The Weekly Wrap #54

04.10.2022

I had a not so great week.

After three intense weeks of work and personal stuff, I was looking forward to this week being a bit lighter. While the workload itself was generally manageable, things bubbled up that drained my emotional batteries.

I'm an academic librarian. Generally, our students are fantastic and I love nothing more than working directly with them. Sometimes, however, things go awry. This week, a student I assist all the time asked for help but then rejected every attempt on my end to provide that help. The rejection was loud and confrontational. It was so bad, I had to write up an incident report. The next day, another student called my direct line and opened the call with "You people are incompetent." Never a great start. 

At home, our kiddo is about to go through a growth spurt which means she's being assertively independent, cranky, and does not listen. This amounts to a lot of screams, whining, and thrashing. It's frustrating and tiring.

On top of all of this, it was gray and rainy almost every day. The weather seemed to reflect my overall mood instead of helping me out of my funk. Thanks, Mother Nature.

If I were to add things up, all of this amounted to about 6 hours of my life. But those 6 hours ruined everything else. The emotional baggage carried over impacting my mood, ability to engage, and my sleep quality. Instead of trying to climb out of it, I just let myself disengage and wallow in the grumps. 

Then, as the sun finally came out on Friday, I let myself take a deep inhale and start over. 

How was your week?

Before I jump into the rest of the Wrap, I have a question for you. I already indicate when something is a gift link. Would you also like me to mention when something might be paywalled? As a librarian, I generally know options for getting around paywalls (legally) but not everyone does. Let me know by taking the linked poll below.

Early last week, I made some time to finally finish The 1619 Project. The whole book is excellent, but the final chapter on Justice by Nikole Hannah-Jones should be required reading. It’s a powerful call for reparations which is the only way our country can even begin to atone for our government condoned history of slavery.

To take a break from the deep reading that was The 1619 Project, I read Oddball by Sarah Andersen in one sitting. It’s a compilation of her web comics and it is delightful.

I am now reading What Chefs Feed Their Kids: Recipes and Techniques for Cultivating a Love of Good Food. Our toddler eats pretty well but I want her to expand her palate so that I can cook lots of tasty things.

• New York City libraries continue the trend of libraries going fine free. Good. [NYT]

• The intentions behind IRBs are good. The process now is a case study in bureaucracy. [The Chronicle of Higher Education]

• If you like plants but don't have a ton of room, try these varieties. [WaPo - gift link]

• You don't always need to toss moldy food. [Real Simple]

• How to talk to kids, even little ones, about consent. [A Cup of Ambition] 

• Perhaps we can all learn from logical consequences. [Is My Kid the Asshole?]

• When Russia's currency broke. [Planet Money]

• Our buildings are dangerous to birds. [99% Invisible]

• A better use of our food waste. [Gastropod]

• This lake is a flamingo resort. [Atlas Obscura]

• Adults need to have fun too! [Life Kit]

• Finding the taste of umami. [Short Wave]

• I confess to having a bit of a film crush on Dwayne Johnson. If he is in it, I will watch it. We watched Jungle Cruise in the hopes that it would be just as good as the remake of Jumanji. It wasn't (because there was no Jack Black) but it was still a delightful romp of a flick. It reminded me of The Mummy, a cult classic of the 90s I adore. Very campy but with great production values. [Disney+]

• I finally got to watch Bridgerton! It took everything in my willpower not to devour this in one night. This was the perfect balm to my bad week. I don't care that it's over acted. I don't care the plot is contrived. I don't care that is formulaic. I want it all. I want the lushness. I want the romance. I want the lingering looks and slow burn. Give it to me! I will be rewatching this soon. Not even my husband's jokingly snide commentary can stop my love for this series. [Netflix]

• Why does buttermilk not come in smaller containers? We've got some hanging out in our fridge so I made two batches of buttermilk pull-apart rolls. I slightly oversalted the tops, but these were otherwise tasty. They are best straight out of the oven while they're warm, but not bad a few days later. I froze our second batch. (Still have buttermilk to use...) [Budget Bytes]

• I'm trying to be better about not eating out the days I work in the office. This week, I made Mediterranean tuna salad as my meal prep. It was good but needed more acid. Next time, I will half the oil and triple the vinegar. Might add capers or kalamata olives and some sliced roasted bell peppers too. [Budget Bytes]

I love anything that saves me money and makes it easy to do so. Honey (referral link) is a browser extension that helps you find coupon codes and earn cash back. What I love best about this is that I don’t need to think about it. It pops up on websites where I shop, does some searching, and applies the codes for me. There are also other features, like a droplist where you can pin items to see if they go on sale.

I gave myself a short work week and will be capping it off with my hotel night off from parenting. I need this.