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surance sally got laid off so they split up kidding no so now they are both without insurance because the aca rates are simply insane and anna s job doesn t offer it and we can t have universal health insurance like a normal civilized country but i guess they can just live on love that s fine everything is fine we had everyone here including 3 count them three kids in law for thanksgiving and it was lovely thank you very much sally tried to get away with saying she was useless in the kitchen but we made her rice 10 pounds of potatoes anyway which was a fitting welcome to our family holidays i m thinking christmas was a much smaller affair just the three youngest grown kids and one kid in law and little sissy and i pretty much worked my butt off without anna here she was at her in laws but at least i didn t get deathly sick on christmas eve like last year so i call that a win brian gave me a jigsaw puzzle of a new yorker cover for christmas even though i haven t done a puzzle in years so i decided to get back into it and people now i know why i haven t done a puzzle in years i get obsessed this was maddening i was late starting my january socks because i couldn t tear myself away from that stupid puzzle but here they are finally started i know you were worried nice bright colors for winter i need that we have snow coming and it will be utter chaos with everyone buying milk and eggs and bread because that is how we celebrate our rare snowfalls in this neck of the woods we will probably end up with maybe 6 inches of snow and be left staring at ridiculous amounts of leftover cinnamon roll and french toast ingredients in our kitchens but we will not learn we will simply do it all over again the next time it s sort of an endearing habit imo because people are silly and i love that about them i also love people who are brave and care about their neighbors and the rule of law so kudos to minneapolis for showing the rest of us how it should be done if anyone cares to help these people help their neighbors this article has a list of mutual aid funds that you can contribute to do it you ll sleep better any knitters here you can buy this pattern off ravelry the proceeds all go to mutual aid in the twin cities you ll feel good about helping and you ll have a hat can t beat that until next time stay safe stay warm and stay away from jigsaw puzzles they ll throw off your knitting mojo like you wouldn t believe on january 22 2026 4 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest saturday december 27 2025 more travels with old people hi still here still coping with the phenomenon that is 2025 no really it s fine that a grown child of mine who has worked every day of their adult life can no longer afford health insurance totally normal and sensible and definitely not a sign of a society on the brink of collapse no sireebob we re good and you wonder why you haven t heard from me hmmm i feel slightly insane but life goes on even in a fascist hellscape so let s talk about i dunno my trip to the olympic peninsula last july as previously reported david was not allowed to take us up any mountains so instead we went to the beach which involved a mile hike through woods and over some hills because apparently there is no such thing as a simple stroll in the pacific northwest the beach had humongous rocks scattered everywhere as if a species of giants lived out there a species completely unlike us ordinary mortals from the east coast with our cute little sand dunes on our accessible shorelines a tad intimidating is what i m saying oh and our first night staying in port angeles we were suddenly under a tsunami warning so i texted david who hadn t joined us yet saying ha ha tsunami warning i m sure nothing to worry about right and he texted back so how high is your airbnb above sea level which was not exactly the reassuring response i had expected we don t have tsunami warnings at home no giant rocks no giant waves everything is human sized we took a ferry one day to victoria which was very exciting because i had never ever been to canada and man they have real bike lanes and everything up there and also universal health care so i spent the ensuing months trying to convince anna and her partner to move north but no dice even the crossing signal has a bike on it so cute we visited our not so newly retired friends for a few days while susie returned to seattle with david and climbed mt st helens with him and no i m not sorry we missed out on that experience instead we sat on our friends deck looking out over puget sound and marveled at the lack of humidity and mosquitoes just like last year it was lovely no mosquitoes none we also went on a private tour of a submarine museum and we revisited the marvelous hotdog place the one with curly fries and like 20 hotdog varieties on the menu it was a very good time and our friends didn t make us hike one bit vacation dining at its best imo i don t remember august like literally no memory whatsoever i worked i guess helped a bit with the grandbabies i dunno in september larry and i took a trip drum roll please to europe the baltic states specifically larry had been to europe many times on business but i had never before set foot on the continent so it was an all new experience for me we chose an organized tour so if anything went wrong we could blame road scholar and not each other marriage hack my takeaways 1 flying reminds me of surgery i might die but i have to do it 2 klm has very nice cheese snacks for breakfast highly recommend unexpectedly delicious 3 the baltic states have wonderful public bathrooms individual little rooms complete with real doors and their own little sinks and maybe we should do that here and everyone can quit fussing about who is going in which bathroom that would be nice 4 i got to touch walls that had been standing since like the 1300s or something which is sort of mindblowing these are very old 5 seeing things in person is way more interesting than seeing them on youtube maybe i should have known that but i didn t 6 there are people who travel a lot i felt like a rube compared to everyone else on the trip 7 the tallinn estonia airport is impossibly cute like landing at an ikea right 8 i don t like strange to me food so i subsisted on potatoes and yogurt and magnum bars i know it s pathetic essentially larry was traveling with a 5 year old 9 we saw a beautiful church in lithuania that had been designed and built by italians so essentially it was like going to rome but cheaper travel hack definitely not like an ikea 10 our country currently looks like a total basket case when you re sitting in europe the news coming from the other side of the atlantic at that point was insane to the point of embarrassing all of us on the trip assiduously avoided talking us politics the entire time until the last night at dinner when the woman next to me said so if you were going to try to claim asylum over here which country would you pick and the entire table immediately chimed in with their answers so obviously everyone had been thinking about it and there s a lot more to talk about but i m going to wrap this up because it s late and this is long enough thanks for letting me talk at you and post vacation photos i mean if there is anyone left reading this i know posting twice a year is not a good way to keep people engaged but hey 2025 you know it s been nuts on december 27 2025 13 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest sunday july 27 2025 a caveat plus more chairs oh hi really after a 6 month absence that s how i m starting out give me this it s been a whopper of a 6 month period okay and i ll confess part of my absence has been because it s been hard for me to balance giving cheerful little accounts of our family s day to day doings while also experiencing along with everyone else the societal political turmoil and chaos that is affecting a lot of families including ours it just felt a little tone deaf you know flower box arrangement by susie who is glad she s in college right now and not looking for a job in this market still i don t want to lose this record of our daily lives either i love looking back and remembering all the things i ve jotted down over the past omg 18 years how do i keep that while not seeming oblivious to everything waves vaguely out there what did the 1930 s germans do about their blogs i wonder lol rotfl see it s just not funny ugh so i am back with my stupid inconsequential stories because skipping them isn t going to help anything or anyone hopefully they ll provide some respite from the horror i dunno am i mentioning this just so readers won t think i m totally shallow and annoying probably back to our regularly scheduled programming if you recall last time we spoke larry and i were suffering a deficit of dining chairs 2 tables 6 chairs with thanksgiving becoming a byochair event now if you will believe it we are the somewhat flummoxed owners of 16 count them sixteen dining chairs it started in february when i took matters into my own hands to procure some used kitchen chairs that provided my long desired pop of color can t really explain the teddy bear as a centerpiece oh well they go well with the dilapidated chrome padded chairs and are a cheerful powder blue which makes me happy but probably bothers larry no end remember he doesn t believe in fun colored furniture we moved the 4 black kitchen chairs to the dining room which really didn t look too bad with the wood table but really i just never wanted to think about chairs again ever larry also seemed to be happy not discussing this stupid topic anymore total number of chairs 10 a somewhat reasonable number not quite enough for holiday dinners but hey it was only february we had time fast forward 5 months and really where does the time go i came home from work more on that later last sunday to find what we can only describe as the miracle of the chairs in my dining room free table 30 chairs that only took 8 months that s right folks larry finally found the long sought after but discontinued west elm chairs on marketplace at a low low price and brought them home he is very happy with himself even though we now own too many chairs and i can tell he is eyeing my pretty blue ones as the ones to go sixteen chairs that s ridiculous in january i started a new job susie worked at our local trader joe s for two years before selfishly going off to college and living her own life and i really missed that 20 discount we used to get also i was sitting around all day scrolling the internet not good and waxing maudlin while gazing at pictures of my kids when they were little downright pathetic okay now i work about 30 hours a week and get a ton more done around the house because i have less time to do it in and there s a psychological term for that but i ve forgotten it also i get paid i like having money because i get to spend it on my grandkids was that plural why yes yes it was rachel rachel gave birth in february to a very cute baby girl and omg i had completely forgotten what a trainwreck those first few months could be but we re finally at the point where she the baby not rachel does all the cute baby stuff giggling and blowing raspberries and snuggling and seriously i have no memories of my babies before 5 months apparently none our empty nest has a bunch of this stuff in it again rachel and the baby stayed with us for a few weeks in june while her husband was away on tdy and larry and i helped out minimally with the baby and were completely exhausted i have no idea how we did all that six times this cutie joins her 21 month old cousin who has adorable little pigtails on top of her head that droop in the humidity and really aren t we all just like those pigtails and i have never so badly wanted to post people photos on this blog but larry s rule holds firm also my kids wouldn t let me either oh well let s start calling the older grandbaby olivia and her little cousin can be sissy since i can t just say the grandbaby anymore wow i haven t had to make up blog names in a very long time that s weird this isn t the beach it s the shore because new jersey earlier in june larry and i rented a beach house for a week on lbi and several adult children consented to join us including rachel and spouse and newest grandbaby and it was actually pleasant because i wasn t responsible for anyone s happiness but my own which after all those years of vacationing camping with kids still feels quite novel and refreshing also adult children on budgets naturally tend to appreciate a free vacation more than dependent children teens do so that s nice obligatory sunset over the bay photo next week we are flying to the seattle area and visiting olympic national park this is happening because during one of our heatwaves in june i pretty much snapped and dropped a boatload of money on airline tickets and an airbnb and i m glad i did because it gave me something to look forward to through all the subsequent heatwaves in july i cannot wait to leave this weather behind for a week i feel as though i am living in the armpit of hell predicted weather for our vacation is 50s and 60s so i guess i ll need to bring a parka or something which is fine by me david is meeting us at the park but we will not be doing the mountains with him having learned our lesson last year we re hitting the beach trails instead and considering the west is definitely another planet i m sure we ll find those challenging enough wish me luck on july 27 2025 7 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest monday december 30 2024 in which i say chairs way too much ah let us chat once more before we close the books on this stupidly crazy year let s see there was a plane trip and covid and lots of failed job interviews and new boobs surgery and recovery my discovery of the west a typically humid summer a trip to acadia wait did larry and i actually travel 3 times this year rachel s wedding still can t quite believe that one and the advent of our empty nest folks it s been a lot really and to usher out the year in the appropriate fashion some rogue virus decided to try to finish me off so i ended up in bed on christmas eve shivering and ache y and coughing while the merriment continued unabated below a shout out to my girls who stepped up and made sure breakfast was prepped and dishes were cleaned etc all while i lay upstairs and prayed i wouldn t die on christmas day because wouldn t that be sort of a bummer what santa brought me i m still coughing and trying to make sure this thing doesn t turn into pneumonia but i m doing better than i was i m disappointed though because the week between christmas and new year s is supposed to be fun and all i have done is lie around and take mucinex and sudafed and cough a lot no cold weather hikes no trips to the movie theater nothing just me and my b...