Some vignettes from our trip this weekend – this time at Pensacola: We appear to have developed a little habit that we probably should break ASAP. ‘Tis the habit of taking our annual fall beach trip, and then picking up a new furry family member on the way home. We’ve had Jasper a full year now – and on our way home from this trip we picked up our newest family member, a wee 3 month old puppy as yet to be named (perhaps Clio?) It was a surprise for the boys and we had fun pulling into a random driveway in Gonzales, Louisiana and making them pile out of…

Well clearly this has been in drafts for some time . . . Dinner prep is kind of complicated during hurricane season. Don’t want to have too much in the freezer . . . we’ve learned from painful expensive experience! Here is the list (ETA – still haven’t made quite a few of these, so this list is still mostly current!): The month is almost over, I can’t believe it. I’ve been quite busy lately – largely pleasantly busy, out in the world and out of my house more often than I have been since covid hit. This was one of my goals for happiness – to have less home-bound…

Well. Pickleball is quite fun. We played on Friday night. Even though I wasn’t very good (I can’t help but hit the ball way too hard and it flies miles outside the line); and even though I ended up playing two games against a VERY condescending mansplainer while my husband monitored my response out of the corner of his eye, to see if he needed to rescue me. (I am a woman lawyer in the American South – tolerating mind-numbing mansplaining by old men is about 50% of my job. At least this guy actually knew more than I did about the topic of pickleball). So even with these two…

So HOWWWW goes the start of the school year for you all? Jasper is ready to get rolling on some projects. As are these boys! Fourth grader reporting for duty. He and the 8th grader started school on the same day. I forgot to take a picture of the tenth grader when he started a couple days later. So here he is in a pic from this summer – holding a baby as he is wont to do. So. Now that we are back in school, how did “design your summer” go over here? As you may recall my goals were to (1) to enjoy the time and make sure…

OK. Indulge me in one rant about starting the school year in the middle of a run of “feels like 120 degrees” weather. OMG. It’s so hot and miserable. OMG. Their schools annoy me most of the time anyway, and the sizzling, rain free, humid steam room heat and scraggly dead vegetation means I am a Ball of Thin-Skinned Aggravation as we start this school year. Jack’s private Catholic high school is annoyingly conservative – girls cannot wear pants and their skirt length is measured with a ruler, there is a razor and shaving cream at the door so boys can be forced to do a closer shave they show…