The worst part of Midwest winter: when the sidewalk, deck, and driveway turn into ice rinks.

(I refrain from posting such things elsewhere because I get too many Sun Belt “friends” reporting their own balmy weather, which gets old after, say, the first post.)

The thick layers of ice surrounding our house (and only a half-cup of melting salt on hand) got me anxious about making it to Sunday Mass and CCD tomorrow. Just got email tonight officially canceling CCD.

Unclear as to whether the Chicago archdiocese COVID Sunday Mass dispensation is still active. (The archdiocesan website doesn’t make that clear.) But I’m taking a cue from this that we’re okay with Mass online tomorrow.

I’ll still bring it up in confession this week, though. Still feel weird about being online instead for Mass, but I’ll feel even weirder if we break a limb on our driveway or end up with our car slipping around the bridge off-ramp to church in the morning. 😐🥶

Wonder if Apple TV+ has stats on how many times we’ve seen each “Ted Lasso” episode.

Failing miserably so far. So, there’s that.

I had forgotten how much I’ve appreciated Andrew Sullivan’s work. As someone said on Twitter, when he’s right, he’s right:

“How can we unscramble our fevered politics without addressing our psychological and spiritual dysfunction? How do we heal a culture we are constantly distracting ourselves from? How do we break out of passive narcissism into more active, sustaining social lives? …

“…we will not fix our politics until we heal our culture; and we will not heal our culture until we have regained control of our technology, which is currently driving us mad.”

Read the whole piece here.

The cloudy, subfreezing pall have made this day really depressing really fast. Plus I’m already sick of social media (including Micro.blog) in the New Year, maybe because I started feeling dependent on the likes and attention again. This can’t bode well for the rest of 2022.

The art of the middle school lunch bag nonsequitur

Some parents slip encouraging or affectionate notes into their kids' school lunches.

A few years ago, C began planting weird visual nonsequiturs in Frannie’s lunch bag to amuse her. They’re generally innocuous, though we learned soon enough during an unrelated parent-teacher meeting that things like screwdrivers or other tools that could be used as weapons weren’t a good idea.

Eventually, her friends – and even faculty and staff who sometimes monitored lunchtime – began to look forward to seeing what kind of oddity F inadvertently brought to school. (During another unrelated school meeting, we learned that after a staff member locked eyes with her during lunchtime, F proudly held up the coconut that ended up in her bag.)

Now C and I keep an eye out for unusual groceries to plant in Frannie’s lunches. Supermarkets like H Mart are particularly good for such things; I was especially delighted with C’s silkworm pupa find over the Christmas break, which surfaced in Frannie’s back-to-school lunch yesterday. It now has a place of honor at my home office desk – and no, I have no plans to break open the can’s convenient pop top to give it a try.

⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
🟨🟩🟩🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Wordle, Day 2. Woo-hoo!

“[Pope Francis] did not say it’s selfish to not have kids. First of all, this is coming from a guy who has chosen to not have children and is in charge of a bunch of people who do not have children. And I think a lot of people were hurt because childbearing is obviously a fraught issue.

“He’s also not saying that people need to have as many children as possible, regardless of their ability to care for them. There was a time where he’s also said that Catholics don’t need to ‘breed like rabbits.'”

More in this transcript from the great podcast “Jesuitical,” which I highly recommend.

I look forward to the day when Epiphany is no longer overshadowed by an historic act of treason.

Watching “Death to 2021” on Netflix, and I can’t decide whether to laugh or just fast-forward to 2023 to get away further from last year.

Having been a single, childless pet owner in a previous life, I get the indignant hot takes about the pope’s latest remarks. (And I never want to be That Guy who lords my married-with-kid status over others.)

That said, calling one’s dogs and cats “kids” or “furbabies” also makes me cringe.

Wading back into the Micro.blog timeline

Tiptoeing into the Micro.blog stream after being sporadic at best with sharing posts on the timeline there. I’ve re-followed a whole bunch of people in my enthusiasm, though I may winnow down my timeline again after a few days, just to keep things manageable. I had forgotten that there’s some interesting conversation and pleasant folks there.

Overall, it’s a terrific community that prides itself on its niceness. And rightly so. But I’m also reminded of some of the political correctness and hypersensitivity to some things – plus the conversation can skew heavily toward First World, Apple-obsessed techie concerns that don’t interest me – that made me worry about getting too wrapped up in the place.

I realized that I tried too hard to fit in at times; I would perceive slights here and there, then post things I would regret later. That’s on me, not on Micro.blog; that just means I need to edit more closely what I see and what I contribute.

The bulk of my blog posts (like this one) will remain off the M.b timeline, but I’m happy to periodically engage there again.

Really loved this post from @jabel as I continue to figure out how my annual New Year refresh will manifest itself in 2022.

Enjoying poking through the Micro.blog community anew and finding voices I’ve missed.

Way too excited over the lint shaver depilling one of my favorite hoodies. Can’t decide if it’s because I’m old or weird. Probably both.

I can’t decide whether it’s healthy to follow a Twitter epidemiologist who alternates between latest developments in terrible COVID strains and rage over people not taking any of this seriously.

Been posting a lot the past few days on social media and here. Starting to add some of my blog posts again to the Micro.blog community ether after taking a hiatus from it.

It could be that I’m looking to renew a sense of connection with the wider world at the outset of this year. Or maybe I’m just trying to avoid decluttering my office. Hard to say.

Breakfast lumpia is the best.

(This should wind down my holiday Filipino comfort food obsession for the season. And after the last of this, my eating habits should get back on track. 🤞🏼)

Charlie Warzel on social media: “What if the internet so frequently feels miserable, and makes those of us posting and reacting feel miserable, because so many people are miserable in the first place? What if we all absorb that misery at scale online and, sometimes unwittingly, inflict it on one another?”

Very grateful for online homilies that can make up for scary in-person ones – the kind that I worry will drive my kid away from the faith – at morning Mass.