Vicky Blogs: COVID-19 (& beyond)

  When you first see this green guy, what do you think he is thinking?  Did he just see something that shocked him?  Is he gleeful? Screaming...? Chameleons have always intrigued me.  When I was younger, I thought it was wild that these creatures could hide in plain sight and yet be so beautiful at the same time.  Their adaptability is what makes them so unusual.  And, they use that adaptability to express themselves and regulate temperature.   I'm pretty sure that I came up with tons of other reasons for a chameleon's colors when I was little, but didn't know until much more recently that it was a common misconception that they use their color-changing powers to blend into their background.  ( Wired   article )  It seems that their blending in might be somewhat accidental. And the science behind how these creatures actually change color is pretty incredible.  Apparently, the outermost layer of a chameleon's skin is transparent...

  Yesterday, I had an exchange with a stranger that really put a smile on my face.  It surprised me, on a day when I wasn't really feeling that light. I have a bumper sticker on the back of my car (somewhat crookedly...) that says "I hope something good happens to you today".  I bought this bumper sticker on a whim when I was buying some gift items during an online sale.   Something that some people may not know about me is that I am an avid gift giver.  It is definitely my outward love language and I pride myself on being able to give gifts that really fit a person.  In fact, I have two large storage bins filled with gift items that I've bought over the years, so that I'm always ready if I need a last minute gift. I have always been better at giving gifts than I have been at receiving them.  I recently re-took the love languages quiz  to see where I landed on it for what I need for myself.  Interestingly enough, how I express my love f...

  It's been a minute since I wrote a post here and I want to try to get back to some consistency with it as we roll into spring.  Spring is often seen as a season of new beginnings, a fresh start.  We all talk about 'spring cleaning' and go about our lives trying to tidy things where we can.  We get rid of old clothes that may not fit anymore, we deep clean our living spaces, we strip off our layers and let our skin see the sun again. I find that for me, this beginning of spring has been a time of reflection.  I've been thinking a lot about what has happened over the past few months and how it all has impacted me.  I've been blessed in so many ways, but also had my share of challenges.  I think it's important to acknowledge both the ups and downs as I move forward. My brother and his wife welcomed a beautiful baby boy, Maksimilian Kan Morgan, my nephew, to the world at the end of last year.  He's a Sagittarius just like his Aunt Vicky :)  See...

I started writing this blog post in December of 2021.  And then, other things got in the way of me having the energy and motivation to finish it.  I didn't get very far on it - only two paragraphs - and most of the content was just details on how my parents bought a cake for me to share with my housemates on the actual weeknight of my birthday.  I think this is because I needed some time to sit with the idea of what it means to be 30 to me. It's been about three months now.  Three months of 30.  And to be completely honest, I've had a plethora of feelings about what this age might mean to me.  These thoughts and emotions have run the gambit from intense feelings of gratitude and joy to the crushing weight of a feeling of failure. I think that this type of chaos in emotions and mental state stems partly from the generation that I was born into (millennial), partly from how I was raised (catholic and fiscally conservative), and then more largely from the type...