Hi all. I’m back. I’ve been AWOL on this blog for a few days, because I’ve been way busy with paid work.

Sidenote: All those folks that talk about “fake media” can kiss my ass. Do you know how many hours of work go into every article? Holy Crap. This last article involved eight hours of interviews with hundreds of pages of transcripts from the audio. Then, turning all that information into a coherent story that fits a website’s format and expectations took days and days of work. And I’m not quite done yet.

And truthfully, I’m working out of some pandemic malaise. Keeping this family sane for an entire year has been exhausting. I’m getting back into some exercise routine, so I’m starting to feel better.

Let me just post some links this morning, as I get back into the swing of things here:

Guilty pleasures: The Meghan and Harry rumble with the Queen. The gossip blogs have so much dirt. Fun!

You might think that people stuck in the house all year would lead to babies. But no. Birth numbers have dropped. I have to think that 20- and 30-somethings have been watching parents struggle this year, and decided that babies aren’t worth the trouble. Others have lost their jobs and are struggling; also, poverty is not a conducive environment to make babies.

Cooking: I’m going to work my way through this list of recipes this month. Last week, I made GOOP’s sheet pan recipes for salmon and chicken — they were actually pretty good.

I’ve been hearing that boys are weathering the pandemic depression better than girls, because they already had a social life through video games.

How many colleges will survive this year? How many folks in the arts industry in NYC are now getting handouts of groceries from friends?

Picture: Easton and Franklin Press books are colorful leather and faux-leather books mass produced in the 70s to now. I bought a stack of them at an estate sale last weekend for resale on my Etsy shop. The house had hundreds more. Maybe I should bought more (kicking myself now), but I wanted to see how they sell first. The house –a jaw-dropping mid-century house that had been sadly neglected for decades — had been owned by a double surgeon couple and was filled with objects from their plentiful hobbies (harps! parrots!). It was a great way to spend a Saturday morning.