parenting
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On the way home from school pickup, my daughter was asking for a song but didn’t really know any of the words or the melody or really anything about it other than the singer’s voice being “so smoothing”1. We tried the whole way home but didn’t get anywhere. I love this game and get a little obsessed with trying to figure it out, so I kept thinking about it while we prepared dinner. I eventually got it. Mel McDaniel’s “Louisiana Saturday Night.” What a trip.
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When I arrived to pick up my son from his after school program at the community center, he was in the middle of coloring an Adventure Time coloring page and he was so excited about it that he talked about all of the characters the whole way home (sometimes over his sister’s descriptions of the song with the smoothing vocie). He has this way of getting so excited about something–could be a picture he’s drawing or coloring, or a Lego set he’s working on, or an obstacle course he’s built, or whatever–that he strings words together like he’s sprinting downhill… It’s pretty great.
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Yesterday, I bought a set of hair clippers for about $30 and decided to start cutting my own hair again. As a kid I almost always just let mom or dad or a friend’s dad cut it with clippers, then I started doing it myself as a young adult while in college, and had gotten away from it for the most part (with a short pandemic-related exception), but I’ve always liked the look of it and hated going to the barber even more. So, I’ve embraced it again. I cut it yesterday and did a pretty nice job. If I stick with it, the one-time cost of that pair of clippers is about the same as one haircut but I can use them again and again for years.
- There’s been a coolness to the air throughout the day that feels amazing. Now that the sun’s down it feels almost like fall is rolling in. I’m sure it’s short-lived, but I’m enjoying it while it lasts.
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She always says this. It’s the best. ↩︎
Notes, 2024-08-19
It’s been quite some time since I’ve done anything with any of my various blogs. I got super busy with work and, since a lot of that busy-ness deals with writing words and thinking about topics, the blogs tend to suffer when it picks up like that. But since things have slowed back down a bit, I’ve still had a hard time getting back into the habit (not that it was every anything approaching _regular_). Part of that, I think, is the initial hurdle of thinking of something worth writing about. Then I read this post from Thomas Rigby today and figured it was as good a time as any to take a shot at a public day note. I’ve kept day notes in Obisidian (or before that, Notion/Roam/BuJo, etc.) for things I’m working on but haven’t ever tired combining them with the more personal “whats-going-on-in-your-life” kinds of notes. I don’t know why. So, with that preamble, here are some notes from today.
👌 3 Good Things
⭐️ Bonus Good Thing
An ode to a picnic table
One of the best purchases we’ve made since purchasing our house a few years ago is a cheap build-it-yourself picnic table kit from one of the big box hardware stores. We brought it home, put it together, and eventually painted it a really cool ocean blue color that we thought looked nice on our deck. It was part of a larger ‘beautification’ plan, which also included a few bird feeders and pollinator-friendly plants and flowers for a little mulch bed, for the driveway-adjacent area where we spent a lot of our time.
It’s not the best or most pristine picnic table—it’s often covered in stuff, the paint has started to chip and flake away, and there’s even some interesting fungus growing out of one of the ends, but since getting this picnic table set up, we’ve eaten outside nearly every day when the weather’s been pleasant (which is a pretty significant percentage of the days for a good chunk of the year here in northeast Tennessee) and I am continuously surprised at how much the practice of eating, together, outside changes our collective moods for the better.
I’ve not given much thought to the reasons for this effect (and really just noticed the correlation relatively recently), but I suspect it has something to do with the change in scenery creating a more ‘mindful’ approach to our meals. Inside, we tend to be distracted by whatever toy or trinket we happen to have nearby[^1]. Outside, we’re similarly distracted by all the goings on of our space, but they’re all shared distractions—when one of the kids points out a nearby butterfly or bug or that the dog has just snatched up a little fallen scrap, we’re all brought into that moment rather than staying in our own separate little worlds.
But the picnic table has created joy even when we’re not using it to eat. We carve our pumpkins each fall on the picnic table. The kids frequently paint or blow bubbles there. It’s a great spot to just sit in the spring when all you want to do is feel the warmth of the sun. So, all that is to say, here’s to you, picnic table. May you continue to bring our family joy for years to come.
Alone Time
As a kid, we lived out of town and there weren’t really other kids my age in safe walking distance. I had a little sister and we definitely played together a lot, but, like any brother and sister, we needed some time apart and had different interests. As a result, I learned to have a lot of fun by myself. I have vivid memories of tossing a baseball in the air, hitting it as far as I could, then walking after it to hit it back the other direction. The same game worked for throwing a baseball or a football, or for shooting a basketball, or for just walking around and exploring our yard. The common theme for these activities was that I was alone with my thoughts. This inevitably led to various iterations of “narrating” or calling fake play by play for myself. I loved these times and, maybe as a result, I still cherish time alone to think and work through problems or decisions with my inner monologue (or sometimes dialogue) as the only participant.
As a parent, my kids have a much different life. We live in a neighborhood with several other houses very close by with children of a similar age, and they’re all friendly and play well together. A large majority of time outside leads, sooner or later, to group play. I’m super grateful for this. I love our neighborhood. Even though I loved the way I grew up, I’m glad my kids have easy access to friends. They still get some alone time (and sometimes seek it out), but it’s not the default. I’m curious to see how this might affect their individual preferences as they grow and mature, but I think the bottom line, and my ultimate point, is that I don’t think there’s necessarily a “better” way of growing up. I wouldn’t trade my solitary playing as a kid for anything. I’ll bet the house that my kids, when reflecting back thirty years from now, will feel the same about the group play made possible by impromptu neighborhood meetups.