A few good gems

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Hello, friends. Happy end of August and gateway to the weekend. Let the wild rumpus start! 

Speaking of wild rumpus, can you imagine receiving one of these Maurice Sendak letters?!

Speaking of wild rumpus, can you imagine receiving one of these Maurice Sendak letters?!

I returned back home to Australia from the States last Saturday and it's taken until today not to feel completely jetlagged by 8 p.m. every day, nodding and drowsy through dinner and everything afterwards. I've been exactly like a two-year-old who's just given up her afternoon naps--not to be trusted to sit still and not fall asleep at random places and moments. But, in honor of Friday night, I think I'm going to live dangerously and stay up until 10 tonight to catch up on some shows with G. Have you seen the new (to me) BBC series Broadchurch? Or PBS's Silk? (I'm always sucker for a good British detective/legal series.) What's brewing for your weekend?

 . . .

A few links and good reads I hope you'll enjoy:

- I love this innovative alarm clock from Yanko Design for couples who wake up at different times. Or if you really hate that loud alarm blare. Brilliant! Count me in.

- A terrific longread about a family secret uncovered. 

- Very good advice from Bill Watterson's 1990 commencement speech at Kenyon, recently illustrated in the comic book style of Calvin and Hobbes in a Watterson tribute by Gavin Aung Than. 

- A stunning description of how poverty taxes the brain. 

- Remembering summer twilights with cousins on the farm--a lyrical tribute to the quality of summers past and the dwindling open spaces of childhood.

- Finally, please enjoy this delightful clip (part of the Atlantic's Creative Breakthroughs series) from Annie Lennox, featuring her take on creativity, finding your own path, locking out your inner critic, and being many things all at once.

See you back here on Monday! In September, no less! 

A few good gems

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Hey, there, weekend. Glad to have you here again. [Side note: you know the song "Everybody's Working for the Weekend?" For the longest time I thought it meant that, unfortunately, everyone was scheduled to work for the weekend. I couldn't figure out what was so song-worthy about that. Ha!] 

While our weekend looks pretty busy, what I'm really looking forward to right now is a long-awaited getaway with G in a few weeks.​ It's been ages since we got away, just the two of us. I think we're calling this our 20th anniversary trip, though we celebrated our 23rd this year. Now that we've got older kids, we're leaving them in the care of each other, with supervision and chauffeuring duties falling to Lauren, 19. Still, I don't think they're too old to appreciate and use something like this to help guide their week:

​via ARMOMMY

​via ARMOMMY

​And I'm definitely not above leaving behind a little "motivational" gimmick like this, ha!  
​A few other gems for you as we head into the weekend:​

  • This hilarious post about the inevitable parental fizzling at the end of the school year swiftly made the rounds on Facebook yesterday. What does it say about me that I resemble this right now and we're only halfway through the school year here in Oz?
  • You know how you look at some families and think, how do they do it? Not in an abstract way but, really, how do they logistically manage their lives? Here's how NPR's Kai Ryssdal and his family does it. ​ And how Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman and her family does it. (Wow, there were so many biting comments criticizing each other's parenting decisions that the Times had to put their foot down and make a stricter commenting policy. Sigh. We parents can be so tough on each other.)
  • The gift of siblings. I'm curious: have you grown closer or further apart from your siblings as you've grown older?
​via Behance

​via Behance

Okay, over and out. Happy weekend, all! ​

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