Weekend Reading: The Roller Coaster Edition

So, here's a protip for you: don't schedule a big work project during the last couple weeks of school. Particularly if you also have a big home renovation project starting then, too. Especially if you've just gotten back from an international vacation and might be a bit jet lagged. And whatever you do, don't agree to give a talk on something totally unrelated to your main area of expertise right after you get back from that vacation, but before your big project is due.

And if you do all of that, try not to get sick. That will only make things worse.

Honestly, I thought I well and truly learned to avoid scheduling things during what I call "silly season" at school after I did that during Pumpkin's kindergarten year. There are so many events, and special requests, and ahhhhhhh! This sums it up rather well. (h/t @RowGirlVT for that one.)

Well, I guess I forgot, because I scheduled my Get More Done class to start next week. When does school get out? A week from Monday.

And, of course, our room addition project starts next week, and I lost a lot of time last week to jet lag and am struggling to get enough sleep this week due to the effing cough I picked up. And I gave a talk about self-promotion on Monday. (That actually turned out to be a lot of fun, and gave me the push I needed to finally read What Works for Women at Work,so I'm calling that a win.)

Oops.

But don't worry if you're signed up for the class! I am actually really happy with how the prep for the class is going. I am on schedule to be ready and I'm pretty pleased with how the outline I'd written before I decided to offer the class has fleshed out into a full class.

I am significantly less happy about how ready I am for the room addition project to start, but something had to give, right? And they found lead in one of the buried layers of paint on some of the outside wood that is going to be demolished, so now the start of demolition is delayed by a couple of days. This sucks from a budget and "not having to be out of our house for an entire Saturday while the crew removes the contaminated material" standpoint, but is a huge help on the "having time to get our house and garage ready for the project" front. Silver linings. Or lead linings, I guess.

Anyway. Despite all of that, I do have some links for you, so let's get to them. They are a bit of an emotional roller coaster, though. Sorry about that.

This post from a woman game developer really resonated with me. There are costs to making everyone fit into the same damn shape hole. She explains it well. (I wrote about something similar last year.)

One woman lost her patience with manspreaders and is sitting on them. This amuses me greatly.

Brit Bennett's article about Addy Walker, the American Girl doll, and the role of Black dolls in American culture is wonderful.

On suicides and gun control. This is a powerful, personal article from Dylan Matthews.

If you haven't read Sheryl Sandberg's post about grieving and living, you should. But it will probably make you cry. It made me cry.

There's no segue from that.

This is a really well-written essay, but it isn't making me feel any better about menopause.

Anne Gibson's Pastry Box post about sucking at something is great. Go forth and continue sucking!

Pumpkin had to do a school report about Hawai'i, and in the course of her research, she came across the story of the island of Ni'ihau. Here is an old NY Times article about it. Apparently, you can now visit it.

This is how I feel sending Pumpkin off to school most days, since I think she is now old enough to decide for herself whether to wear shorts or long pants:

will you freeze, my love? / you tell me it's between you / and the fickle sun #haiku

— Cyd Harrell (@cydharrell) June 4, 2015

And that's all I have. Happy weekend, everyone!