L'aventure américaine

 I am taking a break from the news.  My new goal is to put more positivity and love because we're all just so angry.  For the past week, I have been mailing one postcard a day where I aim to say at least one positive thing about the recipient.  It has made me feel so much better.   In other important news, Marian is starting to learn her colors.  This is just a baffling new milestone.  After a year of her misnaming colors and all of a sudden, she gets them right 75% of the time.  Brains are fascinating.  It is just fascinating that last week, all of a sudden, she can tell you that a shirt is green or she wants the pink hat, when the week prior, she would tell you that everything was black or brown or purple. It is also fascinating how different she and Milo are.  She holds her baby dolls, pats them, coos to them, puts them to sleep.  She loves to draw and color and points out what her creations are.  Milo?  He asked how the dryer vent worked and we spent a dinner talking about what

 I was at Mom and Dad's when Joe Biden was declared President-Elect.  After a week of universal fatigue and restless sleep, it was such a relief to get the news. But, I haven't felt much better since then and I have been trying to pinpoint why. I think it's for many reasons...  One, the good news was tempered with coverage of Donald Trump on his golf course, refusing to concede the election.  Instead of focusing on a Biden celebration, the conversation was focused on the negative.  What do you do with a President who is making false claims and refuses to follow the civil, good precedent of his predecessors?  I continue to get depressed when I see Republicans backing up his claims and giving them credence.  Is winning more important than dignity?  Is retaining power more important than integrity?  It seems that it is. It's also because 71 million Americans still support Trump.  When I ask people (in a calmer frame of mind) why they support Trump, most say it is because o

I get very homesick for Klamath Falls at Halloween.  Our street when we lived there was THE destination for trick-or-treaters and we always hosted a party for our friends while handing out treats to the 600-1000 kids who traipsed through our neighborhood.   COVID-19 would have changed all that, so it was easier to miss the holiday this year and we hunkered down for an intimate Halloween in Bloomington.  Mom brought dinner and we traipsed down two streets in our neighborhood who had tables out for a socially-distanced trick-or-treat.  Like my childhood Halloweens, we all piled into the car and visited some dear friends. The main purpose was to showcase the kids' incredible Halloween costumes.  Randal, Milo and I spent several hours working on Dogman and Marian's little stuffed Toto.  (Okay, Toto only took one hour and I worked on it by myself, hence the disparity in quality is quite evident.) While the adults' costumes paled in comparison to the kids, Randal was a chef, I wa