5 Quick Things #205 š¬
Hamlet hotties, an unboxable lady, busy ants, & we just got a letter
Hi there,
September is arguably the most frustrating month in central Texas. It sounds like it should be early fall, and by all accounts, the end of the month is per the calendar hanging on the kitchen wall āĀ but according to my wardrobe choices and the stickiness of my skin, itās decidedly not. While others write about hearing geese in the morning or finally pulling out a long-sleeved shirt, the sun seems to bear down even harder over here, finally scorching the last of my vined backyard garden melons.
Gratefully, this week the mornings have felt about five to ten degrees cooler (before the afternoons rise back up to near-100 Fahrenheit, of course). Iām tempted to bemoan the midday heat, but instead, Iāll choose to praise the morning and evening bookends. Hooray! There are tiny pockets of the day when itās lovely outdoors!
How is it in your neck of the woods?

5 Quick Things āļø
1.Ā šĀ New episode of A Drink With a Friend!Ā šĀ Seth & I pull on the thread we started weaving a few months ago, practicing the art and habit of noticing the everyday beauty around us. As always ā as a listener, youāre invited to nod along and notice your own as well. Join in this time-tested practice!
2.Ā āShe looks beatific and tough as nails at onceā ā We should all be more like Dorothy Day. I one-hundred percent agree. (NYT)
3.Ā Iāve never heard of the last two, but I agree that this is a great list of podcasts for tweens and teens.
4.Ā Iāve been thinking about why LOTR feels like such a fitting story these days, and this piece on Tolkienās hope in spite of his hard life explores it well. āWe need a story about when times were hard and showed no sense of ever getting easier, and the heroic path was to believe against all evidence that they would.ā
5.Ā And finallyā¦Ā Steve came back to say hi. This wasnāt my generationās thing (Iām a few years too old), but a few of my kids loooved the reruns.
Currently Reading, Watching, Listening š§
This Best Film Soundtracks playlistĀ (because why not make cleaning the house feel just a bit more epic?)
Quotable š¬
āIt is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?ā
ā Henry David ThoreauĀ #
Inside The Commonplace š”
No new essay or conversation this week (it was a doozy past couple of days!), but Iām currently working on: a list of my current must-open newsletters (itās very curated so itās short but mighty), thoughts on the feminine genius and its connection to writing, reflections on why we listen to certain music at certain seasons, why we need more wholesome-and-gritty YA novels now more than ever, and more āĀ including a poll for subscribers about which classic we should read together for our fall/winter book club. If youād like to subscribe for full access to these pieces, Iād love to have you! (And thank you in advance for your support.)
Elsewhere (by someone else) š
Question For You to Ponder⦠š¤
What do you want to say yes to right now? What 3-5 things will you need to say no to for it to happen?
Have a good weekend!
xo, Tsh
p.s.Ā We finally migrated AoS over to a new server, and while weāre still updating a lot of old posts (12 years of writing = lots of them!), itās slowly becoming the archived library itās ultimately meant to be.
So funny..my youngest just started college. And I have been singing the Blues Clues song for when Steve went off to college!