Category: Parenting

It can be tempting for those of us in cold climates to stay indoors most of the winter, relishing the technology that heats our homes. Several locations that you would generally count as outdoor eagerly provide opportunities to visit when it’s cold, with a variety of both indoor and outdoor activities.

Morton Arboretum, for example, hosted a Chocolate Weekend last Saturday and Sunday, featuring a variety of local chocolate vendors – who knew there were so many? – many of whom were offering samples. That, not surprisingly, was an indoor event… convincing vendors to stand outside in 25 degree weather would probably be difficult. (Well, at least after the Christkindlmarket season.)

They have a chili cook-off at the end of the month, and assorted specialty food and drink events including a “Winter Whiskey Tasting” in March. They also have outdoor events, such as a Conifer Walk, and they offer snowshoe and ski rentals when there’s four or more inches of snow on the ground. Not that you’ll want to use those shoes or skis on the mostly untouched snow in this photo – that’s actually a pond. The only footprints on that clearly belonged to a small animal.

Similarly, Brookfield Zoo offers an assortment of events throughout the winter. Both locations have holiday lights leading up to New Year’s, both offer Valentine-themed dinners, and as things warm up, Brookfield Zoo is hosting a lantern festival some evenings from mid-March to mid-May. Brookfield has many indoor exhibits as well, so it’s reasonable to spend a few minutes outdoors viewing the animals that enjoy the cold before popping into a building and shedding the coat and gloves for a while.

What other outdoor venues do you enjoy visiting this time of year?

I’ve mentioned Capricon here a few times, particularly last year when I volunteered as co-chair. I have far less work for the convention this year, as a staff member, panelist, and volunteer, which means I had time leading up to the convention to craft things for the Art Show. Traditionally, most of my art for sale has been crocheted items, and this year is no exception to some crocheted items being available. That said, I’ve been experimenting with watercolors for a bit now, so I decided to include some paintings as well. Three of the thirteen pieces that I’m listing are pictured below… come to the convention to see the others.

Back in October, I mentioned the discovery of a Temperature Blanket group on Facebook, and some related ideas, like a Temperature Tree embroidery kit. Since my embroidery skills are not at the same level as my crochet skills, I went ahead and bought a kit, which has the tree pre-printed on the canvas. As this is strictly a calendar year project, I went ahead and started it, despite not having finished my blanket, which is running from mid-February to mid-February. One of my New Year’s Day activities was to organize my embroidery floss colors for the tree, grouped in 5 degree temperature changes. I have a second organizer – also labeled with the temperature ranges – for the section of thread I’ve cut off for use.

The second photo above shows the 2025 temperature blanket as of late December, with Arwen walking on it and showing how large it is. There are three more rows – another 45 days – to be added after that photo.

A sensible person probably wouldn’t start yet another crochet project while still working on a project that size. But as people were posting their year end blanket photos, I saw one that jumped out as a pattern I wanted to try, and it will be significantly smaller than the 2025 sofa-encompassing blanket. The pattern links crocheted circles together in lines, connecting them again with a border, so I decided it would be a fun way to track the 2026 temperatures. The third photo above shows my progress so far.

Why is that the Scavenger Edition? Like many practitioners of yarn crafts, I have what some (particularly those who don’t partake) might describe as an excessive quantity of yarn, and as it happens, I just reorganized my collection after purchasing a yarn organizer that hangs over an inside door. (This does not hold all of my yarn; only my current projects’ yarn.) Rather than buying more yarn, I decided to use only yarn I already own, with the understanding that the selected yarn needed to be similar in size and texture for this to work. Like last year’s blanket and the temperature tree, I set up a spreadsheet to track the daily temperature and the color ranges to track what I need to do and mark when I’ve completed it. Yes, that does mean that I’m currently updating three spreadsheets daily as I complete each task. In a month, that will drop to two!

If you’ll excuse me, I need to go work on the dragon I’m crocheting with yarn that was gifted to me at the holidays. It’s a side project.

While some of my colleagues in Brazil are celebrating Fat Tuesday as Carnaval, and people in New Orleans throw a Mardi Gras festival, in Chicagoland we celebrate Paczki Day. According to Google Translate, “paczki” is Polish for donut, though it does specifically seem to refer to filled donuts, as that’s what was available the evening before at our local grocery store, with a plethora of filling choices. A quick Google search shows that the ingredients are a little different from a basic donut recipe – these are perhaps a bit denser and maybe should be sold in smaller containers, but all I saw were 4-packs.

Realistically, I know I could pick up a single paczki from a local bakery… if I wanted to pre-order or wait in a long line. These things are popular!

Oddly, I had lived in the Chicagoland area for most of a decade before I learned about paczkis. I was working at a bank – in IT, of course – and as part of a project to computerize some of the paper process, happened to be assigned a branch visit in a heavily Polish-populated area on Paczki Day. It’s not a holiday I remember to celebrate every year, but I noticed this year that the marketing was in full force at the grocery store a couple weeks early. In fact, it was early enough that I doublechecked the calendar to make sure I hadn’t misremembered the date!

What other types of celebrations have you seen for Fat Tuesday?

I’ve talked about goal setting before, I find it’s a more useful approach to accomplishing things across the year than resolutions. That said, sometimes life throws some twists in that interfere with those goals. As an example, I returned to karate near the end of 2023, so had a goal of attending a certain number of classes across the year. And then I had hand surgery in March, which knocked me off the mat for a couple months, followed by physical therapy for arthritis in my knees for a couple summer months, and a whirlwind of travel in the fall.

At least that’s explainable… I’m not sure how I only tracked 42 books on Goodreads. After hitting my goal of 52 books multiple years, I had increased it to 54 for 2024. Even if I missed tracking a couple, that seems low, especially with all of the Hugo nominees I read before voting in those awards before attending WorldCon in Glasgow.

Regardless, I accomplished some goals – fixing up my master bedroom closet (which had been on my list for years), paying down my home equity loan, and, of course, writing my weekly blog posts. Now I reset, determining what goals I want to work towards in 2025. I’ve found 10 to be a reasonable number, and have made sure they meet the SMART requirement – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-based.

Having done that, I should decide what I want to work on… re-organizing my work desk or my reading goal, noting that I’m currently reading Wind and Truth, which is over 1300 pages. As one of my karate instructors says, start strong, finish stronger.

A while back – August 2020, in fact – I shared my review of The Space Between Worlds. Near the end of 2023, I was delighted to receive the sequel, Those Beyond the Wall, to review. Following that delightful reading opportunity, when I began assembling a proposed list of guests for next year’s Capricon, Micaiah’s name was on the list. She will be attending, so now’s a great time to pick up both books and read them before meeting her. This review was originally published in the March 1, 2024 issue of Booklist.

In Micaiah Johnson’s Those Beyond the Wall, the thrilling sequel to Space Between Worlds, readers explore Ashtown – the city beyond Wiley City’s atmospheric protection – through the eyes of Mr. Scales, sister to the Emperor, as traversers arrive from a parallel universe, killing this world’s version of them upon arrival. The leaders of Ashtown scramble for some manner of defense against the interdimensional arrivals, pulling old enemies scientist Adam Bosch and traverser Cara into their efforts, and cementing a sanctuary agreement within the city for their people in exchange for their solution. As they prepare for the city’s anticipated betrayal, Scales confronts the differences between Ashtown and Wiley City’s justice systems, channeling righteous rage against the city’s discriminatory enforcement, leveraging it to protect everybody. The systemic changes Scales desires will require personal sacrifices as she rushes to protect Ashtown’s people. Johnson’s riveting dystopian story carries thinly veiled messages stemming from the protests that swept the United States during summer 2020, the gritty setting reminding readers that this injustice can – and does – happen in reality. Those Beyond the Wall will appeal to fans of classic science fiction that portrays parallels to the current social issues.

When our dear friend Marinda travelled, she took her plush giraffe, Russell, with her. When she passed away, she had booked a Christmas-time cruise with her partner and had already purchased a membership to this year’s WorldCon, hosted in Glasgow. Russell collected several bracelets (necklaces for a smallish plush) during the cruise Marinda missed, and filled almost a page of his plush passport when he travelled with Cassandra and me to Glasgow’s WorldCon. These are some of the photos capturing his adventure in the UK.

If you’re wondering about the blue bag that Russell appears in most of the time, that’s his crocheted travel pouch, which includes an inside pocket for his passport.

If the title Peter and the Starcatcher brings to mind Peter Pan, you are on the right track. This was my second time seeing it, and while I recall enjoying it the first time, I didn’t recall just how… Ren Faire it was. Or maybe that’s just the Paramount’s presentation, with ladders on the stage, model ships representing The Wasp and The Neverland, and a general air of snarkiness from the characters. On the other hand, according to Wikipedia, it’s based on a book by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, so maybe I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind when I first saw it nearly a decade ago.

Peter and the Starcatcher is a prequel to the classic Peter Pan, exploring how Peter came to Neverland and received both parts of his name. He teams up with Molly when pirates – lead by Captain Black Stache – seize The Wasp, the ship her father is sailing on with a bounty of “starstuff” to dispose of for the Queen. Except the captain of the Neverland switched the trunks, so the starstuff, which grants some magical abilities, is actually on Molly’s ship, and when both ships face off in a storm, the Neverland’s wreck and leaking starstuff result in magical hijinks.

This is a delightful story and a truly enchanting performance. Be prepared to laugh for an extended period.

I may have mentioned my tendency towards gaming in past posts. OK, that’s an understatement, of course I have. And while I’m not currently involved in a Dungeons and Dragons (or D&D to those of us in the fandom) game, it was one of the role-playing games I started with in college, way back in 2nd Edition. (It’s on 5th Edition now.) Not surprisingly, that means I enjoyed the Dungeons & Shakespeare show that appeared on the Bristol schedule this year.

Some shows are carefully scripted – and followed. I can quote significant portions of The Swordsmen show, and Cirque du Sewer follows a basic pattern, with variances for the animals’ behavior. Dungeons & Shakespeare is a combination of improvisation and luck. The Stage Master selects volunteers from the audience who draw cards from various decks (characters, goals, encounters) to determine what will be included in that performance’s adventure. Additional volunteers are selected as needed to fill the cast, and ultimately the outcome depends on all of their decisions and, of course, the results of a 20-sided die.

If you have the opportunity to experience this show, at Bristol or location, I highly recommend it.