Helloooo!

Oh, wow. So this past month has been rough. Looking at it from a more positive angle, you could say it’s been one big lesson for Rae in flexibility. A few weeks ago we completely scrapped a vacation I’d been looking forward to since April to Atlantic Canada (New Brunswick, PEI, Nova Scotia) because Air Canada delayed-canceled-rebooked our flights for three days in a row until we finally pulled the plug. So we hopped in the car, and drove to Niagra Falls and Montreal for a few days instead. Another not-so-fun thing…one of my kiddos had a medical emergency and then emergency surgery, so we had three separate visits to hospital emergency rooms in less than two weeks. And our annual camping weekend with my extended family ended with us pulling up our tent stakes and fleeing our campground ahead of a giant storm that would have left us completely soaked, putting a rather abrupt end to what was otherwise a very lovely camping weekend.

Zooming out a bit: parenting in the age of climate change and a global pandemic is slowly dissolving any wisp of belief I might still cling to that I have any control over anything, ever. Parenting was already one big lesson in flexibility, in realizing that you’re just along for the ride so you might as well try to hang on and enjoy it, but when you throw other things like travel delays and health problems and insane weather on top of that…all bets are off. You know what I mean?

Lately though, in the world, the headlines, do you feel it? I feel like I’m beginning to detect a whiff of…dare I say hope? This past week alone, there have been enough tiny snippets of good news that I feel like can look at my kids and say “see? it’s not ALL bad!” And despite feeling some sadness over our lost vacation, the hastily-planned backup trip to Canada was actually quite lovely; I’ll put some photos from our trip at the end of this post.

Some other things to share with you this week:

decorating: I ordered the “Wildwoods” wall hanging from Heather Ross’ studio sale; it’s a photograph of a vintage applique quilt (original maker unknown) that Heather had printed on Belgian linen. Home decor is 100% not my strong suit so I hope it will help tie my living room and its many plants together.

reading: July was blessedly full of books that I can highly recommend: Lauren Groff’s Matrix (so good!), Jaqueline Woodsen’s Red at the Bone (so good!), and Jeanette Wells’ memoir The Glass Castle (strong similar themes to Tara Westover’s Educated…also so good!)

crocheting: Clementine learned how to crochet this tiny unicorn with Twinkie Chan’s Crochet Unicorn class from Creativebug and it’s SO CUTE. I helped and provided moral support.

sewing: Making more progress on my quilted coat. I’m getting so excited - it’s almost finished!

Ok! Pics from our Canada road trip: