Happy Labor Day weekend! Here’s the roundup:
Quote of the week:
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” –Rumi
What I’m reading:
Count the Ways by Joyce Maynard. I’m about halfway through and…wow. What a moving book. The writing is incredible.
What I’m listening to:
I just started This Story Will Change: After the Happily Ever After, a memoir by Elizabeth Crane. Another book with beautiful writing.
What I’m watching:
I watched Inside the Mind of a Cat on Neflix last night. Very cute (and informative!) documentary if you like cats.
Writing news:
I’m finally back to revising my latest manuscript. I’m changing a small part of the storyline and brainstorming some title options.
What I’m talking about:
- California’s massive climate and clean energy package, which will codify new benchmarks to get California to 90% clean electricity by 2035 and 95% by 2040 — stepping stones toward its already established goal of 100% clean electricity by 2045. California is also banning the sale of new gas powered cars by 2035. Very proud to live in this state
- The terrible flooding in Pakistan, a direct result of climate change. Nearly a third of the country is underwater and 30+ million people are homeless. I wish people realized that climate crisis is happening NOW
- The ongoing Mar-a-Lago drama. It’s not looking good for Trump
Interesting things I learned this week:
- The em dash got its name because it is the width of the letter ‘m’; same logic applies to the en dash
- The number of companies offering paid maternity leave beyond the legal minimum dropped by 18% last year
- About half of worker ants in a colony don’t actually work at all
- 1 in 10 young people are near daily users of marijuana
- The Greenland ice sheet is set to raise sea levels nearly a foot
- According to the Sleep Foundation, 75% of children and 70% of adults use a light-emitting device in bed (which is known to suppress melatonin and mess with sleep)
- 59% of cats are overweight
- Ancient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows when mourning the death of a cat
- Men have a larger carbon footprint than women (by 16%)
- Before 1973, women couldn’t serve on a jury
Weirdest thing I googled this week:
“How long do ants live?” We still have an ant farm at our house, though it has become dramatically less exciting. I wondered how long these ants live, hence the google search. Did you know regular ol’ garden ants can live up to 4 years?! The ants we have are pharaoh ants, which I guess live 4-12 months.
What I’m grateful for:
- A long weekend ahead with a good mix of fun and relaxation
- Air conditioning (we are in a heat wave in California right now)
- Getting back to working on my latest novel. I really don’t feel right if I’m not working on a book
- A session with my therapist this week–hadn’t seen her in a while! I heart therapy
A few snapshots:
