It finally happened. I reached the limit for how heavy I am willing to be. I didn’t know ahead of time what that was. It’s not something I’ve kept in mind all along. I just reached the point where I had to say, “No more!” When I went back to school in 2016, I gained … Read more
Just wandering around a park, looking for interesting details. It’s the season for most local plants to be flowering, so the question is: can I get a good shot? One that’s interesting, well lit, in focus? Besides flowers, one plant had one little area with a cluster of pods. Most of them were deep enough … Read more
I have a lot of drafts of blog posts. What’s interesting at this moment is how many of those drafts are currently not relevant. Drafts of things from January or February 2020, before the pandemic came to this part of the world in force. Notes and thoughts and paragraphs about pieces of life that don’t … Read more
The Kid and I were talking about our school-day mornings recently. On that particular day, I had woken up half an hour before the alarm. The alarm is half an hour before I need to wake The Kid, and I wake him half an hour before we need to leave. I got up and took … Read more
The Climbing Daddy was in the kitchen and yelled, “Come here and bring your camera! Or your phone! Bring both!” I grabbed both and hurried in, and on the back wall—because we have walls here in lieu of fences—was a hawk. He took some shots with my phone and I took them with the Nikon, … Read more
We recently replaced our vacuum with a cordless vacuum. It’s remarkably easier to vacuum now. Doing the living room “real quick” actually happens. Getting the bedroom done while the vacuum is out is no big deal. The hallway between the main living spaces and where we store the vacuum has never been cleaner. Doing just … Read more
NextDoor is not known for being a place of warmth and positivity. Someone’s car got broken into and they posted about it. Scores of comments on the post that mainly fell into three categories: 1-mine too; 2-that sucks; 3-were your doors locked? At some point, the writer conceded that he hadn’t locked his doors and … Read more
Last spring, we planted tomatoes. They yielded no tomatoes but they grew and grew. I knew from years past that if we could keep them alive through the summer, they’d produce in the winter. They grew and grew … and didn’t produce in the winter. But now, a full year after planting them, we are … Read more
It’s been almost a year since my household stopped doing normal life. The last time we went to the climbing gym was March 14. I’m sure we ate out that night. Some things have been hard. There are people who I would see casually, not necessarily people I’d set up a Zoom with, who I … Read more
During college, I ended up changing my primary instrument from flute to trombone, taking two extra years to complete my degree because I needed to be proficient enough on the trombone to pass a jury or a recital. With all of the metaphorical sweat equity that went into becoming competent, there was no way I … Read more