On Friday temperatures climbed into the 70s and it's been balmy all weekend. I celebrated by doing nine loads of laundry. There is a washer and dryer in the basement of our apartment building, but we have to go outside to access it. The only thing worse than doing laundry is having to first carry your clothes through the freezing cold or the rain or the snow, even if it's only for 100 feet. So during the winter we do the bare minimum--work clothes and underwear only--and sheets and towels and other miscellaneous garments pile up.
While I was tackling the mountain of laundry, I decided to try out the decluttering lessons I learned this week from The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Per Marie Kondo's very specific instructions, I began with the category of clothing. I dumped out everything in my closet and dresser and purged three giant garbage bags worth of sweaters, pants, shirts, athletic gear, dresses, pajamas, undergarments, and accessories that no longer "spark joy." It was gratifying but exhausting, and I'm not even rid of everything yet. Tomorrow I'm going to have to call an Uber to shlep all this stuff to Goodwill. I posted some peeks into my dresser drawers on Brisket.
Before the laundry and decluttering marathon, I did manage to enjoy the weekend. I spent two hours yesterday morning laying in the sun in the park and reading. I brought veggies to snack on, and my yoga tune-up balls so I could give myself a little pressure point massage. It was heavenly.
Temperatures will dip again tomorrow, and there's snow forecasted on Tuesday. I'm hoping the vitamin D I absorbed this weekend will get me through to the next warm, sunny day. Fingers crossed.
Here's what captured my attention this week...
I'm reading: a lot of books at once, despite my effort to pare the list down from last week. I'm still working my way through Adrienne Rich's On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita, and Peniel Joseph's Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America. I finished Tomi Adeyemi's Children of Blood and Bone, which had a great ending but dragged through the middle. The characters made one too many stops on their quest, and the lusty side plot did not make the endless march across the magical land of Orîsha more tolerable (though I think if I read this as a teenager I would have vehemently disagreed).
I also finished Marie Kondo's The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and started reading Thomas Mullen's Lightning Men. It's the sequel to Darktown, which I read last month and really enjoyed. Set in 1950, two years after Darktown, Lightning Men follows the same black police officers as they investigate a new murder/corruption case. Already I can tell that the Civil Rights Movement will play a bigger role in the sequel, which I definitely find more intriguing than the whodunnit. But I'm a historian.
I'm listening to: Chelsea Jade, after someone compared her to Haim on Facebook.
I'm watching: Baba the Cosmic Barber's World's Greatest Head Massage. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I've watched the video twice since discovering it earlier this week and it is so relaxing. What? How? Why? All valid questions. You'll just have to experience it for yourself.
Enjoy posts like this one? Check out Brisket to read more about what's on my mind--just bring some bread to go with the meal!