this will carry me well into the coming months.
I find working with a uniform of sorts is helpful. So, I’m pairing tanks with denim shorts and cardigans when I get dressed each day. This will shift from shorts to capris once the temps drop below 60 during the day.
My workouts have gone well this week. I did my solid three days of weight training. And even did a long session on the bike for the first time in ages on Friday thanks to Peloton’s “All for One Music Fest.” To be honest, I haven’t heard of a lot of these artists. But I enjoyed the Maroon 5 ride immensely. And doing some of the other classes will help me learn about some newer bands.
And, as summer draws to a close, it’s time to add more cardio back to my workouts. And, to be honest, also lengthen my workouts by committing to more stretching as well.
Also, I had the closest call this week ever. JB and I were sitting on the patio a couple of nights ago and an errant golf ball hit the grill, which was not even a foot to the right of me.
The ball hit the grill with such force, it ricocheted four feet away into the yard.
Of course, the golfers came no where near the house looking for their ball. I’m sure they were afraid a window had been broken and it tends to be the norm for at least half the balls that hit the house.
I’m just grateful, so grateful, my better Angels were looking out for me. Because that would not have been a fun trip to the ER in any way, shape, or form.
This led to us cleaning off the patio this weekend, storing the rug away , and us committing to sitting deeper onto the patio, behind the brick rather than in the open part of the patio.
What I’ve Been Reading
on Paper (and Kindle)
I always have a book or two in progress but after finishing Shattered: a Michael Bennett Thriller (by James Patterson and James O’Born) which was a good read (and a series I’ve been reading for years). And then an ARC of Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro (which was a beautiful book but also emotionally exhausting).
I needed something much lighter in tone. So, I’ve been re-reading some old school romance novels by Catherine Coulter which give my brain an opportunity to just relax, and diving into some non-fiction reading.
American Cake: From Colonial Gingerbread to Classic Layer, the Stories and Recipes Behind More Than 125 of Our Best-Loved Cakes by Anne Byrne (who is here on Substack) . I picked up the hardcover version from the library earlier this week and it is interesting and beautiful.
Twist Your Fate: Manifest Success with Astrology and Tarot by my good friend Theresa Reed. She’s such a good teacher and it’s a good read if you’ve ever wanted to do a deep dive into how to read your Birth Chart (and so much more).
on the Web
I rarely link anything that veers towards political in nature, but do you read Common Sense which is written and managed by Bari Weiss (previously of the NY Times)?
While she does touch on a lot of political topics she also touches on society in general.
The article I want to share with you this week is a bit more sociological than political but does have a bit of that bent to it: I'm 30. The Sexual Revolution Shackled My Generation which is written by author Louise Perry. While I don’t agree with every single word, I found myself agreeing to surprisingly much of it.
They’ve been denied the guidance of mothers, not because their actual mothers are unwilling to offer it, but because of a matricidal impulse in liberal feminism that cuts young women off from the “problematic” older generation. This means not only that they are cut off from the voices of experience, but—more importantly—they are also cut off from the person who loves them most in the world. Feminism needs to rediscover the mother, in every sense.
Especially the longer I coach people untangling who they have been in order to be who they desire to be I see that this issue has affected both men and women - in both negative and positive ways. So, this was certainly thought provoking.
I ponder over conversations with clients about sexuality, their relationship with a parent, the choices they’ve made in the past, and how they feel about themselves…. And, I think back the mixed messages I see coming from feminism from the time I was a child to now - and the belief that we can have it ALL.
And though I strongly believe that we all hold inherent value simply for being a child of God, men and women are just different in some pretty significant ways.
While this veers away from the articles focus on the sexual revolution the author focused on, I’m going to say what probably isn’t popular: feminism shames women for wanting to care for their homes and families as a devotion rather than a chore.
There is a bit part of me that loves being domestic. I love tending and nurturing and am often happy as a lark in traditional roles. But it was never encouraged in my life until the last twelve years when I moved to Ohio.
In fact, my first husband expected me to be the Enjoli woman - you know “bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan”. He wanted me to be the perfect housewife, perfect mom, and also bring in a hefty salary. While I know some of this stems from his mom being a successful career woman, it never quite jived with how my brain was wired. Once I had kids, my career was secondary.
And if I were to give my twenty-something year old self a piece of advice it’s this: It’s not wrong to desire to just hang out and take care of your kiddos. Instead, time with them was left to the dregs of the day when we were all tired and weary from the day….
AND speaking of how my brain is wired…
If you’re here reading me you’ve probably reading Ink on My Fingers by Susannah Conway. I was nodding along to almost every word when I read her post My Beautiful Butterfly Brain as she comes to the realization that she is 99% sure she has ADHD.
I can flutter around for months, doing bare essentials here and there, “composting” as I call it, gathering ideas, fluttering around the internet, jotting things down, getting distracted by something else… and then suddenly, when it’s crunch time, I hyperfocus. I can do that for an entire week — often more when I’m creating a new course — and burn myself out completely. It’s just how I work… But does it have to be this way?
This could have been written by me, especially this paragraph.
The thing is, I know for a fact that I have ADHD. I was flippantly told “Your the ADD parent…” when my oldest daughter was diagnosed back in 2001. The therapist almost almost condescending attitude about it really turned me off AND I was in Mamma Bear Mode. So, I focused on helping my daughter manage school and meds and such. And I did what I always did to manage my brain: use various tools to cope.
And I will say it did allow me something I think we all need around our challenges: awareness and stark clarity.
It helped me finally begin to understand why the things I needed to function at my best: a tidy house, appointments to keep, and deadlines also came really hard to me despite the fact that I am intelligent.
(I say the intelligence piece not as a brag, but as fact. I was in the Gifted program at school and my tested IQ for entrance to the program was 172.)
I have always been a woman who can just get shit done but having a lot TO do was simply a tool I used to get the necessary things done. And the underlying reason my book just isn’t finished despite being 80% done for two years.
Despite this, I’ve spent the last several years dedicated to removing more and more from my plate. This has been a blessing but also a curse in that I just don’t get much done these days.
Yet, in our stage of life - especially JB retiring in the next year - I am finding the light and rays of happiness in this purposeful choice.
That’s enough ADHD talk for today, but it’s certainly something to circle back around to at a later time. Especially to share the tools that help me manage my the way thoughts ping through my head like a pinball machine.
And this is the reminder why we need blogs, to see ourselves in others so that we don’t feel so alone. Because knowing something and being reminded of something that’s a part of who we are can be two different things.
Back to the domestic scene around here…
We spent some time with an Arborist to discuss our trees. We have three threes in the front yard: a weeping cherry, a river birch, and a silver elm. And in the back, there are two Bradford pears.
We initially called for a visit because one of our pear trees is just, well, sad. It’s thinner than the other tree and a couple of weeks ago we noticed it was shifting to fall dormancy at a much higher rate than it’s companion.
Yes, I know a lot of people have a strong dislike for Bradford Pears, but we love them. They are beautiful in the spring and provide early winter nourishment to the birds. And honestly, we are so grateful that they protect our windows and screens from errant golf balls as their placement halts (or at least slows down) the hurtling golf balls at least two dozen times per week.
Sadly, the arborist confirmed my fears: the one tree has Fire Blight. It’s a bacterial infection that can spread to like or similar trees. And unfortunately, it can’t be treated this late in the year. Instead, we’ll have to wait until the spring before the lovely white blooms shift to fresh, green leaves.
The goal is to ensure that the bacteria doesn’t spread further - to the other Bradford Pear - or our neighbors blooming dogwood.
As a result of the visit, we are having some other work done sooner than later because trees are investments, not just plants. They are meant to be around for the long-haul. So we’re having some major pruning work done on both the birch tree (which is more than twenty feet high) and the elm, which has grown close to the gas lanterns along the curb.
The birch tree has been “limbed up” before and the HOA has hacked at the Elm (technically, they “own” all the trees along the curb). But we need to take one big limb off the birch that is hovering over the house and trim some branches to give the weeping cherry additional sunlight. But, because of the height of the tree, it requires special equipment.
And the elm needs to be trimmed back away from the lamp, so while they are here (which is a big portion of the expense) we may as well have them trim the elm.
You may be wondering why I am droning on about trees.
It was what the arborist said as he was getting ready to leave that I found fascinating: in a forest, no single type of tree makes up more than 10% of the forest. Nature knew what was best and if any kind of disease became into the forest, the whole forest wouldn’t die.
He also explained that different trees were also like different species. That the birch tree could be called “a cat” while the elm “a dog”. This is why diseases don’t spread to nearby trees that are different because they are different species, even though they are all trees.
Overall, nature wanted to ensure that diseases and insects wouldn’t kill an entire forest. So, when we curate and cultivate neighborhoods to match with the same types of trees can lead to wiping out a species of trees if there is an insect infestation or disease that runs amok.
This was certainly interesting to me. Nature often knows best but we humans seem to believe we know better.
He said that landscape designers are catching on to this now and planting a larger variety of trees in new installations. But we have decades of loving uniformity.
And that, my friends, is a wrap of the week….
What have YOU been reading of late? Did you learn anything new this week? And has the light shifted there yet? Do you have a go-to uniform?