Hey friends! Welcome to it!
I hope this weekend finds you happy and well, having napped, cocktailed, or baconed at least once so far.
I have a big birthday coming up this week and I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways I care for myself and for the people close to me. The quiet things that we just do because we’re kind and not total jerks, like changing my self-talk from hyper critical to compassionate… or like making breakfast and giving your partner the best piece of crispy bacon or that extra dab of coffee. I’m thinking a lot about the culmination of those small but immense things. I’ll write more about it once I have a birthday and a cupcake and my thoughts straight.
Enjoy a beautiful Sunday, even if it’s weird and raining at the end of May like wwwhhyyyy?
There’s an important question at the end of this post that involves me and Facebook Live. Hang in there with me. I appreciate your thoughts.
I’m grateful for you, truly. Here’s some Internet for us:
• We have a problem, y’all. It’s about how much money we pay when we need help from medical professionals… aaaand we have health insurance. A few years back I had a bike accident and paid many hundreds of dollars for the board that the paramedics strapped me to in the ambulance. Just the board! The board that I didn’t ask to be strapped to, didn’t much like being strapped to, and strangely enough…didn’t get to keep. And they didn’t even turn the siren of the ambulance on to get me to the hospital. That’s the real outrage. (Is it though?) Enough about me. Read more about The $629 Band Aid.
• Grace of Design Sponge wrote some very personal words about Life with Type 1 Diabetes.
• How Your Gut Effects Your Mood. New meaning to the term gut-check. These bodies of ours really are amazing.
• Everything you might not have known you needed to know about flour: A bread bakers guide to flours
• Calling BS on food trends. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
• Here’s the premise, ‘a bunch of hot people work in a restaurant’ on Bravo TV and go: Drinking and Drama on Vanderpump Rules
• Follow up: what to get the vodka lover who has everything? Hanger One is now selling a $125 vodka made from San Francisco FOG. So… there goes the neighborhood.
• Maybe we didn’t know it at the time, but 2007 was as good as it gets. A love letter to 2007. Burn it out, burn it down. How was your 2007?
• So this is what success (and a briefcase full of pizza) looks like. Pushing the All-You-Can-Eat restaurant to the limit.
• My friend Ilana got me this Country Living Home Almanac as a housewarming gift and I love it! Maintaining your home month to month. It’s official.
• A summer project from Shutterbean: DIY Bleach Dying Fabric. She made me a dress and it’s so great!
• It’s breakfast and also dinner: Mushroom and Brussels Sprout Hash.
• Let’s definitely continue our strawberry kick: Strawberry Lattice Pie. The ground ginger is the secret.
• Do you follow me on Facebook? I’m going to start doing Facebook Live videos. What do you want to know? I’ll do it!
Today is a good one! Let’s be in it all the way.
xo Joy
JD
Another great line up and the breakfast hash sounds awesome
Your Sunday post makes my weekend
Have a great week
Emily @ Life on Food
Small things are extra special and so are the ones we love. Funny how those closest to us seem to get the short end of the deal most of the time. This year my goal is to cherish my husband each day. He really is a good guy and I need to remember all of the little things he does when I am getting mad at the one thing he didn’t do.
Margarita
I have multiple lumps in my breasts (TMI) to which I have to have yearly mammograms for. But, everytime I get a mammogram, they always ask me to get an ultrasound because mammos can’t read the lumps. So this time, I decided to save myself time and insurance some money by getting right to the ultrasound. However, my new doctor coded it as a diagnosis because I once had a lump extracted and it was fibroadenoma… Because of that diagnosis from 2007, my doctor can’t code it as routine screening so I have to pay for it out of pocket… When insurance labels these things preventive care and still lets you pay for it, it’s bull crap! Grrrr!!!
Cy
It’s Sunday again and Minnie kitty has been terrorizing me all morning. I finally gave up trying to sleep and made a strong cup of coffee. Now she is sleeping. It’s a cat life. I know you and Tron understand. Happy “big” birthday Joy I look forward to your writing. I have been going through a metamorphosis myself. Losing a sibling does that to you. I cut my hair short, starting carrying a smaller purse, less things. I am shedding. I think carefully about how I spend time and with who. Precious time. Mostly, I consult my heart/intuition and then proceed. I posted a comment last Monday. I found myself wishing you had a cake emergency hotline! I’m an experienced baker, but found myself with the dreaded “bundt cake stuck in the pan and will not budge”. Maybe a cake emergency FB video? I’m buying a new bundt pan today. I did eventually get it out, but decided to let my old pan go. Shedding. It feels good.
Suzonne
It wasn’t until I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that I began to understand how complex the body is. I have an amazing endocrinologist/magician, but he put things into perspective one day when I was complaining of vague, ephemeral symptoms I couldn’t get a handle on. He told me he knew I was telling the truth because he’d heard those exact same complaints from other patients with my condition, but that…medicine hadn’t caught up with me yet. We get so accustomed to having solutions at our fingertips, but that moment reminded me how much mystery there is to the body, those nuances and delicate connections that spell the difference between health and illness.
Bryony Owen
I feel you on the health care one. I’ve had 7 knee surgeries and after my last one I woke up with a brace from mid-thigh to my ankle that I wasn’t even aware I would have because they had to do a different procedure. I had to pay a ridiculous amount of money for what was basically a piece of foam and some velcro straps!
Love your Let It Be Sunday posts!
Lisa
I can’t tell you how much I look forward to your ‘Let It Be Sunday’ posts. Thank you!
Wendy Werner
One of the many problems with our health care system is that there is no pricing transparency. If there was greater transparency there might be competitive pricing. I too am Gemini, happy birthday to us and let’s foster self compassion. I look forward to all of your posts and particularly love Sundays.
perfectingdeliciousness
Happy Birthday Joy!! Suggestion for FB video: make pie crust pleeeeease :)
Bob
Happy early birthday! My birthday is next week,too though I bet I’ll be WAY older…Also-Your strawberry crumble has made me the family rock star this strawberry season.Thanks!
Claire
I found the cost of an ER visit article interesting. I’m a doctor working in the British National Health Service. Here, that father would not have been charged a penny for bringing his daughter to the emergency department (but will obviously be contributing to the service via his taxes). Running costs are lower here as staff are not as highly paid and the NHS has considerable power to negotiate down costs from suppliers. However (and it’s a big however), bringing a child with a minor cut to their finger to the emergency department would still be seen as a gross misuse of the services. Of course new parents worry about minor things, but there are appropriate ways to seek assistance and then there is the emergency department which is incredibly inappropriate.The difference is that in the US you do that and YOU get hit with the charge for being so daft. In the UK, it’s the service as a whole that suffers from misuse. I absolutely believe in a health service that is free at the point of care but I find it hard to have a huge amount of sympathy for this man. You being charged to have your spine protected after a bike accident? That, I have sympathy for!
On an unrelated note, having followed your Sunday round-up posts for some time now, I suspect you may find this article about a Norwegian cave diving tragedy interesting (but a little terrifying): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36097300.
Janet
I totally agree with Claire’s comment. The squealing was so loud (Dad, not Colette), Dad just knows that his share vaporized and he beat the system. Guess who paid the bill? The taxpayers, aka me. News flash: however you get “free” service does not mean without cost to someone. Trust I’ll be getting an invite to little Colette’s preschool graduation as a thank you. Actual cost of our healthcare is another matter altogether…oh, wait.
Taste of France
The health care system in the U.S. is insane. Having spent over a decade in France, I am so grateful for socialized medicine. We’ve been to the emergency room several times (a fall, a sports injury and a sick kid on a Saturday night)–never had to pay a cent. A doctor visit cost €23, of which €15 is reimbursed. Hospitals are more utilitarian than the hotel-like places in the U.S., but I’d rather pay for staff than for marble lobbies. And stuff like the board you were strapped to is priced by the government.
Rena
Yes, I agree the small things are the important ones…
xx from Bavaria/Germany, Rena
http://www.dressedwithsoul.com
Amy Sewell
Will be making your Mushroom and Brussels Sprout Hash as soon as possible!
Nadia
Now, I really am going to have to get a Facebook account! The strawberry lattice pie sounds soooo good and with all the strawberries on the market at the moment, I am definitely going to make this one.