Friday night odds & ends

•  All day yesterday, I kept looking for Mel's Friday blog roundup. I usually read it on my phone as I'm eating breakfast -- but it wasn't there. I kept checking during the day, and still nothing. I thought, "Gee, that's odd -- Mel hardly ever misses a roundup!"  Then it finally hit me:  IT WASN'T FRIDAY. (lol) The days all run together sometimes when you're retired, and even more so in COVID times...!  (The round-up was there as usual this morning.) 
• My gynecologist appointment was Wednesday... when we got home, my family doctor's office returned my call about flu shots & asked if we could come Friday morning. We said yes. But Fridays are usually housecleaning days for us. Thursdays we do laundry (if there's going to be lint flying around, it might as well happen just before we vacuum, right?  lol).  So we did the laundry Wednesday night and cleaned on Thursday, by which time I had no idea what day it was anymore...!
• We recently discovered that CBC-TV has been showing "Downton Abbey" reruns, late on weekday afternoons. Some days it's on for an hour, sometimes an hour & a half and sometimes two hours (two episodes). (I suspect the episodes have been trimmed a bit to allow for commercials that weren't shown on PBS, or the original-original BBC showings -- but, whatever! -- I'll take it, lol.)  We stumbled on to an episode just before the end of season 1, and we're now early in season 3.  I started watching later in the series when it was on PBS (although -- thanks to my friends' chatter in the office and online, I was already pretty familiar with all the characters and the main plotlines...!), and we caught up on several previous seasons during a PBS marathon weekend ;)  but we have yet to see the earlier episodes of season one. It's a great distraction from things like COVID-19 & U.S. elections & fibroids (although we just came through the episode about the Spanish flu pandemic earlier this week...!). Dh -- who used to scoff & roll his eyes and then head off to bed early while I watched -- is now completely hooked!! (lol)  
• Lyz Lenz had a great article in Glamour last week:  "The Power—And Threat—Of Mothers Like Amy Coney Barrett."  The subhead reads:  "In America, “motherhood” is a credential for a certain kind of mother. The bad mothers are the rest of us."  (Waving wildly:  Hello... And those of us who aren't mothers at all...?? Where does this leave US?) (There is one brief mention in the article of "women who are not mothers.")  I really like Lenz's writing and her argument is bang on -- as far as it goes -- but I do wish she'd stretch her logic just a wee bit further, and spare more than a single thought for those of us who aren't mothers at all when she talks about the deification of motherhood (but only certain types of mothers). 
• That said, it's a great article & worth a read. Sample passages: 
• "She’s a mother, so you can trust her. She’s a mother, so she must be good. Never mind that motherhood should not be a factor in a person’s job interview. No, it should not be used against someone. It is also not a qualification."
• "But in touting the motherhood of Coney Barrett, Republicans haven’t just insulated Coney Barrett from Democrats’ questioning. They also remind the public that a woman’s worth is primarily a measure of her reproductive capabilities."
• "America has long lauded this certain kind of mother—white, successful, walks into church holding hands with her husband, has dinner on the table at 6 p.m., with a circle of children around her. Most mothers in America do not look like this."