I was walking Huxley the other day and got really nostalgic. Our neighborhood is lovely, but it’s so new and bare. Our old street was so established and all the trees were fully grown and all the flowers bloomed and so much history.  Our new place will get there, eventually. Now it’s bare. Eve wants a tree to climb. She wants trees for her hammock. Our house was so cozy and had a swing set. Eve was happy there and wore colorful clothes and had friends. I was smaller and cuter. Less gray. Less old.

We have a 3yr old on the street and one neighbor babysits three other little kids, so our street is often covered in chalk and littered with bikes and balls.  I miss my kids being that little.  Or even smaller than me! I miss doing craft projects with them and reading stories with them. I miss gardening together. The neighbor was wheeling his 3yr old around in a wheelbarrow yesterday and it reminded me of this day and others like it.

Also, Alan and I have been watching That 70’s Show again.  I LOVE that show. It’s so funny.  But also it’s a show we watched together when it first came out and it’s a show about teenagers falling in love and parents still very much in love. For as often as I literally laugh out loud, there are just as many awkward moments.

I realize, OF COURSE, that it wasn’t all peachy-keen “back in the day.” The house was too small, not right, leaky. The yard took a lot of work. Parenting was hard and marriage was hard. There are as many “goods” today as there were back then, they’re just different “goods.”  Goods that I sometimes miss.

Also, this…

Purple!

Purple everywhere!

I dyed my hair purple.  Eve has been wanting me to do it for awhile. I kept promising to to do it when my hair was sufficiently gray. We had an appointment scheduled in the “before time” but then COVID-19 hit and the world closed down.  We eventually got tired of waiting, so today we took matters into our own hands.

Eve did the front section of her hair too. Unfortunately (for her), her hair is so ark that it doesn’t show much. It looks cool though. She makes everything look cool!