months go by

We are alive! Not much to report. Cook has a new job, still in government, but doing a different kind of work. I have the same job. Duchess is out there building her young adult life. Skipper is here, wading through sophomore year, busy on the social and academic fronts. (She semi-accidentally ended up taking 4 AP classes, and was pretty bummed to discover that she actually has to do homework this year.) The weather is getting dark and rainy. 

We briefly dogsat Skipper's favorite dog. 

Cook found out this weekend that he was supposed to be at a Halloween party. Skipper helped him sort through the box of miscellaneous dress-up stuff while he looked up "last-minute costume ideas," and he tacked together a hasty costume (Swedish Construction Worker Who is Also a Pirate, I guess). 

Vacationland!

We went to Maine! We picked up Duchess (fresh from three weeks in Sweden) in the airport in Boston and headed north to visit family, experience the heat and humidity and mosquitoes of an East Coast summer, and have some classic Southern Maine adventures.

We spent a week by Sebago Lake, with appropriate amounts of swimming, kayaking, beach-sitting, shuffleboarding, ice cream-eating, LL Bean trips, and tennis. 

We played a round of traditional family Extreme Croquet, which Papa Big Cook won, AS ALWAYS. Antarctic Uncle gave the girls impromptu driving lessons in a stick-shift beater over the grass on his property. We got to take a sail on Casco Bay. We ate fish and chips and lobster rolls and soft-serve ice cream. It was a delight.

And then we spent half a day in Boston, revisiting a few places and recreating some photos from a visit a decade ago. 

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Catching up

 It's been a minute! And we've had adventures!

I went to Miami for work, thoroughly enjoyed it, never going back.

Then Cook and I left the girls at home for a week and went to New York City. (I told a coworker this was our first EVER vacation together without the kids, and she was horrified to the point that I got embarrassed about what I guess is yet another failure of Self Care.) This was utterly delightful. We went to museums (Transit Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cloisters, Museum of the City of New York), we went to the Comedy Cellar like good tourists. We went to a bar to listen to live jazz, we visited a bunch of interesting city stuff (so many parks, the Roosevelt Island Tram, Stuyvesant Town, the East River Ferry, East Village community gardens). We ate a lot of good and/or interesting things (an egg cream soda, enormous Italian sandwiches, khachapuri, pickled kumquats, etc.). And while we were gone, the kids took excellent care of themselves and each other. So it was a triumph all around, totally worth waiting nearly 20 years.

 

And then I went on a short camping trip with a friend to a hot spring in southern/middle Oregon.

And now suddenly summer has begun! Skipper is done with school and looking forward to a summer of naps on the couch. Duchess is off in Sweden again, visiting family and friends and exploring on her own, but she'll meet us on the East Coast for a family visit to Maine. 

15

 Skipper turned 15. She loves baseball and books and ABBA. She likes word games and gathering information, and she is ruthlessly direct and clear-sighted. When she turns her mind to an idea, she opens up the whole horizon with her questions. She likes good bagels and lemon-based drinks. We're very interested to see what she does with her sixteenth year. 

I see that it has been a while.

 Nothing much is happening here. Spring is in the air, we had a household COVID experience (Cook's first, somehow!), baseball season has begun in earnest. 

I went to Arizona to see my mom and a bunch of javelinas. (And some vermilion flycatchers, which I am now certain are the most adorable bird.)

Life goes on. Skipper continues to resolutely apply herself to the job of teenagering. She yearns for the removal of her braces, and rolls her eyes when her English teacher says her short story "lacks passion." Duchess continues to apply herself to the job of colleging, with all the joys and challenges attendant to young adulthood. She'll be home for part of the summer, and we look forward to her return, even temporarily. While the triangular family configuration is satisfying and delightful in its own right, it'll be nice to revert to the square. 

New year

 It's 2024!

Portland is in the throes of a major winter weather event - a snowstorm but with such cold temperatures and high winds that it has felt violent and stressful rather than peaceful and hushed. We're supposed to have an ice storm tomorrow to finish it up.

Our holiday was lovely; low-key and cozy. We played the Reindeer Games again (kids won). 

Duchess has gone back to college, and we're all facing the long slog of January/February but also, hey, a new year! Another trip around the sun! 

Realignment

 Duchess came home yesterday, and we're catching up on all the holiday prep. Today she and I went to Tuba Christmas, and then the whole family went to get a tree. Duchess and Skipper disagreed strongly on which kind of tree to get (soft and fluffy vs stiff and sparse) but Skipper generously conceded to Duchess's preference.