Hi ! Welcome back. I have good news or bad news, depending on where you are in the world: this weekend brings you the shortest or the longest day of the year. From here on it’s either uphill towards summer or downhill towards winter- (but whichever way applies to you, I assure you it will be very quick!) This week I am thinking and writing about prenups, old dogs, pranks, unsolicited d*ickpics, the price of cheese and the good old days- Eve D.❣️

Week in review…

I had a much better week than last week, no doubt because it was much warmer. And it started off with a long weekend, which is always, of course, a pleasure.

💔 We had to say goodbye to my sister’s beloved dog, Bella. She was a miniature Schnauzer, and joined our family over 15 years ago (!), before Zac was even around. She was a real matriarch of the clan, and will be sorely missed. But at least she had a full, full life. ❤️ 

We had a long weekend, and G and I contemplated going on a hike on the public holiday, but instead we went out for breakfast and actually worked, like boring old people. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the morning. It was surprisingly fun to sit at the same table as G, while also working (and focussing) on my own stuff. I got a lot done, and it felt like a good way to spend the first part of the day and week. I think/hope we’ll do it more often.

📺️ I had an impromptu, last minute opportunity to have mid-week dinner with G, and we opted for takeout Chinese, so we could eat in front of his fire place. The restaurant we got it from had a TV on the wall, that played “Gags” while we waited for our food. Gags is the Canadian version of “You got punk’d” or “Funny People” (the South African version). Premise: people get set up in funny situations, while secret cameras record their reaction. I was in stitches, as was everybody else who was waiting for their food. I thought it was such a clever way to have customers pass the time, while also putting themselves in a good mood. G and I both watched the old South African version when we were kids, and we even remembered the same specific skits! (I guess that’s what happens when your TV only had one channel 😂 !). G reminded me of this one below, where an apprentice electrician is pranked to believe he demolished a smoke stack by mistake ( 🤣 🤣 🤣 ):

🍀 Speaking of pranks…Micole had an interesting week. Do you remember me telling you a couple weeks ago (with huge excitement) that I managed to finally solve my Wordle in one guess? Well, this past Saturday, Micole also managed to do it in one (with the word “prank”, aptly). What makes this feat even more special is that Micole plays a different first word every day, which decreases her chances of getting a guess-in-one. You would think. Except that not three days later, she managed to do it again!!!! Yep. Micole solved a Wordle in one-guess, twice. In the same week. (The second time was with the word “ghost”). I was, and still am, totally gobsmacked by this! I think she should buy a Lotto ticket.

I cleaned out my house! It gave me such pleasure to get rid of two big rubbish bags of crap, and donate one bag of clothes. I crank up the music, and attack those cupboards with a vengeance 😂 . It’s amazing how much lighter I feel every time I do this (equally amazing is how quickly crap accumulates!).

Is that it? Can’t really think of much else I did that was outside of work and normal life. Winter is always a bit more boring than the other seasons, I guess.

Prenups and other difficult conversations

Given that I’ve never been married, I’ve never had a prenup. And despite the fact that I am all for having difficult conversations, I honestly would hate to discuss/negotiate a prenup with my soon-to-be-husband. Assuming I would have done this in my 20s or 30s, and that there wasn’t much wealth (yet) and any kids would still be coming, I would effectively be asking my fiancee how much he values me sacrificing a big chunk of my ladder-climbing career to raise our kids. I would also be looking for considerable compensation if he was the one who messed up the marriage (by having an affair, a midlife crisis or change of heart). I suspect this prenup conversation would not be easy, or fun, and if I was forced to have it I would farm it out to a lawyer asap.

So I was interested to listen to James Saxton on the Huberman Lab podcast this week. He is a celebrity lawyer, (who, incidentally, says he has a PhD in other people’s infidelity), and has very, very strong opinions (of course) on the importance of a prenup. As he says…you have a prenup whether you sign one or not. The only difference is whether you negotiate the terms, or whether your government and judicial system does. James has drafted thousands (if not tens of thousands) of prenups, and is clearly passionate about the topic (Side note: a good prenup in the US costs about $10k-$20k!, per party).

But!! I was blown away by this: out of those thousands of couples whose prenups James drafted, only a handful (as in…less than ten) have actually gotten divorced (so far)!!!!. He says it’s a self selecting system: the people who are able to sit down and have the difficult conversation are also more likely to sort out any issues in their marriage before they become too big to handle. I absolutely love this. I also suspect that (maybe?) the process of negotiating the prenup awakens some people to the realities of real life, and exposes the real value system of their potential spouses, and possibly cancels the engagement, in lieu of a divorce down the line.

All this ties in beautifully to the brilliant article I recently read by the wonderful Cate Hall, Are you stuck in movie logic?. She talks about how pretty much every movie’s plotline is dependant on the characters not having difficult conversations. If the characters actually talked with each other, all the drama would disappear. And - of course - she argues that we live our lives too much like movie characters, and don’t converse enough. She then gives guidance on how to bring up issues even if you can’t quite explain or name them (those icky things that give you a “funny off-feeling” that you cannot quite place). “The better I get at [difficult conversations], the less I’m threatened by conflict, and the more it seems like an opportunity to clarify what’s really going on, to grow closer to myself and others”.

I’ve spoken about the power of difficult conversations before, and I thought I solidly practiced it, but having now read her article I realise I have a lot of work to do in this regard. I need to speak up even more. Highly recommend the article.

(Side note: Cate Hall is quite a character. She’s a lawyer, a professional poker player, a startup founder and a brilliant writer. I strongly recommend her newsletter. But one of my favourite pieces of writing was written by her husband about her, Things you learn dating Cate Hall. He wrote it just before they got married. It’s a great read, a real love letter.)

Odds and ends:

✅ Go whelm yourself! Someone posted this sage advice on one of my social media feeds, and it basically suggests that instead of being overwhelmed all the time, we choose to live a life with just the right amount of whelm. So not too little, so as not to have a mundane existence, but also not too much so that we can enjoy the things we end up doing. Of course this is easier said than done, but I think it’s a cute little quip to tell ourselves every once in a while. Breathe, and find your whelm. Go do it.

✅ How do you sign off your emails? I usually simply say “Regards, Eve” or “Thanks, Eve”. But I recently saw a suggestion that on Mon-Thurs we sign off with “Enjoy the rest of your week” and on Friday we say “Hope you have a great weekend”. Not radical, but still worth considering.

✅ I once read that the price of the ink in your printer is considerably more expensive than the price of oil, but now I will never think of cheese and cars quite the same away. The graph below indicates the price per pound of cars (blue) or cheese (yellow). The top blue bar is a Ferrari. The top yellow bar is Roquefort cheese, which is considerably more expensive per kilo than a Mercedes S Class (the next blue bar down)!!

 ✅ This past week, specifically, I found myself reminiscing, and even said to G that I fear I am at the age when I start referencing “the good old days” all the time. Were the old days better? I feel like they were more financially secure: people lived in decent houses, went on regular holidays, drove reliable cars, easily filled up their trolleys at grocery shops. A friend and I were chatting and we both agreed that our parents never worried about the price of energy, but (at least in South Africa) most people will switch on their geyser only a couple of hours before they need the hot water (for showers, etc), unless they are connected to solar power (which is effectively free). Then I saw this graph: the median age for buying a house in US in 1981 was 38; today it’s 56yrs. Hmm.

✅ The Japanese have a word for the speckled light created by trees: komorebi. It literally means “sunlight leaking through trees”.

More pranks…

I have to share this hilarious story. A woman received an unsolicited d*ckpic from a man, and decided to play a little game. She: found his mom on Facebook; found a photo mom had posted of the guy as a younger man; photoshopped the photo into a locket and…used all that to convince the man she is his daughter. 10/10. 🤣 (Sidenote: I’ve only ever received one of such pics, and it was from a female friend who forwarded me one that she had received. I was not happy!!).

I’ve been watching…

We watched Ballad of Wallis Island, and it was WONDERFUL. I loved it so, so much - I think this will be one of my favourite movies ever. I don’t often laugh out loud while watching movies, but this one had me doing so repeatedly. It is very funny, and all the humour comes from very well delivered, dead pan dialogue. I didn’t know anything about this movie when I started watching, and I kind of want to offer you the same experience. Just go find it, and watch it when you are in the mood for a gentle story, that is about music, love, heartache… but one that is also funny. I’ll include the trailer below, as usual, in case you are very curious. (Fair warning: I just watched the trailer, and I started laughing again, so maybe I am just in the right and very specific mood for this kind of movie, and you might not be).

I also spent a fair chunk of the long weekend watching TV with G. We ticked off American Made (not bad, starring Tom Cruise as a drug smuggling pilot) and Titan, which is the documentary about the tourist submarine that imploded on the way to tour the Titanic. That is a very good documentary, but the story it tells is of horrific incompetence, arrogance, and of course tragedy.

And I finished watching Only Murders in the Building, and I’d like to say that for once I correctly figured out who the murderer was well ahead of the finale!

Looking ahead…

Life has been a bit different lately because Craig was here visiting Zac, and that always upheaves our schedule and focus…but life should go back to normal this week. Zac is participating in what will hopefully be a fun but challenging online “summer” camp with kids from around the world, that takes place over the next 4 weeks and is meant to teach him actually useful life/leadership skills, well outside of the boring classroom curriculum that our kids are subjected to. Micole is writing her two board exams this week, and I’ll spare you the details other than to say…she’s not going to be much fun until Thursday, when it’s all over.

On a plus note, I am going out to a fabulous restaurant tonight, with some of my favourite people and I am also planning to start watching Murderbot on Apple TV. I loved the books, and will tell you more about it next week.

Thanks for reading!

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P.S.