2026: Monday August 24: Someone is eating my tomatoes

Yesterday there was a half eaten tomato by my front steps, which answered a lot of questions about why my tomatoes weren't producing as well as they should. It isn't just the oddly cooler-than-usual summer, it's also the critters. Probably the squirrels, since the tomatoes are too big for a chipmunk to lug around to the front of the house.

My over-the-back neighbor trimmed some of her bushes and now my hosta is getting too much sun. Oh well.

This dude isn't helping the situation the way I'd expect. We're calling him Ginger, and he's been a regular backyard visitor since early summer. He looks like he's hunting, but he's clearly not worrying whoever is taking my tomatoes too much. 

2026: Sunday August 16: Time! Marches on! (Again).

It is only August 16, but my summer is essentially over. Next week I start teaching - two courses in the Masters in Teaching program at Binghamton. I'm also taking a class myself, for the novel writing certificate I'm doing, plus I've volunteered to be a submissions reader for the literary journal that some of the people in my writing group run. This is all more than I've committed to in several years, so goodbye to leisurely breakfasts and taking days off whenever I feel like it. I knew all this was coming, it's all stuff I agreed to, and I've sort of been planning for it (syllabi are done and I've finished a very rough draft of my 1890 Binghamton story (100,000 words!)). 

What I did not agree to was having a root canal fail. If you've been following along for any length of time, you'll know my teeth are a whole saga. Sigh. Brush and floss, children! Don't be like me. Thankfully, my dentist had recently been to a continuing education course on root canals and recommended a new endodontist (I always want to leave out that extra "do" syllable") who was doing some fancy micro-surgical techniques and so on Tuesday I drove an hour (each way) to Scranton, Pennsylvania, of all places, to have my root canal re-cleaned and re-filled and honestly, the endodontist was great and explained what was going on in my tooth in a way that made root canals seem almost interesting. I am confident this work both needed doing and was done well. But now I have to go back to my regular dentist to restore the crown and blah blah blah, it never ends. But that is life. Well, it will end. But there is no moment of stasis where you're like, ah, now I am fixed. 

A photo of my tooth would not be that interesting or aesthetically pleasing, so enjoy instead these two pictures taken nine years apart of Ella and two of her cousins - Michael's nieces Lexi and Bella, who are awesome women who I love very much.

Looking south from near Carmel, California, Easter 2017, when Ella and I were doing a tour of west coast colleges

Encinitas, California, Summer 2026, after an extended family dinner at an oceanside restaurant. 

2026: Sunday August 9: California

Got back from California in the wee hours of this morning and spent the day accomplishing nothing but going to the grocery store and here it is bedtime already. 

We were a little north of San Diego with Michael's dad's family. 

We got up every morning before everyone else and took a long walk up and down the beach. 

Keeping an eye out for pelicans. 

Then we'd go get coffee and donuts made fresh to order. 

Probably saying something about the sorry state of the world, that or wondering at the business-speak of all the morning meetings going on around us. 

Then we'd head back to the house to do things with the family. 

Michael's step-brother Christian has rented a large van the last couple of years, all the better to haul the folks around. This is about half the crew.

Then we'd have dinner and hang out watching the sunset over the ocean. 

Somehow there are a million versions of this photo and in none of them are we all looking at the camera. 

Bird count: Lots of pelicans, a shore bird called a Hobsonian Whimbril, three types of gull (Western, California, and Heermann's), black phoebes, the tiny but loud Swinhoe's White-eye that I'd never heard of but which was everywhere, Allan's hummingbirds, osprey, a great egret that caught and ate three fish while we watched, ravens that a custodian in the school where they roosted told us said "Hey" because they'd learned it from him. A common loon fishing in the surf that honestly looked drowned until it popped up and said "Hey." What we think might have been a juvenile Yellow Crested Night Heron, except it was dark (they're nocturnal) and they're not regular to the region. 

And now there's a week until the semester starts and I'm not ready. (I'm teaching two classes this fall, I'll tell you all about it later.) 

2026: Friday July 31: Ink

I was planning this whole thing where I'd blog from my phone to make sure I could do it because I won't have my computer this weekend but here it is Friday night and I'd rather go to bed on time than try to remember passwords and type only with my thumbs.

So just dropping this in here. We got matching tattoos last month!!!! It's about as out of character as it is possible for me to get. I like mine a lot more than I expected. I was really nervous about "permanent" (I can barely decide on a haircut or an outfit). But it's just there on my leg, and every time I look at it I think about how cool the Great Lakes are and how much fun I've had on them with these people. 

Steve, Michael, Shaun, Me. Lucky Rabbit Studio, Alpena, Michigan. 

I could tell you all about the tattoo artist and the studio etc, but like I said, I'd like to get to bed on time. 

2026: Sunday July 26: Second in my age group

In any other city I'd probably get smoked by most of the other 60-something women running any given 5k, but at the Johnson City Carousel Days 5k, I can push myself just a little and come second in my age group. 

Photo by Confluence Running, a local shoe store that sponsored the race, and where I buy most of my running shoes. I get more comments on this shirt than nearly anything else I own. What can I say, people like Snoopy and Woodstock. ($4 at the Goodwill Op Shop).

See the person in the black shirt, back behind me and behind the person who is ready for her photo a few seconds too soon? That black shirt person was first in my age group, which means that at some stage she passed me. I knew right from the start I was running a little too fast and so, yeah at a little over halfway through, I slowed down and then whoosh, she went by and hit the finish about 40 seconds ahead of me. Which doesn't sound like much, but those were 40 seconds I could not make up. I was already pushing it, and I didn't want to injure myself because I still want to be running ten years from now so I can be second in the Women 70-79 age group. Got to have goals. 

2026: Sunday July 19: Apocalyptic

I'm kind of mad that I have to live through the apocalypse. I know, I know, the past wasn't always great and in fact was usually much less than great for most people. But twenty-first century politics, economic inequality, the info-tech hellscape, and the damn climate - it's hard to stare all the awfulness in the face at once. This week it was inescapable. 

That's wildfire smoke drifting down on the jet stream from burning northwestern Ontario. This never used to happen, but it has been three or four years in a row now when summer in Binghamton just goes smoky. 

At an Air Quality Index of 163 it is both very unpleasant and very unhealthy to be outside. Everything gets eerie and weird, like we're in a days-long partial eclipse. It smells acrid, like the neighbors are burning tires. We shut all the windows and hung out in the one room in the house with an air conditioner. I canceled my morning run. And my morning walk. And we weren't even in the worst of it. God knows how anyone in, say, Michigan, functioned. Most of it has dispersed now, as the weather pattern moved, but we're still not great and even today there were people walking in the park with masks. 

Ella and I sent photos back and forth. 

One of the best views of our valley is from the Target parking lot. It is a great place to see sunsets and watch storms roll in, so I stopped there on my way home from writing group. This was actually after the worst of it. Maybe I should have taken my time to set up this shot without the giant AT&T sign, but also maybe that is part of the story? 

This is either Brooklyn looking towards Manhattan or the other way around. The reason I can't tell is because you should be able to see the New York City skyline in the background. Instead there is just haze and the teeniest tiniest orange sun hanging there. Ok now I think about it, Ella took this in the afternoon which means the sun is in the west, so you definitely should be able to see the skyscrapers of Manhattan. But you can't. 

Now excuse me, I have to run out and buy some coca-cola so I can make a fernet con coca to drink during the Spain-Argentina World Cup final this afternoon. It's not that I am a fan of Argentina over Spain, or even that I like coke, but what am I supposed to drink? Sangria? Horchata? Gazpacho? But I do have a bottle of Fernet-Branca in the house and I've developed a taste for it. Here is one of our favorite cocktails to use it: 

I keep notes. 

2026: Saturday July 11: World Cup Soccer

Every four years I become someone who gives a damn about soccer. Non-sporty me can get quite invested in any event given the right circumstances. Baseball, tennis, olympic speed walking, I'll get totally sucked into the drama, I'll wonder at the skill, I'll care about the emotions of fans from countries I can barely place on a map. So this summer, I find myself on my feet in front of the television yelling as rich but incredibly fit and agile men with funny hairdos kick around a ball for ninety plus minutes, making some of the shadiest characters in international sports administration wealthy beyond belief.

I am very susceptible to the narrative of the underdog. Cape Verde! I'm fascinated by the internationalness of it all, the fact that the players know each other because they play together on teams in countries with no connection to their places of birth, a jumble of colors and languages and leagues. I'm intrigued that, in the words of one announcer, those countries then "dig into their diasporas" and recruit back players who were trained, raised, even born, far from their cultural origins. I love that racist Australians have to root for someone born in a Guinean refugee camp. I get sentimental watching men showing real emotion and affection, hugging and kissing each other at the end of the game, and I pretend I don't know that many of them are probably mysogynistic jerks the rest of the time. 

I will, however, refuse to go to any public watch party. The closest I ever got was the 2014 final (Germany!) that I caught in a bar at the Air New Zealand gate at LAX. But being around chants of U.S.A! U.S.A!? At the best of times that kind of jingoism makes me uncomfortable, in today's fascist age it becomes downright creepy. I'm even embarrassed for all those Norwegian fans fake-rowing in unison. I don't do that sort of thing. (I once refused to sing Pokarekare Ana in a Japanese hibachi restaurant in Port Moresby after a table of drunk Australian BP employees gave a solemn rendition of Waltzing Matilda. But then, you know I don't sing in public.)

Ok, that went off topic, but it prompted me to go look for this. I knew it was somewhere, took me half an hour to find just now because it was in the wrong place. This is maybe the day before or the day after the non-singing dinner in Papua New Guinea. 

1986: My friend Marnie and her mother buying fruit at the market. The two women watching them weren't the sellers, they were simply fascinated by white ladies shopping.