You kids get off my lawn

-

Here's how I know I'm getting old: the dumbest things annoy the s_ _ _ out of me. The more inconsequential the better. It's ridiculous. Stuff like social media slang. Why do I care! Who cares! But part of my brain will be all, "Can we just be DONE stanning a queen already??"

Then another part of my brain says, "Who cares! It's slang—language evolves."

And I'm like, "I know language evolves, but that's for, like, split infinitives and the singular 'they.' I don't want to read about any more people being obsessed, or getting destroyed, or having receipts."

I realize it's silly, so I try to keep this internal dialog inside my brain where it belongs.

But another reason that I know I'm old is less curmudgeonly and more positive. I was on a walk today in a meadow and saw a couple dozen butterflies, including two monarchs. And I'm telling you about this experience with words because I did not even attempt to take a picture. I just stood there and looked at them with my eyeballs, watching them flutter and land on knapweed and milkweed flowers.

So please enjoy this butterfly photo taken by James Wheeler in Ontario. I hope to have more blog content soon. I'm big on ideas but short on time!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Songs I would sample: a list

-
  For fun, I've been thinking about songs I might sample if I were a pop artist. Here’s what I’ve got so far. Que Será, Será (Doris Day version) Puttin’ On the Ritz (Taco version) Informer Paranoimia (feat. Max Headroom) Ah! Leah In the Mood I’m a Mess (Laurie Berkner Band) Dang Me Hooked on Classics Barney Miller theme song (season 3) Music Box Dancer Time to Change (the Brady Bunch) Pennsylvania Polka Hanging on a Heartbeat (the Hooters) Rondo alla turca from Mozart's Sonata in A Major, as played on harpsichord by Alice Ehlers Washington Post March Mairzy Doats Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan-Dowdy One O’clock Jump performed by Doc Severinsen (specifically, that lick at 1:06) Foggy Mountain Breakdown Koala Brothers theme One Night in Bangkok  
Read more

Five years

-
Image
  It’s a chilly July morning (FINALLY!) and I’m wrapped in my mom’s napping afghan. It feels like a hug. My last actual Mom-hug happened in June 2018. Five years ago. On an unknown date in late July 2018, we talked for the last time. It was one or two days after my son had had a significant surgical procedure. “How’s our patient?” she wanted to know. I was happy to update her but quickly felt anxious to get back to him and ended the call. Soon after that conversation, she was back in the hospital. She’d been there in April and—I had forgotten this until just now when I read through my old emails—earlier in July. COPD, pneumonia, UTIs, she was not well. Still, the sudden decline surprised us. She wasn’t with it enough to talk to me on the phone. I left for Harrisburg early on Tuesday morning, July 31, after being informed on Sunday that this likely was the end. The 400-mile drive gave me (too much) time to imagine various bedside scenarios. I figured my sister and I wo...
Read more

My Running Path

-
  My 11-year-old has been going to taekwondo twice a week since the year he started kindergarten. Classes are held in a fitness center; every time I drop him off, I long to be one of those exercisey people I see at the gym. In six years I have not made it happen. I started yoga at home last year after “discovering” Yoga with Adriene but couldn’t make it a habit, even though Adriene is adorable and I love her. Because of my lifelong struggle to make an exercise regimen stick, every few years I get amnesia and think “I should try running again! I probably didn’t give it a fair shake last time.” The last time, I tried Couch to 5K and failed. I concluded that some bodies are just not meant to run. For me the problem is the lungs. I truly feel they’re going to explode. In late August, as the boys’ summer break came to a close, I reluctantly googled “Couch to 5K” (thinking I should try again) and got an unexpected hit: None To Run , a program gentler and mor...
Read more