Piqued

This week was a bundle of things - vacation, returning from vacation, re-entry and pure exhaustion. I am mostly recovered, only to turn around on Monday and get on another plane, fly to another coast. :sigh: It's a busy, busy, busy season of life.I miss this space. I think about visiting you here, and then the urge to nap overwhelms, or I take the dog out for another walk, or I decide to make soup, or catch up on The Walking Dead. Know that my coaching training is going well and that I have ideas for writing coming to me, I just don't have the bandwidth right now to execute. And while that doesn't feel ok, it is, because it is, y'know?The picture above if from the nugget's stay at my sister's house. He loves it there. And here are a few things I found for you this week:I know I felt the magic when I went through my own bathroom last year. I hardly shop anymore and we make it a point to only buy things we love. If I need some retail therapy, I go to the library and lug home a stack of books. But, I think about all the crap Americans are dumping at donation centers since Marie Kondo's book went viral. I think about how we may be doing better keeping only the items we love, but what about fixing, mending, tending to the items we have? This piece in the Atlantic about how the KonMarie method isn't so easy for children of immigrants, struck a chord in me:

The idea that going through items cheerfully evaluating whether or not objects inspire happiness is fraught for a family like mine, for whom cherished items have historically been taken away. For my grandparents, the question wasn’t whether an item sparked joy, but whether it was necessary for their survival... If our life is made from the objects we collect over time, then surely our very sense of who we are is dependent upon the things we carry.

This dog rocked her maternity shoot. (I love the Internet.)This Is My New Normal by Kira Elliott. ::tears::

I know better than to disrespect grief, even when I tell myself it’s been four years now and I should be fine. The reality is while it is not white searing hot pain like the first few years, it still hurts. The loss was huge. I still think about him everyday.

Gwen Stefani is back."One thing I’m certain about is that the in-between is where life is lived. There is no arrival.  There is only getting there." On Being In Between by Lindsey Mead. Boy, am I feeling this right now too.And the song stuck in my head from our road trip...[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EErSKhC0CZs[/embed]