Bree begins driving lessons. Of our kids, Bree has been by far the most excited about learning to drive.
Jan and Angela haven’t had a date night in a while, so go out to dinner at Shaker + Spear. We’d gotten food from there once during the height of the pandemic, but this is our first visit having a proper dinner at the restaurant. The menu highlights their seafood options, and both of our dishes are fantastic.
Bad luck: walking back to the car, Angela stumbles and lands awkwardly. Her foot hurts, so Jan returns with the car. [She’ll later have the foot x-rayed, revealing that she’s fractured the fifth metatarsal — an injury so common in dancers and athletes that it has its own name: a Jones fracture.]
Bree and two friends attend the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire in Bonney Lake.
Gothic horror at the coffee shop: Anya, Bree, Lyn, and Jan all walk down the street to Madison Kitchen to get morning coffee and tea. It’s a nice day, so there’s a good-sized crowd sitting outside. After we place our orders, Anya ends up sitting in a chair in front of the neighboring hair salon. As we wait, we notice a couple of crows nearby. They’re squawking at each other. After a while, they fly up into the trees overhead and continue their squawking argument.
We pick up our drink orders, and are about to leave when Anya screams. One of the crows has fallen out of the tree. As it fell, it hit its head on the edge of the hair salon roof, then fell onto Anya’s shoulder before finally collapsing in a heap on the ground. It’s upside down, still breathing but otherwise not moving. Something about it looks wrong. Jan tries to flip it over so it can get up, but it can’t get up. Some people nearby say, reassuringly, “Sometimes birds can get stunned.” As they say this, a small pool of blood begins to form underneath the crow’s head. This crow is not getting back up ever again.
Angela solves a long-standing home maintenance puzzle. This morning Dennis, the general contractor who has done many projects for us, comes over with his assistant Lauren to repair some things in our house. We’re keen to have them fix a problem we’ve had with a leaky shower in the upstairs kids’ bathroom. We recently had some other plumbers replace the shower cartridge in that bathroom, which fixed the problem long enough for them to leave the house, and then the shower started leaking again.
Dennis and Lauren replace the cartridge again. Again it fixes the problem — but a short time later the shower begins to leak again. This is a puzzle.
Angela asks whether there might be an issue with our water pressure. Dennis and Lauren investigate and find that, yes, our water pressure is far too high. The root of the problem is actually with the water pressure regulator in our basement.
Come to think of it, we’ve had many plumbing issues in the last few years all around the house, including a leak in February that caused a bit of water damage. (Repairing that damage is, in fact, one of the things Dennis and Lauren are doing today.) Apparently our pressure regulator failed at some point, putting all the fixtures around the house under too much strain, and eventually causing them all to eventually fail.
Dennis and Lauren are able to rebuild the pressure regulator and solve the root cause of the problem. We’re all happy the upstairs shower has stopped leaking.
Jan takes Lyn up to Edmonds to visit her dog Tari. Lyn’s dogsitter, Doug, has been wonderful in watching over Tari this summer while Lyn continues to recover from amnesia.
Bree has been keen to practice driving. Angela’s normally the adult that accompanies Bree on these practice drivers, but this evening she asks Jan to go with her. Bree takes them down Lake Washington Boulevard, which doesn’t have much traffic on it. There’s one moment where Bree needs to pass a cyclist, and as she’s moving into the left lane, a car begins to appear around a bend coming towards us, but she slips in ahead of the bicycle without incident.
Bree and Angela attend the Emerald City Comic Con. Bree’s been looking forward to this convention all summer. Following her first cosplay (costume) convention in April, she decided that she wanted to construct a different outfit for each of the four days of the convention. For the first day, she wears the same Denki Kaminari costume she created for the April convention.
Bree attends the second day of Emerald City Comic Con. Bree appears in the middle of this photo wearing her Fern cosplay, lifted from one of the Critical Role D&D campaigns. On the left in the photo is her friend, Leah, who’s also attending the con.
Unlike most cats, our cat Mojo doesn’t seem to mind being placed on his back. This is the best way to enjoy rubbing his soft, furry tummy.
Outfits for Day 3 of Comic Con: amanita mushroom hats.
Liya returns from Taiwan! We’ll have her at home for a week before she returns to school.
For the 4th day of Comic Con, Liya takes Bree and Bree’s friend Leah. From left: Bree as Dabi Todoroki from My Hero Academia, Leah as Dabi’s brother Shoto Todoroki, and Liya as Percy de Rolo from Critical Role.
(Not shown: Bree’s mask is covering up a substantial amount of face makeup, including a number of staples that appear to be embedded in her skin. She tried the full makeup out a while ago, and came to dinner wearing it. Jan and Angela tried to avoid looking at Bree while eating.)
Angela has surgery on her broken foot to reduce the time it will take the fracture to heal.
Bree starts high school. She indulges Jan with a snazzy back-to-school photo in front of our house, then Liya gives her a ride to her first day of 9th grade.
More bad luck! Angela’s rolling around the kitchen on her knee scooter — which skips out from under her. She falls, hits her head on a corner of the stove, getting a bloody lip and chipping a tooth. This stupid summer.
Angela’s parents arrive for a visit. We haven’t seen them in a long time.
To make room in our guest room, Jan moves with Lyn back to her apartment. This will give us a chance to see how she does spending longer periods of time on her own.
Happy 19th Birthday, Liya! Jan brings Lyn back to the house. Lyn, Cheng-nan, and E-moon join the five of us for a dinner at The Well & Table in Issaquah.
Back at home we sit around a wood fire on the backyard patio while Liya opens gifts. Bree’s gift is a big pile of little felt bees that Liya had thought were cute. Later, she opens one of Jan’s gifts to discover — more of the same little bees.
In the late evening, Jan and Lyn drive Liya to the airport for her flight back to the East Coast and the start of her sophomore year at Yale.