Life Lately

As I type this, the kids are downstairs watching the Olympics. (Raise your hand if screen time rules in your house have also been 1000% relaxed during these two weeks.) I’ve heard cries of “Guys lookit!”, “We won!”, and chants of “USA! USA! USA!”

And as I was typing that Caden flew a paper airplane over to me at my desk which, when unfolded, reads, “we got 1st place in m200 back heat 3!”

Suffice to say we’re a bit Olympic-obsessed.

Tyson and I have had various conversations about various things lately which end with me exclaiming, “But I don’t mean this or that. It’s not one or the other or black and white. It’s in the middle—it’s shades of gray!” (Yay for evolving as an Enneagram One.)

The Olympics this year feel like one big shade of gray. I’m cheering on every single athlete—Can we give them all medals please?—and also rooting for Team USA with all my heart. The empty stands leave me feeling both heartbroken fans can’t be there and grateful that this step, at least, was taken to ensure everyone’s safety. I’m annoyed that Russia gets to compete in all but name despite its doping scandal and outraged that Sha'Carri Richardson was suspended for marijuana, of all things. I’m (obviously) so hyped that the Olympics have gone on and also concerned about the ethics: I understand why every single protester is there in those Tokyo streets. (About the only non-gray part is finding myself a Simone Bile’s stan.)

July itself is filled with shades of gray. Because time still has no meaning, the Fourth seems like it was months ago. I was packing, unpacking, or on two July trips during part of the month and at home for some endless afternoons the other part. We’ve experienced brilliant, blue-sky days and yet as I type this, an eerie haze the sun can’t quite break through has settled over much of my state from wildfires hundreds of miles away. I began the month feeling pretty good about the pandemic, about returning to a sense of normalcy, about school for the fall, and am ending it feeling uncertain about it all, feeling very much like I did exactly a year ago. 

As always, life isn’t all one or all the other of anything. It’s everything all at once, swirled into one big bucket of gray.

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Action Item

I may be in enough of a bubble that this won’t much affect whoever is reading this, but just in case: please, please, please get vaccinated if you haven’t done so already. Encourage—with love and information, not shame and embarrassment—those around you to get vaccinated. We have an entire population in our country, kids under the age of 12, who are unable to get the vaccine even if they want to. School, extracurricular activities, and a general life of normalcy without masks, of parents being able to say “yes” to normal kid things like going to the mall, or museums, or the fair, all hang in the balance. Use this link to find a vaccine near you.

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Around the Internet

• Basically a friendship liturgy.

• “People scoffed about moms ruining Instagram, but I thought they were revolutionary. They’d formed a market for their unpaid labor in the home. Or at least their representation of unpaid labor. These women weren’t being paid to be caretakers or community builders. They were being paid for their online depiction of that labor.”

• Kate Baer forever.

• “Rather than sticking to the script we assigned ourselves (or our structures and society assigned us), maybe we can imagine who we are, what matters to us, and what we need without focusing on “growing into” the next big thing.”

• Simone Biles is the GOAT, always.

• “The victory here is not that my children turn down processed foods. The victory is that they don’t feel out of control around these foods. They don’t feel compelled to eat them just because they’re there—which is what everyone assumes will happen when you have a mountain of processed foods on hand.”

• Find you some friends who will cheer you on like this.

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Eating

• File this one under drinking, not eating, but Real Simple told me to mix equal parts red wine with sparkling lemonade and serve it over ice and I can confirm that this has been one of my best life choices to date.

• I make this pesto cream sauce and serve it over pasta with a bunch of stir-fried bell peppers and it’s one of my favorite summer-y meals.

• These Crunchwrap Supremes were dinner on Tuesday. When I asked Tyson what he thought he said, “You’ve outdone yourself.” Definitely adding these to the rotation and wondering how soon is too soon to make them again.

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Fun Things

• I bought these earrings and they make me very happy. That is all.

• This is my favorite everyday tee. I own at least two and just ordered two more. I find it’s true-to-size for a more fitted tee; size up for a looser fit.

• This nail repair kit is a lifesaver. I’ve had a few nails that have been thin or prone to chipping over the past year and a few weeks of this leaves them strong and healthy again. It’s also easy to remove—I soak a bit of Kleenex in acetone, wrap it around my nail with foil, wait 10 minutes, and it rubs off leaving my nail perfectly clean.

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These posts are always interesting for me to write, as I sit and reflect back on the month that’s passed. A month from now, we’ll be in the middle of State Fair time here in Minnesota, on the edge of the start of school, ready to send all my kids off to elementary school for the first time, and I have no idea where we, where I, will be on that black and white scale. Only that it will, inevitably, be tinted with gray.