The Butt Rule

I was once doing a group exercise where we all passed around papers, there was one for each person in the group, and everyone had to write on each one and then pass it on. So sometimes one would take a little longer, or the person you were passing to would clearly be busy and the person passing to you already had another ready for you. 

We discovered one had gotten stuck along the way and everyone looked, and nope. The person passing to me told me they had given it to me. And I was sure I had passed everything but shifted to look again, and discovered I had tucked the paper under me. So it was found and all was well. 

One person told me, they called it the Look Under Your Butt Rule. That it had started when they had kids in carseats who would call out that something was lost. And often once the car was stopped the search would find it underneath the kid.

These days, I often find in my squishy couch that I have lost track of, and often standing up and looking at where I was sitting helps. Though I can't swear I haven't been sitting on a park bench and suddenly realized I misplaced something I had just a second ago. 

We could get very profound about how things you need are often just right there.  But also we are keeping track of so so much these days.  Juggling all the things.  Sometimes, a thing or two slips underneath your butt.

New Release - Dream Catchers Anthology

Newsletter subscribers got the heads up first, but surprise! 

Something a little different from me. I had the chance to participate in an anthology. We all wrote flash stories around the theme of dreams. I have two stories  in this, one straight contemporary with a smooch (flash, so not much time) and the other is a little more folklore based, though there are relationship shenanigans.

Balloon Dreams is about a woman who, after a weird dream, hops into a hot air balloon to see if a change in perspective helps, and discovers that there's a cute balloon pilot.

Dream God's Assignment is about dream god Pahulu, who is asked to send a dream message to a friend's granddaughter.

The anthology is being made available on Amazon in e and paperback. 

It was such a fun prompt and I enjoyed the chance to go in two very different (and yet still very me) directions with the theme.

If Amazon is not your book purveyor of choice, I do have plans to make the stories, including an extended cut of one, available later this year, so stay tuned for that. 

Three Interesting Things

1. It has probably been a decade since I went to Salt Lake City for dayjob reasons.  But while we were there, I insisted I needed to see the lake.  And so I and the one co-worker who felt similarly drove out there, and circled past.  It was winter, there was snow, so we didn't get out of the car.  But it was gorgeous.  So, hearing about how climate change and drought have affected it, saddens me.  This article talks about some of the efforts to address that.  

2. In Wellington, one family has some native birds nesting underneath their house.

3. A DC born artist is part of two Broadways shows coming soon. 

Support the Things You Love

I missed talking about this last week, when it was National Library Week, but as anyone who has ever working in any sort of customer service job, which is a lot of them, people are so quick to tell you what they hate. 

And fair. I am currently trying to get information from a company that I have paid money too, I get it.

So it stands out when people take the time to tell you what they love. I wrote a love letter of sorts to my library this year. I made a point to reference specific things they were doing that I loved, books was obviously a feature. I mentioned branches that I frequented. Access to learning and to COVID tests that I made use of. And ways it had improved my life. 

First, it is so much more fun to write a letter about all the things you love about something. Try it. 

Second, I wanted to mention specific things that I loved, in the hopes that those would continue. 

And third, I wanted to mention how it had helped me. 

We are also in a tight budget season this year in DC, I am going to mention libraries as a thing I love, on the list of things I want more of. It's often easy to get stuck on the newsy bits of the city budget. But libraries, funding for shelters, for youth programs, also are parts of the city budget. And I plan to advocate for them. Your list may be different. 

And of course love letters can also go to grocery stores when a particularly helpful person got something taken care of, or to bus drivers who are fabulous. I think we all get customer surveyed to death these days and it's hard to remember that you can just reach out on your own to whomever or whatever you want to lift up. Like acces to books. 

Three Interesting Things

1. I am really enjoying NPR's sibling series, and this one about grief with siblings was interesting. 

2. American University's student paper wrote about the shrinking local news coverage in DC.

3. I enjoyed this story of two friends who first met in DC, and have stayed touch throughout the years.