January 28th, 2025
Wake to piles of orange peels and an empty milk jug on the kitchen counter... Puck partied hard last night...
Yali continues piecing together the small plastic weapons cabinet (including a lock) for his Dummy 13's, fully 3D-printed... the worlds one can create in a box... as Haydn string quartets play from my laptop... soothing music is sometimes helpful when reminding young students that math sheets wait following a hot breakfast...
Done before eleven o'clock...
- Bus Yali and Patience to Yellow Bird while discussing the reality of social anxiety with Yali
- Gather breakfast request for Puck, including another hot chocolate, before his four-hour work shift
- Pick up Chinese New Year cash from the ATM... listening to Gustav Holst's “The Planets” on the radio
The remainder of my time is quickly swallowed by dishes, finances, laundry, scrubbing surfaces, getting clawed up good by the bad cat when I move some laundry she doesn't want to get off of, and a video call at one o'clock... with a brief break for hummus and my favorite cranky/scheming old Scottish gentlemen in “Monarch of the Glen”...
On the way to grab the kids, pass copious snow remnants... lazy polar bears stretched out across yards and pavement... many looking nearer black bears from the dirt of the roads...
Yali and Patience have been busy all day... amongst other things, creating suet bird feeders, stained glass paper suncatchers, painting fondant polar bears, and playing hard in the outdoors with friends...
Home to help Patience make pretzel bites in the air fryer before another violin lesson... Yali giggles occasionally when she hits the odd note... “Don't worry...” he tells her... “I'm not laughing at you... I'm just laughing AT you...”
Then after my fourth attempt over six months to at least be given a summer jury service notice, receive another email from the court : “You are not required to report until your new jury service date of May 12, 2025”... you know what... good enough
Yali and Patience get busy fighting over taco fixings in the kitchen at dinner... Patience does a good valley girl impression when she's annoyed by her brothers... “Yali-uh! Give me the cheese-uh!”
And... back to the studio for two hours of gliding and stomping... while Mama sits on the parking lot with a stack of notebooks and Greg Johnson's “Still Time to Care”