Tough week. Charlie got a stomach bug on Tuesday and was up all night vomiting, so we kept him home Wednesday and Amanda missed a work trip. By Thursday morning Charlie was fine, but Amanda and I came down with what we assume is the same bug and were vomiting all afternoon and early evening. Taking care of an energetic toddler while sick is zero fun. Thankfully it passed by mid Friday.
Charlie is transitioning to one nap a day, which comes with some sleep regression at night and trouble getting him down for his naps during the day. Accordingly, he was fussy this week, seems to be having some separation anxiety, and some big toddler emotions in reaction to small inconveniences.
So, tough week.
Despite that, there were some high points:
Charlie’s daycare had a fun Fall Festival for families. I volunteered to take photos.
Charlie helped us clean out the tomato and tomatillo bed. He is excellent at putting green tomatoes in a brown paper bag to ripen.
We went on a nice fall walk.
I started a new book while holding Charlie for his morning naps: Woodswoman: Living Alone in the Adirondack Wilderness by Anne LaBastille.
I made Smitten Kitchen’s Apple Pancakes for breakfast on Sunday, and made a breakfast skillet with sausage, potatoes, and onions on Monday. Breakfast has felt pretty rushed around here recently, so taking the time to make a couple full breakfasts was nice.
This is a heck of a thing to think about. The single issue that shaped American politics for the last 21 years (the amount of time people in my generation have been politically aware/active) amounted to much less than everyone expected.
With the benefit of hindsight, everything about 9/11 and the War On Terror was a random blip in history with no broader implications. There was not a rising Islamofascism, there was not a clash of civilizations. There were a few guys in some caves doing terrorism, they got lucky once, the US got angry and invaded a few countries, and then everything continued as before. If people were ranking threats to the world order now, Islam and terrorism wouldn’t make the top twenty.
I do take a few issues with this quote, but it gets the big picture right, which is that the threat is much smaller than we imagined.
- I think there should be an asterisk stating that the US invasion of the middle east turned out to be disastrous for the middle east and set the whole region back 50 years.
- The rise of support for the Islamic State and the related bombings/attacks in Europe might still be an issue there.
Do you know about johnbillion/wp_mail? This document lists all the situations where WordPress core sends an email, how and when they happen, and how to filter or disable each one. Most of the time you don’t need it, but when you do it is invaluable. Sharing for those who don’t know about it.
I spent much of my week auditing permissions, access, and security-related processes at work this week. More ahead this week, then hopefully I can set that aside for a while. It takes a particular kind of focus that I find taxing.
I don’t think you should spend much mental energy on the possibility of nuclear war. Now is a good time to review your home emergency preparedness (food, water supply, heat, energy, emergency medicine) in case there is an emergency, otherwise ignore it as much as possible and go about your life.
Things I’m looking forward to this week:
- Picking the jalapenos from the garden and smoking them to make chipotles (and maybe fermenting some for jalapeno hot sauce).
- Charlie got invited to two birthday parties next weekend. Maybe we’ll make some more parent friends?
- Carving out a little bit of time to read.
- More backyard time and walks with Amanda and Charlie
Leave a Reply