Work that taps into our humanity.
Routine work can be outsourced or automated; artistic, empathic, nonroutine work generally cannot.
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The first step to getting things fixed is to know they are broken. This is true whether you work for a software company, are coaching a little league team, or write a blog. None of us is all-knowing, and we all make mistakes. I would venture to guess that most of us, if we have made a mistake, especially on a project that we care very much about, would like to fix it.
So thank you, thank you, thank you to those of you who have pointed out errors on my site. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that my mistakes are not hanging out for all the world to see anymore. That would be embarrassing! What kind of mistakes do I mean? Here are a few of the more recent ones:
- The Mesh gallery on my recent Making apple pie: a photo essay was broken. My dad reported it to me, as did several readers in the comments. As a result I was able to report feedback to the Mesh team, and they got it fixed up.
- I misspelled “lobotomy” in every instance in my Half-full post. Thank you to my friend Dee, of birchnature.com, who texted me and said “Hi hon – love the new post! Heads up, though, it’s lobotomy, not labotomy.” Thank you, Dee ❤️
- I entered some HTML into the visual editor instead of my text editor on a recent post, and the code appeared on the front end of my site. My coworker Kelly pinged me to let me know it was showing, and also make sure it wasn’t an error with the editor. No, I assured her, it was not the editor. It was a case of PEBCAK.
I know it can be hard to tell someone, hey, you’ve got a big chunk of black bean on your front tooth. But that’s the kind thing to do, right? Better to tell them and be embarrassed for five seconds than to let them walk around ALL DAY with gunk in their smile.
Not that that’s ever happened to me.
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It’s that time of year. Time to scope the outside of the house. Find a flat area to build a stand. Time to poke around, asking for whispered tips on whose is best-seasoned — I’ve heard folks are secretive about sources around here.
It’s time to think about firewood.
When we moved from Florida to Minnesota, I made a wish board for everything I wanted to find in a home. On the board, I wrote things like walking distance to the kids’ school, safe neighborhood, a place for a garden, and the thing I wanted most? A fireplace. The house we found had all of those things.
I loved our fireplace. Each fall we bought half a cord of wood. We stacked it under an eave, on a red brick patio, up against the house next to the kitchen door. The eave mostly protected it from getting buried by snow, and in winter I’d build fires in the afternoon when the kids came home from school. We’d drink hot cocoa and listen to wood pop, and we’d pull the bean bag next to the hearth and we’d read books and play Sorry!
I can’t wait to do that again. When we first moved to Virginia, we lived in a townhouse without a fireplace. In fall and winter, on my walks and runs through the hills, I’d smell chimney smoke in the cold air. I’d watch white puffs rise from the valley. I could smell the wood burning, and I imagined rocking chairs, blanket wrapped laps, quiet broken only by snapping, popping, and the soft turning of a novel’s pages. I ached for a fireplace every time I smelled chimney smoke. When it came time to buy a house, due to timing, pricing, and the small size of our town, our options were very limited. I feared we would not find a house with a fireplace.
But we did. And last night, as we worked on our September budget, I was thrilled to add in:
- Fireplace stand
- Fireplace tools
- Firewood
I can’t wait for our first fire.
Photo credit: Ben Dwyer of scruffian.com. Full image available here.
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End-of-day statement
At 5pm today, someone was ready for my work day to be done. After kitten #1, also known as Tootsie and “bad kitty,” sat between me and my monitor, chased the arrow on the screen, and then stepped all over the keyboard, I finally got the hint and logged off. -
Our daughter’s greatest struggle right now is, “I know I want to be a pastry chef, but I also want to be a swimmer and musician. I know I can play guitar on the side, but I doubt culinary schools will have swim teams. Maybe I can find a local swim team in the town where my culinary school is.” And so on. She is 9.
Regardless of what she will ultimately choose for her life’s course, I am more than willing to encourage all three. Especially the pastry chef idea. So today, I helped her make her first pie.
May this be the first of many.
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I am super excited. I’m about to start on an entirely new and foreign-to-me part of the country on my Andrea Reads America reading project: Idaho. What I’m most giddy about is that there is an author I’ve been hearing about for years — on book podcasts and in my book-nerd circles — and I’ve been waiting to get to Idaho so I can finally read her. The author? Marilynne Robinson.
Robinson is probably best known for Gilead, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, but Gilead is set in Iowa and I haven’t gotten to Iowa yet. Instead, I’ll be reading Housekeeping, which is set on a glacial lake in Idaho, Robinson’s home state. Like Gilead, Housekeeping glitters with awards and nominations, including nominations for both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award.
I’m dying to download Housekeeping, which is apparently set on a glacial lake and is a dark and intense read. I know nothing about Idaho, and even less about glacial lakes in Idaho, and so I’m eager to not only read a (hopefully) phenomenal book, but a (hopefully) phenomenal book set in a harsh, unknown-to-me climate.
I’m dying to download the book, but I’m refraining. I’m delaying gratification until I’ve finished my write-up for the Hawaii books I read. I’ve been sitting on these Hawaii notes for months, and it is time to compile and post them. Housekeeping — and Idaho — will be my reward for publishing, and for finally getting back on track with Andrea Reads America. I can’t wait!
Butterfly Mind 