02.26.14 (Wednesday night) - Another voluntary P report, this time on dinosaurs.



02.26.14 (Wednesday morning) - Even more snow on the walk to school (but luckily, again, no cancellations).







02.25.14 (Tuesday morning) - Snow on the walk to school (but luckily, no cancellations).



02.24.14 (Monday night) - P spent all weekend writing a report (for fun) on Abraham Lincoln. And then we lost it (turns out Dan loved it so much he kept it upstairs in a drawer so it wouldn't be ruined). So P spent Monday night rewriting it, she's awesome like that.



02.24.14 (Monday afternoon) - Grilled cheese cheers.





02.23.14 (Sunday morning) - Walking to Mika's for brunch. Finally some warmth.







02.21.14 (Friday afternoon) - Walking to Kelly's for happy hour.





02.21.14 (Friday morning) - Crazy hair day. F wore 5 headbands at the same time (her "crazy" is a little tame), P did her own hair.







02.20.14 (Thursday afternoon) - Picking F up from school (P has theater class).





02.20.14 (Thursday morning) - It's a steal Dad's headset type of morning.

02.19.14 (Wednesday afternoon) - Walking home.





02.18.14 (Tuesday afternoon) - Warm snow.







02.16.14 (Sunday afternoon) - Shrunken heads with Grandma.



02.11.14 (Tuesday morning) - Not quite awake.







02.07.14 (Friday afternoon, part II) - More Valentining.





02.07.14 (Friday afternoon, part I) - Valentining.











02.06.14 (Thursday) - Schoolwork.

well, Grace she's gone, she's a half-written poem
she went out for cigarettes and never came home
and I swallowed the sun and screamed and wailed
straight down to the dirt so I could find her trail
spread out across the Great Divide

well, I just came to talk, Saint Valentine
I never pictured you living here with the rats and the vines
ain't that my old heart hanging out on your lines
you're all fucked up, Saint Valentine

now I circle the bars on the promenade
while the girls in the glass, they're just throwing me shade
and I'm saving my coins up for Jingling Jane
she's out plucking strings in the pouring rain

see I'm all crooked feet, Saint Valentine
I've circled this map till it caught on fire
now Grace she's left you just skin and bone
well, you hang up your hat, but you can't call it home
you've tried and you've tried, but you can't call it home
you're the loneliest one, Saint Valentine
you're the loneliest one, Saint Valentine
you're all fucked up, Saint Valentine

- Gregory Isakov, Saint Valentine

all of my heroes sit up straight
they stare at the ground
they radiate

me, I'm mumbling in the kitchen for the sun to pay up
lonely is a ring on a cold coffee cup
I'm some sick hound
digging for bones
if it weren't for second chances, we'd all be alone

my hands they were strangers lost in the night
they're waving around in the dusty light
I'm waiting in the wings while the trees undress
cupping my ear to hear the wind confess
I'm a ghost in the garden
scaring the crows
if it weren't for second chances, we'd all be alone

I'm running from nothing, no thoughts in my mind
oh my heart was all black
but I saw something shine
thought that part was yours, but it might just be mine
I could share it with you, if you gave me the time
I'm all bloody knuckles, longing for home
if it weren't for second chances, we'd all be alone

I'm a shot through the dark
I'm a black sinkhole
if it weren't for second chances, we'd all be alone

- Gregory Iskaov, Second Chances

you were a phonograph, i was a kid
i sat with an ear close, just listening
i was there when the rain tapped her way down you face
you were a miracle…i was just holdin your space

well time has a way of throwing it all in your face
the past, she is haunted, the future is laced
heartbreak, ya know, drives a big black car
swear i was in the back seat, just minding my own

and through the glass, the corn crows come like rain
they won’t stay, they won’t stay
for too long now

this could be all that we know..
of love and all.

well you were a dancer, i was a rag
the song in my head, well was all that i had
hope was a letter i never could send
love was a country we couldn’t defend.

and through the carnival we watch them go round and round
all we knew of home was just a sunset and some clowns

well you were a magazine, i was a plane jane
just walking the sidewalks all covered in rain
love to just get into one of your stories
just me and all of my plane jane glory

- Gregory Isakov, Big Black Car

01.31.14 (Friday morning, part II) - I love when she turns and smiles before she walking through the doors.







01.31.14 (Friday morning, part I) - A cold walk to school. The kids always want to play on the ice.







01.30.14 (Thursday afternoon) - T's puppet show.





01.30.14 (Thursday morning) - Before school.











01.27.14 (Monday) - School work (and fun work), mostly P's art, with F's fireworks on the bottom.



01.26.14 (Sunday afternoon) - Flowers.

"Perhaps the immutable error of parenthood is that we give our children what we wanted, whether they want it or not. We heal our wounds with the love we wish we’d received, but are often blind to the wounds we inflict."

Andrew Solomon via Eleanor Limprecht (via Something Changed).

"Women should stick together and not do things like that. I see that now, but didn't then. I never thought of myself as being in any way like her, or coming to the same troubles, ever.

. . . .

Till it came to me one day there were women doing this with their lives, all over. There were women just waiting and waiting by mailboxes for one letter or another. I imagined me making this journey day after day and year after year, and my hair starting to go gray, and I thought, I was never made to go on like that. So I stopped meeting the mail. If there were women all through life waiting, and women busy and not waiting, I knew which I had to be. Even though there might be things the second kind of women have to pass up and never know about, it still is better.

. . . .

He always tells the children the story of how I went after him by sitting by the mailbox every day, and naturally I laugh and let him, because I like for people to think what pleases them and makes them happy."

- Alice Munro, How I Met My Husband

“One of the things that I’ve learned to appreciate more as President is you are essentially a relay swimmer in a river full of rapids, and that river is history,” he later told me. “You don’t start with a clean slate, and the things you start may not come to full fruition on your timetable. But you can move things forward.

. . . .

I have strengths and I have weaknesses, like every President, like every person,” Obama said. “I do think one of my strengths is temperament. I am comfortable with complexity, and I think I’m pretty good at keeping my moral compass while recognizing that I am a product of original sin. And every morning and every night I’m taking measure of my actions against the options and possibilities available to me, understanding that there are going to be mistakes that I make and my team makes and that America makes; understanding that there are going to be limits to the good we can do and the bad that we can prevent, and that there’s going to be tragedy out there and, by occupying this office, I am part of that tragedy occasionally, but that if I am doing my very best and basing my decisions on the core values and ideals that I was brought up with and that I think are pretty consistent with those of most Americans, that at the end of the day things will be better rather than worse.”

The cheering crowds and hecklers from the West Coast trip seemed far away now. In the preternaturally quiet office, you could hear, between every long pause that Obama took, the ticking of a grandfather clock just to his left.

“I think we are born into this world and inherit all the grudges and rivalries and hatreds and sins of the past,” he said. “But we also inherit the beauty and the joy and goodness of our forebears. And we’re on this planet a pretty short time, so that we cannot remake the world entirely during this little stretch that we have.” The long view again. “But I think our decisions matter,” he went on. “And I think America was very lucky that Abraham Lincoln was President when he was President. If he hadn’t been, the course of history would be very different. But I also think that, despite being the greatest President, in my mind, in our history, it took another hundred and fifty years before African-Americans had anything approaching formal equality, much less real equality. I think that doesn’t diminish Lincoln’s achievements, but it acknowledges that at the end of the day we’re part of a long-running story. We just try to get our paragraph right.”

A little while later, as we were leaving the Oval Office and walking under the colonnade, Obama said, “I just wanted to add one thing to that business about the great-man theory of history. The President of the United States cannot remake our society, and that’s probably a good thing.” He paused yet again, always self-editing. “Not ‘probably,’ ” he said. “It’s definitely a good thing.”

- "Going the Distance, On and off the road with Barack Obama", David Remnick the New Yorker January 27, 201