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Preparing for Pandemic Parenting Pandemonium
While state and local governments are scrambling to limit the effects of COVID-19 in their communities, there’s a lot of talk about how to handle being suddenly forced into remote work. Since I work at Automattic, I’m already working remotely and my job will remain largely the same. But I’m anticipating that my 6 year…
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Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch…
Tonight I learned that They Might Be Giants is doing a tour next year for the 30th anniversary of Flood. My delight at this news was tempered by the way I crumbled into dust when I realized that album will indeed be 30 years old next year. It’s hard to overstate the importance of Flood…
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Who is cleaning the juicer?
It’s not a new observation, but I’m pretty well done reading articles about productivity and “morning routines to help you win your day” (is my day a competition?) from wealthy dudes* who do not have caregiving responsibilities. Like, you can get up at 5 AM and go for a run in the park and then…
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Playgroup Strong
Our neighborhood playgroup got an email this morning from one of the parents on it, breaking the news that they have been diagnosed with a medical condition that will require a grueling course of treatment that will likely last months, but also expressing gratitude for the way they knew they could count on us to…
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Self-care is a stocked freezer
When I’m feeling a very particular combination of helplessness and rage, say, the kind I felt the day Christine Blasey Ford testified, my coping strategy is to cook. I don’t mean that I pick a new recipe and cook an elaborate meal. I don’t mean that I bake decadent treats to self-soothe by sheetcaking. I…
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Welcome to Happy Valley
I wrote the original version of this upon visiting State College, PA for the PSU MacAdmins conference in 2018. After the 2019 conference, my husband performed a dramatic reading of it actually at the Berkey Creamery, and I’ve started to expand it. The Creamery is indeed excellent, but having grown up in Pennsylvania, I’m already…
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Hidden spaces, public oasis
We returned today from a trip to Australia, where we spent 6 days in Sydney and a weekend in Melbourne. Something that struck me again and again during the course of the trip is how intentionally these cities make use of hard-to-use space. We visited a literal alley into which a street food market had…
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Sometimes, you CAN blame your tools.
I got caught up in an Instagram/YouTube rabbit hole the other day (YouTube rabbit holes: for more than just Nazi recruitment!) and ended up on this video about cheap vs. quality water color paper: I’d been hearing forever that “Arches is the best! Just use Arches!” but a. that stuff is expensive, and b. they…
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Unconscious Bias is Running for President
The Fortune 500 as of 2018 had only three black CEOs, all male, and 24 women, and it’s not hard to imagine that this would be a different country if white men didn’t control most of it. A 2011 scholarly paper on climate change denial with the fun title “Cool Dudes” concludes, “We find that conservative white…
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A space of one’s own
Because my company is completely distributed, my primary workspace is at home. When I needed to select a permanent workspace in our home, for various reasons, the most sensible location was a corner of the front room of our house. I have our old dining room table (bought on consignment for the tiny dining area…