Odds & ends

• Creepy or what?? -- I got a cold sore on my lower left lip/corner recently (ugh). I did not type ONE WORD about it on my laptop or phone (until now!) -- and yet!! I suddenly had ads for Blistex popping up all over my Instagram feed a day or two later!!  I swear these things are LISTENING to us... (I am NOT amused...!) 
• Annoying thing:  I was reading a NYT story, about the growing threat of violence against public figures :(  -- and then the comments. This one raised my hackles (albeit not for political reasons !) -- it said (in part):  "The 60s were 80 years ago and multiple generations ago… "  
• HEY!!!  I was born in 1961... I am NOT 80 years old!! (Yet!!)  (The writer must have flunked math class, lol.)  
• The comments are closed, or I would have definitely shot off a reply...!  
• Richard Osman announced last week that Celia Imrie has been cast as Joyce in the movie adaptation of "The Thursday Murder Club" -- the fourth and final member of the club to be cast. 
• I have to admit -- I know the name, I know I've seen her in movies & TV shows, but I could not picture her at all. I had to look her up. She's not someone I would have thought of for Joyce -- my first pick was Penelope Wilton, followed by Julie Walters. 
• Any guesses/suggestions for who should play the secondary characters??  (Chris, Donna, Bogdan, Stephen...?) 
• The New York Times asks "When Did Everything Become a ‘Journey’?"  (Gift link.)  Good question!  (I'm sure I am guilty of overusing that phrase myself...!) 
• Glynnis MacNicol, unapologetically childfree by choice, who wrote the wonderful memoir "No One Tells You This" (reviewed here), about coming to terms with being single and childless around her 40th birthday, has a new book coming out as she turns 50 ("I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself"). In the New York Times this weekend, she declares "Men Fear Me, Society Shames Me, and I Love My Life." (Gift link.) Excerpt:  

Saying so should not be radical in 2024, and yet, somehow it feels that way. We live in a world whose power structures continue to benefit from women staying in place. In fact, we’re currently experiencing the latest backlash against the meager feminist gains of the past half-century. My story — and those of the other women in similar shoes — shows that there are other, fulfilling ways to live.

It is disconcerting to enjoy oneself so much when there is so much to assure you to expect the opposite, just as it is strange to feel so good against a backdrop of so much terribleness in the world. But with age (hopefully) comes clarity...

Forget about the horror of being alone and middle-aged — there is nothing more terrifying to a patriarchal society than a woman who is free. That she might be having a better time without permission or supervision is downright insufferable. 

• A Globe & Mail opinion piece called for a national sperm donor registry, after a recently released documentary revealed that three donors -- all from the same family in Quebec -- are the biological fathers of hundreds of children across the province. (Gift link.)  
• I don't know if this Toronto Star article (essentially a cautionary tale about aging solo without children) is paywalled, but it's worth a read if you can access it. It's a sobering tale and may be difficult reading for some (it certainly gave me pause), but I believe knowledge/awareness is power. I just wish there was more information included about how such situations could be avoided. "When Antonietta vanished." 
• I appreciated Ryan Rose Weaver's Substack interview with Hayley Manning (who is originally from Toronto/Markham!) of the podcast and Instagram account "Time to Talk TFMR" (termination for medical reasons), on "finding alternative rainbows," when your "rainbow baby" doesn't materialize. (Manning has one child but after several losses, including a TFMR, decided to stop trying to conceive another). There's a lot here that CNBCers will relate to, even if you never experienced pregnancy loss or TFMR.  
• Says Weaver:  "If we want to have better, more trauma-informed conversations with loved ones and clients who have experienced birth and medical trauma, then we need to acknowledge that there are many possible “right” choices to make about how best to heal. Including this one."
• Weaver asks Manning: "There are so many valid reasons for deciding not to pursue subsequent pregnancies after a late loss like ours. I think this surprises people and is not well understood. What made you decide not to pursue a subsequent pregnancy yourself?" 
• Manning responds (and boy, I can relate...!): 

After my last miscarriage, I didn’t know if I could put myself, my husband, or son through more anxious waiting and more loss. I was worried about what it was doing to all of us. I didn’t want to feel sad and anxious anymore, or at least not so constantly. I was tired of tracking my cycle, tired of sex for conceiving, tired of worrying about how old I was (I was about to turn 40). I felt like a husk of my former self. And after every loss, it took more from me, it took longer to emotionally recover. This wasn’t living.

• I really liked what Weaver says here, too: 

What I fear for myself and others is what you’ve described: falling into the same old capitalist-patriarchy trap instead, with a different set of bars. Instead of being sold just one more face serum or sparkly dress or engagement ring, now we’re being sold one more expensive fertility tea, restrictive special diet, or painful medical procedure. Just one more, and we’ll be able to cross what Amelia and Emily Nagoski call The Chasm in their book on burnout — that is, the gap between who we are and what we are culturally expected to be.

In our case, those of us who have “just one,” or no living child at all, will finally be “enough” in the eyes of everyone around us.

What we seem to be talking about is exploring what happens if we stop seeking that. If, as Mary Oliver says, we stop crawling through the desert on our knees, and begin to just let the soft animals of our bodies love what they already love.