Top of my to do list: trim this plant. Every time I look at it, I feel like it’s flipping me off. I walk away feeling insulted, muttering, “Yeah, I forget to water you, but you don’t have to be rude.”
rude plant
Author: JB
A Hoosier living in Quebec by way of Boston
If your child crosses out your name
I was tidying the house when I made a startling discovery. My daughter had written her name on her drawing notebook – then she wrote MAMA and PAPA and crossed both of them out.
Look!
First I clutched my pearls.
Then I texted a photo of it to my mom and said, “I’m a little worried that my little girl may be plotting my demise! Her father’s, too! What should I do???”
She replied with, “No, she just means she doesn’t want you to look in it.”
And I said, “Oh. Yes. That makes a lot more sense.”
So if your child crosses your name out on their notebook, consider that they are just asking for privacy and not planning your downfall. Obviously, I can’t open it up to check.
owl
I saw a fluttering of wings as I walked by the window. Little did I know I was about to meet an owl in my backyard.
Do you see her?
If I didn’t know better, I might have thought my fox sent her.
Listen, there’s this lady who will freak out if you go in her backyard. She will get her camera and take a million photos of you. She’ll even try to talk to you. So if you’ve been down on yourself lately, go see her and it’ll give you a real confidence boost.”
-fox to owl
Except I recently learned that owls prey on foxes, so that conversation was unlikely.
After just a few photos, she started to fly away and I called out,
No, don’t go! I haven’t even introduced myself!”
-lady to owl
Turns out she was actually trying to catch a squirrel – unsuccessful – so she humored me and sat in a tree to be admired. I don’t think I have admired anything as much since the birth of my children (don’t tell my fox I said that). I ran outside without a coat, but I didn’t need one because my heart was beating so fast. I can’t explain it, maybe it’s the intensity in her face.
She unfurled her feathers to then bask in all her glory like the queen she is.
I kept getting closer and closer until she looked at me like this, which stopped me dead in my tracks.
We stared at each other for a while. I would have stood there all day except for hypothermia.
I even hooted at her a couple of times, like an overenthusiastic nitwit but with meaning. I’m not being hard on myself, she confirmed this when she looked at me with an expression that said,
Stop hooting at me. You’re not an owl.”
-owl to lady
I took a video of her because of course I took a video of her. I swear, at about seven seconds in, my heart almost stopped.
We eventually parted ways, but we were never the same again (I’d like to think our meeting had a profound effect on both of us, but probably mostly on me and probably only on me). Thank you, Barred Owl of St-Bruno. Do come again.
Baseball with the boys
When I was kid, my mom missed the deadline for softball sign-ups. I am sure I pitched a fit about missing out on a summer of softball with my friends. So, even though it was the last thing she wanted to do after a day of accounting and then making dinner for her kids, she went to the board meeting that week and asked if they could let me play.
They told her no, which I completely understand as there probably would have been a tidal wave of other late sign-ups in my small community that would have sent the softball league reeling into chaos. She came home and broke the news to me. I am sure I pitched another fit.
Fast forward a couple of days, I was probably in my room brooding and shaking my fist at the world, and she told me that baseball sign-ups were still happening. “Why don’t you play baseball with the boys? You can do that.” And this is just one example of the many, many, many times in my life my mom made me believe I could do anything in the world. Whether it was little things like playing baseball with the boys or bigger things like moving to Boston at 18 for college, the strength and confidence she instilled in me set the course for my life.
She built me up so much and because she told me I could, I believed and did.
Happy International Women’s Day to my mom – I hope every little girl has a woman like her in their lives.
Love for Ukraine
Tania was my first Ukrainian friend. When I worked in subtitling+localization, she was on the team of language specialists. A Russian language specialist joined their team, and they were good friends. When I would hear them getting coffee or eating lunch together, I could never tell if they were speaking Ukrainian or Russian. It was enough for me to tell they came from two countries who shared a long history but still two independent countries.
She and I worked on an 80,000+ word menu in Russian (she speaks Ukrainian, Russian, English, who knows what else in that beautiful head of hers). It was for a Blu-ray movie collection set to be released in Russia. Since Blu-rays have loads of special features, trivia, games, it was a *huge* menu (this one also included film history). It had been translated from English into Russian, and Tania could tell the Russian translator had been overwhelmed and made a lot of mistakes.
That Blu-ray menu was in our lives for weeks. I remember walking up to her desk and seeing it open on her screen, and I would ask if I could bring her food or water or any type of sustenance. I was just the middlewoman between the client and the production teams, no language skills here, so all I could do was offer my support. She found every mistake, every typo, every oversight, every inconsistency, and fixed them all. She made it through every round of quality control, patiently answering all my questions since the Russian Cyrillic alphabet was lost on me. I was so happy the day I walked over and could tell her, “Let’s go for drinks – the project was approved and shipped, you did it, it’s gone!”
May life imitate that project.
May Putin make all the mistakes.
May Ukrainians find every mistake, receive the support they need, and persevere.
May we all be able to celebrate when he is gone from their country, and may he walk away with a better understanding of human rights and the power of patriotism.
fox
We first met in 2019 when I saw him pass through my backyard. He didn’t stop to say hi so I called out, “Oh, so you’re going to play hard to get, huh?”
Things got pretty serious for us in 2022 when we first made eye contact.
But he quickly looked away, turning to a profile position as if to say, “Look how handsome I am from this angle.”
Sometimes he likes to play hide-and-seek with me.
But he mostly uses this steep hill to hunt. I hired a National Geographic reporter (just kidding, it’s me) to add commentary to one of his hunting expeditions. Watch three attempts here:
My mom has a hound dog, and I told her to bring him here immediately. I recently watched a very interesting movie where I learned a fox and a hound can be good friends.
A fox and a squirrel, on the other hand, do not make good friends. His hunting expedition was ultimately successful.
Our friendship had a staggering development on Valentine’s Day when he walked into my yard and we stared at each other for about a minute. Safe to say he is a romantic.
He paid me another visit a few days later, and I can only hope this means I made an impression.
One day, I saw him walk through the back like he was headed somewhere. So before the snow has melted, I followed the direction he took and am fairly certain I found his den. I didn’t get too close, though – I don’t want to be rude and invite myself in. Once the snow does melt, I will be returning to analyze the wood pile because I will obviously be recreating one in my backyard for next winter. I saw him poke around a couple of my wood piles this past winter, but they must not have been to his liking. I will remedy the situation.
I shared his photo on a Facebook group called “View from my window.” He was very popular there, and I loved talking all things fox with people from all over the world.
An artist in Pennsylvania contacted me to ask if she could paint my photo. I am happy to share this painting by Gloria Powell. I think he would be pleased with this portrait. I would love to show him, but I do not want to look like some sort of crazy lady waving my phone around at a fox. Maybe I’ll have one of the kids do it.
Then I was contacted by a publisher in Japan who was releasing a book of a selection of photos from “View from my window,” and they sent me a copy of the book once it was published. I probably would not even be able to walk the streets of Tokyo without people stopping me to ask, “Are you the fox lady? From the book?!”
He has not returned in this winter of 2023, but that doesn’t mean my eyes aren’t always looking for him.
If you dance while driving
I was doing some very serious, very fierce dance moves in the car today with my children. I was driving the speed limit but no more as the roads have been snowy, icy, treacherous, etc.
Look at the snow, icy, treacherous, etc. road I was driving on!
There was a car behind me (not pictured), and he was not exactly tailgating but not exactly not tailgating. I was too busy dancing and driving safely to notice (also, unfortunately, not pictured).
As we all know, dancing in the car can be very restricting, so you really have to utilize your best arm moves, which is what I was doing. I can’t remember which song it was, but it inspired me to do a lot of finger-wagging with full arm movement – very dramatic – I hope you can picture it.
Suddenly, the car behind me crossed the solid line to race past me. Vroom!
I only then realized that it’s very likely he interpreted my amazing dance moves as me mocking him, wagging my finger in regards to whether he could pass me or not. Or maybe he thought I was giving him a big “no-no” in response to his tailgating. Because I was not driving so slow as to warrant an illegal passing (trust me, I am a good and fair judge on these matters).
Either way, I wish I could tell him that I was simply dancing with my kids. I may also let it slip that the only thing more dramatic than my dance moves was his car maneuver to get passed me.
So if you also dance while driving, with or without children, and you also have fierce dance moves, watch the arm movements as they may be misinterpreted.
Boston Times coming soon…
Is that red marker on the floor? Again?!
If you make it through the early years of raising children without crayon or marker on your walls or floor, I salut you. It happens to the best of us, but one day, it was a repeat occurrence.
I walked into the kitchen and, to my horror, found red marker on the floor. As I cleaned it up, I reminded my darling children not to color on the floor.
Now that my solid mothering skills were all used up, I walked into the living room to relax only to discover red marker on the living room floor, too. Unbelievable! I thought. Repeat offenders! Not in my house! This time, they cleaned it up but with slightly confused expressions as they tried to tell me they didn’t do it.
A few minutes go by and I head to the kitchen, and I know I don’t even need to tell you, but there was more red marker on the floor. Who is raising these kids that would do this yet again? So I call them into the kitchen for a serious talk only to discover that one of my daughter’s toes is bleeding. So it was blood and not red marker. I am a regular Nancy Drew.
So if your child insists that they did not color with red marker on the floor, consider the possibility that it might be blood and inspect your child for wounds.
Leslie James Barr + Annette Kendall
Stories about my parents. Pick a date.
coming full circle 