Odds & ends

• Bloglovin update: Day 4 and still nothing on my laptop screen. The phone app is not loading new links either. Grrrr....  
• It's clear and sunny outside here today, and the forecasted high is 17C!! (63F)  But -- back "home" in Manitoba, they are bracing for a snowstorm that, Environment Canada warns, "has the potential to be the worst blizzard in decades" -- 30-50 cm (about 12-20 inches) and possibly up to 80 cm (32 inches!!) of snow!!  
• Snow in Canada in April (and especially in Manitoba) is not uncommon. Dh's late dad loved telling him about the snowstorm they had here in Toronto the night he was born (65 years ago in April -- see next point).  We never had an Easter egg hunt outside when I was growing up... even if there wasn't snow on the ground, it was still usually pretty wet & chilly. But 80 cm??!! 
• My elderly parents had a medical appointment in the city today (about an hour's drive away). They've rescheduled for May. My sister & her partner were supposed to go there on Friday for the Easter long weekend. They'll see how the roads are (and whether there's power!) by then. 
• Monday (yesterday) was dh's birthday -- his 65th!!  He's getting his first Old Age Security cheque (well, direct deposit, lol) from the federal government next month (eeek).  
• BIL -- dh's only sibling -- called around lunchtime. I assumed it was to wish dh a happy birthday. Nope!  His grandson -- our Little Great-Nephew -- got his first big-boy haircut on Sunday afternoon, and BIL wanted to ask if we'd seen the pictures (we had!) and rave about how cute he is (and of course he is!).  As the conversation wound down, dh threw out a prompt:  "Anything else?"  Nope!  Dh hung up and said, "Not a WORD about my birthday!" We both laughed -- it WAS kind of funny (and so typically BIL). (He finally did call later in the afternoon -- full of apologies, as I expected, lol -- after one of the kids texted birthday greetings on our family text group.) But at the same time, so very typical of what we childless people have to deal with too, wasn't it? 
• Saturday morning, I watched the live premiere of Jody Day's latest TEDxTalk, "Social Plankton: Why Single Non-Mothers are the Fuel of the Future." Jody ends the talk with five calls to action -- specific things parents and partnered people can do to be more inclusive of single childless people (and childless people generally), and the benefits they themselves will experience as a result (the "what's in it for me" factor!). Well worth watching! 
• Also worth sticking around to watch:  Jody's actual talk (the standard 14-minute TEDTalk) is followed by a 45-minute Q&A session, with some very thoughtful questions posed by an obviously well-prepared host. 
• Also worth watching:  Jody's first TEDxTalk, "The Lost Tribe of Childless Women," delivered before a live audience in Hull, England, in 2017.  
• I have to admit I found Yael Wolfe's recent piece in Medium about childlessness and legacy somewhat unsettling/depressing (the stuff about being the keeper of the family tree and photographs hit particularly close to home...!) -- but it's still a worthwhile read (and there are some lovely comments too). Legacy is something that many childless women struggle with (World Childless Week devoted a day to the topic last year -- and here are my own tagged blog posts on the subject). I do recognize that once we're gone, what happens next is completely out of our control, and that there's more of human history that gets forgotten than remembered. We might make an impact that lasts (at least for a little while), we might not -- and that goes for parents, as well as the childless. What really matters is the here and now, and what we do and how we treat each other in the relatively brief time we're on this planet.  
• I get Maria Shriver's Sunday Paper every week via email, and one of this week's features was an interview with Anna Quindlen. Back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, when I was newly married and hoping to start a family (someday...), I discovered Quindlen's regular column in the New York Times. (You might say that Quindlen was a mommy blogger, years before blogs existed.) She left journalism in 1995 to turn (mostly) to fiction. I've never read any of her novels (and, needless to say, while I'm sure the writing is wonderful as usual, I have no interest in reading "Nanaville: Adventures in Grandparenting"), but I still have several early collections of her columns on my bookshelves. It's the kind of personal writing I love and admire (Joyce Maynard is another such writer whose work has had a huge influence on me). And now, in her newest book, Write for Your Life, Quindlen is encouraging all of us to take up our pens and document our personal histories.  

Writing also allows us to honor ourselves, says Quindlen. “That is such a challenge in our modern life with its pace, with its technology, with its emphasis on celebrity and glamor: To sit quietly with yourself and say, I'm important. I have something to say.”

I'm looking forward to reading it!