Odds & ends

• I'm enjoying another few hours of "me alone at home time," for the second time this week. BIL is on vacation this week (and doesn't know the meaning of the word relax...!), Older Nephew & family are moving to their new house this weekend, and so he & dh headed up there again this morning to do a few more things around the house before moving day. 
• Dh & I went to the nearby mall yesterday for the first time since March 10th... 2020 (i.e., pre-pandemic/17 months!!).  Specifically, we went to our cellphone service provider's store, because my two-year-old phone was literally falling apart!! (cracked across the screen and splitting along the seams... I can see inside!) I'd made an appointment (for right when the store opened) so we didn't have to wait around for someone to help us.  
• I walked away with a new Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G, and a whopping 128 MB!! (I seem to remember complaining in a past post about how quickly my lowly 16MB filled up (and how many apps I'd had to delete!), but couldn't find it.)  This will do quite nicely for a while, I'm sure...!  lol    
• The salesperson was able to transfer over all my apps and data -- but of course I had to sign back into a lot of them, and I spent most of the afternoon doing that (looking up forgotten passwords...!), and trying to get things to look & work the way I like. My old phone was a Motorola, and while both phones are Androids, there are still some significant differences in how things are set up, etc...! I'm sure I'll adjust within the next few days, but right now, it's a pain...!
• While waiting for everything to transfer over, she commented on my old phone's wallpaper -- a recent photo of Little Great-Nephew. "Your grandson is so cute! You're going to love your new camera!"  "Great-nephew -- my nephew's son," I politely corrected her. (The fact that she recognized his obvious cuteness took the edge off the grandparent assumption...!)(Also the assumption that he was my grandson and not my son... nothing like being reminded of your age, right??  lol)    
• We didn't cover the entire mall -- about 1/3 of it, maybe? (It's pretty big.) I briefly ducked in & out of a couple of stores (Gap, Old Navy, Homesense) while dh waited outside, and stopped by a kiosk to get a new battery for my favourite watch (the old one had, of course, conked out just after the pandemic began...!).  Instead of walking all the way back through the mall to the entrance where we'd come in, we just ducked out the nearest mall exit when we were ready to go, and then walked back to the car, outside. 
• It was all a little too people-y for both of our comfort levels, even being fully vaccinated and even with masks, social distancing measures and capacity limits in place (the food court was packed at noon, and we both looked at each other and said, "NO!" lol) -- and walking around a mall with a mask on is not fun -- but I'm glad things are open again!
• The Childless Not By Choice podcast hosted by Civilla Morgan is celebrating its sixth anniversary this month! Definitely worth a listen. :)  
• Yael Wolfe writes about "Moms vs. Aunts: A Social Media Smackdown" and asks "Can we stop with the pronatalist propaganda, please?"  I've been using all my free Medium articles lately to read Yael's posts since Jody Day introduced me to her work. :)  Sample passage:  

The idea that there is no greater calling in a woman’s life than motherhood is nothing but pronatalist, sexist propaganda... there is no equivalent standard a man has to meet in order to “meet his greatest calling.” All a man has to do to achieve his ultimate purpose in life is to exist...

This leaves no room for us to value women who didn’t have children due to circumstances outside their control. Nor does it support women in determining their own reproductive destiny, like women who choose to be childfree.