i feel about this white. and about this dry. i need a week of 95 degrees and 95% humidity. and a foo-foo drink.

white finger starfish

florida

this is the big frozen period at the end of the iconic teenage text message called “K Dot.” It’s when you end a text conversation coldly, like this: “K.” It says that you emphatically have nothing further to say, because you are exasperated with your correspondent. It means, “End of conversation,” with an implication that the recipient of the K Dot has been, at best, lame, and at worst, infuriating. we have a sixteen year old in the house. we have received quite a number of K Dots over the last several months, both verbal and textual. we have come to accept that we are, as parents, both lame and infuriating. we are, on the one hand, exasperated ourselves at being bossed around by a creature whose diapers we were changing not long ago, and on the other hand, charmed at the pluck of our assertive daughter, as she builds the walls of her adult self on the foundation of a succession of boundary-setting K Dots.

snowball

saint paul, minnesota

ok people. this is what you get when in addition to groceries, laundry, lunch, dinner and still blog, i am also asked to put together several collections of my images sorted by color. you get bracket fungus. from a stump. next to my driveway. i’m phoning this one in. can you hear me now?

bracket fungus

saint paul, minnesota

our household has a busy season and a slow season. this is our busy season. my husband steve is a tax guy. from mid-january to late april, he will put in nearly a year’s worth of work, spending seven days a week down in his office. but it buys him six months off (mostly) during the remainder of the year. and he likes that bargain. the kids add some intensive piano practice to their homework this time of year, because this also happens to be the six-week season of a state-wide piano competition (both kids are finalists!). normally, all this busyness works, because i have flexibility and can pitch in to make sure all the i’s get dotted and all the t’s get crossed. but this week, the cold weather handed us a frozen boiler pipe in one of our rental properties in minneapolis. steve will be dealing with that by text and email tomorrow, between and among his seven tax appointments. and i have an extra agenda item too. remember that little local company i mentioned a few weeks ago? well, i have been a busy beaver putting materials together for them at their request. i deliver my first milestone on monday. and boy oh boy am i looking forward to a little down time and a return to routine. anyway, as a result of all the reviewing of my portfolio i have been doing, i ran across this junco wing photo i never published before.  “one from the cutting room floor” they call it on instagram.

junco wing

saint paul, minnesota

insulation is just a fancy way of making air stand still. in minnesota one of the concepts you grow up knowing about is r value. windows, doors, fiberglass insulation, down jackets, all have an r value, meaning a particular resistance to the infiltration of heat or cold. when air is moving, it has almost no r value. that’s why wind feels so cold. trapped air, on the other hand, has the kind of r value that can keep you warm through the coldest night. it’s something you think a lot about when you live in minnesota with a short haired dog, a small flock of fluffy chickens, a newly balding husband, and 30 below windchill blowing in across turtle lake. the coyote in this photo trapped a lot of air inside that wiry fur. it kept him warm through several winters, until something blew in from highway 88 that couldn’t be resisted with r value.

coyote tail

minneapolis, minnesota