Something nice

The unavoidable truth of a blog like this is that it’s mostly going to be exercises in either depression or avoiding depression. But I also think it’s important to make clear that the four of us don’t sit around the house moping and being sad. Yes, there are certainly moment – even long stretches – like that, but we also have plenty of moments where we watch dumb movies, experiment with exciting cake-baking strategies and try to teach the children poker. All in all, we do pretty well.

Also doing well is this little apple tree. It was a gift from Colin’s old day care. The administrator brought it over a couple of weeks after the funeral. Due to a combination of disorganization and my general laziness when it comes to yard work, we probably got it into the ground about two weeks later in the year than the average gardener would recommend. However, it was a mild winter and the little guy is now blooming like crazy, which is nice. I’d much rather have Colin, but there’s a small solace in having this apple tree growing up sheltered by our shed, giving us the hope we’ll be able to move it to a more prominent part of the yard once it can better fend for itself.

Today’s the last day of my 2019 vacation, so I’ll go back to working from home tomorrow, hopefully discovering soon what the plan forward it. I don’t know if it was the best use of my vacation time, but I went through everything in our attic and then I went through and organized all of our baby and young children’s toys. That was not fun work. There were a lot of memories. At the same time, the toys aren’t lying all over the house, waiting to surprise me with an unexpected memory, as happens every time an old Lightning McQueen rattles out of the woodwork. I know my children: There will be more toys surprising us. But at least I’ve gotten some control of the bulk of the situation.