Paul Davidson
Weeknotes 108: Blue bananas are silly
Music upfront this week. Pop Complete Mountain Almanac on while you read these. You won’t regret it.
The NHS don’t mess about when they want to get in touch. These all arrived on the same day.
Having joined back in August to little effect, I’ve spent the week faffing with Mastodon. I think I get the concept of instances and migrated from the mastodon.social landing site. Like everyone else, I read the syndicating blogpost by Mattias Ott and, if I followed the instructions properly, these should appear as a toot and a tweet1. That said, I’ve still not made the right incantations to the DNS gods to use my domain name and the rest of the indieweb remains baffling, but I’m getting there.
This week at work has been a mix of procrastinating2 on the big thing and being productive on everything else as a result. I’ve felt the need to add a “2 hours of focused work” question to the habit tracker. My body is screaming out for the week off at the start of December.
Winnie Lim tooted3 that shorter morning pages are a sign of a calmer mind. I’m a strict one-page-on-a-weekday and it got me thinking, are my morning pages a panic garden? Am I tending my anxieties and helping them bloom? I might have to be more intentional about what I write there. I did note that Janice is a perfect name for a seahorse, so it’s not all therapy.
Piglet took 45 minutes to eat one (1) single slice of toast for breakfast and we were late for school. She arrived between two distressed kids and stood nervously picking her lip and asking her teacher what was wrong.
A work friend’s daughter has outgrown her Elsa dress and he passed it on to us. Love at first sight. She even packed it to take to Grandma’s with her the next day.
Our first post-lockdowns parents’ evening with both of us in attendance went to script. I’d written down my expectations beforehand to keep myself honest. And we heard it all. Still, it was reassuring to find out that she has friends, her teacher likes her and that she’ll take herself off to the reading corner with a book when it all gets a bit much. I’ve put too many books on her Christmas list, but that image was sufficient to justify it to myself. Piglet had requested yet another sleepover and we were free to head out for a midweek curry.
While we were waiting for our slot, I was reading the mindfulness boards they had around the hall. The zones of feelings and patterns for handling them are all a step up from when I was in school. I didn’t see the righteous anger board, but I’m hopeful they teach that too.
From Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter, forgive the extended quote;
“Because children grow up, we think a child’s purpose is to grow up. But a child’s purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn’t disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. We don’t value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life’s bounty is in its flow. Later is too late. Where is the song when it’s been sung? The dance when it’s been danced?” — Tom Stoppard
Because we’ve broken the climate and it’s 19 °C in November, we did a double trip to the nature reserve this weekend. It made for a pleasant cycle down and Piglet unleashed in the wood was travelling at a speed and volume that we needn’t worry about seeing any wildlife.
Once she’d worn herself out, we were told that she could see a “very respectable pond” before we spotted the deer we made the trip to see. Even the rat feeding off the bird-table scraps managed to look wholesome because of the surroundings.
Sunday’s trip was more fretful with tired bodies and minds. We remembered to pack a flask of tea and relaxed in the hide watching cormorants, swans and a sparrowhawk. Piglet dropped her first Dad joke:
“Did you know the toilet had pink cheeks. He was flushed”
She’s accidentally playing with words, repeating it from someone else or I’ve a new competitor for sub-standard puns in the house.
—