what is time

Here'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. 

Milestone

The girls finished school yesterday - they're done with 6th and 10th grade. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's been a rough year. They both navigated online school with impressive maturity, managing their own attendance and homework without us having to coach or nag them. They struggled some with homework and bad teachers, and they both were lonely a lot. I'm really proud of them. 

Mundane busyness

We are persevering. Skipper and I returned from California a week and a half ago, leaving Cook at a work conference in San Diego, and made it through a workweek on our own. Cook returned Friday night, and we went to the wedding of yet another delightful cousin on Saturday. (I got to see ALL my delightful cousins, which was lovely.) And we heard a LOT of river metaphors.

Here's Skipper and Cook in their wedding finery, next to an actual (McKenzie) River.

 And here's Momotaro and Uncle Rock Star. Momotaro made friends with another little boy his age (the child of the delightful cousin of some of my delightful cousins), and Skipper played hide and seek with them.

Here, also, is Cook, listening to The Drunk Guy at the next table over, because there's one at every wedding.

 And also Cook being whapped in the face by Ume, who is now one entire year old.
























And here is Skipper, worn out by the weekend, on the way home on Sunday.

And THEN we picked up Duchess from the airport late Sunday night.And then we dropped off Skipper at the bus to camp on Monday morning. It's been hectic.

This is Skipper, apprehensive about camp.



















This is the reminder note Skipper made for herself about camp.



















And this is just Duchess, whom we are very happy to have home.  She had a great time at rowing camp. She made some fast friends, had some fun flirtations, and got a lot better at rowing.

I took the train to Seattle

 It was a nice but brief trip. And I didn't take photos. Except these two.

Fall vacation

First, an interlude. Duchess took these photos while escorting Skipper and a friend. The cat is Velvet Elvis, a neighbor, hanging out on our front steps contemplating the last of the Portland sunshine.

A three-day weekend adventure, for us, is pretty exhausting. We're a pretty bad driving family, and we also need time to do nothing built into the schedule. So this mini-vacation was a bit of a stretch for us, without enough down time, but we had fun regardless.

On Friday afternoon, we picked up Duchess at school and hit the road. She was mad at us, for some 13-year-old reason, and was an ass most of the way to Seattle.
















We spent Friday night in Seattle to hang with the Rock Star family and attended a celebratory picnic in honor of Momotaro's third birthday. I got to snuggle Ume the baby (who no longer sleeps ALL the time, but still sleeps MOST of the time) a lot, and that was delicious. Skipper got to spend time with her beloved Momotaro, and when we left, she wept bitterly in the car for half an hour.

We drove to Whidbey Island on Saturday afternoon, which included a ferry ride. We stayed in a vacation rental in Freeland two nights, and poked around Whidbey on Sunday. It was cold and grey, but lovely nonetheless. We had a pretty good time; the girls stopped fighting a few times long enough to enjoy each other's company. I experienced sciatica for the first time,* which makes sense because I'm getting super-old.

Here's where we stayed - right on the bay in Freeland. This is not a picture of the water, or of us taking advantage of the water, but it captures the zeitgeist of our vacation approach in general.

We went kayaking late one evening, and Duchess made friends with a seal.

Fort Casey, where everybody else went up in the lighthouse and took a picture of me way down on the ground, where I feel happiest. The girls had a lot of fun together here, for no particular reason. You'll notice Duchess is laughing a lot in these photos. That's genuine. When she's not being a sulky jerk,** she's delightfully easy to please, and she generously laughs at every one's jokes.

Coupeville, where we ate an enormous lunch.

Deception Pass, where we walked up to a terrifying bridge with a spectacular view, and also stopped on the beach to be reminded that Duchess's rock-skipping technique has not improved.

On Monday, we caught a ferry to Port Townsend. The kids (said they) saw a whale.

And then we went home. We had to, because Duchess was pretty mad about missing rowing practice Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, so we had to get her back for Monday afternoon practice, because she's trying to secure a good position in the boat before a regatta. (Or something. There's a lot of boring droning-on about rowing around here these days, and I'm trying to maintain a protective veneer of ignorance.***) Anyway, we got her back, and now life is back to normal, such as that is!

*It passed. I'm fine. But the kids really enjoyed me howling "ow my ass!" and clutching my hip/butt every time we got back in the car.
** You do not want me to get started on this topic.
*** Rowing has eaten Duchess. In the few hours when she's not actually at rowing practice, she's texting her rowing friends or following me around talking about rowing. I have never loved a sport even a fraction as much as she loves this. I hardly love ANYTHING as much as she loves this.
****You might get a letter from Duchess soon, fundraising for rowing. Sorry about that; they make her do it.