Less than Twelve Parsecs

Shelter-in-place?! She's all over the place!!! Somebody should tell this little girl about the times.... She started pushing herself backwards this week so she can travel the whole length of the room until her feet touch an obstacle, then rotate and repeat. Yeah, we're baby proofing this weekend... And about those no-contact policies! Need to call the authorities, she loves contact, she thrives on contact ! Four out of five times I look at her: someone is giving her a hug - that's SO not in the spirit of social distancing!! I'm pretty sure she's interpreted the "keep 6 feet away from everybody" as "kick 6 feet on everybody", so she taps you and bounces indefinitely (babies can't count past three so she just goes up to whatever she considers a sufficient amount). On wearing a mouth covering when going out in public? She found the exact opposite of that rule as well!! The last three days she's been

It's a bit unnerving to get out of the house for a walk during enforced social distancing when you have young kids (4-6) who are crazy energetic but forgetful and would not easily tolerate face masks. How do you keep them away from passersby without constant nagging? Today, we had a brilliant approach: short-leash kite flying! What you need: - small kite, 5-6ft long handle-to-tail (see bottom of post) - windy day - kids. It worked out wonderfully, every person instinctively gave us a wide berth, trying to avoid a fluttering kite tail in their face. The kids had a natural constant reminder to stay away from others - they don't want their kite all tangled up! Plus I've had the most fun with kites as I've had in years - thank you,  Aeolus ! Here I am with Fae, we were flying the story kite for the first part of the walk, until Gaius's original kite got its wing broken and we swapped with him: The kites are geniusly simple, from a Kiwi Crate we ha

I can't even write about this. Yet it feels wrong not to. The world is going through a Pandemic right now, at such a scale that it's hard to really comprehend. Two thousand Americans just died today of COVID-19 and countries so dear to me like Italy are paying an insurmountable toll. And here we are all sheltered-in-place, just one step below lock down. It's been like this for three weeks now. Is it four? Time loses meaning when the usual life rhythms are gone. I went to the grocery store yesterday and it was surreal. I realized afterward that I was affected quite a lot by the experience, thus I’m writing down my account of the trip, full of the internal emotional colors as I was going through it. There’s no intentional artistic post-factum exaggeration, just tighter detailing due to the vivid memory it created, like one of those rare, extremely intricate dreams you can’t shake off in the morning. But it was not a dream. Upon reading, Greg pointed out that