positively

The best thing about becoming a full-time fiction writer is escaping into my imagination and blocking out the ugly horror in the real world. There's so much heaviness right now. I catch myself doom-scrolling and fretting and swirling down the abyss of What will happen if... It's so tempting to borrow trouble these days. Better for my feeble brain to indulge in catastrophic thinking with pretend people living in pretend worlds, but this means sometimes I catch myself wondering how I'd kill someone while in a real life situation. I mean, it's to be expected, right? Write a murder mystery and you start plotting ways victims might die by a killer's hand...

I was literally pushing my shopping cart through the produce section of the grocery story, looking as ordinary as you please with my cloth bags tucked neatly inside the cart and my list clutched between my fingers. I nodded pleasantly to the man restocking potatoes while I reached for a bag of Russets. He had no way of knowing that I was contemplating the logistics of hiding a corpse in a building undergoing renovations. If it was really cold, like in winter, would anyone smell it rotting? Would it be better for Enrique to be stabbed or bludgeoned to death?

I'm telling you, my head can be a dark, dark place. Even without my daily dose of Broligarchs Taking Over Capitol Hill, Climate Change Destroying Everything, the Packers brutally losing their wildcard game, and the sense of impending doom a lot of us cannot shake...

But it's not all despair and gloom over here. It can't be. I'm writing a list of things that have brought me joy. My way of injecting some positivity into the universe today.

We're almost a month past the Winter Solstice and have daylight until nearly 5:00 now!

I bought the warmest winter coat and even though it makes me look like a giant black marshmallow, I can abide the -15 degrees with windchill.

B and I are planning a new trip to take together before he graduates. Fingers crossed he doesn't break anything else before March 21! (I don't want to say more until we return, but our new destination involves ancient and medieval history, castles, hiking, and cathedrals.)

I finally saw The Lion King performed live (needed to clarify that--when I told B I was going to be gone, had tickets to see The Lion King, he was very confused about why I'd go watch a children's movie in a theater). It was amazing! Better than I expected! The costumes! The set design! The clever use of puppets and when that elephant came down the aisle--magnificent! I could not stop grinning.

I've kept hiking even in wicked cold weather and I haven't gotten sick at all. Like, barely a sniffle.

I can pick up Woody and cuddle with him anytime I want to and he seems to enjoy it.

We've had a fair amount of sunshine here, which always boosts my spirits.

Even though I can't actually swim in the surf right now, I can remember tropical vacations when I could. Ahhhhh...memories... What's better than the beach?

Cozumel, December 2021

There's a public aquatic center about 10 miles from my house and I can begin swimming off-season and swimming is one of my favorite things to do.

Also, speaking of tropical vacations, I listen to this alt-rock station on my radio. When I drive to Green Bay, there's this spot where the station blasts a millisecond of static before becoming a Mexican radio station, La Mas Grande FM, and the music makes me feel 10 degrees warmer when I hear it. But I can only listen to it when I'm in Green Bay. On my way back home, that station mysteriously and magically switches back to The All-American Rejects.

Cheese. I live in Wisconsin and cheese is a food group. How lucky am I to live in a place where I pass a cheese factory every time I leave my house and I can buy delicious, locally made cheese?

Those fig and rosemary crackers I can buy at Target.

And Love Beauty And Planet bar shampoo. I bought it to test for using when I travel and I LOVE IT. I love it so much that I've replaced the shampoo and conditioner I've been using for years and it's super satisfying to get rid of plastic bottles. The bar is heart-shaped, smells wonderful, and leaves my hair clean and detangled.

The other product I used on my hair has never been great, but I didn't know what to use instead to keep from frizzing. A friend sells Rodan + Fields products and I purchased the leave-in conditioner to try. Well, color me completely converted and satisfied! Every day is a great hair day now!

One thing I do like seeing in my feed* is pictures of chubby-cheeked babies. Many of my friends are becoming grandmas and some of my former students are becoming parents. It's delightful to witness.

I've been watching Atypical on Netflix and it's funny and sweet.

And Masterpiece is back with All Creatures Great and Small and Miss Scarlet, so who cares if there's no more Packer season?

I just started Fresh Water for Flowers by Valerie Perrin and I don't want to put it down. It's this month's Bumble Book Club read.

On Tuesday nights I work with 5th and 6th grade girls at church and they are SO funny and sweet and goofy and earnest. I don't remember being that way when I was their age. I look forward to the energy they exude, it feeds me. I never thought I'd enjoy being around middle school kids, but it turns out I do and that's cool to discover.

And finally, Siegfried & Joy. If they're not in your feed, fix that problem RIGHT NOW.

Spill it, reader. What's keeping you positive this month?

*Coming soon: Things I hate seeing in my feed. The Broligarchy's algorithms suck.