About Steph

Your author, part-time, work-at-home writer.

A Richer Place

Posted on February 22, 2026 by Steph

We welcomed the Year of the Fire Horse at the National Museum of Asian Art yesterday. We arrived about a half hour before the lion dance was scheduled to start so we wandered around the museum, looking at early modern Japanese pottery and ancient Iranian metalwork. Have you ever heard about the tradition of mending broken pottery with gold and how this practice could be seen as a symbol of how our scars can be seen as something that makes us stronger or more beautiful? I feel like I see it all the time on social media and I don’t know if that was the original symbolic intention, but I did see a pot like that, which was kind of cool.

We went outside to the steps of the museum, which were crowded with people who had come to watch the lion dance. It started about fifteen minutes late and the couple behind us was having a protracted discussion about whether it was worth continuing to wait. It was. There were two full-sized lions (one purple and one red), with two adults inside each, and one orange baby lion with two small children inside. The three lions danced to the music of the drums and received red envelopes from a few members of the crowd and pretended to gobble fortune cookies out of a basket on the ground and then threw the cookies to the crowd. The baby lion had a chaperone, an adult not in costume who followed it around and gave it instructions when it got off course. It was seriously cute.

We used to go to see the Lion Dance in Chinatown occasionally when we lived in D.C., and I think we might have taken Noah once when he was very small (pre-blog). Seeing the tiny children inside the dragon costume did shake loose a memory I hadn’t thought of in ages. One year one of my grad school professors at the University of Maryland invited her students to see a lunar new year performance at her small son’s Chinese dance school, followed by a buffet feast. Try as I might, I could not remember her name or even what class she was teaching but I remember her son’s first name, even though I only met him once. It was Logan, which his mother explained his parents gave him because it was an English name that sounded like a Chinese one. (The child was biracial.) It’s funny the little glimpses into other people’s lives we remember years later. Given that this event happened about thirty years ago, Logan could have his own kid old enough to learn the lion dance by now.

When the dance was over, we headed over to the Arts and Industries Building, where there were food and crafts booths and more performances. I initially had some trouble finding food that was both vegetarian and not too diabetic-unfriendly, but I ended up with eggrolls, a tofu dish, and half a small and very expensive Korean black sesame seed cheesecake, which I shared with Noah. Beth and Noah had noodles, and she got a Vietnamese bahn mi sandwich, which is a favorite of hers. Everything was delicious. I only regretted that I couldn’t have a Thai iced tea. I used to love those, but they are super sweet and I have yet to try one since diabetes. We briefly listened to some Mongolian singers before heading home.

As we walked across the Mall, headed back to the Metro, I was feeling emotional about multiculturalism. When the kids were small and we’d go to the Folklife Festival (which, sadly, has been cancelled for this year in favor of some fake State Fair* on the mall) or to Takoma Park’s Fourth of July parade and we’d be watching musicians and dancers from all over the world and eating food from different cultures I would so often talk to the kids about how the United States is a country of immigrants that one year when Noah was around twelve he interrupted and supplied the lesson himself. But it’s true. I like living in a country and a region with a lot of immigrants. I think it makes us stronger and more interesting.

So that’s one reason Beth has gotten involved with a local organization that helps support immigrant communities. She’s not sure what she’ll be doing yet—maybe delivering groceries to people who are afraid to leave their houses, maybe observing drop-offs and pickups at our kids’ old majority-Latino elementary school in case ICE shows up. It’s a way to protect and give back to the people who make our home a culturally richer place.

By the way, I read that the year of the fire horse, which happens only every sixty years is supposed to “bring intense, fast-paced change.” That could certainly be good or bad. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for good.

*No shade to real state and county fairs, which I really like.

Ice Melts

Posted on February 19, 2026 by Steph

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Snowmelt

The snow that fell three and a half weeks ago is still with us, but it’s gradually melting. Our back yard is still mostly covered with a three-inch layer, with most of the grass in the sunnier side and front yards now visible. We’ve had two days with highs in the fifties with more on the way, so that should speed up the melting.

I am enjoying seeing what emerges from the snow as it recedes—daffodil points in our front yard, a neighbor’s meditating skeleton and frog, a newspaper from the night the snow fell, the last week of January. It was delivered at night to beat the snowfall, but we could not find it the next morning. When I found it and looked at the front page, it was like a time capsule. There was a story about Alex Pretti’s death, but his name had not yet been released. Doesn’t that seem like a long time ago? The news moves fast these days.

What have we been up to while the snow and ice melt? Besides reading a book club book that takes place partly in Antarctica, you mean? (That ended up seeming more apt than anticipated.) Well, we’ve been…

Watching the Olympics

We’ve been watching the Olympics most nights, more figure skating than anything else, but also ski jumping, moguls, snowboarding, skeleton, and bobsled. It’s a nice distraction, and Walter enjoys it too, as you can see from his rapt attention to the opening ceremony. (He was also into bobsledding and ski jumping.)

Baking

Baked goods continue to appear in the house without me lifting a finger to make it happen. So far this month Beth has made chocolate-chocolate chip cookies and Noah has made rye muffins with caraway seeds, and the most amazing turtle shortbread bars for Valentine’s Day. They have a shortbread base, a middle layer of caramel with pecans, and are topped with chocolate. They contain a whole pound of butter and they taste like it.

Going on a Date

The second Saturday in February Beth and I went to see Sly Lives!, a documentary about Sly and the Family Stone at AFI, where it was playing for free for Black History Month. I think the music and fashion would be a nostalgic treat for anyone old enough to remember the 1970s, but I also learned a lot I didn’t know. Sly Stone was deeply talented and flawed, like so many artists. The story is sad in parts, but also joyful. And he had the most beautiful, endearing smile when he was young. (Perhaps he still does, but there is no contemporary footage of him in the film.)

After the movie, we got a late lunch at a pupuseria where there was a benefit for the immigrant community. We got pupusas and Beth bought a sticker and some other small items from the art table. I would have, too, if I’d realized that was the benefit part. I thought the proceeds from the food was being donated, too. (But I have another chance because another Mexican/Salvadoran restaurant near us is having that kind of benefit in early March.)

Celebrating Valentine’s Day

The next weekend was Valentine’s and President’s Day weekend in one. We didn’t have big plans for Valentine’s Day, but a great quantity of chocolate (dark chocolate bars in various flavors and caramel-filled hearts) and cookies (heart-shaped butter cookies from a local bakery and low-carb strawberry almond flour cookies) were exchanged between the three of us. Noah baked the turtle bars that day, while Beth and I were at the Silver Spring Recreation and Aquatic Center, where she’s been going to exercise almost daily since she retired.

The facility is new and I had not been yet. In fact, I haven’t been swimming in months and just a couple times in the current Trump administration. At first it because we were so busy with the flurry of protests at the beginning of this term and then I just got out of the habit. Anyway, Beth used the weight room and I swam laps. We’d hoped to use the hot tub together, but it was out of service. I got a half-sweet mocha at the café while I waited for her to finish. There are some nice amenities there they don’t have at the elementary school where I usually swim (though no kickboards, which is a drawback).

We talked to North the following day. They had not gone to the mailroom to pick up their Valentine’s care package because they didn’t know it was from us, and we declined to tell them what was in it. They have since picked it up, so I can reveal it contained strawberry-white chocolate truffles, coconut milk caramels, and probiotics. This last item is because, after seeming to clear up after their surgery, they are having digestive issues again. This is discouraging.

Rallying for Immigrant Rights

The next day, we went to a protest. I used to take most federal holidays off because Beth had them off and we’d often do something together, but now that she’s retired, it doesn’t seem to make as much difference, so I’m never sure what to do. However, on President’s Day, I worked a little and took off early so I could accompany Beth to a rally for immigrant rights in Annapolis.

The rally took place at 5:30 at Lawyer’s Mall, in front of the Maryland State House. It’s a plaza with a bronze statue of Thurgood Marshall, on the base of which people left battery-operated votive candles and signs. State representatives, community activists, and high school students spoke. The timing of the rally was meant to mark the occasion (the following day) of Governor Moore’s signing a bill to ban co-operation between local police and federal immigration agencies. Speakers celebrated this and called for further legislation to prohibit federal agents from masking, engaging in racial profiling, and operating detention centers in the state. One of the speakers, by way of encouragement, gestured to the brick and granite courtyard that was largely free of snow, and said, as we’ve noticed recently “ice melts” to the cheers of the crowd.

We stood in the chilly square as the sun set and darkness gathered, listening to the speeches, and wandering around to read signs that said things like “Abolish ICE,” “Due Process for All,” and “Fund Healthcare and Education, Not State Terror.” I particularly liked one with a picture of a butterfly (a symbol of migrants) and the following words: “We the People” (in calligraphy) “Are Pissed” (in block letters). But the best one was not technically a sign, but a quilt big enough to require two women to hold it. It said “Abolish ICE Now” in gold letters on a blue background. That takes more commitment than markers and posterboard.

We left around seven o’clock. Beth had made a quinoa-vegetable stew for dinner before we left, and I had mine in a thermos to eat as we drove home. As I ate the warm stew, I watched the dark, snowy landscape along the Beltway roll by, hoping for a melting, not so much of the snow, but either of the hearts of any of our leaders who need it, or barring that, of their power.

Winter’s So Cold This Year

Posted on February 2, 2026 by Steph

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Come with me, dance, my dear
Winter’s so cold this year
You are so warm
My wintertime love to be

From “Wintertime Love” by Jim Morrison, John Paul Densmore, Robert A. Krieger, and Raymond D. Manzerek

Snowcrete

A few days after the snow, I walked to the co-op for milk and dinner ingredients and I took a picture of a more than six-foot high pile of plowed snow on a corner across the street from the co-op, posted it on Facebook and asked people to guess how long it would take to melt. Guesses ranged from early February to early April. I promised to track it and announce whose guess was closest. Well, we’ll never find out because as one of my friends predicted, the snow was removed with a front-loader a few days later. There’s no shortage of other piles, including a glacier-like twelve-foot tall and at least eighty-foot long mass that’s been dumped in the parking lot of a closed hospital near my house.

It’s been over a week since the snow fell, but removal has been a challenge because of the thick ice layer on top. People have been shattering it and using the pieces to build igloos, replicas of Stonehenge, or abstract sculptures in their yards. Streets are clear (though some don’t have as many lanes as usual) and sidewalks are mostly clear as well, but the parts that were never shoveled are covered with what everyone is calling “snowcrete” and this makes it a challenge to walk anywhere. It’s unlikely to get easier any time soon because we’ve been having an unusually long cold snap. The temperature hasn’t risen above freezing in a week and a half (though it might tomorrow). It has been sunny, so there are tiny rivulets of meltwater at the edges of things in the afternoons, but there hasn’t been any significant melting. The public schools were out all last week and are still closed. Beth says she’s glad we don’t have kids in the school system anymore because I would be losing my mind and she’s 100% right.

After we finished shoveling the sidewalk and the path from the front door to the sidewalk, we undertook new shoveling projects. All three of us worked on making new paths out of the house—front door to the driveway and back door to the driveway. We share the driveway with our next-door neighbors (UNO’s people) and Beth, Noah, Rose, Seydou and two of their teenage sons spent several days shoveling the driveway. Usually, we either wait for the driveway to melt or hire that job out, but the mostly Latino men who come by offering those services were not much in evidence last week. Why do you think that might be? To be clear, I am not complaining about having to do this job ourselves but thinking with sadness about our neighbors who are afraid to leave their houses. Beth has been trying to get involved with volunteers who are making grocery deliveries to immigrant households, but she hasn’t been able to get connected yet.

The snowy weather spurred a lot of baking. In addition to the pumpkin brownies, Beth made chocolate chunk-almond biscotti, and Noah made banana bread with pecans. And I don’t think either of them is done. Beth brought home chocolate chips when she went grocery shopping this weekend, “just in case” she felt like baking again and Noah ordered rye flour for muffins.

Goodbyes

Friday night Beth’s staff took her out for a goodbye dinner at Busboys and Poets. She said it was fun and good to see them. Noah and I were on our own that evening, so we ordered pizza and watched Life of Chuck. I’d been reluctant to watch it with Beth because she doesn’t like violent films and I didn’t know how the apocalypse scenes would be portrayed. Well, it was about as gentle a portrayal of an apocalypse as you could hope for and the film is really very beautiful and life-affirming for a movie with so much death in it.

The next day Beth and I attended a memorial service for our friend and neighbor Chris, who died unexpectedly in late November a couple weeks shy of her sixtieth birthday. Chris worked for the AFL-CIO, so she and Beth met through work. Then about ten years ago, she and her wife Melissa and their two girls Zoe and Skyler moved to Takoma Park just around the corner and two houses down from us. We went to their New Year’s Eve parties several times. We don’t throw parties, so we reciprocated with hand-me-downs for the girls, baked goods, and garden produce. I would often run into Chris outside her house when starting out on my morning walk and this would almost always turn into stopping to chat, mostly about politics and our kids. Less than a week before she died, she messaged me asking about good places in the area to hike because she’d been ill recently, but she was anticipating recovering and wanted to hike, perhaps with Beth, once she was better and Beth had retired. The two of them had discussed kayaking together, too. Well, those outings will never happen now.

The service was at the Washington Ethical Society. The building has no parking lot, and a lot of street parking spaces were still covered in snow, so we weren’t sure if we should drive, take our chances on public transportation, or take a Lyft. We drove and we did find a space a couple blocks away. We had to climb over some drifts, so I was glad I decided to wear boots rather than shoes (and that I hadn’t bought new shoes for the occasion as I considered). I’d also wondered if I’d be underdressed in a grey turtleneck, black cardigan, and black pants but when we arrived and I saw the crowd I felt I’d intuited the standard for largely middle-aged lesbian sad event attire accurately.

The hall was packed. We got seats, but it ended up being standing room only in the back of the room. There were several speakers, arranged chronologically, telling stories about Chris from different phases in her life—her childhood on a gladiola farm in Ohio, her madcap twenties in D.C. (some relayed by a former girlfriend), and so on, ending with Melissa, who told a story about how they got married “for the first time” in Oregon in 2003 during a brief period when that was legal and how when the marriage was cancelled after a referendum, they got a refund check from the state. It was darkly funny but also served to remind us how far we have come in recent years. There were pictures of Chris and loved ones at different ages projected on a screen and then people from the audience went up to mikes set up around the room to tell more stories. Labor colleagues, a fellow soccer coach, and one of the girls on a team Chris had coached spoke affectionately of her.

Chris was big-hearted and passionate about social justice. She helped create some of the online communication tools labor and other progressive activists, including those in Minneapolis, are using to co-ordinate actions. She was a devoted wife and mother, a lover of card games, and an avid birdwatcher and outdoorswoman. (I realized at the ceremony that even though I sent her a long list of parks where Beth and I have hiked, I probably didn’t suggest any she didn’t already know, but she was kind enough not to tell me that.)

When we got home from the ceremony, we found Noah chopping vegetables for a stir-fry, and I lent him a hand. As I chopped cabbage, carrots, and mushrooms, I put on Prince because I was remembering that when Prince died, Chris and Mel hosted an impromptu Prince dance party in their yard. It reminded me how they turned sadness into appreciation and joy. Like the dancers in the Doors song, Chris excelled at finding warmth in the cold.

Snow and Ice

Posted on January 26, 2026 by Steph

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DC: Protests
After only a little over a week at home after our New Year’s trip, Beth and I hit the road again for the same two places we’d just been. The reason was North’s gallbladder surgery (which we hoped would resolve the daily nausea, abdominal pain, and other digestive issues they’d been having since summer) was the Friday before MLK weekend, and we were going to look after them as they recovered. We left Wednesday morning, headed for Wheeling first to break up the drive. The day before that Beth, who now has time to go to as many protests as she wants, went to two. In the morning, she was outside the Supreme Court as they heard arguments about trans secondary school athletes and in the afternoon, she was outside Customs and Border Protection protesting ICE’s overreach and brutality.

I would have liked to go to both protests, but especially the second one. As I told Beth, at the beginning of this administration I had identified trans rights as one of the most important issues to me, and I still care, deeply, but now there are so many things to protest that I sometimes have to ask myself, “Is this an existential threat to democracy?” when deciding whether to get out the markers and posterboard and take some time off work.

Well, the way the government is treating undocumented people, black and brown people who it thinks (with or without proof) could possibly be undocumented, and people who don’t think immigrants and/or citizens of color should be routinely abducted, physically attacked, or killed seems like the one of the most existential threats to democracy currently. Nevertheless, I sat this one out because I knew I would be working only sporadically on the road so I thought I should put in two solids days on Monday and Tuesday. Beth reports that Senator Chris Van Hollen gave a good speech. You may have seen it online. It was the one about the immigrant mother in detention who was not released to be at her teenage son’s side as he died of cancer. This is the level of cruelty we are seeing these days.

Takoma Park, MD to Wheeling, WV: Traveling

We got a later start Wednesday morning than intended because I realized a half hour into the drive that I’d left my diabetes medications at home, so we had to turn around. We arrived in Wheeling in the late afternoon. It was cold and raining, but I hadn’t been able to walk as much as I would have liked that day, so I went for a short walk through the neighborhood, during which the rain turned to snow flurries. For dinner Beth’s mom had made a vegetable-barley soup that was warming after a damp, chilly walk. We watched part of the Ken Burns American Revolution documentary before bed.

In the morning, I worked a little reviewing background materials for web copy for a curcumin extract and took another walk, this one mostly in Wheeling Park. There was about an inch of snow, making the walk pretty. We left for Oberlin shortly after lunch, aiming to arrive after North’s afternoon rehearsal.

Wheeling to Oberlin, OH and Westlake, OH: Traveling

There was a lot more snow in Oberlin than in Wheeling. It had snowed hard for twenty hours and they had ten inches. During much of the day there were white-out conditions. North’s morning rehearsal was cancelled and their afternoon one moved to Zoom. They kept texting Beth about weather conditions and seemed worried about our drive. But it was lake effect snow, so the roads were clear until we were about a half hour from Oberlin, where they were imperfectly cleared. It had stopped snowing by that point, and the sun was even out for parts of the drive. We didn’t have any real trouble getting to Oberlin.

We arrived at Keep and North came out to the porch to greet us with kisses and hugs. We hung out with them in the lounge until the laundry they were doing was ready to move to the dryer and then we left to get coffee at Slow Train. North wanted one last coffee with whole milk before they had to go on a low-fat diet, post-surgery. I got coffee, too, and a chocolate chip cookie because on the drive over the past two days we’d been listening to a six-part podcast about the life of Famous Amos and it’s hard to listen to so many mentions of cookies before you start to want one. I asked for the coffee decaf but given how long it took me to fall asleep that night, I don’t think that’s what I got.

We’d been planning to eat dinner at the co-op where North is eating over Winter Term (Keep is housing only until spring semester) but North checked the menu on their phone and wasn’t that enthusiastic about lentil shepherd’s pie as their last pre-surgery meal so they suggested we eat out. They’d been meaning to get the fried pickles at the Feve before the surgery and hadn’t gotten around to it, which was probably their main motivation. They got the pickles, plus grilled cheese and tater tots, which is a meal they won’t be able to eat for a while.

We dropped North off at Keep and drove to Beth’s friend and former colleague Jeff’s house outside Cleveland, where we were staying the night. Jeff and his wife Karen were leaving the next morning hours before dawn for a trip to Disney World with two of their grandkids, so we didn’t socialize for long before they went to bed. Beth and I are early-to-bed types, so it’s unusual for anyone we stay with to go to bed before us.

Avon, OH: Surgery

The next morning, we left Jeff and Karen’s house, picked North up at Keep, and drove to Avon Hospital. They had a ten-a.m. check-in time and were told to expect to be there for three hours, though it ended up being more like five. They were in an exam room for an hour and a half before surgery, being hooked up to an IV and EKG stickers, and being informed about the procedure by various medical professionals, but as is usually the case in hospitals, mostly waiting. The most interesting thing that happened was that when one of the nurses couldn’t get a vein for the IV, another one performed an ultrasound on North’s arm, and we got to see the inside of their arm and watch as the needle penetrated the vein. At one point shortly before the surgery, North said, “There’s an organ in my body that won’t be there in an hour. It’s been there my whole life. It was once in you.” Here they gestured to me. This seemed to be blowing their mind a bit.

After North was wheeled into surgery, we went to the cafeteria for lunch. I decided to stay there because I’d been hoping to squeeze in a little work at the hospital and there were tables there, which made it a better workspace than the waiting room. Beth went back up to the waiting room and texted me when North was out of surgery and had been taken to recovery. The view from the window in this waiting room, of an overcast sky, a parking lot, a snow-covered quad cut into triangles by shoveled paths, and some bare trees, reminded me of something from Severance.

We eventually got to rejoin North in another exam room. Everything had gone well, but they’d taken longer than expected to come out of the anesthesia. Even when we got there, they were still very sleepy. We got post-surgical instructions and waited for North to wake up enough for the nurses to assess their pain level and decide they were ready to leave.

Oberlin: Convalescence

We drove to the rental house where we were staying and got North settled into bed for a nap. Beth went out for groceries while I stayed with them and when she got back, I went for a walk. It was almost dark when I left and only some of the sidewalks were shoveled, but I am devoted to my daily walk and didn’t want to skip it. For dinner, Beth and I ordered pizza from Lorenzo’s, the only restaurant in Oberlin from our college days that’s still open. I wondered if it was mean to have pizza when North was having broth and vegetarian strawberry Jello for dinner, but North said it helped we got spinach on it, because they don’t like spinach. We watched The Devil Wears Prada after dinner. North and I have been watching Emily in Paris, and I didn’t realize how much the show draws on the film, even though it’s a kinder, gentler echo of it.

Saturday was a quiet day of convalescence for North. I went out for a morning walk, admiring the deep snow and huge icicles, and then after lunch Beth went out to take her own walk and fetched some forgotten items from North’s room in Keep. While she was gone, I read a half dozen chapters from The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and then worked a little more on the curcumin web site. When Beth got home, we thought we might watch Gilmore Girls, but North had fallen asleep waiting for us to be ready, so I blogged instead. We watched a couple episodes once they woke up, had dinner (North had managed pretzels and yogurt earlier in the day so they had miso soup with tofu and noodles, while Beth and I had a couple prepared curries on quinoa) and then we watched People We Meet on Vacation.

Sunday was much like Saturday. It was sunny and as I sipped my herbal tea in the kitchen I looked out at the snow on the lawn—sparkly and touched in places with the palest pink from the newly risen sun—and the icicles, some maybe as long as a foot and a half long, translucent and glowing, hanging from the eaves. On my only outing of the day, I went to Slow Train to drink coffee, eat half a bagel, and read three chapters of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, admiring some creative snow creatures on the way, and picking up a coffee to bring home to North, who was trying it with skim milk that day. They were still in pain and easily fatigued, but their appetite was good.

Later that afternoon, I did laundry for everyone so North would have a good supply of clean clothes when they returned to Keep, and North and I watched a couple episodes of Emily in Paris Rome. I wondered if it was a good idea to start a new season when we won’t be able to watch it again until spring break, but that kind of thinking might mean we never start it, so we did. North napped in the mid-afternoon and I finished The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Later we played Sleeping Queens and watched Gilmore Girls and ate an improvised breakfast-for-dinner meal with food we had on hand (air-fried tofu, scrambled eggs, vegetarian sausage, toast, and fruit salad) and watched Murder Mystery. North wrote a review on Letterbox: “Exactly what you think a murder mystery starring Adam Sandler would be like.” They also said it hurt their incisions to laugh, but despite this they chose to watch the sequel the next night.

That afternoon we’d talked to North about if they felt ready for us to leave the next morning and they said no—partly for practical reasons but also “because I still feel like I’m sick and I want my parents”—so we extended the rental house by a day.

Monday was the coldest day so far, with a wind chill of -3, which may be nothing to my tougher Canadian readers, but is unusual for us Marylanders. I braved the elements to go to Slow Train again to get coffee and a scone and bring an iced coffee back to North. On my way, I stopped to take pictures of Underground Railroad-related sculpture (tracks rising out of the ground) and plaques because it was MLK day. When I got back, there were newly formed ice crystals attached the underside of the coffee cup lid. I found Beth and North playing Spelling Bee in bed. “We are currently Amazing, but we want to be Geniuses,” North told me and soon they were.

Because we were staying an extra day, I decided I needed to get more serious about working, so I holed up in the house’s little office and got back to work on the curcumin web site copy, taking a break to watch a couple episodes of Emily on Paris Rome with North while Beth was out buying groceries, mostly for North to have after we left. I think it was the first day North didn’t need an afternoon nap.

Later that afternoon Beth boiled a bunch of noodles and air-fried tofu to send back to Keep with North the next day. Beth made a stir-fry for dinner, and we watched Murder Mystery 2. North’s review: ““Exactly what you think the sequel to a murder mystery starring Adam Sandler would be like.”

The next morning was even colder, with a wind chill of -7. I packed, took a short walk, packed some more, and then we checked out of the rental house, unloaded copious groceries into the lounge fridge in Keep, took North out for lunch at a sushi place in Elyria and then hit the road. They were complaining of nausea, and it was hard to leave them, still recovering, but at least they were well provisioned.

Oberlin to Wheeling and Wheeling to Takoma Park: Traveling

We arrived in Wheeling a little after five. The drive was uneventful. The temperature rose into the twenties and we could see the snow gradually lessening as we neared Wheeling, where there were only patchy remnants of the snow that fell when we were there almost a week earlier. Beth’s mom defrosted the vegetable lasagna we had over New Year’s and we watched more of the American Revolution documentary. In the morning, we had a video call with North who said the nausea of the day before had been short-lived. They seemed in good spirits. I took a walk in Wheeling Park (where Good Lake was frozen solid) and we visited with Beth’s aunt Carole, leaving shortly after lunch for home.

It was snowing as we drove home, more than was predicted, and the drive ended up being tricky, but we got home in six hours, which was not bad, considering.

Takoma Park and Minneapolis, MN: Snow and ICE and Border Patrol

We’ve been home four and a half days now. I went back to work Thursday and Friday. We got almost seven inches of compacted snow and sleet that fell Saturday night and all day Sunday. Beth, Noah, and I took turns shoveling and re-shoveling the sidewalk in front of the house and around the side. We have a corner lot, and our back yard is big so there is a long stretch of sidewalk to shovel. Between the three of us, we did the section in front of the house four times—because it’s the more traveled street of the two at our intersection— but by Sunday evening it was covered again. But the power didn’t go out and Beth made pumpkin brownies, two pluses for an inclement winter day.

Sunday morning, we had a video call with North. They hadn’t left Keep since we left them there five days earlier, but their friends are hanging out in their room and getting their mail from the mail room and doing their laundry for them (the washer and dryer are one floor up from their room and they can’t carry loads upstairs). They made a crochet snail from a kit one of their friends got them, they haven’t run out of food, they joined the rehearsals for their winter term project last week by Zoom and they hope to go in person this week. Best of all, they say since the surgery, the digestive problems they’ve been having since summer do seem to be clearing up. We are all gratified by that.

But like all of you, we were horrified, when earlier this weekend, a second protestor was executed in Minneapolis. Between the kidnapped preschooler used as bait and the other abducted or tear-gassed children, the elderly man (a citizen, not that it matters) dragged out of his house wearing just underwear and a blanket in the bitter cold, and these terrible deaths, things just keep getting worse and worse in that besieged city. The massive protests and the way people are organizing to protect their neighbors at considerable risk to themselves is truly inspiring and I hope this will be a turning point, but I don’t know if it will be. Like much of the country, I feel like I’m holding my breath and waiting to see.

Every Phase of Us

Posted on January 11, 2026 by Steph

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Fire and Ice

My first work week of the year was a short one. I didn’t start to work until Wednesday and then I took off early on Friday to go to a protest. Between the kidnapping of the President of Venezuela and the killing of a protestor in Minneapolis, the year had gotten off to a dismal and dismaying start. There were nationwide protests planned for the weekend, but Beth had a prior engagement, so we decided to go to a Friday afternoon roadside protest in Silver Spring. I made my sign the night before; the side I meant to face the street had just the words “Fire Ice” in letters I hoped would be big enough to read from the road, with accompanying sketches of fire and ice. (I think if I use it again, I will make the letters thicker, so they are more legible from a distance.)

This recurring protest happens every week at 4 p.m. on 16^th Street, a six-lane thoroughfare. The weather was not inviting, in the forties and drizzling when we arrived, but there was a moderate turnout, several dozen people. I’m not a regular at this one, so I’m not sure how that compares to an average week. People’s signs were about various issues, but anti-ICE ones were popular and two people in the median held signs that said, “No Blood for Oil” and “No War.” Someone on the other side of the street had an upside-down American flag. My favorite sign might have been the one that said, “Alexa… change the President.” If only it were that simple…

As usual at these types of protests, there was a lot of positive engagement from passing traffic, near constant honking, waving, and thumbs up from drivers. I most appreciated honks from a school bus driver and a contractor’s truck with a Spanish surname in the name of the company. There was also an elementary school age child (perhaps Latino—it was hard to tell at a distance) who leaned out a rolled down window and yelled “Thank you!” repeatedly across several lanes of traffic. Another driver yelled to us, echoing “No Blood for Oil” and then wished us “a blessed weekend.” This isn’t something I’d say myself, not being religious, but I appreciated the sentiment.

A Ceremony to Prove It

Friday night after a dinner of homemade pizza we watched Train Dreams. In the scene in which the protagonist proposes to his wife, she says they are already married, they just need “a ceremony to prove it.” That line struck me because the anniversary of the two times Beth and I had a ceremony to prove it was in two days. Each one was a different kind of proof. As of today, it’s now been thirty-four years since our commitment ceremony with friends and family in one living room and thirteen since our legal wedding in another living room, with just the two of us, the kids, and an officiant.

On Saturday afternoon I made the spice cake I made for the first time for the commitment ceremony, and I have made almost every year since then. While it was in the oven I read a few chapters of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, which I’m reading because my book club is reading the modern re-reading Pym in February. Earlier that day Beth got a long-delayed haircut. In her first week of retirement, she also paid a visit to the dentist (also delayed) and attended the first meeting of her new Quigong class. She was happy to report she was not the youngest person there.

We had the cake Sunday afternoon, after a video call with North and before Noah left for his game club. It’s a comfortingly familiar cake by this point, dense, sweet, and moist. This year as most years I make a lemon frosting for it—the one year I made orange instead, North was quite put out.

We also exchanged cards and gifts. My card had a botanical illustration of a passionflower on the front. I circled the name of the flower, even though I know from writing about it—it’s a common ingredient in herbal sleep aides—that its name refers to the passion of Christ, not the other kind. Beth’s had pictures of the phases of the moon on it and said, “I love every phase of us” on the front.

One of the advantages of having an anniversary two and a half weeks after Christmas (other than relieving post-holiday letdown) is that we usually have leftover items on our Christmas lists and that makes gift-buying easy. This year we ended up with a reverse “Gift of the Magi” situation, in that without or planning it our gifts improved each other. Beth got me three kinds of nut butter—fancy nut butters being a diabetic-friendly treat—and I got her a nut butter mixer. It’s a lid with an attached crank that allows you to mix separated oil back into natural nut butters without splashing it out of the jar. We haven’t tried it out yet because while I opened one of the nut butters later in the afternoon, it was the pistachio-cocoa butter, which was creamy and didn’t need any mixing.

Happy anniversary, sweetheart. Even though I wish this phase of our lives did not involve the need for quite so many protests, I think we improve each other and this was a blessed weekend.

Happy New Year, Happy Retirement

Posted on January 6, 2026 by Steph

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The Week Between

There was almost a week between Christmas and our departure for Wheeling. Beth worked at least a few hours most of these days, tying up loose ends because—and I don’t believe I have mentioned this up to now—she has retired. The last day she worked was second to last day of December. She was at CWA for twenty-six years, so it’s a big deal.

While Beth worked, the rest of us were at leisure. The kids and I binged all the available episodes of Stranger Things Season 5 over the course of four days. One morning Beth took off, all four of us went to Brookside Conservatory to see the hothouse plants and the model trolley and train exhibit. The trolley runs past models of historic Maryland and DC buildings that stand (or stood) on a real trolley line, including the Cabin John mansion in the process of burning down, the Arcade Building at Glen Echo Park, and the trolley barn in Georgetown (pictured). The train tracks pass by the very conservatory that houses the exhibit. If you look inside the greenhouse, you can see a tiny model train track. It’s very meta.

For several day starting on Christmas day North was cat-sitting UNO*, the next-door neighbors’ half-blind, mostly outdoor cat, who spends a lot of time in our yard. Some of you may remember that when I was still grieving Xander and thought I couldn’t bear to get another cat, UNO melted my heart. He’s the reason we got kittens when we did, two springs ago. Anyway, there was a problem with the keypad on the neighbors’ back door and North could not get into the house. As UNO was outside when his people left, that meant he was locked out for several days. He had a lot to say about this whenever North went to fill his food and water bowls on the deck of his house or when any of us would leave our house and he’d see us.

We had food to give him (and he seemed fine with our cats’ food), but the first night, Christmas night, it was supposed to go below freezing and UNO is about fifteen years old and getting thin, so we were all worried for him. If it wasn’t for our cats, particularly Willow who does not care for any cats who are not Walter, we might have brought him inside our house. Walter, who has been engaged in longstanding and unsuccessful campaign to befriend UNO whenever they meet in our yard, might have been game for a sleepover. It’s hard to say how UNO would have reacted. He used to pay us inside visits before we got Walter and Willow, but now other, annoying young cats live here so he does not.

North tried setting up a space heater with a cushion in front of it on our porch, but UNO wouldn’t go near it, despite our encouragement. Since he never sets foot on our porch, but frequents our garage, it seemed like that would be the better space to heat, so Beth set up a propane heater in there, with a towel-lined bin nearby. He would not go in the makeshift bed, but he did sleep on the ground near the heater and the following night, Beth put another towel down in that spot. We were all relieved when UNO’s people came home and texted us their thanks and a picture of him asleep under their Christmas tree.

One last thing we had hoped for before leaving town was a get-together with our family friend Becky because we often met and exchange baked goods at Christmastime, but her family went to Montreal for Christmas and in the brief overlap we had in Takoma she was not feeling well, so I delivered a plate of cookies and buckeyes to her doorstep late Tuesday afternoon. That night we took down the tree and most of the decorations from the living room.

New Year’s Eve

The next day, the last day of the year, we drove to Wheeling. A winter storm was predicted to hit Western Maryland in the late afternoon, so we drove through more quickly than usual, with fewer and shorter stops. We made it to Beth’s mom’s house a little after four and the roads were clear all the way there. There was snow on the ground and the hills, though, so it was a pretty drive.

I took a walk about a half hour after we arrived because I hadn’t had a chance to move much that day. There was snow on the ground, and I admired the Christmas lights I saw as I meandered through the neighborhood in the gathering dusk. Toward the end of the walk, new snow started to fall, just scattered flurries, but later in the evening it started to snow in earnest.

That afternoon, Beth’s boss texted her and she thought it could be work-related as she wouldn’t be officially retired for a few hours and he is in the habit of texting her on vacation—most recently on Thanksgiving Day—but he was just wishing her a happy retirement. Beth was half-expecting calls from colleagues either on or after her last day, but there were no work requests, just more well wishes.

We had vegetable-gnocchi soup Beth’s mom had picked up for dinner and around eight everyone but North went over to Beth’s aunt Carole’s for a New Year’s Eve gathering. North, who is not a night owl, wanted a disco nap to help them stay up until midnight, plus they’d hurt their knee earlier in the day and wanted to rest it. YaYa’s other two sisters, Susan and Jenny, were there, along with Susan’s husband John, Jenny’s daughter Laura and her boyfriend Nico, and Carole’s son Sean.

There was a nice spread—charcuterie and several kinds of Christmas cookies and other sweets, some of which became the topic of lively dispute. Do you know those peanut butter cookies with Hershey’s kisses stuck in them? Two different bakers had contributed some to the feast and there were some with the points of the chocolate sticking up and some with the points stuck into the cookie, leaving the surface flat. The relative merits of each method were debated with enthusiasm.

The four sisters also considered different trips they could take together, including a silent retreat. This idea was startling, as there’s not a lot of silence when they are all together. Beth, Noah, and I all exchanged amused glances, and Beth said later the sisters would get thrown out in the first five minutes.

Because some people in attendance weren’t keen on staying up until midnight and others were concerned about driving in the snow, we sang “Auld Lange Syne” and toasted with champagne and sparkling cider at 8:45. Jenny wanted to find the full lyrics and sing the whole thing but it turns out there are six verses and no one was up for that. Sean, who is an English professor, was called upon to give us some details about Robert Burns’ life and he obliged. No one actually left until around 9:30, when Beth and I made our departure. Noah stayed a little longer and then he and North and YaYa rang in the new year at her house, eating salty snacks and watching the ball drop. Beth and I were staying at her friend Michelle’s apartment, which was empty because Michelle’s acting in a show in Chicago, so we drove there, met the feral cats she feeds and who hang out on her porch, and we were in bed by a little after ten.

“Good night. Happy New Year. Happy Retirement,” I told her.

New Year’s Day

On New Year’s Day everyone but Noah, who slept until early afternoon, watched the Rose parade. North had never seen it before and was interested in how the floats are made at least partly of natural materials.

Late in the morning I started to make Hoppin’ John for good luck in the new year. I do this every year, but it did not seem like the year to skip it. I don’t want to be the one responsible for the fall of our teetering democracy because I failed to make a black-eyed pea stew. I didn’t start in time to eat it for lunch, so we had it for dinner that night.

That afternoon, Beth and I took a walk in Wheeling Park. It was a sunny day, and the snow was sparkly and crunchy underfoot. I asked her how her first official day of retirement was going. (She’d been on vacation the day before.) She said she was spending it in one of her favorite places with her favorite people and there was snow, so pretty good.

We went to the coffeeshop in the park where I got a latte and she got a hot chocolate. Then we walked past the skating rink, the tennis courts, and the swimming pool and headed back to her mom’s house. It was about forty minutes of walking, broken up with the beverage break, which was probably not as far as we walked at Brookside Garden when we went to see the lights, but still a long walk for Beth, post-accident. When we paused to watch the skaters at the rink, she said she should be on the ice, and I said maybe she’d be skating before the winter was over. She does continue to improve and stopped using the cane some time on the trip.

As Beth and I left for Michelle’s that night, YaYa and the kids were starting to watch Night of the Hunter. Earlier in the visit, YaYa had mentioned in passing what a good film (and novel) it was, so Noah suggested they watch it. He’s thoughtful about what other people would like when it comes to suggesting books and movies. I think it’s one of his love languages. This 1955 film was billed as one of the scariest films ever made. The kids report that it is not, but they liked it.

Two More Days in Wheeling

We stayed in Wheeling two more days after New Year’s. Beth got a maintenance message on the car and had to take it to a mechanic the day after New Year’s, because she didn’t want to take any chances on the drive to Oberlin. Beth and the car being gone for a few hours changed some plans.

The down time gave me the opportunity to finish reading Huckleberry Finn, a relatively short novel which I had been reading for three months. I’d started it because I’d read James over the summer, but I was always reading at least two books at a time, and it kept falling to the bottom of my priority list. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it, but it was a third reading for me, and I guess twice is how many times I needed to read this book. Or maybe I would have been better off reading the Twain first, I will say in case you are intending to read both books. (This is how I did it when I read David Copperfield and Demon Copperhead earlier this year and I found that a highly satisfying reading experience.) And once I’d finished Huckleberry Finn, I read the excellent novella Small Things Like These in one sitting. It was a luxurious day of reading, the kind that’s too rare for me. Carole and Sean came over for pizza that night and after they left, we watched the first half of Wake Up, Dead Man.

The next day, Beth and I took another walk in Wheeling Park, and then the kids and I watched the last episode of Stranger Things at Michelle’s apartment. It didn’t seem like a good idea to watch such a loud and frequently violent show on the television in YaYa’s living room, as the first story of her house has an open floor plan. The difficulty in finding a long enough chunk of time when we were all free and could get transportation to Michelle’s place meant we’d delayed watching it until a few days after the finale was released and North had gotten some spoilers on social media, but it was fun, nonetheless.

That evening Beth, the kids, and I drove through the Festival of Lights at Oglebay Park. I generally prefer walk-through light displays to drive-through ones, but I am fond of this one, which we’ve been visiting for decades, since before the kids were born. One benefit of visiting at dusk two days after New Year’s is that it’s not very crowded. The kids held their breath in the tunnels of lights, just as Beth and her younger brother used to do in real tunnels when they were kids. When we went by Santa and his sleigh, there were real deer grazing in the snow in front of the reindeer made of lights. After the lights, we went back to YaYa’s house, had leftovers for dinner, and watched the rest of Wake Up, Dead Man.

Two Days on the Road

We left Wheeling for Oberlin late the next morning. It’s the shortest leg of the journey, so there was time for errands afterward. The only grocery store in walking distance of campus has closed, so we drove to one in Elyria and got some breakfast food for me (in case the hotel breakfast bar was not vegetarian-diabetic-friendly) and groceries for North to have at Keep. They will be eating at another co-op during Winter Term because Keep’s kitchen is closed until spring semester.

Beth, Noah, and I were staying at a hotel and once we got settled there, we ordered Chinese takeout and then went out for ice cream in Vermilion at an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, the kind where ice cream comes in a metal dish and shakes come in glasses with the leftovers in a metal shaker. Vermilion is a pretty town on the shores of Lake Erie and there were still a lot of Christmas lights up on the streets and two lit-up Christmas trees in parks a few blocks apart. (We wondered if there was some kind of Christmas tree schism in town to have two trees in public places so close together.) The ice cream parlor was still offering Christmas-themed treats. Beth got hot chocolate with vanilla ice cream and crushed peppermint candy. Noah got The Santa, a cherry shake with Sprite. I got a dish of peppermint stick ice cream, and North, who is devoted to root beer floats got one. It came in a glass mug, and they said it was the fanciest root beer float they’d ever had.

The next morning, we met North for coffee, hot cider, hot chocolate, and pastries at Slow Train, their favorite coffeeshop in Oberlin. From there we dropped them off at Warner Center, where the Theater and Dance department is housed. For their Winter Term project, they will be writing a play with eight other students. Then over the spring semester they will rehearse and perform it.

After our goodbyes, the three of us took a stroll around Tappan Square and got into the car for the longest drive of the trip, Oberlin to home.

Looking Ahead

It probably won’t be long until I see North and Oberlin again, though, because their gallbladder surgery is scheduled for mid-January, and Beth is going up there to take care of them while they are recovering. I’m probably going, too. I thought I might be superfluous, but when I asked if they’d like me to come, they said yes. My work is flexible and I guess sometimes you can’t have too many mothers.

Our first day home, I took the day off to take care of back-from-a-trip tasks and Beth started to disassemble the workstation that’s been wedged between the bookcase and our bed since March 2020. It’s strange to see it gone, like a visible sign of the transition to retirement.

*We learned through texts with his family that UNO’s name is spelled in all caps, which we did not previously know.

Keeping Christmas

Posted on December 26, 2025 by Steph

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And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.

From A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens

O, Christmas Tree

We got our Christmas tree on the second Sunday in December. We’d had our second snowfall of the year, just an inch, the night before, so we were expecting Butler’s Orchard to be scenic. But to our surprise they were almost out of trees. The field where the trees are usually sold was closed and the few trees that they had left were stacked along a wall outside the farm market. We were sorry not to be able to walk through a snowy field decorated with seasonal wooden cutouts and snowmen made of hay bales or Christmas trees fashioned from tractor tires painted green, but we started to browse the small selection of trees.

We often get a six- or seven-foot tree, but the biggest ones they had left were marked five feet. When we held them up and stood next to them, though, it was clear some were closer to six feet, if not quite that, because Noah is five eight and there were trees taller than him. We chose one of these. Though short, it was very full and had an attractive shape. We were all pleased with it. Once we had a tree strapped to the top of the car, we went into the farm market to browse for treats and small gifts. Then we dropped Noah off at the Panera in Rockville where his game club meets each Sunday afternoon and drove home, satisfied with the results of our outing.

The tree spent the next six days in the garage. We had some trepidation about having a tree at home, with the cats. We’ve only spent Christmas at home twice in the kids’ lives (in 2013 and 2014) and back then Matthew and Xander were ten and then eleven years old and in a more sedate phase of life than our not quite two-year-old cats. Plus, these cats, especially Willow, are more expert jumpers and climbers than their predecessors were at any age and it just seemed like asking for trouble to bring a tree into the house and adorn it with breakable objects. If it had been up to me, we probably wouldn’t have even gotten a tree, but I was outnumbered. If you can stand the suspense, I will tell you how it worked out later in this post.

Misfortune Seemed Our Lot

Two days after the got the tree, Beth was hit by a car while crossing the street on her way to the Metro. She’d been planning to work in the office that day, but that plan quickly changed. She was able to get up and walk away, but her foot and knee were hurt. She went first to her own doctor and then to get X-rays taken. Nothing was broken. A few days later, she saw an orthopedist who told her kneecap was subluxed and gave her some home exercises to do. She was using crutches for a few days; now she’s getting around with a cane, but she’s still sore.

The three of us who were not hit by a car all got sick that same week. Noah was the canary in the coal mine, but a couple days later North and I were sick, too. Our symptoms varied (North was the only one with a fever, for instance) so covid made sense. I picked up some tests while out on a series of holiday errands (masking at my stops) and sure enough, North tested positive. Noah and I tested negative, but it seems likely that’s what we had as we were exposed and sick. My worst symptoms were deep fatigue and an overwhelming amount of snot, but now we’re all nearly recovered.

Deck the Halls (and Make the Cookies and Mail the Cards)

Despite injury and illness, Christmas preparations went on. While we waited to decorate the tree, we decorated other parts of the house, inside and out. Over the course of the week, North decorated the mantel and Noah strung lights on the porch to join the candy cane lane and lights in the dogwood tree Beth had installed earlier and North put the decorations we re-use every year on the wreath.

There was also a lot of baking and candy making. Once North finished their exams, several days after arriving at home, they made candied cranberries, almond butter cookies with Hershey’s kisses, pinwheels, and chocolate-peppermint cookies. Noah made eggnog pudding and a pan of very convincing copycat cranberry bliss bars. (We’re supporting the striking Starbucks baristas by boycotting Starbucks, and it turns out cranberry bliss bars are what I miss most of their holiday offerings.) Beth made cashew butter buckeyes and she’s thinking of making pizzelles between Christmas and New Year’s. I made mint brownies before North came home and then the kids and I made gingerbread cookies two days before Christmas. And this wasn’t baking precisely, but I made gingerbread pancakes for dinner on Christmas Eve and they were a hit. There were requests that it become a tradition.

“Do we usually have this many cookies?” Noah asked me toward the end of the baking spree. The answer is no. I’m not exactly sure why we went so crazy this year, but it could be 1) that being home meant we had more time because we didn’t have to pack or travel, and 2) it’s my fifth Christmas with diabetes and after a few years of restraint, I am just not as strict as I was in the beginning and I know more hacks to keep my blood sugar under control (basically protein, fat, timing, and exercise), so I felt like going all out. It was fun and I’m glad we did it, but perhaps next year we’ll be more restrained.

On Christmas Eve morning I delivered plates of cookies and buckeyes to our next-door neighbors and a family around the block. Within a couple hours the next-door neighbors had reciprocated with a container of cardamom cookies. This exchange felt very festive. Meanwhile, we are setting aside some more treats for people we won’t see until after Christmas.

While not decorating or baking (or working—Beth worked until Christmas Eve and I worked until the day before that), we watched all our canonical Christmas specials (How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Frosty the Snowman, Frosty Returns, A Year Without a Santa Claus, Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and Christmas is Coming Again) and two more holiday romances: Keller Family Christmas and Christmas Baby. This was the one about the lesbian couple who find a baby on their doorstep (actually, in the store where one of them works) and they must decide whether to keep it. Go ahead and guess what they do. You already know the answer. On Christmas Eve, we continued our Christmas media binge with The Muppet Christmas Carol, which may be my favorite Christmas movie of all time, partly because of its faithfulness to the original and partly because of the changes.

The Happiest Christmas Tree

We bit the bullet and set up and trimmed the tree on the last Saturday before Christmas. Noah went through all the ornaments ahead of time and picked out the least breakable ones. The cats did not knock the tree over or try to climb it and we have North to thank for that. They read somewhere online that many cats strongly dislike the smell of oranges, so we bought a couple of bottles of essential orange oil and treated the mantel and the area around the tree and some of the ornaments and the presents with oil. It worked surprisingly well. At first, when the oil was freshly applied, they hated it so much they would run from the room. They did acclimate somewhat, but they still don’t like it. And now when you walk into the house you smell orange more than pine. Luckily, I find the scent more pleasant than the cats do, as we need to keep re-applying. North also made new ornaments out of dried orange slices for good measure.

Initially, Willow seemed frightened of the foul-smelling tree. She would hide in the cave part of the cat tree or inside the cat tunnel and stare at it. After a few days, though, she was used to it and was relaxed enough to sleep in the living room again. Both cats will occasionally bat at low-hanging ornaments and that’s our cue to re-treat the tree with orange oil.

We finally got our Christmas cards in the mail, with the last batch going out on the Monday before Christmas. I did most of the addressing but on Saturday morning, Beth, North and I all sat at the table and addressed cards together, trying to get as many done as possible before pickup from the mailbox around the corner at ten a.m. Then I finished up the rest on Sunday. I don’t suppose they all arrived by Christmas, but they should arrive before the festive season is over.

All Is Bright

We went to Brookside Gardens to see the Garden of Lights the same day we mailed the last of the cards. This is a walk-through light display in a botanical garden. The theme of the decorations is nature, so many of the lights are in the shape of plants or animals, but there are also several tunnels you can walk through and the branches of trees along the paths are outlined with colored lights. It was magical, as always. We were starting to recover from our illness by then, but we all masked just to be safe. We visited all the old familiar lights (my favorite is the sea monster that breathes steam) and some that may have been new (a field of tulips).

On Christmas Day, On Christmas Day

On Christmas morning, North made scrambled eggs and a very yummy cranberry-pear crumble for breakfast. We opened presents afterward. Books and flannel sheets and gift certificates seemed to be the most popular gifts this year. Beth got one for REI, Noah got one for the GAP and Panera, North got several that are good for multiple businesses in Oberlin. Beth also got a lot of chocolate in the form of bars and two different hot chocolate mixes. I got new sneakers and a cutting board. Noah got a couple games and a puzzle. North got a messenger bag, long underwear, two jars of fancy olives, Earl Grey concentrate, lemon curd, and two pairs of earrings.

After presents and lunch, North and I went for a walk down by the creek, where I posed by a decorated tree in the woods and then I continued to walk on my own, while North went home to start the orange-cranberry meringue pie they were making for Christmas dinner dessert. While I was out walking, my mom called and we had a chat until the wind go too loud for her to hear me. When I got home, she talked to everyone else.

Noah and I read and I spent a good bit of the afternoon blogging while North worked on the pie and Beth made a spinach lasagna. That night we watched Elf. It was the first time for all of us, except Noah who once saw part of it. It was enjoyable, but probably not something I’d watch on repeat. (Sorry, Nicole!)

Because we travel so often during the holidays, it sometimes felt strange to be where our regular life takes place and not a grandmother’s house or a cabin in the woods or a beach house. But despite that strangeness and some medical obstacles, we managed to keep Christmas well. And as for travel, we will be hitting the road on New Year’s Eve. More on that later…

The Rails

Posted on December 14, 2025 by Steph

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On the Rails: Snowfall

The first Friday in December we woke to the first snowfall of the year. It was just about perfect, two inches that didn’t stick to streets or sidewalks, so we didn’t need to shovel, but enough to make the neighborhood Christmas decorations, porch gourds, yellow leaves clinging to trees, winter berries, and creek rocks look festive. The only thing I would have liked was for it to stick around a little longer. Two days after it fell it was all but gone.

Off the Rails: Home Invasion

Five days later we had a less pleasant experience. Beth got up at six, which is her normal weekday time and discovered a stranger in the living room, standing in between my desk and an open window. It wasn’t a thief; it was an elderly man with dementia who thought it was his house. He’d come in and out through the window several times and had been engaged in 1) reorganizing items on the porch (he tied the rainbow flag in a knot) and 2) removing items from my desk and lining them up around the perimeter of the porch when Beth stumbled upon him. Beth called 911 and he was taken away in an ambulance.

When she called, I was still in bed and could hear her talking on the phone with someone, which I thought was odd at that hour, but she sounded so calm I wasn’t worried until she came into the room to tell me what was going on. By that point the dispatcher had told us to stay behind closed doors, so I never even saw the man.

In the end, everyone was fine, nothing was taken. In fact, the man left behind some items (a pillow and a hat) that aren’t ours and we suspect may have come from a neighbor’s porch. (I asked our next-door neighbors and they weren’t missing anything.) Both cats, even Walter who usually likes strangers, were freaked out and hiding in the basement. It was hard to find Willow, who most emphatically does not like strangers, and that was the scariest part, thinking maybe she’d been put outside with my computer monitor and had run away.

Riding the Rails: Travels

The next day Noah set off for Boston. He had some hotel points leftover from his trip to London last year and he’d decided to use them to see a concert. He took an Amtrak train from Union Station to Boston. He was there for two nights and one day. He took a historical walking tour and went to see the electropop band Pvris. I’m glad he got to have a little adventure.

North had an adventure, too. Instead of flying or getting a ride home for winter break, they opted to take the train, too. This was an odd coincidence, as neither of them has taken Amtrak before. Taking the train from northeastern Ohio means boarding a train at a little after one a.m. They got a friend to drive them to the Elyria station and spent the night and the next morning riding the rails. They said they slept “better than I thought I would but not as well as I would have liked.” They enjoyed the scenery, much of which was snowy and hilly, and it was considerably cheaper than flying.

We picked them up at Union Station. Beth and I had eaten lunch, but North hadn’t so they got a felafel sandwich and then we got dessert. Beth and North had ice cream, and I got coffee and a peppermint cookie/brownie mash-up. We admired the big Christmas tree Norway sends every year, which was beautiful as always. I was happy not to see any National Guardsmen or women at Union Station for the first time since late summer. I don’t know if this means they are recalling some of the troops. It would be nice if they were allowed to go home to their families for the holidays and even nicer if they didn’t come back. Standing outside Jersey Mike’s and Insomnia Cookies is probably not what they signed up for when they joined the Guard.

We got back home, North reunited with the cats, and Beth and I did a little work before eating our pizza dinner in front of a silly holiday romance. It was a cozy first night home. North went to bed early and slept for almost eleven hours.

The next afternoon we participated in the Takoma Cocoa Crawl. There were fourteen restaurants and coffeehouses in Takoma Park and Takoma, DC selling cocoa. We made three stops and got one cup at each. North chose Spring Mill Bakery which was offering half-price cocoa with a free gingerbread man. The cocoa was nice and creamy there. Beth’s choice was Red Hound because she remembered the orange-cinnamon cocoa there from last year. It was the highest quality of the three we tried, rich and complex. I chose Takoma Beverage Company because they had a hot chocolate bar where you could add your own toppings and I thought I could adjust the hot chocolate/whipped cream ratio to be more diabetic-friendly. I didn’t quite get it right on that score (I may have added too much crushed candy cane), but there’s always next year. Anway, it was a fun expedition.

Meanwhile, Noah was on a train coming home and he sent me some pictures of the walking tour, Christmas decorations, and the concert. He sent photos of a historic church, two former state houses, a historic cemetery where Sam Adams and other famous people are buried, a statue of Paul Revere, Christmas lights, and a surveillance robot from the hotel. He said at the cemetery, the tour guide pointed out a nearby bar and said it was the only place you could get a cold Sam Adams next to a cold Sam Adams. Not surprisingly, he said the concert, his main reason for going to Boston, was his favorite part. The venue was big, but he had a good seat, near the front. He got home around 9:15 Saturday night so Beth and I were able to chat with him a bit about his trip before going to bed.

It’s nice having North home for break, even if they aren’t quite finished with finals (one paper and one online exam to go) and it’s also nice having everyone under one roof again. This time of year, that makes me feel as if we are on the right track.

Beach and Banquet

Posted on December 4, 2025 by Steph

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Arrival

We pulled into the realty parking lot around 3:15 the day before Thanksgiving and I went inside to pick up the keys. Our realtor commented that if we wanted to reserve the house for the same dates next year we could do so when we checked out. I must have given her a cold look because she immediately said she imagined we didn’t know what our plans would be.

Why would I be cold to the realtor, who has been helping us find beach houses for years, and with whom I have a cordial relationship? Do you remember when I realized I’d rented this house for the wrong week and then the realty agreed to switch the reservation at no charge and I was so happy? Well, it turned out there was no charge for the switch per se, but Thanksgiving week was $500 more than the week before, and I was quite surprised when a much larger charge than I expected came out of my checking account. I understand why holidays might be more, but I was salty that no one told me that before charging my card. This happened shortly after I told you all the happier version of this story and I just didn’t have the heart to admit how it turned out until now. So anyway, the house cost a lot more than we wanted to pay—I’ve reduced my Christmas shopping budget to make up some of it—and chances are we won’t be renting this house for a holiday again. But that’s water under the bridge and we really did have a very nice few days at the beach.

Almost as soon as we arrived at the house, we headed for the beach because it was the golden hour already and it was going to be colder and windier all the other days we’d be there, so we wanted to do our Christmas card photo shoot. We drove because it was a fifteen-minute walk to the beach and we didn’t want to lose the light.

We posed and took pictures of each other with the ocean to our backs, on or near some jetty rocks, and next to a weathered pole in the sand. It wasn’t until after we were looking at the photos a couple days after we got home that we realized how very phallic the pole was. And it was too bad because we had several we liked with it, some with me and Beth and some with the kids, and I liked that there were evergreens in the background, as a Christmassy touch… but I had reservations. Then someone (Beth or Noah) had the brilliant idea that we could crop the photo to make it a little less pornographic. So, if you are on my Christmas card list, you’ll see the clean version, but I thought I’d amuse you all by putting an uncut one here.

Beth and Noah went home after the photo shoot, but North and I lingered long enough to watch the sunset turn the beach grass reddish gold and the clouds pink.

That night we got takeout Italian and watched most of the first Wicked movie because North wanted everyone to have the plot fresh for when we watched the second movie, which we were planning to do the last night they were home, after we got back from the beach.

Thanksgiving

When I woke on Thanksgiving around 7:10, I looked at my weather app to see how long the sun had been up. I was too late to catch the sunrise, but I decided to go down to the beach anyway because the early morning light is still pretty. I arrived around 7:40 and the sun had risen a bit over the horizon, tinting the thin line of clouds over the water pink, casting a path of shining light across the water, and turning the tips of the waves a translucent green.

I came back to the house for breakfast and Beth inquired about my walk and I told her I was “invigorated.” I put some of that energy to use doing some Thanksgiving cooking prep with North. We worked together on the cranberry sauce and chopping vegetables for a broccoli-cheddar casserole.

Then I went back to the beach and North came with me this time to walk on the boardwalk and sit near the ocean. We lingered in some Adirondack chairs set under a concrete overhang in front of a boardwalk hotel, because I thought that area would be out of the wind, but the high winds that had been predicted hadn’t really materialized. It was sunny and not too cold, and we stayed long enough for me to finish my previous blog post, about Beth’s birthday. I’d brought my laptop with me for this purpose.

The rest of the afternoon we were occupied with cooking and reading and making our traditional apple-turkey decorations. I have been making these since childhood. The legs, feathers, and neck are made of toothpicks with dried cranberries and raisins, and the heads are made of green olives with the pimento pulled partially out. When they were finished, Noah posed the turkeys on a table on the porch to photograph them and then we put them on the table with the other decorative items—gourds we got with our Halloween pumpkins and a little glass turkey North got as a birthday gift for Beth some time in elementary school.

I went back to the beach for the third time that day to watch a cloudier sunset than the day before. There was a line of glowing pink just over the horizon, below the puffy dark gray clouds. I got back about an hour before dinner time and helped with the finishing touches of dinner. We feasted on a tofurkey roast, mashed potatoes, two kinds of stuffing (wild rice and bread), mushroom gravy, broccoli-cheddar casserole, rolls, and two kinds of sparkling juice (apple-cranberry and white grape), and three kinds of pie (pumpkin, pecan, and apple).

Since Beth and North did the bulk of the cooking (a nice treat for me as the family’s main cook), Noah and I did the dishes. I started them before we watched the last forty minutes of Wicked, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and Mayflower Voyagers, and he finished them afterwards, when everyone else had gone to bed. Sadly, we couldn’t have a fire in the living room while we watched tv, because we couldn’t get the gas fireplace to work, the second year in a row we’ve had this problem (in different houses).

Black Friday

I’d mentioned that I might try to get out of the house earlier the next morning, in time for the sunrise and Beth surprised me by saying if I did, she’d come with me. We made it out of the house by seven and were on the beach by 7:15. The sun was an orange ball, just peeking over a band of clouds on the horizon. The light was lovely, making the sand glow a peach color with sharply defined shadows in every little hillock. There were large flocks of seabirds (two kind of gulls, dark and light, and littler birds, either sand pipers or terns) near the water.

We left the beach to go get coffee (me), hot chocolate (her), and biscotti (both of us). I saved my biscotti for later as I can’t eat pastry first thing in the morning. Instead, back at the house I had vegetarian sausage and half a grapefruit as a sort of appetizer, while we waited for the kids to get up. We were going out for breakfast at Egg.

Before diabetes, whenever we came to the beach in November or December, I would always get the Pumpkin Pie Praline French Toast, but I haven’t had it in years. I was considering my less appealing options when Noah, who almost always gets lemon-blueberry crepes, said he was considering the French toast. “That would make me so happy!” I exclaimed because then I could have just a little. After that, he had to get it and I had about a quarter of one of the slices, with two fried eggs, and it was as good as I remembered. Also, it wasn’t enough to push my blood sugar out of range, when followed by a lot of walking around town shopping. (I ended up with 23,449 steps that day and 19,831 on Thanksgiving between all the walking on the beach, the boardwalk, and in town.)

We left the restaurant and split up to shop. I went with North and we hit BrowseAbout, Christmas Spirit, the Spice and Tea Exchange, and a jewelry store. I cannot disclose what we bought in most of the these places, but I’m pretty sure my niece does not read this blog, so I can say that North bought a black cat ornament for Lily-Mei, who is very attached to her real black cat and who has her own Christmas tree in her room. We met up with Beth toward the end of our shopping and headed back to the house for lunch, which for most of us was Thanksgiving leftovers.

Noah and I read and the kids and I talked to my mother on the phone before I headed back out to do some more shopping and then took a much-needed nap. That evening we attended the holiday singalong and Christmas tree lighting in downtown Rehoboth. We dropped the kids off before finding parking a few blocks away. While we were separated, they got hot chocolate. When we found them, it was almost time to start.

The cast from a community theater production of A Christmas Carol was on the bandstand. They were all in costume (though the child actors wore modern coats over theirs, we imagined at their parents’ insistence as it was a cold night). I have noticed in recent years fewer people seemed to be singing at the singalong, but that wasn’t the case this year. Maybe it was because the kids had gotten us a good spot, close to the bandstand.

We sang a selection of mostly secular holiday songs like “Frosty the Snowman,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town.” There’s usually one pop song and one religious one and this year it was Taylor Swift’s “Christmas Tree Farm” and “O Holy Night.” During “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” North stared at me and continuously shook their head. Both kids are opposed to any Christmas song that sexualizes Santa and will in fact often try to fast forward past the aforementioned song or “Santa Baby.” There was a man standing behind us who, as each new song was announced, would exclaim, “That’s a good one!” He didn’t sound like he was joking either, so either he was sincere or trying to jolly someone into more enthusiasm, or both.

At just past seven the tree, the biggest one I’ve ever seen at this event, lit up with colored lights and a white star on top. We made our way to Grotto to pick up the pizza, stromboli, and mozzarella sticks we’d ordered ahead of time and took them back home to reheat and eat.

I’d thought we’d watch A Charlie Brown Christmas and How the Grinch Stole Christmas because that’s what we usually do the day after Thanksgiving, but Noah wanted to watch a movie. So, we carefully weighed everyone else’s priorities—that the entertainment be holiday-themed and that it be less than two hours long (because it was late) and we settled on Champagne Problems, a Hallmark-type Christmas movie. It was true to type but also reminded me of Emily in Paris in miniature. It was fun if you like that kind of thing, which I do, but only at Christmastime.

Departure x 2

On Saturday morning, we packed up the house and checked out. After returning the keys to the realty we visited the lobby of the Victorian-themed Boardwalk Plaza Hotel to look at their ornate Christmas decorations and then we split up. Beth and Noah went to do some more Christmas shopping and North and I went to get coffee at Sugar and Thread. North got an apple fritter and I dipped the biscotti I’d gotten the day before in my coffee.

When I was finished, I left North there and went for a walk on the boardwalk. I ran into Beth sitting on a bench on the far south end and we started to walk around Silver Lake, but we needed to turn back before we’d completed the circuit so we could meet the kids on the boardwalk.

The kids and I said our traditional goodbye to the ocean, which involves the two of them striding barefoot into the surf (I wear boots in the colder months) and staying for twenty-five waves. The number is determined by the last two digits of the year. North speculated that in the 2090s they would be risking hypothermia to do it for ninety-plus waves while their descendants anxiously watch from the boardwalk and suggest maybe they don’t actually need to complete this ritual as the two elderly siblings ignore them and shuffle down to the waterline anyway. I like this image.

It was hard to leave the beach. It always is in varying degrees, but it’s harder when I feel I haven’t done something I wanted to do. This time I was happy with the amount of time I spent on the beach and with my family and with the moderate dent I put in my Christmas shopping. What I felt was missing was down time. I would have liked another day to relax a little more, but I realize I should not complain about spending a holiday dedicated to gratitude in my favorite place with my favorite people. I am suitably grateful for that.

We had lunch at Grandpa Mac’s and drove home, listening first to an episode of Handsome and then Christmas music. We were home long enough for me to start a load of laundry, unpack the food (but not much else), and take a shower before we left to go out to dinner at Cava and see Wicked: For Good. I’d read some not-so-glowing reviews, so the bar was low, and as a result it was better than I expected. I’d say the music was not as good as in the first installment but with one or two exceptions I felt it did a good job connecting the plot with the source material, the two stars have good chemistry, and it was fun to watch. I’m not intimately familiar with the musical, so I don’t know what was in the play and what was added for the five-hour, two-movie version.

We got home late (for us) and fell into bed a little after eleven. Beth and North left for the airport at 7:15 the next morning. I would have gone with them, but Beth was grocery shopping right afterward, I hadn’t made a grocery list for her, and I did think eating this week would be a good idea, so I stayed home and did that. I went out to the driveway to hug North goodbye and then watched the car drive away. I wasn’t too sad, though, because they would be back in a couple weeks (less now) and we’ll have more holidays to celebrate.

A Very Nice Birthday

Posted on November 27, 2025 by Steph

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Early Celebration

On Thursday, three days before Beth’s birthday, I made stuffed eggplant with vegetarian ground beef and tomato sauce for dinner because she loves eggplant and it was the last day I was choosing the menu before her birthday. She was quite appreciative of the dinner as well as the dessert, chocolate-covered pumpkin spice truffles I’d made the day before, not for her birthday per se, but more of an autumnal treat. The insides are made of crushed graham crackers mixed with pumpkin puree and they have the texture of the inside of a cake pop.

Pizza and Protest

Friday night we went to Red Hound, which is Beth’s favorite pizza place. A lot of their business is takeout and there are only three tables inside (plus some outside tables) so we were gambling an inside one would be free and the gamble paid off. We got pizza with goat cheese and all three of us got maple soft serve with caramel-apple cider sauce. They always have interesting flavors there.

Part of the reason I suggested we go to Red Hound was that it’s just a few blocks from the ongoing Free DC protest just over the DC line. People gather with pots and pans and percussion instruments every evening and make noise for five minutes. It was at eight o’clock in the summer but now it’s at seven. We got there a little early as Beth’s former colleague Sara who organizes the protest was setting up her bin of noisemakers. A thirty-something woman was telling her that she lives in the apartment building just across the street and watching the protest has become part of her six-month-old baby’s bedtime routine.

Indeed, once it had started, I looked up and she was at the window holding the baby and waving. Beth said it will be a fun story to tell him when he’s older and wants to know what life was like during that perilous time during his infancy when the country was teetering on the edge of dictatorship. In Beth’s version of this scenario democracy is saved.

We’d brought instruments with us since Noah still has some from his days playing percussion in middle and high school band. Beth took the tambourine and he had a cowbell. We’d only brought those two, so I picked a maraca from the bin and at seven sharp we all started to play. Pedestrians and people in passing cars honked or shouted encouragement. A Metro bus driver also honked in support. A man in front of the CVS across the street did a little dance and yelled, “You guys are the greatest.”

There were eight people there, counting us, and I knew two of the other five, Sara of course, and Jim from my book club. Jim told Noah to be careful hanging out with “this troublemaker,” gesturing to me. Sara, who has been doing this almost every night since August, says it still cheers her up every time. It was only my third time attending, but I am inspired to go again some time.

A Very Nice Birthday

On Beth’s birthday we had our usual Sunday morning video call with North, but it was somewhat unusual because we sang “Happy Birthday” and Beth opened her presents on camera. I got her Alison Bechdel’s Spent and some orange chocolates she likes. The kids got her two different graters (a garlic grater and a micro plane grater) that had been on her wish list. She also opened a pile of dark chocolate bars from my mom.

After lunch, we sang “Happy Birthday” again and had the cake I’d made the day before—dark chocolate with coffee frosting. It’s the cake I make most often for Beth’s birthday and I need to read the recipe through a patina of brown cocoa powder spills.

Noah left for his weekly board game group in Rockville, and Beth and I went for a walk in Brookside Gardens and Wheaton Regional Park (these parks are adjacent and you can easily cross from one to the other). We spent most of the hour-long walk on a series of interconnected wooded trails. We were usually alone but every so often we’d cross paths with other people, dogs, and horses. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing at home.

We had Burmese takeout for dinner and Noah came home early from his games to eat with us. (He’s usually out until after we’ve gone to bed.) We ordered a feast that lasted for days afterward, but the most popular dish (based on order of disappearance) was the eggplant fritters. After dinner we had more cake and watched a couple episodes of Man on the Inside. Beth declared it had been “a very nice birthday.”

Afterward

By Monday it was already time to start thinking about the next holiday. That afternoon, Noah chopped up onions, celery, and mushrooms for Thanksgiving gravy and stuffing at the dining room table. While he was doing that, I was chopping vegetables (including some of the same ones) in the kitchen for the soup we were having for dinner that night. This felt like a kind of cheering, festive parallel play. And that night Beth used the mushrooms and some of the onions to make gravy.

But even though we had turned our attention to Thanksgiving, her birthday wasn’t quite over. On Tuesday she got a card from her brother and a present from my sister (reusable cloth produce bags she’d requested) in the mail.

But the most exciting thing that happened on Tuesday was that North came home. Their flight from Cleveland was delayed, so we didn’t even leave the house to drive to National until ten p.m., a time we are normally in bed. Beth had thought traffic would be light by that time of night and it was until we got close to the airport, where there was quite the backup of cars. Turns out a lot of people are flying or picking people up from the airport two nights before Thanksgiving. It was almost midnight by the time we got home, but Noah and the cats were all up so North got to be reunited with the whole family. And the next morning, we left for the beach.

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

Author Archives: Steph

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A Richer Place

Ice Melts

Winter’s So Cold This Year

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Happy New Year, Happy Retirement

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Beach and Banquet

A Very Nice Birthday