Category: Parenting

I am currently “between jobs.” Not unexpectedly, like last time – this time I gave a month’s notice, which despite a week’s vacation in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia, was ample time to document and transition my work to other team members. (A post or two about Victoria will be coming soon, I hope.) Having just taken a vacation, I decided a pair of days would be sufficient before starting the new job, though to be fair, a week would not have been a bad idea given the gardening and chores around the house that I would like to accomplish in just a couple days. I spent about two hours moving mulch this morning, and have probably about the same left to do for the section I’m currently working on. Plus I still need to empty my old work desk, so we can move it to the garage as our workbench. (The sit/stand desk is working out fabulously!)

I’m not sure what impact, if any, the new job will have on my posting schedule. I will be starting work an hour earlier, so I know I’ll shift some chores to the afternoon, which will be fine for gardening this time of year. By the time summer rolls around again, with earlier sunrises, I expect I’ll be back to avoiding the heat with early morning gardening. Either way, I’m super excited about my new job, which I will talk about here about as much as I did my old one, which is to say… not at all.

Work stays at work, this is my fun space.

My love of travel came from both parents. When we were young – before our first visit to Guatemala – we would take cross country road trips in our full size van, sometimes with a mattress replacing the backmost bench. We varied between camping (Dad had been a Boy Scouts troop leader and had appropriate gear), staying with friends (Mom’s ex-boyfriend in Nebraska got us tickets to the University of Miami’s first national championship win at the 1984 Orange Bowl game), and sometimes driving through the night. If we woke up to find the van parked at a Waffle House, and no sign of our parents, we knew we were allowed to find them inside and get some hot chocolate.

With our summers allocated to Guatemala, and then shifting to school there, our road trip habit declined. We did one big road trip there during middle school, hiring a large van and its driver to take us from Antigua to Tikal. In addition to the four of us, our housekeeper and several family members came along, including his elderly mother. The morning of our departure, the driver arrived on time, only to leave again immediately, having secured permission to bring his wife and children along as well. (For clarity, we did not have a phone at the time.) As we arrived in Petén, most of us had to disembark from the van because of the muddy road (in dry season); on the return trip, everyone except the driver disembarked. This was the only time I have camped at Tikal, and we were really roughing it, relying on the dry season to allow us to sleep on the ground rather than in a tent. While there were bathrooms for campers, they were locked overnight. Yikes! By the next time I visited Tikal, right after college, the stairs on Temple 1 (Templo El Gran Jaguar) had degraded enough that it was off limits for climbing.

My next big road trip with my parents was in college, on my way to study at the University of Glasgow for a year. We started, as with most trips in the UK, by staying near London, arriving in time to celebrate my aunt and uncle’s 40th anniversary, where I heard the story of Dad accidentally locking himself out of their house, which he was watching for them, when he dropped them at the airport for their honeymoon. Dad was a climber – mountain and rock – and realized there was an open window on the second floor, so he climbed up and let himself back in.

We spent about three weeks visiting family and friends, with the occasional unscheduled stay along the way, arriving into a town and immediately visiting tourist information (typically at the train or bus station) to find a suitable bed & breakfast. In one such place, the bed & breakfast was a large manor house attached to a farm, and the owner showed Dad some coins he had recently dug up, which Dad identified as likely being from the Charles II era. They then referred us to a pub for dinner which was even farther outside of town than the B&B and turned out to be amazing.

I suspect that Dad would have appreciate the digital navigation options we have now. They certainly would have been better than Mom’s style of navigation: “You were supposed to turn back there!” That resulted in the harrowing experience of Dad backing up on a roundabout. On two different occasions. Please, don’t ever do that. Go around.

The last time they visited us here was supposed to involve a short road trip to the Wisconsin Dells. Their visit was scheduled to coincide with my planned black belt test… which got pushed out a week right after my parents booked their flights, both to here and onto Europe for one of their many cruises. (My black belt test then got delayed by six months due to a car accident.) Given the weekend in town instead of in Wisconsin, I booked tickets to see Million Dollar Quartet again at the Paramount, figuring the music from that era would resonate nicely for my parents. (It did!)

On Tuesday, I walked out to the end of the driveway to retrieve the garbage can – I knew the recycling hadn’t been picked up yet- and placed it by the garage door, slightly sheltered from the rain by the overhanging roof and gutters. As I rolled it into place, a female mallard flew away from the house, startling me.

I returned along the walkway to the front door and noticed a handful of eggs, partially exposed. Concerned that she might not returned, I did a quick Google on my phone and found out that a nesting mallard will leave a couple times a day to get food, so I hoped that was the case here. Cassandra did more research later in the day, discovering that mallards don’t start incubating their eggs until they’ve laid them all, and an average nest can have between 8 and 13 eggs. Wow! That reassured me when she wasn’t back on the nest later in the day; our thought is she’s not done laying the eggs yet.

Not, mind you, that I would necessarily notice her. She camouflages quite well, as you can see. Or not see, as the case may be. Knowing that she’s in this photo, I still had to crop it a lot to see her easily. Here’s hoping for a part two on this topic, though research says that’s almost a month of incubating away.

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.