Might delete this, but anyway: my grandfather had a younger brother who we all kind of assume was autistic. He had savant qualities (could rattle off the specs for all the ships in Halifax harbour), and social/apparent intellectual deficits (I say apparent because it was the 30s) Anyway. He didn’t go to school, but went with my great-grandfather, a stevedore, to work every day. When he was 12, he had a seizure on the dock, fell into the water, and drowned. My grandfather often spoke about his brother Stephen; all of his siblings did.

Was looking for something else entirely and found this illustration I did of Allan Gardens like … five? Almost six? Years ago? I really love drawing and should get back into it Wish I’d finished this one

What is your favourite specific episode of a podcast you listened to in 2022? I always need new stuff to listen to on my annoying little mental health walks My podcast rotation is:
- You’re Wrong About
- 99% Invisible
- This Podcast Will Kill You
- Passion Médiévistes
- One Year
- If Books Could Kill
- Films To Be Buried With
- Les Couilles Sur La Table
- Maintenance Phase
- Badlands
- Endless Thread
- Cover Story
- You Are Good

Sometimes I just feel so stressed out by the bombardment of all of the available pandemic information and I can’t process it. Also a lot of times there just isn’t anything I can do about it and I have to make the choice to close the app or spiral into panic. I don’t know. I really struggle with figuring out whether this tendency is healthy or unhealthy. There’s probably an argument to be made for both. I’m very careful about COVID and sometimes just can’t process further brutal pandemic predictions when I’m already doing my best. I don’t know.

I have to be in Toronto very briefly tomorrow (+ overnight) for a medical appointment and I am hyping myself up by a) thinking about what takeout I might want to eat and b) thinking about maybe finally getting a new winter coat for the first time in almost a decade It’s truly the little things (well, the coat is gonna be big, but you know what I mean)

Tonight’s wave of Toronto nostalgia: going to mass at St Michael’s cathedral. The weird little parasol someone would carry behind the archbishop at extra special holidays, the sublime boys choir, how every mass ended with chanting “St Michael the archangel, defend us in battle” My favourite thing to do was to go to Saturday vigil mass at the cathedral, then go to a pub and have a pint of Guinness (the perfect trinity of Irish, Catholic, holy - obviously) while reading my book

It’s really interesting that we have this cultural idea that narcissists love to hurt people and feel no feelings, whereas the people I know with NPD are all profoundly unhappy people but lacking the insight needed to understand the source of their unhappiness (their behaviour) Or, I should say, mostly lacking that insight. I do know people with narcissistic traits who have done a lot of work in therapy and are self-aware. But the ones I know without therapy are people who truly believe they are the unique victim of every single person around them

Two months after the move and finally found the cord for the record player. Celebrated by playing Coltrane’s Blue Train, which was the only record 10yo would accept back in his toddler days. What a fun, weird, wonderful kid he was and continues to be

https://twitter.com/anne_theriault/status/1076550766662430720

He used to get really mad if I tried to put on any other record 😂

The MCU, but it’s just me learning about all the weirdo families orbiting/marrying into 16th century English royalty. The Tudor Cinematic Universe. Man, those Howards were just UNRELENTING. Kept throwing spaghetti at the wall until it stuck or whatever the simile is Thomas Howard: oh my niece Annie didn’t work out? Hmm lemme see what else I can rustle up over here … how do you feel about nervy seventeen year olds?

There are many stories that have at least partially driven home the reality of residential schools for me, but one that sticks with me was an elder saying “imagine a town with no children - streets empty, no laughter, no playing, just adults with all the children gone.” I can’t. I don’t know why this is the one that especially stays in my in my imagination, but for some reason it is. That emptiness and silence coupled with the horror of knowing but not knowing where your kids are...

I think the thing I am most excited about for my house (!!!) is the yard. I think I’m going to refer to it as my terasse (with a pretentious French accent, naturally). I have so many things I want to do with it! The possibilities feel endless and wild! A string of lights around it, of course. An old wicker patio set with some kind of shade. I’d love to put roses in that planter, with trellises so they can climb up the fence. Big terracotta pots for herbs and tomatoes. A hammock? A full moon, a sky full of stars, a summer night

One of my favourite moments in literature is in Colette’s La Fin de Chéri when Chéri goes back to find Léa and she has just completely rejected the male gaze. She’s visibly aged and fat and having a raucous good time with her friends and so uninterested in reuniting with him. I just love it, I can’t explain it. I’m excited to hit the Léa threshold soon where I stop giving fucks and just want to drink and play cards with my girlfriends

I am back in a very frustrating, incurious rut where I can’t even think of things to pitch, and I just don’t know what to do. I know in theory there is stuff worth talking about but in practice we’ve been in a lockdown for so many months and it all feels incredibly Groundhog Day Also I just generally feel like there are way smarter/more articulate/better educated people than me talking about the difficulties of, say, being a mom during lockdown. It’s my entire life but I feel like I have absolument nothing new to add to the conversation

Thinking about Salk and Banting & Best and a lot of the sort of medical science breakthrough celebrities of the early/mid-20th c (many of whom sold patents for low $ to be available for public good), and wondering if that really was a whole different moment or just feels like it Like, do we still have those kinds of public health/medical celebrities in the same way? I don’t know if any of the developers of the Covid vaccines has the same name recognition as Salk, but maybe it’s a good thing that these things aren’t just being credited to one dude?

Also re: previous thread about twitter and conflict, something that really has truly helped me on here/in general is asking “what outcome do I want for this situation?” and being VERY honest with myself. I can’t properly manage conflict until I know what my desired resolution is Sometimes the answer is “to make this person feel bad.” Which is not something that makes me feel particularly good. But acknowledging that is helpful for figuring out how I want to respond and/or re-contextualizing how I feel. Is it useful? How or why? Etc

I know this is maybe ... naive? Silly? Not the kind of behaviour Twitter incentivizes? But before I do an angry/snide/clever quote-tweet, I think, what do I really want to accomplish here? Do I want a dialogue? Do I want this person to feel bad? Is it worth it? (Sometimes it is) (This is not meant as a slight on anyone else, but I do often feel weird about the model of tweeting something that looks like a reply but is actually a performance for the broader audience of my followers. Twitter is so weird! It’s weird! I’m old! Etc)

It’s a shame that Swift’s Modest Proposal has grown so enormous in our cultural consciousness that we completely ignore his treatise on why women should be allowed to fart more Ok I guess it was technically ~anonymous~ and there’s no concrete evidence that it was written by Swift, but everyone at the time generally agreed that it must have been Swift and that’s still believed to be the case ... anyway, I must know more

A Mother’s Day miracle: 10yo, a notoriously picky eater, tried a California roll for the first time (!), liked it (!!), then had a second one (!!!)

He also tried miso soup for the first time! He used to LOVE maki as a baby (avocado and yam rolls are perfect finger foods for early eaters), then he went through a food regression around two when he stopped eating a lot of the foods he’d been eating, so I’m really excited a lot of it is coming back into his diet!

I know this is not necessarily rational, but I would love to feel allowed to validate my own emotions and not feel like I have to be “the bigger person” for just one day in my life. Just would love to experience not weighing someone else’s stuff for one frigging day Oldest daughter feels lol

My kid has some issues with food taste/texture. I decided really early on that this wasn’t something I wanted to fight him on because I wanted him to have pleasant relationship with food and also you can’t make someone eat. It’s mostly going ok but oh man it is the LONGEST game The main rule is that you have to try a bite and you can’t refer to food as gross or disgusting. I’m not going to pressure you and I hope you thank me in 20 years when you have a much more adventurous palate!!! It’s slowly but surely working, but oof

It’s fucking wild that the Concorde was able to do London to New York in under 3 hours. And its little nose moved up and down!! I don’t even like airplanes, and I know the sonic boom and fuel consumption and cost were a problem, etc etc, but the Concorde is my problematic fav