learnings: March 2016

Today I link up with Emily P. Freeman to share things I learned in March. I halfway wanted to make it an April Fools posting, but I actually wanted to tell you these real things. So, these are real things.

1. The Most Exciting Thing I learned in March is that the little one we’ve affectionately called BC — Baby Crouch — is a little boy. It’s been thrilling to call him by his name and be able to imagine a bit more concretely what he’ll be like: I already know, thanks to the ultrasound, that he has his daddy’s profile.
   
2. The quirkiest thing I learned is that in Stockholm, Sweden, you can board your sourdough starter at a baker’s shop to be fed while you’re on vacation.
3. I learned that North Korea — in addition to testing missiles, boasting of hydrogen bombs, and sentencing dumb American college students to hard labor, has advised it’s people to be prepared for another “arduous march.” The last “arduous march” was a devastating four years of famine in the nineties, when millions of North Koreans starved to death. And apparently it’s bad there again: “scientists have found that migrating vultures are feasting before attempting to cross the country because they know it has slim pickings.”
4. I learned why you (and I) aren’t seeing Donald Trumps many, many supporters in our Facebook feeds: “The media we consume is so good at regurgitating the story we want hear, that an entire nation has been caught off guard by the presence of a class of people so desperate for change that they would support anyone – literally anyone – who will listen.” Ouch.
5. I learned that when there’s a 15% chance of rain and it looks potentially rainy outside, it is not the best time to walk to the post office without an umbrella. Fortunately for me, my husband was at home and came to rescue me from under a shop awning where I took shelter when the sky fell.
6. I learned that Bifrost Arts’ Lamentations album is worth hearing. Go listen.
7. I learned that it’s not a good idea to wash the white fleece blanket with the bathroom towels, unless you like smearing white fleece all over yourself post-shower.
8. I learned that colorful infographics can actually make weird blood cancers look kind of fun. (Weird. I know.)

9. I learned that hotel conference centers can be very creepy at eight o’clock on a rainy Easter morning. Elements to include in your imagining: dark hallways, a glass-eyed man with a crutch going tap-tap, leprous wall-paper held up with red and green thumb tacks, missing ceiling tiles revealing five-gallon buckets in the space above our heads, and, last and most choice, a bird lying dead on the doormat. And yet, in spite of all, we celebrated the Resurrection, and saw again that death has lost its victory.
10. I overheard someone saying that “There will be no pollen in heaven,” and I realized that, though I bemoan the yellow state of my car and the green state of my front windowsill, I yet love the way the pollen yellows and greens the trees so gradually, and find a glory in the way pollen blows sometimes in golden clouds across a yard. No pollen in heaven? Or perhaps simply no allergies? I prefer the latter.

I liked March.

©2016 by Stacy Crouch