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Big Wheels Peace Accord
This morning I’m sitting on the couch, drinking coffee, and listening to the boys upstairs playing with some new action figures. The tension between the two of them has been through the roof the past couple weeks, so hearing them playing together does my heart good. Sometimes the struggle of parenthood is managing to equip children with conflict resolution tools while the bullets are flying… at each other and at you as the parent. Sometimes I succumb to the chaos…
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Royalty
Royalty visited our garden this afternoon. After our caterpillar died, I figured our butterfly season was over, until this lovely monarch lighted down on the zinnias. And we waited near the red carpet to get a picture. The youngest confessed to having ill intent towards it (as he does with most bugs), so we sent him to the deck after he’d had a good look.
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Pumping Soap and Counting Mississippis
She walked into the locker room holding her bags and mumbling to herself. People mumble to themselves, especially when they’ve just walked across a rainy parking lot to the gym, but as she started unloading her bags to open the corner locker, she kept on speaking under her breath, not making eye contact with any of the other women changing around her, seeming to be conversing as her voice quietly undulated with indecipherable words. I’d seen her in the gym…
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Pottery and Pinguecula
About two months ago I tried my hand at the pottery wheel after not working with clay for nearly eight months. The next week my eye flared up. After a busy summer and fall at the wheel in 2013, my eye had given me trouble but had cleared up when I quit working with clay. Steroid eye drops helped during that season, but the flare-ups only went away after extended time away from the wheel. After having it flare up again at the end…
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Hanging Rock Nature Photos
This past weekend we drove up to Hanging Rock for a quickie camping trip. The very best part of the trip was watching the boys explore the woods and climb rocks and fallen trees. I found myself really wishing other families were with us to play with. Some of my best childhood memories are from camping with family friends at Fall Creek Falls. On Saturday, the weather was perfect, and we somehow managed to make it to two waterfalls and up to…
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Wrinkles and Relationships
It’s amazing what photo filters can do for wrinkles and relationships. As I scroll through my instagram feed, I see one continuous incongruity – I rarely edit photos of plants and scenery, but pictures with my face in them have gone through filters, sometimes more than one. Photos with my kids go through another sort of filter, the one where they are presented as loving, creative, motivated, funny and kind. I rarely capture the tantrums, the boredom or the fights. The…
