A couple of months ago, as the nights began to cool, there was a sleepy lizard on the corner of the doormat, and for the following weeks I wouldn't step on the doormat at night. Doing a big steppy with my wee legs from door to landing, on the off-chance the little lad has returned and I didn’t see him in the shadows. Not even wanting to startle the sleepy critter with my feet landing too closely.

I've become less overly cautious as it has been a while since I saw them, plus it's much much colder now so I think I'm safe. Pretty sure the lizard is now hibernating or whatever in the space that generations of lizards have clawed out from the plaster behind the doorframe. I still widen my step a bit more than I need to, however.

It is funny what we get used to and what we never do. I reach, sometimes, for the door lock of a car we had two cars back. The placement was so strange, within the handle built into the inside panel, which felt like a great way to accidentally open a massively heavy '90s car door while going at speed. No reason that reflex should exist--we had a different car for well over a decade since that particular vehicle. And yet!

I think we all have reached for light switches that never existed in that time and place. It feels sometimes like the old joke formatted like a noir--"[drags on cigarette] I haven't heard that name in years¹."

On the opposite end, there are the things we never build reflexes for. Choking on spit still happens to me, which is wild to be something I haven't yet mastered after being in body for this long. And yet! The rule in our house is to not engage when that happens. It's a bare pretense to preserve a body's dignity, because nobody can help you when you're caught in a coughing loop thanks to deciding to aspirate some water instead of drink it. What you do is you keep an ear and a side eye out, in case it does break bad⁴, then check in when things have calmed down.

Does anybody remember what 40th birthday parties were like in the '90s? My parents were older than other kids', so I remember sassy black balloons and a general "over the hill" theme being deployed. It's been different for a while, I think. This quick piece from 2012 on NPR explains that the concept of "middle aged" is relatively new and also varies a lot from generation to generation. Most people I know are so thrilled to finally hit 30, and then 40, goodness knows I was².

While we were talking about caterpillars³, one of my neighbours was startled to learn I had a solid decade on him. This has happened enough that at this point I wonder if people even know what 40, 50, 60, etc looks like any more. Which is awesome. Who cares! I've just had more time to learn weird science facts, or make mistakes and have tips on how not to do that. Knowing people who are younger than you and older than you is one of the most joyous things. Cross-generational friendship, baby!

Knowing a wider range of people means you get the benefit of lots of other perspectives. Like, a more encompassing version of when you don't like pickles but you're having lunch with someone who does. There's like a dead zone of media from a certain point in college for me that my younger friends have enlightened me on, for better or worse. No matter what, we're all a bundle of reflexes and biases that we'll be spending our whole lives having conversations with. We'll always be reaching for a light switch that has never been on that wall, but knowing folks who will point out that a reflex isn't serving you helps. They've never known a light switch to be there.

And when we inevitably (literally or metaphorically) choke on our own spit, they'll be there to keep an eye on you.

Two very different flavours of books this go, some second-world fantasy that doesn't shy from machines and a sci-fi thriller that is set very determinedly on earth. Links go to the Storygraph entries for each title, a great place to check out content warnings and find ways to read them.

• The Magebike Courier duology by Hana Lee is a satisfying storm of fantasy. I recommended it in the family discord with a simple "magic motorcycle Mad Max also gay." I think you could also say it's if The Witcher and Tristan and Isolde got stirred into a soup that also included dinosaurs. There's a very fascinating magic system that also has Loads Of Implications.
• A snappy dystopian noir, The Body Scout by Lincoln Michel is fun even if you don't know anything about baseball. It keeps with the noir line of no real "happy" endings, preferring satisfying ones. Since I did comps for the other book this newsletter, here they are for this: Rollerball and Altered Carbon, wrapped up in hmmm, Raymond Chandler I think.

Here, have some cars on the coast. We used to spend the new year along the Oregon coast, which is particularly wonderful and wild in the winter. The first picture is the car with the strange latch I still have the reflex for.

Image description: A photo of a black 1990s Mercedes Benz with a slightly crooked grille in the roughly fenced turnout of a sand dune area. The colour of the tall grass and dirt are only slightly darker than the sand, though the landscape has deep green scraggly short pines dotted along the fence. Sand and mist lightly obscure the thick stands of pines in the background. End ID.

Image description: A photo of two vehicles parked in a sand-crusted parking lot, separated from a wooden-sided building in the background by a low rise of sand. The wind is whipping a fine mist of sand over the vehicles and off the dune, misting the image. End ID.

Some rather assorted Cool Links (tm), though I have found that the last one is like many links in one.

• It's time for oranges here, so recently I was looking up how to know when an orange is good to pick and this post at Yardposts gives a lot of examples and the whys of how there is no exact time to pick an orange. It all depends on the type of orange, your weather (colder nights make for orangier-oranges, and coastal weather robs them of flavour). The short of it is: if they start looking done, pick one and taste it--if it suits you then it's time.
• There's several enjoyable somethings in Octo-Heist in Progress by by Rich Larson, over on Clarksworld, though I think I was well-won by the sort of inverse wet-suit worn by an octopus.
• Learn a bit about the Big Square Livestock Lads depicted in 19th century British paintings over at Rare Historical Photos.
• I simply adore this archive of clothing catalogues and holiday wishbooks from 1930 to 2017. It's mostly Sears but there's some Montgomery Ward, etc in there too. If you draw or write, they're kind of great sources of reference for what a lot of regular people were wearing in different eras.

If you've thought of donating eSims, this guide was very helpful, and Crips for eSims for Gaza is a good option if you can't easily manage topping them up. There are also more traditional donation targets like the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, UNRWA, and Doctors Without Borders. If you prefer giving directly to families, Gaza Funds is a nice resource that facilitates finding campaigns.