10000 Words + 10 Laps

I was on lock-down this weekend (staring longingly out the window at still more unironically gorgeous London weather) writing a bunch of articles. All good stuff, great to think about and write. The Media Association for Peace, my Lebanese research partner, is rounding out their Environmental Media, Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation Project with a publication featuring the training retreat, public discussion, and national conference as well as a variety of local voices reflecting on the connections between media, peace, and the environment. I was honoured to be asked to contribute a theoretical introduction to environmental peacebuilding for the book. I also talked the Kuwait Dive Team and FoodBlessed into reflecting on these issues and worked with them to write peices.

Some colleagues from my food days at Michigan State are editing a book based on the conference I attended last summer. They're including innovative practitioner vignettes at the beginning of each section. FoodBlessed was invited to write the intro for the "Food Justice in a Global Context" piece.

Those all got written and sent off to my various partners.

And then, today, 10000 words later, I happily ventured out of my loft. Into...baby time. :)

The young one I'm watching a few hours a week turned four months old on Saturday. He and I celebrated this morning with our first swim together. Absolute delight. They've a heated indoor pool in their community gym. It's generally very quiet. Cue the good mornings of bouncing and quicking while Becca sings nursery rhymes and generally makes a fool of herself!

I got more of a workout than I was expecting...the way to get him most actively kicking is by swimming on my back holding him up but just in the water and swimming underneath him. Which means I'm only using my legs, kicking frantically, to move us all and keep us upright. The pool is under 1.5 metres, so I'm able to catch us easily. But he's definitely happiest when I'm swimming rather than walking. Leg workout via kick-kick-kick, and arm workout via holding up ever-growing baby! Then, of course, there's the reward of the giggle. Good stuff, my friends. Good stuff.

We definitely did more than 10 laps. But I didn't actually count.