Got that Autumnal Feelin’
The first week of September has been and gone with the fiery, hot fart gases of hell smacking you in the face as you walk out the door in Southern California. We are experiencing a heat wave like no other, think cookies baking on the dashboard temps, almost. Erstwhile, Ireland has officially announced the coldest, wettest summer in a decade. Well. now what a mixed bag of weather we have here. What is the world succumbing to? Poor Ireland, my lovely people had (since I have left mind you) been experiencing almost ten years of glorious summers that brought out the bared, freckled milk bottle shoulders burnt to a lovely lobster crisp. The ruddy cheeks of those lucky bastards grinning over disposable tesco bbq grills on the dunes of Brittas Bay eating a burger whilst running into the (still) frigid waters. When the sun shines in Ireland god it’s like paradise herself has awakened in all people united in their need to get out for a nice ole stretch. Ah the memories.
Here is my favourite Irish social commentator/comedian/all around good guy and his personal opinion of how the weather in Ireland just can’t get it’s shit together and it’s a downright shame.
I love September. It feels like New Year’s Part II. I have always been a fan of opportunities to waste massive amounts of time turning inwards and thinking deeply or incessantly on being, in both ourselves and the world.
Reads
I have been attempting to wrestle control of my shockingly large volume of photos hogging storage on my little patch of fluffy cumulus nimbus in the internet sky. In doing so I have been taking a trip down memory lane to my life before I became a mother and after. A challenge I have been facing in this part of my life is my attempts to not make everything about being a mama. Yet, everything in my life is finding itself rooted in this new soil of motherhood. To be honest with you, I am unsure what the appropriate course of action is. When I look at the photos of my old self, I don’t recognise her. Often, sadly, I feel a revulsion and frustration towards her. I lament her and grieve what might have been. This snappy little read hit me in the feels a bunch.
Having kids changed my career, but not how you might think by Elissa Strauss, Made With Care
Book recommendation: I finally picked up and finished a book after a month-long hiatus. August was hard. I’m on a bit of an environmental-centered media consumption kick these past few weeks. Mostly in the region of natural disasters. Anything in the world-is-ending realm seems to do me just fine. Me thinks I am managing the chaos of my life this past summer with chaotic stories of future world destruction. The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton is well worth a read. It’s bleak-ish and redemptive with beautiful weavings of the wild. It left me with such longing for my daughter and the next generations who will inherit this world of ours. If you like dystopian-environmental-survivalist fiction with a smidgen of magical realism then this book is for you.
Bants
Here is a few things that made me smile and also feel a glimmer of the ghost of my own self’s past this week.
Photos of the divine. Milky Way is a collection of pictures by Vincent Ferrane of his wife and child in the intimate wilderness that is the act of breastfeeding.
This video made me laugh particularly because I have a weird feeling this will be my child. She is like this already but without the language. One commenter said, “If you haven’t met that kid you are that kid” hee hee
This new song and spunky lyric video by the effervescent Sammy Rae and the Friends. A delightfully charming band I stumbled on a few years ago whose jaunty sound brings my body to dancing.
Eats
I have been cooking a lot lately. I suppose, in a sense, I did not realise that having a human child meant that from now until the end of time I will need to provide nourishment for another person besides myself and my husband. Multiple times a day. Much as I love breastfeeding she does need non-milk food and this little exploring machine has an appetite for all things scrumptious. I think the most challenging meal to think of interesting and non-repetitive foods is breakfast. For some reason I have internalised a belief that my child cannot eat the same food for multiple meals in any given week or she will become…nutrient deprived? picky? starved? bored? SO I decided to change up breakfast and made us basically cake to eat that is on brand for the season. Am I embracing the basic bitch fall vibes here? Yes I am. Pumpkin and chocolate chips are best belly friends for me.
Nourishing Pumpkin Baked Oatmeal from Hummusapien who usually has some good non-meat offerings for those of us who abstain.
Taking food photos is not my gifting or at least not in my kitchen which is decidedly non-aesthetic with it’s fluorescent, ice-cold over head lighting that feels like I am being taken in for questioning at the local police station.
Paired this recipe with her Healthy Cream Cheese Frosting which I basically made in like three minutes and just have been eating right out of the bowl by the spoonful so there’s that for how good it is. ***
***One thing to note. I enjoy the recipes on this website but she does pretty much always use the words ‘healthy’ and ‘clean’ in her titles or descriptions of ingredients. I do not ascribe personally to this ideology around food having moralistic value and certain food items being considered ‘healthful’. Nor do I enjoy when people who write recipes overstate how something being ‘low sugar’ is better for you, or over-emphasises food swaps or randomly adding like veggies into cakes. I just liked that I could make this frosting with what I had in my fridge because I never have icing sugar on hand. Just to give ye a heads up when you head over to those recipes. I had to train my brain to not be triggered and that is not the approach I take with food. Thank you and goodnight.
This is literally my doofus dogs.
Okayyyyy byyyye