Sara Joy

sara

stuff

blog

/Users/sarajoy/Downloads/_a8e4b1c5-24ca-404d-8389-64d27673246f.jpg

Weak Notes

Weak notes are like #weekNotes but less regular.

chevron pointing up

Weaknote 2023-08-22

These are becoming more like month notes 😄 I knew I was right not to call them week notes!

Anyway, this time we’re doing it in unordered-list-style - I started roughing out a post in bullet points and there were so many (despite thinking “I have nothing to tell”), that it can stay that way:

Kids

  • Half birthday party success! No fights or tears even with 11 2-to-6 year olds!
  • “DOM” is the name of the big 3-times-a-year funfair that comes to town. We went. It is loud. Overstimulated (me)!
  • Tonsils and adenoids reduction and grommets prescribed for the youngest. Hearing improved but still not great, and tonsils are huge, setting off coughing fits at night.
  • Gave away the old baby clothes for midwives to give to poorer new families.

Life

  • Upcoming holiday in 3 weeks, yay!
  • Climate worries, while also feeling flygskam.
  • Sophie from Mars video about the world not ending is very good. Also very long.

Health

  • More squishy Oofos shoes bought for sore foot. Would never have bought them at full price, thank you eBay!
  • Finding online advice for plantar fasciitis is either “go barefoot” or “all the supportive shoes” - why is everything in life so polarised!
  • Massage gun was also a nice purchase, though. Make foot go brrr.
  • Considering getting COVID vaccination booster again. Off-Label (not currently recommended by national health authority) for the kids?

Nerdry

  • HHTML meet-up plans for end of September! Very looking forward to meeting people :)
  • Keycap covetousness. Trying not to buy more as I really don’t need them.
  • Captcha from Netlify hastly added to website guestbook. Needs the dark mode configuring.
  • Letting a hobby-web-dev lull happen. It’s cool, no need to stress out about hobbies, they’re supposed to be the opposite to stress.

Talk to me

Weaknote 2023-07-31

Hello! Weak Note IV incoming:

Kids

Bought the kids three different kinds of new footwear for various reasons. Trainers (a.k.a. sneakers), wellies (a.k.a. rain boots) and sandals (rubber/plastic ones, also for use by pools/swimming). I also bought them swimming goggles recently. They’re about to have a half-birthday* party next week, so they’re having a whole period of gifts - let’s hope they don’t get too used to getting new stuff all the time!

We’re taking our annual holiday in September (because they’re not school age or beholden to term times yet, so it’s cheaper), but I’m starting to feel some mental tiredness, and I think they’re pretty tired of Kindergarten too. We might try and take some random days soon just as a rest for all of us (not that having kids at home is much of a rest, but eh!).

Edit: It’s now Monday, I’ve taken a day off and kept them out of daycare as they’re both clearly run down.

*They both have winter birthdays, as do lots of the family - we get a bit present-fatigued and out of ideas, and it’s just blah having a party for their friends around then too. So we have opted so far to run them a joint party in the summer, when we’ve had time to think of things they might actually need, and the kids can all run around outside if need be :)

Personal

I’ve treated myself to a few bits and pieces too lately, most notably a massage gun for my poor sore foot with the angry plantar fascia. It feels pretty good, hope it does me some good!

Finally I picked up my big crochet project again after a good 3 year hiatus. I have crocheted other smaller things in the meantime, but it feels nice to just let my hands do some non-typing work that’ll evemtually become a gorgeous scarf.

The “meadow” area in our garden had grown very unruly, so I decided to attack the most gangly area with a pair of hedge shears (our strimmer couldn’t touch the woody wildflower stems that were growing there, and everything was too tall for our lawnmower). I’ll do the rest… another time.

Work

I invited Florian Beijers to speak to my colleagues about his experiences working as an accessibility manager, auditor, advocate and user. A person of many hats! He was very straight with them about how things are trying to navigate the web and developer tools are they are, and pulled no punches.

If your colleagues could do with the honest input of a real human being who requires and actively uses accessible tech, and who also speaks the language of developers - I recommend him wholeheartedly.

Nerdry

New on the CSS Joy Webring

Weaknote 2023-07-17

Life

Seen some very variable weather since the last weak note. Storms, hot days, colder days.

Swimming

We finally got to try out the neighbour’s pool after 6 years of living next to it! The previous neighbours were old, unfriendly and litigious (!) and NEVER even used the pool. They aged further, and died leaving no descendants. Then they left their home to their lovely gardeners!

The gardening couple are totally quids-in now, the value of the land the property is on is already worth a very pretty penny (we know how much it cost us to buy a semi-detached place on just 1/3 of the same sized plot), so they’re going to enjoy an excellent retirement :)

Light Reading

Through Bluesky I discovered Sarah McIntyre, the illustrator of the AdventureMice and promptly bought the first in the series, “Otter Chaos”. It’s super cute and just the right balance of text to pictures, to read to our 5.5 year old!

CSS Joy!

New on the Webring

Old on the Webring

Temani Afif already has two sites on the webring, but this week I discovered a treasure trove of further content on dev.to!

Enjoy :)

  • @ppk is busy ploughing through writing a CSS book, and his poll and the ensuing conversation about attribute selectors had me going to look them all up. Now you can remind yourself too :)
  • I finally did something about my modifier key muscle memory problem, because of switching between Windows and MacOS. I have had a version of Windows Powertoys installed probably since using win98 or something - so much good stuff is included that I just forget how handy it all is.
  • Go look at this handy list of places to find personal websites at https://sizeof.cat/post/website-discovery/
  • Jared White has just set up That HTML Blog and it’s off to a great start already! Looking forward to updates :)

Weaknote 2023-07-05

So… these will never have a regular structure, I think.

I mean, maybe one will emerge. But I think I prefer the idea of their being a little more free-flowing.

Life highlights

  • Having the realisation that I am happy. Or was, when I realised it! I don’t need to have reached “happiness” as I don’t really know what that is - but swinging above and below an average level of contentment is perfectly fine with me.
  • We had an ant invasion. We saw it off. Hooray!
  • I cut my own hair and it turned out OK.
  • I introduced my kids to Thunderbirds (so far just some clips from the original 1960s series). They loved what they saw. Octonauts, Paw Patrol, Go Jetters are so derivative…

Assorted nerdry

  • Moved my WIP scrolly-tabs explainer article to this site instead of Hashnode.
  • Shuffled some subdomains around, in an effort to decouple an older domain from my current web presence.
  • Every now and then I do a little pull request from (or to? It should really be a merge request imho) the webri.ng GitHub repo. I am a contributor! 🎉

CSS JOY!

I welcomed these sites into the ring:

Links & learnings

Also

I have a day job. Whew!

Weaknote 2023-06-27

The first weeknote! Or weak note. I’ve named it this way because I’m absolutely not going to be able to commit to doing this exactly weekly. I cheated with 100 Days of Code too… There’s a difference, I feel, between being defeatist and knowing your limits.

Hey, I might want to write one of these more than once a week sometimes, too :)

Anyway, this past week (and a little beyond):

Family

  • We have been having a very busy time this month. Both myself and my husband have had work engagements keeping us from home, or making the working days longer. I have also been on a social trip away to see friends (more on that later) - it’s all been Go! Go! Go! We’re a bit tired. But coping.

  • During this, our youngest child was ill for a week requiring parenting tag-team in between working and the other engagements. Note to self, if either child appears to be ailing again in this way, ask for them to do the finger-prick blood test sooner to check CRP values and see if antibiotics are needed, actually.

Work

  • …has been very jolly lately, actually. First a conference trip with colleagues, then a quarterly three day ‘all hands’ event, which involves a big discussion day, a planning day, and a team-building fun day. Because of the aforementioned busy-family situation, I had to run away early on the first two days, but this turned out OK.

  • During the discussion day, I managed to get a solid accessibility priority set in our working practices, which has been a really good first step. Step by step. Before this, I was a little overwhelmed with what needs doing, so it helps to narrow it down.

Self

  • I just came back from a weekend seeing old friends. We had a chill and classy* hen party in Liverpool entailing matching T-shirts, a bunch of challenges in bingo card form, a makeover, then getting dressed up, going for a nice meal and dancing the night away. It was the perfect tonic, definitely something I needed.

  • The last day of this trip I spent alone with the host, and we went to a Puppy Yoga session. Yes. I know. Actually the yoga wasn’t just a sideshow to the puppies, it was pretty good! And PUPPIES. 8 week old Dachshunds, painfully cute. Apparently it’s actually useful for the breeders, to help socialise their pups, and we got to enjoy the snugs.

  • My foot continues to be a pain. Either I’m learning to live with it, or it’s getting very slowly better. It’s plantar fasciitis or a heel spur, or the former became the latter. I miss walking around comfortably barefoot - it’s been sore since mid-January. I saw the doctor about it last week, and have decided to hold off on further treatment for now, after taking the advice of the physio. We will see if I can make any progress on my own.

*So said several people who said we were “not like all those other hen parties!” which was meant in a complimentary way, but at times it felt like it threw the other hen parties under a bus. They’re allowed to have fun in their way, too.

Afterword

That will do for now - let’s see when the next weak note is written :)

← back to blog index