Well, April is over. I can’t say I’m mad about it.
As with last month, I’m borrowing Emily Freeman‘s questions to look backwards, because it’s time to put out a post and I don’t have much else. And, again, I’m rearranging it so it ends on something fun. (I read On Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, who, btw, is a favorite, and he talked about how a person’s perception of a period of pain is basically the average of the maximum pain of the episode and the pain level at the end. I’ve experienced this and now apply it to basically everything. So we will end with light.)
What do I miss?
I miss taking pictures. Weird, right? But a few things have come together to make it difficult. First, breakup is ugly. A lot of dirty snow piles and last year’s dead vegetation. I am uninspired. Second, and probably more influential, my husband has been stealing my camera to video music and sermons for church, since video is suddenly an essential part of church services. So I frequently don’t know where my camera is, and when I do have it, the card comes helpfully preloaded with a ton of video and my settings are all screwy. The digital settings are fine—we have separate user profiles on the camera, so it goes back to manual everything—but the number of physical switches on the body of the camera that come back to me all kinds of wrong makes “taking a quick picture” impossible. I might be mild-to-moderately grouchy about it. Not at him, really—he’s got a job to do—but just at the situation that has everything, even this, all wrong.
What does peace look like in May?
Better self-care.
Andrew went back to work this week, so for the first time since mid-March, I’m home between 9ish and 6:30ish (and occasionally later) every day with some children I can’t take anywhere. I absolutely have to prioritize exercise so I stay sane, and I asked him last night for a night out of the house (probably library parking lot) and a night that he and I actually do something together (like watch a movie or something) every week.
What was the funniest thing that happened in April?
I don’t know about funniest, but this happened yesterday, so I remember it, and I did laugh pretty hard.
I got a text from Andrew: “Looks like maybe you had a couple kindle books that went on my work card a week and a half back…? History of Printing and Forgetting the Past?”
None of this rings any bells. I’m pretty judicious about my Kindle purchases and very careful not to use his work card on anything, and I tell him so. I check in with my sister who has, on occasion, used our account. Seemed like a long shot, but I couldn’t imagine anything else.
Then I get another text: “Looks like Brian has been buying books on my kindle… at least I’m guessing it was him since my device was renamed ‘BRIANLOVESANDREW‘”
Y’all, I died. I have no idea how the boy renamed his device, but whenever he writes anything (or, often as not, uses the alpha keys on my trusty TI-83 from 1997) he uses our first names:
BRIANLOVESANDREWANDROBINANDJENNAANDKATHERINEANDLILLY.
We will be keeping closer tabs on the Andrew’s kindle going forward.
How are you going into May?
grace enough 