tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86559774188806730922024-02-28T15:44:05.586-08:00Squeezing ThoughtsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1723125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-19724368916495779392024-01-15T20:25:00.000-08:002024-01-15T20:25:39.008-08:00New 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, andUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-30807127908606949422023-12-16T18:09:00.000-08:002023-12-16T18:09:08.005-08:00Realignment 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. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-40497195804529613142023-12-02T21:49:00.000-08:002023-12-02T21:49:28.867-08:00Regular LifeFall is over! We hosted a Japanese high school student for three weeks, which was awkward and weird and also sometimes delightful. Our guest was a cheerful, easily-pleased 17-year-old whose English conversation skills are pretty weak, so conversations were limited to simple topics and short sentences. She had classes and field trips during the day on weekdays, so we were responsible forUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-22959907848515615902023-10-03T19:43:00.004-07:002023-10-03T19:43:28.741-07:00An interlude outside regular lifeWe took a mini-vacation! We drove to Cottonwood Canyon State Park and stayed two nights in a cabin, took a walk along the John Day River, and did a lot of reading. We saw a tiny snake and some medium-sized rabbits and contemplated how little we understand geology. It was lovely. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-22691449339931701032023-09-30T18:41:00.000-07:002023-09-30T18:41:11.484-07:00 It's a beautiful fall-ish day here, sunny and just cool and breezy enough to be autumnal. A friend gave me a fresh apple today. Our yard is full of the smell of fermenting grapes. (Sure, Cook made some juice, but there are still a LOT on the vines.) The girls have a month of school behind them and are settling in. We haven't yet figured out where all our stuff goes now in the new houseUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-33304141367532151592023-08-30T20:53:00.002-07:002023-08-30T20:53:23.613-07:00Dear lord it is somehow time for school again I read somewhere that as you age time feels sped up because your sense of time is determined by the way you sort experience and memories, and as you age you have more established categories (which I imagine as file folders) in which to place experiences as you have them, so your brain does not have to take the time to build new categories, just drops the experiences into the established Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-85500111079991531652023-08-20T19:38:00.008-07:002023-08-20T19:38:53.975-07:00Next steps Duchess and I went to Minnesota to deliver her to college. She had a LOT of feelings about this, as you can imagine, but the predominant feeling was excitement. This is Duchess sadly saying goodbye to Portland.We stayed the night in St Paul, got into the dorm the next morning. Duchess is housed in The Worst Dorm on Campus (a time-honored rite of passage for unlucky freshmen acrossUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-91921755653088641362023-08-17T15:25:00.002-07:002023-08-17T15:26:41.862-07:00Summer! We've had a couple of brutal heatwaves, a charmingly tiny canine houseguest who adores Skipper, some ultimate frisbee, and a trip to Seattle to see family and watch baseball. We finally get to moved back into our house (after exactly the kind of exhausting, overbudget, much-drawn-out renovation project that makes people tell you never to do a renovation).Duchess had an early-summer trip Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-50725029507181574782023-06-19T16:24:00.004-07:002023-06-19T16:24:55.171-07:00Summer! We made it! We finished the school year, made the turn into summer.Duchess graduated from 12th grade. Skipper graduated from 8th grade. Duchess is heading off to Sweden for a couple of weeks, and while she's gone Skipper will play a lot of ultimate frisbee and Cook and I will prepare to move back into our actual house. Also, here are some photos from Skipper's trip to Japan, Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-75409850695617467122023-06-01T20:26:00.005-07:002023-06-01T20:26:55.780-07:00what is timeHere's Duchess (and Skipper) on her first day of kindergarten.Here's Duchess (and Skipper) today, on her last day of 12th grade. (Skipper was not yet awake enough for the sunny morning.)I took Duchess out for mediocre pizza to celebrate at the end of the day. She has a weekend of parties and sentimental weeping over yearbook notes to come, and then graduation next week. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-9366924835619124282023-05-22T20:44:00.003-07:002023-05-22T20:44:22.600-07:00Winding down the school year Time has passed! It was relentlessly cold and rainy here for a long time, and then very terribly hot for a week, and now we're back to a normal late spring, and everything is so green and flowering and lovely. A lot of things have happened. Duchess is wallowing in intense sentiment as she wraps up her high school experience. She chose a college, had a great time at prom, finished up Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-48684237979137999762023-03-12T16:27:00.002-07:002023-03-12T16:27:10.859-07:00Miscellaneous updates It is not snowing. Just rain, and more rain, and we've all reached the end-of-Portland-winter moment when we just want to see some goddamn sun. Everything else continues as normal. Both kids started track, which means a lot of running and burpees and squat jumps and whatnot in the rain for now, but presumably will get slightly less tortury over time. I remain puzzled over the fact thatUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-7399370522454733452023-02-24T18:45:00.001-08:002023-02-24T18:45:20.507-08:00It snowed. I mean, it snowed a LOT. A historic a LOT. We thought it was a classic Portland snow, with some flakes and nothing sticking, and then rain, but then the rain turned back into snow, and the snow started sticking and it just kept snowing. Luckily I was working from home and the kids' schools are walking distance. Cook made it almost all the way home by bike, and then had to walk the last mileUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-63435269453928390282023-02-04T09:25:00.000-08:002023-02-04T09:25:00.759-08:002023 is not boring so far Oh, hey, it's been a while. As forecasted, it's been a busy month - Duchess wrapped up college applications, I started my new job, and we moved to our temporary home. My new job is good and interesting, but a bunch of factors converged to make my first month much more chaotic and intense than I was anticipating. I also go into the office twice a week, and deal with all the human Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-20129499427198452202022-12-25T18:59:00.007-08:002022-12-25T18:59:51.664-08:00Holiday We did it! We got here! This year we're hunkering down at home for the holiday. The kids are on a 2-week holiday, and Cook and I are taking a few days off here and there. We did our traditional walk to a local pop-up Christmas tree lot, and picked an extremely bushy tree to carry home. (Duchess was in the lingering tail end of a bout with the flu, so she stayed home and peered out the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-90623702537826736462022-11-24T20:47:00.003-08:002022-11-24T20:47:43.637-08:00Fall progressesUpdates! We did Halloween. Skipper went out trick-or-treating with a crew of fellow middle-schoolers. (The nice kind who dress up and don't terrorize the neighborhood.) Duchess passed on trick-or-treating, but put on some festive frog eyes for a photo op. Other things that happened - we had an election! Duchess canvassed door to door to turn out the vote, something hard she had not done Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-73108489467337402922022-10-09T20:59:00.003-07:002022-10-09T20:59:47.478-07:00PumpkinsThis weekend I took the girls to The Pumpkin Patch on Sauvie Island, a place where u-pick meets consumer kitsch, and the parking lots overflow with cars from all over the region. We haven't been there in a while. Duchess brought a new friend she met in French class, an exchange student (somewhat bewilderingly) from Sweden, and Skipper brought a friend whom she first met when they were both Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-84968873128487259412022-09-22T20:43:00.002-07:002022-09-22T20:48:20.548-07:00It's fall! Hello! It is fall! The girls started school (and did not at all want me to take their photos). Duchess is starting 12th grade, and Skipper is starting 8th grade. We are all quite old.I went on an unexpected trip a few days after school started, and came back two weeks later to find that my family has a new routine, and it is the routine of a family with two teenage children in school. They Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-82429433136618986042022-08-03T08:19:00.006-07:002022-08-03T08:19:36.517-07:00StockholmI went to Sweden! I had to pick up Skipper from camp, and I did some touristing on my own in Stockholm and also got to visit some family and friends as a wonderful bonus. I really enjoyed poking around Stockholm on my own and with Skipper. The transit (including ferries!) is fantastic, the public spaces are abundant and delightful (if short on public bathrooms), the bike and pedestrian Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-79359004926974848402022-07-10T18:04:00.003-07:002022-07-10T18:04:35.464-07:00Summer Pt 2Summer continues!I got my eyelids cut open! It was another Real Surgery, with comical hat and IV and sedatives (hooray!) but it was very quick, and the recuperation is barely a thing at all - basically just getting over the sedative fog immediately after surgery and then putting antibiotic ointment on my newborn eyelid for 2 weeks. I am extremely relieved to have two eyes again, after 5 weeks of Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-26570612427415948572022-07-02T21:38:00.006-07:002022-07-02T21:38:58.244-07:00Summer It's summer. It's a weird one. The day after school ended, Cook and Skipper went to Detroit, realizing a longtime dream of Skipper's. They watched three baseball games at Comerica Park, and of course the Tigers lost every game badly. Fortunately, Cook and Skipper were emotionally prepared for that outcome, and took it in stride. They did some other touristing - they saw the Little Caesars Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-21512403724455682702022-06-05T12:06:00.004-07:002022-06-05T12:06:29.249-07:00I had surgery. Wear sunglasses. So I had my first real medical intervention last week. I went in for an eye exam a few months ago, and they identified that the weird-looking skin on the inner margin of my eyelid (right up against my eye), which I had thought vaguely was some kind of combination of blepharitis, generally crappy skin, and just becoming an old lady,* was definitely not normal. The doctor did a biopsy on the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-284280050897892342022-05-26T22:28:00.001-07:002022-05-28T14:18:49.311-07:00I went on vacation. I did. I went TO SCOTLAND. WITHOUT MY FAMILY. It was fantastic. A friend and I cooked up a plot to walk the West Highland Way, and somehow we actually pulled it off.The first day of our vacation after we arrived in Glasgow was a day tour of filming locations for the Outlander TV show. This was pretty fun, in spite of my total ignorance of the show and my general disinterest in guided tours.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-68486090965785287062022-05-26T20:25:00.003-07:002022-05-26T20:25:41.446-07:00Thirteen Skipper turned 13 last month. She has grown and changed a lot over the last year, but somehow remains the same person she has always been. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8655977418880673092.post-40632572362818946782022-03-27T21:18:00.002-07:002022-03-27T21:19:01.638-07:00Time
We spent some time outside today, and this photo of Skipper in our yard reminded me of a picture of her in our yard at almost exactly the same time of year 11 years ago. Our girl keeps growing.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0