This was felt good. Was nice to keep moving. Set a pace that I was happy with for the bike. Surprised how good the squats felt.
This was felt good. Was nice to keep moving. Set a pace that I was happy with for the bike. Surprised how good the squats felt.
Had a whiskey and burgers, played Mario Wonder with Yumo - he is really good, played Mario Kart with Elise and Yumo, signed up for a webinar on Enhancing Classroom Talk to support multilingual learners, about to watch Echo with Lyra. All going on!
Searching for Taylor Swift’s Love Story, likely because of The Bear, I found Indila’s Love Story and from there her album Mini World, which I’m very much liking. Finally, some new tracks to add to my 2024 playlist.
Friday, the day I realise I need to stop rushing through the week.
Why am I telling you all this?
Because I have decided that my hand on this man’s back is the beginning of something. I am going to start writing more publicly about my journey with my dad.
I haven’t done so for a long time out of respect for his privacy, and I will continue to care for what I believe he would and wouldn’t want put out in public, and will continue to be in dialogue with my mom and my brother about that. But for the last few months I have been sitting with a question: Is my silence publicly about my dad’s illness, and my experience of it, protecting him or contributing to the silence, shame, and stigma that surrounds this wildly common disease?
I’ve been slowly coming around to thinking my silence is no longer serving me, or the potentiality that putting words to my father’s loss of words, could be healing for others—all the daughters and sons and wives and husbands, the friends and neighbors, who love someone whose brain is fading, whose very essence is shifting, who requires new kinds of communication and care. The experience of my dad’s dementia, for me, has been one of profound loss, and also, it has been the most important experience—right next to birthing and growing my children—of exploring the human condition.
My old biology teacher once said that revising was like spinning plates, you have to go back to it occasionally to keep it spinning. As it is with remembering stuff. It’s always stuck in my head.
I was thinking about it today. I feel that, as an primary teacher there’s a lot to be doing, that is, a whole lot of plates to keep spinning.
Except… I realised that it’s not the same, since each of the things is so different. If they were all plates, then they just need a push in the right direction to keep them spinning.
Except, they aren’t all plates.
I’m spinning plates - and to go with a circus theme - juggling, lion taming, keeping the audience happy, working on a new routine and am jumping between these tasks constantly. And if any of the things I’ve read about multi-tasking are true, it’s not great for getting things done well!
Today I am grateful for living so close to the airport I could take Mum and Dad to their flight this morning and still make it to work on time.
Tomorrow, I will be grateful for going to bed at 9pm - in 15minutes…
Start Often Finish rArely
Now get out there and start doing stuff! And then stop doing stuff, so you can do more stuff! Do as much stuff as possible! Never stop doing stuff! Always stop doing stuff!
Been thinking about this a lot since I read it on Metafilter. In completely related news, I started learning Korean today. The Korean boys in my class were eager to help me. I can now write banana, mum and dad!
Onwards! Or not!
Been looking at using https://omg.lol as a kind of landing page (which is the right name for what I want).
Teachers consider rapid, non-stop decisions as simply part of their job not fully realizing that their instantaneous decision-making compares nicely to expert jazz musicians and professional basketball rebounders.
Star Wars IV, A New Hope - SWANH.NET Star Wars Infographic
Star Wars in one 123-meter long infographic
A conversation
A different perspective
A portal elsewhere
Can anyone point me in the right direction? I’m interested in a home page with some words, links to all my posts and other pages, and my most recent entries. However, I’m not really sure where to start with doing that. Can I just use micro.blog. Thanks!
The Whippet #178: Somebody better say something about the moon
So what I learned in school is that the Moon was created when another planet crashed into it (a glancing blow) and knocked off a bunch of rock that formed into the Moon.
But no! The planet (named Theia because that’s the mother of the Moon in Greek mythology) crashed head-on into Earth and broke through the crust and into the core. Where it still is.
They key takeaway here is that we should view retrieval as a learning event. Retrieval practice is not so much about testing whether someone knows something but rather a core part of actually learning that something, a process which occurs across time and space.
I have a strong dislike for Twitter threads, especially ones with information that I find useful. If only there was a better way to share words online?!
After living in China for 12 years, I’ve just come to love the food. I mean, it’s true that there’s things that I don’t like but generally, the food is just so good. Living where we do, we eat a lot of spicy food. A. Lot. So I was pleased yesterday when a friend made me 蒜泥白肉，thin sliced pork, served cold, with beansprouts, garlic and chilli. So. So. Good.
A friend of a friend got me the staff jumper from the delicious tomato soup hot pot place.
#supportyourlocalrestaurants
Hey, um, if you were
to have kids all over again,
what would you do?
Oh, honey, I wouldn’t have ‘em.
Alright.
You know, Nat, I’d, um
What would I do?
I would I I’d want them to be
not so fuckin’
afraid of things, you know?
I’d protect them less. Yeah.
I’d want ‘em to have more fun.
Make more mistakes.
Get into more fuckin’ trouble, you know?
I don’t know how to do it, but
but that, that’s what I’d do.
Ma-make sense?
She doesn’t grow plants.
The plants grow themselves.
Her job is to create conditions for the plants to grow.
See also, The Carpenter and the Gardener
Life’s constant pressure
A hand on my shoulder
Such expectations
早饭：油茶
午餐： 面条
晚饭：火锅
Breakfast: Spicy porridge
Lunch: Spicy noodles
Dinner: Spicy hot pot
🌶️