Jami Attenberg’s #1000WordsOfSummer starts June 17 and the Slack is hopping right now, in case you want to join in on the fun. 📝
🌊 Today is the first day of the 10th Annual 100 Days of Blue Mind challenge. As often as you can between now and Labor Day, “get near, in, on or under your wild, domestic, urban or even virtual waters.” Today I took a shower and hung out with my kid on some rocks near South Ellerbee Creek.
It was hard finding time to write while traveling, so I didn’t do all the travel blogging I would have liked. But I have consistent childcare for the next couple weeks, then for several more weeks after a one week break from now, and I’m hoping to write up some travel stuff during that time. 📝
Where have I been?
I like Manton’s Where have I been post and have had a pretty significant change in where I’ve visited since the start of the year, so I thought I’d make my own list.
As for what counts:
If I simply passed through in a car, train, or bus, it doesn’t count. If I was only there at an airport for a layover, it doesn’t count.
Everything else counts.
7 Countries:
- United States
- The Netherlands
- Germany
- Scotland
- Ireland
- England
- France
14 States:
- Arizona
- California
- Florida
- Georgia
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maryland
- New York
- North Carolina
- Ohio
- Pennsylvania
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Virginia
🔖📚 Read This Is Dedicated To Anyone Who Ever Left - Kelly McMaster interviewed by Lyz Lenz.
🔖📚 Read “I think, like marriage, home is a fantasy” - Kelly McMaster interviewed by Amanda Montei
Here are all of my intellectual intentions and here is this adorable, smiling, chubby baby, swallowing it whole.
When writing real life, there is always going to be a connection between what is happening at the breakfast table and how you are showing up on the page.
📺 Me, watching Bridgerton: How can anyone tell these Bridgerton brothers apart? They all have the same coloration. I guess two of them are a little taller? But I’m not sure.
🔖 Read Monkey House: Strange Reflections at the Singerie by Kate Zambreno (VQR).
📺 Watched Velma. The two primary criticisms - that it relies too heavily on meta-humor and that the characters are selfish & don’t grow - are spot on, and yet I still found it compelling enough to watch all 10 episodes.
🔖 Read The Winter Zoo by Kate Zambreno (The Yale Review).
For a few years when M. was a toddler, our family went to Knoxville - the place of my mother’s birth - for The Collective library conference. W. would present and M. and I would wander about town, exploring the best haunts and generally enjoying the adorable downtown and the home of the 1982 World’s Fair.
One of the places I took M. was Zoo Knoxville. We were there in mid-March so it was pretty much a winter zoo like Kate Zambreno talks about here, and our experiences there were very similar.