It is now November, and I have spent some time this weekend sorting and curating this year’s pictures with the idea of catching up on the blog, which I am further behind than I remembered. This is really my diary to keep the years from passing too quickly by pounding a few stakes into my memories to buffet them a bit against all the busy-ness that wants to blow them away.
One of my favorite weekends of all of this year happened in January–going to the cabin with my playgroup moms-cum-book group. All but one of us were able to gorge ourselves, first at Braeburn brunch, and then with books and puzzles. Franz, an electric foot massager, was our plus-one this weekend (and I think Sus has a secret crush on. My crush is not-so-secret).
We actually got to spend New Years at the cabin and forgot to polar bear this year. Turns out, it has been a good year even without first starting it by jumping into frigid waters, but I’ll try not to take that chance in 2024. However, we all got to walk down to “our” beach and the kids demonstrated what to do (and not do) on a cold January day.
Wes turned 13, making me the mom of three teenagers (which, so far, is way easier than it is reputed to me…mostly).
Kyla was really excited to start rock climbing again, but mostly, she’s just happy being Kyla.
January was not Piper’s happiest season. She generally won’t let me take her picture anymore, but when she is so madthat she would rather drape herself over the hood in the rain than get in the car with me, I capture the moment for posterity. But she also invited my parents over and made them an upside down chicken recipe she learned in Jordan almost a year ago and crocheted some fun creations.
I actually found some picture of myself in my downloads, and knowing there will be few more the rest of the year, will post them.
And of course, one of my favorite humans did one of my favorite acts of service–pick up the garbage on the big road.
I’m looking forward to reviewing the rest of the year! We’ll call it homework for Christmas card writing. 😉
I am thrilled to celebrate this season where we set out a colossal kitty water bowl and then stick a tree in the middle of it. This year, after uninstalling Twitter and Instagram and still refusing to touch Facebook, I saved all my [ahem, smug] social vomiting for this annual letter, which you have full permission to toss without me ever knowing.
2022 was a big year for us! In addition to finally getting to do our Big Adventure, Dwayne celebrated 25 years at Microsoft and 20 years of marriage (to me, I think), we paid off our home of 19 years, and we haven’t misplaced any children, gladly. Or cats. Sadly.
Oh, Ecuador! We’ll remember you fondly next time Piper gets so bitten by mosquitoes that we end up in a hospital many, many hours from the closest electric grid.
It was while we were in Ecuador last December that it started seeming possible, even likely, that our Try It Again Trip would happen. Even in the excitement of Quito, Dwayne and I would sometimes look at each other and mouth “six weeks”—the subtext being “we’ll need to panic soon”. And, to understate the amount of work this involved, we packed suitcases, withdrew the kids from school, and in February, flew from Seattle to shiny Dubai, where we began a 4-month journey through Africa and Europe.
Dubai is too good to be true and was a great kick off to 3 weeks in Kenya, a country with almost no Venn overlap with the UAE. We spent most of our time in Kenya safari-ing. In Nairobi, the girls adopted a baby elephant without their cats’ permission and we all took our first swim in the Indian Ocean. Then we checked off our Egypt and Jordan bucket list items, while the youngers had nearly fatal ennui at the Giza pyramids. Between Ecuador and Kenya, we straddled the equator twice—and were amused by identical scams at each.
I now know the difference between the Pantheon and Parthenon. First off, they are in different countries.
From Jordan, Cyprus was the entrance to our exploration of the Mediterranean, which in addition to our northern African travels, gave us a touchpoint into most of the Roman Empire, through France, Spain, and Italy (with Vatican bonus). Dwayne, Kyla and I hiked the Italian Cinque Terre, where we came across the moniker “expert excursionist” that I want to adopt as a life motto. Leaving the Boot, I changed into sandals, because Slovenia, Croatia and Greece charmed my socks off! We ended by straddling Europe and Asia in Istanbul before flying home.
Here’s the thing about traveling Americans: we’re loud, friendly, easy-going…and generally tip well, making sure that fellow countrymen get warm welcomes around the world no matter how terrible our manners.
I am incredibly grateful that English is the most popular 2nd language in the world; our monolingual selves were able to navigate 14 non-English speaking countries because so many others bothered to learn another language or four. This was particularly useful when Piper and Wes stopped going out with us on anything I had to label “I will enjoy this enough for the both of you”. That twinge of guilt was quickly drowned out by the realization that everyone was happier this way. Piper and Wes called a full truce when left on their own, and Piper would decide where to go and carry the money, and Wes would do all the peopley stuff.
Our Big Trip only took up one third of the year, so we’ve embarked on other adventures back home, which mostly involved regular life and avoiding positive Covid tests.
Seemingly overnight, Wes matured from an infuriating imp whose motto could have been, and I quote, “I don’t like anything” to a pleasant-ish almost-13-year-old who we love hanging out with. Before we left last winter, he enjoyed “sipsies” of Dwayne’s morning coffee. By Sicily, he was ordering his own afternoon cappuccinos. He also has turned a corner with school, as he gets himself to the bus before the rest of us are out of bed and enjoys all his classes, even recommending a book for me that he read in English. (It may, ahem, have been the first book he’s read in years. I’m glad he liked it!) He is particularly engaged in his CAD class and wants to take as many tech and parkour classes as he can. I definitely enjoy a creative Wes over a destructive one!
Piper engaged in the trip through animals and cooking classes—which still left her plenty of time while traveling for developing abject misery. She never, ever, never wants to travel again, with a tiny possible exception of another safari. Wholly unrelated, she’s 14 this year. When she gets to do what she wants, she is absurdly delightful. Fortunately for me, one of the things she wants to do is take over the cooking and baking—I stepped out of the way so quickly, a hurricane brewed in the Carolinas. She’s a freshman in high school this year and wishes homework didn’t take so much time away from crocheting riveting hats for our gargoyle, Ernie. In addition to cooking and crafting, Piper has found a calling for volunteering in the 3’s Sunday school class at church.
If Piper is the one we broke on the trip, Kyla is the one who thrived. She joined Dwayne and me on almost all the tours and explorations, and thanks to paying attention in all her classes, could actually tell me the what and why of what we saw. She’s also the one who will always jump into any blue lagoon with me. As Kyla points out, you won’t remember tomorrow how cold you were today. She is my favorite let’s-do-something-stupid adventure buddy. From berry picking to advanced math, and metal design to Middle Eastern desserts, Kyla is like Dwayne in that she will need several lifetimes to explore all the things that interest her. One of her (and everyone else’s!) favorite things about this year was having Cousin Esther stay with us for the summer.
If Dwayne ever leaves me, it will be for an older model, made of marble, mortar, and generous arches. This summer, he did a drone survey of our property that sounds expensive for our future. He was inspired by Greek temples, Roman arches and fountain extravaganzas. I’m crossing fingers that the project stays in the drafting phase indefinitely, but it was a known risk when we traveled to witness what scheming men with slave labor could accomplish architecturally.
Yeah, I still lose the “Does Denise like beer yet?” game.
Wes called me “Momstrosity” this year and of all the labels I have—substitute, small business owner, tutor, volunteer—this one is my favorite. Not because I love my kids that much, but because it’s a particularly clever wordplay. Ah, Wes gets me, he really gets me. More than reading (and apparently my family), I love adventuring. Dwayne and I could have lived out of our luggage for many more months. So it was quite the wake-up call to return home and have two properties and an RV with 4 months of backlogged maintenance needing me–and a minivan that promptly fell apart when I washed it for the first time in 3 years, proving my hypothesis that it is held together with love and dirt. I embrace it all for this age and stage, but someday I will own so little that I can live large. In the meantime, I adorably spreadsheet all the books I read (see blog for my ’22 favorites), play, and work, and dearly love all the peopley parts of my life, of which you, dear reader, are one.
~Because good fiction makes us better humans and these are some of the best.~
Title
Author
Denise’s summarily poor summaries
1
An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good
Helene Turstein
Oh, dear. “Maud is an irascible 88-year-old Swedish woman with no family, no friends, and…no qualms about a little murder.”
2
Crownchasers (and the sequel Thronebreakers)
Rebecca Coffindaffer
As soon as I started, I couldn’t put down this YA sci-fi with exactly the female protagonist I want to adventure with. Great characters, a puzzle-chase, hilarious AI, it has all the things I love about Sanderson’s Starsight series and is still very much its own story.
3
The Diamond Eye
Kate Quinn
Kate Quinn. Again. Why would I be interested in a Russian assassin, even if she’s female? Because Kate Quinn wrote it, and it might be my favorite Quinn novel–which sets an impossibly high bar for her books I haven’t yet read.
4
It Ends with Us
Colleen Hoover
After seeing this author’s name everywhere, I picked up this must-read. Why do we stay with abusers, the author asks to understand her own mother’s life, and are abusers more than their abuse? And what if he’s fun, interesting, and mostly good?
5
Lessons in Chemistry
Bonnie Garmus
Another book that is in everyone’s Top 10 this year. How does a brilliant woman in the 50’s become a chemist? Well, after years of being mocked, dead-ended, assaulted, etc, she falls into having a popular TV cooking show, using chemistry. If I could summarize the book well with one sentence, the book wouldn’t be worth reading, so know that there is much more to it than this.
6
Liar’s Knot
M.A. Carrick
Book 2 of the Rook and Rose trilogy. My perfect escape: a fantasy adventure with a deceptive female character who is uber-competent and creative, and fascinating complex characters who have to create a third way when there only seems two options…it checks all my boxes.
7
The Lincoln Highway
Amor Towles
This sort-of road trip story confounded my expectations at each bend and introduced me to some of the most intriguing characters, even as male teens, that I have read this year. Neighbor Sally is my spirit sister. It was perfectly plotted and prosed.
8
The No Show
Beth O’Leary
My fellow bibliophiles snatch O’Leary books as soon as they are published. Any book that takes me on a journey where I know I’m going, and then completely drops me on my head and makes me read the entire book again–right away–is my drug of choice.
9
Part of Your World
Abby Jimenez
These are not your grandma’s bodice rippers! Jimenez (like Helen Huang) definitely writes meet-cute-and-figure-it-out-from-there novels, but the romance is only a part of it. What are the real obstacles, what emotional baggage must be dealt with, who gives up what, is it worth it, what about careers and families? It is both mundane and impossible and very real.
10
The Rose Code
Kate Quinn
Kate Quinn continues to be my favorite historical fiction writer, though she is more like a time machine. Here, she takes you to the WWII code breakers desperately deciphering Enigma and its Axis siblings. The reader tramps all the way around Britain, and as well as up and down the emotional scale.
Sure, I left out Sullivan’s Farilane, Gaiman’s Good Omens, and Picoult’s Leaving Time, but I (painfully) narrowed down my ten favorite novels that I read in 2022, which gives me a little room for some delightful YA and worthwhile nonfiction:
YA
The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise
Dan Gemeinhart
From the Sasquatch YA list. A young heroine for the ages. Full of truth bombs and beautiful souls, as a young teen has to make it back to Washington, the only state that her dad won’t drive to.
YA
Pay Attention, Carter Jones
Gary D. Schmidt
Sasquatch YA nominee. I really enjoyed this book about a butler, a middle school cricket team (in NY), a sibling death, and a walk-out jerk father. Many layers.
YA
What I Carry
Jennifer Longo
Muir was born into foster care and she hopes this is her last placement before turning 18. However, instead of Seattle where she has been all her life, she is moved to Bainbridge, carrying only what fits in her suitcase, and refusing extra baggage, including relationships. So full of truth bombs, and feelings, and bittersweetness, this is a YA book that gave me all the feels.
NF 1
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory
Caitlin Doughty
Let’s talk about death. And the death industry. And how much Americans don’t like talking about death. I learned much about what we don’t talk about—and now just want to be composted into a tree.
NF 2
Attack of the Teenage Brain
John Medina
Okay, I needed this perspective of the teenage brain.
NF 3
When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi
The rarest of humans (neurosurgeon with degrees in philosophy and English lit) gets the rarest diagnosis and poignantly writes about dying as a young man.
NF 4
Untamed
Glennon Doyle
A third time read, I get something new each time I pick up St. Glennon. She started as a funny mommy-blogger but shifted into a hilarious truth telling warrior. Her spiritual peers are Brene Brown…and perhaps that’s it.
NF 5
How Jesus Became GOD:The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
Bart D. Ehrman
I love new thoughts and perspectives and Ehrman writes a readable scholarship as he details the journey of Jesus from crucified prophet to complicated God.
NF 6
Fuzz: When Nature breaks the law
Mary Roach
How do humans deal when animals are just being animals and it inconveniences, and sometimes endangers, us?
NF 7
Fair Play: A Game Chang-ing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do
Eve Rodsky
What is all the invisible work and why, really, why do women do so much of it? Dig deep, and then deeper. This gave me both words for what I do and a way of thinking about it.
NF 8
Invisible Women
Caroline Criado-Perez
Subtitle: Data bias in a world designed for men. Need I say more?
NF 9
The Persuaders: At the front lines of the fight for hearts, minds, and democracy
Anand Giridharadas
“We meet a leader of Black Lives Matter; a trailblazer in the feminist resistance to Trumpism; white parents at a seminar on raising adopted children of color; Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; a team of door knockers with an uncanny formula for changing minds on immigration; an ex-cult member turned QAnon deprogrammer; and, hovering menacingly offstage, Russian operatives clandestinely stoking Americans’ fatalism about one another.” Ideas burst, my brain explodes…all in a good, aha! way.
No one could be more thrilled with his new Thanksgiving turkey bonnet that my favorite gargoyle-who-is-technically-a-grotesque-because-Ernie-is-no-one’s-water-spout is sporting today, thanks to a late-night crocheting session by Piper. I am thankful for irreverent playfulness!
I love that I’m 48 and still get birthday money from my generous parents. I opened the hopeful envelope and got myself right down to a posh urban trek store that carries only European-made footwear. I fell in love with several options and took these hand-knit-socks-from-happy-sheep-inspired side-zip boots, because, you know, boot laces should only be decorative. And yes, I think I just wrote an entire poncy paragraph saying that I bought cute adventure boots with money my parents slipped me because, 48 years and nine months ago, they had sex for the first, and second to last time. Possibly.
And why did I need adventure boots? Because months ago, I booked the five of us a trip down to San Francisco, on the notion that 1) it’s my 3-day birthday weekend and Mama adventures on her birthday and 2) I wanted to tiptoe back into traveling with the kids, seeing if they have recovered enough from The Big Trip so that we could adventure domestically and explore iconic American cities.
Spoiler? The answer is no.
No, we can’t. However, we did have some highlights when everyone was enjoying themselves. Friday was a trip to Alcatraz and the audio tour was really interesting, and all the kids bought wanted books on the different escape attempts from the gift shop.
I was also able to demonstrate to my kids that I can be gobsmacked by new information. I had been to Alcatraz as young adult but I had never heard of the “Red Occupation” of the island 50 years ago. It was pretty interesting.
After Alcatraz and lunch, we convinced the kids that we should walk the long way back to the apartment by way of Ghiradelli Square, which was definitely NOT a place designed solely around chocolate. As Dwayne articulated later, if we had said over lunch, let’s go wander around for 3 hours before we head back to the rental, there would have been an uprising. But meandering down Pier 39 and checking out all the street performers, shops, highly caloric food offerings, sea lions–the whole carnival atmosphere on a reasonably warm day–before getting sundaes at Ghiradelli was a fun, un-whiney way to take a very long walk back to the Wifi. It was delightful and we had mostly convinced all five of us that traveling together is something we should keep doing.
Fortunately, Saturday arrived in time to prove us idiots.
It wasn’t all bad. Dwayne and I got a few hours at the Japanese Garden in Golden Gate Park–a huge green spot on the map that needs much more exploration.
We got to meet up with some of our favorite people to climb Coit Tower and have a disappointing walk-through of Chinatown and failed trolley attempts, which I had foolishly deemed iconic and necessary for this trip. Wes held it together only because Piper fell so apart so stupendously. I don’t think we’ll be able to go to NYC this spring. Sigh.
We recovered in time to have a delightful Sunday morning before flying home. Dwayne took the girls to the small aquarium on the pier, and Wes and I did some VR exploration, zombie shooting, and an obstacle course–I like how we like to play together. Now, in 30 years, my kids can revisit SF and regret trying to adventure with their kids. And then I will buy them a drink and we will compare notes.
Ernie is probably my favorite pet, and sometimes, possibly my favorite offspring. He blends his humor with his sense of style for sartorial commentary on our lives.
Here, Ernie subtly comments on Wes’s frequent lawnmowing, back when we still had green grass early in the summer.
Strawberry season!
I adore getting fresh bouquets at the farmer’s market, and end-of-summer sunflowers are especially cheerful…
… just like Ernie.
Ernie particularly enjoys his pirate costume Piper designed for him.
Next up, he will need an umbrella or a rain hat. The rainy season is finally replacing fire season here in the PNW.💕
I had one victory at the airport. While we were waiting in lines, large screens showed famous landmarks around the world where TurkishAir flies. Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia popped up and Wes remarked, “Oh, I know that. We were there. That was cool.” I have primary documentation that, at the time, Wes did NOT think the Sagrada Familia was cool or interesting. In fact, he could barely contain his apathy during the mere 2-hour self-guided tour I had arranged for us. But if he wants to remember otherwise, I am more than happy to support the revision.
And with that, and our under-the-weight-limit luggage, we left Istanbul for a 12-hour direct flight home.
How to make the most of the last day of The Big Trip?
Mama-style: Get us on a tour boat on the Bosphorus for relaxation, warbled historical lecture occasionally in English), and views of the palaces built by sultans when they got tired of the Topkapi Palace.
Younger’s style: hang out below deck of tour boat but refuse to look out the window. Their loss.
We started the day by walking the scenic way to the Covid clinic, as we were flying home on the second-to-last day of needing proof of negative tests to enter the US. We checked out the local coffee franchise for strength to continue our walk down to the wharf. It should be noted that after 8 days in Egypt drinking (or gnawing on) Turkish coffee with Mohammad, Dwayne really couldn’t stomach more than one cup of the authentic slop in Istanbul. Wes, our other household coffee drinker, who had gone from “sipsies” before the trip to ordering full-size afternoon cappuccinos for himself by the time we hit Italy, was also unable to stomach the Turkish version. I cried uncle right away and just went for the beer. 😉
Kyla, Dwayne, and I had one more item on our Istanbul Bucket List–a Turkish bath. I went in not completely sure what I was getting into but knowing I was going to enjoy it. The tension arose from, when being in a country where Kyla and I had to wear a headscarf in addition to modest clothing the day before, to how naked to get for a public bath. Let’s just say I had to go commando on the walk back to our apartment because I guessed wrong.
The entire experience was a lovely dream. It began with a mud mask and steam room before a full body scrub and deep massage, and finished with a cool water swim. It was heavenly and I must do it again.
For dinner, I wanted to do small dishes anywhere that sounded good as we explored the shopping promenade rumored to be in the direction Dwayne and I hadn’t yet explored. Wes and Piper went back after our first round of tapas, leaving the adventurous ones to explore the Thursday evening nightlife in the area–and it was fabulous!
We found our promenade right away and it began with a concert on a tram. The star played for a few minutes before waving goodbye as the tram took her further down to the next wave of fans. Decorative lights, exuberant crowds and new sights and smells made for a very festive atmosphere and Kyla barely got lost each time she stopped to dance to the music or give coins to a busker. I did the “ice cream trick” thing for the experience though the product itself was possibly the worst ice cream I’ve ever tasted. We had to cut our evening short when the youngers couldn’t turn the key hard enough to get into the apartment. Sigh.
We had a few hours the next morning before the van was supposed to pick us up, so Dwayne accompanied me on one last excursion–climbing the Galata Tower, which not only had great views, but also a museum of historical Istanbul. One of ah ha’s for me was this remnant of the Golden Horn chain:
This is a segment of the original near-half mile of chains. These 27 links add up to over 900 pounds.
The Golden Horn is the waterway that was the strength and weakness of mighty Constantinople. Strong, because it made the city a perfect location for trade. Weak, because where trading ships can enter, so can enemies. An enormous chain was forged, stretching from tower to tower across the water, in the 9th century. Eventually, complicated pulleys and magic allowed it to be raised and lowered, a bit like a drawbridge. It worked well to keep enemy ships out. It even worked well when enemy ships “pottaged” — landed, rolled foot by food over logs around the chain and then set back in the water. The Byzantines just set some of their old ships on fire and sent them out to engulf the invaders, who couldn’t escape because the damn chain was in their way. But the Ottomans, in 1453, somehow pottaged successfully and used gun power to get through the previously impregnable land walls. That last breech is considered the dying breath of the Middle Ages–and the end of the Roman Empire.
Outside our Airbnb, waiting to go home.
And thus ends my final history lesson before leaving for the airport. See you soon, Mom & Dad!
Needopedia 