The Weekly Edit: Choose Joy

Last week was an emotional week.  The Internet was alternately cruel and uplifting.  My job vacillated between frenetic and boring, frustrating and incredibly gratifying.  Every day, I came home and just collapsed.

I’ve been working closely with the bill sponsor on Montana Senate Bill 312, legislation to help missing Indigenous women and children.  This is a crisis in Montana and on Tribal lands across America.  In 2018, 25 Native American women and children went missing in Montana.  One was found alive.  Most weren’t found at all.

Seen the movie Wind River?  Not as fictional as one might hope.

The primary issues are 1) we don’t know how many people are missing, 2) jurisdictional bureaucracy between local, state, and federal law enforcement, and 3) pervasive domestic violence against Indigenous women and children.  SB312 doesn’t solve the problem entirely, but it and a companion bill, Hanna’s Act, lay the foundation for a solution.

SB312 provides family and loved ones the ability to file a preliminary missing person’s report that can be sent to law enforcement and the Tribes.  It jump starts the process of searching for missing people and creates a task force to work on breaking down the jurisdictional issues.  So if you live in Montana, or you have family and friends who do, encourage them to call their State Representatives.  We’d like to see it pass the House with matching grant monies in a State Special Revenue Account so we can also raise private dollars.

Thus ends the public service announcement.

I have been sick for weeks.  I get well.  I get sick again.  It’s madness.  So my face is puffy.  My skin is tired.  It needs help.  Enter the Ice Roller.  I’ve posted about it before, but it never hurts to do it again.

This think helps with fluid retention, puffiness, and sinus pain.  After a facial, it helps with inflammation and minimizes pores.  No matter how many blogs you see this on, I promise, it is not just hype.

Living in a rental, I don’t want to stock up on pantry staples.  Basically from Bon Appetit offers great recipes with fewer than 10 ingredients.  The idea is to make eating delicious food more accessible to people who are busy, who don’t love to cook, or who just want things to be simple.  One of my favorite recipes is Sweet-Spicy Pork Noodles that are everything you love about pork ragu and everything you love about spicy Asian food in one dish.

I bought this trench coat from Banana Republic last year in slate blue.  This season, I have to have it in the olive.  The drape on this trench is so relaxed a chic, a very modern alternative to a traditional trench.  I love the way to moves when I walk.

It comes in several other colors.  I also recommend the black and the blush-pink.  It’s available in misses and petite.

The Case Against Adnan Syed picks up where the podcast Serial left off.  If you were one of the five people who didn’t listen to the first season of serial, Adnan was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend Hae in what many believe was a rush to judgment.  The documentary follows Adnan’s case as it goes through the appeals process.

This documentary does a better job than Serial of talking to people who knew the victim, which was my primary complaint about the podcast.  Often, true crime becomes about the alleged killer or the mystery, and not about finding justice for the person who died.  This HBO documentary balances those competing narratives better.  I don’t have HBO at my rental, so I’ve been watching it via Amazon Prime which was a must since I won’t be home in time for the Game of Thrones premier.

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