Hi !  Welcome back. Happy Easter - even if you’re not celebrating I   hope you are eating chocolate. This week I am thinking and writing about laughter, names for our vaginas, Substack, relationship flaws, peace, rest and bored kids - Eve D.❣️

Week in review…

🏖️ I am enjoying my four day weekend immensely. Friday was decadent: I did absolutely nothing, and then after I finished doing that, I went out to dinner with my kids and sister. We ate fish, because we were raised Catholic and do not eat meat on Good Friday, although none of us can actually explain why we do this or why we care. We certainly do not celebrate the religious part of Easter (which is another way of saying we do celebrate by eating chocolate and by colouring eggs).

🧑‍🍳 While at dinner, my sister gave me her ideas for side dishes, because I volunteered to be in charge of some for a dinner G. is hosting at his place on Sunday. On the menu, tentatively, are: couscous salad with roasted vegetables and balsamic vinegar; glazed carrots; roasted potatoes ala Patricia style. Chicken is the main dish. I’ll let you know how it goes, and if any recipes are worth sharing.

🥾 I walked. Fun fact: my first “walk” ever was up a small mountain, last July. I did it with G (we were just friends at the time), and during that walk I thought I was going to die from exhaustion. I literally stopped five times to rest. (G was very patient with me!). And this week? This week I walked the same hike, and while I still regretted my life decisions while walking, I did not rest once. We’ve come a long way, baby!

✂️ I went to the hairdresser. She was not impressed with the state of my hair, and chopped a lot of it off. I’m not complaining. Side note: An often undiscussed consequence of going to hairdresser is that you get to spend a lot of hours staring at your reflection in the mirror. It’s a great form of therapy, spending such time with yourself.

👩‍🏫 I’m still tutoring my high school math student and I am proud to say that in just one month of (sporadic) tutoring, he went from a 20% test result to a 60% test result. I’m thrilled that he is gaining confidence in his math skills. Things can only go even more up from here.

💪 So many of you wrote to me in solidarity of my new venture. Thank you for reaching out - it was the best form of validation ever. I’m working on it (see below), and will have something fun to share next week.

⛺️ G wants to go hiking and camping next weekend, which made me think of the image below. But in all seriousness, as long as it’s not freezing I’ll be excited and eager to try new things, and I have a feeling that G is an expert camper.

Ice breaker question:

New feature! I will post an ice-breaker question a week. Because we all hate small talk, right? And the next person who asks me “what my spirit animal is” will be stabbed.

Are we all tired yet?

I am. And so are many of my friends. We look at the calendar and on one hand we can’t believe it’s already mid-April (so much to do still!), but on the other hand…it’s so many months to Christmas break. (Although I do understand that my American readers are counting down the months to Summer, which is only few months away. Lucky you).

An obvious solution to feeling tired all the time is to have more frequent breaks. But although technically I can take off as much time as I want when I want, the problem is that spontaneous breaks give rest but not peace. The rest of the world still demands things of me, unfortunately.

So maybe the trick is to grab peace as often as I can, even if it’s in small chunks? Here are 50 ways to find some peace, if you too are looking for inspiration:

What’s wrong with you?

I listened to a new Huberman podcast this week where he interviews Lori Gottlieb, and it’s good. Very good. Gottlieb is a psychotherapist who helps people “build strong relationships by first understanding themselves and the stories they’ve internalized about themselves and others”. It’s one of those episodes that makes so much sense as you listen to it, and I think it helps add a new, kinder perspective to ourselves and our relationships (past and present). (Fair warning: the episode is 3.5 hrs long though, and even at 1.5x speed that’s still long).

I am going to re-listen to it again this week, make notes, and come back here to share them, but in the meantime here is the one thing that stuck out for me: before you start listing off ways you wish your partner would change, start by making a list of the things you want to change about yourself. Or, as Gottlieb puts it, what’s the one thing you want to work on? It’s often super easy to list things that are “wrong” with our partners, especially if our relationship is in trouble, but it’s much more useful to realise that actually we too are far from perfect.

In the same vein - and I do love this - she asks her patients to list all the reasons why they are difficult to date. It helps her clients realise that both parties in a relationship make compromises, not just them.

(Btw, this is a great episode to listen to even if you are not having problems in your relationship, because it’s far better to be proactive in these matters. And it will probably help you become an even better partner, which has obvious benefits.)

Odds and ends:

✅ Do you have an emoji for the vagina? We all know what this is: 🍆 but what’s the equivalent for our parts? I swear to god, I saw a Instagrammer use this one recently 🌮 …WTF? This article explores some possible options, and I must say I am loving the oyster with the pearl one (🦪 ). I do not think we need a vote for approval, because it’s perfect but read the article to view other contenders.

✅ G sent me a link to 2 new Caminos that opened up in Europe, and the article is worth reading but the real joy is the whole afar.com website that is an absolute gem of a find. It is filled with nothing but inspiration for travel ideas, whether you want to walk a pilgrimage or explore Europe’s finest hotels (yes, and yes). I’ve also bookmarked “No work, No kids, No limits” which is all about travel in retirement. Happy day dreaming!

✅ I love this YouTube series from Rewilding Jude. He is a gentle soul who bought a cottage in Scotland, and is living a simple life. As he says, “I've been stuck in rut for the past couple of years - both my parents passed away at the end of 2022 and since then I've been navigating grief, burnout and just being scared to make a change. I decided that 2024 was going to be the year I set my life on fire, because life is too short to spend all of it wondering just what the point is. So I quit my job, sold my house in the suburbs and bought a 150yr old cottage in the middle of the Scottish countryside. Follow along as I attempt to renovate this little stone house, build a backyard homestead and hopefully fall in love with life, all over again.”

Staying real…

Bored children and other nightmares 

This is a frightening video about kids and school:

And this is a frightening article about how our children are losing the ability to be taught, because they literally are drowning in constant dopamine hits as provided by social media and the Internet in general.

I know my Zac (14yrs) has lost all ability to be bored. He cannot cope unless he is stimulated. Just yesterday he offered to make us flapjacks (a novelty for him), but the dopamine wore off after he made just five, and he literally sent me this from the kitchen as he was making the rest:

Apparently, waiting the one minute for the flapjack to cook on one side, flipping it and waiting another minute is not time that Zac has to waste. By the time I went to check on him in the kitchen, he had pulled up a chair, made an impromptu iPad stand on the stove, and was watching YouTube videos while the flapjacks cooked.

I am a bit horrified by this. (On the plus side, his inability to be bored also means he is forever pursuing new things, reading up on AI and trying to find shortcuts to conquering the world. So there are upsides).

Similarly, I was at a market with a friend this morning, having a gentle coffee, and her 11yr old (who was meant to be sitting with her other sibling and Zac at a separate table), interrupted us to announce that “she was bored”. Which would have been fine, except that these kids of ours make these announcements not as an observation but as a request for a solution. Zac was probably expecting me to make the rest of the flapjacks myself, my friend’s kid was probably expecting us to include her in our conversation. (Instead, my friend wisely told the kid to go entertain herself at a market that was full of stalls, people, food and drink).

I know that if, as a kid, I ever told my dad I was bored, he’d hand me a broom to sweep the driveway, a rake to rake up the leaves or a sponge to wash his car. I quickly learned to entertain myself! So maybe that’s the problem. Maybe we’ve coddled our kids too much, and they don’t know how to sit with discomfort. Which is a pity, because we need to be still and quieten our mind if we want good things to find their way to us.

Laughter, in 3 parts

I.

Growing up, and well into my adulthood, I always felt I had an inability to properly laugh. And by that, I don’t mean I had an inability to feel happy, or to feel joy, but simply that I didn’t know how to express that through deep, heartfelt, from-the-belly type of laughter. I could maybe giggle, or smile, or laugh gently, but it was usually difficult to match my laughter with the actual emotion I was feeling.

You might think that this probably has to do with a miserable childhood. And I can see that logic, except that my sister - who grew up in the same circumstances as I did - had/has the exact opposite problem to mine. She laughed too much, too loudly. (Still does, to be honest). I was often tasked with taking her to the movies when we were kids, which I always found to be a profoundly embarrassing experience. She would laugh out loud and anything mildly funny, so loud that other patrons would turn their heads and look for the culprit. I wanted to die of shame, obviously. Watching a (good) sitcom with my sister, to this day, is an experience to behold. The saying “rolling on the floor with laughter”? I have seen my sister literally do that. It’s always a bit disconcerting to watch her ability to express her joy, and match it to my inability to express mine. Weird stuff.

II.

But, despite all of the above, there were times when I was so overcome with laughter that I couldn’t stop. This wasn’t loud or obnoxious laughter, but it was uncontrollable. And it always and only happened either when I was with my sister, or my mom, or both of them. If the three of us were together, and we felt what we would call “an attack of laughter” coming on, we knew we were in big trouble. These outburst would often be in public, and would occur as a result of an inside joke, which meant that no one else would know exactly why we were laughing. Most would assume we were laughing at them. It got us into serious trouble, more than once. One time, Craig (my ex) and I took his mom and my mom out for Mother’s Day to this wonderful, quaint restaurant and his mom said something that unknowingly referenced an inside joke for my mom, Patricia and me, and we were gone. Imagine …we were trying to not laugh, but it was out of our control, and tears of laughter were literally coming out our eyes. The more my mom tried to not laugh the worse it all was for all of us - and remember, my sister laughs loudly. Eventually, Craig’s mom - very confused - just started laughing at us, and soon we were all rolling with it. All except Craig, who probably thought we were all mad, I’m sure.

III.

But something new I’ve come to realize recently: in the last 3-4 years or so, I have quietly learned to laugh out loud. I’m not sure when it happened, or how, but I think it was timed with Covid. Which is strange, because life wasn’t fun then for all the obvious reasons, but also for other more personal reasons (failed relationship, death of my mom). So here is my theory: during Covid, I shed, and I grew. I think we all did, and for me one consequence was that when coming out of the sadness, my body forgot it didn’t know how to laugh. And now it does.

I realised this yesterday afternoon, which is why I am writing about it now. G called me, and we had a seemingly casual chat. But he made me laugh -out loud - so much. (Fun fact: he used to do stand up comedy, eons ago). And then my kids made me laugh. (Fun fact: my kids and I do laugh all the time. Dinnertime is a riot in our house). And then a show (Modern Family) made me …gasp…laugh out loud again. I still have nothing on my sisters laugh (thank goodness?) but I can now express my joy appropriately. ( 🤣 ).

Let’s talk Substack

Substack is a newsletter platform is used by writers to compose and send out newsletters to your email, but you can also read them in the Substack app. The app is designed around a community of some excellent authors whom you “follow”. Your “feed” is then made up of notes the writers posts, or articles they write. It’s like Twitter, or Threads, but much more sane and literate. You’ll always have something good to read, on hundreds of possible topics/themes.

I am loving it. It’s like Twitter was 10 years ago, and like Threads could have been. If you are eager for thoughtful online discourse, consider browsing through the app and finding “your people”. The best part is that readers can comment on the Notes and on the newsletters, and the result is a vibrant community of like minded folk. The one down side of Substack is that many of the writers charge for their content, and that’s a drag because the cost of subscriptions can add up fast. But there is still a lot of excellent free content.

If you decide to join (it’s free) you can also find me there (@sneakersandheels). I have opted to keep Sneakers and Heels off Substack for now, because I feel that Substack is more for “serious” writing, and this newsletter is anything but serious. But I am going to start writing there for my “women’s community” that I mentioned last week. (Fun fact: the community is called “About Blooming Time!”. But more on that next week 😃 ).

I’ve been watching…

We watched Mickey 17 this week, which a sci-fi black comedy drama. It was both brilliant and terrible, and I know that makes no sense but I am sticking with it.

One of the protagonists is played by Mark Ruffalo, and is oh-so-definitely modelled on Trump. The comedy kind of writes itself. The main story line revolves around Mickey, who is an “Expendable” which means that if/when he dies, his whole body, mind, memory and soul are simply “re-printed” by a special 3D printer, and he “goes-on” living. As you can imagine, dying is pretty much a non-issue for him, and he is sent by the government into lethal situations (“let’s see how much radiation is on this planet..oh, a lot! Sorry Mickey, you’re dead…again”). Lots of important ethical issues arise from this, and the movie starts off well. Watch it if you are looking for 2 hours of solid entertainment that you can then discuss with a friend.

Thanks for reading!

Want more? You can find past editions here.

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P.S.