The last time I had a summer off I was still in high school. Finding myself out of work at the start of the summer was not terribly surprising given the number of previous layoffs but several of us suspected the decision would come later in the year. I’m glad it didn’t.

In the end, I had a new job just as the fall term for Sam was kicking off. Of course, when I was laid off, I didn’t know that would happen. The majority of the people I know in a similar position had struggled for a year or more to find their next role. I believed that would be the case for me too.

I had a list of activities to do each week to qualify for unemployment and I definitely wanted to find a role quickly so I did more than they required. I applied to jobs. I talked to people. I studied. I did all the things.

None of that is what I think about when I remember the summer though.

The main thing that has stuck with me is the joy of sitting outside in the sunlight with my first cup of coffee in the morning. The blue sky, the red leaves on the maple, the birds flitting around, the neighborhood dogs stopping by for water. I drove to the highest point in the city one day just to lie in the grass and stare at the sky. I spent a whole lot of time doing nothing but letting my thoughts wander.

Having peace and space to sit with my own thoughts stands in stark contrast to the utter chaos that had been my job. Being able to spend so much of that time in the sunlight was particularly special.

Some other highlights from the summer

A pair of hawks built a nest in a tree just down the road and raised a chick. The crows didn’t like this at all, but it was a joy to witness. This photo is most likely from the fledgling’s first time out of the nest. It stayed in my neighbor’s back yard for the better part of an afternoon.

I can’t talk about that summer without also talking about the cats. Anytime I stopped moving there was a cat in my lap. In bed, I had two cats beside my feet and a third nearby to climb onto my shoulders as soon as I got up. It was both lovely and overwhelming. I sometimes made excuses to leave the house just to not have a cat on me. By the time Ally moved back in though, I was generally quite content living my life as cat furniture. There’s a truly embarrassing number of cat photos on my phone.

Life has been busy in both fun ways and in “why the heck is all of this happening at the exact same time?!” ways so sitting down to write something longer than a sentence has been a challenge. I still want to post some updates/photos from the past year though.

Seattle Atmosphere

In March, I was able to drive up to Seattle for the Atmosphere conference. This is particularly notable because it was the first developer conference I’ve been to in a long time and I didn’t realize how much I missed being in a room with a lot of smart people talking about interesting technology.

Summer Road Trip

We did a road trip that took us through Ashland Oregon, Winnemucca Wyoming, Provo Utah, Brighton Utah, Los Angeles California and finally Sacramento on our way home. We saw Ally’s college graduation in Ashland, spent time with my extended family for a reunion in Brighton and then enjoyed time with Matt’s extended family at his cousin’s wedding outside of Disneyland. We spent three days at Disneyland as well. As usual, we visited a couple museums along the way.

Joseph Oregon

In July, Sam and I again went out to Joseph, Oregon to help lead a star party coordinated through Wallowology. An unfortunately timed storm shortened the event, but we still had a chance to spend time talking with park visitors about the night sky. This was the first time we’ve camped in the park. The new tent I purchased for this functioned more as a small swimming pool than any sort of protection from the elements. That first night was glorious though!! I took this picture to commemorate the trip. Ha!

Other than those and Visiting Stef in Clarkston, the only times I got out of town were related to moving kiddos in and out of various college apartments. I did get to spend a day with Ally at work though. Her last job in Ashland was working in the Archive at the university library. There were many treasures but this original Shakespeare book was the highlight for me.

More to come later.

Having firelight be the theme for day 3 of the 12 Days of Winter Wonder was convenient after the power went out at 1 a.m. and didn’t come back until 8 this evening.

This is a work in progress, but it looks cute with the candle light. Would I recommend stitching by candle light? I would not.

Day 2 of the 12 Days of Winter Wonder is cozy.

When Ally moved home earlier this year, she came with two cats. (She shares custody of them with her best friend.) Neptune more moved into my lap than into our home, however. While Neptune sleeps in my lap, his brother Beau is often snuggled near my feet under the blanket I drape over myself. When I think of “cozy”, I can’t help but think of the hours spent each day with fuzzballs keeping my warm.

I thought it might be fun to participate with the 12 Days of Winter Wonder photo challenge. Portland hasn’t been below freezing once this fall, so of course the first prompt would be frost.

This photo represents a happier part of a stressful winter day.

There’s an atmospheric river going through Portland this week. It seemed like the day never started on Monday. Somehow the sun forgot to come out.

I learned we were under a high wind watch as well as a flood watch at just about the same time a huge tree fell in the neighbor’s yard. I’m really hoping this isn’t the start of another windy wet winter. I’m still not over the stress from the big storms two years ago.

I’ll be sleeping in the basement until this is over.

Ally is still on the ship off the coast of Georgia so we definitely missed her for Thanksgiving. Sam came up for the long weekend and Matt’s parents came for Thanksgiving dinner. This term for Sam is rather strenuous so he spent most of the weekend either doing homework or sleeping. It’s great to have him home even if I’m just sitting next to him trying not to make noise. Ha!

As usual, I tried to recreate my mom’s apple pie. As usual, it was pretty far removed from the magic she used to create. I realized that this was actually just fine and somehow that let me enjoy the process a little more. It was my best pie yet.

One bit of excitement was getting to meet Sam’s girlfriend, Alex. Sam has a pretty solid track record for choosing good friends so it was no surprise that he’s chosen a lovely person to date as well.

Last weekend, I went to visit my sister so we could celebrate her birthday and Guy Fawkes Day together. She lives in Clarkston, Washington which sits alongside Lewiston, ID at the confluence of the Snake and the Clearwater Rivers.

My nephew, as you’d expect, enjoyed the fire.

It was great to spend a little time with my sister and get to know her boyfriend a little better. While I was visiting, we helped shuttle one of her friends so that he could spend the day on one of the nearby rivers. This gave us an opportunity to go exploring. We spent some of that time trying to take photos that we actually liked of the fall colors. Her new iPhone did a better job than my not so new Pixel 8 Pro. Trying to get the colors in photos to match what you actually see continues to frustrate me.

I put my favorite photos in a collection. Some of them don’t seem terrible.

As I’ve mentioned before, the drive through the Columbia River Gorge to get there and back is amazing. It’s hard to comprehend just how much water is moving through there.

I mentioned my daughter having an adventure and then I haven’t had a chance to post about it!

This past Monday morning Ally got a text from a friend asking if there was any way she could be in Norfolk, Virginia within the next 36 hours. The tall ship Lynx was scheduled to sail from Virginia down to Georgia for the winter and needed some additional crew. I dropped Ally off at the airport at 8 o’clock that night (after driving 6 hours home from my sister’s house). When she got on the plane, she didn’t even know how she was going to get from the airport out to the ship. By the time she landed in Atlanta after her first flight, a friend of someone on the ship was arranged to meet Ally at the airport and give her a lift.

She’s having a great time. She’s mostly working at night which means she gets to see the Milky Way and amazing sunrises. So far the ship has made it down to Charleston, South Carolina where they docked ahead of a storm.

Aside: I learned of the existence of the word “noctilucent” from the auto-generated description for that last photo.

This is all possible because in the Summer of 2021 Ally signed up for a program called Two Weeks Before the Mast on the Lady Washington. The Lady Washington was built as a replica of one of the first two tall ships that sailed to the Pacific Northwest in 1787. Ally was really excited about it, but when the day came to leave she was so nervous she was in tears. I think she didn’t feel like she knew what was expected of her and if she was up for it. She went anyway. After a week and a half on the ship, they asked her to stay on longer as a paid crew member. My son (he was 16 at the time) went up and joined her for part of the summer too.

Both Ally and Sam have been back a few times.

After mentioning all this to her college advisor Mark, he ended up joining her for two weeks aboard the Lady which led to the two of them traveling up to Canada to meet with members of the Nuu-chah-nulth community to discuss the possibility of doing archaeology at the site where the original Lady Washington stopped for a while in the late 1700s.

Not letting her fear stop her from trying something new has led to such amazing adventures.

All photos in this post were taken by Ally.

On election night last year, Matt and I went out to dinner. I didn’t want to spend the whole night staring at the TV stressing about what might happen. The texts I kept getting over dinner told me things weren’t going as I had hoped. Shortly after I got home, I got a call from one of the neighbors saying I needed to come over. I spent the rest of the evening with that neighbor sobbing in my arms while her husband stared numbly at his phone across the room and everyone else shouted over each other about all the people that were going to be hurt by the outcome. Community building was on my mind as I walked back across the street late that night.

It’s been a long year.

It’s so much worse than I thought it would be.

Along with three of my neighbors tonight I went to see Vice President Kamala Harris speak in Portland as part of her book tour. My neighbor, the one I held last year, was there to hold my hand when I got overwhelmed. The woman on the other side of me (I hadn’t met her before today) offered me a tissue. Harris encouraged everyone to remember that we’re in this together and to help those being targeted/harmed in our community. Community building is the path forward.

I took a photo of the blue sky from the backyard today (we’re fully into grey sky season, it was unexpected) and then it was so nice outside tonight that I went out to take a picture again. I tried to have it framed the same way, but I’m an imperfect human.

While I was out there tonight, there was an unnerving screech in the trees overhead. Merlin didn’t recognize what it was so I sent the audio clip to my sister and her boyfriend (professional birders, both of them) and even they couldn’t agree. They sent me back outside to play the different songs to see if I got a response. The idea of calling an unknown screeching thing to me in the dark is uncomfortable.

I’m fairly convinced it was a barred owl even though nothing came to attack me.

(Please ignore the plants growing in the gutter. It wasn’t that long ago that they got cleaned, but we’re due again.)

Playing with the new Google Photos remix capability for some seasonal silliness.