It was a good week. At the top of the list, my dad’s heart surgery was a success. He has AFib, an irregular heart pattern that can lead to bad things. The surgeons did an ablation to create tiny scars in his heart and destroy the bad signal callers. He was discharged the same day, out walking the next morning.

Dawn got a positive lead on more work, and Charlotte got the camping trip with her friends she’d been planning for all year. The five of them reserved a camp site by a river near the town where Dawn and I got married, Gold Bar, up in the mountains. I lent Charlotte my cooking gear, stove and fuel. I can’t imagine what they’re going to do for three days but I’m hoping they’ll get a break from their phones at least. We’re lucky she has good friends so we don’t have to worry about them doing the kinds of things I would have done in the woods at her age.

I finished week 3 in my new job, passed my first “fire drill.” Got asked to do something complicated and cryptic via chat. Used GPT5 to help me do it. Had to redo it then. About 140 rows of data, lots of internet scraping and cross referencing web pages and Excel files. Strange how manual work can be when you’d think it would be more elegant somehow. Happy to be of service though and love my client; would dig holes for her.

Met her and my two new colleagues in a large office in nearby Bellevue. Wore a sports jacket for the first time in forever, an outfit I bought in 2019 for a business trip to Europe. Wore my hair in a ponytail too, which felt kind of weird. Remembered what it was like hobnobbing at tech events where you mix business with small talk, often drinking. How much I liked being with people in person like that, how different and real it was.

Haven’t sat in front of an Excel file all day in years, but chatted with my colleague Heather as I did, trauma-bonding over it. Got a text from our neighbor, “sorry to bother you but there’s a deceased baby raccoon in your yard.” Used a shovel to move it to the compost bin after dinner so the dog didn’t get to it. Watched more Breaking Bad with Dawn and Lily. Opened all the windows and turned on the fans. Woke early thinking I should go back to sleep, but Lily’s leaving for France today and part of me feels that going-away feeling too. Fantasizing maybe I’ll go to Germany for a couple weeks in October and visit her for a weekend.

It’s taking longer for the sun to come up in the morning and nearing that perfect sun-up, sun-down schedule. I wait until it’s light before going to the park and carry bear spray with me now, for the cougar. That and a rape whistle and my staff. It’s not the same, having to look over my shoulder so much, but better than not.

There is a severe weather warning today for high heat that seems excessive to call it that; I think it will feel like proper summer. Then with Charlotte out camping and Lily flying to Europe we’ll have the house to ourselves. And the seasons of our lives will change some too I guess. Maybe I can interest Dawn in helping me with the traps.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, parenting

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, journal writing, Memoir, pacific northwest