Latest news with #Marek
Newsweek
5 days ago
- General
- Newsweek
Mom and Dad of 4 Used To Do Weekends Together—Then Realized Their Mistake
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Two parents from Oklahoma City are going viral for how they get some much-needed time alone. Marek Cornett, 41, told Newsweek it was one of the "best things" she and husband Casey, 42, have done for their marriage, parenting and mental health. In a reel on Instagram (@marekcornett), the mom of four boys, including a set of triplets, explained the system: on Saturdays, she wakes up with the kids, while Casey sleeps in and enjoys a free morning until 2:30 p.m. to nap time. From left: Marek Cornett, 41, enjoys her alone time while sipping a coffee and reading. From left: Marek Cornett, 41, enjoys her alone time while sipping a coffee and reading. @marekcornett On Sundays, the couple reverse roles. Each partner gets one long stretch of uninterrupted time to recharge, followed by full family afternoons and evenings. Marek said that the idea was born after a particularly demanding season for her and Casey. "I ran for office in 2023," she said. "While I was campaigning, my husband had large stretches of time when he was home with them solo. Once the campaign wrapped, he tossed out the idea of swapping weekend days." Before the change, weekends felt like an extension of weekday chaos. "We'd both try to rest, both try to parent, and end up feeling like we were doing neither well," Marek said. "We were constantly 'on,' constantly negotiating, and constantly tired." The swap helped them reset expectations and take actual time for themselves. Knowing that there was a break on the way for them both was a key component. "It's improved our marriage because it removes resentment or silent scorekeeping," Marek said. "And for our mental health, just knowing that a block of time is coming—to read, run errands alone, sit in silence—makes a huge difference," she continued. "It doesn't require money or child care, just intention." Marek's reel went viral on the platform, amassing more than 4.5 million views and over 20,000 likes. Hundreds of parents commented on the clip, sharing that they also have a similar parenting arrangement. "My wife and I swap every morning during the week and weekend, it's the best and works great for us!!" one user wrote. "We did that when the babies were little. It was a game changer for our family," added a second. Marek said she has even seen couples trying it out and sharing how much they enjoy solo time with their kids—and solo time without them. Many have reached out with practical questions, like how to handle the swap during sports seasons or when housework piles up. "I've been able to help guide with what we do in those instances as well," Marek said. She added that the time alone isn't just about physical rest—it is also about mental relief. "Because without it, you carry a mental load 24/7," Marek said. "Even when you're 'off,' you're not really off—you're listening for the baby monitor; you're mentally planning dinner; you're half-watching the kids while trying to recharge. "Guilt-free alone time lets you turn your brain off," she continued. "It reminds you that you're still a person, not just a parent. And when you come back to your kids, you come back full—not running on fumes."
Time Out
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Till the Stars Come Down
Packed your fascinator? Rehearsed your most attractive crying face? Well, good; over in Mansfield – by way of the Theatre Royal Haymarket – the wedding of the year is about to take place. Local girl Sylvia (Sinéad Matthews) is marrying Polish lad Marek (Julian Kostov), and the audience, some of whom are sat directly on the stage, are all invited. The ceremony plays out in real time at Beth Steel's Till The Stars Come Down, now running in the West End after debuting at the National Theatre early last year. Director Bijan Sheibani sucks you right into this world through fast-paced dialogue and artfully constructed tableaus. It is heady, hilarious and emotional; the wedding itself might be a car crash, but this imaginative production is anything but. As the lights come up on Samal Blak's set, little of the grandeur associated with getting hitched is visible. There's a huge disco ball hanging overhead, whizzing fragmented stars across the theatre, but this romantic image dissipates when it comes face to face with the realities of the working class family wedding: the electric fan, the TK Maxx shopper, the extension cord. Here, the sublime and the mundane exist in constant opposition; some characters dream aloud about the enormity of space and the universe, while others discuss their greying pubes. Matthews's Sylvia, our scratchy voiced bride, is getting ready for her big day. Buzzing with nervous energy, she is something of a supporting figure to her conversation-dominating sister Hazel (Lucy Black) and their other sibling Maggie (Aisling Loftus) who is back for the wedding after flying the nest for undisclosed reasons. The three sisters constantly oscillate, driving the chatter in turn. Unrealised tension simmers in the air – and that's all before the true liability of the lot, Aunty Carol (a scene-stealing Dorothy Atkinson), rocks up in her rollers. Alongside these hyper-realistic scenes, there are abstract set pieces where rain falls from the ceiling and time freezes still at the touch of Sylvia's fingers. The experience is deliberately disorienting. There's so much going on that Hazel's casual comment about eastern European immigrants taking her husband's job are easily missed. Quickly, they become unignorable. Asked if there will be any Polish traditions in the wedding, Aunty Carol shoots back: 'Well, we're not in Poland,' then adds: 'Not that you'd know.' Initially, xenophobia appears to be the central conflict of the show; it certainly is for Marek, who is deeply frustrated that his wife won't stand up for him against her 'backward and bigoted' family. But secrets have been buried everywhere: wedding drama clichés involving stolen kisses and affairs within the extended family are hinted at in the first act and released in the second, as the dance floor opens with Nelly's 'Hot in Herre' and everyone gets drunk and sloppy. Steel knowingly riffs on these tropes. Some plot lines are fairly predictable, but they're smartly undercut with a final act twist that leaves the audience gasping out loud. Her script is sharp and pacey and gives the funniest lines to the women, who also get the major tragic beats: the tears, the wailing, the clutching. It's a reflection of a community still reeling from the effects of deindustrialisation and the closure of the pits. At least the women can feel something; their husbands, in contrast, are spoken about in the third person and walk around like ghosts when they do arrive. In fact, the only man with any vibrancy is Marek. Bulgarian actor Kostov, who recently starred in The White Lotus and is making his West End debut, is a bright light, and throws himself with gusto into the often embarrassing action Steel's script asks of him. Given the casting of British actor Marc Wootton (and his shifting accent) in the original run was one of the main criticisms made of the show, seeing Kostov shine is a relief as much as it is entertaining. With so many different strands interwoven into the story – and Steel's admirable efforts to fully realise every character – some do get left by the wayside. I particularly found myself wondering about Maggie's past, and that the sisters' widowed father Tony (Alan Williams) was left in stasis with many questions unanswered. But perhaps, as Till The Stars Come Down teaches us, that's life. Tension has a way of coming to the surface whether we like it or not, but the endings aren't always satisfying. Steel's play ends as chaotically as it started, but with that unshakeable sadness now impossible to ignore.
Daily Mail
04-07-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
TOM UTLEY: I like an honest pint, the Isle of Wight and Tim Henman. Am I next for a Lifetime Achievement Award in Dullness?
Raise a glass with me today to the great Peter Hansen, 85, the worthy winner of the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award presented by The Dull Man's Podcast for that most admirable and underrated of qualities, dullness. I confess I had never heard of him until the other day, but then I suppose this was only to be expected of the winner of such an award. It turns out that he is the inventor of the unpleasant, sulphurous smell they add to otherwise odourless natural gas so as to alert us to leaks – a dullish invention, I grant you, but one that must surely have saved countless lives. As it happens, I may well owe my own life to Mr Hansen, although I didn't know this at the time of an unfortunate incident in our kitchen many years ago. I had hired a monoglot Slovakian painter and decorator, Marek, who in the course of his work hammered a nail into a gas pipe behind the skirting board. We might have known nothing about it if it hadn't been for Mr Hansen's revolting smell, which quicky filled the room. As I rushed around, frantically throwing open all the windows before searching in the cluttered cupboard under the stairs for the valve to turn off the gas at the main, Marek just stood there, squinting at his Slovak-English phrasebook and repeating over and over again: 'Vorterpitter, vorterpitter.' When at last I'd located and closed the valve, I asked him to show me his phrasebook, so that I could work out what on earth he'd been trying to say. He jabbed a paint-stained finger at the words: 'What a pity!' But back to Mr Hansen and that award, which he accepted with great good humour, self-deprecation and courtesy – three laudable attributes that, in my experience, often go hand-in-hand with dullness. 'I couldn't be more proud,' he said. Comparing the smell of his gas-additive to that of 'bad eggs' and 'flatulence', he said: 'I had to look for the nastiest smell I could think of. That was the choice. I can't describe the smell. It's just horrible.' He had made hardly any money out of his invention, he explained, because he was in his 30s at the time and 'I wasn't very business wise'. 'But I had the kudos that I delivered the smell and that was enough for me.' Before I go an inch further, I must warn any readers who suspect I may have my tongue in my cheek when I write in praise of dullness that they couldn't be more wrong. Indeed, I agree heartily with Albert Einstein when he declared: 'A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.' I will merely observe that this world might be a degree or two safer today if only Albert and his fellow physicists had embraced dullness to the full, instead of devoting their lives to developing exciting new theories about nuclear fission. As for myself, I like to think I've been the very embodiment of dullness since my early teens. At school, I was never one of the cool kids who worshipped Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and the Stones. Though I wouldn't have dared tell my classmates, I much preferred Cliff Richard, Dusty Springfield and Val Doonican. While the in-crowd bought their casual clothes in Carnaby Street, mine came from Marks and Sparks. These days, I've graduated to John Lewis for most of them. At my posh school and university, the cool brigade also liked (or at least professed to like) the beat poet Allen Ginsberg, artists such as Mondrian and Kandinsky and the novels of James Joyce and Jean-Paul Sartre. I infinitely preferred John Betjeman, Gainsborough and Millais, PG Wodehouse and good old Jane Austen, whose books I have read again and again ever since, with never diminishing pleasure. As for my other tastes, you can keep your fancy cocktails, your haute cuisine and exotic foreign holidays on faraway islands I've never heard of. Give me an honest pint, a steak and chips – and, for choice, a holiday cottage in the British Isles. This year, we're off to the good old, dull old Isle of Wight. In the world of work, meanwhile, I flatter myself that I've devoted almost 50 years to expressing heroically dull opinions in print – dull and desperately old-fashioned, anyway, in the view of many of my sons' generation. You should see how my boys roll their eyes, for example, when I write that it's simply absurd for any individual to insist on being referred to by the plural pronouns 'they' and 'them'. They yawn when I express my fear that today's teachers and university lecturers brainwash their students with a crassly distorted, Left-wing view of our islands' history, which paints almost everything about our past as pure evil. Does it never occur to them that Britain has damn sight more to be proud of than almost any other country on the planet? Why else do they think the UK is the number one destination of choice for so many migrants fleeing the world's hell-holes (far too many for our own welfare and social cohesion, in my dull, old-fashioned view)? As for celebrating dullness for its own sake, I've written columns in praise of Britain's suburbs as the ideal places to live. I've described, ad nauseam, my love of crossword puzzles and afternoon telly, and my dislike of fashionable phrases such as 'reaching out', 'can I get?' and 'going forward' when it's used to mean 'in future'. I've confessed in print how I've begun to irritate even the patient Mrs U, by scowling 'don't mention it' every single time another driver fails to thank me for pulling over to let him pass on a narrow road. Once, I even wrote a piece extolling Tim Henman! Enough said. True, dullness on its own isn't always a desirable quality. For instance, you have only to think of John Major, Theresa May and our present walking disaster, Keir Starmer, to realise that a Prime Minister needs something rather more. A functioning brain, for starters, and perhaps the guts to stand up for common sense against those who would bankrupt us all. But I must stop now, before I bore you all to tears. I have an appointment with my regular crew of old codgers at the pub, where we'll swap ancient jokes we've all heard a million times before, and tell each other how much better life was in the old days, before the entire world went mad. Never let it be said that we don't dare to be dull! Oh, but before I go, I suddenly remember that in the course of almost 50 years of rambling in print, I've told that story about Marek the decorator on more than one occasion. Is it too much to hope that this will boost my chances of a future award for dullness?
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
NHL Insider Floats Panthers Move for Maple Leafs' Mitch Marner
NHL Insider Floats Panthers Move for Maple Leafs' Mitch Marner originally appeared on Athlon Sports. The Toronto Maple Leafs and pending unrestricted free agent Mitch Marner seem to be ready to part ways after nine years together. Advertisement Marner is coming off a 102-point regular season but once again failed to elevate the Leafs in the playoffs, scoring 13 points in 13 games but crashing out in the second round. The winger enters free agency at age 28 and will most likely command a top-tier salary. Marner will hit the open market on July 1 with no shortage of suitors ready to pay for his services, but one team in particular has NHL insider Jeff Marek intrigued. Depending on how the Panthers play their cards, they may be able to offer Marner his desired salary, with Florida players Brad Marchand and Aaron Ekblad also entering free agency. Speaking on 'The Sheet,' Marek floated the back-to-back champions as a potential landing spot for the Maple Leafs star, citing Sam Bennett as one major factor. Advertisement "Something really interesting happened at the 4 Nations," Marek said. "Mitch Marner played with Sam Bennett, and he looked really different." Marek said Bennett's playing style brings out a more effective version of Marner compared to his longtime linemate in Toronto, Auston Matthews. "Matthews and Marner are more similar than they are different," Marek said. 'But Bennet and Marner — those are two distinct players, and I know it's a very, very small sample size, but I think there's something there." Toronto Maple Leafs winger Mitch Marner (16) defends Florida Panthers center Brad Marchand (63).Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images Marek predicted the exit of two Panthers, thus opening enough cap space and roster room to sign Marner and making a potential reunion with Bennett possible, provided Bennett is re-signed to an extension himself. Advertisement 'And when you throw in the state tax situation,' Marek said, 'I don't know that it will be outlandish to speculate or wonder about, if the Florida Panthers don't bring back all three...' Marek finished by predicting Ekblad will sign with the Utah Mammoth and Marchand with the Dallas Stars, giving the Panthers the cap space they need to land Marner. Related: Panthers' Brad Marchand Addresses Future Immediately After Winning Stanley Cup Related: Matthew Tkachuk's Message to Free Agent Teammates Won't Please Panthers GM This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jun 20, 2025, where it first appeared.
Business Upturn
18-06-2025
- Health
- Business Upturn
Boehringer Ingelheim Launches Next Generation Innovative Three-in-One Poultry Vaccine in India
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India: New single-dose vaccine offers broad protection against three major poultry diseases, improving bird health and easing the operational burden on farms. Strengthens poultry portfolio in India with two launches in th e past one year. Boehringer Ingelheim, a global leader in animal health, has announced the launch of its latest poultry vaccine in India—a single-dose, next-generation solution that provides protection against Bursal, Newcastle, and Marek's disease. This innovative vaccine is designed to address the practical challenges faced by poultry farmers in India, offering early, reliable, and long-lasting immunity with just one administration at the hatchery. With poultry playing a vital role in India's food supply and rural economy, disease outbreaks remain a serious threat to both productivity and profitability. This new vaccine offers a streamlined approach to disease prevention by reducing the need for multiple field vaccinations, lowering labor requirements, and minimizing bird handling stress—all while maintaining strong disease control across production systems. Dr. Vinod Gopal, Country Head-Animal Health, Boehringer Ingelheim India, emphasized the company's focus on local needs, 'We understand the pressure Indian poultry farmers face—from disease control to operational efficiency. This vaccine reflects our commitment to bringing science-led, farmer-focused innovations to the market. By combining protection into a single dose, we are helping farmers enhance productivity, improve bird welfare, and build more resilient operations.' Dr. K. S. Prajapati, Former HOD, Dept. of Vet. Pathology, College of Vet. Science, AAU, Anand commented on the significance of this advancement, 'Farmers need solutions that are both effective and practical. The evolving disease landscape demands smarter protection strategies. A vaccine that offers early, combined immunity against three major diseases is a valuable tool that helps farmers secure their flocks and reduce reliance on antibiotics.' The vaccine is suitable for broilers, layers, and breeders, and can be administered either in ovo or via subcutaneous injection at the hatchery. Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health Boehringer Ingelheim provides innovation for preventing and treating diseases in animals. The company offers a wide range of vaccines, parasite-control products, and medicines for pets, horses, and livestock to veterinarians, animal owners, farmers, and governments. As a leader in animal health, Boehringer Ingelheim values that the health of humans and animals is deeply connected and strives to make a difference for people, animals, and society. Learn more at About Boehringer Ingelheim Advertisement Boehringer Ingelheim is a biopharmaceutical company active in both human and animal health. As one of the industry's top investors in Research and Development, the company focuses on developing innovative therapies in areas of high unmet medical need. Independent since its foundation in 1885, Boehringer takes a long-term perspective, embedding sustainability along the entire value chain. More than 53,500 employees serve over 130 markets to build a healthier, more sustainable, and equitable tomorrow. Established in 2003, Boehringer Ingelheim India manages operations in India and neighbouring markets, offering innovative products in Human Pharma and Animal Health, with key therapy areas including diabetes, cardiovascular, and respiratory conditions. Learn more at Submit your press release Disclaimer: The above press release comes to you under an arrangement with Business Wire. Business Upturn takes no editorial responsibility for the same.
