A few odds & ends

A couple of articles/posts to share: 

• Tracey Cleantis Dwyer -- formerly at "La Belette Rouge" (a blog which no longer exists) -- has returned to blogging via Substack!  Check out "The Next Happy Project." 
• I highly recommend Tracey's 2015 book "The Next Happy," which is all about letting go of the life you had planned -- something Tracey, who is childless after infertility, knows a lot about. 
• Disclosure:  I'm in the book. :)  I answered survey questions for Tracey as part of her research.  I also reviewed the book on my blog not long after it was published, here. 
• This Sunday, March 15th is "Mothering Sunday" in Britain, and The Full Stop community and podcast has published a post on Linked In with suggestions for "Navigating Mother's Day When You're Childless Not by Choice." (Also very applicable for Mother's Day in May, here in North America & elsewhere in the world.)  

Non-ALI/CNBC related:  

• It wasn't just our imaginations -- this winter really was as cold and snowy as it seemed, the Toronto Star confirms by looking at the historical weather data.  
• The time changed last weekend -- and it struck me that my mother was no longer here to complain about it (as she always, always did!).  Wherever she is now, I know it's a place where time is meaningless. Enjoy, Mom.  :)  
• This coming weekend (Sunday night) is the Oscars. 
• I used to follow the Oscar races like a hawk (I even won the office Oscar pool once!), and tried to see as many of the nominated movies as I could (the ones that interested me, anyway).  These days, I think I am only aware of "Hamnet" (with its ties to a well-known book and its grief/child loss theme -- not to mention Paul Mescal, lol), but not many of the other nominees.  
• Mel recently posted about "The Last Movie I Saw;" I think the last one I saw in-theatre was "1917" (which was very good, and one of those movies that really deserves to be seen in a theatre). The pandemic began not long after that and, well, you know the rest. We used to go to the movies, perhaps not every Sunday, but usually at least one Sunday a month. Many things have returned to some form of normalcy since then, but we still haven't been back to the theatre.  I am not sure how we got out of the habit, but we did.  I do miss it sometimes. 
• Nevertheless, I will be watching on Sunday.  :) 
• This will be my first Oscar night without my Mom. :(  She always watched, and when I was growing up, she would let me stay up late -- on a school night! -- to watch with her. I more recent years, I would always call her before the show started (even though she hadn't been to a movie theatre in years either). 
• I'm sure she will be watching from wherever she is now.  And I hope there's a bottomless bucket of popcorn, and that it doesn't bother her stomach, as it did in her later years (to the point that she had to stop eating it).