Today’s post is brought to you by the six year old’s current favorite song, “Stressed Out” by Twenty One Pilots. He informed me of this as we drove home from our favorite burger place, Mike’s in Oregon City, all the windows and sun roof open to the mostly smoke free, blessedly cool night air, singing at the top of our lungs to the dusky sky.

Wish we could turn back time, to the good old days
When our momma sang us to sleep but now we’re stressed out

It’s been a stressful first week; trying to find a routine to settle back into, our backyard of the beautiful Columbia River Gorge is on fire, ash is falling from the sky,  Tom’s work is going through changes, and I started with a new department to discover a bombshell; the manager who hired me is out for a month long FMLA leave, with three days of training! I had a few more interviews and still no bites outside of OHSU, so looks like I’m settling in for a few more months at least, at which point something’s gotta give.

…But it would remind us of when nothing really mattered
Out of student loans and tree-house homes we all would take the latter

So many others have written about the very real grief about the fire in the Gorge; all I could do is echo them. I’ve had the privilege to have worked, travelled through, camped, hiked, and photographed that beautiful, carefully protected area for half my life. Kade’s been visiting there most of his young life, including several hikes, even the haul up to the top of Multnomah Falls! He’ll never quite remember it’s full glory, but we’ll help with the efforts to restore it to health.

What more needs to be said at this point, while the fire still burns and we wait to see if some teenager’s lives will be upended by their stupid choices and the actual witch hunt out for (unreasonable) blood? We can mourn the loss of such of treasures, the tragedy of such choices and their impact without ruining lives. We can take time, a pause to reflect on what the actual best course is from here, not howl our anger at the universe.

A good caramel milkshake and a dance party at full volume with the kid helped set things to rights, and there is at least one thing to look forward to: A dog! The landlord approved us to adopt a boxer, so now we’ve just got to scrub and rearrange every corner of the house, tell an uncomprehending Wilson a thousand times he’s not an only pet anymore, purchase a bunch of stuff and wait for the right dog for us to be found. So if anyone has some dog gear I could snag for cheap, let us know, it’d be a huge help!

We used to play pretend, give each other different names
We would build a rocket ship and then we’d fly it far away