Ice Melts

Posted on February 19, 2026 by Steph

Snowmelt

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

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

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

Watching the Olympics

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

Baking

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

Going on a Date

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

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

Celebrating Valentine’s Day

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

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

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

Rallying for Immigrant Rights

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

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

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

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

Winter’s So Cold This Year

Posted on February 2, 2026 by Steph

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

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

Snowcrete

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

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

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

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

Goodbyes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Snow and Ice

Posted on January 26, 2026 by Steph

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

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

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

Takoma Park, MD to Wheeling, WV: Traveling

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

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

Wheeling to Oberlin, OH and Westlake, OH: Traveling

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

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

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

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

Avon, OH: Surgery

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

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

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

Oberlin: Convalescence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oberlin to Wheeling and Wheeling to Takoma Park: Traveling

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keeping Christmas

Posted on December 26, 2025 by Steph

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

From A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens

O, Christmas Tree

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

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

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

Misfortune Seemed Our Lot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Happiest Christmas Tree

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

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

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

All Is Bright

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

On Christmas Day, On Christmas Day

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

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

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

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

The Rails

Posted on December 14, 2025 by Steph

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On the Rails: Snowfall

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

Off the Rails: Home Invasion

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

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

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

Riding the Rails: Travels

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Winter Wonderland

Posted on January 12, 2025 by Steph

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To face unafraid
The plans that we’ve made
Walking in a winter wonderland

From “Winter Wonderland,” by Felix Bernard and Richard B. Smith

We got home from Wheeling right ahead of the biggest snowstorm we’ve had in a couple years. The first Monday in January we awoke to four or five inches of snow. Beth shoveled the walk in the morning and then Noah did it in the afternoon and again the following morning. It snowed most of the day, and we eventually got eight inches. I went for a walk by the creek that morning and it was very pretty.

Schools were closed from Monday to Wednesday and finally opened two hours late on Thursday. Not that this affected me in any way. I mostly heard about it from a friend who teaches middle school. She has a daughter in North’s grade (they went to preschool together), also newly away at college. The mom said it on Facebook that it felt strange to have her first snow day with no kids at home. She made a little snowman by herself in her yard and posted its picture. (I did not make a snowman, but I did photograph them all over the neighborhood over the course of the next week.) I knew what she meant and replied that in North’s absence I was forced to do my own snow day baking—almond flour banana-walnut muffins.

I couldn’t make them on Monday, though, because by Monday afternoon it was clear that both Beth and I had caught the stomach bug her brother and sister-in-law had, even though we never saw them and even though Beth’s mom had disinfected the house with bleach wipes before we got there. Luckily, she never got sick herself. My theory is that our resistance was lowered because we were already sick with, or just recovered from, colds when we got there.

So, that was unpleasant, but it was over quickly for me. It was worst late Monday afternoon and evening, but I took Tuesday off for the most part (the only work I did was reading a trade magazine while lying on the couch) because I felt weak and tired. Noah read The Last Continent aloud to me two days in a row while I continued to lay on the couch. I did manage to rouse myself to make the muffins and omelets for dinner Tuesday night and after that I was mainly back to normal. Beth’s fatigue and loss of appetite lasted all week, however.

It snowed again Friday night, probably less than an inch. Saturday morning, I took a turn with the shoveling. It wasn’t a hard job. In some places, the slushy snow just needed to be scraped to the edge of the sidewalk.

After shoveling, I made a cake because it was Beth’s and my anniversary. It’s been thirty-three years since our commitment ceremony and twelve since we were legally married. Every year I make the spice cake we had at both events. We ate it in the afternoon and exchanged cards. We both got each other gift certificates (I got her one for e-books and she got me one for Koma, a neighborhood coffeehouse.) But the funny thing was that I also wrote in her card I would take her out for hot chocolate (she doesn’t drink coffee or tea) at Koma or wherever she liked.

“We’ve got a ‘Gift of the Magi’ situation here,” she said because if I used the gift certificate for the outing, she’d be paying for her own gift. So, I think when we go, I won’t use it, and I’ll save it for another time.

Speaking of gift certificates, Beth had a Fandango one that was about to expire so that evening all three of us went to see The Room Next Door. Nothing says date night like taking your son with you to see a movie about a woman dying of cancer.

The venue is the kind of theater where you can order food brought to your seat. There are menus, pads of paper to write your order, pens, and call buttons at every seat, plus a little table that swings around in front of your seat so you can eat. We’d never been there, or anywhere like it, so it was a novel experience. I got a Caesar salad and mozzarella sticks. It was necessary to cover my whole torso with napkins while eating salad in the dark, but I got the hang of it eventually.

The movie was intense, as you might expect, and the acting was good. Noah says the quality of the projection was higher than in the average movie theater. I wasn’t surprised because the whole place had a cinephile vibe. There were vintage movie posters lining the corridors and there are strict warnings about talking or texting during the movie—you can be ejected from the theater without refund if you do. You can even report other people talking or texting with your call button. Also, no minors are allowed without adults accompanying them. And the film was preceded by clips of other films that are referenced in the film and an interview with one of the actors. It was a very integrated experience. It also kept us out later than usual. Well, not the twenty-something, but his moms, so we went to bed soon after getting home.

Throughout the day I was thinking about the two events we were commemorating, the commitment ceremony in 1992 and the legal wedding in 2013. I fear sometimes that we could be unmarried during the next administration. Sometimes it seems far-fetched, but sometimes it doesn’t. People who want it to happen have the incoming President’s ear and he will likely be even less restrained this term than the last one. So, it could happen, at least on the federal level. I am not worried about Maryland, but if we were no longer married in the eyes of the federal government, we’d owe more in taxes, and I would not have access to Beth’s social security if she predeceased me.

But we’ve lived most of our relationship without those legal protections. We can do it again if we must. We will face unafraid the plans that we made, back when we were twenty-somethings ourselves. Those cannot be undone by any government.

First Steps

Posted on January 6, 2025 by Steph

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North is back at school. While I was cooking dinner on New Year’s Eve and listening to Roseanne Cash sing “Everyone But Me,” the line “It goes by real fast” jumped out at me. I thought of the kids’ childhoods, of course, but more immediately, North’s three-week break.

The first two days we were home from the beach North was wiped out by a cold—they tested for covid, and it was negative—and they spent those days mostly in bed. By Monday they’d recovered enough to take a short walk with me to Koma and get a chai (them) and a latte (me). On Tuesday, they delivered a tin of homemade Christmas sweets to Maddie and Miles and spent most of the afternoon at the twins’ house. Then Noah and North stayed up to see in the New Year, finishing a season of Queen’s Gambit, and consuming a lot of snacks while they waited for midnight. Meanwhile, I’d caught North’s cold, and Beth and I were abed by 9:45. If I could have roused myself from the couch—where I was feeling sick and listless—I would have gone to bed earlier.

New Year’s Day: First Hike

On New Year’s Day Beth and I went on a Maryland State Parks First Day hike, as we often do. I was quiet in the car on the way to Merkle Natural Resources Management Area. I was still sick and fatigued. Also, the persistent dread I’d been feeling since the election, which lessened a little over the holidays, was settling back down around me, if anything worse than before because it was finally 2025. After hearing so much about Project 2025 for so long, the very name of the year sounds menacing and dystopian. Is that going to wear off?

But we got there, and we took the hike, and it was nice to be walking outdoors, and it lifted my spirits a little. It almost always does. The park is a Canada goose sanctuary. Some geese live there year-round, but most of them winter there from October to March. We saw a lot of geese on the drive to the parking lot and hundreds more in the fields surrounding the visitors’ center, but we didn’t see any on the actual hike, because it was mostly on a wooded trail, and they prefer water and open fields.

The ranger pointed out a beaver dam and beaver-gnawed trees and identified tree species as we walked past streams and ponds and a heap of garbage that he said was eighty to a hundred years old. There was an upside-down car, what looked like an oil tank, some appliances, something made of porcelain that might have been part of a sink or a toilet, and what I think was the torso of a rocking horse. There was also the rusted frame of a banana-seat bike, which made Beth speculate some of the trash was from after the 1940s. After the hike we went into the visitors’ center and watched turtles swimming in a tank. It was the first day I was wearing my new Fitbit, and it was novel and interesting to have something counting my steps and zone minutes again after an almost six-month break from that.

Back at home, we had a lunch of fancy cheeses, crackers, fruit, and sparkling juice. This is another New Year’s tradition for us. And I made black-eyed peas for dinner because there is no way I am skimping on luck this year.

Thursday to Sunday: First Road Trip

Thursday morning, we hit the road for Oberlin. The drive took eight and half hours and we passed the time with music and podcasts (a couple episodes of Handsome and one each of Normal Gossip and Where Should We Begin). Somewhere in Western Pennsylvania I fell asleep and when I opened my eyes the first thing that I saw was a sign that said, “Trump. Fuck Your Feelings,” so that was a rude awakening… literally.

We arrived in Oberlin around six. We dropped North’s things off at their new, possibly temporary, first-floor single room in Keep, which they requested because it was empty for Winter Term and it’s easier for them not to have to climb two flights of stairs. We helped them move some of their stuff down from their third-floor room into the first-floor room.

It’s still trippy for me to be in Keep, where I lived for a year and a half. To intensify that feeling, North’s new room used to belong to my sophomore year boyfriend, so I once spent a lot of time in it. I also spied a picture of myself North added to the “Keeple of the Past” display, a collage of photos of people who once lived in Keep. Can you spot me? The Christmas tree was still up in the lounge, and we noticed the ornaments we gave North over Thanksgiving on it.

We went out for Thai at a very festive-looking restaurant, all strung with colored lights. I got a green curry the waitress warned me was hot and she did not lie. I ate all the tofu and vegetables, but I had to leave half the broth, and it got my nose running and knocked all my congestion loose. Beth said that was good for me and maybe it was because the next day my cold was almost gone.

North came back with us to our Air BnB, took a shower, and hung out for a little while and then Beth drove them back to Keep for their first night in their new room.

Friday morning, we woke to a couple inches of snow on the ground and snow falling through the air. It wasn’t a surprise, it had been forecast, but Beth was delighted anyway (even though now she had the cold we were all passing around). We’d had flurries a few times at home and a dusting of snow over Thanksgiving weekend in Wheeling, but no accumulation anywhere we’ve been this fall and winter so far. After breakfast we walked through the snow to CVS to get a comb since Beth had forgotten hers and vitamin D and magnesium because I’d forgotten mine. Then we met up with North for warm beverages and pastry at their favorite coffeeshop in Oberlin.

We had a busy morning and early afternoon. We took North to two different grocery stores to stock up on fresh and dried fruit, olives, bagels, cream cheese, yogurt, cereal, milk, and frozen foods. Keep’s kitchen will be closed over Winter Term so North will be living there but eating in a different co-op and it seemed like a good idea to have some food on hand where they live. This was in addition to the tote bag full of instant oatmeal, hot chocolate mix, toaster pastries, and popcorn we had presented them with before we left home. I don’t think they will starve, even though their play rehearsal schedule may cause them to miss meals sometimes. After the first grocery store, it was snowing so hard there were almost white-out conditions, and we had to stop at Keep so we could wait out the squall before proceeding to the second store.

Next, we took a walk in the arboretum. I promised Beth I would not break up with her there. It’s an old joke—I once took a “yes, we are really breaking up” letter from a quite recent ex-boyfriend there to read and I broke up with two other boyfriends there in person, so it does have a break-up vibe for me, but it’s a pretty place and I do have other memories associated with it. The reservoirs were partly frozen, and the snow was lovely on the tree branches and cattails. We were all rather cold after that walk, though, so it was nice to warm up with a tasty lunch of Mexican food.

We picked up some medications that had arrived at the mail room for North. Beth and I walked a little more on campus after that, passing by Noah Hall—it wouldn’t be a trip to Oberlin without at least walking by the dorm where we met—and then we picked North up at Keep and drove the building where their first rehearsal was starting at two, and we hit the road for Wheeling.

It was sad to leave North, of course, but happy at the same time because I think they’re going to have a good Winter Term. I always loved Winter Term, being able to focus on one intensive class or project for four weeks before the spring semester. Rehearsing a play seems like a perfect project and we’ll be back in Oberlin in a month to see it performed.

The snow was heavy and blowing across the road at the beginning of the drive, but it cleared up, and we got to Wheeling around 5:15. We were staying at a hotel that night because Beth’s brother and his wife were at her mom’s house. They’d been there for Christmas and had gotten sick with norovirus and had to extend their stay because they were too sick to fly. They had since recovered and were leaving early the next morning. After Beth and John consulted with each other on the phone they decided not to visit with each other, just in case John and Abby were still contagious. Beth and I brought pizza back to the hotel room and had a quiet evening—she read, and I wrote much of this.

Saturday morning, it was quite cold, in the teens, so Beth didn’t want to go out with wet hair, and we stayed in the hotel room until it was dry. We ran some errands and then arrived at her mom’s house in the late morning. We all sat in her mom’s bedroom, and she caught us up on various members of the extended family, who was doing well and who wasn’t. It made me think how people’s lives are kind of like a microcosm of a family’s or even a nation’s life, alternating good times and bad times, always a mix of both, even as the ratio shifts.

Beth and I went to Oglebay Park to walk in the snow. When we set out the wind was blowing hard and it was so cold my face ached and I thought I’d made a mistake coming along, but it died down and then I was fine. I had on a new pair of boot socks we’d purchased that morning because my feet had been cold in the arboretum, and they helped. It was quiet in the park other than occasional honking geese. You know how smell travels farther when it’s very cold? Even when I was walking a few feet behind Beth, I could smell the cherry cough drops she was sucking.

We walked from the lodge to the mansion and around Shenck Lake and saw a big flock of geese hunkered down, motionless on a snowy hillside. Afterward we got coffee and hot chocolate in the lodge. I stared out the window watching the falling snow, still feeling pensive and a little melancholy.

When we got back, we went to visit Beth’s aunt Carole, who lives two doors down, and Carole’s son Sean, who was visiting from Ireland, and shared more news of family. Then we had a late lunch and settled in for a quiet afternoon of reading and writing and watching the falling snow.

Sunday morning, we ran some more errands and hit the road for home a little before ten. We took our time on the drive. We stopped for lunch at a café in Cumberland—where I got a cozy meal of tomato soup, grilled cheese, and chocolate-peppermint tea—and for a walk in Rocky Gap State Park. There wasn’t much snow there on the ground there, or anywhere after Cumberland, but Lake Habeeb was partly frozen. There were ducks on the water and a couple beaver-felled trees.

In the first five days of the new year, we walked in four different parks in three different states. I don’t know where the year will take us as a family or as a country, but for better or for worse, we have taken our first steps.

You Across the Table

Posted on January 23, 2024 by Steph

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Cornbread and butterbeans and you across the table
From “Cornbread and Butterbeans” by the Carolina Chocolate Drops

Beth’s home, after nearly three weeks in Wheeling. Her brother has taken over caring for their mom. I think this was the longest we’ve been separated since I went to Spain for the fall semester of my junior year of college in 1987. We all missed her, but we got along okay. The kids pitched in with some extra chores, helping me grocery shop and shovel snow and we all spent a lot of time in Lyfts and buses going to and from extracurricular activities, stores, and medical appointments. On our anniversary, Beth sent a purple African violet to the house because we had potted violets at our commitment ceremony in 1992 instead of cut flowers. It was a sweet gesture.

Nothing as notable as the one-act performance or our anniversary happened in the second half of the time Beth was gone. The main thing she missed was seven inches of snow, after a nearly snowless winter last year. But it snowed in Wheeling, too, so she didn’t really miss it.

She took a lot of long, snowy walks in Wheeling Park, sometimes alone and sometimes with her high school friend Michelle or our college friend Stephanie, who lives in Morgantown and came to visit her.

In Takoma, the snow started with a dusting on MLK day before the big events Monday night into Tuesday morning (4.25 inches on our backyard table) and Thursday night into Friday (3 more inches). School was cancelled Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. This means in the space of four days we blew through all our allotted snow days for the year plus one, which will have to be made up. I hope the district decides how to do so soon, because I’d like to know what the school calendar looks like next semester. I am so very tired of this whole, broken system for dealing with winter weather…but next year it won’t be my problem.

On Tuesday I divided the shoveling into three pieces. I assigned North the smallest stretch, I took the middle one, and Noah did the longest one. (We have a corner lot and a big back yard, so we have a lot of sidewalk to shovel.) After they finished shoveling, North made a snowman. It’s nice they don’t feel too old for that. On Friday, Noah shoveled the whole walk because there were indoor chores that I wanted North to do.

Thursday, the only day North had school, there was an afterschool read-through of Beauty and the Beast. They’re in the ensemble and they have a couple solo singing lines as a washerwoman. Since it’s a small part, they’re going to pitch in with costumes, too.

During this week and a half, North continued to bake, making a pan of brownies as a thank you for a friend who drove their phone back to our house after North left it in her car, and an apple crumb cake. We also continued to watch scary and/or violent movies and television shows, stuff Beth wouldn’t like—we all watched Us and The Terminator, the kids are watching a Korean zombie show, Noah and I finished the fourth and final season of The Strain (which we’ve been watching for years), the kids and I started American Horror Story, and Noah and I started Angel since we finished Buffy last month and I miss that universe. We also watched some tamer fare. We went to see Mean Girls at a theater in Silver Spring over MLK weekend (and to prepare we watched the original version at home).

Saturday I menu planned for the first week Beth would be back and made the cake for our belated anniversary celebration. It’s the cake we had at both our commitment ceremony and our legal wedding, a spice cake with a lemon glaze. Sunday the kids and I did the grocery shopping. I’d been going to the farmers’ market and co-op alone but taking them with me to the supermarket to have extra arms to carry groceries home on the bus (Noah) and for help locating items (North, who after Beth is the most familiar with the grocery store layout because they used to tag along on shopping trips with her until their early teens).

For dinner that night Noah and I made burrito bowls. It was quite the complicated endeavor, involving cooking dry black beans (which I hardly ever do any more), locating the rarely used rice cooker in the basement and figuring out how to use it, making a roasted poblano salsa for tofu sofritas, using a copycat recipe based on Chipotle’s sofritas Noah found online, and preparing many little bowls of different toppings. Beth got home a little after six, while we were still busy in the kitchen. When I heard the car, I hurried outside, slipping on the crocs I keep on the back stoop. The crocs weren’t quite up to the snow in the driveway, and we stood by the car hugging for a long time while snow melted into my socks.

We ate dinner and watched an episode of Mixedish. At the table Beth kept exclaiming how good it was to see us all. Then we had cake, and Beth said it tasted “like love.” I gave her a chocolate tasting kit that Suzanne featured in a Christmas gift post. She seemed delighted with it. In addition to a promise of new headphones (I lost a pair and broke another while she was gone), she gave me a card with rainbow stripes coming out of a heart in which she’d written:

Happy anniversary.

I will forever remember this one as the one where we were away from each other and I was full of longing for you and the life we have built together.

Love you will all my heart.

“What does it say?” North wanted to know after I’d read it, so I handed it to them, and then North gave it to Noah.

“I didn’t know it was going to be so public,” Beth protested, and now it’s even more public because I put it on the Internet. (Don’t worry. I did ask her if it was okay.)

Beth had stayed over at Michelle’s house the night before and they’d stayed up late talking, so she was exhausted and went to bed early. I got into bed to keep her company for a little while, then got up to finish the dishes and to write some of this.

Monday morning before she left for her walk, Beth suggested going away for a weekend to reconnect. I said it sounded like a good idea. We’re still thinking about where and when. That night I made almond flour cornbread and a butterbean stew with kalettes for dinner. I did this because Saturday while I was trying to menu plan and struggling to come up with ideas, I’d heard the Carolina Chocolate Drops song “Cornbread and Butterbeans” and I thought, “That sounds good.”

The first line of the song is “Cornbread and butterbeans and you across the table,” so I sang it to her and said, “Now I have all those things.”

She’s been home a couple days now, but I am still very glad to have her across the table.

Second (and Third) Week: Coronavirus Chronicles, Part 63

Posted on January 19, 2022 by Steph

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Second Week Begins

After the week that was mostly cancelled for snow, North had another short school week. Monday and Tuesday they were suffering after-effects from their covid booster and stayed home from school and Wednesday was a half day. I’m not sure why, but if it was teacher planning I am not going to begrudge the teachers anything they need.

Anniversary #30/9

Beth’s and my anniversary was a week ago Tuesday. It’s been thirty years since our commitment ceremony and nine years since our legal wedding. Both ceremonies took place on the same date, the first one in the living room of the apartment in D.C. where we lived when we were in our mid-twenties to mid-thirties and the second one in the living room of the house in suburban Maryland where we’ve lived since 2002.

I like to give anniversary gifts based on the traditional materials. Thirty is the pearl anniversary and this was tough one, because as Beth let me know ahead of time, she did not want a string of pearls. (There wasn’t much danger I would have gone in that direction anyway. It’s not really her style.) This is what I did get—a card with a shell on the front, a confection called licorice pearls (because Beth is on a licorice kick), a cultural biography of Pearl Buck (which I thought might be of interest because she was from West Virginia and Beth has a lot of West Virginia pride), and a gift certificate to Main Street Pearl, a bubble tea place in downtown Takoma. Beth doesn’t care for bubble tea (or any kind of tea), but they do have pastries, including a pretty good chocolate chip cookie. I got it for $9 so it would symbolize both anniversaries.

North accompanied me to the Co-op to get the card and to Main Street Pearl to get the certificate the Saturday afternoon before our anniversary because I promised to get them a bubble tea if they’d walk with me. It was a pleasant outing on a cold but sunny day. I got a warm milk tea with boba. (“You got it warm?” Beth said later, “That makes it even worse.”) We sat outside and drank our tea in subfreezing temperatures and because Main Street Pearl is gay-owned and decorated with rainbow flags year round, North made me take an online quiz about various Pride flags on their phone. I was doing pretty well at first but it got harder as it went along and I ended up with a score of nine out of fourteen. But in my defense, pride flags have gotten a lot more complicated than when I was a baby dyke and in some ways I am stuck in my youth.

Back to the anniversary… because our commitment ceremony was a homemade affair, we made our own cake and I’ve made it almost every year since on our anniversary. It’s a spice cake. The original had white frosting with purple frosting flowers (to match the potted African violets we gave away as wedding favors). However, every other time I’ve made this cake I’ve made the lemon glaze that’s included in the recipe (except the one year I made an orange glaze and North almost lost their mind). This year, as a concession to diabetes, I made even more drastic changes, cutting the recipe in half and making muffins instead of a cake, with no glaze or frosting. I made breakfast for dinner to go with them—kale and mushroom omelets, various kind of vegetarian breakfast meat, and grapefruit.

Earlier in the day Beth and I took our separate morning walks and worked—she had back-to-back meetings all afternoon and I was working on a white paper about vitamin K2—and I read several chapters of Odds Against Tomorrow, the dystopian cli fi (climate fiction) novel I was reading for book club. I had a Zoom meeting with my diabetes nurse during which she watched Beth apply a new sensor to my arm to see if the problem with the monitors is faulty application, but she said Beth’s technique looked perfect.

North emerged from their room in the late morning, took a rapid covid test, ate some chia pudding, and went back to bed. All the students in their school had received tests they were supposed to take the day before, but as North was absent the day before, Beth had gone to the library where they are distributing free tests so she could submit test results (negative) online before North goes back to school.

Once I’d finished working for the day, Noah and I finished The King of Scars, which we’d been reading since a few days after Christmas and then I started making the muffins and the rest of dinner. The cake recipe works pretty well for muffins, it turns out. North said next year I should add a little lemon juice to the batter to give it the lemony taste the glaze gave the cake. I had half a grapefruit and half a muffin at the same meal, which is a splurge for me these days, but it was a special occasion.

Beth and I exchanged gifts after dinner. She tried one of the pearls, which are coated in white chocolate, and she said the licorice filling was salty and intense and she liked it. She got me a gift certificate for Takoma Beverage Company, a coffeehouse in downtown Takoma, and made Saturday lunch reservations in the garden at Zinnia, a new restaurant on the site of an old one in a rambling old house, with a big garden. (Mrs. K’s Toll House, if you’re local.) Now the high temperature on Saturday was predicted to be in the twenties, and while we considered canceling the reservation and doing it on a milder day, in the end we decided to go as there were heaters and it had been much too long since we’ve had a date.

After I’d done the dinner dishes, Beth, Noah, and I played Settlers of Catan because we hadn’t played the whole month Noah was home and this game was a pandemic staple for us the year and a half he was home. Beth won. She almost always does.

The Rest of the Second Week

When North finally went back to school their bus arrived and it continued to arrive for the rest of the week. (The county has asked for National Guard troops to fill in for all the absent bus drivers. We’ll see if that happens.) At school, the promised KN95 masks had not materialized and North wasn’t called in to receive a rapid test to take at home the way kids who had been absent were supposed to be. I guess it’s a good thing Beth had already taken matters into her own hands and procured tests while North was absent. (This is the kind of planning at which she excels.)

In other medical disappointments, my new sensor seemed not be any more accurate than the last two, both of which I removed before they expired. I didn’t take it off, but I started checking it with finger pricks, which is suboptimal, because one of the main reasons to wear one is not having to do that. Instead of running consistently low, sometimes it was a little low and sometimes it was way too low. (I still have it on because I got some better readings from it and I just didn’t want to make Beth deal with the rigamarole of getting a replacement or do it myself, but it’s still not as accurate as I’d like.)

Also in medical updates: Thursday I went to see the allergist, who still doesn’t know why I break out in hives if I don’t take a daily antihistamine. He advised me to start taking it every other day to see if the reaction is lessening. He says 50% of mystery cases like mine resolve themselves within a year, so it’s a good idea keep checking to see if the medication is still needed. It’s been about six months. He also reviewed the results of my allergy tests from September and said if I wanted I could try going off nuts, as those were some of the biggest reactions after soy, which we’ve already ruled out. It was kind of a tepid suggestion and nuts, like soy, are an important protein source for me to manage my diabetes, so I haven’t decided if I even want to try that. (I have peanut butter for breakfast two to four times a week.) I’m not going to try it until I’ve been on the every-other-day antihistamine schedule for a while, as I don’t want to change more than one variable at a time. (On my no medication days so far, I’ve only had hives one of three days, so that’s interesting—maybe they are tapering off.)

My book club has gone back to virtual meetings, which is half sad (because I like it better in person) and half a relief because I was thinking I probably shouldn’t go in person anymore and the hybrid format is awkward, especially for the folks at home. Anyway, we had a meeting on Thursday, to discuss Odds Against Tomorrow. I realized after it was over that I’d only spoken twice and both times it was to disagree with someone, and then I felt guilty about that and then I wondered if that was a gender-conditioned reaction.

After book club we all stayed up later than three out of four of us (those of us who weren’t still on break) probably should have to watch the last two episodes of Dickinson, because there are lot of shows we wanted to finish before Noah left on Sunday morning.

Friday night we got pizza and since it was his last pizza night at home, we let Noah choose and we got Roscoe’s. It was also our last family movie night with him home, but as everyone else had already had a turn during his month at home, Beth chose and we watched Love and Friendship. She said she wanted something light.

Third Week, So Far

On Saturday morning Noah and read longer than usual in an attempt to finish the short novel (Equal Rites from the Discworld series) we’d optimistically started four days before his departure. We got about halfway through what we had left and decided to pick it up later in the day. Then Beth got home from grocery shopping and we hurriedly put the perishables in the fridge and left the rest on the kitchen floor because we had lunch reservations.

Yes, we did eat our anniversary lunch outside in twenty-one-degree weather. But there were propane heaters by the tables and I spread my cashmere scarf on the metal chair before I sat down on it and it wasn’t too bad. We didn’t even avail ourselves of the blankets the restaurant provided. And we weren’t the only ones dining al fresco. There were people making S’mores over fire pits and a lot of bundled up kids tearing around the garden, and music making the scene festive. I got devilled eggs made with pimento cheese instead of mayonnaise, a Caesar salad, and Oolong tea. Beth got hot chocolate, spinach-potato soup, sweet potato fritters, and we shared a cheese board. It was quite a spread and we had a lot of food to bring home. While I probably would not have chosen to dine outside on a colder than average day in mid-January pre-pandemic, it made me glad we can be hardy and flexible. That’s not a bad thing to consider while celebrating one’s thirtieth anniversary.

In the mid-afternoon, Beth took Noah for the first of two covid tests he needed to return to school. But instead of the PRC test he registered for, he got a rapid antigen test and those are only accepted if taken within twenty hours of a students’ move-in date, so it was basically useless. So he’ll take two more rapid antigen tests in Ithaca. (The first test was negative, by the way.)

While Beth and Noah were gone, I cut several springs from my rosemary plant and pulled the needles off and put them in one of the little glass spice jars my sister got Noah for Christmas, so he could take a bit of home with him to Ithaca. Then Beth and Noah got back, we read some more, and then made pho together. It was kind of a complicated recipe for a noodle soup, but we’ve been making Saturday dinner together ever since he was in sixth grade, and for the past five years we’ve always done it while listening to my friend Becky’s show on Takoma’s community radio station, so that was a comforting thing to do.

After dinner, there was a flurry of television viewing and book reading. Beth and Noah have been watching a Star Wars cartoon and they got in a couple episodes while I did the dinner dishes. Then the three of us watched an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We were unable to finish a season in the month he was home, but we got to the midpoint of season 3, which was kind of satisfying and may also make it easier to remember where we left off. After that, against all odds, Noah and I finished Equal Rites, which pleased us both. We immediately started to discuss what path we want to take as we continue through this forty-one-book series, which has several sub-series, and therefore no set order. I doubt we’ll read the whole thing, so the order is an important consideration.

It was a very nice last day of having Noah home, just about perfect.

Beth and Noah left a little before ten a.m. Sunday, around the same time North left to go meet Zoë at Starbucks. I found myself alone in the house for the first time in I don’t remember how long. Even though I had a to-do list, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself, being agitated and overcome with emotion. Sadness, yes, but also happiness, because the spring semester seems to be happening and Noah’s got a good course schedule and a job I think he’ll be good at and enjoy. College is going well for him and it’s important for him to get back to his fledgling adult life.

Eventually I settled down, stripped his bed before it seemed unbearable to do it, ate some of the leftover fancy cheese from Zinnia, and started blogging. Then I had lunch, took a bus to the library to return a book, walked home through the falling snow, had a nap, tackled the pile of newspapers that piled up while I was trying to finish my actual book club book and my mother-son book club book, and listened to a couple of podcasts, which have also been piling up on my phone. North returned from Zoë’s while I was napping and that evening they watched Love, Simon on a Hulu watch party with a couple friends.

The snow had all but melted, except in patches where it’s shady or the piles the plows made in parking lots, when we got two more inches on Sunday afternoon and evening, but Monday was MLK day, so it did not result in any additional snow days.

I told Sara I’d work Monday even though it was MLK day because she’s got a lot of projects, so I did that, working on web copy for a vitamin D product. But I also shoveled our slushy walk, took a walk by the creek, and saw kids sledding (successfully) on what was more mud and wet leaves than snow. North wrote a short essay on the role of women in the Odyssey, which in their words is “to take the blame for things men do.” After dinner, North and I watched It, cuddled up the couch with Xander. North leaned against me during the scary parts, sometimes reaching over me to pet the cat.

Tuesday North woke up with a sore throat and a cough and stayed home from school. Remember, the whole reason North and I didn’t go to Ithaca with Beth and Noah, a trip I really wanted to make, was so North could go to school on Tuesday, so this was a frustrating turn of events.

Beth texted me that Noah was covid-tested, cleared, and checked into his apartment around 11:00 a.m. She took him grocery shopping and they went for a hike to see Buttermilk Falls in the snow—they got a foot there to our rapidly melting two inches—and she left Ithaca around 2:30. (She made it home by a little before nine, which is good time for that drive.) Over the course of the afternoon I finished the vitamin D copy and started some for a stress relief product.

And speaking of stress… that afternoon it was announced some more schools in our county are going remote, starting Thursday, but not which ones, so that was an exciting bit of uncertainty. By evening the schools (mostly elementary and middle schools) were identified, and North’s school is still in-person for now. My friend Megan, whose daughter Talia attends the same school, texted me “looks like we won the lottery…today anyway!” Not that North went to school today, as they were still feeling under the weather. (Rapid antigen test says it’s not covid.) This makes three weeks in a row they’ve gone to school two and half days or less, because of weather, vaccine effects, or illness. Plus, it’s supposed to sleet or snow tomorrow right before the morning rush hour, so who knows if there will even be school tomorrow?* There are still some bumps in the road of this new year, even though I’m glad Noah’s settled into it.

The certificate for North’s legal name change arrived yesterday. This was a happy moment for them, but a melancholy one for me. It’s been hard for me to give up their old name, which I loved, even though they haven’t used it for over four years. It was the right thing to do, though. It’s their name after all, and this stage of parenting seems to be a long process of letting go, which, ultimately, is a good thing.

*Update, 1/20: It was rain, not even sleet, and school was cancelled.

First Week: Coronavirus Chronicles, Part 62

Posted on January 9, 2022 by Steph

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First Day: New Year’s Day

Last weekend Beth and I went on a First Day hike at Patuxent River State Park. These are organized by various state and municipal parks to encourage people to get out into nature on the first day of the year. We go on one most years, usually just me and Beth, as the kids are often tired from seeing in the new year, which Beth and I never do, even when we have a party to attend, which we did not this year for the obvious reasons. We generally either stay home or come home early, leave the kids with many bowls of salty snacks, and go to bed well before midnight, which is what we did this year. I think of it as sibling bonding time.

We chose a hike on a newly made trail that goes past Howard Chapel Cemetery, a small historic African-American cemetery where descendants of Enoch Howard—who bought himself and his family out of slavery and then bought the land of his enslavers—are buried. Despite the wet conditions, fifteen or twenty people (and three dogs, one charmingly named Ruthie for Ruth Bader Ginsburg) had showed up. Because the trail was so new and it had been raining earlier in the day, it was very muddy in places. One hiker slipped and twisted her ankle so one of the two rangers stayed with her until a park employee could come get her back to the trailhead.

The rest of us kept going, led by a very cheerful guide along the wooded path, up the ridge, to the cemetery and then back down. It took two hours and I didn’t slip and fall in the mud until pretty near the end. (I sustained no injury. The mud was quite soft.)

Back at home, I put together a cheese plate, which is another New Year’s tradition of ours, and we ate a lot of cheese. Later that day, I made Hoppin’ John for dinner, because it’s good luck and we are not taking any chances as we approach Year Three of the pandemic.

First Week: Monday to Friday

The first week back after break was an abbreviated one for North. We got seven inches of snow in the wee hours of Monday morning and that was enough for two snow days and a two-hour delay on Wednesday, when they finally went back to school. Thursday there was a full day of school and then it snowed again (three more inches) and they had Friday off, too.

If you’ve read this blog for a couple years or more you know I’m no fan of snow days, but more than a year of remote school has put things in perspective at least a little. Plus, I’m not sure in-person school should even be happening right now, with omicron what it is. I was a little grumpy about the snow days (because I just can’t help it) but I made the best of it. Given that the weather was unusually cold all week, I declared it Soup Week, and we had soup for dinner four nights last week (hot dog and bean, cheddar-broccoli, chili, and curried noodle soup). That was as much festive spirit as I could muster. And the snow did get both kids outside. North took a long walk with Zoë on Monday and Noah went out and took pictures of our yard (some featured here).

The not quite two days of school North did have were disrupted for other reasons as well. There are district-wide school bus driver shortages and their route was cancelled. Beth had to drive them to and from school Wednesday and Thursday, which is more of a hardship than it would be if their school wasn’t a half hour drive away. Two of their teachers (English and Psychology) are out with covid and they say attendance is as low as 50% in most of their classes. I don’t know if kids are out sick or their parents are keeping them home out of caution. I do know people who are doing that, so it was probably both.

The school district was using a metric that if 5% of students, faculty, and staff in any given school tested positive for covid, the school would go remote. Then between Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, it went from just a handful of schools at 5% or higher to 60% of the schools in our enormous school district (including North’s school) reaching that level. And then they gave up on that metric. In-school classes are continuing, but who knows for how long? If the district, albeit under pressure from the governor, changed its minds on a dime once, it could happen again. And the schools are stretched incredibly thin. Teachers have to use their free periods to cover for absent colleagues and sometime there’s just no teacher in the room and the kids just get a message about what work to complete in class. This has been the case in North’s psychology class. In Noah’s old high school (which is huge and has four thousand students) they are down to two janitors.

On Wednesday, before the 5% rule was abandoned, I started a pool on Facebook asking when people thought the school district as a whole would shut down under the weight of all these burdens. Everyone guessed it would be last week or early next week. But that doesn’t seem to be happening. There is going to be distribution of home test kits and KN95 masks to all students on Monday. I’m not even sure what I want to happen. To say remote school was not a good fit for North would be putting it mildly. None of us want to go back to that. But it would be worth it if a short closure, say two weeks or even a month, prevented a longer one later. But is that what would happen if the schools close their doors? I keep remembering how the two-week closure in March 2020 ended up stretching to April 2021. Honestly, I’m glad it’s not up to me.

Meanwhile, Ithaca announced on Friday that the first week of the spring semester will be virtual. It does not affect when Noah goes back because he has training for his IT job the week before classes start and those dates have not changed. Beth’s driving him up to school on the Sunday of MLK weekend and returning on Tuesday, his move-in day. Students (with limited exemptions) are required to be vaccinated and boosted, to test three days before their move-in days, and again on the move-in day, so I feel like the college has a clear, serious plan. Of course, it’s a private college and it has more freedom to take effective health measures than a public school system that has to be open to everyone, vaccinated or not, and which is subject to pressure from the state government.

Before Noah was assigned his move-in date (just a few days ago) we were hoping we could all go up to Ithaca for MLK weekend and drop him off a day earlier. I do enjoy a road trip and seeing him in his adopted hometown. Plus, Ithaca is a fun place, with a lot of natural beauty and good restaurants (not that we would have patronized them in person). But North has school the day he moves into his apartment, so North and I will be staying behind. I am sad about this.

I’ve been kind of blue and discombobulated all week, truth be told. Partly it’s the disruption of our schedule, partly it’s not knowing what’s coming next, plus I’m still having trouble with glucose monitor reliability, which is really vexing me, and there’s more I don’t care to go into, but I’m hoping 2022 is an improvement over its first week. North got their booster shot today, so that’s a start.

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

Category Archives: Snow

Ice Melts

Winter’s So Cold This Year

Snow and Ice

Keeping Christmas

The Rails

Winter Wonderland

First Steps

You Across the Table

Second (and Third) Week: Coronavirus Chronicles, Part 63

First Week: Coronavirus Chronicles, Part 62