Category: family life

Sunday night

Tomorrow I have my first school meeting all day long. I’m dragging my feet for this, because I’ll have to sit and listen to a lot of talk about technology and I’m not ready to say goodbye to summer. I’m excited to see students but not thrilled with the meetings that are integral to this time of year.

I did go to the pool today and that felt refreshing. It was cloudy and sunny and the excitement at the pool was incredible. Hundreds of joyful children and parents all holding on to summer as well.

After my meeting tomorrow I have book club for Wild Dark Shore, a very interesting climate crisis family story that takes place on a remote island near Antarctica. I’m very excited to discuss this with my book people. We also always have really delicious food and that is a joy. I’m bringing an arugula salad with fresh sweet corn, herbs, and red onion.

I’m listening to Pocket Bear by Katherine Applegate which reminds me of Kate Di Camillo’s The Incredible Journey of Edward Tulane. The two great books would pair well together as both are about elder Teddy bears.

One exciting detail about our summer is that we are now proud owners of an adorable puppy named Tova. She is a lab/ spaniel mix and very black and white with a polka dotted belly. Japhy is doing a magnificent job of training her and we hope that goes well. Our 9 yo Rhodesian Ridgeback, Ruby, has a lot of anxiety about rain storms and people. Tova does not and that is refreshing. She’s 21.5 pounds of fluffy love and big paws as of Friday.

Enjoy your week ahead.

Panama City

I just got back from Panama and it was pretty amazing! I like beaches and forest and I didn’t think Panama had either so it wasn’t my ideal travel destination but I needed to use some unused tickets from Copa Airlines and their homebase is, yes, Panama City. My son, Tristan and I traveled last Sunday and made it to our super cool two bedroom apartment in the Casco Viejo (the old section) which is the also the tourist section with lots of restaurants and shops around the two nearby squares.

We built up a holiday routine; sleep late, a little fresh fruit and bread for breakfast at home, and then off to explore and find a place for lunch. As a foodie family we always look forward to finding delicious food and we are always on the lookout for amazing vegetarian and vegan food. We had amazing luck finding delicious vegan food in Mexico and I hoped we’d have luck here as well. We didn’t the first night but the rest of the time, after we’d had a chance to look around, we found a treasure trove of excellent choices.

I love that I can go on vacation outside the U.S. and find menus that have at least 4-5 vegan choices and several full vegan restaurants in the area. Amazing. I can’t find vegan or even good vegetarian choices in most of Iowa. Another side note is all the to-go containers are eco-friendly unlike Styrofoam boxes here.

We did make it to a beach 30 minutes away from PC and spent a lovely day and we took a tour bus to see the Canal and a biodiversity museum. We took two hours to tour and read all the information at the Museo Canal in town. We had a lovely trip and it was fabulous to spend 5 days with my son.

I have so many thoughts and feeling about what’s happening and with that narcissist running our country. It is a major shit show with people getting kidnapped by the ICE gang, secrets being shared with no accountability, libraries and artistic centers taking a hit, USAID which is major help for our 3rd World countries who need our help. We’ve entered into a zone with no empathy. It’s too much to think about and makes me so crazy.

New address, new look

Google/Blogger and I had a bit of a falling out recently. I got some messages from a company called eNom that I kind of thought was spam because I didn’t recognize the name so I ignored it. At the same time I received an email from Google that I’d been auto-renewed for another month which again made me disregard the eNom message. A mistake though or maybe not…

Within a few days eNom shut my beloved peacefulreader.com down. If you look it up there’s nothing really there. I thought I’d have at least 30 days to work it out. The good thing was in a last ditch effort I was able to download my entire content and upload it to WordPress. I’m hoping it works out. I was already disgusted with Google from DT’s inauguration. So I guess it’s a good break-up. It took me awhile to find away around to save all my words and I was very relieved when I accomplished it. I’ve had this blog for years, my children have grown up, and I’ve written a lot of family moments as well as emotional pieces about my life. I didn’t want it all to just go away.

I’m so disgusted with our beautiful country right now. I have no words to express my feeling and then some days all I have are too many words for the shit show we are in.

What I’m reading: The Frozen River by Ariel Hawhon (excellent)

What I’m watching: Sweet Tooth on Netflix (interesting dystopian world)