A pool party, a slumber party and kid Jenga with her closest friends… and her “nemesister.”
Pfffffft!
Accidental abundance
So few aspects of life, left altogether untended, still reward us with beauty and bounty. Not so with our organic planter box, which I neglect year-round, and nonetheless explodes every summer into a lush strawberry patch.
Tweenship
The 10-year-old’s birthday falls at the lag-end of the Winter Break. Much as we celebrate her, it’s a dreadful time for a friends’ party: everyone’s over-traveled, overspent and generally nursing a revelry hangover. So this year, we threw her a half-year gathering instead. She wanted seven girls for a slumber party. And doughnuts. And indoor…
“Dreams: The Fake Lives You Have at Night”
The 8-year-old was tasked with creating a book in class, and this was her submission. In the past eight years, I have grown accustomed to the sawed-off Buddha who shares my home, the one who openly discussed death at 2, projects a stoic calm in moments of physical trauma, and has, from the beginning, regarded…
Kiss my ass, I bought a boat, I’m going out to sea.
Last week, one of my very first boyfriends died. It was sudden and shocking, and not just because Terry was relatively young and fit (55, and the longtime outdoors editor of the Tampa Bay Times), but because Terry was so distinctively full of life. Terry was… positivity DISTILLED. No matter when you talked to him, there was always something to be excited about, to look forward to, to achieve or conquer or experience, and a way for him to include you. His enthusiasm was infectious, and no one was immune.
The yard giveth.
Each spring, our table is dressed with supple, sensual bouquets of calla lilies. They were planted here well before our arrival by a fool, as I’m reminded once a year when thinking, “Oh that’s right, we have a calla lily plant.”
Gold Beach, Vashon Island, sunset.
Michael helped a longtime friend of ours move yesterday, a young woman we’ve watched work extraordinarily hard to achieve her dreams and is now seeing them bear fruit. (With two wild girls, having an EMT-in-training as your regular sitter comes in handy more often than you’d like.)
This one’s gonna be trouble.
Or as Uncle Daron said of the 8-year-old, “She wanted BLACK Chucks? Uh oh, she’s gonna be that girl.”
Fierce AF.
Living the rad girls’ life, showing friends the path.