#MicroblogMondays: I got scammed :(

I can't believe I fell for it. 

Suffice to say it involved sending an Amazon gift card to someone I didn't know, at the request of a good friend who said she was having difficulty accessing her Amazon account -- at least, I *thought* it was my friend.  (I feel slightly better that the transaction went through Amazon, and I didn't give any financial details to anyone else.)  

The initial email came from her actual email account (I later noticed that subsequent emails came from a Hotmail account -- which she doesn't have). She's been dealing with some health issues recently, and I've been feeling guilty that I hadn't messaged her in a while. It's been a busy day/week/month, I was tired and distracted, and I guess my happiness at hearing from her blinded me to all the huge waving red flags that look pretty damned obvious in retrospect. (Plus, it's a full moon tomorrow night!!) 

I realized almost immediately that I had just made a BIG mistake. I felt sick. It wasn't a huge-huge amount of money, but it wasn't insignificant either. Very fortunately, I was able to call my bank and have the transaction cancelled almost immediately. 

Unfortunately, that meant they also had to cancel my credit card, period. I should be getting a new one in 7-10 business days. In the meantime, I'm without a credit card, and when I get the new one, I need to contact ALL the companies that take regular payments/subscriptions from the old one and give them the new number.  

Because the initial email came from my friend's actual email account, I was leery of emailing her to warn her. So I called her. We couldn't talk long because she was waiting for her service provider to call her back (while juggling calls from all the other people they had emailed too). Whoever did this managed to wipe out ALL her contacts, including ALL her business contacts, going back years & years. (She's a freelancer, too!)  She's hoping they will be able to retrieve those for her. 

As a precaution (and with a little help from my sister's techno-expert partner), I also changed my email passwords. (I also changed my Amazon password for good measure.)  He told me I'm certainly not the first (nor the last) person to be taken in by a scammer, and that these guys are getting very, very good, especially now with the help of ChatGPT and other AI tools.  :(  

My sister (who has worked in financial services for nearly 40 years -- and was herself  -- as she reminded me -- the victim of a scam at work a few years back) also advised me to check my credit bureau ratings on TransUnion and Equifax. She said it's probably overkill, but better to be safe... 

What a mess.  :(  

Needless to say, I am beat. And feeling like a complete idiot.  :p  (Learn from my mistakes!)  

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here. 

"The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd

"The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd (published in 2001) will be the September pick for the Gateway/Lighthouse Women Nomo Book Club. (It was also recently featured in Queen Camilla (formerly the Duchess of Cornwall)'s Reading Room, which I follow on Instagram.) 

"The Secret Life of Bees" is set in July 1964 in rural South Carolina, where 14-year-old Lily Owens lives and works on a peach farm with her abusive father and their black housekeeper Rosaleen. Emboldened by the newly signed Civil Rights Act, Rosaleen tries to register to vote -- with disastrous results. Together, she & Lily flee to Tiburon, South Carolina, which is tied in a mysterious way to Lily's mother, Deborah, who died when Lily was 4. In Tiburon, they are taken in by the (slightly eccentric) three Boatwright sisters -- all unmarried, childless, and devoted to bee-keeping, honey-making, the cult of the Black Madonna, and each other.  

It's funny how some books can be a slog to get through, while others, even if you have your doubts that it might appeal to you, just fly on by. I read the first half over three days, and the second half in one.  There was a lot here in the setting and the plot elements that was familiar (and perhaps even just a wee bit stereotypical?). I was reminded of other similar novels I've read in the past -- coming of age stories set in the American South during the Jim Crow era -- among them "Summer of My German Soldier" by Bette Greene (which I read as a young teen), "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett (review here), and "Where the Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens (review here). 

(I was also reminded of my great-uncle, a World War 2 veteran and shy bachelor with a sly sense of humour and fondness for cigars, who lived his entire life in the same house with my grandmother (his older sister), and worked as a beekeeper on a nearby honey farm. There was always a big bucket of fresh honey in Grandma's pantry, and they'd bring one for us whenever they came to visit. Sadly, he died suddenly in 1976, shortly after he turned 59 and I was 15.  I still think of him often and wish I'd known him better.) 

But the writing was wonderful, the characters and their voices and the world they lived in were vividly drawn, and the beekeeping angle was pretty unique (and interesting). I loved the strong, independent women in this book, and how they loved and supported each other.  And, as a childless woman, I appreciated how clearly the story showed that you don't have to be a biological mother to nurture and care for others. 

4 stars on Goodreads 

Apparently there is a movie version, made in 2008, starring Dakota Fanning as Lily, Jennifer Hudson as Rosaleen, and Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys and Sophie Okonedo as August, June and May Boatwright. (Somewhat younger and more glamourous than I pictured the characters in the book, but that's Hollywood for you...!)  

This was Book #27 read to date in 2023 (and Book #2 finished in July), bringing me to 60% of my 2023 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 2 books ahead of schedule. :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2023 tagged as "2023 books."  

Odds & ends

• Last Sunday (July 23rd -- always the last Sunday of July) was Aunties Day. I had it written in my calendar, or else I probably would have forgotten about it completely -- it's not like it's well known outside the childless/free auntie community, right? (and it's not even that well known there/here, sadly...)(unlike that "other" holiday...! -- as I wrote a few years back), and I haven't been on social media much lately to notice if anyone else was posting about it. Anyway, here's to all the unsung aunties & godmothers out there!  
• Yael Wolfe wrote about Aunties Day after the fact on Medium: "It’s Aunt’s Day…and It’s Time We Celebrated the Aunties of the World."  It's for members only (and there don't seem to be gift links), but here's an excerpt:

As a culture, we seem to understand the value (at least to some extent) of having grandparents actively involved in their grandchildren’s lives. We understand how enriching it is to all parties, helping generations bridge the gap across time and build strong family legacies.

Strangely, we do not seem to recognize the value of having aunts and uncles actively involved in their niblings’ lives.

I’m not surprised by this — again, I call out pronatalism that would attach the most value in families to relationships that are forged by parent-child bonds. We value grandparents more because they are parents. Aunts and uncles might not be, and even if they are, their contributions to their families are often seen as secondary in the absence of these parent-child bonds.

and 

We love them. We absolutely love them.

And what’s all the more notable about this is that we don’t have to. Parents are stuck with the kids they push out into the world. They have a legal and (ideally) emotional obligation to them.

Aunts and uncles are under no such obligation. And yet we keep showing up just because we love those little beings.

Makes you wonder about all those parents who say women without children could never know true love and true sacrifice, doesn’t it? They don’t have any choice but to practice “true love” (whatever that means) and sacrifice.

But aunts do, and many of us figured that out without having become mothers… 

 and 

If we’re so committed as a society to value our children and the family that raises them, why don’t we make more of an effort to show those who pitch in how much it means to us?

• I haven't had much time for podcasts lately, but I did manage to tune in live to hear Christine Erickson in conversation with Stephanie Joy Phillips about World Childless Week on New Legacy Radio. You can listen to the replay here, or on many other podcast platforms.  
• World Childless Week 2023 is coming up!  Sept. 11th to 17th.  Deadline for submissions is Sunday, August 27th!  The list of this year's topics is here.   
• I love, love, loved this recent New York Times story about intergenerational friendship between two women/neighbours. (It pays to get to know your neighbours!)  Bonus: children are not mentioned as part of either woman's story. I am assuming they are both childless/free. (Gift link.)
• The Guardian recently talked to an embryologist at a fertility clinic about how her own infertility journey and losses have affected her and how she now does her job.  Headline: "The IVF specialist who lost multiple pregnancies: ‘I had spent years making people’s dreams come true. It felt so unfair’." 
• From the Daily Mail:  "Why we childless women are sick of being exploited by mums in the office during the holidays."  
• Sample quote: " 'What upsets me most is that I had their backs during lockdown, manning the phones in the office so they could stay at home, as I understood how hard it was to work while home-schooling kids. I feel sad the same goodwill doesn't seem to be there for me.' " 
• (This was a frequent issue mentioned in the discussion about "Your Childless Experience" on Anne Helen Petersen's Substack newsletter, "Culture Study," which I wrote about here.) 
• Jody Day of Gateway Women appeared on two different radio programs to comment on this issue: 
• BBC Essex (link available through mid/late August) -- the relevant segment begins around the 3:09 mark, and Jody appears around 3:24.
• And on Newstalk Breakfast (Ireland)(link within story). 
• This Globe & Mail article doesn't mention pregnancy loss, infertility or childlessness, but I thought it was still highly relevant:  "Paying the ‘grief tax’ and the other hidden costs of caregiving." (Gift link.) 
• Mel recently posted that it's been 10 years (!) since the demise of Google Reader (and shared a great article about it). Says Mel: "Social media is often blamed for the decline in blogging, but I think closing Google Reader contributed to the mass exodus to Facebook updates. Make it hard to read blogs, and people will stop reading blogs. Alas."  
• I think she's right. I sometimes mention blog readers to women in some of the non-blogging childless communities I participate in -- and they have no idea what I'm talking about. 
• I still miss Google Reader. As you all know well (I've complained about it enough here, lol), I used Bloglovin quite happily for most of the past decade, but it rapidly went downhill in recent years and became increasingly unreliable. I finally bit the bullet, downloaded Feedly and paid for the premium service (because the free version limited me to 100 blogs -- hahahahaha....).  I haven't had a lot of time lately for blog reading, but so far, so good...  

"The Fair Botanists" by Sara Sheridan

It took me a LOT longer to get through "The Fair Botanists" by Sara Sheridan than I had anticipated.  I started reading it on June 30th;  it's not a long book, but it took me until last night (July 25th!) to finish. (Normally, I get through 3-4 books a month!)  But needless to say, I've been otherwise occupied this month...! and even when I did have some down time at home, I often found it difficult to focus on a book.  I'll also admit that it took me a while to get into the story. 

It's 1822, and newly widowed Elizabeth Rocheid has just arrived in Edinburgh to live with her late husband's relatives, whose home sits adjacent to the city's new Botanic Garden. The garden's collection includes a rare Agave Americana plant, which only flowers a handful of times each century. It's set to flower again, so the watch is on, captivating the interest of the city's elite. Several of them hope to profit from the seeds the flowering plant will produce -- including Elizabeth's unlikely (and much worldlier) new friend, Isabel (Belle) Brodie.  

This was a pleasant read. It didn't grab me right away, although it did get more interesting (and complicated!)  as the story built to a climax -- but the rather conventional (yet rather unlikely) happy ending left me feeling slightly flat. (No babies, though!)  I did learn a lot about Georgian-era Edinburgh and Scotland, and about botany and essential oils/perfumery -- and the story of the Botanic Garden and how it was moved was fascinating. It was also interesting to read the author's note at the end, explaining how she came to write the book, what was historical fact (quite a lot, actually) and what was fiction. 

I had a hard time deciding on a rating for this one. I settled on 3.5, but rounded down to 3 stars on Goodreads. 

We'll be discussing this book throughout August in the Gateway/Lighthouse Women Nomo Book Club. (Cardinal rule #1:  no miracle babies!)  

This was Book #26 read to date in 2023 (and Book #1 finished in July), bringing me to 58% of my 2023 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 1 books ahead of schedule. :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2023 tagged as "2023 books."  

#MicroblogMondays: A sticky situation

Friday night, dh poured himself a glass of iced tea, sat down in the armchair and set the glass down on a coaster on the end table. 

He's not sure what happened, but over went the glass, and sticky, sugary iced tea sloshed ALL OVER the table, the side of the (leather) armchair, the (laminated wood) floor and the power bar/surge protector sitting on the floor between the table and chair. :(  

We managed to unplug the power bar and the things plugged into it without getting electrocuted (!) and started soaking up the liquid with various cleaning cloths and paper towels. I wiped down everything with a wet rag, including the floor -- but I could still feel the stickiness after it all dried. I knew I needed to give the floor a good, proper mopping -- it had been a while since I last did it anyway -- but my heart sank at the thought of starting this at 9 o'clock at night. I resolved to do it first thing in the morning after breakfast, when I could get in the shower right afterwards.  

Mopping the floor is one of those tasks that I always find myself putting off -- and when I do, I generally focus on the ceramic tiles in the kitchen, entryway, front hall and laundry closets, and two bathrooms. I grew up in houses with wall-to-wall carpeting in most of the living areas & bedrooms, and while I enjoy the look of our laminate wood floors and how easy it is to keep them clean, I find I'm a little leery of wet-mopping them too frequently, so I generally tend to just spot-mop any areas that look like they need it.  Dh vacuums our unit thoroughly every week, and I follow along behind him with a Swiffer dust mop to pick up the fine particles left behind, which usually keeps the floors pretty clean.  I figure I don't need to wet-mop every week, when there's just the two of us. I couldn't help but think, as I cleaned up the mess, that one bonus of being childless is that there's generally not a lot of sticky stuff landing on my floors with any kind of frequency, which means I don't have to mop as often!  :)  

When I do mop, I use the Vileda spin mop -- called O-Cedar in the U.S. -- recommended by GoCleanCo, and follow her method:  fill the bucket with hot water to the maximum fill line, and add one teaspoon of powdered Tide laundry detergent. (NOT liquid Tide, and no more than one teaspoon! -- and yes, it HAS to be Tide!)  That's it!  :)  

Before discovering GoCleanCo (on Instagram, during the pandemic), I used good old white vinegar in hot water, with satisfactory results too -- and I've also had a Shark steam mop, which I LOVED -- although I would be leery about using it on a laminate wood floor (the heat might soften the glue and warp the floor).  Also, I've had two steam mops, and unfortunately, they've never lasted very long...!   

Do you faithfully mop your floors on a regular timetable -- or are you more of an occasional/as needed mopper like me?  What's your preferred tools/method?  

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here. 

Making space for childless/free experiences & voices

I'm a paid subscriber to Anne Helen Petersen's Substack newsletter, "Culture Study" which, as the name suggests, tackles various subjects related to the culture around us.  She is childfree by choice, and sometimes touches on that in her writing, but she often covers parenting issues, because (of course) so many of her readers are parents.  A couple of times a week, she posts a discussion topic, and everyone jumps into the conversation in the comments. There are regular discussions about what we're reading/watching/listening to/cooking, and other recent topics have included divorce, being queer, favourite family photos (and why), and regional food delights. 

Imagine my surprise and delight when this past Friday (July 21st), the topic was "Your Childless Experience"!!  

Needless to say, my best-laid plans for the day went out the window, as I sat glued to my laptop, scrolling through all the comments (and I've read just about all of them too!).  As one commenter quipped, "Every Friday, you think you're going to get a lot done and then AHP releases an incredible thread topic and THERE GOES THE AFTERNOON." 

By the time I logged off that evening, there were more than 700 (!!) comments;  as of this morning, there are almost 900 (!).  Many of the commenters are childfree by choice, but almost every other conceivable aspect of the childless experience is covered:  infertility, pregnancy loss, ambivalence, lack of a partner, an unwilling partner, medical issues, concerns about climate change, and so on. Many expressed their gratitude to Petersen for making space for this topic (and for politely asking parents to refrain from commenting this time around: "There are lots of spaces for you!).  Many expressed their delight at realizing just how many other childless/free people were out there!  

Here's an excerpt from how Petersen set up the discussion. Needless to say, I love it!:  

We spend a lot of time thinking and talking and paying attention to parents in this newsletter. We do this because even though I am not a parent, a whole lot of people are, and the way they experience the world matters. The majority of adults *are* parents (although that percentage is decreasing every decade) and that experience of the world is often assumed to be the default. It shows up in the way organizations prioritize benefits, it inflects assumptions about eldercare, it’s ALL OVER political rhetoric. The imagined adult, the theoretical adult that society is built for….they’re a parent. 

And yet a whole lot of us are not parents! We are not the majority, but we exist, and our needs and rhythms and finances and ways of negotiating the world….they’re different. Some of us have consciously chosen not to have children, others are ambivalent or have found themselves in this situation without really realizing it, and some are desperate for children they cannot have for whatever reason. No matter how you found yourself here, I wanted to create some space here to talk about the experience of not having children in a society where the majority of people do. What’s hard? What rules? What’s weirder than you thought, what have you grown to appreciate, what scares you or delights you? 

I debated whether to post about this here, because you the conversation is private and you have to be a  (paid) subscriber to access it. The conversation itself is incredibly interesting and valuable -- but I thought the simple fact that she made space for it, and that it's been embraced so enthusiastically by her readers -- was fabulous and noteworthy in itself.  :)  

They're home!

My last real status update on my brother-in-law and nephew was last Monday (July 17th). A lot has happened since then! 

• Older Nephew's homecoming a week ago Friday (on July 14th)(which I wrote about here) was, unfortunately, short-lived. Last Tuesday morning (July 18th), I was eating my breakfast when his wife called dh, asking if we could drive up there and look after Little Great-Nephew for the day:  she needed to take Older Nephew back to the hospital in downtown Toronto. His bloodwork results were off -- and, somewhat alarmingly, he was seeping fluid from around the stitches of his incision.  :(  
• We literally dropped everything, showered and dressed in record time, left within an hour of her call and made it there before noon. LGN was happy to see us and good as gold as usual.  
• On the other hand, the dog -- a miniature dachshund, whose legs are too short to climb upstairs -- whined long and loud every time I would head upstairs to join LGN & dh -- so I wound up spending a lot of the day with him. Even so, he peed on the couch -- TWICE! -- presumably to show his displeasure at being abandoned, not only by his mom & dad, but also by me!  Poor puppy!  (It's hard to be mad at him!) 
• Older Nephew was readmitted  :(  and then had to wait around for an MRI (which meant not being able to eat anything until it was done). It eventually happened at 10 p.m. that night (!).  His wife returned home around 7:30 p.m., and we left shortly after that. 
• After analyzing the MRI results, the doctors decided to do a (non-surgical) procedure to correct the problem, which took place on Friday morning. Poor Older Nephew couldn't eat for 24 hours after that either! 
• We didn't expect he would be sent home until Sunday or Monday -- but he got the okay to leave on Saturday (today!),  and is now home (again!) -- hopefully for good this time!  :)  
• He will be off work recuperating for at least the next 2-3 months.  
• We made a detour to BIL's house en route home from Older Nephew's house on Tuesday night:  SIL had asked us to check the refrigerator and throw out any food that had spoiled or looked iffy.  Let's just say we threw out a LOT of stuff.  (Clearly, BIL & SIL don't spend a lot of extended time away from home...!  -- dh is meticulous in ensuring we use up stuff before we head off on a trip that's going to last more than a few days, and we usually leave the refrigerator & freezer compartment nearly empty.)  We finally got home around 9:30 p.m. 
• The next morning (Wednesday), we got up early and headed downtown to visit BIL & Older Nephew. It was BIL's 61st birthday. We'd seen him just two days earlier and we were shocked -- and delighted! -- by just how much better he looked and sounded. He'd been gradually improving to that point, but he was just SO much more like his old self, even since our last visit on Monday. It was great to see!  
• He arrived home early Saturday afternoon! -- almost three full weeks after he was hospitalized, and 12 days after his operation.  He's a full 100 pounds lighter than he was at his peak weight!!  (But believe me, this is NOT the way you want to lose it!)  His arms are like toothpicks -- he's lost a lot of muscle mass, as well as weight (most of which he hopes to keep off for good) -- but the swelling in his abdomen is gone and the swelling in his legs has subsided considerably.  Absolutely amazing.  
• Meanwhile, dh's scratchy throat turned into a sore one, and he developed a horrible cough. Two negative covid tests to date, and he's feeling a bit better, but he's resolved to stay away from BIL and Older Nephew for a while longer. :(    (One of dh's cousins went to pick him & SIL up and bring them home.)  
• Dh couldn't resist heading over to BIL's on Saturday afternoon, though.  We both wore masks, the balcony door was open (ventilation) and we only stayed a few minutes. 
• We're both happy to see the last of downtown Toronto traffic for a while...!  It took us a FULL HOUR to travel from the hospital to the closest exit onto the expressway that runs east-west along the lakeshore -- a distance of barely more than 2 kilometres or 1 mile!  We couldn't get in the right lane in time to make the exit ramp, and had to loop around and try again. Sooooo frustrating!
• We could have taken the subway downtown -- there's a station a few miles/minutes away from where we live, with ample parking nearby, and a station right on the corner outside the hospital -- it's about a 45 minute trip -- but there's been an uptick of crime and violent incidents on there lately (albeit it's still very safe overall), and dh said he preferred to drive. And since he's the driver in the family...!  
• One of Older Nephew's Wife's friends started a GoFundMe on July 14th to benefit the family. In the week since then, it's racked up $6,000 from more than 30 generous donors! 
• I posted the link on my social media, and was tickled and touched to see two of my besties from high school donate $100 each. :)