Happy Monday and MAY the FOURTH be with you. Yes I’m very happy with myself for that.
After a twist of Spring events that no one saw coming, we’ve almost made it to the summer. Experts are constantly weighing in on our future, and it’s either positive or negative depending on perspective, latest data, the person talking, and a plethora of other factors. So we’re here to lighten the mood and hopefully make you smile!
Scroll on down for a healthy dose of good things.
Good Things
I know I promised to make this a newsletter NOT about Covid-19, but hear me out: my good friend Cris (aka The Batchmaker) inspired me to share some of this good news that frequently gets buried in the chaos of the pandemic.
Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand, has made waves already by (among other things), having a baby while in office, bringing her baby to the UN General Assembly in NY, and “rewriting the script” on a national response to terrorism. So yes, she’s one of my heroes. And last week she announced that thanks to strict and swift guidelines meant to protect her population (imagine that from a government), New Zealand has drastically reduced the threat of Covid-19. They’re slowly moving back into a sense of “normal” that we can only stare at with puppy-dog eyes and feelings of longing.
Speaking of normal, Hawaii is throwing it in the trash and using this opportunity to redo a few things. They’ve recently announced a “feminist recovery plan.”
The plan, produced by the state’s Commission on the Status of Women, is designed for “deep cultural change” by explicitly incorporating the unique needs of indigenous and immigrant women, caregivers, elderly women, femme-identifying and non-binary people, incarcerated women, unsheltered women, domestic abuse and sex trafficking survivors, and women with disabilities.
Source: The Lily
The policies that they’re suggesting and the reasoning behind them are well worth the read. Thanks to Frances Nguyen at the Lily for this great reporting!
It’s always encouraging to me to hear of the work that scientists are doing to get us a vaccine for Covid-19 as fast as possible. For instance, a lab at Oxford had a head start on a vaccine (because they were already working on one for MERS) and they’re moving it into a testing phase. Meanwhile I’m sitting here eagerly awaiting the British sass that will accompany any of their efforts to save the world. Something like “I thought all of you fools didn’t want us…well look at you now,” but I’m just spitballing. More positive news in the world of Covid vaccines can be found here and here. And since I’m talking about it, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the woman who comes to my mind at least once a day: Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett. We spoke about her on the pod recently, but this woman blows my mind. She’s a fellow North Carolinian, and apparently she’s a boss scientist PLUS she remembers friends’ birthdays. Women really can do it all.
*Image Credit: NBC News
The reality is that a lot of us are going to be under shelter in place orders for a while longer, and will likely need to practice social distancing for some time after that. (Perhaps on and off, depending on the waves of the virus.) And it can get really monotonous these days to do the same thing day in, day out. Dishes, laundry, work, tidying, parenting, rinse, repeat. These may not all apply to all of us, but most of us have at least some version of the same schedule every day.
Sarah Jenks posted something lately that I’ve been experimenting with to see if it worked, and it has! A mindset change that helps to ease the monotony. Less of the “I have to” and more internal dialogue like “I deserve cleanliness, I deserve health, I deserve..” etc. It’s encouraged me to do the responsible thing in the moment and have a better outlook about all of it.
Funny Things
Look, my husband and I are opposites. We have precious little in common, so when we find something that we both think is hilarious, I cling to it like it’s made of gold. (He doesn’t care.) Some of our combined favorite funny things are Psych, Brooklyn 99, and that’s it. That’s actually the whole list. So when he shared a TikTok with me that he can’t stop watching or laughing at (because like every sane adult over the age of 30, he seems to be spending an inordinate amount of time on that app), I knew it was a hot ticket item. Here it is: a rare shot of the type of humor that both an Enneagram 8 and and an Enneagram 1 can enjoy:
Kids Things
NatGeo@Home is our weekly resource for things to entertain our kids in quarantine. I don’t know about you but for me it’s been a roller coaster ride from tightly scheduled days, to loosening up and trying to survive, to leaning into the fact that I mainly care about 2-3 things that my kids do daily.
If you care to pay a few bucks a month for a NatGeo subscription (which I did because they sucked me in with the following piece) you can awe your kids and yourself with this latest updated model of the Spinosaurus, animated so that it looks like real life footage which I can’t stop watching.
I’m a really big fan of the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World sagas. Jurassic World 3 was my family’s first DVD I believe, back when VHS was still a thing. I vividly remember the shiny silver color with the three claw marks of the Spinosaurus splitting the cover. I have no favorite because I love them all equally, but I like that Jurassic Park 3 ventured away from the T-Rex as the main predator. So this is checking the boxes for pre-teen AND adult Hannahs.
*Image Credit: IMDb. 2001!! Can you believe?
I think it’s a great idea to talk to the kids about the news when it’s something that they can relate to, and this news from Spain is probably a piece that they’ll really understand. In a country that was hit hard by Covid-19, kids are finally starting to come back out into the streets and play outside! The fresh air has been our saving grace during this time period, and I feel for all of you that are trapped in apartments or cities with strict lock-down policies. I’m working on teaching empathy to my child (because I’m seeing some sociopathic tendencies that are mildly panic-inducing*) and stories like this help to show them what this experience is like for kids in other cities and around the world.
(*I’m probably kidding about that. Surely all kids are at least partially sociopaths.)
Good Idea Girls
We took a break from the pod this week. The audio wasn’t working, we were feeling like we needed a breather, and we felt like the signs were pointing towards a respite. But if you’re looking for more content to get your mind off of the pandemic, and you’ve already binged Never Have I Ever and Normal People (Netflix and Hulu respectively), you should check out previous episodes! You can find It Sounded Like a Good Idea at the Time anywhere you listen to podcasts.
We’ve also got some fresh content up over at Good Idea Girls. Our take on why the sourdough craze has flown off the handle, as well as how we’re making shelter-in-place look effortless. Hint: click to read before you send me hate mail.
*Image Credit: Good Idea Girls
Thanks for reading this week’s issue of Good Things! If you enjoyed it, I’d love if you shared with a friend! If you received this email from a friend who knows that you need to unplug from heavy news every once in a while, sign up below to receive Good Things every Monday! If you have feedback or ideas, you can shoot me an email at hello@goodideagirls.com, or find me on IG @hannahpremaratne. See you next week!