dreaming out loud, Seasons

What if…

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I have this fantasy about melting snow: Imagine you have some snow on the ground. Seattle snow. Midwestern snow would be too deep. Now imagine that it all melts, all at once. Instantly. Like someone used the Clapper and instead of turning on a light, all the snow was immediately liquid. Now imagine the split second when the water is all standing where the snow had been, all still and quiet, like the water’s a little surprised to be Not Snow. Then, it all suddenly rushes away. It’s somewhere between that Parting of the Red Sea scene in The Ten …

Seasons

Thanksgiving Snow Days

 

One of the things I enjoy about a good snowfall in Seattle is how it shuts things down. We live a block off an arterial road, and when we’ve had a good snow fall, the volume of traffic drops significantly. There were occasional cars on it yesterday, but mostly just the big trucks interspersed with stretches of quiet. Today – probably due to the holiday since I’m not sure the road is really all that much safer – the cars and their constant hum are back. Snow provides an excuse. I’m behind on my pre-holiday to-do list because it was …

Caitlyn

Scary Things

A neighbor asked Caitlyn, “What were you for Halloween?” “A princess. Fairy Princess!” “How nice,” the neighbor replied. “Yeah, she was really scary,” added Caitlyn’s uncle, which inspired chuckles from the rest of us. Caitlyn was offended. “I was not!” “You were!” he insisted. “Some people are afraid of clowns, I’m afraid of princesses.” Caitlyn hasn’t quite figured out how to tell when people are teasing her, and she doesn’t know the cultural reference to coulrophobia. Someone else admitting a fear is apparently grounds for asserting superiority: “I’m not afraid of anything!” she declared. Everyone else thought this was hysterical, …

current events

The Importance of Small things

You make me feel guilty. I didn’t think people still cared anymore. He was an older man, African-American, with a small hat and a black jacket. I wonder what his life had brought him that a few people in front of a supermarket asking for food bank donations could seem so unlikely. And I’m grateful that despite my frustrations with things in general, the specifics around me are of people who do indeed still care.

Caitlyn

WordTag

Caitlyn dreams of spelling or reading, apparently. When I woke her up for school yesterday morning, before she got out of bed, she told me (her version was much longer than this one): “I played this game called WordTag in my head. There were all these letters. I was pink and I ran around and put them together. Yellow wanted to break them. But if I made really long words, then Yellow couldn’t. Or if there were lots of ‘a’s or ‘the’s on the ends. Those were red, the sight words (she really called them that). So pink and red …