Things I Couldn’t Do

A person whom I follow on Twitter is currently mothering both a little one and a new baby, and it is giving me serious flashbacks. It is so hard! And no one realizes that it’s hard until they’re doing it. People quibble about whether that’s because parents act like it’s easy as part of a … [Read more…]

Books

Last week I made another trip to the Savannah Book Festival. Part of me feels like it’s pretty silly that I’m such a devoted fan of this book festival when I have yet to show up at an Albany Book Festival. In fact, I just marked my calendar so that I remember to look into … [Read more…]

“It’s Not My Time.”

Have you heard the recent chatter about Marie Kondo, who famously taught everyone to ponder whether our possessions sparked joy and specifically taught my daughters how to fold laundry? Apparently, she has “kind of given up” on being so tidy now that she has three little kids. Well, of course she has, and more power … [Read more…]

Missed Milestones

As the girls were growing up, I’d always assumed that the passage from teenager to grown-up would be marked by two big milestones: high school graduation and the emotional college-drop-off. As with many things that I’d assumed about parenting before I actually parented, I was wrong. M’s high school graduation happened, of course, but since … [Read more…]

Cutest Garage on the Block

I realized that I never shared our garage painting project here. Well, I mentioned Part 1, which was when the girls transformed the rather grim grey cinderblocks with blocks of color, a nice way to perk up the mostly-depressing Summer of 2020. At that time, I’d said that I’d love for the girls to do … [Read more…]

College Pride

We spent quite a bit of time traveling this fall. We’d never seen one of M’s college soccer games in person during her first year, and so we were excited to head out to Iowa when school started for year two. We flew to Grinnell just after dropping J off at the airport for Italy, … [Read more…]

Holiday Preparations

I wrote most of this before Christmas, and then I got busy and never finished it. So I’m way behind, but I’m giving it a shot now. I am ready for Christmas. Basically. Mostly. There are presents under the tree. There are shortbreads and containers of homemade Chex Mix and hostess gifts and stocking stuffers … [Read more…]

Learning Italian

We had a video call with J on Saturday, and it was a special treat because she took the call while she was working on a cooking project in the kitchen, which meant that one host sister and both host parents made brief appearances. Even better, a couple of times J turned away from us … [Read more…]

A Lot of Eating.

Now that it’s gotten too cold out to garden, what have I been doing? Well, in honor of Thanksgiving, there’s been plenty of eating. Actually, Cute W and I got an early start when we went out to eat with friends at The Nest in downtown Schenectady. We’d had take-out before, but this was our … [Read more…]

Wild Ones Seed Swap

I swear that this isn’t turning into an all-gardening, all-the-time blog, but I had to report on my very first seed swap, hosted by Wild Ones ~ Capital Region New York at Thacher State Park. Okay, first? Before I even made it to the seed swap, I found out yet another way I’d managed to … [Read more…]