The Weekly Wrap: April 10, 2022

I had a not so great week.

After three intense weeks of work and personal stuff, I was looking forward to this week being a bit lighter. While the workload itself was generally manageable, things bubbled up that drained my emotional batteries.

I'm an academic librarian. Generally, our students are fantastic and I love nothing more than working directly with them. Sometimes, however, things go awry. This week, a student I assist all the time asked for help but then rejected every attempt on my end to provide that help. The rejection was loud and confrontational. It was so bad, I had to write up an incident report. The next day, another student called my direct line and opened the call with "You people are incompetent." Never a great start. 

At home, our kiddo is about to go through a growth spurt which means she's being assertively independent, cranky, and does not listen. This amounts to a lot of screams, whining, and thrashing. It's frustrating and tiring.

On top of all of this, it was gray and rainy almost every day. The weather seemed to reflect my overall mood instead of helping me out of my funk. Thanks, Mother Nature.

If I were to add things up, all of this amounted to about 6 hours of my life. But those 6 hours ruined everything else. The emotional baggage carried over impacting my mood, ability to engage, and my sleep quality. Instead of trying to climb out of it, I just let myself disengage and wallow in the grumps. 

Then, as the sun finally came out on Friday, I let myself take a deep inhale and start over. 

How was your week?

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• New York City libraries continue the trend of libraries going fine free. Good. [NYT]
• The intentions behind IRBs are good. The process now is a case study in bureaucracy. [The Chronicle of Higher Education]
• If you like plants but don't have a ton of room, try these varieties. [WaPo - gift link]
• You don't always need to toss moldy food. [Real Simple]
• How to talk to kids, even little ones, about consent. [A Cup of Ambition] 
• Perhaps we can all learn from logical consequences. [Is My Kid the Asshole?]

• When Russia's currency broke. [Planet Money]
• Our buildings are dangerous to birds. [99% Invisible]
• A better use of our food waste. [Gastropod]
• This lake is a flamingo resort. [Atlas Obscura]
• Adults need to have fun too! [Life Kit]
• Finding the taste of umami. [Short Wave]

• I confess to having a bit of a film crush on Dwayne Johnson. If he is in it, I will watch it. We watched Jungle Cruise in the hopes that it would be just as good as the remake of Jumanji. It wasn't (because there was no Jack Black) but it was still a delightful romp of a flick. It reminded me of The Mummy, a cult classic of the 90s I adore. Very campy but with great production values. [Disney+]
• I finally got to watch Bridgerton! It took everything in my willpower not to devour this in one night. This was the perfect balm to my bad week. I don't care that it's over acted. I don't care the plot is contrived. I don't care that is formulaic. I want it all. I want the lushness. I want the romance. I want the lingering looks and slow burn. Give it to me! I will be rewatching this soon. Not even my husband's jokingly snide commentary can stop my love for this series. [Netflix]

• Why does buttermilk not come in smaller containers? We've got some hanging out in our fridge so I made two batches of buttermilk pull-apart rolls. I slightly oversalted the tops, but these were otherwise tasty. They are best straight out of the oven while they're warm, but not bad a few days later. I froze our second batch. (Still have buttermilk to use...) [Budget Bytes]
• I'm trying to be better about not eating out the days I work in the office. This week, I made Mediterranean tuna salad as my meal prep. It was good but needed more acid. Next time, I will half the oil and triple the vinegar. Might add capers or kalamata olives and some sliced roasted bell peppers too. [Budget Bytes]