#empty nesting

Around the time we were married, NBC released a show called Mad About You. It was actually a week and a half after we took our vows.

To us, it wasn’t just a show... it was Paul and Jamie Buchman living out their newly married life. And a lot of that life very much seemed like the one we were living. The details of it, at least. The interactions.

Oh sure, the show was funny with fantastic, memorable characters. But it really was astonishing how much of the newlywed experience resonated with so many other newlyweds at the time including us. It was fascinating to see it on national television some of the stuff that we thought was only us.

In 1999, the series came to a close and became this story that we and (I’m sure) a lot of other married couples would tell about their early years. The part where, once upon a time, there was a show and this couple who absolutely nailed what it was like. It was completely uncanny.

Was that every newlywed? Of course not.

But it was sure us.

Fast forward 20 years and they put the band back together. Of course a lot of bands, a lot of these old TV shows were getting back together. But this one was special. This was our jam.

That’s still true, by the way, even though we could only watch the first two of the twelve show run ‘cause they’re on a cable network that’s unavailable in our neck of the woods and only those two had been made available for universal consumption.

Aside from that monumental disappointment slash frustration, I’ll tell you this though: we watched the hell out of those two episodes.

We did.

And dear me. They’re actually living some of our empty nest experience. Their relationship with their daughter, Mabel, while going right over the top with gusto... was also thoroughly familiar territory.

And yes. The way Paul & Jamie are getting older is pretty much the way we’re getting older too.

Case in point:

“I can’t hear you if you’re not looking at me.”

Wow.

Nailed it.

‘Cause I can’t tell you the number of times I asked Kimmer to repeat something since she was speaking to me whilst turned in the opposite direction from me.

So now I just say

“I can’t hear you if you’re not looking at me.”

Oh man.

We’ve just gotta figure out a way to watch the rest of the season.

Hey Hi Hello!

Sorry for the extremely late reply! 

I’m not exactly sure what Empty Nesting but here are my thoughts: 

(Angsty) Empty Nesting is when an Omega is pregnant and is nesting, but lose the child and keep the nest. 

Empty Nesting is creating a nest with no supplies. They just find an area they feel safe and stay there. No pillows, no blankets, etc. 

So the topic today is transitions.  There’s the one right in front of us, of course: Summer to Fall, not-school to school, warm air to cool, cooler, cold air... bright, long days to dark, short days, and the middle of the year... to the end of the year.

What can I say?

It all has an impact on how we feel.

Aside from those mostly environmental factors in our lives, there’s a host of both macro and micro ways in which our days move from one act to the next, from one state of being to the next, from a particular way our days are constructed that gives way to something different. Sometimes intentionally...

Sometimes not.

I was actually thinking about these things this time, last year.

At my age, it’s easy to believe I got life handled because gosh I know so much. But the truth is, I know what I know. I learned lessons from what I experienced to date… and for sure were I in grade school again, jr. high, high school again, college… I’d be waaaaaay ahead of the game. For sure I’ve got better comebacks than I once had. Or maybe 20-30-40-years later I finally hit on the things I should have said.

I’ve got better study habits. I’m better at prioritizing. And while I don’t have the brain capacity I once had, I know how to make information stick.

I could go on. But that would be a resume. Not a map through what lies ahead.

As we embark on the next 25, how do we engage this part of our lives as if we know what we’re doing? As if we’ve done this before.

As if we got this.

It’s wishful thinking in the extreme, but the world in which we live manifests a chaos and instability that calls for something more than…

Actually, I don’t know what it calls for. I just know that in a constantly changing environment, you gotta roll with it. There is no such thing as “settled down”. We will need, in this next 25, to make a series of short-term decisions about the shape of our lives together. We’ll need to do that because it’s unlikely that the basis upon which we make any decision is stable enough to sustain those decisions more than a few years. 

Photo by Filios Sazeides on Unsplash

I won’t lie. That last sentence still seems right.

It’s unlikely that the basis upon which we make any decision is stable enough to sustain those decisions more than a few years.

At the time I wrote those words the first time, our days were constructed in a way they are not now. For example, Kimmer’s transitioning out of the job she had at the time... and transitioning into a pair of jobs, one in Ballard, one in Bellingham.

Yesterday, in fact, she trained up in Bellingham for a few hours... then came back down to Lynnwood mid-afternoon for an appointment at her private clinic. 

Today... it was Ballard.

It’s a transition that’ll play out over this month, culminating in some very busy weeks. And months.

For me, at this time last year, there were three editors at one of my Seattle gigs where now there are two. Which opens more opportunity, has opened more opportunity. More gigs down there.

So even on that basis alone, this September’s stunningly different from the last. The heart of which has to do with the decisions we made about Kimmer’s work life.

Photo by Fabien Bazanegue on Unsplash

As I continued to read, something else resonated...

Pro Tip: The brightest, loudest elements of our environments aren’t necessarily the most relevant in the long term.

My guess is that, while my focus is drawn by shiny and fast and loud… the threads running from our past through our here and now into our future… those threads are probably not visible from the direction my eyes get turned. Our present is always in motion, is my point. There’s always stuff going on to which we’re not paying attention. 

Important stuff.

So these days, I’m looking into the dark, the silence. I’m looking where the light’s not pointed. Where the sound’s not coming from. Where the news... isn’t. I’m looking at and I’m looking for things that don’t draw attention to themselves in any given moment. Basically I’m looking for Time’s equivalent of boulders amidst whitewater rapids.

They are threads running through time and place, my time and my place, and, if you look at them a certain way, they constitute pixels that will eventually form a new picture, one unrecognizable from the picture that constitutes our present.

Of course it’s fun to think of myself as a master of my past. But the next 25 will require some different kind of skill set. I’m not even talking about jobs or careers. But of how we will be in this future. How we will interact. How we’ll consider ourselves. How easy or difficult it’ll be to just be. To exist, co-exist. To become more.

Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

That also still seems legit. At least the heart of it that calls for a relentless sort of focus. Because a year after I wrote those words, the signal to noise ratio is bunching together: more noise, less signal.

Cacophony... is the word I’m looking for.

According to Miriam-Webster:

1: harsh or jarring sound: dissonance 

2: an incongruous or chaotic mixture: a striking combination

—a cacophony of color —a cacophony of smells

A cacophony of news.

In the meantime, technology’s changing. Automation. AI. Machine learning.

The nature of our jobs is changing. A good thing... right up to the moment those jobs can be zeroed out by what tech can do.

The nature of our republic has changed. Gone are the days of any sense of stability. From now on, our laws, our objectives and the strategies we employ to achieve and sustain those objectives, will swerve all over the road. Every 2, 4, 8 years. Maybe less.

Social media is capable of so much in real time.

So yeah.

A foundation... is not something we’re counting on. That’s just what is.

Whitewater rapids.

Photo by Julie Thornton on Unsplash

It’s a useful thing that we’re improvisers. Helpful that we’re used to looking for puzzle pieces that might fit together differently. Really, really swell that we know how to make it all up on the fly and run with it. Useful that we’re not super wedded to settled down.

If we have to, we can hit the road in any number of directions... for any number of reasons. Scottsdale, Arizona, for example, is one of many options we’ve taken a liking to.

But that’s for later.

For now, it’s a year later. No surprises. Nothing that ran us off the rails. Not one thing beyond our abilities to handle. 

And I’m very okay with that.

A year from now?

Well...

We’ll see. 

I’ll let you know how this all worked out by the time we get there.

It’s an odd post title. I know but it about sums up my life over the last year. I want to thank those who have reached out about A Flare of Fire, the third book in The Warwick Witches Series. I just wrote several pages and I am starting to feel like myself again. I suppose I should back up and explain about what’s been going on with me over the last year. Buckle in, dear readers. I am…

In 1968, Hugh Heffner opened The Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. The decadent resort featured a restaurant where waitresses donned Playboy Bunny costumes and served the mid-west’s most sophisticated tourists, Hollywood’s elite, close cronies of the Playboy empire, and …. me. In what can only be attributed to 1970s parenting, my Uncle Joe took my family to lunch at The Playboy Club in…

Empty Nesting - Music Free Static (029)

My wife and I are at that time in our lives when we're re-relearning how to live without kids. Our younger kids have all been away at college and we've been on our own. It's surprising what's changed in our lives.

Quick and Easy Stuffed Peppers

First up as I venture into the foodverse is a recipe for stuffed bell peppers. It’s not a dish that’s all that common on our family menu. But it always receives rave reviews when served. It’s fairly simple to put together and so colorful. I’d love to say I used peppers from our garden in making this recipe, but ours are not ripe yet. The game changer I discovered in this recipe from Bellyfull.net…

The topic is: what was the best part of our vacation?

Of course there's no answer to that question because it wasn't that kind of vacation. We didn't do a bunch of rides to compare. We didn't see a bunch of shows amongst which there was a clear winner. We didn't indulge epic experiences like hot-air ballooning or white water rafting or riding in a helicopter over The Grand Canyon.

We basically showed up. Walked through a series of photo ops. And had most excellent food and drink.

But if I had to say...

If I had to say...

I'd say the best thing is simply the life we indulged in Vegas. A life in which there is no morning alarm clock. There is no start of the work day waiting impatiently on us. There is no rush to get ready. And lounging in bed in the morning has no expiration date.

We get 8-10 hours of sleep or more every night.

We hit our steps every day. I think Kimmer topped out at 22,000 or more.

There's sun from dawn to dusk every single day.

Seriously.

Every single day.

And you can actually feel the warmth.

Even as you're sitting by the fountain. Which we did.

We eat out for dinner every day. We try different wines every day. We meet new people every day.

We have time to think. And we have time to consider.

And this:

Because we have no agenda, because there is no schedule to keep, time runs slower here. Just as it does on Maui where it runs more slowly for lack of agenda and schedule to keep.

And that's.

What I liked best about our vacation.