Odds & ends

• How was Voldemort Day for you? (You know -- THAT day from this past weekend -- The Day That Shall Not Be Named, lol.)(Karin on Gateway Women calls it "Others Day," which I also rather like.  :)  )   
• We ordered takeout from one of our favourite restaurants on Saturday night -- and then wound up going to a nearby cousin's house for coffee & dessert later, along with BIL & SIL and several other local cousins -- 14 people in all (which was a few too many for my covid comfort levels, but anyway...). It had obviously been a MDay dinner for that cousin's family (her mom/dh's aunt and her sister and family were all there too), but nobody mentioned the M-word while we were there, thankfully! 
• Sunday was very quiet, thank goodness. It was clear, sunny and pleasant outside, and we had the balcony door open for most of the afternoon. Dh napped on the couch, I called my mom, spent two hours volunteering/co-hosting a text chat on the private Gateway Women community, and that was about it, which was fine with me. 
• Dh's cousins' WhatsApp group exploded on Sunday morning with "Happy Mother's Day" greetings and comments like "Toughest job in the world!"  I promptly muted the conversation for 8 hours. I still haven't looked at it. I don't feel like I missed anything. ;)  
• I had to laugh, because around 10 p.m. Sunday night, an email popped up in my inbox from a retailer of women's clothing, with the header "Lori, did you forget about Mother's Day?" FAT CHANCE, right?? -- "I'm trying!!  But YOU WON'T LET ME!!"  lol
• Bloglovin resurrected itself on Saturday night (after being offline for 4 days -- AGAIN... I think that's something like 12 days out of the past month that it's been down??) 
• Mali sent me a link to a blog post with instructions for exporting my Bloglovin content and importing it to Feedly, which is the reader she uses. I actually managed to do it (once Bloglovin' was back up & running again). 
• BUT! Feedly only allows you to follow 100 blogs at a time (unless you cough up money for a paid subscription). I currently have more than (gulp) 500 blogs on Bloglovin. A lot of them are inactive, but I like having them in there, just in case a new post from a blogger I used to enjoy reading pops up (and it does happen!). And even if I culled the inactive ones, I'm willing to bet there would still be more than 100.  Still, I suppose it's time to take a look and see what I can cut... 
• I have tagged all my posts related to blog readers (Google Reader, Bloglovin, Feedly) for easy reference (for myself, if not anyone else!  lol).  
• My eye surgery/keratectomy has (finally!) been scheduled -- for July 25th. That kind of screws up my plans for summer vacation with my family (I'm dreading telling my mother I will definitely not be attending the family reunion, later that week...), but I want to get it over with. Still waiting to hear about gallbladder removal (and probably won't hear about that until sometime in June, at the earliest). That one will have to be worked around this one too. 
• One appointment I didn't have to wait long for: our fourth covid vaccine doses/boosters. We both became eligible last week (age 60+ = 140 days or almost 5 months past our most recent doses = May 5th) and we're going on Wednesday afternoon (tomorrow).  
• We got to pick, Pfizer or Moderna... picked Pfizer simply because that's the last one we got (we've had all three different kinds offered!) but we're fine with Moderna if that's what's available too. 
• How's this for irony? Over the past year, on & off, I have been helping one of my best friends from childhood with a book she's writing, as well as an online masterclass presentation she's been working on. The subject? Coping with an empty nest. (!)  I told her that I'd be happy to make suggestions re: spelling, grammar, structure, etc. -- but as for the subject matter/content, she'd probably be best to check in with one or more of her empty nest mom friends to make sure she had all the bases covered. 
• Jody Day of Gateway Women recently talked about childlessness in the workplace during a half-hour "lunch & learn" session, "The F Word at Work," an ongoing series organized by Fertility Matters at Work, a UK organization. (I can't think of an equivalent North American group, can you?) All lunch & learn sessions are recorded -- here's the link -- and open to all, aimed at HR & line managers. Worth sharing within your workplace, if you feel brave enough to do so...! 
• I thought of Jody (who once gave a talk titled "Who's Afraid of the Crazy Cat Lady?") when I saw this article from New York Magazine's Intelligencer:  "Why Are Conservative Men So Scared of Cat Ladies?" ;)  (Recent political events are discussed.) 
• Kate Kauffman chatted with Catherine-Emmanuelle Delisle about Mother's Day and childlessness in the workplace in her "Unapparent" (love the name!!) column in Psychology Today online. 
• Sian Prior, author of the new book "Childless: A Story of Freedom and Longing" (not yet available in North America, unfortunately), wrote an opinion piece for the Guardian that was published on Sunday: "When you’re childless not by choice, Mother’s Day can be a painful reminder of profound loss." Subhead: "When other women are being feted by their progeny, no amount of positive psychology can override the sense of loss I feel."  
• Jill Filipovic interviewed Therese Schecter, the filmmaker behind the new documentary "My So-Called Selfish Life," about pronatalism and the decision not to have children. It's only available to her newsletter subscribers, which is unfortunate, because I think it's a conversation that deserves a much broader audience.   
• The documentary is streaming online until May 16th. Tickets are just $10 (US) -- I've already bought one, although I haven't watched yet. 
• I know surrogacy has helped a lot of couples become parents... but there are certain ethical aspects of it, I'll admit, make me rather queasy. Add in the complications involved when your surrogate is in another country. Then what happens when that country is invaded and becomes a war zone?? -- i.e., Ukraine?  The New York Times Magazine had an article following a group of Ukrainian surrogates and some of the intended parents of the babies they are carrying. (Beware the comments section... too many "just adopts" for comfort...!)