Oof, but we’ve been sick over here at Chez Davis-Rose.
I had some nasty virus whose main symptom was an excruciating sore throat for five days, and then another five days of coughing and general malaise. Apparently there’s a lot of strep going around, but that’s not what I had (my comrade doctor says she’s seeing so much of it that I apparently broke a long streak of positive tests). Whatever it was, it was so painful that I had trouble sleeping—and getting to sleep a lot is supposed to by the consolation prize of being sick, right? As it turns out, not sleeping enough is my kryptonite—almost nothing can tank my mood and stir up generalized anxiety more effectively than several sleepless nights.
And then, just as the virus was healing, allergy season arrived. 🌳 🤧 (Tree pollen is my other kyrptonite).
And then, Joel came down with what I had.
😟 Like I said, oof.
But! Today I woke up (in fact I’m still in bed as I write this in my notes app) feeling for the first time in weeks like maybe today could be a good day.
It is after all, the equinox, and here in the northern hemisphere we’re beginning our spin through spring. Normally I have mixed feelings about spring because a) allergies and b) spring leads inexorably to summer, my least favorite season.
But today I’m even looking on the bright side about this summer (as my son recently said when I told him I was out with friends at 10:00 pm, “Who even are you?”) because:
The van is finished!! We’re just waiting for nights to be warm enough and state parks to open for camping, and then we’ll start testing things out in anticipation of an August road trip!
Grand Tour bicycling season starts soon! 🚴 I think we’re going to watch the Giro d’Italia in May, though not with the same fanatical devotion with which we watch the Tour in July. (I do have a Big Ideas essay about grand tour bicycling in my mind that maybe I’ll actually write this year).
I’m finally building a permanent, sturdy, dog-proof fence in the backyard (after years of flimsy, failed attempts), and I have seeds sprouting under grow lights—so it seems I may actually have a garden is in the works.
And while I have had to take some time off from my social butterfly local friend-group coordinating duties, I’m hatching a scheme for an artist salon on the summer solstice (I had originally thought maybe I would do something in person on the equinox, but life had other plans—still, we are having an Equinox Salon this afternoon at 3:00 pm EDT in DDS—a lovely, long-standing tradition and I’m so ready to hang with my peeps again after missing two weeks of peer support).
Oh! And also, we had to postpone the online Spiral Time workshop I’m doing through Glasgow Zine Library, which is now scheduled for Monday 25 March at 1:30 pm EDT. As it turns out, I am quite excited about some new thoughts I am developing for this workshop (early on in my sickness, I literally couldn’t focus on anything but the very most ridiculous of YouTube videos, but eventually I was able to graduate to reading again—and I’m in the midst of a trio of books that are in a way about the same thing—the ravages of capitalism and the importance of community—and now that my synapses are sort of firing again, it’s making me excited about this workshop in a new way). I’m pretty sure there are still places available for the workshop, I just looked and it seems the workshop is sold out (*gulp*), but you can get on the waitlist here (or just join DDS, where we talk about this stuff all the time). I’m also doing three more workshops for the Zine Library, if you want to get tickets early!
I know this newsletter is a little all over the place, but I woke up feeling like publishing something here on The Spiral Lab and this is what I’ve got 🤷🏼♀️.
As for the future of this newsletter, I’d really love to publish more stuff more often, but sometimes I’m not really sure if folks are interested in the rather mundane things that I would write about if I were to do this more often. Of course everyone loves an eloquent, well-crafted essay full of thoughtful insights, but I honestly think I only have a few of those a year, lol. The rest of what I’m thinking about at any given time is much more prosaic. Like how things are growing in the garden. Thoughts on entertaining local friends. What I’m baking. Home improvement updates. Travel plans. I would like to write more about that stuff, and show you photos, and maybe even make little videos (no promises…) — but I’m just not sure any of that is very interesting? What do you think?
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