thedaveandkimmershow

[thedaveandkimmershow]

May was a transitional month for us. Definitely from not that sunny to super sunny. From largely indoors to largely outdoors. From no yard work at all to sawing branches off trees waaaaaay up high..

First things first, though.

In my we downloaded the Audible version of "The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping". This is the story of the second Hunger Games Quarter Quell (if you're familiar with The Hunger Games universe at all). It's the story of Haymitch.

It's a brutal story, by the way. The darkest, the meanest, the most personally cruel and, because of all that...

The most heartbreaking.

We were hooked from the first word (because Haymitch) and were both outraged and horrified by the story that unfolded while rooting for our heroes the whole way.

Didn't take long, sadly, before we were all the way through the book and now we're outraged by how long it's taking to get the movie done. Not 'til November of next year if you can believe it.

In the meantime, we're making do with casting announcements. 😕

May 11, Mother's Day, we celebrated with my mom & dad at their place in town. We brought some treats for them, courtesy Kimmer's inspired cooking, picked up Linzy on our way into town and enjoyed some lovely Mother's Day family time together.

Since it always works better for us to not pile up events onto a single day of holiday, we celebrated Kimmer's Mother's Day the Sunday following on the 18th. Linzy drove up to join us with delicious, chocolate-y desserts to go along with some appetizers while we set up the Harry Potter Monopoly game she bought us for Christmas. Since we had not taken the game out for its inaugural play, the three of us took up residence at the dining room table and played Monopoly, Harry Potter style.

It's a fun and clever game, faithful to the books and movies. Unfortunately for us, Linzy plays the general game of Monopoly more faithfully than we do, going so far as to study game strategies.

So yeah.

She won.

And we all had a fantastic time together.

QUOTES OF THE DAY:

"Just because it's Mother's Day doesn't mean you get to CHEAT."

"Mom, it's your turn. Get your face out of the whip cream bowl."

🤣🤣🤣

Rolling into the fourth weekend of May, this one the three-day weekend that includes Memorial Day, the season seemed to finally accomplish a profound change (knock on wood). Which is how we wound up to our eyeballs in weeds and grass, bushes and trees. Weeding, weed whacking, pruning, trimming, and wood chipping (Kimmer's favorite activity).

End of that first weekend day, Saturday, we decided to celebrate not only a job well done but also the fact that, after many months of work on a paper for her doctoral studies, an effort that included a pivot and restart of said paper, the verdict came back earlier that week:

100%.

Yeah.

She nailed it. 😁😁😁

Since I had a gift card provided to me by my boss last Christmas, we found our way down to Johnny Mo's Pizzeria in Edmonds for the tastiest, definitely the most expensive, pizza we've ever had. It was glorious! Just as the day was glorious as soon as we grabbed hot showers and sat down at tables before a Puget Sound sunset.

The next morning, it's back to the yard, the sun fully out, and today we're cutting a lot of branches. Low to the ground to start. Then, before you know it, I'm high up on a ladder leaned against a large tree in our backyard sawing away with actual, you know, hand saws. Not optimal... as I would learn the next morning. But I did hit on a mid-sized one that work real well. So well, in fact, that I was five inches through a six inch diameter branch before Kimmer caught what I was doing and got me to stop.

Why?

Because the branch went out then up. It was a lot of weight that might slam into the neighbor's house a few feet away, might land straight down on our fence, smashing it, or land on a nearby arbor, destroying that.

In an effort toward safety, we tried getting a rope up and over the branch to gain control of it, direct its path toward the ground as soon as I cut through the remaining inch.

To no avail, though. That was just a stupid hard task to achieve so Kimmer tied one end of the rope to the bit of branch she could reach from the top of the ladder... then tied the other end to the thick wooden frame of our swing set.

Amazingly, the branch still felt solid even though I had sawed most of the way through. The rope for good luck. We were sure it wouldn't be necessary.

The next morning, of course, that branch came down. We didn't see it. We didn't hear it. It didn't slam into anything. It didn't smash or destroy anything.

It came down on the one patch of lawn that was free of any object on which it could land.

So yeah.

Everything worked out despite our best efforts. 🤣🤣🤣

May for me was more AI post-production experimentation, a short historical ditty focused on art and a 16th century artist. During the course of my efforts, I turned grey footage into fully technical sunlit imagery complete with lens flares and clouds in motion. I used old footage to create better variations of new footage. I indulged some lovely text to video magic. I conjured artists painting in nature. I navigated virtual cameras across the canvases of art history. I liberated our host from a museum in Switzerland and inserted him into a museum in Germany. I made a 16th century horse drawn carriage traversing a mountain road. I made a wooden ship with crew on deck sailing a raging sea while a virtual camera flies an arc from one side of the ship around the bow to the other side. All the while waves are crashing and water is splashing and misting. I made a medieval map of western Europe to add to the travel vibe. I added 16th century ghosts to a courtyard at Hampton Court, the English castle.

Yeah.

I'm a million miles from where I was when I embarked on my career. 😁😁😁

Linzy had a busier month of gigs that went beyond what she thought would happen in May. For us, the highlight was the Fireside Lounge at Willows Lodge on Thursday the 29th for some wind, fries, and a charcuterie board of meats, cheeses, and toasted breads... accompanied by the lovely voice and guitar of Linzy Collins.

Also, here's the latest version of her Artist Bio she shares with wineries, cafes, and lounges:

"Linzy Collins is a born performer with a voice like honey and a deep well of musical influences at her command. A member of two of Seattle’s beloved supergroups—Midnight High and The Little Lies: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac—she’s graced some of the city’s most iconic stages, from The Moore and The Crocodile to Climate Pledge Arena. Shaped by legends like Billy Joel, Tears for Fears, Ella Fitzgerald, and Taylor Swift, Linzy blends classic inspiration with modern charisma. Raised in a music-loving family steeped in vocal jazz and classic rock, she has a natural gift for making audiences fall in love with the familiar all over again. Her performances are rich with nostalgia, romance, and a timeless charm that lingers long after the final note."

Well dang.

Doesn't she sound good.

❤️❤️❤️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Okay since everything turned out okay I can tell you this story.

It's not, by the way, a story that makes us look great. But it is a great story.

On Sunday we engaged in all kinds of yard work that inevitably, inevitably wound up with me waaaaay up on a ladder sawing branches off a tree with various hand saws we happen to have in our garage. Through the course of the afternoon/evening I used a big hand saw, a small hand saw, and a medium hand saw on branches the width of a pencil to branches six inches in diameter.

Now, all this branch cutting is leading up to one of these six-inchers, the only six-incher, in fact, being cut down. A weird branch, it juts out a few feet from the main trunk then arcs upward to the sky, branches shooting out from it along the way up between the tree's other, proper branches.

I actually started on this branch with the big saw... but the progress wasn't much for the physical exertion I applied. So I moved on to all the other branches. Later, when I turned my attention back again, I tried the small hand saw... but that was also gonna take forever.

Then I grabbed the medium hand saw and suddenly I was sailing through: one inch, two inches, three. Until Kimmer looked up in horror and told me to stop.

So I kept going.

Four inches.

Four-and-a-half.

Until she seriously urged me to stop so I stopped.

From her point of view, the problem was quite obvious. I don't know what exactly I was thinking... but one of the possibilities was that, once I cut enough through the branch, the whole thing would rotate and slam into the neighbor's house.

The whole thing would come down hard on our fence and demolish it.

The whole thing was gonna come down on our arbor and demolish it.

Given the arc of possibilities, there's no way nothing was gonna get smashed.

It seemed just then that our move should be to get a rope over the branch farther up so we could guide its ultimate descent from the ground.

So.

I climb back up the ladder with a terribly thick blue and white striped fuzzy rope (it's just what we had), a 2x4 attached to the end of the rope, and, once I'm up top, I tried to lob it over the branch from there.

On my first try, the 2x4 flew halfway before not enough rope pulled it down toward the ground. A bit like pitching a ball into the dirt between home plate and the pitcher's mound although, in my case, we're talking about a distance of five feet.

Yeah. Embarrassing.

So I gather more rope and try it again once. Try it again twice. Then tried extending my arm holding the 2x4 to see if I could shove it over the branch. But the best I could do is get it on top of the branch but no further because...

Because it turns out there's another branch behind that branch that's preventing me from pushing the rope over and behind it. So down the ladder I go with the rope, back up the ladder I go with the hand saw, cutting off this second branch then down the ladder I go with the hand saw, up the ladder I go with the rope, pitching it over the branch, but...

No.

It doesn't and it never clears no matter how I try to pitch or push.

Completely defeated, I climb back down the ladder, handing the rope over to Kimmer who feels like she wants to give this a go from ground level.

So.

Twirling the rope beside her like a cowboy, she then releases it underhand, sending it—

Oof.

It goes a few feet, jerks back, crashes to the ground.

Why?

Because Kimmer's standing on the rope.

So yeah. That happened.

She then tries a couple more times not standing on the rope but with plenty of rope free to travel the full distance. Sadly, this method never works to thread that small bit of clearance between the branch above her and the one above it.

Eventually she, too, gives up in defeat and decides we are officially done with the day's yard work. Before we pack everything up and stash it all back in the garage, though, she ties one end of the rope to a section of branch she can reach from the top of the ladder and, after climbing back down, ties the other end to the thick wood frame of our swing set 20-30 feet away.

We were hoping, we were trying to loop the rope farther up the branch for more control...

But this'll just have to do.

Even having cut most of the way through, the branch seems secure. Definitely it's not going anywhere so we'll just come back to this task the following morning.

And with that, we're done! Putting everything away, catching well-deserved hot showers, we eventually head off to bed for a deep, deep sleep.

The next morning we wake to another sunny day and breakfast in bed... then lounging part of the morning in bed. At some point, Kimmer thinks to look up YouTube videos about limbing trees. That's right. She looks it up the day after I've been happily sawing off branches without a care in the world.

Hey. At least she looked.

Never did it occur to me to look up how to do what I had no idea how to do.

And yes. It turns out there is a best way to limb thick, heavy tree branches.

Three cuts: the first underneath the limb about 6-8 inches from the main trunk. You mainly need to be all the way through the bark to prevent more bark than necessary being ripped from the main trunk by the weight and force of the falling limb. Ripped bark is to trees what a gash in our skin is to humans.

The second cut is one you make all the way through the limb a few inches further up the branch. Bark is ripped off in the process but that strip is stopped by the first cut.

The third and final cut is the one you make, again all the way through, nearest the main trunk at the "collar" of the branch. All these cuts assure the least amount of damage to the tree.

Okay. Got it.

So then we get up, ready to start the day and resume our work.

Now. Remember when I said "Even having cut most of the way through, the branch seems secure"?

I was serious about that. Even with the amount I sawed through from the top (5 of 6 inches, I think) the branch felt immovable. And so it remained as Kimmer tied it to the thick swing set beam, as we put everything away, indulged hot showers, went to bed, slept deep deeeeeep sleeps until at some point the tree limb's weight began to shift.

How do we know this?

Because in the morning, after we researched the proper way to cut down such a limb, Kimmer walked into the kitchen, looked out the windows above the sink, and saw it.

I don't remember what she said or the sound she made... but it effectively was a distress call. So I booked it out of bed, down the hall, into the kitchen, and yup.

The tree limb was down.

The tree limb came down exactly where we meant it to. Oh sure, I know it looks like it demolished the white frame arbor... but Kimmer'd already flattened it the day before because it was already doing a pretty extreme Leaning Tower of Pisa routine. So she preemptively laid it all the way flat to the ground.

The limb, then, managed in the night or early morning to avoid smashing into the side of our neighbor's house, crashing down on our fence, or smashing the arbor. In fact, had the arbor remained standing, the amount of lean away from the tree might've meant the limb could've barely missed the arbor.

Maybe.

Unlike the Hunger Games, in this case the odds turned out very fortunately in our favor. The limb landed pretty much where we would've guided it to. It wasn't a catastrophic event. Its departure from the main tree trunk made no sound of which we or any of our neighbors took note.

It just happened.

Perfectly.

No thanks to us.

🤯

[thedaveandkimmershow]

One word:

Johnny Mo's Pizzeria.

Okay so at the end of our first 70 degree Saturday (complete with blue sky sunshine), a day on which we spent the afternoon indulging physically demanding yard work hacking tree branches, weed eating grass, pulling long grass/weeds by the roots, wood chipping, and hauling 30 gallon bags of yard debris...

We both decide it's time to indulge a lovely evening.

Therefore.

We pack everything back into the garage and back into the tool shed and score ourselves some really lovely hot showers.

Mmmmmmmm.

By the time we're out the door and on the road, it's 8 and the sun's on its way down.

No problem, though, because we're on our way to Johnny Mo's Pizzeria from which we will see the sun actually set behind the horizon.

We've got time, is my point.

Edmonds is still hoppin' by the time we roll into a parking spot so we park two blocks over and two blocks down, walking through the heart of Edmonds, passed the convention center where we used to celebrate the Passover Seder event hosted by Small Beginnings even though we're not Jewish (culturally or otherwise), passed the headquarters of Rick Steves Europe, passed the Church Key Pub we went to that one time, passed that one alley with its photorealistic painted walls, passed the movie theater and its three-hour Mission Impossible finale, passed the burger joint at which Linzy worked completely insane split shifts for a very short amount of time long long ago, passed the bakery next to it, across the street passed the Starbucks at which, pre-pandemic, people used to hang out both outside and inside, passed what used to be that pet store I visited once upon a time with Linzy and one of her friends. Now, in what was once the parking lot of that pet store, there resides a brand new two-story building with a line snaking out onto the sidewalk from the Molly Moon's that's open there at ground level. Around the back, up the stairs to the second floor, is our destination, Johnny Mo's, where setting sunlight is streaming into the space.

It's both striking and beautiful.

Since we're within half hour to close, there's no seating on the outdoor balcony which is fine 'cause as soon as the sun sets we'll definitely feel the temperature drop out there.

Meanwhile, we're handed laminated menus, front and back, our eyes quickly latching on to a heading:

WHITE NY PIES

$29 / $37

Huh?

So we ask our server what that is and they tell us the color refers to the sauce. In this case, white sauce.

The next question, of course, is what's a New York Pie?

The answer, as I understand it from our server, is mainly a question of form. A New York style pizza is thin crust with very wide slices. Its alternative, the Chicago style pizza, is deep dish with the ingredients added in reverse.

Something like that.

At this point for us, the way forward is clear. Deep dish is a No Fly Zone. Also, we've been going without the red sauce as a matter of taste for a while now.

So.

A White NY Pie's the call. And for tonight:

ARUGULA BIANCA

Mozzarella, ricotta, roasted garlic, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and topped with baby arugula and prosciutto.

The pizza takes some time cookin', but when it arrives, it is a revelation.

Doesn't even look like there's all that much on the pizza but the flavor, the quality of the crust, is undeniable.

We also, however, understand we're probably not gonna do this again unless. You see, we're here as a result of a gift card Christmas gift my boss gave me. And tonight we're taking full advantage of it, a celebration of the perfect score Kimmer received on the paper she's been crafting over months and months like a da Vinci sculpture. It was a relentless challenge, derailed and redirected by her professor, a disregulating pivot at the time that she muscled through to perfection.

100%.

So tonight we're celebrating with a thirty dollar pizza and a pair of ginger ales ('cause we already had NA beers today to go along with the yard work).

Yeah.

Thirty dollar pizzas are not gonna be our way of life. Unless, you know, another gift card shows up at the end of the year. We definitely wouldn't say No to that. 🤩

In the end, a lovely date night was hàñybith of us. Even came with its own sunset.

It even came with its own sunset.

☺️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

We began the month of April already camped out above the Pacific Waters of Crystal Cove. Once again, we’re traveling and camping in an Escape Campervan we scored from the Inglewood HQ over by LAX.

Our days haven’t settled yet into full-blown California sunshine but we are having a peaceful experience which we gladly and gratefully accept.

The next day we’re early celebrating Kimmer’s nephew with his dad and friends at the actually & thankfully nearby Ruby’s Diner, the one with those classic cars parked out front. We’re there as afternoon transforms into sunset and as milkshakes, burgers, ‘n fries transform to empty tumblers and empty plates all of which eventually gives way to a lovely, peaceful nighttime along the mighty Pacific Ocean.

Thursday Kimmer’s cousin & nephew leave us in the morning to our own devices. While they make their way home, Kimmer ‘n I take the opportunity and, finally, the full-blown California sunshine to take a walk on the beach. A looooooong walk on the beach featuring surf, sand, beachcombing, coupla beers, a quick stop up above at the local Shake Shack for burgers ‘n fries, then the lazy walk back to our van to complete about four and a half miles of relaxing an afternoon away before heading home.

Friday’s a lazy day, Saturday’s a lazy day basically living in a home in Irvine. We manage a walk to the local Starbucks before prepping some food for a potluck and joining a dear friend at his home to hang and have dinner and just enjoy the night.

And then finally… Sunday. The voyage home.

Linzy’s been busy, of course, doing the young adult professional thing. Aside from her teaching gig at Off The Wall, she performed at the Palisade Restaurant across the month as well as with Midnight High at Add-A-Ball in Fremont. In the meantime, gigs are piling up for The Little Lies in the summer.

As for us, the rest of our April was the full court press of our everyday life that features Kimmer’s doctoral studies and clinical responsibilities. Which means there are always a lot of charts to do and a hugely major research paper into which she’s in deep.

One definitely out of the ordinary occurrence in April landed on me Friday, April 11: the public announcement of the regional Emmy nominations in which I've been nominated in my craft of editing.

The work I submitted was a documentary on Youth Incarceration presented by Eric Trupin, PhD, of the University of Washington, a psychologist and professor of UW Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

And then...

Easter.

Due to how are month played out, we moved our own Easter celebration one week later with dear friends and family… and a pair of kids looking forward to an Easter Egg Hunt with which we indulged them: for the little girl, a specially prepared challenge in our front yard; for the little boy, a specially prepared challenge in our back yard after which prizes were awarded based on numbers found in random colored plastic eggs.

It was actually a lovely way to play out the month. A special prize, if you will, for finishing up our time in April.

:-)

[thedaveandkimmershow]

I think I started the practice in college which is weird since I didn't know that many people in the different classes I took that well. It was largely big classes filled with strangers.

Still...

Somewhere in those five years I started writing down memorable quotes I heard in class. I wrote them in the margins of my notes or at the top of the page. If I heard it and something about it hit me in any way, there it would appear somewhere around my notes for the class.

After university, I signed up for the Music & Video Business program at the Art Institute of Seattle. Since I traveled the entire program with the same cohort, there were plenty of quotes that made their way into the pages of my notes. So by the time I was released into the wild, my ears were finely tuned to the quotable wherever I happened to find it.

Now, my habit was to carry around a note pad that captured everything I learned, everything I had to remember in my professional career. And of course quotes found their way into those pages. It's a practice that continued as paper and pen gave way to digital notes on my smartphone.

Of course getting married, becoming a father, that was quite fertile ground for plenty of exclamations and conversations that caught my ear. And eventually the best of the best, the most memorable found their way into a section of our family Christmas letter reserved for just such entertainment and insight.

So.

This afternoon we're playing Monopoly. Monopoly, that is, specifically themed by the Harry Potter book and film franchise. And during this game, a thing is said—two things are said, actually—that catch my attention. And before I think to write the first one down, Linzy says she's looking to make this year's cut. That section of our old Christmas letter in which, yes, our daughter is quoted often.

Adorable that she remembers those old letters, by the way. What really captures my attention though is her admission to documenting the same thing in her life. Memorable quotes by anyone and everyone around her that she documents on her phone, organized by person.

Dang.

And just like that.

I passed on a tradition.

😁

[thedaveandkimmershow]

She wanted to be a mom which meant that we were gonna be parents which meant that I was gonna be Dad, a role for which I'd never aspired, imagined, or prepared.

She, on the other hand, was crazy prepared. Of course it didn't hurt that she was a nurse practitioner at the time. That was incredibly helpful over the years especially as her nurse practitioner degree gave way to multiple health specialties and Masters degrees.

It didn't hurt she had that knowledge and expertise in her wheelhouse. And while health is a crazy important responsibility of parenthood... it's but a corner of the parenting universe. "What To Expect When You're Expecting" doesn't even come close to beginning to address what's in store for the impending parent.

Seriously. With a title like that I actually expected it to. 😡

My north star, though, when it came to navigating, well, everything was and is Kimmer.

Everything?

Like what?

Right off the bat, what to expect when our daughter was a baby then a toddler then a child then a tween then a teen. She ballparked stages of human development for me along the way.

Of course there's no counting on expectations when we're relentlessly confounded by random turns of events. Not only that, as our daughter grew older, the subset of the world to which she was exposed grew exponentially. The subset of human beings to which she was connected... same.

The whole thing was a wildly expanding network of intellectual challenge, emotional turmoil, physical/biological/neurological changes on the fly, a whirling circus of social and relational tests, and the ever-changing demands of learning.

It is an unending, ruthless, full court press experience and it was Kimmer who either knew how to approach these challenges, knew how to figure them out, or at least had a first step up her sleeve.

Of course it's Mother's Day gospel that moms can do all these things, which is true. But it isn't until you examine the stormy seas in which moms operate on behalf of their children, on behalf of their families, that you get the full scope of the motherhood gig. For example, I can juggle three balls. I can't do that, though, while running. I can't do that, though, trying to cross a high wire a hundred feet off the ground. I can't do that while pressing a persuasive argument. I can't do that in a building on fire.

And so on.

And yet.

And yet.

Moms do the mom thing in ways more profound and pressing and obstructing and confounding and frightful than that. There is no simple multitasking to what they do and how they do it. They are levels of complexity beyond our poor understanding of mere doing more than one thing at the same time.

So yeah.

No matter how confounding the swirl of world around us became, Kimmer was and is our north star, able to help shoulder the weight of growing up, able to figure out complexity on the fly, to pivot as we all continued to grow up, and, most profoundly, to help me be the kind of dad I would've never been...

Without her.

☺️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Whatever a mother's starting point, however she comes to motherhood at whatever part of her life in whichever circumstance.... motherhood itself plays out, will always play out, in a relentlessly changing environment.

Even on a good day.

One of my first major insights into motherhood happened at a gathering of a family friend with "kids" ranging from late teens to late twenties. During the course of the afternoon, I observed any number of interactions between she and her son and daughters until finally it hit me.

There is no finish line. There is no moment of nailed it... done. The Mom gig never ends.

It never.

Ends.

Fresh with this insight, I took a private moment aside to ask our friend if this was so and she didn't hesitate to say it was so as if that was the most obvious thing.

Which I suppose it is.

I just didn't realized it until right then.

With motherhood there's always a need of the moment. A thing to be done. A comfort to share. A behavior to instill. There's always the full gamut of human perception and expression in which she walks with her children as they grow up. As they change as they grow up. As they fail as they grow up. As they're challenged as they grow up. As they swerve all over the road as they grow up. As they shine as they grow up. As they learn as they grow up. As they become who they'll be as they grow up. As they persist as they grow up.

As they prevail.

All of which all of which all of which are not processes confined to the first eighteen years of life.

18, 19, 25, 26, 31, 32 the Motherhood gig continues albeit in different, transforming ways.

So.

Whatever a mother's starting point, however she comes to motherhood at whatever part of her life in whichever circumstance.... motherhood itself plays out, will always play out, in a relentlessly changing environment.

Even on a good day.

[thedaveandkimmershow]

I watched moms do their Mom thing, of course, since I was a kid. I didn't begin to understand the Mom gig, though, until I became an adult. A young adult.

You see, once I was released into the professional wilds of production and post-production, I got to know people older and much older than myself. People with, as they say, "life experience". And one of these people, very early on, was a single mom. Of course that's not how I knew her. She was a producer. She was a writer and director. Earlier in her career she was a news photographer. And what I came to understand about her only later was that she was also a single mom.

I have another friend, a mom who's stepped back into the Mom role with her grandkids because that's what needed to happen. So here she goes again. Willingly. With a full heart. ☺️

Over the years, we watched a spectrum of moms from experienced to brand new, teens, who became pregnant and almost always started out as single moms.

We know any number of moms who are navigating relentless complexity with their kids even as those kids spiral out into young adulthood.

And.

A friend of Kimmer's just lost her son.

Just lost her boy.

There's no question that on Mother's Day it's a very easy thing to praise moms for what they do, for the complexity they navigate, for the crazy multitasking they execute on a daily basis.

However.

I observe from right on stage, from the front row, from the main floor, from the box seats, even from the first balcony... what moms endure. Against what they prevail. In every demographic. Leading every experience. Within every circumstance.

Most of the time without warning.

And that's where I wanna land today:

Mothers prevail.

Mothers endure.

Grown from a spectrum of experience, healthy through dysfunctional. Navigating every kind of circumstance there is, easy through impossible.

In the grand scheme, it's not really about what moms do. That stuff's impressive, of course. Of course.

If you really wanna know just how impressive moms can be, take a look first at the cards they were dealt and then at the circumstances in which they and their children still prevail...

And thrive.

☺️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Make no mistake. It's tough to boil the superpowers of a mom down to a few memorable and postable bullet points.

The broad strokes? Yeah. We got those.

There are obviously obviously obviously similarities among all moms but for sure everyone comes to motherhood from different directions informed in a multitude of ways by their own experience and circumstances.

My observations are informed by front row seats to motherhood from so many angles, from stakes that are purely superficial all the way through those that are crazy intense high-level chaos and white knuckle emotion.

Sorry. That was dramatic as hell but at least captures the general vibe.

Now, I don't want the following to be a judgement on parenting or motherhood. But the path of parenting, motherhood especially, leads through minefields. There's always something blowing up unexpectedly somewhere.

Literally...

The explosion, why-ever and however it arrives, could be sourced by anything that spans the Complete Human Experience.

A minefield.

And there is no such thing as "navigating a minefield". You're just in one. And there's no map.

And the explosions?

From superficial to lives laid waste.

And you bet the emotional weight fell on Kimmer's shoulders. Because that is the Mom gig. As if her shoulders held some kind of gravitational force drawing toward it such consequence.

This isn't all Mama Bear stuff either. This isn't all Protecting Her Cub. It's way waaaaaaaaaay more than that.

Like I said, I had front row seats from well before Day 1. And to pin down the singular thing that motherhood is, well, that's not possible once you see everything that motherhood is.

Once you witness it at velocity across time through a mind-boggling array of environments and circumstances.

Only then do you have an ounce of insight.

Only then can you even begin to imagine the insane intellectual and emotional juggling act going on in the center ring of the Big Top.

[thedaveandkimmershow]

These two.

Once upon a time, Kimmer told me she wanted to start a family and—swear to God I didn't see this coming—she was serious about that.

I thought it was one of those some day things to which it was always always always easy to agree.

Yeah. I'd like to start a family.

You know, some day.

So then we did start a family and she became Mom which is what she wanted to be for a long time... and then she was, is, will be 'til the end of time.

Over the years we documented the bejesus out of the experience. We had 35mm SLRs, little digital cameras the size of wallets, and then our smartphones at which point the sheer tonnage of photographs exploded. And yet.

And yet...

And yet the story of these two goes so far beyond what's captured in pixels. Their story is so massive in scale, the full-spectrum human experience of mother and daughter, of growing up and growing older, of learning, of becoming, of navigating school and friendships and abilities and the same/similar/diverging/completely different paths to their futures. The experience was fraught with turbulence, plot twists, roadside bombs, and simply coming to grips with the emotional chaos that is becoming.

To call it a rollercoaster is to undersell the experience by a lot. This is two human beings, one older, one younger, both subject to capricious reality who themselves are growing up, growing older, relentlessly being shaped by experience. It's a dance of sorts taking place across space and time that sets and resets, sets and resets, as they both continue to grow. Mother and daughter.

We are today, of course, celebrating Mother's Day. Being a mom, though, doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's the relationship between these two forever and always that I celebrate. This deep connection spanning decades. A closer relationship than I could possibly imagine.

She is Mom, of course. And all I really want to say is how I had no idea about the Mom gig... until I was married to one and we walked through this life together minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, month by month, and year by year raising our daughter through time and turmoil, through failures and fatigue, through triumphs and success.

These two.

You know?

[thedaveandkimmershow]

When kids are in the house, my time definitely looks a lot different.

I spent the morning assembling plastic eggs with stickers for a post-Easter egg hunt.

I supervised hiding half of those eggs plus that same amount of decoy eggs in our front yard.

I attended Easter egg hunts in our front and backyards.

Fast rewind a day then fast forward to the backyard and being super grateful I weed whacked everything there AND cleared off the patio. :-)

I threw a football back 'n forth with another human being in the street out front.

I was apparently the bartender of giggle juice. Turns out later the reason for that's because it never occurred me to cut my little customers off from these super sugar-infused drinks.

I assembled bubble guns. Like you dip the muzzles in liquid soap and the guns spray bubbles into the air.

Not having any bubble liquid, we pivoted to experiments in soap viscosity, trialing out various liquid soap products from straight up liquid soap to laundry detergent to Kimmer's own special brew of liquid cleaner. Each time we took a sample into the back yard and the kids tried them out to no avail. Eventually I was encouraged to try all the soaps at once which I immediately did. Dumped 'em all into the glass measuring cup.

It didn't work either but it was a most excellent science experiment. :-)

So yeah.

I'd say my afternoon was filled with more sports and science than it usually is.

;-)

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Each month it's tempting to say we didn't do much unless we did big things, traveled places, or went to concert after concert after concert.

So I'm guessing that's why each month's Month in Review starts that way.

I just forget sometimes that they really all do. 🤔

The truth is that our March was a month of regular hard work. Normal really busy days. The relentless juggling of what we've gotta do, what we're gonna do, and when we're gonna do it.

It all can feel like a bit much. Like there's not enough time and space to breathe... but these are just our normal, busy days.

Call 'em our baseline days.

So, to keep things in perspective, when we get into the other things we did in March, that's all on top of our normal, busy days. Any time we hit the road, any time we board a plane, any time we get on a bus, we are a mobile school and a mobile business so that we can conduct those activities on the fly.

And it does... it does sometimes feel like everything's happening every day of every month.

And March was no different. 😕

Around here, every day is charting, doctoral studies, post-production AI, writing, and then talking about these endeavors every day because yeah.

We're living and breathing these things. Not just, of course. Our lives are not focused in that manner. But there's definitely a juggling act going on in the center ring.

Now, we actually entered March having just helped Linzy move, thus ending our family history living on Capital Hill.

Speaking of Linzy, the musical high point of the month arrived Friday, March 14 at The Crocodile, Seattle's iconic venue in Belltown that hosted The Little Lies and Madman Across The Water, the Fleetwood Mac and Elton John tribute bands, respectively. We've never experienced a show at The Crocodile so this experience was extra special, the perfect venue for both bands. Our love of the music of Elton John was actively rekindled at this show. ❤️❤️❤️

For me, March turned out to be the central month for testing and discussing post-production AI tools beginning with Travels in Venice, progressing to Shortcut to WinCo, stopping in at Security Bot and The Seedling, finally landing at The Kunstmeseum. In case your wondering, these titles represent various test of transforming words to video, transforming photographs to video, making the character in such video speak dialogue, testing out a super low-cost Motion Capture process, and finally taking footage that was shot a specific way in the field and turning it into that same footage only shot a different way according to AI.

Mind-blowing, is all I can say about these tests. They change the very premise upon which my profession is founded.

Moving on...

March 28, Friday, we joined Linzy for her solo performance at Efeste Winery in Woodville. Always a delicious treat.

Of course the last few days of March were the first days of our travels, joining family in Crystal Cove, California, at Moro Campground right above Laguna Beach and the Pacific Ocean.

Saturday the 29th was our travel day followed by the announcement that we'd be joining a birthday party later that afternoon followed by the party itself during which a fine time was had by all. ☺️

Sunday the 30th we're on a train from Irvine Station to Union Station in L.A. on our way to pick up our campervan for the impending family camp meet. Once at Union Station, we head across the walk to Olvera Street where we score fabulous tacos and beer. After that, we continue by bus to LAX, walk next door to the transportation hub where we score an Uber to the Escape Campervan HQ about a mile away in Inglewood. From there we make our way slowly back down the freeway stopping at Taco Mesa in Tustin (my favorite of the franchise), and the Micro Center 'cause Kimmer needs a new set of earbuds as well as a power brick that can charge her laptop while we're at camp. After that, we're back to where we started the day.

If our first day was Birthday Party Day, our second day was Adventure Day.

And our third? The last day of March?

I've tried to think of a clever name for it but the fact that I can't tells me everything about the nature of the day as I need to know because the day wasn't about anything in particular expect for packing to go to camp, going to camp, and then wondering if and when the weather would stop being such a stone cold drag. 😕

Spoiler Alert: the first week of April completely turned that experience around for us. But that's how we finished the Month: on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean hoping for great weather.

And that was that.

Stories like our trip to California definitely give off a doing something vibe. As if when we're not engaged in some experience that transcends our baseline days, we're not doing something meaningful when nothing could be further from the truth. What I will say is that our baseline days can be a bit of a relentless river. So it's easy for that experience to play out as a blur.

One thing we do that pulls in the opposite direction, that drags us toward focus, are the daily walks. Presumably they're for our health but they also serve as brakes. They serve as pauses. They serve as an opportunity for a status check or kicking around ideas or reviewing the day or getting feedback on something or other or, if it's night and the sky's clear...

Stargazing.

We spent more time than any other part of our lives looking up at the heavens.

Don't know what to tell you about that. But it definitely, definitely pulls you out of the rushing river that is the day-to-day.

And I highly recommend it.

☺️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Sunday I said was a logistics/travel day as well as an opportunity to reflect on our time spent with family.

Our key takeaway from the experience is that it felt like three experiences.

Part 1, Saturday, was a travel day as well as being thrown into the midst of a big birthday party we didn't realize we'd be attending. We wound up being there from 3-9pm. Ish.

Sunday was about picking up our escape campervan in Inglewood that involved a train ride from Irvine to Union Station, lunch at historic Olvera Street, a bus to terminal 1 at LAX, walking over to the transportation hub and catching an Uber to the campervan lot then using that van for shopping and dining excursions on our way back to Irvine. We spent each day with Kimmer's cousin and nephew, especially mornings and evenings.

Part 2 was our camping experience, Monday afternoon through Thursday afternoon, at Crystal Cove, the Moro Campground above Laguna Beach 

Part 3 was back at Kimmer's cousin's place but without her cousin there because he'd pivoted to an archery event up north... so it was just us and her nephew.

Each of those parts, each of those acts, if you will, felt different. In a way, they didn't seem connected. They didn't flow seamlessly, one into the next. Because of that, I believe, our vacation felt like something more than eight days. Part 1, in fact, seemed like part of another week, a previous week, as if these were three separate trips not just three parts of a single trip.

Curiously, the thread running through our trip from beginning to end (although not the middle while we were camping) is our couch experience. As in, we spent a bit of time on the couch together watching the final two episodes of The Residence on Netflix. On the other side of our camping experience, we watched all twelve episodes of Season 2 of Shrinking on AppleTV as well as the pilot episode of Resident Alien on Netflix.

I mention this because it's a classic family experience. With these shows, we have the same appreciation for drama and the same sense of funny. So we are having the same experience together.

Anyway, that's our vacation. Definitely an adventure. Definitely a unique mix of camp life and domestic life. 

Definitely family.

☺️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Our 9th and last day of vacation was really a logistics/travel day for us. A day of getting from here to a bunch of there's across a single day. It was a day, too, to think about our experience that, I won't lie, seemed longer than the eight days through which we just lived.

On the logistics/travel side of our day, my phone alarm went off at 5:30AM and I got up at 5:30AM. Had I continued to sleep instead, a similar alarm woulda gone off at 5:35 and then the most cataclysmic alarm would've hit at 5:40.

So.

Just setting that alarm is apparently enough for my subconsciousness to take the first alarm seriously. 🤨

5:30AM, then, shower, clothes, continue packing for both of us with Kimmer reorganizing five bags into four. Then a nuked Starbucks Americano from the day before for Kimmer and, by 7AM we're done packing the two big camping bags and the two duffles.

The bigs, by the way, clocked in at 37 and 40 pounds and, after waking up Kimmer's nephew for our goodbyes before he went back to sleep again...

,,,we rolled away from our home for the past week coming up on 7:30.

Now, we've gotta return the campervan to Inglewood but the play we learned that works best is to drive straight to LAX, park, then check in our four bags leaving us with just our rucksacks. So we get to LAX about 8:25, check in, check our bags, then Uber to Inglewood by 9:20, return the campervan, get a bit of refund, then Uber with Jocelyn (Disney Land & Sea during the pandemic, looking forward to Epic Universe next year)... so Uber with Jocelyn back to LAX by ten to ten, then onward to TSA, through TSA, continuing into the terminal with a quick pit stop along the way until we reach our gate where Southwest already boarded everyone in the A group so we get right in line, B group 36 and 37, taking our seats on this first of two flights home at 10:35.

The timing could've been tighter, sure...

But not by much.

Part 1 of our journey home ends at five past noon in Sacramento where we take a beat at Peet's coffee for half an hour, board Part 2 afterward, and we're back in the air at quarter to two, winging our way home to Seattle.

We land at 3:30... and the thing that signals the end of our vacation comes as our plane approaches the gate and has to stop and wait for a minute. In that moment I look up through our window to see a classic Pacific Northwest Welcome Home: the exterior of the window wet with raindrops while the scenery beyond it is an overcast, white atmosphere, rainy, soggy day.

Yup.

We're home.

The sweet thing about our journey, though, is a thing the head steward of our previous flight said as we prepared to leave the plane:

"Go out, be kind to each other. Have an amazing life."

❤️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Our last full day of vacation here starts at quarter after eight in the morning with me downstairs making the hot water Kimmer 'n I use for coffee 'n tea. While we're embarked on this traditional start to our day, we figure out the mystery of the Cheetah Cup.

The Cheetah Cup?

Yeah. You see the previous night when her nephew 'n I were cleaning the kitchen, we came across this metal mug:

Immediately Kimmer's nephew proclaims 

"My dad would never own something like this!"

And I say

"I'm pretty sure we didn't bring any mugs with us."

Unless, of course, we bought it at the local GoodWill and left it here every time we went back home to Seattle.

Hmmmmm.

So while we're starting our new day, I ask Kimmer about this mystery and she tells me

"It's one of Jacquie's mugs."

There you go, then. You see Jacquie's Kimmer's aunt who passed away in November of 2023. Jacquie is Kimmer's cousin's mom. And many of Jacquie's possessions found their way to family members upon her passing. One of those households, of course, is that of her son. Which is how the Cheetah Cup wound up in her son's home even though he would never own something that looked like this. 😉

After breakfast, Kimmer continued her doctoral studies while I tweaked Thursday's beach walk photos online until a quarter of 9.

After that, we're out in the garage sorting out, organizing, packing and repacking our big black camping bags.

Back in the kitchen's a bowl of fruit Kimmer's sliced up for eating on the fly.

10:50AM I check-in for our morning flight the next day from LAX to Sacramento, Sacramento to Seattle.

Around 11, we call it good in the garage and move on with our day.

By 'n by, I find Kimmer and her nephew going through a bag of her aunt and uncle's possessions. Her uncle, because I haven't mentioned it yet, passed away at the tail end of  2022 so anything that wasn't retired or donated wound up with family. And some of that wound up with family in order to be considered at a later date, tucked away sometimes in unlikely locations. In this case, it's a bag of mostly watches and jewelry and empty jewelry boxes that Kimmer discovered that are now being considered on the living room floor.

In a way, these possessions have been lost until now. Some of it has financial value. Some of it has emotional and nostalgic value. And some of it's just stuff.

You know?

The watches, interestingly, are hit and miss. They're not personal possessions, really, they're items Kimmer's uncle intended to sell.

Fortunately, in terms of the sorting process, Kimmer's nephew determines the analog watches are the ones of value while we can donate the digital ones out of hand.

Even so, not all of those analogue watches make the cut, as Kimmer's nephew points out:

"You can tell some of these aren't very good watches."

"How?" I ask.

"Because the hands fell off this one in the original packaging" comes the reply.

Ultimately, we produce two large bags of donations placed by the front door. I even manage to match some of the digital watches to some of the empty jewelry boxes.

Quarter past twelve we return to packing for a bit until 1:00 when I move the campervan further/closer down the hill on which it's parked after grabbing a few items we left in there.

1:30 it's lunch! featuring the meat pies we bought the previous Saturday at Trader Joe's after Kimmer's cousin and nephew picked us up from John Wayne airport. Now, these meat pies are a meal we have at least once a week back home. This time, though, Kimmer cooks 'em with an air fryer that makes them extra special tasty. ☺️

2:00 Kimmer's nephew 'n I head out to the local GoodWill to drop off the two bags of donations. We've also got a hit a Trader Joe's for whatever Kimmer still needs because we're going to a friend's house for dinner later in the evening with our friend and Kimmer dividing the cooking responsibilities.

Fortunately, Kimmer's nephew finds a Trader Joe's I didn't know about not four minutes away from the GoodWill... so we're back at the house by 3:30 where I join Kimmer in our bag packing endeavors while her nephew walks the family Chihuahua for a bit.

Now, for a few days now we've had it in mind to pick up a friend of Kimmer's nephew to go miniature golfing at a place called Boomers.

Upon checking out Boomers online, though, it turns out that Boomers is more than just miniature golf. It's laser tag, bumper boats, and a bunch of other stuff that makes the entrance fee on this Spring Break weekend insane if all we're gonna do is miniature golf. On top of that, the friend can't make it. On top of that we have an ever shrinking window of time to go anywhere between the packing we've been doing and the cooking that's gotta happen prior to showing up at our friend's place at 6:30.

So.

We ditch our Plan A, Kimmer starts making the cake from scratch (white on the inside, vanilla frosting on the outside) that her nephew requested as part of his pre-birthday celebrations, and, at 4:22PM we head out to that Starbucks a mile and a half away...

On foot.

Because that's our Plan B.

Okay.

So why is the exact time and our mode of transportation important to our story?

Well, because that Starbucks, the closest one, closes at 5PM, 38 minutes from when we left the house... and it's not clear to any of us if we can cover that distance within that amount of time wearing flipflops.

Best case scenario?

We arrive within minutes of the store closing.

What actually happened is that we hustled our way there, Kimmer's nephew 'n I perpetually many many steps behind Kimmer, until we walked through the front doors of Starbucks at 4:47.

Twenty-five minutes later.

One and a half miles.

In flipflops.

😁😁😁

By the time the store's about to close, we've been sitting at a table outside on the patio having nearly finished our iced drinks.

At some point, Kimmer goes inside as her nephew and I continue to enjoy our drinks, the warmth of the California sunshine, and the music from overhead speakers.

A coupla minutes to five, the music suddenly cuts out and, from inside the store, we hear Kimmer wish a cheerful "Have a good evening!" to the baristas inside.

The timing of those two events was impeccable. ☺️

And then at five o'clock the doors are locked, the store closed.

Five minutes later, we finish our drinks and head for home, arriving there a little over a half hour later.

Inside, Kimmer gets right to continuing the baking of the cake she promised her nephew, even going so far as to giving him the barest minimum taste of the frosting she conjured just for him. Her nephew and I collaborate on the Caesar salad as well as slicing the veggies for the veggie tray. And, by six thirty we've got it all done, packed up properly, and ready for transport.

A little after six thirty we leave for our friends house by car... arriving ten minutes later.

6:45.

Our friend's kitchen conveniently has able set for four where we immediately settle in for some fried appetizers and dips (sour cream and blue cheese). After that it's the veggie tray with the Everything Bagel Greek Style dip which is where Kimmer's nephew gets into trouble. You see he apparently can't get enough of the veggies and, by the time it's pizza time, he's already pretty full.

Whoops.

In front of us, our friend's got two pizzas he's teeing up: one pepperoni, one cheese ('cause his daughter likes cheese pizzas). The pepperoni, though, has so many pepperoni slices piled on top that it's decided to take summa those and cover half the cheese pizza with 'em.

Once the pizzas are done, we all fill our plates with pizza slices and salad and, thus, the main course is begun. Of course Kimmer's nephew by now is struggling to make it to the finish line given that he ate so many, you know, vegetables. 🤣🤣🤣

After that?

Cake. And ice cream.

Oof.

The poor kid's really having a hard time. 

In the end, though, all is well. The conversation's all over the place and our friend is one of my favorite storytellers regardless of the subject. In this case, the subjects were door to door solar panel sales people... the pitfalls of apartment management... and the circus that is local government.

Huzzah!

Coming up on 930PM, we say our fare-thee-wells, bid our goodbyes, and make our way home for the night.

Dropping Kimmer and her nephew at the door, I park the campervan further than the top of the hill on the street. The farthest yet that I've parked.

By the time I walk through the front door, Kimmer's upstairs studying while her nephew 'n I hang out, spending our time talking this 'n that, comparing notes, considering the future a little.

Eventually Kimmer comes down to join wherever we are in the discussion and then we introduce her nephew to season 1 episode 1 of Resident Alien.

Which.

He. 

Loved.

His kind of comedy, just as we thought. 😁

By the time that show's over, it's nearly 12:30AM so we head upstairs, pack our last little things, and call it a night.

Our last one.

😕

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Our first full day back in Lake Forest, I wake up at quarter to nine to find Kimmer already sitting up and studying.

We have our usual fruit breakfast. In California it's bananas, green grapes, red grapes, mandarins, and apples. Across the next few hours Kimmer continues her studies while I do some writing. Eventually showers are had and around quarter after noon we walk with Kimmer's nephew to the local Starbucks that's about a mile and a half away. Our walk takes us passed a friend's house who lives close by and we indulge a conversation with them a little before continuing on our way. Our Starbucks go to, by the way, is, for me, a venti chai tea latte, no water, oat milk, with an empty tall cup on the side so Kimmer can have a little of mine, too. Kimmer's go to is a tall Americano/dark drip coffee along with half of my latte. 😕

After our hot drinks and walking home, we all jump into the campervan a little passed 2:15 for a quick visit to the local Chase Bank just up the street after which we walk across the parking lot to Ralph's to pick up dinner fixins Kimmer needs for the evening's stroganoff dinner.

An hour later, we're back at the homestead taking the groceries as well as the food left over from camping to the kitchen and then pulling out our camping gear into the garage.

After parking the van up the hill on the street, it's time for ice creams and an episode of Shrinking from season two.

After that, Kimmer starts prepping the stroganoff and we snack on veggies with an Everything But The Bagel Greek Style Yogurt dip. Way more tasty than you'd think, by the way.

After that it's Shrinking season two episodes 5, 6, and 7 followed by Kimmer finishing up the stroganoff and broccoli while I pitch in making a fluffy Caesar+ salad. Top it off with an NA Blue Moon for the two of us and we have ourselves a dinner with yet one more episode, number 8, of Shrinking from season two. 😁

Now, we do have some unfinished business to which Kimmer still wants to attend. So around quarter to eight we all jump back in the campervan and take off for The Micro Center in Tustin to return the laptop charger we purchased the Sunday before we left for camp.

Why?

Because the laptop charger didn't actually charge any of our laptops. Plug the thing in and out laptops started charging the charger. In other words, the charger drained our laptops of power.

Not okay.

9pm we're back in the living room working our way through Shrinking season two episodes 9, 10,.and 11 while Kimmer retires upstairs to continue her doctoral research.

Once we're through episode 11, Kimmer's nephew 'n I have standing directives from Kimmer to clean the kitchen, load and run the dishwasher as she'd cooked the main stroganoff event earlier. ☺️

It's an interesting discussion in the kitchen because I do have an interest in the future on which some are newly embarking. I'm also interested in what those with big brains can do across the spectrum of their career (or careers), and I'm interested in the kind of people in college who would share and pursue whatever objective that career (or careers) is attempting to solve, to pursue, to transform.

Once we're done in the kitchen, Kimmer joins us for the season two finale of Shrinking.

Totally worth the binge watching we've done across the day. ❤️❤️❤️

Quarter after midnight we're done and off to bed.

☺️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

This is our final morning waking up at camp and it is a glorious morning. Completely unexpected. The forecast last week suggested the good weather on the coast would burn out by now.

But no.

Kimmer's up at 830. I'm outta bed twenty minutes later. The visiting teens from last night are already on their way home so we're down to just Kimmer's nephew.

Nine o'clock we're at the picnic table  enjoying the pancakes and bacon, hot off the grill courtesy her cousin. With real maple syrup also courtesy her cousin.

When finally he's done with all the cooking and boiling of hot water...

It's time for him to go. So he sets about breaking down his side of the camp, eventually pulling away the canopy above us, the canopy above our breakfast picnic table so that suddenly we're exposed to the full light and heat of the sun.

Still lovely, by the way. This day will be defined by the perfect balancing act of temperature, wind, and warmth that's playing out along this Pacific coast.

Ten o'clock, Kimmer's cousin and nephew are pulling away, heading for home. Her nephew's gonna hang there for the afternoon until we join him. Her cousin's gonna pivot, resupplying and packing for an archery tournament taking place at a ranch over the next few days.

So now it's just the two of us and a day along this sunshine coast to consider.

Our first order of business is walking the three loops that house each of the campsites as well as cars, trucks, bikes, tents, trailers, and all manner of recreation vehicle from teardrop trailer to massive rock band buses. It's a bit of Show 'n Tell that's lovely to indulge, lots of opportunity for inspiration, and a lot of neighborly "Hello's" along the way including one alarming discussion that spring from the question "do you know what a baby rattlesnake looks like?"

Kinmer took that question, if you're wondering.

Quarter to eleven we're back from our walk. Kimmer sets up her laptop at the picnic table while I reset the campervan for our daytime use. It takes me about twenty minutes after which Kimmer moves to our table inside while I scan the ground if our campsite for any stray garbage, mostly small to tiny, that needs to be removed.

When I'm done and back inside, Kimmer's taken to researching a Death Valley camping trip.

Death Valley???

Yeah.

It's a thing Kimmer's cousin does and we've been invited.

Apparentlly.

So now Kimmer's taking a pass at figuring out RV possibilities from different companies and different starting locations. While she's doing that, I take one more look around our campsite for anything that doesn't belong because we're about to leave. Check-out's at noon and it's almost noon.

Are we leaving?

We're leaving our campsite for sure because our pass will have expired at the end of our stay. Our pass, however, is still good for going down to the beach. We can park at the bottom of the hill near the tunnel entrance to the beach. And our pass is good for the rest of the day. So noon ends up being the end of our stay but the beginning of a little afternoon beach exploration. What will turn out to be three miles of beach exploration as it turns out.

Having parked down below, we take a moment for some grapes and mandarin oranges and hanging out inside what's becoming an ever warmer interior of the campervan. Then I change into shorts for the first time this week because the weather's perfect for it and, by one o'clock, we're headed toward our beach adventure! 😁😁😁

By the time our three miles of walking first to the southernmost end of the beach then backtracking a little and heading north to the Crystal Cove Beach Cottages, the Crystal Cove Shake Shack 'n back, three hours have come and gone and we're back in our campervan, leaving this beautiful park a little after four.

On our way back to the homestead, we make a quick stop at Sally's by the Sprouts we always go to across the street from the Goodwill we always go to. After that we return to that Salvation Army we hit earlier in the week where Kimmer scored a whole bunch of stuff she was looking for including a Kimmer green carry-on piece of roller luggage. This time she wasn't as lucky but I did score a pair of black Vans for nine bucks. 😁😁😁

Back at the homestead a little after five-thirty, Kimmer checks her watch and celebrates the 17,599 steps she (and therefore we) racked up during the course of all our walking about across the day.

What I haven't mentioned yet is that the homestead is without power. Completely without.

Why?

The local utility is upgrading the neighborhood grid and, until they're done, no one has power.

Supposed to come back on by 7, though, so...

Fingers crossed.

Moving along, we set about moving our stuff inside from the campervan after which I park it on the street up the hill a bit . Then it's time for hot showers (because the hot water is powered by gas not electricity) and coming to grips with the fact that Kimmer's beef stroganoff dinner plans rely on, you know, electricity so we punt and decide on the Mission Viejo Taco Mesa for dinner.

7PM comes and goes, by the way, with no restoration of power so we hit the road and, eventually, partake of tacos and quesadillas until, lo and behold, 8PM comes and goes and Kimmer's nephew learns that power's been restores.

How do I know?

Because in that moment he learns, he suddenly lifts his face to heaven in profound relief because Instagram Reels work so much better when there's, you know, power. 😉

So of course now it's time to head out which we do... stopping along the way at Ralph's for a Breyer's for us, a Breyer's for Kimmer's nephew, and then a bag of Hershey's chocolate chips we can melt to pour over the Breyer's for us. 😁

We partake of our ice creams at the homestead while relaxing on the couch watching episode 2 of Shrinking season 2 after which Kimmer heads upstairs to do research for her doctoral program while her nephew 'n I kill two more episodes.

It's Shrinking, you know. And we can't get enough.

Afterward, the conversation turns to broadcast television, predicting the future based on past and present, personality types, brain types, the elements of a good career, the things we enjoy that are foundational to who we are and how that can at least draw us toward opportunities that match who we are and pull us away from opportunities are profoundly not for us.

What can I say?

I'm really old and love a captive audience. ☺️