Wordless Wednesday: Bladensberg Hike

 

Happy Parent Day to Me!

 

Relaxing Together

Wheeee!  Today it's been one year since my parent's came to live with us!

Other than some major health scares around last Christmas, it's been fantastic.  They have a their own little suite of rooms, but we tend to eat together and do fun stuff.  I think they have a nice combination of privacy and support.

Pray for us today, my dad is having his third (minor) surgery in three weeks.  It's exhausting, but, after this he should be both able to see really well and be out of pain, and he should be in really good shape heading into this winter.

It's been a a wild ride, but so fun, and so fantastic to have them here with us, getting to know their grandkids in a new way, and all of us getting to enjoy each other!

Happy Birthday, Zorg!

Zorg is TWENTY!

Congratulations and happy pandemic birthday!

It was just the ten of us celebrating (plus distanced well wishes from friends and extended family), but we had a great time!

To me, the 20th birthday is a more definitive adulthood marker, maybe because you aren't a teenager anymore.

•  20 Great Things About Zorg
• 
  
• 1. He is an Eagle Scout!
• 2. He sings beautifully.
• 3. He's really good at gaming.
• 3. He's a loyal friend.
• 4. He's always willing to lend a hand.
• 5. He's very honest.
• 5. He's really good at math and logic puzzles.
• 6. He's always up for some fun!
• 7. He can climb pretty much anything.
• 7. He's very good at probability.
• 8. He tells great stories.
• 9. He is always overflowing with ideas.
• 10. He really cares about other people.
• 11. He supports his family and friends in whatever they are trying to do.
  
  
  
• 11. He has gotten into role playing games in a big way.
• 12. He makes great mix tapes.
• 13. He's rocking the mustache!
• 13. He's doing great with (distance) college.
• 14. He's really funny, he's always making people smile and laugh!
• 15. He's having fun with college.
• 15. He's great at Tough Goals, or Dank Moles, or whatever that game is.
• 16. He's very friendly, as in makes friends everywhere, all the time.
• 17. He's interested in being a priest.
• 17. He always tries to do the right thing.
• 18. He's a very loving son!
• 18. He loves philosophy.
• 19. He has a very solid grounding in logic and ethics.
• 19. He's an AMAZING GM/DM!
  
• 20. He explains difficult concepts clearly and simply.
  
• 20.He loves God!

Poem of the Week: After Apple Picking

 

After Apple-Picking

By Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree

Toward heaven still,

And there's a barrel that I didn't fill

Beside it, and there may be two or three

Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.

But I am done with apple-picking now.

Essence of winter sleep is on the night,

The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.

I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight

I got from looking through a pane of glass

I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough

And held against the world of hoary grass.

It melted, and I let it fall and break.

But I was well

Upon my way to sleep before it fell,

And I could tell

What form my dreaming was about to take.

Magnified apples appear and disappear,

Stem end and blossom end,

And every fleck of russet showing clear.

My instep arch not only keeps the ache,

It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.

I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin

The rumbling sound

Of load on load of apples coming in.

For I have had too much

Of apple-picking: I am overtired

Of the great harvest I myself desired.

There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,

Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

For all

That struck the earth,

No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,

Went surely to the cider-apple heap

As of no worth.

One can see what will trouble

This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.

Were he not gone,

The woodchuck could say whether it's like his

Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,

Or just some human sleep.

HT: Poetry Foundation

Just picking apples at the store this year, unlike most years...

Poem of the Week: Question

 

Question

By May Swenson

Body my house

my horse my hound   

what will I do

when you are fallen

Where will I sleep   

How will I ride   

What will I hunt

Where can I go

without my mount   

all eager and quick   

How will I know   

in thicket ahead

is danger or treasure   

when Body my good   

bright dog is dead

How will it be

to lie in the sky

without roof or door   

and wind for an eye

With cloud for shift   

how will I hide?

 

HT: Poetry Foundation

Poem of the Week: September Midnight

 

September Midnight

By Sara Teasdale

Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer,

Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,

Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,

Ceaseless, insistent.

The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples,

The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence

Under a moon waning and worn, broken,

Tired with summer.

Let me remember you, voices of little insects,

Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,

Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us,

Snow-hushed and heavy.

Over my soul murmur your mute benediction,

While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest,

As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to, 

Lest they forget them.

HT: Poetry Foundation