• Christina and I retraced my route to Saturday’s chorus concert trying to find the music folder that I had set on top of my car before driving downtown to sing. Alas, it has gone wherever music folders go when people do such things, because we couldn’t find it. The day was not all lost, though,…

    November 19
  • Robin keeps going through these drawing spurts and I am trying to take advantage of as many of them as I can. We went to Bob Evans for breakfast while Christina was at dance and we did some drawing. There are some proportions off in this one, but it’s one of the few drawings I’ve…

    November 18
  • I took the day off from work today and did some writing, a little shopping, and performed with the symphony. It needs to stop raining already.

    November 17
  • I took some time to call people I haven’t spoken to in a while. I spent an awful lot of time talking about myself. All I have to say is people were very patient with me, and not bad at sounding interested.

    November 16
  • Christina and I get 45 minutes between her dance classes to eat dinner together. It’s nice to have this alone time with her, even if we do end up spending some of it glued to our screens.

    November 15
  • As it turns out, communication skills learned in therapy in other contexts do not work on teenagers. In case you were wondering.

    November 14
  • What a long day. It required an orchestra of effort from several people, but somehow everyone got to everywhere and all the pieces of everything needed were purchased or reserved. I think. I even got Christina to practice some math before her unit test tomorrow. Don’t know if she did it right because I couldn’t…

    November 13
  • Today was Robin’s first cheer performance with her new team. The routine wasn’t totally ready, so there was a little bit of awkward while they just stood there, but what we saw looked good! I’m so excited to see Robin cheer on a team where she’s challenged and gets to be competitive. She seemed really…

    November 12
  • There was some kind of soccer tournament going on near the hotel. There were at least 75 kids running around the lobby and the pool after dinner while their 125 parents drank beer and wine and largely ignored them. The noise! The chaos! It wasn’t the peaceful escape I imagined, but we did get this…

    November 11
  • Against my better judgment, I solved a longstanding problem at work today. It was so simple and so drastic an improvement, it’s ridiculous that no one had ever thought of it before. Problem solved, I guess.

    November 10
  • I went outside to check on Pinot in the backyard, because he likes to dig under the fence and disappear. He was sniffing around on the grass, so I lay down and looked at the sky a while. It was a really nice day, warm but not hot, sunny with a few clouds, not humid.…

    November 9
  • I hate this photo. I don’t even want to post it. But this is what I got. I am definitely in a mindset of, screw it, I don’t care. I just want to sleep.

    November 8
  • Had a tough day. Have not been feeling my best to begin with, but I had a lousy meeting that put me over the edge. Like, way over. To feel better, I decided to have some plantain chips that Billy bought for me, but he took them with him to his wrestling practice. So then…

    November 7
  • I rediscovered an old playlist – songs that defined my life, every one with a story. Someday I want to write a book holding all of those stories. As I was listening to it after the kids went to bed, I thought about the sermon I wrote for church that was so well received and…

    November 6
  • Today was Daylight Savings, church and the silent auction, lunch at the Loop with the girls, Lowe’s and Michaels with Billy and Christina, working on the advent calendar (it’s coming along), pork loin and homemade applesauce, driving home from cheer, and trying to stay awake until a respectable hour. I’m almost there.

    November 5