Category: Drawings

I accidentally caught stunning clouds while the wife recorded the kids riding bikes in the park.

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We moved this week. From our in-law’s place to our own house. And I moved from working at home back into the office.

The latter move was unnecessary except someone decided it was important. Such is the nature of work. Fortunately I enjoy the company of my coworkers. The commute is annoying¹, but the time at work is still enjoyable in its own way.

The former move was also unnecessary, except that it’s nice to have a home of one’s own. We’ve been living with her parents for a decade. This autumn, we finally found a place that we liked more than the possibility of buying a better indeterminate place.

Life rarely gives perfect choices. It’s a blessing to be presented with good options—many folks don’t get such moves.

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1. In spite of my complaints, I experienced a sublime moment driving east on 215 pressing towards the orange glow of a rising sun, immersed in Glenn Gould’s 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations. Epic way to start a Wednesday. ↩︎

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My former intern in private practice joined the State Public Works Division half a year ago. He finally passed his last architectural exam.

At the time I was working from home, but I snuck into the office with party hats and poppers to properly celebrate at the Monday morning staff meeting.

Nothing like the smell of gunpowder in the morning.

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Getting your license is hard. 2010 was my year of misery, a slogging through seven tests. Never a moment of peace with the enormity always under the pillow.

And I was lucky, working only 30 hours a week. Those great recession paychecks were ugly, but I had “free” time to study.

Unfortunately, my guy’s celebration was short lived. In the past couple of weeks, we had a shakeup at our agency. He got picked to run our most public project, a room with our administrator, right before we head into the nasty budget season and the birth of his first child.

I’ll be there for him, just like I have all these years, cheering him on.

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Now that he’s been transferred out of our main office, I’ve been called back in from working remote.

A space just opened up.

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After an hour of climbing the new play structure in an outdoor atrium, they raced around the small berms at Downtown Summerlin after the holiday light parade.

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This was our first holiday season (almost) fully out of our shell. We’re still masked and not dining out, but rubbed lots of elbows these past few months.

We attended the Downtown Summerlin Halloween parade, trick and treated at Calstock Court, visited the Clark County Museum Heritage Holiday, stood in line for the illuminated cactus garden at Ethel M (overrated), and came back to the outdoor mall for their Christmas parade. I forgot how busy the holidays can be!

With time, I wonder how we will judge this four year hibernation¹.

It wasn’t all bad — before the pandemic we had tired of the dining scene, so we saved a ton of cash and learned how to cook white-people cuisine. We also successfully avoided COVID (so far).

But it wasn’t cheap. We worry how this long time might affect the kids. They seem fine, but are we deluding ourselves? Like everything else parenting, I guess we’re making shit up before we reap the whirlwind.

Best not to worry and just run some hills.

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1. Check out Ayano Imai’s gorgeous book, While He was Sleeping. ↩︎

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The boy is notorious at not doing his part of cleaning up. One Sunday, the girl figured out a hack, enticing him to help. They took videos of each other cleaning up — and played it backwards on the iPad to great hilarity. Viola! A clean playroom!

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Our daughter had jaundice that kept us in the hospital an extra night after her birth.

Late into that third night, I walked around the ward in a sleep deprived haze. I suddenly realized that my parents were just making shit up as they went. I also realized that this was now my fate for the coming decades.

Maybe some parents know the answers; do they figure it out after the 3rd or fourth kid?

But I ain’t got no epiphany to share after almost ten years in this parenting game.

I’d love to think that I might have something to do with raising them right. But I suspect that our main job is to avoid traumatizing them and to avoid spoiling them. And to share cool stuff along the way.

Between those two wide bounds with that fuzzy directive, I wonder if we actually exert all that much influence over our kids.

Who knows, I’ve been making shit up all along the way.

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The Sunday after Thanksgiving, we went to the park to so they could ride their bikes. He proudly said knew how to ride a bike. I said, not really — I had taken the training wheels off his bike. He was unhappy about the change but made a go at it. Not perfect and couldn’t keep it up for a sustained period…but he did it!

In the month since, his skill has jumped with each trip to the park. He needs to learn how to brake, but it’s remarkable how quickly they pick things up!

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I finished grad school in time to get slammed by the Great Recession. I avoided being laid off but dropped to 30 hours a week. I spent some of those extra 10 hours as regular at Cafe Brasil.

When things picked up, I still showed up on Friday mornings to sip an espresso before heading out to the office. I’d ponder the week that was almost complete and consider the coming weekend.

Normally these sessions wouldn’t result in any insight. I’d often just chat with another regular. But occasionally something would pop up. Once in a blue moon the “brilliant” idea might surprisingly turn out to actionable.

Unfortunately, adulting means outgrowing a loving parent who can disappear training wheels at the right moment. A distant second best may be regular semi-contemplative practice to reset the mind.

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A few nights ago, kids brought Mommy Bear, Daddy Bear, and Adventure for my bedtime. They also gave me an old sweater to dress Daddy Bear. I put it on him this morning, brought in Bear Bear and took a family portrait.

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This post is an example of why I am such a huge proponent of sharing your work online, again and again over time.

Can you see it? (Clue: I’ll keep original formatting on the previous alphabet.)

As I was setting this post up for this next round of images, I accidentally hit a comma instead of a period.

Of course! I always wanted an non-intrusive spacer, and what’s smaller than a period? But a period is a touch too insubstantial and carries weight as an ending. A comma is a tad bigger and actually means “pause”.

It took me six posts to figure this out….or sixty-one posts including my OPM letters, which used a ~ tilde. I could have never thought this up in the abstract.

A digital space of your own gives you the space to grow. It lets you experiment one step at a time. Just start! With something imperfect! Now!

And one day, the gods may grant you a flash of insight, possibly the perfect typo at the right time. But you gotta show up, again and again.

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She balanced the spoon on the edge of her bowl and had me record it for posterity. In the meanwhile he snuck away from the table, most likely to google Pokémon while she read her ebook.

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In the theme of “E”, shout out to Everyday Magic thread on Notes. Every Saturday Charlene Story starts a thread for people to share their beautiful mundane worlds. Here’s the one from last week.

Every few weeks, I collect my recent contributions for this blog series. While there, I wander through all the entries. It’s a great mental reset to walk the world through others’ eyes (and be jealous of everyone else’s luscious green landscapes!)

Starting a thread once a week might not seem like a big effort. But having blogged on a schedule, I know how hard it is to act consistently without fail over months, which is why I don’t blog on a schedule now!

So thanks again Charlene, for being our wonderful Everyday Magic host!

Ever since the got a Pikachu stuffie from the claw machine at the Primm Mural Gallery (formerly an outlet mall), they’ve been into Pokemon. He wanted a Pikachu and she drew an Eevee with a witches hat. Their lights from the jack-o-lanterns left a bold mark on the ceiling.

The unseasonably warm autumn meant that these poor pumpkins went mold in a couple of days. But still, it was a day of carving and a few good photos.

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That Pikachu might have been the most impactful dollar that we’ve spent (for good or ill). It’s turned into a costume, a change in TV habits. Pokemon Go has me walking in circles around the house to hatch eggs and the kids just forced me to try out the Pokemon Sleep tracking app. They’re constantly drawing different Pokemon when they aren’t playing. He’ll walk up and start talking about random creatures and evolutions, without no explanation or context (of course!)

I recently heard on the Cortex podcast that Pokemon may be the most successful IP of all time. It’s hard to argue from this household. Lord help us if we get into the TCG card game, or if we ever get a Nintendo.