9 Things Making My Life Better So Far This Year (Jan. – March 2019)
Winter is a tough time for me, so although I was expecting the trouble I had compiling this list, I was expecting the opposite kind: actually, there were too many things that made the past three months better for me! #blessed
Seriously, though, I am really lucky that so many little things made the dullest time of year a smidgen livelier for me. It was a tough choice, but I narrowed the ones I wanted to share down to these nine.
1. Silicone muffin cups
A kind and useful gift from my in-laws.
(Also, I’m really enjoying lunch recipes from The Just Bento Cookbook and Effortless Bento.)
2. Old-cheddar shreds
First, let’s not fall into the ableist/classist traps of equating pre-prepared food with laziness, wastefulness, lack of skill, or lack of taste. I sometimes buy pre-shredded cheese in part because shredding block cheese is often painful for me. If you have time, ability, and the inclination to shred your own cheese, great. If the time-cost-value equation doesn’t tilt that way for you, also great. You know what works for you.
However, I’ve learned that when I do have the energy/good pain day to shred my own cheese, using funky old cheddar tastes way better to me than mild store-brand orange cheddars. For some reason, if a cheese is good enough to eat on its own, I’ve always figured I had to save it for that. But, duh, great cheese is great as a topping for other foods too. Props to my cousin Ken for prompting this epiphany when he served Balderson shreds on taco night, and I went from “You’re allowed to do that???” to “OMG, why haven’t I been doing that???”
3. Quiet for Gmail (Android app by SGarcia)
I try to keep my computer turned off during non-work hours, but when I get a work email on my phone, it bothers me until I respond to it. It’s not that the answer is urgent — it usually isn’t — it’s that I can feel it squirming on my to-do list.
This app allows me to schedule recurring syncing hours for specific email accounts on my Android phone and to turn off those accounts when I’m not working. It’s calmed down my weekends and helped me get to sleep at a reasonable time every night.
4. One-Punch Man (anime adapted by Madhouse, 2015; English dub by Viz, 2016)
I put off watching this because I secretly suspected that the story of Saitama, a bored hero who can beat any foe with a single punch, was going to be all existential ennui and no plot. Instead, I found myself caught up this loving parody of shonen anime. Like any good comedy, it has real emotional stakes at its heart.
5. Tetris 99 (Nintendo Switch game by Nintendo, developed by Arika)
I wasted my youth playing Tetris, and it’s finally paying off!
I never understood why battle-royale games were so popular until one came out in a genre I like. Yes, it’s great to play Tetris against 98 opponents and jump right back into another match as soon as you’re eliminated from the previous one. As Husband pointed out, if you do poorly, you want to play again to do better, and if you do well, you want to play again to do well some more (I LIKE WINNING).
6. Dirty Computer (album by Janelle Monáe, 2018)
Full disclosure: I’m not super into music, so I try to broaden my horizons by reading the album reviews in the general publications I like and listening to them. I liked Dirty Computer on Spotify, so I bought it. Some of it goes over my head — that’s okay, not every piece of art is or should be about me! — and I love the queer, feminist, anti-racist stuff that doesn’t.
7. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (TV show by DreamWorks Animation Television, 2018)
I loved showrunner Noelle Stevenson’s graphic novel Nimona and comic series Lumberjanes, so it’s no surprise that I like She-Ra too. True, it’s not nearly as amazingly campy as the eighties original, but I like the fast-paced plot that gives the characters enough heart and motivation to feel sincere without bogging down the story in angst. I love the way the show celebrates all sorts of femininity on its own terms instead of making Adora feel like He-Man’s calculated toy-sales spin-off.
8. Writing real letters
I used to write long, rambly paper letters to my distant friends. I haven’t in a while — I don’t have as much time as Single, Grad-Student Me did. And I figured that generally, email and Facebook let me communicate when I needed to, right?
But I decided these past months that a) I missed writing letters; and b) nobody said my letters still have to be five double-sided pages long. So I prodded myself to write shorter letters, when I feel like it, to friends or family I haven’t seen in a while. I haven’t written many (see above re: time), but I enjoy it when I do.
Added bonus: sometimes when you write letters, you get letters back in reply! (Double added bonus: nothing makes you push the limits of your German vocabulary faster than writing a short letter in German…)
9. Giant popovers (I’ve been using this recipe as a base, only without the onion, pepper, and cheese)
This is actually totally unconnected to my New Year’s challenge to make Yorkshire puddings from scratch, similar though the two dishes are. I was looking for more non-legume, non-tofu, non-entirely-eggs vegetarian dinners to make, and I came across this one. I like how easy it is to make and customize, how it uses ingredients I generally have already, and how striking it is when it first comes out of the oven.