1) Book club 2025
For the past two years, my book club took a different approach to our monthly meetings. Essentially, since we had six members, every member got to “own” two months (their birthday month, since none of us share a birthday month, and a non-birthday month). When it was your turn, you chose three book selections that the group would vote on and planned a fun book club outing. This year, we decided to switch things up because a) we now have a seventh member, which makes evenly splitting the year was not possible and b) it can be a lot of pressure on people to own all of the planning for one month. Instead, we all came to our January meeting last weekend with a selection of book ideas and a selection of activity ideas. We all wrote our ideas on Post-It notes, folded them up, and placed them in two jars. Now, every month, we will select three book ideas and three activity ideas to vote on! This is going to make things very exciting, I think.
We kicked things off by selecting our February book (our February activity was already chosen; it was actually supposed to be our January activity but the place we were going to had to cancel on us) so we only chose a book during our meeting (it was between The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, Good Material by Dolly Alderton, and What the Wind Knows by Amy Harmon—we chose Good Material). The books/activities that aren’t chosen go back into their respective jars to be perhaps picked another month.
God, I love my book club. We’re the best.
2) Goods Unite Us
My friend Amber introduced our group to this app during book club called Goods Unite Us. The app shows you all different companies and where they stand politically. It takes into account any donations made to political campaigns by the organization and its senior employees. It also gives each company a Campaign Finance Reform Score from -100 to 100. You want a positive number here. As the app states, “The higher the score, the more likely that purchases from the company or brand will lead to meaningful campaign finance reform.” And vice versa – buying from a company with a negative score means helping to keep corporate money in politics. I’ve been obsessed with looking up companies on this app, and I feel like it is one small way I can try to make a difference by not shopping (or shopping a lot less) at companies who (a) lean Republican and (b) have a negative CFRS.
You can also answer a few questions to learn what your overall rating is and CFRS. That was a sobering experience for me. (My score was -4, sigh.) But knowledge is power, right?
One big change I want to make is to switch from Publix (86% Republican with a -86 CFRS) to Aldi (they have a perfect CFRS because they do not give significant money to political campaigns). I love shopping at Publix, but do not love their political contributions, so this is an easy change I can make. (Plus, Aldi is a lot cheaper than Publix so that’s a win/win if I’ve ever heard one.)
3) Medical routines
There’s nothing that screams “I’m getting old” than talking about medical routines, eh? I seem to be building a repertoire of them. Let’s discuss:
- Radial nerve pain – Every night, I use a hand massager to try to reduce some of the inflammation and then I slather on topical lidocaine all over my fingers, palm, and wrist. Right before going to sleep, I put on a splint to keep my wrist immobile.
- Scalp psoriasis – Every night, I use a prescription-grade scalp solution on my problem areas (I have three of them, two on each side of my head and one at the base of my scalp) and 1-2 times a week, I wash my hair with a prescription shampoo (clobetasol propionate).
- Sleep apnea – Obviously, I sleep with my machine every night. In the mornings, I wipe down my mask and dump out the humidifier water. Once a week, I take apart the whole machine and soak it in unscented, gentle detergent.
- Hidradenitis suppurativa – My newest condition! Twice a day, I slather on antibiotic ointment and whenever I shower, I use a prescription-grade soap for my underarm where the burst cyst is located. Hopefully, this will clear up within a few weeks.
And if I have to add an entire diabetes treatment regimen to all of this, I might lose my mind.
4) Mushrooms (not those kind)
One of my goals for this year is to try one new thing every month. I almost missed January because the thing I was going to choose as my “one new thing” ended up getting cancelled. But I did my new thing this week, which was eating a new type of food! This week, I made beef stroganoff and typically I leave out the mushrooms because ick. But then I got to thinking… are they ick? I’ve never actually tried mushrooms. Maybe I’ll love mushrooms! So this time around, I dumped in a whole carton of mushrooms into the meal and hoped for the best.
And… ick. My spidey senses were correct. I do not like mushrooms. Live and learn!
5) Weekend plans
Oh, I have a beautiful plan-less weekend ahead of me, which is great because my upcoming weekends are going to be quite busy. I will have my regular writing date with Mikaela on Saturday morning and my mom and I are going to try out a new yoga class on Sunday morning. Other than that, the weekend is all mine!
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