She leans forward, grabs the edge of the bookshelf, and jumps high in the air. The hem of her gold dress flaps up. A scolding forms in my mind, not so much words as the sensation of reaching forward with one hand, and before it becomes a sound she turns and runs, full sprint, down the length of the children’s area then cuts through diagonally and back to my wife. Neither of them has seen me yet, I’m still walking across the library. My wife’s bouncing the baby on her knee. I catch her eye, wave, she gives me a thin smile and a head nod. The bottom drops out of my stomach - what did I do?! - and a second later it’s back. Everything’s fine, I’m sure.

“Daddy’s here,” she turns the baby to face me and the baby smiles, waves a hand at me with her elbow straight, swinging in a wide circle. I lean over, kiss them both. My older daughter’s hopping in place now. I kiss her too. My wife leans...

My second job at the Motorola plant was to put cell phones in boxes. I took a phone out of a big box full of phones, packed in small cardboard columns, and put them into the box a customer would open. I did this for eight hours a day, sometimes ten hours. Sometimes there was a bit of variation in that a new box of a new kind of phone would come in and we would need to set up the phones to be unloaded. That provided a small break in the monotony.

I don’t remember any of my co-workers names there. I had been transferred from my first job which was to sort scrap. We dug through big boxes of crushed phones, throwing the garbage into one box and the recyclable material into another. That job was fun because there were so few of us there and we worked very little. We worked in a building they were tearing down while we were inside it. Sometimes the outer wall would shake. It had once been an...

I wanted to show this but I’ll tell it, that’s what I can do right now. My daughters let my wife and I know when they want and don’t want something. They let us know clearly. Loudly. And if need be, they will let us know with their bodies, arms flailing, legs kicking. They want what they want and they stick to what they believe is right despite personal discomfort. They aren’t deferential to authority. These are excellent qualities for adults to have. As someone who sometimes has to manage them, as someone who is an authority in their lives, these qualities are a pain in the ass. I often say my wife and I are victims of our own success. I get tired of this. I remind myself that easiness for the parent is not a measure of child’s well-being. But damn, sometimes it’d be nice. To be fair, they have easy moments, and there are many awesome times. But any time I try to force them to do...

I think their names were David and Kathy but this is like ten years ago now and we never hung out. Anyway. David and Kathy slept in a park. By the time they got hired at the canvassing place I was one of the experienced part of the crew. I’d been there maybe two months; turnover there was nuts, new people arriving and old people leaving every week. Most of the canvassers were young. I was too though I didn’t think of myself that way and I was in the older track. A lot of the people there were in college, back for the summer. Everyone living on their own and so needing the job to pay rent, we were all older and tended to be madder. Some people on the older side were more chilled out but when you dug a little they’d let loose a lot of negative opinions about how the turf was assigned, about the pay, about the disrespect. I think above all most of us were negative about our lives, worried...

Winter came back. A dusting of hard icy snow sits on everything. A layer of ice covers windows and sidewalks. Spring’s brief visit felt lovely, the warmth coaxed people outside to walk and run. I saw the flakes fall while I sat at the kitchen table sipping my tea. “Oh no!” I groaned. “What?” my wife said. “Look!” I pointed. My daughter shouted “hurray!” more out of contrarian personality (that’s my girl!) than out of actual enjoyment of winter, I think.

People who don’t live here tend not to realize how severe our winter is, in intensity or in length. It’s not this cold all the time but it’s predictably going to be this cold some time - twenty or thirty below zero is another world compared to zero, or compared to freezing. From freezing down to twenty below is fifty degrees. That’s the same jump from the low eighties down to freezing. At twenty below it’s less cold and more stinging, a...

My older daughter’s at the kitchen table painting and listening to the Wizard of Oz audio book. This is probably her fifth time through the book since she first heard it. That’s awesome and she’s awesome but trying to write while an audio book plays is slightly distracting to put it mildly. I put on some music to run interference. Burial. Burial doesn’t exactly fit with the Wizard of Oz (though now I kind of want to watch the movie with the sound off and Burial as soundtrack to see how that works; I could imagine a lot of his music working well for the black and white parts in Kansas and maybe his newer more upbeat stuff would work for Oz).

I just wrote about how I don’t connect to sad music the same way and yet Burial is very high - possibly in the top slot - on the list of music I’ve gotten into in what I consider the current phase of my life. In past phases for all of my adult life...

“Can I help you?”
“Yeah, you got any wheat bread today?”
“Whole wheat?”
“Yep.”
“Yeah we do.”
“Great, a loaf of that please.”
“You want it sliced or whole?”
“Sliced would be great.”
“Okay.”

My daughter’s on her third cookie chunk from the sample tray. “That’s enough samples, honey.” She pops the piece in her mouth, eyebrows raised. “Thank you for waiting. Do you know what you want for your treat?”
“Donut.”
“Cool. Chocolate donut?”
“Chocolate or cinammon, I like both kinds.”
“That’s great. You get to choose, they have both today.”
“Ummmmmmmmm chocolate.”

“Here’s your bread. Anything else?”
“Yeah, two chocolate donuts and a croissant please.”
“Chocolate or plain?”
“Chocolate donuts.”
“No, the croissant, plain one or chocolate filled?”
“Oh, plain please.”
“Got it.”

My daughter’s got another cookie chunk in her hand. “That’s enough samples.” She lowers her chin to her chest and looks up...

We take turns reading stories, my night one night, my wife’s night the next. On my wife’s night I end up holding the baby who needs to sleep before storytime ends, while my wife reads to the older daughter. I hold the baby sideways, her forehead in the crook of my elbow, my other elbow around her butt, fingers laced together under her ribcage.

We have a playlist on the computer, one just for the baby and me. I had one for my older daughter, before she decided she was too big to fall asleep while I held her and danced and sang. (This morning after an especially sleepless night she agreed to get part way to sleep this way, and she was out in about five minutes after I set her in her bed.) When the baby girl came along I asked my older if she wanted me to sing different songs to the baby and she said yes, sing none of her songs to the baby. So I don’t. It would now feel a bit like...

The pot gets weightier as the water level rises. I turn off the tap, set the pot on the stove, place the lid on top, turn the knob to ‘light’. Click-click-fwump the flame’s lit. The black iron frying pan’s heavy, I carry it to the sink, scrub out the remains of yesterday’s lunch, set it back on the range top, click the burner on, pour oil into the pan.

“What are you doing Daddy?”

“Cooking dinner, sweetie.” I kiss her forehead. I open the fridge, pull out the cheddar block and the butter in one hand, the milk in the other, elbow the door closed.

“What are you making for dinner?”

I set everything on the counter in front of our microwave; this maybe two square feet is all of our usable countertop.

“Macaroni and cheese.”

I set the cutting board on the stove and pick up the chef’s knife I got as a gift years ago. I cut the wax paper wrapping on the butter at the two table spoon...

Spring! Or a sick joke of a false spring. Either way, this weather feels great after a long, stupid winter. I’m excited to run outside again soon. For me that means running at all - I only run outside. That’s not a point of principle. I’m really broke so a gym membership’s a hard expense to justify. More than that, running on a treadmill bores me like the most boring of boring things. I can run for an hour or so, well I could when I was running regularly anyway, but after about 20 minutes on a treadmill I’m desperate to stop. Outside running is genuinely fun; treadmill running sucks the worthwhile from the activity. I mean, I realize there are health benefits still, but the thing is, ugh.

I live right by a running path lined by trees which are occasional homes to kestrels, alongside a creek where I’ve seen minks, and the midpoint of my typical run is a waterfall. I feel very lucky. The...