My eldest went to boarding school (no drivers ed / no access to a car on which to practice), spent all summers past age 16 working in NYC (no need / no access to a car) and has lived her entire post-university life in major cities. She only very recently (like, this last August) got a DL, at age 28. Because the next chapter of her career (as a rabbi) will entail driving to congregant houses / wedding venues / gravesides / etc. Until she saw a need, she saw no need. (Youngest got one as soon as she was eligible. It's a good deal cheaper on parents if they wait, LOL)

Merrell moccasins. I am devoted to these shoes.

Awwww. Longtime lover of both hummingbirds and transition rituals that I am, I reaaaaaallllly loved Poetry Foundations' Poem of the Day for today, so timely for this thread. The Last Hummingbird of Summer, by Beth Ann Fennelly (audio link by the poet here) reveals itself in retrospect. Unlike the first, whose March arrival bade you gasp, hands clasped, like a child actor instructed to show joy, when the last departs for points south, there’s no telling, and no tell. Well, so what? You know their cycle. In August, they swarm the feeder, all swagger, greedy tussle for sugar water. Suddenly, September. Chill tickles your ankles. You reach for long sleeves and you fret. They’ve left? Not yet. Ear cocked for the symphony’s shrinking strings. Then comes a day without a ruby flash. Next day, they’re back. Next day, there’s one. Then none. Or maybe one? From porches, pumpkins grin. Your last had left, and left you uninformed. Kinda? Sorta? Can I say it?—like menstrual blood, again, between your legs. Your last, perhaps, or next-to-last, your no-longer-very-monthly monthly. So unlike your first crimson, at twelve, its “Yes-You-Are-There-God” annunciation. Well, so what? You know the cycle. Your body’s eggy miracle, unneeded now for years. And you hate waste. Why fill and dump and fill again the undrunk sugar water? Enough. Let’s progress to whatever season’s next. But still, a farewell ritual wouldn’t be amiss. The last hummingbird of summer, zinging from the feeder—to others, a smooth departure— to you, alone, unmistakably, dipping its wing.

re toxic lure of TikTok That is really interesting. I'm not on TikTok, and I don't know if you mean TikTok **literally and specifically** or more as a stand-in for social media more generally? But if you do mean TikTok, literally and specifically... it's sort of the Opium War with the roles reversed, gutting a society slow-mo, from the inside out.

You could easily do a 3-5 day trip that combined Sturbridge, then up to Plimoth, then on to Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth. Each one is smaller than Williamsburg, and that sequence makes sense to drive but is not in chronological order; but between the three you get a nice range of both time periods and also types of living. Of the three I am particularly fond of Strawberry Banke -- they do a different thing than any of the others, whereby each house is a different time period / immigrant group / socioeconomic class, so you really get a sense of how the city's population and business changed over time. It's neat.

As a general matter: no. No, when you get pregnant, you don't "know" the consequences of what raising a child with extensive disabilities will entail, even if you theoretically know there is a chance it might happen. No, when you get married, you don't "know" the consequences of how the marital balances will shift with even neurotypical children, with aging/ailing parents, with job loss/ career change, with often-evolving perspectives on fundamental matters of faith and community and politics etc, even if you theoretically "know" such changes are bound to happen. No, when you move locations, you don't "know" the consequences of navigating in potentially very-different communities and cultures, even if you theoretically understand there will be such differences. But most fundamentally of all, none of us "know" how we will ACTUALLY respond under even-such-ordinary stress, let alone extra heapings of extraordinary stress that a whole lot of people find themselves in over the course of life; nor how our partner will. We may believe, at 20-something, we know. But we don't know until we're actually there. This.

re identifying the resources / breaking down the steps required to "figure it out" This. And it's hard to overestimate how much being in either an extended state of anxiety, or the pressure of an extreme moment, impairs the ability of even someone who is usually able to figure stuff out, to do so while fighting other battles. One of my kids is enduring that now.

clawing the way back to attention span This is maybe a spinoff thread. With a CRAZY AMOUNT of intention and effort, I am amassing a toolbox, I have made a commitment to myself of a (modest) number of minutes a day to devote explicitly to the effort, and am trying concertedly, with thus far modest but nonetheless discernible ( = measurable) results, to claw my way back. Ironically, I need now to focus on prepping for a meeting I'm chairing later today, but perhaps I'll start a spinoff after that.

Audiobooks, how I clawed my way back to something approaching an attention span. A sorry shadow of my former self, but Better is Better.

Did you read Anita Diamant's Red Tent? bc this is #Genius yes of course I'm in... ...except.... DOGS, please...

I'm into Year 4 of nearly constantly cycling hot flashes. I exclusively literally ONLY wear sleeveless tanks with various sweaters and jackets so I can on/off in a ... flash... as interior weather permits. Yesterday I stood in my closet marveling at all the long sleeved shirts and sweaters and dresses still hanging... dustily, now... and wondered, will I EVER wear these things again? When normal people muse aloud, is it hot in here? is it cold in here? should I adjust the thermostat? I just shrug. Who knows? I have zero confidence in my own experience of temperature. What difference does it make? I just pile another sweater on, or fling off all my clothes, or huddle under a second blanket, it makes no difference, this moment will pass and then I'll be in a different moment. My wedding band doesn't fit anymore. Should I presume the swollen finger is PERMANENT and get it expanded, or will it recede when (if???) I'm on the other side? I could go on. I haven't personally experienced foot issues. Nonetheless I feel your pain...

I didn't read the locker thread. The older I get, the more I believe that knowing when to ask for help, knowing whom to ask for help, cultivating mentors and mentoring others are actually superpowers. I have one kid who is truly skilled at this. In important ways it really matters. And also in stupid ways. I can't count how often I've been wandering in some strange place with my husband, trying to find some destination, and he's pushing buttons on his phone and cursing that it's not reloading or the address is vague or whatever, while I walk up to some kindly looking stranger and just ask. Why is that hard? And yet it is.

I mean, whatever we think about The Monarchy Writ Large, both Diana and Meghan said quite clearly that the relentless scrutiny and utter lack of privacy drove them into serious mental health issues. People suffering physical OR mental health issues deserve privacy. There is no obligation to satisfy public curiosity prurience. Morally, that just isn't a thing.

re direction toward which such patriarchal gender-casting naturally drives Right. And the gains toward women having choices (including voting, access to credit, access to employment, decisionmaking over whether/when to marry and whether/when to leave marriage, decisionmaking over number/timing of children) are both quite recent in the scheme of things and also not settled permanently. See: associate pastor, casual statement, women don't "really" need the vote, presumably because wiser minds can make better choices on their behalf. Whatever errors the First and Second waves of women struggling for women's agency made -- and being human they made plenty errors -- the gains they did make are foundational to our lives today. The gains they made are also FRAGILE. (as also are the gains made by racial and religious minorities and LGBT population) The expansion of rights and choices does not inevitably and permanently go towards "more." There is a substantial and pretty-loud segment of our society today -- as in some prior societies -- that explicitly calls for a movement BACK, to a time when women (and racial and religious minorities and LGBT) had FEWER rights and choices. See: associate pastor, who without getting political is hardly alone. re pendulum swings and performative element OK this is not only #Hilarious but also surprisingly optimistic. What IS Milo Yiannopolus up to these days anyway? Off to the rabbit trails..

re Equal Credit Opportunity Act thanks to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It hasn't been all that long, and the rights that were won are by no means permanently or irrevocably secured. That case would not be received / accepted / decided that way, today, by the current SCOTUS.

I would also wish the mom wouldn't do her musing in such a public way. But, that musing-in-public is what social media recognizes/ rewards/ monetizes. I wish your daughter didn't have to endure additional salt in the wound of the breakup that the mom's-musing-in-public evokes. But, she'll almost certainly eventually come across it, if she hasn't already. I wish our society didn't run on SM. But, it does. This is what God created eyerolls for. Hugs to you and your daughter.

Padraig O'Tuama's Poetry Unbound and Krista Tippett's On Being. They kept me **afloat** during the worst of COVID.

Please thank your EMTs for their service for us.

Our local paper routinely does Back to School photos of kids coming off the bus, Seuss Day at the library with kids reading, Harvest Festival with kids picking pumpkins etc. With parent permission, without last names or identifying information. Also sports pictures / awards ceremonies / Scout achievements etc which do include full names (again with parent permission). Older kids who've done a particularly newsworthy thing are sometimes interviewed for a story, with full names. Barring a custody dispute or other extenuating circumstance I wouldn't think twice of photo images associated with any such thing.

Sure. The biggest was public speaking -- I greatly prefer writing > speaking, and also behind-the-scenes > in-front-of-the-room. But practice. Realizing that a) most of the time most of the people actually are NOT looking at us/ talking about us/ thinking about us/ judging us because most of the time they're deep inside their own concerns; and also that b) even to the limited extent that some of the time some of the people ARE judging us... most of the opinions of most of people don't actually matter all that much... is very liberating. I mean, so maybe one of the people at the program I did last night at our library on Early Voting DID think that my roots need highlighting, or that I spent too long on the part about wonky deep-in-the-weeds legislative details, or that a darker font color would have been easier to read on the screen, or whatever. That's OK. The world will carry on rotating on its axis and I will carry on to the next thing.

Once I finally aged out of the carpool/Minivan Mom era, I have only exclusively driven red Subaru Outbacks. I'm currently on my third; both the first and the second are still being used by family members at ~150K and ~250K respectively; and I plan never to drive anything else for the remainder of my life. Which simplifies MY life in a way I find extremely stress-reducing though it rather breaks my husband's heart as there is no decision process he enjoys more, or e x t e n d s m o r e p a i n f u l l y, than How Many Times Shall We Go Out to Testdrive?

re water lovin' willows Yes, essential point re underground pipes. I absolutely ADORE hakone nishiki willow, either clipped into formal shapes or flopping along profligately; and it is deer resistant. But IME it doesn't really like shade, whatever the suppliers allege. In my shade, it just sort of limps along greenly surviving, but its variegated tri-color glories only emerge in decent sun.

Yeah, I forgot bleeding heart ` They do quite well here wrt deer. The big bushy pink classic type blooms early; and there are white and upright versions that come in later. All of them have the quite`cherishable virtue of, once they're finished blooming, the foliage turns a nice golden color and thereafter recedes back into the earth so there are no cleanup chores.

For perennials, you can do a pretty nice mix of heights/colors/textures just with ferns, heucheras and liriopes (which come large and small, black to green to golden, with later blooms that the heuchera fronds), all of which are shade tolerant and relatively deer resistant. Around here, deer don't much go for astilbe either, and though their bloom cycle is short I think the ferny foliage is nice unto itself. I puffy heart LOVE the look of hakone on sloping bed sections, and it's shade-tolerant enough, but slow and thus somewhat $$ to get going. But if you're really hoping for a **drainage** benefit then you'll likely need some larger anchor shrubs and trees with more root structure. Pussy (or any willow really) would be good to try. In my area, spirea (a rather dull but indestructible shrub) is extremely tolerant of virtually all drainage/drought conditions and I think the golden versions look good next to tall dark green ostrich or cinnamon ferns. Hydrangea flourishes in pretty-wet soil but it's deer bait in many areas particularly when it's young and succulent (I've found that the older the bushes get the more the deer leave it to other things). And I've never grown river birch myself but you do *see* it growing apparently natively along rivers and streams out in the woods, so it must be relatively easy.

Everything above and wear presentable socks, as you'll likely remove your shoes.