Sometimes You Can Go Back Home

Winter Greenlake Saturday afternoon, I venture out to Trader Joe’s. There are two, about equidistant from our new house by Greenlake, but honestly neither is terribly convenient. I know this, because I’ve had this problem before. This EXACT problem. Because I grew up about a mile from where we live now. So I remember thinking,…

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Rolling Over

A newly-engaged Timmy and Kristi, February 2013 Six years after I got engaged, I’m awake before dawn in a too-bright room, in a house I just moved into last night, listening to a baby roll over. To be accurate, I’m listening to my daughter, who is both proud and a little annoyed that she’s just…

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An Eclipse and An Inauguration

My daughter wakes up at 9:00 PM. I hear her upstairs, stirring, waking up from what she must assume is a nap, in her pajamas, in the dark. Someday, I’ll put her to bed and she’ll just stay asleep. But not today. Oh well. Anyway, I’m hardly busy. I’m literally lying on the couch in a…

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Things That Made Life Better This Year: 2018 Edition

Happy New Year! The close of this year finds us in the snow globe world of Snoqualmie Pass, a pleasant place to reflect on the many things that made this busy year beautiful. Strollers: We’ve had two main strollers this year (a Graco jogger and a Phil & Ted’s Sport) and a handful of umbrella…

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In The Heights & Christmas Lights

I’m home! Where people come People go Let me show all of these People what I know There’s no place like home! … I’m home! Where it’s a hundred in the shade But with patience and faith We remain unafraid I’m home! You hear that music in the air? Take the train to the top…

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What Mary Didn’t Know

Though I stand by what I wrote in this post from two years ago, “What Mary Knew,” it’s not the whole story. Read that, if you haven’t, then come back here to the follow-up, as I explore one of my least favorite Christmas songs, about one of my favorite women ever.  And His father and mother…

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Of Purple Parties and Fitting In

“The people you love will change you The things you have learned will guide you And nothing on Earth can silence The quiet voice still inside you And when that voice starts to whisper Moana, you’ve come so far Moana, listen Do you know who you are?” from Disney’s Moana The dining room windows are dark,…

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Lest We Forget

Take up our quarrel with the foe! To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high! If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields. from “In Flanders fields,” John McRae I was twenty-five years old before I heard of…

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Using the Car

I’ve never much liked driving. I realize that this probably puts my American citizenship at risk—a dangerous thing to do at the moment—since automobile affection seems stitched into the fiber of our national being. We’re the nation of the Model T, of giant parking lots and the infinite chain of interstates, of drive-ins, drive-throughs and…

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The Time To Be Slow

Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening, like a tree which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them,…

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