🔖🧶Read How Crocheting Is Bringing Me Back To Myself by Emily McGowan (The Good Trade).
This is a beautiful article about crafting not just beloved items, but our very lives.
Finished reading: Soulless by Gail Carriger 📚🎧
Been listening to this audiobook for literal years. It wasn’t as steampunk as I thought it would be. I was pleasantly surprised by how much romance it incorporated.
The things I was going to do in 2026 and haven't done yet
In late November and early December last year, I started thinking about the things I would do in the new year.
I was going to journal, using The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad as a guide. I was going to prep more of my own and my child’s food. He and I were going to be less sedentary. I was going to use the craniosacral therapy tool I bought years ago. I was going to hand-code a new version of my website. I was going to blog more. I was going to make something most days. I was going to actually do all the online courses and seminars I have access to.
These weren’t resolutions, I told myself. They were just things I was going to do.
Then, on December 19, I had a cough. The cough turned into a respiratory illness that required me to sleep most of the day. I was better enough to see family on Christmas, but that was a long day and I overdid it. I relapsed. I was well enough by New Year’s Eve to take my kid and his friend to our local museum. I overdid it. I relapsed again. Four and five weeks after this illness started, I was still wiped out even more than usual. I still had a productive cough.
In the next week or two, I got better.
Then we had an ice storm. My kid was out of school for 3 days.
My mom had some medical stuff that seemed resolved.
The pipe in the library burst. (It was the ice storm in the library with the pipe.)
We had a snowstorm. My kid was out of school for 2 days.
My mom’s medical situation got worse again.
I was running myself ragged being an eldest daughter, trying to figure out the library situation, and trying to engage my kid anytime there wasn’t a friend around so he didn’t turn into a screen zombie.
I have not done the things. I’ve done a little of some of the things, but they’ve all fallen off.
I like to let myself celebrate New Year’s multiple times: on January 1. On the spring equinox. On my birthday, in July. At the start of the new school year. At Rosh Hashanah.
And between those, I like to think about the next one coming up, to reflect on what I want to do differently.
Right now, ahead of the spring equinox, still in the middle of the library restoration process, living with chronic illness, I’m thinking I want to learn to be flexible. To hold intentions but be ready to adjust when unexpected things happen.
To learn to cope.
Finished reading: Texas! Chase by Sandra Brown 📚
📚 Kelly Jensen continues to be a key voice informing readers about censorship in libraries and schools both at Book Riot and in her personal newsletter.
“Government officials now ultimately determine what is on the shelves of public libraries, and therefore our books are on the ballot every time we go vote.” Leila Green Little, plaintiff in Little v. Llano County
🔖 Read The Trump administration is illegally gutting NASA’s largest research library. by Brittany Allen (Literary Hub).
Read the article. Stand up for science every day, but especially March 7.
Finished reading: Texas! Lucky by Sandra Brown 📚
📚💬 “She was as uncomfortable with her body as she was serene about her mind.” David Rieff of his mother, Susan Sontag, in the preface of Reborn: Journals & Notebooks 1947—1963
Finished reading: Devil’s Bride by Stephanie Laurens 📚
A classic historical romance. I liked the way this one tests the couple by having them get frustrated because they’re each scared the other will get physically hurt and neither is willing to stop putting themselves at risk to protect the other.