Matching Tracksuits

the dog

Changes Waiting

Monday 22 April 2024

Though it’s hard to comprehend how we’ve reached this moment so quickly, the Girl is just shy of six feet tall and wrapping up her junior year of high school, and the Boy has crossed the five-foot barrier and will soon be twelve. The changes coming are enormous: L will be making final decisions about college over the summer, and the Boy will soon have a full-blown, empty-leg, teenage boy appetite.

We got a hint of that this evening.

After eating a full meal, he came back downstairs hunting for food no more than five minutes later.

“I’m still hungry,” he declared. So he got a piece of yesterday’s leftover pizza out and warmed it up.

Clover smelled it, sensed a treat, and followed him into Papa’s room (it will always be “Papa’s room”), and sat down like the best behaved pup in the world.

Autumn Walk

Monday 10 October 2022

When I took the dog out for a walk tonight, I forgot for the who-knows-how-many-th time about the Halloween house up the street from us. The kitsch-fill yard that amounts to little more than hundreds (no exaggeration) of plastic Halloween characters all lined up shoulder to shoulder. There’s no thought to it, no attempt to create any kind of little scenes throughout the yard — just a bunch of plastic all lined up.

Video shot this weekend

And it scares poor Clover to death every time we walk by there and one of the animated ones starts moving and talking.

Black Balsam Knob

Sunday 9 October 2022

We took a quick drive (well, not quick for the Boy — it was two hours) over to the Blue Ridge Parkway for an afternoon hike today. The Girl stayed home because she had volleyball practice — open gym for the club team she’s signed with this year. And she doesn’t really like hiking. And she’s almost 16 and is starting to have her own life — though it pains me to admit it. How did she get so big so fast?

Be all that as it may, we headed a little further south on the Parkway than we usually go and ended up hiking along ridges with gorgeous views.

K took some pictures with her phone.

K’s pictures

We both took some pictures with the Nikon.

Pictures from the Nikon

And we arrived home exhausted and hungry.

“We really should do this more often,” K said.

Evening Walk

Sunday 25 September 2022

We’ve overseeded our front yard and seeded our backyard. Not “overseeded” because after we started having our yard sprayed for weeks regularly, everything in the backyard died. Because it was all weeds.

This means, though, that our dear Clover is an inside dog for the next month or so as everything takes root and grows. So we take her on a lot more walks, which means we get to see lovely fall scenes like this.

Sunset While Walking the Dog

Wednesday 15 June 2022

First, this, of course — two weeks to go. We’re all getting excited.

Then this — a simple image from this evening’s walk with the dog.

The Dog, the Ball, and the Garden

Tuesday 26 April 2022

She knows she’s not supposed to be there. I’d be a fool to expect her not to stay out as long as I’m not keeping watch. It’s the Garden of Eden in our own home.

After Dinner Play, Redux

Tuesday 19 April 2022

When your kids ask if we can do the same thing after dinner as we did yesterday, and it involves laughter and the dog, of course, you say yes!

The Day After, Again

Monday 18 April 2022

What is it about the day after Easter or Christmas that makes us want to do nothing? We do what we have to do, but it’s just off. And even if the day after is a day free from the obligations of work, it still feels off.

I’m not talking about hangovers — those are easily avoidable. Just don’t drink to excess. It’s undoubted the feeling of deflation, of everything coming down after building up for so long.

The party is over; the friends are gone; the spell is broken.

I want to say it’s because we don’t have anything to look forward to, but that’s not true. We look with anticipation and excitement at many things coming in our family’s near future: a camping trip, several tournaments, a summer trip to Poland.

Perhaps it’s the bustle of getting so much ready so quickly for a party, and then the sudden release of all that?

Or maybe it’s nothing…

Our Neighbors (Sort Of)

Tuesday 25 January 2022

Out for a walk with Clover, and I find myself wondering if that guy up the street — a near-neighbor, I suppose, who lives about half-a-dozen houses up the street — has finally taken down his Halloween decorations. He puts on such a show that he starts putting crap in his yard sometime in mid-September. Surely, I think, surely he’s taken the last of the decorations down — huge skeletons that have remained in his yard long after everything else disappeared.

But no — no such luck.

“He can just put hearts in their hands and he’ll have Valentine’s decorations,” K laughs when we’re talking about it later in the evening. “And then an Easter egg!” she adds.

“Maybe a flag for Independence Day,” I suggest.

We come to a few simple conclusion, though:

  1. We’re glad this guy lives up over the hill, and we don’t see this unless we go for a walk.
  2. We’re glad the neighbors around us have, well, taste.
  3. And we finally see a positive use for a HOA…

Evening Walk

Monday 25 October 2021

Took the dog for a walk — it was foggy.

Spent the rest of the evening resetting passwords in LastPass to improve my security scores and peace of cyber-mind.

Searching for Normalcy

Sunday 18 July 2021

“Normal” is a fluid idea in our home these days with Papa’s condition, but with two kids in the house, we also have to try to keep the old “normal” part of our new normal.

Yesterday, for example, I took the Boy swimming in the afternoon (the Girl was not interested in going just to float around with a bum ankle if she didn’t have a friend with her, and it was too late to arrange all that), and afterward we went out for our favorite Boys’-Night-Out meal: Mexican. A taco and enchilada with beans and rice, all covered with sauces and queso?! Who wouldn’t love that?

“The only problem with going out for Mexican,” the Boy explained, “is that it’s so easy to stuff yourself.” That’s certainly true.

In the afternoon today, I spent a lot of time with the dog, kicking the ball for her to retrieve. Again and again and again.

She came back in a slobbering, exhausted mess.

Training Clover

Friday 9 July 2021

to be outside the fence and off-leash. The Girl’s idea.