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.

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🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

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.

Our neighbor started up her snowblower around 7:10 this morning. This is after shoveling at least twice yesterday and using her snowblower extensively through 10 p.m. last night.

Oddly enough, this is NOT the same neighbor who mows her lawn twice a week.

And some people wonder why I didn’t want to leave my South Loop condo for the suburbs when I got married. Sure, there were the nightly sirens, which didn’t bother me, but at least I didn’t have to shovel the sidewalk seven stories below.

First attempt at making lumpia from scratch (except for the wrapper, which was store-bought). My sister talked me through the basic ingredients of our mom’s recipe (ground pork, julienned vegetables [carrots, snow peas], bean sprouts, and sliced water chestnuts), and I took it from there.

Okay for a first attempt, though I need practice in wrapping them. Cooked them in my new air fryer, and I find I miss the greasy sheen of deep frying.

Most of all, I miss being able to ask Mom how to pull these off.



Hope and resolve. The words popped into my head during Mass today.

The practice of picking words to guide a year usually entails one or three words. There might be another word popping up later, but “hope” and “resolve” are definitely keepers.

In 2021, I lost my mom, then a dear friend, and then found out a couple of college friends had died in the past year. And that’s on top of all the other messes in the world.

Thanking God that there were still pockets of joy along the way. Still, this year can’t end fast enough.

A few thoughts on this New York Times piece on the multiculturalization of Chicago’s Italian beef sandwich:

  • I love living in an area that has Korean-Polish delis and a 1950s-style diner that serves halal meat.
  • I am intrigued by Kasama’s version of “Italian beef” with thinly sliced adobo meat, longanisa, and giardianera. But I won’t try it until I’ve tried their combo longanisa/tocino combo breakfast.
  • Portillo’s is not the best Italian beef in the area. Not by a longshot. (Chris converted me months ago to the cult of Johnnie’s Beef in Elmwood Park, but Buona is good, too.) But I’m not as fussy about such things, and I’ll tolerate it more than Chris does.
  • I love how protective Chicagoans are about their food.
  • All that said, the sandwich purists really need to get a grip.

Tidied up my workspace a bit this morning.

Happy to report a peaceful Christmas Eve that started with a lovely vigil Mass at our parish, then the decoration of our humble tabletop fake tree, followed by a dinner of home-baked milk rolls, arroz caldo, and a tankard of coquito.

No photos. I leave my phone in the car for Mass these days, preferring not to look for the next cool shot to share from church. And I’m increasingly content to relegate the phone to Spotify duty at home. Sometimes it’s just tiring to strive for an Instagrammable holiday. Glad to take a break from it right now.

Merry Christmas.