Well, let’s recap this wild, strange, and insane year! January Somehow I went to Florida! How was this in 2020? I left Billy Goat Day thinking that in 2021 I would possibly come back and go to the FT Kick Off and then maybe hike through Big Cypress with the thru-hikers, and possibly convince Chris to come along. Ahh, dreams! Travel! Those were the days! I still laugh when I remember seeing folks wearing masks in the airport (more so on the way to Florida) and they weren’t necessarily folks from Asian countries (to be clear, this was still very few people, but more than the usual International Traveler sort…

Thinking: Wow, I haven’t written one of these up since August! It has crossed my mind a couple of times to sit down and write one but I never made the space to do so. So, here I am, sitting down in the last month of this very insane year of 2020! If you’d asked me in January or February this year what December would look like I would not have said, “Sparingly going places, thrilled to go to the grocery store as an outing, wearing masks like nobody’s business, and pondering a very different Christmas season than is typical.” And here we are. We’re on the home stretch but…

What a damn good day for Democracy!

The season switch is hitting me hard this year. It’s happening and I am not experiencing it how I normally do. Suddenly it is dark by 7:30 and with some cloudy and wet weather it is more like 7pm. Paired with this, my bike riding endorphins have disappeared with a schedule change the last few weeks. I had been able to get out at lunch for 30 minutes most days of the week and if not I would go after dinner. Losing the light in the evening means I haven’t gone as much in the evenings and when Forest switched teachers a few weeks ago she now often does Zoom…

Last night after dinner I retreated to my bed to finish up a book I was reading. I was at 90% done and was making my way towards the end. I spent a good hour or so curled up in bed, quietly reading as the early autumn sun retreated for the evening. Eventually I got up, took a shower, and then made my way downstairs to my phone, thinking I would casually check a few things before getting Forest ready for bed. I saw a text from my mom, the tear emoji, and swiped to see what was tied to the rest of it. What was tied to it was…

Thinking: My first thought is—I was overly ambitious to want to try a 10 mile bike ride at 1pm during a heat advisory day (I’m drafting this on Saturday)! *Laughs in Texas in August* I cut it short to 5 miles and hope to do the other 5 this evening. Tomorrow (or today when this posts) I’ll go earlier. My second thought is, Hurricane Laura delivered us barely any rain from a far outer rain band on Wednesday afternoon and that was that. The shift into Cameron, Louisiana really put most of the Houston area out of the range of anything and other than some storm surge in Galveston it…

Thinking: Covid as per usual. And we’re 100 days from the election. All I’ve got to say is that I hope the aftermath isn’t a shitshow, either in that he’s out of office and doesn’t go off the rails for the few months until inauguration, or in that he doesn’t win. No winning. No winning. No winning. Because we are well and truly screwed if he does. I’m not really in the mood for a comprehensive write-out of what I think but here are a few items of note: AOC’s speech to Rep. Yoho the other day. The Poison of Male Incivility – RE: AOC and Yoho To Be a…

Last day of 29… Lady day of 39… My 30s were a ride. The first four years went smoothly enough but the next several were a rollercoaster. Having a kid and changing your life will do that, I suppose. I know that when I turned 30 everything seemed wide open for the decade. After having a rather adventurous 20s, from graduating college and moving to Florida and spending most of that time soaking in everything the state had to offer, my 30s were about winding all of that down and settling into life. I have spent plenty of this decade wistful for those years of my 20s. The mid and…

+This little 16 year old isn’t doing too well at the moment. He spent a few hours at the vet yesterday getting blood work and x-rays done on his abdomen. He’s dropping a little weight and hasn’t been wanting to eat and his behavior is very different over this last week. I’m waiting for some more blood results and the x-ray results but it may be a bowel obstruction of some sort. Which at 16—might be the C word. We aren’t ready for this yet! Our spry little kitten was going to live forever! Samson will be gone six years in August and it still seems like last year. So,…