August 4, 2016 @ 4:35 pm | Filed under:
Photos 
Argh, Facebook, Facebook. You make it so darn easy for me to slap up a photo or funny kid quip, and then a year from now I’ll be sad I didn’t preserve those memories here. I was looking for a conversation today and found myself scrolling through dozens of moments I’d shared there…instead of here.
Clearly I need to cultivate (re-cultivate) the habit of—at the very least—reposting those moments here every couple of weeks. For me, for my own future enjoyment. But also for the family, and for my bloggity friends who eschew Facebook. After all, this intense life-sharing I do started here, didn’t it?
Okay so here’s a WHOLE BUNCH OF STUFF from July.
Brave Writer Retreat — Photos and Links
Official recap post on Brave Writer Blog (featuring video of Julie Bogart & me hamming it up in a lip-synch performance of “Home” from The Wiz—one of my favorite musical theater songs OF ALL TIME)
Link to my own Retreat recap on Periscope
Retreat slide show on Youtube
High School Reunion
The three blind mice, reunited
And other assorted things I posted
Found in my old room: this page from an issue of Young Miss magazine circa 1985 of the haircut I longed for in my post-Oliver (as in the musical, as in I’d Do Anything for this role including chop off all my hair) days. By the time that awful cut was grown out, this puffy ‘do was no longer in style. Didn’t stop me from sighing over the photo anyway.
#mistywatercoloretc
***
Attention Scott Peterson: Your 10yo daughter is listening to Wildfire. WHAT HAVE YOU WROUGHT?
***
Last month we learned that Wonderboy’s cerebral palsy qualifies him for a lifetime family membership at the San Diego County YMCA through the Challenged Athletes Foundation. *Family* meaning every single one of us. When they handed me my membership card today with that little word “lifetime” at the bottom, I suddenly had something in my eye. A lot of happy somethings. Because “lifetime family membership” has many layers of meaning in this context.
***
SDCC recovery plan: Naruko sheet mask + @WestWingWeekly podcast.
***
Using my phone camera as a mirror just now & found myself attempting to expand my own face into close-up view. AS IN I SWIPED MY ACTUAL FACE
Aquarium Hijinks
And last (but definitely not least), a poem by one of my poetry students:
Especially Pete!
Actually, I guess the first couple of photos here are from March. (1) We hadn’t been to Old Town San Diego in a while and made a quick pilgrimage there one day during Wonderboy’s spring break. (2) Rilla’s bunny chain—entirely her own design—is the best Easter decoration I’ve seen in a long time. Those ears!
April for real:
(3) How Huck likes to rock his Math-U-See.
(4) Library day. I want that Eric Carle rug!
(5) Another library-day shot. What I love most about this photo is that the bed they’re on belongs to neither of them. It’s Beanie’s—the bottom bunk, which has long been the favorite place for my girls to sprawl. Beanie, meanwhile, does most of her own sprawling on Rilla’s bed. Go figure.
(6) Monarch caterpillar on our milkweed: always a sight that brings me joy.
(7) Wonderboy raised these sunflowers from a handful of old seeds spilled in the bottom of a bag of mostly-empty seed packets. The color surprised us!
(8) Also a surprise this year: the giant blooms on a neglected rosebush by our patio. Loads of them! It’s like Valancy went at the bush with her clippers.
(9) Playing with a Hobonichi Techo-style layout in my bullet journal. Mary Ann Scheuer and I had a fun Skype session last week to chat about my bujo system. What’s working these days: Separate books for my messy notes and my bullet lists. It’s sort of a left brain/right brain thing: I need a space for scribbly notes of all kinds, an unkempt, all-purpose thinking-on-paper space; but I also need nice, neat(ish) to-do lists with boxes I can fill in as I accomplish tasks. It took me a LOT of years—and the revelation of the multiple-insert traveler’s notebook—to figure this out: that I need the two separate spaces.
Yay, now I can fill in that ‘blog’ box!
I shared this photo on Facebook—a cellphone shot captured at the park yesterday. Because my phone’s camera is middling, and because in the bright sun I can barely see my screen at all, and because I used an Instagram filter that looked nice on the small phone screen but appears excessively washed out in the larger view, this is not nearly as good a photo as it might have been. But it captured a happy moment in a lovely place, and I’m glad I caught it.
But the best thing about the picture is this: after I’d sent it to Facebook, I got a note from my friend Asako. My photo had appeared in her news feed immediately above this one.
She couldn’t help but giggle. Me, I guffawed.
*I wish I knew the origin of the second image so I could properly credit. If it find it, I’ll add it here.
UPDATE: Peter in the comments found the image on a t-shirt at Buck Wear Inc.
