april showers.
after what felt like a busy march, i was ready for april. what's next. bring it on.
and then what was next was a stomach bug on day two and losing my dog three weeks after that. april was kind of rough, is what i mean to say.
it also rained a lot, which isn't a real issue as much as it is my personal preference to be where the rain is not. i don't remember rain being a deterrent when i lived in connecticut (that was reserved for real inconvenient weather like snow or ice), but people choose to stay home when it rains in nashville. and to that i say, these people are my people because i don't like going out in the rain either.
i don't know where i'm going with this, other than to say april was the kind of month i kept stopping to think, wait what is happening? (also, will it ever stop raining?)
the war of art.
other april things.
i stopped watching tv.
again. kind of. this is such a non-event, i know. but i realized watching tv, for me, is like eating sweets. i want to watch every night when i get home from work, or before bed. but it's not a great habit to have. so like, do i feel guilty that i'm typing this out after watching 5-7 episodes of friends last night until i fell asleep? no. will i be doing that again tonight? also no.
i started donating to charity:water.
i have heard the story of charity:water before, but the episode of "sounds good with branden harvey" featuring scott harrison is what did it for me. charity:water is an organization that uses 100% of donations to work toward giving every person access to clean drinking water. what got me was the part of the interview where he mentioned that the water crisis is a problem we know the solution to, but we still don't have resolved. this feels crazy to think about, especially considering i was spending $7.99 every month for a service that provided me with access to tv shows. (that i don't watch.)
and that's when i cancelled my hulu subscription in favor of donating to charity:water. (sorry not sorry to all my friends who have my password.)
also started using amazon smile.
you guys! do you know that by using smile.amazon.com (instead of the regular amazon.com), you get the same amazon experience and the same prices, except a percentage of your total (from eligible products) gets donated to a charity of your choice? you are literally doing nothing different except typing in a different url. it feels kind of like a game to me now: how much can i donate by purchasing items that i'd already be ordering anyway? (for this, i chose preemptive love coalition.)
i continue to subscribe to the skimm.
the skimm is where i get all my news and i don't know why i haven't mentioned it yet because it is THE BEST. they send (week)daily emails with recaps of current events, and i love it because it's written casually, in language i can understand, and includes important clarifying details while excluding all the extra fluff you'd find in any ordinary news article – but there are links so you can read more or verify sources if you want to. it's literally everything i'd want in a news source. also because it links to articles like this one about what happens when the olive garden runs out of breadsticks.
you can subscribe here.