Weekly Roundup: September 2, 2022

Happy Labor Day weekend! Here’s the roundup:

Quote of the week:
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” –Rumi

What I’m reading:
Count the Ways by Joyce Maynard. I’m about halfway through and…wow. What a moving book. The writing is incredible.

What I’m listening to:
I just started This Story Will Change: After the Happily Ever After, a memoir by Elizabeth Crane. Another book with beautiful writing.

What I’m watching:
I watched Inside the Mind of a Cat on Neflix last night. Very cute (and informative!) documentary if you like cats.

Writing news:
I’m finally back to revising my latest manuscript. I’m changing a small part of the storyline and brainstorming some title options.

What I’m talking about:

California’s massive climate and clean energy package, which will codify new benchmarks to get California to 90% clean electricity by 2035 and 95% by 2040 — stepping stones toward its already established goal of 100% clean electricity by 2045. California is also banning the sale of new gas powered cars by 2035. Very proud to live in this stateThe terrible flooding in Pakistan, a direct result of climate change. Nearly a third of the country is underwater and 30+ million people are homeless. I wish people realized that climate crisis is happening NOWThe ongoing Mar-a-Lago drama. It’s not looking good for Trump

Interesting things I learned this week:

The em dash got its name because it is the width of the letter ‘m’; same logic applies to the en dashThe number of companies offering paid maternity leave beyond the legal minimum dropped by 18% last yearAbout half of worker ants in a colony don’t actually work at all1 in 10 young people are near daily users of marijuana The Greenland ice sheet is set to raise sea levels nearly a footAccording to the Sleep Foundation, 75% of children and 70% of adults use a light-emitting device in bed (which is known to suppress melatonin and mess with sleep)59% of cats are overweightAncient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows when mourning the death of a catMen have a larger carbon footprint than women (by 16%)Before 1973, women couldn’t serve on a jury

Weirdest thing I googled this week:
“How long do ants live?” We still have an ant farm at our house, though it has become dramatically less exciting. I wondered how long these ants live, hence the google search. Did you know regular ol’ garden ants can live up to 4 years?! The ants we have are pharaoh ants, which I guess live 4-12 months.

What I’m grateful for:

A long weekend ahead with a good mix of fun and relaxationAir conditioning (we are in a heat wave in California right now)Getting back to working on my latest novel. I really don’t feel right if I’m not working on a bookA session with my therapist this week–hadn’t seen her in a while! I heart therapy

A few snapshots:

A rare dinner out. Sky magnificence. My little girl at a horse lesson with her dad.

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