💐 Spring Guide: Links & recs for joyful renewal

Take the rest of your life as seriously as you take your job

February was spent almost entirely horizontal as wave after wave of illness passed through our house. Oscar went down first, arriving back-lit in the bedroom doorway sometime around 12:45 AM with his little fists balled up, rubbing his eyes.

“Mama my eyes hurt.”

“Climb in my love, I’ll scratch your back.”

So first it was pink eye, followed a few days later by a surprising spike in his body temperature and then a late-season snow, each one lashing us tighter to the leaded, grey winter sky.

By Wednesday I was cheerfully ignoring the existence of a warm, cottony feeling in the back of my throat because it’s just got to be dry air and not the virus my child has been aggressively coughing into my eyeballs for the last five days.

“Yeah, Jory had made reservations and everything.” I said when I called my mom to wish her a happy Valentine’s Day.

“I’m sure it won’t be so bad — we just want to get a good rest tonight so we can go out this weekend.”

I crawled into bed on Wednesday, proud of myself for …