Happy Birthday Skipper & Lovee

Sometimes big things come in small packages. Today I helped deliver Skipper, a little boy goat, black and white and full of cute, and Lovee, golden and full of adorable. It was about as nerve-wracking as you can imagine, with a young first-time mom, my first time attending a goat birthing, and with a cold draft shooting up through the barn door into the barn.

But, so much went right! First off, triple blessings: we went to check on the goats before going shopping and saw she was starting to deliver, it wasn't raining, and I had everything ready. Sweet!

When Skipper seemed stuck, with just his two feet showing, I massaged a tiny bit and he slipped right out.

Lovee had no problems being delivered.

Momma Ginger appears to be very healthy and happy.

No kids were rejected.

Although Skipper needed a little help warming up, nursing, and standing, once he got going he got stronger pretty quickly. I worried that we might lose him.

There are still concerns. Ginger has stepped on Skipper a number of times and doesn't seem to be careful about where she lays down. We're not sure how the rest of the herd is going to react to the newcomers (they're all locked out of the barn right now.) The last time we had the barn shut up, Ginger pushed her way out. I've reinforced the door, and she doesn't seem inclined to go anywhere, but if she does that again and the babies try to follow, they will be crushed.

We've had a racoon nosing around. It could kill the baby goats.

So, there are worries, but I think they're pretty traditional worries. Part of farm life is understanding that things don't always go well, and sometimes they go pretty horrifically. There's pain, sorrow, loss, grief and regret. Plenty to go around for everyone. But, we had a really good day today so far. In about twenty minutes we'll go check the goats again. Who knows what we'll find? With luck, two healthy baby goats and a content mother bedded down for the night, safe and sound.

A Married Couple at Work

Soon now, our house sitters will move in (note to self, have to clean the kitchen!) and we'll be off for the much-anticipated work weekend.

My DH and I work really well together.  At least, it works really well for me.  We succeed at the dueling keyboards model of going out to dinner, which we don't call going out to dinner unless that's the actual focus.  Most of the time it's going out to Wifi at a place that has food because our chosen work time conflicts with mealtime.  We also succeed at the dueling keyboards model of hanging out around the house, and often bounce ideas off of each other when we take breaks for food, to stretch, or to deal with animal stuff.

We had a great time working at home together, during that all-too-short time period when we were able to do that.  I think we both worried that we'd see too much of each other and get sick of each other, but that didn't happen.  Maybe spending hours and hours not talking to each other with only mouse clicks and keyboard keys getting tapped in rapid succession helps shield us from over exposure.  But I don't think I'd ever get tired of hanging around my DH.  He's the kind of sunshine that won't give me a sunburn.

So we're both working hard to get to the point where we can both work full time at home, and so that I can travel with him on some of his trips overseas.  Not all of them.  Someone needs to hold down the fort, and we do have dogs.  I don't think the cats and chickens would miss us very much.  They love anyone who feeds them.  But Chase, and our red-eared hounds Brian and Finn, tend not to eat when we're away. I'm not exaggerating.  I have family members and former house-sitters who can attest to this.  As a result, I'm nervous about being away for more than a few days.

But I would like to visit with some of the people and see some of the places he's connected with.  Really wonderful people, living in legendary or beautiful or exotic or all-of-the-above places.  It's funny how life works out.  The introvert travels and meets tons of people while the extrovert stays home.

It's funny, too, that both my DH and I have been athletes most of our lives, but we both work at a physically demanding job that requires hours and hours of sitting employing small muscles instead of the great big muscle groups.  I like it.  And I look forward to focusing on that work.  You can bet, though, that we'll be walking on beaches and maybe even running or sparring with bokken.  We'll make the time, somehow.  It's going to be a jam-packed working vacation and play is integral to our working life together.  Without the physical stuff, my mental stuff languishes.  And my DH is a genius physical sort of guy.  He inspires me to belly dance, and keep in shape, and keep some sort of semblance of physical prowess good enough to defend myself if I need to.

He doesn't just inspire my physical self.  (Rrrow!)  He inspires me in all aspects of life, so I guess what I'm really anticipating during our time together is a kind of holistic inspiration. That sounded way fuzzier than I meant--but it's true in a very real sense.  That inspiration will go into the skull machine, and out the words and art and maybe even music will come.

We may not talk to each other, but the communication is there.  We're going to get a lot of stuff done as a result, way more than we'd get done individually.  I tell my kids and it always proves to be true, at least in our family.  Two people working together can get way more than twice the work done than two people working independently.  Weird, but it works for us.

Hopefully, by this weekend, you'll see a lot of new stuff up on the Wyrd Goat website as a result of our working retreat.  I'll keep you posted.

Nanowrimo Count Up--41032 words!

I'm hitting a weird point in the book where I feel like I'm racing toward the end, but I'm only halfway, if that.

The ending came to me during a bath. I'm not sure what it is about hot water, but it works for me. Anyway, now that I know the heartbreak and joy that comes at the end, I can't wait to get there. My word count has shot up as a result. I hope to reach the winning count, 50,000 words, by this Friday. And I really hope, though I doubt it'll happen, that I'll actually finish the whole book before the end of the month.

My poor DH has to suffer through me explaining bits and pieces of plot when I finish a particularly exciting scene. He made me happy today by letting me know that he enjoys listening to me talk about my book. Of course he had to tease me after that remark, but we're like that with each other. We like to tease, and tickle, and play. We have a wonderful relationship that keeps us both writing like crazy. Maybe someday we'll both be full time writers. I think that would be awesome. I wouldn't have to guard my writing time so jealously anymore, and when he invites me to go somewhere to Wifi, I won't want to say no so that I don't lose writing to travel, which is followed by feeling lonely and wishing I was with him. And I won't feel harried or like I've wasted my time if I say yes, and we won't play that not-so-fun game where we're lingering longer than we like and trying to find useful things to do while the other person finishes up their latest thing they started when the other wasn't done ... yeah. That can be crazy-making after a couple of rounds.

Oh, and about that flooring project ... what flooring project? I was going to try to finish the living room today, but instead I'm at 41,032 words.

Totally worth it. But the floor needs to happen, so I'll work on it really soon. Not sure when, but soon.

Good Friends Gone

These weren't the pics I originally planned on posting.  I've been going through my pics and I found these.  I'd forgotten that I took them.  The top one is of our beloved Nikita and goofball Beast, and the lower one is of our sweet girl Dakota who passed away so recently.

Good days, gone but not forgotten.

The Home of Dreams

The dogs are rampaging.  This cooler weather has made everyone more active than usual.  We're all blackberry hacking, lawn mowing, house cleaning fools around here.  We even went to the laundromat and did all the bedding.  Or maybe it's not the weather.  Maybe aliens downloaded Pride and Prejudice (the 2005 movie) into my brain.  (Sorry, love Colin Firth, but not in the 1995 P&P movie and that sunk it for me.  Sling rotten veggies at me all you like, you can't make me like his performance better.)

Why P&P rather than, say, The Stepford Wives?  It's the architecture, the elegance, the open spaces and beautiful things that aren't too crowded, but aren't too sparse.  It about having power and affecting the world rather than being a slave to it.  And why the movie rather than the book?  Much as I enjoyed 99% of the book, the ending left me with a bad taste in my mouth because Lizzy fell in love with Mr. Darcy after she saw his beautiful home.  There's little or nothing between the lines to imply that what she saw there filled in his character and told her what he really was in his soul.  It read like plain old greed, at least to me.  In the movie, on the other hand, not only did they fill in all kinds of beautiful expressions and wow, chemistry throughout, but when Lizzy went through his house it was like she was exploring him.  Total foreplay on the screen.

Anyway, I want the house to be less of a nest and more of an expression of me.  I've been nudging it in that direction for some time, but this last week I've been digging deeper.  In writing terms, I'm making my setting more rich, and suggesting character through environment.  

I have lots of cans of paint and I'll probably lavish some on the walls upstairs, but not tomorrow because tomorrow, my first, last and only true love is coming home!!

Which is probably the root of the reason of why I'm going crazy with the clean up, but then again I usually go on a cleaning spree 24 hours prior to a big event, not building up over the course of a couple of weeks, and it's usually a pretty barbaric sort of cleaning.  This is like spring equinox and Lady's Day (May Day) combined.  There's a festival air and sacred breeze flowing all around us.

Yayness!  Bless his flight, and bless his life.  Welcome home, my beloved.

Drunk on Friendship and Enjoying the Hangover

I had a really good time yesterday at the ABBB, and I hope everyone else did too.  It's always hard for me to gauge if party stuff is going well.  My beloved friends are so good to me, they'd never let on if they were bored or annoyed or insufficiently fed if they felt left out or fillintheblank.  But judging from the laughter and smiles I'm guessing almost everyone enjoyed themselves.  And I have to say a special thanks to the mighty tall one for being the best sport ever.  

Oh man, now I want to give more special thanks--to the goddess and her accompanying god (or does he consider himself a minion) for their warmth and excellent companionship, and to the woman of the moon for her stories.  To Wit for his quirky, fun gifts.  To my oldest friend for fighting a hard battle to make it to the party at all and winning through only to suffer the luck of the draw.  To father and child for being patient in the extreme (for us) heat and crowded conditions.  To the cheater, who always helps out and makes me laugh.  To the monk who keeps things lively--it wouldn't be a party without him.  And to all of them at once, together, and the ones who couldn't be there but were in spirit, and to the voice from afar who I love more than the graceful sky, and my children who waited hand and foot and sometimes even seemed to enjoy it, and to the glory that's the sun, the teasing wind, the full moon that shone like molten gold at the horizon, and ...

To all, to those I missed because I'm a little tired and drunk from friendship, and to the world.  Happy birthday!

Birthday (belated)

Someone I love gets to count an extra year to his life.  

Birthdays are so odd if you think about life as a continuum.  Not to say that they're silly.  They are useful for all kinds of things.  They're the marks on the long tape measure we extend along our time in the world.  But because they're relatively far apart and there's so much cultural (and medical) weight put on them--get your first mammogram at age 35, over-the-hill forty birthdays decked in black with headstones, sweet sixteen, etc.--it's easy to lose sight of the fact that we get older all year long.  We don't suddenly become 28 or 79 or 12.  

So on the one hand, I don't perceive my beloved as being proportionally any older than me, even though my birthday isn't until autumn.  On the other, I recognize that he's passed a markerpost, the day of his birth, and his age can be counted as a precise number of years.  Counting by months, days or hours wouldn't be useful.  Human beings age too slowly and we live too long.  The medical mileposts would be redefined in ways that aren't any more useful than the years measure, and culturally we'd probably miss out on some fun parties (although I could see having a blast at my 1,000,000 hours old party with all the kids and grandkids and greatgrandkids and great great grandkids ...)

I wonder if mayflies tell each other, you still look as good as you did yesterday.

I know he doesn't view aging the same as I do.  He never expected to get this far and aspects of that frustrate him.  His body can't always support his expectations of what he wants to do physically.  He's stronger than he's ever been but the toll he's paid out of his joints has brought him pain.  His shape has changed from lithe and light to powerful and dense.  His mind is broader and sharper than ever and the depth of his experience leaves many in awe of him.  Anyone can have that experience, but they have to be willing to train for it and seek it out and to take the chance that they might not survive it.  Unlike so many human beings, he doesn't claw to hold onto his life as long as possible, nor does he cram death into a box of abstraction.  It will come, to him, to those he loves, and there's no reason to hold back.  To lose his life doing something great and meaningful is much better than avoiding death and doing nothing that matters to him.  It makes him remarkable, though he finds that baffling.  To him, that's the only sensible way to live.

I used to have a devil of a time trying to accommodate what he did and didn't want to do on his birthday (he didn't want to artificially elevate what's otherwise an ordinary day,) but I think I've brought him around.  He always has and always will live on a continuum, but he's discovered the usefulness, not for medicine or culture, but between us and his friends and family, of celebration.  For a moment we can stop to take a breath, and smile, eat some beef jerky and reflect on the past, present and future.  For a moment we can pause and think about how far we've come since the day we were born.  

He's come many miles and breaths and hours and heartbeats since he was born, something the years can't measure in age, but I see it in his eyes.  Birthdays can't touch that.  There's no way to measure the full meaning of his life with a number that so many men reach who've done far, far less, or who've done more.  But it's never about the number.  It's the moment.  And he lives because of this moment, years ago, when his mother gave birth to a son.

Close but no banana

There's a lot that's challenging about communicating with people who aren't just far away, but which have between you and them issues with line quality, connectivity, and technological limitations.  So today I spent more than a usual time for me trying to do some workarounds.  I figured if I can't even get something off my mail program to the server, then it's going to be a bear, if not impossible to retrieve back off the server.  It may even get stuck in transit.

As far as voice communications you can't appreciate the marvel known as the telephone much less the miracle of cell phones until you try to talk to someone via a program like Skype.  As much as I love this advance in communications, the technology is imperfect and it's actually easier to chat than it is to hear someone's voice and interpret sentences that transmit at uneven speeds and volumes and often drop entire or parts of words.  I'm hoping that these limitations will go away or become mitigated as I gain access to better technology and connection speeds, but unfortunately, there's a good chance that the problems originate as much on the other end as they do with me.

All is not lost.  Far from it.  I love firing up the ol' confuter first thing in the morning, knowing there's a decent chance I'll have some email or a chance to chat with someone I care about.  Not so very long ago I would have been waiting for some sign of life in the mail, a letter that's two weeks or more old and which can only interact with my thoughts–as-words in a limited way.  Letters are conversations, but not the kind of conversations we take for granted in our world today.  So life is good.  But I'm eager for better, because I see the possibilities just within reach.  It's ... right ... there ...!

Bliss and Success

Still sore today.  Nothing new there.  I think I'm better in that incremental way that people feel better with their colds when the fever goes away but they're still coughing and draining enough snot to go into national production.  At least I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  

Also, I had my first mammogram today.  I think I must be a member of the lucky few because it didn't hurt.  At all.  Squeeze the boobies this way, squeeze 'em that way, and you're all done.  It was firm but not at all painful pressure.  Piece of cake.  After my TMI procedure I was all ready to be pain endurance woman, too.  Got some ibuprofen into me, coached myself to relax, take deep breaths that reach below the navel, and concentrate forward through time with wordless calm.  I'd say it was a huge disappointment but actually it was a relief.  I won't hesitate to go in for a mammogram on the suggested timetable.  The bummer part, aside from having no chance to use my (very limited) zen training?  No excuse to go have a conciliatory ice cream at Cold Stone.  Nothing to do but to go home, have lunch and wait until it was time to pick the boy up from school.

I was missing my man pretty desperately yesterday but I got to talk to him today and I'm walking on clouds on air.  A best friend and lover's voice develops a direct connection to the soul.  It doesn't amaze me at all that I'm in a great mood today.  My spirit has had a big chunk of emotional chocolate and is riding the endorphin high.  Weeeee!

So it's been a day of bliss and success.  Now I just have to finish up my reading, finish up my financial stuff for the week and I can finally settle into some semblance of summer vacation.

Right, Wrong, and Both

My DH and I got to talk a long time today.  Sometimes we just talk to hear each others' voices.  A human voice is powerful.  When it's a loving voice, it's so much more powerful.  It can change the world.

Or not.

Raising kids has highlighted to me how much stake people put into being right.  Part of the conversation today revolved around that too.  Even when people are caught doing something that they know is wrong, they'll defend their special case.  You know how folks got all riled up about how certain groups hoarded food and medical supplies so that they didn't get to the folks who really needed it?  I bet if you talked to them they'd defend their actions.  They'd justify until your ears bled, trying to make a case for why they're special or who gave them permission or how it's for reasons that you don't understand.  The loving voices aren't being heard.

Some of the wisest, smartest people I know are secure in their beliefs and at the same time allow that they might be wrong or, even more importantly and relevant in this case, how someone else might be right or even different and also right.

It's so important to allow someone else to be right.  Being okay with being wrong is important, but I think it's far more important to allow someone else to have validity and to let that validity have enough weight that it could potentially change your perceptions, your outlook, your world.  

So when I talked about the power of the human voice, did you take that to mean that you have a powerful voice that can change the world (true) or that the power referred to people who love you and you love (also true) or both?  

Folding this back into writing, part of making a complex character is this need to be right.  Especially the good guys have a tendency to be bland when they think they're right and are right.  But you can be a very good person and think you're right and be wrong (good people, when they discover this, try to change though they'll try to defend their original perception) or be a good person and think you're wrong and discover you're right, or you can think someone else is right or wrong and be wrong about that.  Working out something that functions as truth translates to complexity in growth, something that a lot of characters lack.  Working out the rights and wrongs is a good tool to help bring characters to life, and give them their own powerful voices. 

Flash! Bang!

First, a reminder to read Flash Fiction Online.  The new edition is out, and there's a great article by Bruce Holland Rogers.  It's the first of a series, and I can't wait for the next installment.  He has a livejournal you can link to from the wikipedia article.  No excuses, people.  Writers have got to read, and reading a flash is going to take less time than it will to go to the fridge, figure out what you want to eat, and bring it back to the computer.  

Argh!  We're under attack!  Please stand by ...

Yes, we finally reached the day when we went on our battle cruise on the glorious Lady Washington with the graceful Hawaiian Chieftain.  

I wish I had a deeper way than photographs and movies to record what we experienced.  Oh, wait, hey, I'm a writer!  Woot!  

I'd say it fulfilled a lifelong dream, but since I never imagined it would be possible to sail on a ship with cannons firing, well, I guess I can say it fulfilled a lifelong dream I never knew I could have.  

See the sail folded up neatly along the mast and angling into the boom below the sailors in the rigging?  That's the spanker (first definition on the link), and my job was to manage the brails--the lines that keep the spanker out of the wind until it's needed. Ten people to a side are ideal to manage the brails when we're hauling it in, about half that when we haul it back out again.   During the battle we hauled that baby out and tucked her back tight several times.  Sometimes the spanker sail helped, and sometimes it actually slowed us down depending on the situation with the tight, variable conditions on the river.  The captain made the call, and we'd haul the outhaul or haul the brails.  I had to sling my camera back right quick every time I heard the captain say spanker.  In a different context, I guess that could be considered kinky ...

When they asked for volunteers I thought for certain that every passenger on board would leap up and cry me me me!  But only about a baker's dozen of us, almost a quarter of them kids, ran back to help.  I got to manage the brails on the port side, but then I lost my job to Brandon for a while when he asked if he could take my place.  Later he got promoted to the helm and, with a whole bunch of other kids, ran the rudder back and forth at the captain's command, so I got the brails again.  Yay brails!

It got cold, but we didn't have rain so it wasn't miserable by any means.  The capricious winds made for an interesting fight.  The Lady Washington is amazingly nimble, and I mean really incredible. 

The crew was very welcoming, informative, and patient with their guests.  I highly recommend touring the ship, sailing with it on a sunset or battle sail if you can, or best of all (a personal goal of mine) signing up for one of the family adventures they offer in the San Juan islands.  I probably won't go this year (watch me change my mind as longing for sailing and the sea keep eating at me) but next year I hope to be a passenger on their nature and historic tour of beautiful coastal Washington State.  They do it right.  

BTW, the kid in the lifeguard shirt?  Yep, that's Brandon at the brails.  He was a real shark for the fun posts.  I wonder if he'll become a sailor one day.  I know someday when I grow up, I'd like to be a sailor, even if it's on a wee river sailboat, lazy rigged so I can run her all by my lonely if I have to.  Judging by how the family reacted to the experience, though, I won't be alone unless I beg for it.

More Snow? Bring It On!

I haven't built a snowman in what seems like forever.  Today we went overboard and built a snow ogre that I had trouble reaching to create the nose and a spot for the eyes to rest (Rory pinned them in, and he also provided the creative genius and physical skills for the teeth, mustache, eyebrows, branchy hair and the green beard.)  Andrea and I used truck ramps to roll the snowball for the midsection onto the lower section.  Rory lifted the head up.  Orion provided creative options and some help with the shoulders but mostly he worked on his sentinels for the driveway.   He also made the little snowman on a spit for the snow ogre.  If we only had a tractor, we could build a really gigantic dragon--or I guess I could just use good ol' fashioned elbow grease.  That'd be a lot of grease, though.  Might even be bad for me.  Cholesterol being an issue and all.  Or is elbow grease cholesterol free or maybe the good kind of cholesterol?  Anyway, since we were doing the traditional snow stuff anyway we had a couple of snowball fights (I've noticed that concepts like teams and sides are more fluid in snowball fights than other games) and the kids went sledding.  The neighbor kids came over and had fun and then we all had hot chocolate (the adults had adulterated hot drinks.)  The weather couldn't have been better for all this.  I even abandoned my coat at one point.

While rifling around my gardening stuff looking for seeds (it's time to organize and also to get the slow-germinating seeds into their starter pots) I discovered three bags of overlooked tulips, poor things.  They were still alive, so I planted them.  Going from occasional light and warm air to dark and wet and frigid must have been quite a shock.  I hope they make it.  There might be more bags, as that area is still a mess.  I'll try to get that all organized tomorrow.  Then again, all is a very strong term.  Most might be a more appropriate word, or perhaps even some would be about as much as I can expect.  It's a mess that's been around a long time, so it's entrenched.  I wouldn't be surprised to find mice nesting in there, and I've already seen some impressive spiders who've made a very fine home amid the debris.  Yeah, it's that bad.  

As much as I love summer and gardening, I have to say that I'd be thrilled to have more days like today.  This one will last in memory a long time.  I hope everyone else had a great day too. 

Mojo's Memorial

Mojo's memorial has been posted.  Have a look around, and if you're a big animal lover, have kleenex handy.  There are so many beautiful animals on the web page, many wonderful and many painful and sweet stories.  Lots of smiling faces with adoration in their eyes.  It's a big reminder to appreciate what you have and also, if you've lost, that you're not alone and in the end it's worth the pain to have lived in love.  

To leave Mojo's page for the main pet loss story website, just click on Pet Stories.  If you're moved, consider donating to the college.  They do very good work and it benefits countless animals through research, the hospital, and graduates.

Our Hero has Fur

Surprisingly, the dogs slept quietly all night.  Nikita did make a small mess.  No one had stepped in it so it was easily cleaned.  They poured out the door this morning to frolic in frigid freedom.  

It's supposed to warm up today.  Good.  I have to work so I can't let them in and out all day.  I worry about my poor old grand dame a lot.  We just can't seem to get any weight on her, and that lack of insulation makes the effects of cold weather that much worse.  Hopefully she'll snuggle up in the dog house.  I understand why she doesn't, though.  She's our sentinel, our guardian, and she doesn't want to give up her job.  Sometimes I wish I could tell her that we'll be all right, that she can relax, but I'm glad I don't have the opportunity.  If I gave in to temptation, how awful would it be if she decided that she'd been useless, or is useless, to us?  She isn't.  She's still our best watch dog, our most loyal friend.  I do think she could use a vacation, though.  As far as retirement, though--I couldn't see her retiring.  She's too defined by what she does, and I don't think anything we'd do could change that, even if we wanted to.  Nikita is the one who watches from the porch, who gets up and barks at strangers no matter how painfully stiff she is, who lets the garbage man know that he won't take our stuff from us without a fight, and who lets our across the street neighbor Chuck know that when he gets his mail, she's keeping an eye on him in case he decides to do something shady.

I do sometimes wish she had a softer life, or that we could give her a softer life without making her unbearably anxious.  I guess we could try, but I'd have to examine the deeper reasons and whether that would honestly be good for her.  She's a warrior, a brave spirit, a fine soldier and all the softness she's ever enjoyed was the touch of our hands and a proud word, letting her know that we appreciate what a good girl she is, and that she's loved.  If I could I might try to tell her how amazing she is, but I doubt she'd believe me.  Like Rory, I think she believes what she does is what must be done, and to do any less is unthinkable, therefore, what she does is ordinary.  Doing less would be to become less, to fail to do the minimum, to unmake who she is.

Memorial

I wrote a small obituary for Mojo today.  It will be placed at the Pet Memorial Program for the WSU College of Veterinary Medicine when they have time to process my email and post it.  I'm not sure how long it will take.

I've owned a lot of animals over the years.  When I was a child, I viewed pet ownership as something done by my parents for my pleasure.  Over the years that's developed into a sense of privilege.  It's so worth it.  Over the summer I wrote often, and with pride, about gardening and how it's so beautiful to have living things respond to my care.  My early feelings about animals were similar, but now I have different sense of the relationship.  We're a family.  We live, grow, and die in a continuum of community.  We depend on each other, and love each other.  I don't think animals have the same sort of love for us that we do for them or each other, but then human beings express their love in a huge number of complex ways.  It's not a stretch for me to call what Wiz feels or the puppies feel or Nikita feels as real love.

I wonder how my children feel deep-down about our pets.  I know that they love them, but how is a mystery.  How I love others in some ways is a mystery to myself as well.  Maybe that's just the way love is.  Like the magnificence of music or the intense glow of sunset, it is what it is.

Take the cake

Andrea turned another year older today. There's not much I can say except how much she amazes me, and how much I love her. Her favorite dinner includes revenge. She's tall but not yet elegant--working on it. She's learning to choose.

Parents sometimes talk about children as being their legacy. That almost but not quite touches it.

I touched the surface of the ocean, and the waves have made the ripple mighty.

Happy birthday, Andrea. Blessed be!