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…

Moving Forward

Posted on November 15, 2025 by Steph

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No News

I guess I will start with a medical update, though there’s not much to report. North’s endoscopy went fine, but we are still waiting for biopsy results that will determine if they will have gallbladder surgery. My colonoscopy went fine. My blood sugar didn’t spike during the three low-fiber days—I was able to eat enough protein and fat to prevent that—and it didn’t dip dangerously low during the one and a half fasting days. It was at the low end of my target range, but stable. Just stopping my diabetes meds was enough to keep it high enough. I told Beth, “I guess I don’t really need to eat.” But I like to eat, so I was glad when it was all over and I could eat normally again.

Transitions

Beth came home from Wheeling the first Sunday in November, just in time to celebrate Noah’s half birthday with cupcakes the next day. I got three different flavors from a nearby bakery. He chose the maple-sweet potato with a marshmallow in the frosting, I had gingerbread with lemon frosting, and Beth had German chocolate. When I told him I bought cupcakes he said he’d forgotten it was his half-birthday. I guess twenty-four to twenty-four and a half doesn’t seem as momentous a change as say, four to four and half, but we keep doing it because it’s a tradition.

Election Day was the next day and that was a more dramatic change: big victories in the New York City mayoral race, Governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey, and many down ballot races. Because I grew up mostly in Pennsylvania, I was especially heartened by the re-election of several Democratic judges in that state. Let’s hope that momentum carries into 2026.

During all this we switched over to standard time. As aggravating as it is to change the clocks and one’s body clock, one thing I like about fall back (besides the extra hour) is that the time change always makes it feel like we’ve officially crossed over from early fall to late fall, with Halloween over and Beth’s birthday and Thanksgiving on the horizon. I do like neatly marked transitions, so I put flannel sheets on the beds, grapefruit on the shopping list, and stocked up on lotion.

It gets dark around five now, which makes drying clothes on the line trickier because I need to remember to get them hung up earlier in the day than I did before. We had an overnight freeze last week and I picked all the green tomatoes and brought pots with the tenderest herbs (basil and cilantro) inside for a few nights. I used all the basil in one last batch of pesto and put the cilantro back outside.

Moving Forward

Even though it’s feeling like late fall, it’s still not that cold, with highs in the fifties and sixties most days. On Veteran’s Day, though, the high was in the high forties and it was windy, which made for a chilly day. Nevertheless, we had decided to go for a hike, because Beth had the day off and I didn’t have any urgent work. She had a work-related errand she needed to run near Frederick, dropping off some boxes of old CWA newsletters going back to the 1930s to be digitized, so we decided to make a day of it, eating lunch in Frederick and hiking in a nearby state park. We invited Noah to come along and he said yes.

That morning Facebook Memories reminded me of Veteran Days past. That feature is more effective for holidays like Veterans Day that always fall on the same calendar day than roving holidays. There were definite patterns. When the kids were younger, we had parent-teacher conferences that day (until North was in high school and they got moved to the week before Thanksgiving). We also went to the Veterans Day sale at Value Village and because the kids were at school for at least a half day and Beth and I weren’t in conferences until afternoon, she and I often went out for breakfast or lunch before or between conferences. In later years, when we could leave the kids alone in the afternoon, we had longer outings, to see a movie or take a hike. The most memorable one was last year, when we went to Great Falls, to see if getting out into nature could help us shake off some of our post-election grief and shock.

This year, we were buoyed by better (if less earth-shattering) election results. After Beth dropped off the boxes, we had lunch at The Orchard, which I recommend if you find yourself in Frederick. I was tempted by the maple-pecan cheesecake, but I didn’t think I should have it because I’d had a sandwich (Brie, tomato, tofu, and pesto) for lunch, so Beth suggested we come back after the hike and that’s what we did.

We went for two short hikes in Cunningham Falls State Park. We decided to forgo the cliff trail because it was marked difficult and chose to start with the (moderate) falls trail. It was a mostly flat, wooded trail. We still have a lot of fall color at home, but here the leaves had mostly fallen, exposing the austere architecture of the trees. There’s beauty in that, too. We reached the falls, which didn’t have a lot of water. Next, we walked around the lake and watched geese flying low over the water, crossed a creek, and found some red winter berries.

Then we went back to the same restaurant, sat at the same table, and the same waitress brought us hot chocolate (Beth), tea (me), and dessert (me and Noah). And that was our Veterans Day outing. I can only hope we’ll keep moving forward and that our Veterans Day hike in 2026 will celebrate even more positive changes for our country.

A Scary World

Posted on November 1, 2025 by Steph

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Pre-Halloween Activities

Two days before Halloween, I posted on Facebook: “Steph knows it’s a scary world out there, so she wrote to PA voters in hopes they might help hold the line, and she made some comfort in the form of soup in a pumpkin shell. Vote YES on judicial retention!” The first two pictures were of a cardboard sign and tombstones some neighbors made for their “International Development Graveyard.” The tombs read “USAID: 1961-2025,” “Environmental Conservation,” “Global Health,” “USAID Education Programs. RIP,” etc. I also included a photo of a stack of postcards, my second batch for Democratic judges in Pennsylvania, and my cream of pumpkin soup. There’s only so much we can do, but I try to keep doing it.

All Hallows Eve

The next afternoon Beth set out for Oberlin to stay with North during and after their endoscopy, which was taking place on Halloween. The doctors are closing in on an overactive gallbladder as the source of North’s ongoing digestive problems, but they wanted to have a look inside their upper digestive tract to rule out any other problems before scheduling a gallbladder removal surgery. The procedure went smoothly, and they didn’t find anything, but they are running a second H. pylori test (the first one came back negative, but this one’s from a biopsy and more accurate) as a final step before surgery.

Beth drove North to Cleveland Clinic and back to the rental house where she was staying in Lorain. It was Halloween, so they watched Muppets Haunted Mansion and ate pizza and candy. (Beth bought some in case any trick-or-treaters came to the rental unit, but none did.) North had been sad to miss Halloween festivities on campus (trick-or-treating at academic department offices and a party) so I hope this was some compensation. It reminded me of other times they had to miss trick-or-treating—for Outdoor Education in sixth grade and when they were hospitalized in eleventh grade. They really love Halloween, so the timing was not ideal. The next morning, Beth and North took a walk along the shores of Lake Erie and then Beth left for Wheeling for a quick visit to her mom.

Back home, Noah and I held down the fort. We replaced decorations that had blown down and put batteries in ones that make more noise than we want to hear all month. Noah also got the topple-prone witch that Beth and I had been struggling with for days to stand up and got both fog machines going. He had evening plans, filming an amateur production of Sweeney Todd, but I was grateful for his help before he left after dinner.

I was left alone to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. We got about thirty. Toward the end of the evening, I was texting Beth and saying I hadn’t seen any fabulous costumes when a little autumn fairy knocked on the door. Her dress was covered in different colored leaves and she had green, leaf-shaped wings with glow sticks in them. Shortly afterward there was a teenage frog with (possibly homemade) crocheted eyes on a headband. I also appreciated a preteen Grim Reaper with a homemade scythe, a teen Elphaba who had gotten the shade of her green makeup just right, and a little dalmatian with nice spotted face paint. As always, we got a lot of compliments on our decorations. One mom said she always looks forward to our house more than any other.

Post-Halloween Thoughts

The next day on my morning walk, I came across another cardboard graveyard of political commentary. The stones said, “Due Process: 1791-2025” and “RIP Medicare & Medicaid.” That last one may be a bit premature, but it was a reminder (as if we needed one) of the stakes over the next few years.

There will be a time after this time, I keep telling myself, and we may be able to rebuild some of what’s being lost, or maybe even build something better. Some things are lost for good, though, like the East Wing of the White House. It’s not as important as due process, for instance, but I’ve lived in the D.C. area for thirty-four years and I have fond memories of White House tours: Christmas tours in the 90s and in 2023, an East Wing tour in 2010, garden tours in 2011 and 2022, and an Easter Egg Roll in 2014. There’s a reason they call it the People’s House. It belongs to all of us and it’s sad to see the physical symbols of democracy attacked as ruthlessly as its norms, laws, and spirit. That’s scarier than any bright green witch or robed figure with a scythe.

#FallBreak

Posted on October 26, 2025 by Steph

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North came home for fall break and stayed eight and a half days. It went by fast, but we packed a lot into that time.

First Saturday: No Kings

North got home late Friday evening. Noah was up to greet them, but we’d gone to bed and we didn’t see them until the next morning. I did tag my Facebook post about anticipating their arrival #FallBreak, and it became a theme I kept up in my posts all week.

We ended up leaving North home alone for most of their first day home because it was No Kings 2.0 and they thought a long rally would be too strenuous. Noah was coming along this time, and we split up almost immediately so he could wander around the crowd filming the protest. He’d met with Mike recently for job-hunting advice and Mike said he should have a website of his work and suggested this would be a good place to film.

There were many signs on the No Kings theme (I reused mine from June), including one with a sad T-Rex that said, “No Rex.” There were many people in inflatable unicorn, dinosaur, and frog costumes. I heard one man tell someone with a microphone who asked why he was dressed as a unicorn, “They were sold out of frog costumes.” I wasn’t sure if it was a joke or true, but it was funny either way. On the frog theme, there was a sign that said, “Amphifa: Amphibians Against Fascism.” I also saw two women in handmaid’s costumes.

I can only report on signs and costumes because we were too far from the stage to hear anything, except when Bernie Sanders spoke, and even then, I only caught about a quarter of what he said. I clapped anyway when other people clapped, because it seemed unlikely that he was saying anything objectionable.

Organizers are estimating seven million people attended nationwide in thousands of locations. Even if that was optimistic, independent estimates are at least five million and that it was probably the largest single-day protest in U.S. history.

First Sunday: Picking Pumpkins

Our civic duty done, we were able to turn our attention to seasonal fun the next day. We went to Northern Virginia to get our pumpkins. We used to do this because there was a specific farm stand that we liked to patronize, as it belongs to the family of a friend from college. That stand doesn’t sell pumpkins anymore, as of last year. However, over the years we built up a whole routine of activities in the neighborhood, so we keep going there.

We headed first for Meadowlark Botanical Gardens, listening to an Apple Halloween playlist and critiquing the choices. Then we took our late afternoon stroll, passing the pond, the Korean Bell Garden, and other familiar sights. Noah took a lot of pictures of lichen on benches. We saw a couple and a larger group posing for wedding photos, but fewer Homecoming photo shoots than we usually see.

We went to our new farm stand, and got pumpkins, pumpkin butter, and decorative gourds, and posed in the pumpkin arbor. We got a feast of Chinese food from our favorite vegetarian Chinese restaurant (which is one of the main reasons we keep trekking out to Northern Virginia for pumpkins) to eat at the picnic tables at Nottoway Park. We couldn’t order the food ahead because of a problem with the online ordering system so our timing was thrown off, and it was getting dark by the time we’d finished dinner and began our after-dinner stroll in the community garden plots, but we could make out some tomatoes and collards and flowers. Our last stop was ice cream at Toby’s. I got half pumpkin and half apple pie with whipped cream and Beth correctly guessed I had the whipped cream to complete the pie theme.

Monday to Wednesday: Berkely Springs

Monday morning, we left for a quick trip to Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. Beth, North, and I haven’t been there since President’s Day weekend 2020, less than a month before the world shut down. This timing caused all three of us to look back on the trip nostalgically during the time when weekend trips were not on the table. We hadn’t been as a foursome since the kids’ spring break in 2016. North is very fond of Berkeley Springs. I think that’s why when during a low period, they needed to draw a pen-and-ink street scene in their eleventh-grade painting class, they choose a block in Berkeley Springs.

As you can probably guess from the name, there are mineral springs in town that were used by Native Americans, George Washington, and continually ever since. The site of the historic baths is a state park, and you can reserve time in the private baths. The other main attractions in town are restaurants, shops, and a cat café.

We visited all these, but on our first evening, we decided to stay in at our rental house in the woods. This was no hardship as the house had a view of a ridge decked out in fall colors and was equipped with a skee ball machine, a Pac-Man machine, a hammock, and fire pit. We used them all, after a brief walk in the woods. I lay in the hammock for a while, looking up into the yellow and green leaves and watching squirrels in the branches and hawks circle above the trees. I made broccoli melts for dinner, and we made S’mores at the firepit.

The next morning, we browsed in the shops and North bought a pair of colorful wooden parrot earrings in a shop of Himalayan handicrafts and then we soaked in the Roman Baths. The water is heated to 104 degrees and it’s very pleasant and relaxing.

We went back to the house for lunch, and then to the cat café, where we pet and played with many of the cats who are awaiting adoption in the cozy two-story house, equipped with structures to climb on, private dens for sleeping, and many toys. It’s a much nicer place than the shelter where we adopted Matthew and Xander. (We adopted Walter and Willow from a foster home.) It must be good for their socialization, too. There are separate rooms for shy cats and one for kittens. The two smallest kittens were being segregated from the rest because a cold had gone around the place the week before. One of them, a long-haired black kitten named Odessa, who looked like a tiny version of Xander, climbed up on Beth’s lap and fell asleep and she was trapped there a long time. Noah and I spent most of our time in the main kitten room. There was a mama cat there with three nursing kittens and many other kittens who wanted to play with their toys and our shoelaces. By the time Beth made it to the room, they had collectively decided it was nap time and collapsed in piles to sleep.

Our next stop was the Paw Paw tunnel, where a towpath from the C&O canal goes through a rocky ridge. It’s a fifteen-minute walk on a damp, dark path, and it’s suitably spooky. We were told at a coffee shop we’d frequented earlier to “look out for ghosts.” We did not see any, or any bats, which we have seen in the past, but we did see a lot of white mushrooms growing where the path meets the brick wall. Beth lit the path with her cell phone light so we wouldn’t step into any puddles. I always enjoy this hike, which starts and ends with a walk through the woods between the Potomac River and the canal. You can also climb up the ridge afterward if you want, but we didn’t do it this time. Noah and I climbed up the stairs outside the tunnel to look out at the canal from above. When we emerged from the tunnel, I could smell the fallen leaves along the path. The scent reminded me of old paperback books.

We ordered dinner from the parking lot and picked up pizza, stromboli, and salad to eat back at the house. North tried pickles on their pizza and approved of the selection (which was called the Princess Brine).

Wednesday morning we were going to take a hike in Cacapon State Park, and we did start, but pretty soon into it, North decided hiking up to the top of the ridge was going to be too much for them, and we headed back into town, where we browsed the shops again and they got a jar of garlic-stuffed olives from an olive shop before we had lunch and hit the road for home.

Thursday to Friday: Baking and Coffee

Thursday and Friday Beth and I were back to work. North had invited me to go for coffee after their Friday morning psychiatrist appointment at the coffee shop in Takoma DC where we’ve always gone after their appointments and at first, I said yes, but then I remembered I had a mammogram that same morning, so North proposed that we go the day before and we did. We got coffee at Lost Sock and pumpkin and apple pastries at Donut Run. When I took North’s photo, I instructed them to “look autumnal,” which made them laugh.

That afternoon Noah made a baked lemon-blueberry pudding (apologizing before I said anything: “I know it’s not seasonal”) and North made toffee to use in chocolate chunk cookies they made the next day. They thought the cookies were too crispy but no one else had any complaints.

Second Saturday: Halloween Parade and Carving Pumpkins

North’s last full day at home was full of seasonal activity. We went to the Halloween parade in the early afternoon. I still enjoy watching other people’s kids in their costumes, even though my kids don’t participate any more. And we all enjoy judging the costumes ourselves. In the four-and-under section of the parade, there were two separate women dressed as flowers carrying their babies who were dressed as bees. I was amused because when I saw the first one, I thought “that’s original,” but I guess it wasn’t. Anyway, one of the flower-bee groups also had a beekeeper and they won. I can’t remember the category, but I it might have been Cutest, though come to think of it, that might have been a ladybug.

There was a well-executed astronaut with a homemade cardboard rocket affixed to his scooter and a truly impressive owl with many feathers and expressive papier mache eyes and a beak that both won in five to eight. There was an elaborate jellyfish; two girls, one dressed as a peasant and one as an aristocrat holding a bloody guillotine between them; and a tornado with little houses, vehicles, and trees attached to her in nine to twelve. Groups dressed as characters from the Chronicles of Narnia and Aladin also won.

In terms of trends, there were more inflatable costumes than usual, probably repurposed from protests. Beth noted that Harry Potter costumes are evergreen and there were also quite a lot of zombies. The only costume I saw that I thought deserved a prize that didn’t get one was a detailed, homemade Edward Scissorshands. But the boy was probably nine to twelve years old and the competition in that age group was strong this year.

When we got home, we carved our pumpkins. I’d been feeling under the weather all day, and I still had a lot on my list for the day (cooking, menu planning for the next week, doing dishes) so I found a simple moon-and-stars stencil so I could finish quickly. Although we didn’t plan it this way, everyone had one to two of the following elements on our pumpkins: cats, stars, and pumpkins. Beth said the thematic continuity was satisfying.

Noah and I made roasted white beans, cherry tomatoes and halloumi for dinner and then I roasted the pumpkin seeds so North could have some to take with them to school the next day. When all the chores were done, we all settled in to watch the end of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which we’d started the night before, and then Beth and I went to bed early because I was exhausted.

Second Sunday

A little before ten a.m., North’s friend Jayden picked them up and we said our goodbyes. Beth will see them in less than a week because North is getting an endoscopy on Halloween and Beth is going to stay with them overnight to make sure that they’re okay. They are already planning what movie to watch, and they bought an extra bag of candy in case trick-or-treaters come to the rental house. I will have to wait until Thanksgiving to see them, but that’s only about a month.

Did you go to No Kings? What kind of fall activities have you been enjoying?

All’s Well That Ends Well

Posted on October 20, 2025 by Steph

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Here it is, mid-October and I haven’t blogged about anything that happened this month. Not quite three weeks after we said goodbye to North at the Sacramento airport the day after the wedding, they came home for fall break. Here a few of the highlights of that time, before I get into our fall break adventures:

Street Festival

The first Sunday in October, Beth and I went to the Takoma Park Street Festival. We walked by the craft booths, she got an ice cream sandwich, and I got a caramel sundae before settling in to watch Ammonite play at the gazebo. There were so many people in Free DC t-shirts, I lost count even though I’d been trying to keep track. In the playground behind the stage, the Boy Scouts had set up a rope bridge, and I watched kids walk across it, thinking nostalgically of all the times my kids did that at Takoma Park events. And that was before I spotted the preschool-age girl in a pink tutu and sparkly silver sneakers playing air guitar to the side of the stage. She was very in tune with the music, striking dramatic poses at just the right time, switching over to drumming during drum solos. I couldn’t take my eyes off her; she was such a delight.

Seasonal Miscellany

The next week Noah and I started decorating the porch and yard for Halloween, a project that’s almost but not quite finished. Also that week, my book club held its second of four meetings on the Big Book for fall, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. We have two meetings to go, one next week and the last in early November.

The second weekend of October, Beth, Noah, and I got our flu and covid vaccines, and I wrote postcards the gubernatorial race in New Jersey, having written a batch for judges in Pennsylvania the weekend prior.

The weather took a turn for cooler, and it spurred both Noah and me to bake. He made pumpkin-oat muffins, and I made and almond flour banana cake with peanut butter frosting. We saved some of each for North.

A Bad Day

The day before North came home was a Thursday and it was an upsetting day. The first thing that happened was that I was looking at the November calendar page so I could make an appointment when I realized Thanksgiving was a week later than I thought and I had made the reservations for our Thanksgiving beach house for the wrong dates. I reserved the house in September, so I immediately went to the realty website to see if the house was available on the dates we wanted, and it was. I sent an email to the realtor seeing if we could make the switch without having to pay for both sets of dates. Then all day long in the back of my mind I was stewing about what to do if the answer was no.

Next, I had to go to a consultation for an upcoming (routine) colonoscopy, and the bus didn’t come so I had to take another less direct route to the Metro, and I thought I’d be late, but I almost didn’t care because the consequences of missing an appointment that could be rescheduled seemed low stakes in comparison to having possibly ruined Thanksgiving. I arrived at the unfamiliar building in time, but the elevator setup was very confusing, but eventually I found my way to the office.

At the appointment I had a chance to reflect on how difficult colonoscopy prep is going to be, not the awful drink and the unpleasantness that follows—I’ve done that before and know what to expect—but the three-day, low-fiber diet, followed by the day of clear liquid fasting. I didn’t have diabetes the last time I had a colonoscopy, and I didn’t have to worry about blood sugar spikes while avoiding fiber and crashes while not eating. I asked some questions about that (and then contacted my primary care provider afterward) but it seems like the answer is, yes, it’s going to be hard, deal with it.

Back at home, my sister and I had a discouraging email exchange about the effect AI is likely to have on her copywriting business and both of our jobs in the coming years. I have been afraid for a while that AI might put me out of a job before I intended to retire, and this made that fear more concrete.

Later that day, while picking cherry tomatoes in the garden I got stung by a bee that had gotten trapped under the back of my shirt, which probably hiked up while I was bent over and then fell back down when I straightened up.

There were some bright spots in the day: 1) The tech who weighed me at the medical appointment complimented me on my socks (red with black hearts) and I was surprisingly touched, because I was so low, any kind word seemed moving. 2) My blood pressure was unexpectedly good for a stressful day. 3) Then after the appointment, I went to a bakery in the same complex and had the most amazing pastry. It was a croissant in a cube shape, with pumpkin pie filling inside and meringue and pepitas on top. (Croissants are relatively safe pastry for me because all the butter in the dough slows down my blood sugar rise.)

And the next day, I found out the realty was willing to switch the reservation to the right dates at no charge and North came home, so all was well…

Goodbye, Sophomore

Posted on August 29, 2025 by Steph

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Saturday: Takoma Park to Oberlin

We left the house for Oberlin (for the first time) a little before nine a.m. last Saturday. Our first stop was Mike and Sara’s house because Rose’s boyfriend John, who goes to Oberlin, had spent the summer with Rose’s family and we were giving him a ride back to school. We chatted with Mike and Sara, who were about to leave for a Tesla takedown protest (they are regulars) while John loaded his bags into our car and said goodbye to their little white dog. John and Shorty had bonded over the summer, Sara said, while John lingered on the porch with the dog. (Rose had already left for school a couple days earlier.)

When we got into the car, I remembered I had failed to take a leaving-for-college photo at our front gate and Beth said she’d indulge me by going back home. As North stood in front of the gate where they’d had a back-to-school photo snapped every year since they were two (except 2020), I said “Hello, sophomore!” to make them smile.

And then we drove to Ohio, with many stops along the way. We got snacks at Blue Goose Market in Hancock, Maryland, and lunch at Next Door in Bedford, Pennsylvania. Blue Goose is a regular stopping place for us and Next Door is on its way to becoming one. We listened to music and podcasts to pass the time. For the first hour or so, North and John were very chatty, mostly talking about mutual acquaintances from both high school and college. (They did not go to the same high school, but he’s from the area and high school theater circles are small.)

We arrived in Oberlin around six o’clock and dropped John off at his dorm. Next, we went to Keep and carried North’s things into their room. It’s the same one they had last spring, a first-floor single. They prefer a first-floor room because of their chronic pain, but they only found out recently they’d gotten into it off the wait list. The room was familiar to me, not only because I had been in it last year, but also quite often during the 1986-1987 school year, when a close friend of mine lived there. We didn’t linger because it was almost dinner time and Tank was only dining co-op that was open before the semester started, so we needed to scoot.

At Tank there was a bountiful buffet of chickpeas in tomato sauce, roasted potatoes, pancakes, cornbread, and brownies. I had to think about what carbs I most wanted, and I decided on a small serving of potatoes and a brownie. We ate on the steps of the wraparound porch, also familiar because I ate at Tank my first year of college. It felt good to be back in Oberlin and eating OSCA food.

After dinner we tried to get some groceries for breakfast, but first the IGA and then the Aldi’s we tried were closed, so we ended up picking up a few things at a Sheetz to supplement the food we’d brought from home. The search for an open grocery store was a little frustrating, but we were rewarded with a beautiful sunset as we drove around Lorain County.

The rental house where we were staying had two cats in the driveway who were quite insistent that they wanted to come inside with us, but when the owner showed up to help us with the keypad, he said they were not supposed to go in the second-floor apartment where we were staying. The place was notable for its religious décor. There was a Bible quote framed at the top of the stairs outside the entrance, another one on a mug in the kitchen, religious books placed on the bedside table, and a tiny Jesus figurine in the glass jar of makeup wipes in the bathroom. It looked like he was floating on a cloud in there.

The space was one big room with a kitchen and bathroom off to the side. North was staying with us that night so we could get an early start the next morning and they slept on a pullout couch in the living room area. At bedtime I was dismayed to find out I’d left my sleep mask at home, so I didn’t sleep well. Neither did North because apparently one of us was snoring. (They opted to sleep in Keep the next night.)

Sunday: Oberlin to Wheeling and Back Again

Why did we need to get an early start? We were driving to Wheeling to see Beth’s mom Sunday. It’s a three-hour drive each way, so it was going to be another long day on the road (the second of three), but North hadn’t seen YaYa since Thanksgiving and really wanted to go, so we did.

We arrived at YaYa’s house at 11:40 and soon after Beth’s aunt Carole and cousin Holly (who live two doors down) came over for a visit. As we left the house, we admired the flourishing Rose of Sharon in front of Carole’s house before we went to have lunch at the bistro at Oglebay resort. We ate on the patio, and the restaurant is on a hill, so we had a nice view of the park. We got a feast that started with a butter board with various compounded butters, fresh bread, and olives. I got a slice of quiche and a salad as well. Next, we went to the lodge and got coffee, chai, and a slice of lemon cheesecake.

Back at YaYa’s house we socialized some more, and I went for a short walk in her neighborhood. At 4:40, we said our goodbyes and drove back to Ohio. We drove mostly along rural roads and saw a lot of Amish people. There was another beautiful sunset. They are easier to see when there aren’t many hills or buildings. We had dinner at a Panera and then stopped in Wooster for ice cream and frozen custard at the dairy where OSCA gets its milk. It was fun to have a connection to the place.

Monday: Oberlin to Takoma Park

We picked North up at Keep the next morning and walked to Slow Train Café for coffee and pastries. From there we went to Ben Franklin, where we got clothes hangers and other sundries for North. (At home they had divided their hangers into a bag to take and hangers for children’s clothes to donate. Can you guess which bag they packed?) It was eleven o’clock by the time we said our goodbyes and got in the car again. When took pictures on the Keep steps, I said, “Goodbye, sophomore.” And it was time to go.

Our drive featured another stop at Blue Goose with a longer than planned stop to walk along the nearby C&O canal. We just kept finding interesting things, like a feral cat colony and water lotuses in bloom. It was a welcome distraction from the growing number of miles between us and our youngest child.

Tuesday through Friday: Takoma Park and Oberlin

Until recently, I thought this drop-off would be easy (if not objectively, then comparatively). It wasn’t anyone’s first year of college, it wasn’t the first drop-off after a year and a half at home due to a global pandemic, no one was going halfway across the world. But the fact that North’s multi-day migraine hadn’t gone away and their digestive woes were still unresolved made it harder to leave them. Right before we left home, we’d found out through the portal that their H. pylori test came back negative, so it’s more likely gastroenteritis than an ulcer. They got an appointment at the Cleveland Clinic, but it’s not until late September. Even though I am sorry they are dealing with these health problems, I am proud of them for taking steps to manage them. They are growing into quite the capable young adult. But of course, we are here to help if they need it.

On the positive side, they have a lot to look forward to this semester. They like their class schedule—two theater classes, one psychology class, a sociology class, and they will be on production crew for a show (which one TBD). They are one of two food coordinators for all OSCA, serving as a liaison to the wholesalers that supply the co-ops with food. It’s a paid position. They are now three days into the semester. Good luck, sophomore!

Last Two Weeks

Posted on August 26, 2025 by Steph

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North never made it to camp, and they didn’t even get a doctor’s appointment the week they were unexpectedly home. They didn’t have a lot of plans, as a lot of their high school friends had already left for school, and I think after a few weeks of not working, they were bored. They had long phone conversations with college friends and a couple online OSCA meetings. (They are one of two food coordinators who serve as liaisons between the co-ops and wholesale food vendors this year and they needed to plan food orders for the welcome picnic for new students.) They said it was the first week they wished they back at school. Lucky for them, it was their second-to-last week at home, so they didn’t need to wait long. This is what we did during those two weeks:

Week 1

Watch Movies

North was home, but Beth was gone, first at the CWA convention in Pittsburgh and then visiting her mom in Wheeling. What we mainly did in Beth’s absence was watch scary movies because she is not a fan. After Sinners, we went to Weapons in a theater, and then we watched Good One (which I hesitated to watch with Beth because I thought it might take a turn it did not) and The Gift. I’d seen that one alone in the theater ten years ago when Beth and the kids were out of town on a camping trip. Kind of funny I saw it again while she was out of town yet again.

Bake a Cake

Normally, North would probably bake something during a slow week, but it’s not that appealing when you feel sick much of the time. However, Noah made a ginger-apple cake with cream cheese frosting. It had three kinds of ginger (crystalized, fresh, and powdered). It was excellent and had quite a kick. I wondered if he thought all the ginger might settle his sibling’s stomach (they’d been drinking a lot of ginger ale) or if he was trying to summon fall during a miserably hot, sticky week by using autumnal flavors. North didn’t get better, but the weather eventually cooled down, so it worked on at least one front.

Protest

On Thursday night, I went to a Free DC protest. You’ve probably heard that the President tried to federalize the DC police. The legality of that is up in the air (and may change before I finally finish and post this), but there are National Guard troops from several states and other federal law enforcement agencies occupying the city, even though crime in DC is declining. They’ve set up checkpoints and some employees from Cielo Rojo, a Mexican restaurant a twenty-minute walk from my house, were seized in the city on their way to work. I’ve lived in the DC Metro area since 1991, so I am just heartbroken over all this. Not to mention that there have been more people seized in Takoma Park on the Maryland side of the border, including some landscapers in my friend Becky’s neighborhood. She posted video of it to Instagram.

The protests are happening in neighborhoods all over DC, every night at eight o’ clock. I went to the closest one, just over the DC/Maryland line. It was organized by our friend Sara, who used to work with Beth and is married to Mike, who frequently employs Noah. The bus schedule meant I got there early, so I went to the hardware store to get yard bags and then got myself some gelato. While I was eating it, a couple also eating gelato noticed my sign and asked where the protest was, so I told them, and they came along.

It was the second night there was a protest at this corner (Carroll and Maple if you’re local and want to come) and about fifteen to twenty people showed up, including my two recruits. Signs, pots, wooden spoons, and various percussion instruments are provided, and for five minutes, everyone makes a lot of noise, and people in passing cars honk or shout in support. That night, a Metro bus driver honked, too.

I resolved to go again sometime soon. As I told North, these protests are very short, and I should spend at least as much time holding the sign as I spent making it. I used colored tape to make the Free DC logo, as I did with my No Kings sign. I was pleased with it. Beth says I am becoming a “tape artist,” though North finds it amusing that “DC” is so much smaller than “Free,” because I ran out of room.

Week 2

Go to the Fair

Beth came home on Saturday afternoon, a day earlier than originally planned so we could go to the last day of the Montgomery County Fair. When we walked through the gates, I was awash in nostalgia. The fair always does that to me and now I have fifteen years’ worth of memories to add to those I mentioned in that post.

We did a few rides first thing. North wanted to ride the swings and some other favorites before eating in case they got sick to their stomach. I did the swings and the Mouse Trap with the kids. (Beth only rides the Ferris Wheel.) We went to get dinner next. North wanted dessert first for the same reason they wanted to do high-priority rides first. So, they got a root beer float while Beth got pupusas and Noah and I got crepes. Later in the evening, they got fried pickles while Beth and Noah were getting dessert.

In between we visited the animal barns. Because it was the last day, most of the stalls were empty of their tenants, but we saw sheep, goats, and North’s favorite, rabbits. I always feel a little sorry for them when I read the judges’ notes on their cages. I mean, would you like to be on display with a card that says, “uneven fur density?” I want to tell them “You are perfect just as you are,” but since they can’t read, I guess I don’t have to do that.

The line for the Ferris Wheel was long, so the kids went to ride something else while Beth and I stood in line, but it turned out that ride had a short but slow-moving line, so we had to give up our place and go to the back of the line before they came back. That was frustrating because it was getting late and it had been a hot day, so I was tired and ready to go home. But once we were high in the air, all together in the little car after in a week and a half apart, looking at the colored lights of the fair, it was worth it.

Bake a Cobbler

I had been planning to make a peach-blackberry cobbler to welcome Beth home, but I delayed it a little because of the presence of cake in the house. North said they wanted to help, so while Beth was grocery shopping on Sunday morning, I made the filling, and North made the crust and assembled it. They did a good job rolling the dough thin enough to cover the whole pan. I sometimes have trouble with that. I’ve been making this cobbler for decades, usually near the end of summer, and it tasted comfortingly familiar.

Go to the Doctor

On Monday afternoon, North finally had a doctor’s appointment (with a new doctor since theirs was on vacation). The results of their bloodwork were in the portal Monday night and by Tuesday morning we had a message from the doctor saying they had an elevated count of a specific kind of white blood cell, which was consistent either with an H. pylori infection causing an ulcer (the original theory) or gastroenteritis (a new one). They got another prescription and depending on the results of another test they might need an endoscopy. This will mean they’ll need to find a gastroenterologist in Ohio.

Protest Again

Tuesday night, Beth and I went back to the Takoma DC Free DC protest. We were the first ones to arrive and I was afraid no one else would come, but eventually over a dozen people gathered. One woman said she’d heard the protest the night before while in a meditation group at a church a block away and came to check it out. Sara wasn’t there that night and she brings the extra pots, spoons, and instruments, so there weren’t enough to go around. We chanted and clapped instead. Right at the end, a woman with a DC flag joined us. She said she’d been looking for a group that’s sometimes at the Takoma Metro but wasn’t that night.

Wade in the Creek

Wednesday morning the kids and I went on a creek walk. We’ve been doing this since they were small, often in the late summer, usually in Long Branch, the creek nearest our house. We altered our most common route this year because on my morning walks, I’d noticed a lot of deadfalls in the part of the creek where we usually wade since a big storm in mid-July. I also wanted to change the normal order of events to get food and beverages after the walk instead of before. This was in case North felt sick after eating.

So, we entered the water at the spot where we usually do, but we went in the opposite direction to a part of the creek I don’t see as often on walks. I don’t think there were any fewer trees down that way, but it was pleasant to wade in the water and look at pretty fungus on a downed log, little fishes in the water, and a spiderweb full of drops of water. We waded for twenty minutes until we got to a tree that was too big to clamber over and turned around, exiting where we entered. Then we went to the Langley Park farmers’ market where we got pupusas and drinks from Starbucks. North was able to eat most of a pupusa. It was a very satisfactory outing.

Go to the Hospital

North had a psychiatrist appointment Thursday morning, and I met them afterward for coffee at Lost Sock. They were somewhat subdued because they’d had a headache since the previous day. It didn’t feel like one of their usual headaches and it was accompanied by dizziness and blurry vision and a feeling they described as being “off.”

We went home and North talked to a nurse in the Complex Care program at Children’s (where North still gets most of their healthcare). They were advised to go to the ER, so that’s where Beth and North spent much of the day. As they left, Beth said, “We haven’t done this in a while.” Even so, we’ve gone to the ER with North so many times it’s a familiar ritual, if not a pleasant one.

Beth texted me updates throughout the day. North eventually got some IV migraine meds, and it did take the headache away, so it must have been a non-typical migraine, like the one they had when they were almost eleven that paralyzed their hands and feet.

We thought we had one health problem solved but the headache came back the next day mid-morning. They had been told to take ibuprofen and electrolytes if it did, so I went out and got them some Gatorade, but it only helped a little. Then Beth remembered we have another medication on hand that North hadn’t tried because it’s only semi-effective on their usual migraines and they rarely use it. But they tried it, and it worked, at least temporarily. They can take it twice a day for up to three days in a week, so that’s what they did, timing the doses strategically depending on our plans. It’s been more than a year since they’ve had to ration their migraine meds, but that’s where we are again.

Observe Friday Traditions

On their last day at home, North packed and that night we went out for our traditional Friday night pizza. Most of us got Red Hound, but North wanted their favorite Roscoe’s so we got takeout from two places and ate it at the tables on Laurel Avenue. (Maya, you can visualize us there. It was just up the street from where we met.) Then we went back to Red Hound for ice cream. I got orange with stewed figs. They always have interesting flavors there. North got doughnut peach-maple, but they couldn’t eat much of it.

At home, instead of randomly drawing a movie from the index cards in the cookie jar on the dining room table as we usually do on Friday nights, we looked at all the cards and picked the shortest one because it was late and while Beth and North were packed, I was not. The movie was Marvelous and the Black Hole, which I’d had on my list of possible movies to nominate for a few years but only nominated in this round. It was worth the wait.

And then North’s wait to get back to school was over, as we were leaving the next day. More on that trip soon…

Social

Posted on August 13, 2025 by Steph

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I am not particularly outgoing. I do have friends, but I don’t see them as often as I’d like. Our family spends a lot of time together and I am an introvert. Because I enjoy my own company and my wife’s and kids’, I often forget to reach out to other people. But I am always glad when I do.

For context, before last week, the last time I got together with a friend was in mid-June when I had lunch with the mother of one of North’s preschool classmates. Before that, it had been six months. In December, I had coffee with the same friend and paid a visit to another one, the music teacher at the same preschool, to deliver holiday cookies (and sample some of hers). So, given this track record, it was rather extraordinary that I had four social events in the space of a week.

Sunday: Oberlin Ice Cream Social

Sunday afternoon Beth, North, and I went to an ice cream social for Oberlin alums and current students in Chevy Chase. It was held on the lawn of the Somerset town hall under stately trees. When we arrived, we signed in at a table of the hall’s porch and a picked up some Oberlin swag. North and Beth got stickers of the unofficial mascot, an albino squirrel, and I got an Oberlin pen.

We stood on the porch for a while, talking to people, and then moved to the chairs arranged in clusters on the lawn, where we chatted with alums from the 1950s to 80s. The most talkative person was from the class of ’84. She was there with her mother, class of ’58, so we weren’t the only parent-child group there. The mother mentioned she lived in Keep before it was a housing co-op, and she told us back then it was “the bad girls’ dorm.” I wished later I had asked a follow-up question to find out what shenanigans she got up to there.

North met some current students, including one who will be living in Keep with them. She’s in North’s class and is also a double major, Psychology and Dance to North’s Psychology and Theater. It seems they have a lot in common. The only person we saw who we already knew was an ex-co-worker of Beth’s (not an alum) whose daughter goes to Oberlin now.

When the ice cream cart opened for business, we lined up. To be precise, it was a gelato and sorbet cart. Between us we sampled the chocolate-hazelnut gelato, pineapple gelato, and raspberry sorbet. North could not finish their sorbet, though, because the stomach pain and nausea I mentioned in my last post has continued, and it’s hard for them to finish anything they start to eat. We left soon after because North wasn’t feeling well and we’d all had about as much socializing as we wanted. I was glad we went, though. I’d do it again.

Monday: Medical Interlude #1

North had started on medication for their stomach pain the previous Thursday and they were originally supposed to give it two weeks to work, but Monday they called their doctor to ask if they could accelerate the diagnostic process because it was only a few days until they were supposed to leave for their sleepaway camp counselor job. They got an appointment for an ultrasound on Wednesday afternoon.

Monday: School Tour with Lesley

That evening we went to the preschool to see renovations in progress. There had been a tour for alumni families while we were at the beach and since we missed it, the school director, Lesley, who taught both kids and became a family friend, offered to give us our own private tour.

By now you may be starting to notice the extent to which my social life revolves around people we met when the kids were in preschool. There’s really nothing like being in the classroom of a co-operative school on a regular basis for a few years to bond with teachers and other parents.

During covid, the school stayed open by becoming an outdoor school and it has stayed that way ever since. But starting this next school year, they are going hybrid, and the inside space has been re-imagined. Most of the interior walls have been knocked out and there are circular windows in some of the remaining walls that let you see from room to room. The whole back wall is sliding glass doors. The idea is to let you see more of the outdoors from any part of the building, which is very much in keeping with the nature-based philosophy of the school.

In another startling change, the school is now painted a muted purplish brown color, rather than the violet shade that has led parents to call it “the Purple School” for decades, although that is not its real name.

It was interesting to see the renovations and nice to talk to Lesley. After preschool both kids stayed involved with the Purple School through its after-school classes (drama) and day camps (science, art, drama, and tinkering) both as campers and later volunteer counselors. Both kids have helped Lesley catalog photos and books in the school’s library for some of the student serving learning hours they needed to graduate. When he was in high school, Noah made a zombie movie with day campers as actors, and he also produced a podcast interviewing several alumni of the school. So, we’ve stayed in touch, but we hadn’t seen Lesley in a while, maybe a couple years. She thinks she might have some website work for Noah. I hope that comes through, because it’s a kind of work that he hasn’t done for pay before and it would help expand his resume.

Wednesday: Medical Interlude #2

North had the ultrasound, or rather ultrasounds, on Wednesday. They were primarlily looking for gallstones, but they looked at all their digestive organs for any problems. We were able to get the results that evening through the patient portal that night. The tests didn’t find anything unusual. So, with no clear way forward and still in daily pain, North decided not to go to camp on Friday. It was the job they were most looking forward to this summer, so we are all bummed about it. We’re hoping that either their symptoms improve so they can go mid-week or that we can get another appointment that might lead to a diagnosis before they leave for school. Right now, their doctor is on vacation and we don’t have contact information for the substitute who is supposed to contact us.

Thursday: Coffee and Tea with Becky

Becky (who was North’s music teacher both at the Purple School and in Kindermusik classes we took through the community center and whose daughter babysat for us for years) has a show on Takoma’s community radio station. Noah and I listen to it on Saturday evenings when we’re cooking dinner and we all listen while we eat dinner. One recent Saturday, listening to her voice, North commented that they’d like see Becky before they go back to school, so I reached out to her and Becky, North, and I met up with her for coffee on Thursday morning.

We got coffee, tea, and pastries and ate outside Takoma Bev Co under the big white tent, as the weather had been unseasonably and delightfully cool for almost a week at this point. North doesn’t have much trouble with beverages, so they got an iced mocha, which they deemed insufficiently chocolaty.

We caught each other up on North’s first year of college, illness in Becky’s family, and all our recent doings. Becky knows so many people that in the hour and a half we spent together, she ran into people she knew twice (well, three times, but two of those times it was the same group of people, an elementary-age former music student and his grandparents). We walked part of the way home together because Becky needed to go to the food co-op and when we parted, we resolved to get together sooner than the last time.

“It’s always nice to see Becky,” North commented as we crossed the street headed for the bus stop. When I was a kid we moved around a lot and it’s been satisfying for me to give the kids a childhood in one place, so that in the space of a week North can see a teacher who has known them since they were born (and made us a baby blanket) and another who has known them since they were a shy two year old who clung to their mother during toddler music class.

Friday: Travel Begun and Not Begun

Beth left on a work trip Friday morning. She’ll be gone a little over a week, attending the CWA convention in Pittsburgh and then swinging over to Wheeling to visit her mom. Originally, she was going to take North to Allentown on the way and drop them off with another counselor who would drive them to camp the following day. It made me doubly sad when she left, first to say goodbye to her and not to say goodbye to North.

That night we ordered cheap pizza and took advantage of the absence of the most squeamish member of our family to watch Sinners. (I let North choose the movie because they were the one missing out on a week at camp.)

Saturday: Coffee and Tea with Maya

Saturday afternoon I met up with someone who has nothing whatsoever to do with the Purple School. If you read my blog, there’s a good chance you read Maya’s, too. She lives in Michigan, so we have never met in person. But she was in D.C. on short visit with some of her family and she ducked out early on a trip to the Portrait Gallery to meet me at the same coffee shop where we met Becky two days earlier.

Maya is just as sweet and warm in person as she is on her blog. She came bearing gifts, baklava and another Middle Eastern pastry with pistachios and rose petals, and a magnet with a Susan B. Anthony quote: “Failure is Impossible.” She said she got it because of all the protests I go to. I only hope Susan B. was right. We had iced coffee and tea. (The weather is getting a little warmer but it was still more pleasant than August in the D.C. area generally is.) We talked about things we’ve read on each other’s blogs–family, work, politics– but in more detail. It was nice to talk in person. When we parted, she urged me to come to Michigan someday.

It’s kind of appropriate that my week as a social butterfly ended with a visit with a blogging friend, because online friends are another important part of my social life. There are about a half dozen blogs I visit and comment on regularly and I have come to consider some of these bloggers friends. It’s unusual to meet one, though. The last time I met a blogger in person was in 2011. (I’d link to Tara’s blog, but she doesn’t write it anymore. We do still keep up with each other on Facebook.) If any of the rest of you are ever in the D.C. area, let me know. I’d love to meet you, too.

Families, Folk, and Flowers

Posted on August 3, 2025 by Steph

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North finished up their day camp job on Wednesday. They originally thought their last day would be a Friday and they’d come up with a plan for us to meet them at work, have our weekly Friday night pizza at Roscoe’s and then go try out the nearby newish Peach Cobbler Factory in Takoma, DC. So, we ended up doing it on their last Friday at work (the last Friday in July) instead of their last day. Dessert was on them. Three of us got cobblers of various flavors (I got blackberry) but they also have other desserts and Beth got chocolate chip banana pudding. It was fun to try a new place.

Now North is in the middle of a week and a half off before leaving for their third and final job of the summer, a week of being a counselor at the sleepaway camp for kids of gay and lesbian parents they attended for five summers, starting when they were twelve.

Families First

That same weekend Beth and I went to the Families First rally on the mall Saturday afternoon. North couldn’t go because they had a five-hour online training for the sleep-away camp job (that on top of an hour and a half of asynchronous modules they had to complete before the training). The stipend for this job is so small that North joked that if they were getting even minimum wage, they would have earned half of it by the time they finished the training.

The protest was not particularly well attended. We didn’t expect it to be, as it didn’t seem to be well publicized and there weren’t any other people with signs on the Takoma metro stop platform. In fact, two curious people at the station asked where we were going with our signs, which means even people who are interested in protests hadn’t heard about it.

When we got there was only a scattering of people in front of the stage, but that was partly because it was a hot, muggy day and a lot of people were off to the side under the shade of trees. There were a lot of amenities, however. There were red-and-white checkered blankets spread out on the grass and various games (giant Jenga blocks, connect four frames, and cornhole) set up on the grass, to make it family friendly, and people were handing out battery-operated fans (the kind that spray water), and free snacks. There was also a water bottle-filling station that dispensed cool water. On its side it said, “You know what else is refreshing? Protecting Medicaid.”

The theme was support for families hurt by cuts to various federal programs. The website cited Medicaid, FEMA, food stamps, school lunches, so put those in lefthand column of my sign under the words “Families Need,” but I filled up another column with other issues that concern me (gender-affirming health care, reproductive rights, action on climate change, and academic freedom). On the flip side of the sign, I wrote Immigrant Families Belong Together, because I thought that was important enough to stand alone. The action was national, so the focus may have differed from location to location, but at this one the spotlight was squarely on Medicaid. There were passionate speeches from people affected by Medicaid cuts, including a man with developmental disabilities and a teen boy with a life-threatening respiratory disability.

There were some nice musical performances by the DC Labor Chorus and the Baltimore Urban Inspiration Choir. Congress had just left on recess (dismissed early so they couldn’t vote on releasing the Epstein files) so there were no politicians who spoke. Beth said the actions were timed to correspond with the beginning of the August recess to get people across the country motivated to visit their representatives and express their concerns. It was a shame there wasn’t a big turnout at this one because it was a good event. Still, we weren’t sorry when it ended early because it the weather was punishing. Many of the speakers thanked people for showing up in the heat.

(Near) Future Plans

On the way home from the rally Beth and I talked about things we’d been saying we should do this summer and have not done. Part of the reason was that our pink resurrection lilies were just starting to bloom, and this always makes me realize while summer break is not over, we can now count what’s left in weeks rather than months. We made plans to visit a sunflower field the next weekend, and I checked on the schedule for outdoor concerts at the National Arboretum (the next one is not until early September, so that won’t be an all-family activity). We also resolved to visit an African ice cream place in Silver Spring we’d heard about but never patronized.

The next day North and I made a kuchen out of the blueberries we’d picked three weeks prior and the two of us looked at a calendar to see if we could reasonably hope to finish season 6 of The Gilmore Girls, Season 5 of Grownish, and season 3 of Ginny & Georgia before North goes back to school in late August. The answer seemed to be a tentative yes.* Finally, North and I made plans to go to the Langley Park farmers’ market for pupusas the first Wednesday of August, the kids decided to collaborate on the long-discussed brownie sundaes (Noah would make the brownies and North would make a sour-cherry peach sauce). I resolved to make a blackberry-peach cobbler after Beth and North return from their travels and the kids and I will probably take our annual creek walk the last week North is home. I felt good about these late summer plans. They seemed do-able and like they would be fun.

Over the next few days, I started to remember other things that wouldn’t be as easy to fit into the time we had left. North had mentioned wanting to take a day trip to the Chesapeake Bay and I’d been thinking about the fact that the four of us haven’t been to the movies together all summer. We had a few weeks but only one weekend left because Beth and North will be travelling for the next two (North to camp, and Beth to her union’s convention and then her mom’s house) and then we leave to take North back to school on a Saturday.

Folk Rock

Thursday morning North had a doctor’s appointment. They’ve been having stomach pain and nausea, and their doctor thinks it might be an ulcer. They got meds for it, with instructions to take them for a couple weeks and see if they help (so far, they haven’t). That afternoon the kids made the components of the sundaes.

Beth and I didn’t have ours until the next day because we had plans that evening. We were going to see Emmylou Harris and Graham Nash at Wolf Trap as a belated anniversary celebration. Getting there turned out to be more of a challenge than we anticipated. On the way back from North’s doctor’s appointment Beth got a flat tire. Someone from road service came to remove it and put the spare tire on, but it wasn’t clear how we were going to get to Wolf Trap (which is in suburban Virginia) because it’s not safe to drive on a donut at high speeds and the Beltway would be the normal route. We considered trying to borrow a car, taking a Lyft, or driving an alternate route. We ended up choosing the alternate route.

Did I mention torrential rain with possible flooding was in the forecast? It had rained intermittently and with varying intensity all afternoon, everything from drizzle to moderately hard. We set out about 5:30 and got there a little before 7:00. The sky was clearing when we arrived and the hour we had before showtime was just long enough to get some food, picnic on the lawn, get some ice cream, eat that, and get to our seats. The food line was short, but the wait was long anyway. They kept apologizing and offering us free drinks or food and we finally accepted a box of popcorn for our trouble. We’d sprung for tickets under the roof and while the lawn would have been fine, we didn’t know the rain would stop right in time, so that was one fewer stressor in a day that had plenty of them.

The concert was fun. Emmylou Harris went on first and she started right on time. She sang “Red Dirt Girl,” the song I most wanted to hear, early in her set, and I learned from her introduction that “Bang the Drum Slowly” is about her father. She had a very talented and versatile group of musicians with her. The fiddle/mandolin player was especially good.

I was looking forward to Harris’s set more, but I ended up enjoying them equally. For one thing, Nash’s sound was better set up, so it was easier to hear the words. But instead of singing mostly from his solo career, which is what I think I expected, he sang a lot of songs from his time in the Hollies; Crosby, Stills, and Nash; and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. It was more nostalgic because I’ve loved a lot of those songs since I was child and while I’ve been listening to Emmylou Harris for decades there’s nothing quite like the music you loved as a kid. I have to say, though, that when you hear him sing them alone, you do miss the harmonies. Though he wasn’t really singing alone. His band sang, audience participation was encouraged, and a lot of the songs (“Marrakesh Expresss,” “Our House”) became sing-alongs. Everyone seemed to know all the words. Finally, based on his stage patter, I’d say he is more invested in being Joni Mitchell’s ex than she is about being his.

It was quite late when we got home, after midnight, and I was wrecked the next day, but it was worth it. While we were at the concert the kids ate defrosted chili North made a while back and watched The Barbarian and Noah had his sundae, but North waited on theirs because they didn’t feel well.

(Where Have All the) Flowers Gone?

The next Saturday morning we were intending to go see the sunflower fields at the McKee-Beshers Wildlife Management Area. But when Beth visited the website that morning, she discovered the bloom was over. This was a surprise as our sunflowers are still going strong. But at least we found out before we left.

I’d been looking forward to this outing, for the family time, and being out in nature, and because I knew Noah would get good pictures. He always does. I floated the idea of going to see a movie instead, but Beth had work to do and there wasn’t anything playing nearby I wanted to see anyway, so I gave up on the idea. And a trip to the Bay would have been too time-consuming so I didn’t even mention it.

What we did do was try out the African ice cream place. It’s in Solare Social, an international food court tucked away in an out of the way street in downtown Silver Spring. There were a lot of interesting stands and Noah is already making plans to go back and have dinner there when he’s in Silver Spring for a concert next week. Beth and Noah sampled the spicy chocolate. It had too much of a kick for her, but he ordered it, with dried plantains. Beth and North got the grape-raspberry-black currant (Beth with cacao nibs and North without) and I got a malted ice cream with cacao nibs. It was fun to try yet another new (to us) dessert place.

We weren’t done with frozen treats, though. There was a meet-and-greet for Oberlin alums, students, and incoming students in Chevy Chase Sunday afternoon. This was the beginning of a remarkably social week for me, which I will report on later…

*We finished season 6 of Gilmore Girls tonight.

All For The Love Of You

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Families, Folk, and Flowers