Quote of the Week

- Alexis Leave a comment

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

—Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

Nocturne painting of a tree and lighted windows

Making the Most of the Time Change

- Alexis Leave a comment

Pastel drawing of a sidewalk light at night

Today is the last day of Daylight Saving Time for 2018, and at 2:00 tomorrow morning, our clocks will reset to 1:00.  Unless, that is, you live in one of the jurisdictions that has shunned the outdated practice.  The modern wisdom of Daylight Saving Time is debatable.  It can have negative health consequences and is of questionable economic benefit.  But for most of us in the United States, changing our clocks twice a year is unavoidable, so we might as well try to use it to our advantage.

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Here’s What Self Care Looks Like to Me

- Alexis Leave a comment
Charcoal drawing of a woman’s head with eyes closed

Charcoal drawing of a woman’s head with eyes closed

My son and I both came down with a cold this week (not surprising given that he started day care last week), so this seems like a good time to discuss self care.  Over the past few years, the concept of self care has taken over the internet, with women’s websites constantly telling us we need to escape from our lives and indulge ourselves with expensive products, time-consuming rituals, and unhealthy splurges — as if we need one more thing to do.  (Ever notice that these self-care articles rarely seem to be directed at men? I guess the assumption is that they already know how to take care of themselves.)

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