Web Time Wasters

How was your week, friends? Mine was filled with awesome stuff – crossing ‘mushroom foraging‘ off my New Things list (posts to come!) I also caught up with a long-lost friend (the glories of Facebook will bring us together!) and started planning my Summer roadtrip.

Links for you!

Reminder: getting what what we want isn’t as hard as we make it.

Let’s make arepas and then eat key lime pie ice cream for dessert and wash it all down with lilac rhubarb spritzer.

An awesome, easy cake for the kids in your life (or anyone, really).

I grew up in a very small town. I did my undergrad in a very small town. I was 22 before I lived in a city with a population larger than 5,000! Since then I’ve lived in some huge cities and now I live in Minneapolis – and I love it! But every time I visit a small town I think “Whaaaaat if? Wouldn’t life be so much easier out here?” As such, I loved this podcast on simple living in the big city.

I love change and seeing the impact that tiny changes can have on daily life (here are 17 tiny changes I endorse!) Clare wrote up 10 changes she’s made recently.

Dream house.

This is important on so many levels: The most successful female Everest climber of all time is a housekeeper in Hartford, Connecticut.

Ohhhhh, this is good: The glossary of happiness. Could understanding other cultures’ concepts of joy and well-being help us reshape our own? The Positive Lexicography Project aims to catalog foreign terms for happiness that have no direct English translation.
Heimat (German, “deep-rooted fondness towards a place to which one has a strong feeling of belonging”).
Mamihlapinatapei (Yagán, “a look between people that expresses unspoken but mutual desire”),
Queesting (Dutch, “to allow a lover access to one’s bed for chitchat”)
Dadirri (Australian Aboriginal, “a deep, spiritual act of reflective and respectful listening”)
Fēng yùn (Mandarin Chinese, “personal charm and graceful bearing”)
Ilunga (Tshiluba, “being ready to forgive a first time, tolerate a second time, but never a third time”)

Somewhat related: Should we rebrand Anthropology textbooks?

Read this when you can’t find a way to be happy.

My 55-year-old self is going to wear this brand of clothing EXCLUSIVELY. (Also: Dansko clogs + chunky wooden bangles from my travels + sassy eyeglasses.)

And another dream outfit.

A great comic about communication (as told through Bart Simpson)

Oooooh! Such a good longread! My Grandmother The Poisoner.
So why would Grandma poison us? Well, for some time, my mother has postulated that Grandma has Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a condition that causes caregivers to poison or injure their charges. Me? I’m sure that Grandma wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. If she slipped you a Mickey it was because she didn’t want you to leave—she loved to make people miss their train. “Stay the night, stay the night,” she’d coo.

And a few Yes & Yes posts you might have missed: 7 skills you should master before you travel, How to deal when all your friends get married + have kids, and The 4 cardinal rules of safe, solo lady travel.

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Web Time Wasters

What you get up to this week, friends? This weekend, Kenny and I are in Superior, WI, staring at the lake and eating our fill at some of Wisconsin's best supper clubs. I mean, who wouldn't want to eat au gratin potatoes at a place with a sign like this!? Links for you...

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Web Time Wasters

How was your week, friends? Kenny had Monday off so we finally saw this movie and then fell down a Wikipedia hole reading all about the true story it's based on. This weekend, we took a super quick trip up north to help my mom celebrate her birthday and enjoy a bit of...

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Web Time Wasters

How was your week, friends? I saw Eighth Grade with a buddy, phone banked for the DFL (totally not scary!), and packed + planned for my trip to Denver next week. Totally excited to see the Denver Aquarium mermaids and try out some great vegan restaurants! Links for...

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9 Comments

  1. Katie

    I lived the last 3 years in the hometown and it was wonderful! now i’m almost a year into living in St. Paul and while I like my life in the big city, I do miss the small town life a lot.

  2. Janet

    This is so funny; I had never heard of the word queesting and I’m Dutch. I looked it up and as it turns out the last time this word was described in a Dutch dictionary was in 1871! That’s a real shame: I love the meaning 🙂

  3. lindsay

    i think your 55 year old self is frankie from “grace and frankie”! (i think mine is, too.)

    • Sarah Von Bargen

      Yesss! One can only hope!

  4. Jessi

    Ok now I know for real that we’d be buddies in “real life”.

    My GOAL IN LIFE is to be that 55yr old lady. My eyes get so wide and my heart beat faster when I saw that dress. I tell people all the time I want to be rich enough to wear Eileen fisher exclusively in retirement. I rock some sweet specs and have been wearing clogs since high school (why no one thought my wooden clogs were cool is beyond me)

    Buy the danskos now. TRUST ME. no need to spend such a vast majority of your life uncomfortable.

    • Sarah Von Bargen

      Right?! In my fantasy, I also drive a vintage jaguar and have two rescue greyhounds that have matching, literary names like “Daisy” and “Gatsby” !!

      • Jen

        Maybe since I’m closer to the 55-year-old mark, I imagine that my “wacky old lady” phase starts around 70 😉 And in my fantasy I live in this house with my Jack Russell — which is down the street from me, and was for sale about a year ago…

        https://www.instagram.com/p/BFhqZNjNpvV/

        • Sarah Von Bargen

          That’s a good point, Jen. I don’t know that one can go Full Wacky Old Lady till you’re retired … so maybe I’ll just dip my toe in with lots of linen tunics at age 55!

  5. katherine

    Oh, wow–My Grandmother the Poisoner, what a great read!!

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