Tag: life
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This was my washing machine
Part of the This Is My series. This week we said goodbye to our washing machine, which according to its serial number was manufactured nearly 35 years ago in September 1990. For context: Goodfellas had just released in theaters, Saddam Hussein had just invaded Kuwait, and I’d just turned three years old. Time flies. Its sudden demise…
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Why the Nicole Kidman AMC ad matters
If you’ve been to a movie at AMC in the last two years, you’ve seen their now-legendary in-house commercial starring Nicole Kidman where she walks into a theater extolling the magic of movies, moviegoing, and AMC: It’s sincere, borderline saccharine, and immediately after its debut in September 2021 became a lightning rod for hot takes…
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On the passage of bathtime
There’s a quote I discovered floating around Instagram Reels that people use as narration for clips of their little kids: You have little kids for four years. And if you miss it, it’s done. That’s it. So, you gotta know that. Lots of things in life you don’t get to do more than once. That…
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A COVID movie journal
As I’ve been going through my old journals and digitizing the entries—a tedious and time-consuming process that will eventually yield a much more accessible and searchable archive—it’s been fun and enlightening to rediscover things I was thinking about at any given time. Like this entry from March 10, 2020: I hadn’t seen Contagion at that…
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Playground adventures anew
The playground at the park near my parents’ house is getting renovated, which means the place as I knew it from ages 11-18 will be no more. I’m glad for the memories I have from there, many of which are shared with my childhood best friend, Tim, who also lived a block away from the…
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This is the bookend
After nearly 7 years, today is my last day at my library job. It was my first full-time library position after a few part-time jobs out of library school, and for that alone I am immensely grateful. Whenever someone asks me how I like working at a library, I say I love it because every…
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Into his great daily unknown
We celebrated Little Man’s third birthday this week (well, fourth if you count his actual day of birth). While looking through my photos of him I noticed a motif of capturing him from behind as he ventures forth at varying speeds. I like this vantage point for a few reasons. Since we don’t post his…
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No disclaimers
As a drummer in my college’s jazz program, I once got recruited by one of the jazz guitarists for a paying gig he’d gotten at a local restaurant. I was interested not just because of the money, which was negligible (not that there is such a thing for broke college kids) but because the idea…
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Moon moon moon, shining bright
I was playing soccer on the front lawn this evening with Mr. Two Years Old when the moon, waxing crescent, caught his curious eye in the encroaching darkness. I asked him if he knew why the moon glowed. We’ve read books about it before, but he said he didn’t. I explained in the simplest language…
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Four Thousand Weeks in the Midnight Library
Matt Haig’s novel The Midnight Library asks: What if you could explore every what-if of your life, specifically those that turned into regrets? How many of your other lives would actually turn out better than your real one? It’s an intriguing philosophical question that quickly turns personal for the book’s protagonist, Nora Seed, who comes…
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Learning fictions
I’ve been on a fiction reading tear recently. In the last fortnight I’ve finished The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai, The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All by Josh Ritter, and The Midnight Library by Matt Haig—all with a mix of print and audiobook. I just started The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller on…
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Stargazing with WALL-E
Spent the holiday weekend at my wife’s family’s beach community, where they do a fireworks show every year on the beach. (Read my 2017 reflection about this experience.) Though it was fun to watch Little Man experience fireworks for the first time, my personal highlight was being able to see the clear night sky without…
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Mulch ado about gardening
We’re finally, finally, doing stuff in our yard and garden areas. Some of it is remedial caretaking—fertilizing and weeding the lawn, removing dead bushes and trees—but a lot of it has focused on beautification and planting vegetables we’re not totally sure will thrive but are giving a try anyway. I gotta say: I’ve really loved…