One short vanilla breve and one short hot cocoa to go before hitting the grocery store. No boys. Big smiles.

We take the Metro to the National Mall to watch the Arsenal of Democracy World War II Victory Capitol Flyover. We walk to the western slope of the Washington Monument grounds and stake our claim. A black dog sits nearby and pants in the bright sun. We eat our simple picnic lunch on a blue plaid blanket in a dense forest of legs, lawn chairs and tripods. My girl passes the strawberries around, one eye on the sky.

The first warbirds appear just to the right of the Lincoln. He raises his binoculars to his eyes. I hear the clicks of a thousand camera shutters. Veterans and distinguished guests are gathered for a service at the World War II Memorial below. The public address system shouts sentiment, fills in the space between flyovers. I feel the engines in my chest, and close my eyes to imagine war, death, and life, the sound of victory rattling my ribcage.

When the last formation passes, the speaker asks the crowd to stand for Taps. All of the chatting and clicking stops, and we are hushed and reverent as we listen. As the last note falls away, I sweep one finger behind my sunglasses to wipe my eyes.

On our way back to the Metro station, we wander through the farmer’s market and make new friends. We cool off underground as we wait on the platform for our westbound ride home. As the train heads towards Rosslyn I say we’re under the river now, so they can imagine the car full of fish and current.

We took a walk after dinner Friday evening, following mossy trails to the playground. I admit to doing a little climbing, a little playing, but only as much as becomes a forty year-old. At the end of our walk, we approached our front steps. Fireflies twinkled all around the concrete and the grasses, but only at our house. We were chosen. I lit them a candle to keep them company.

I have tons of soft, sweet clover growing all over my backyard and I and refuse to cut it short or spray it with herbicides. I just can’t do it. I often sit on a bar stool in my kitchen and watch the bunnies and birds hang out. The bunnies chow on the flowers and the birds look for worms near my de facto/illicit compost pile.

On warm spring evenings, our neighbor carries his huge bass across the driveway and plants it in the front yard. His little ones often follow him over. We grab the sidewalk chalk and whatever instruments are handy and then we jam. People dance, people draw, people come out and stare.

Whatever. We are that family, the one with puffs of unruly clover in our lawn and messy drawings on our stoop and a ten year-old playing cajon and a twelve year-old dancing with a box on her head and a crazy mother filming the entire circus on an iPhone.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/o8yUl8mw6oE

We took the train into the city on a cold Friday morning. Union Station was gothic, beautiful and quiet in the early hours of the day. I sipped hot coffee and the children shared a cinnamon sugar pretzel in the white tiled food court. We walked across the street and into the National Postal Museum inside the Old City Post Office.

We spent the next two hours moving back and forth through two hundred years of history. I lost myself in lives lived and lost, my mind filled with their stories. The international stamp collection is stored in a wide wall of skinny vertical display cases, and we thrilled to the variety of sizes, shapes and colors. In a gift shop bin my son found a fat and heavy plastic bag labeled “OVER 500 STAMPS FROM ALL COUNTRIES INSIDE!!” His eyes were bright with excitement so I had no choice but spend the $7US. He held the bag tightly in both hands during the entire train ride home.

He sat down at their work table, made a hole in the bag and turned it upside down.. We watched the stamps spill out of that hole, big stamps, small stamps, all colors and countries and soon the pile covered much of the table. Over the next two hours we sorted stamps together, found countries on our world map, talked about how countries sometimes just dissolve and form new countries, and made many little piles all over the table. We each picked our favorite stamps from the whole lot–how lovely is the butterfly and those mushrooms?

The next day while he was at a friend’s house I sewed a stamp pile organizer of sorts, a temporary place to keep his piles sorted and visible until we devise a more permanent way to display his new (instant) collection. While the stamp holder isn’t as colorful as the last organizer I made, the green makes a lovely billiard-table-ish background for his treasures.

Spent the morning with my loves at a cozy coffee shop in Arlington. I wrote in my journal about 2013, about my hopes for renewal and rebirth. My girl began writing in her tiny purple Moleskine, too. Tonight we will light candles, share our writings and craft a family vision for this year to come. Then we will pop popcorn and play a game, and then we will blow out the candles and nestle down into our covers. And when we wake, it will be a new year.

A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked. ~Anais Nin

I push the broken storm door closed once, two, three times before it latches. I wave and blow kisses to my littles standing in the front window, turn, and make the short walk to my bus stop. I scan the headlines through the newspaper box glass and wait. The bus pulls up to the curb and I step through the open doors, climb the stairs, tap my commuter card to the fare machine, then take my usual seat. The bus threads its way down the narrow street and makes several stops, picking up small, orderly lines of people. The daily riders greet each other with the ease of the long-married, remarking on a new haircut, asking about the weekend, pointing out an uncharacteristic suit and tie in a teasing voice. Fifteen minutes later, we climb the HOV ramp to the highway. I close my eyes and listen.

The other riders rise and stand in the aisle as soon as we exit the highway. The bus comes to a stop and the doors open. I step into the current and am carried past idling taxis and buckets of flowers to the pedestrian bridge. A newspaper is thrust into my hand and I float across a sea of red tail lights. Halfway down the tunnel the others turn toward the Metro gates, but I break free of the tide. I walk to the far end of the tunnel and emerge onto the street. I make my way down the hill and enter the housing development bordering my office campus. Most balconies are bare, but one is not. The streets are unswept, and the withered lilac blossoms release a sweet, stale fragrance as they are crushed under my Converse. I pass a long-haired cat sleeping on a concrete porch. I turn a corner and my office building stands grey against grey sky. I slip the lanyard of my employee badge around my neck as I pass through the glass entrance doors.

She gets an unreal amount of attention when she rolls around in public wearing these skate/shoe thingies. Every comment she overhears from a little one (Mama, HOW is that girl skating on her SHOES??) makes her smile wide. The floors at IKEA are the bestest of all.

It is kind of weird to be shopping at Whole Foods on a Sunday afternoon and come across a band standing in a little triangle-shaped space between the olive oil, fish fry counter and bulk dried beans, jamming their faces off. It’s even weirder when the music is actually incredibly good. I wedged my body between two parties of greasy-lipped diners woofing down their fried oysters to take these shots, but in my defense, I did give them the apologetic photog face.

**ACKC** on 14th Street NW. Can’t even describe how perfect **The Audrey** was, a cupful of melty bi[…]

An extremely pierced, pretty woman watched from the other side of the glass as we approached from the street. She pushed a grey button on the wall to release the door, and we walked inside **Fathom Creative**. The **instant dc** exhibit was spread out across the walls of the second floor space, and I spent the next 45 minutes geeking out over the work, entirely comprised of iPhoneography. If I didn’t have iPhone envy before, I am a hurting unit now. The second shot from the bottom is a special message painted on the bathroom wall above the toilet for those gallery visitors who stand while using the “facilities”.

I am very glad that I am not a mama pig. Wait a minute. My young roll around in the mud, too. Maybe I am a mama pig. If so, I got gypped in the boob department.

The walking path was covered with seed pods. The kids thought they looked like alien faces. They found a squirrel’s nest that had fallen from a tree and poked it with sticks, looking for life. Most everything along the path was brown and grey, except for bright green patches of moss at the base of some trees, and the river itself, colored green by long ribbons of algae that quivered in the current.

One short vanilla breve and one short hot cocoa to go before hitting the grocery store. No boys. Big smiles.

Wooden paths and bridges lead to trout pools lovingly tended by ghosts. A thick layer of moss covers every surface, absorbing our words and footfalls. In a neighboring yard, a woman hangs her laundry on the line. We float past her unnoticed.

On our way to the shops in the upper village, we always stop by the memorial park to greet the lion in the fountain. He doesn’t start spitting water until April.

I had $3 in change in my pocket, scrounged from various change jars and couch cushions in the house, so no buying for me that day. It’s more fun to look, anyway.

We stopped at Varsity on the Syracuse University hill for some pizza last week. We were surrounded by lots of college students, hospital staff wearing scrubs, and blue collar dudes. People didn’t seem to be able to deal with a lady with two kids and a camera. I think I scared them a bit.

We had a lovely Saturday night date during a big snowstorm: sandwiches at The Blue Tusk, followed by a $5 movie at The Palace Theater. I wish I had known that The Palace doesn’t actually heat the theater in winter. I watched most of the movie sitting sideways in my seat, my stockinged feet in John’s hands and the rest of me buried deep inside my down jacket.

Funniest conversation overheard:

Abbie: “Wow, you can see the whole world from up here!”
Jocelyn: “Can you see Italy???”