Activities with kids is one of those topics that I wasn’t prepared for at all as a parent. I quickly discovered that my own after-work hobbies are largely incompatible with small kids. There’s also the unexpected mental load of managing what we’ll do every evening, because if I ask them, they’ll likely reply with some grand adventure and a desire for cheeseburgers. So, every day, I think things to do and evaluate my energy level to make sure the options won’t cause additional stress. Once I have my list, I can give the kids something to choose when I take over from our au pair at 4PM.

This may seem like I’m giving myself too much work by being so prescriptive about this (“just let them play!” “when I was a kid I didn’t come home until sunset!”), so I’ll start out by saying “just play!” is definitely something that lands on my list. But overall if we don’t have plans to choose from it’s a whole night of me telling them “no” to whatever complicated thing they want to do, which is dreadful for everyone. And they’re only 3 and 5 years old, things will loosen up as they get older. Besides, it’s great bonding time, I am grateful for the ability to have so much time with them and if we can go on grand adventures in the evening, we will!

Loosely, this is our evening schedule:

• 4 – 5:30PM: Activities
• 5:30 – 6:30PM: Make and eat dinner
• 6:30 – 7:15PM: Wind down activities, no screens (too close to bedtime)
• 7:15 – 8PM: Bedtime routine

Here’s what I’ve come up with:

• Just play! They have lots of toys and free play is so important to development that they use their imagination
• Play outside: bikes, drawing with chalk, bubbles, toys
• Outdoor picnic: we even bought little baskets and checkered paper to make it a whole event
• Baking: banana bread! muffins! cupcakes!
• Make mini-pizzas for dinner
• “Pizza party” with a movie downstairs and pizza we order
• Art: either a project I’ve put together, or their ideas
• Play-doh or Kinetic Sand
• Lego construction
• Homework: it’s optional in Kindergarten, so it only really comes up when they’re in the mood
• Puzzles
• Board games
• Chores: they sometimes like helping with dishes, or laundry, or taking out the trash, and I have to do this anyway…
• House organization: they love seeing all the junk I can pull out of our closets and discovering new treasures
• Limited computer tinkering: I have to be very careful, but Adam sat by while I replaced a failed harddrive in my desktop recently
• Holiday decorating: Outside hanging lights, putting decorations in windows and around the house
• Errands: Grocery store, bank, Target runs (via BART)
• Dinner at the mall (via BART)
• Go out to a playground
• Gardening: water plants, weed lawn, plant new plants/seeds
• Kitchen science experiments: So much baking soda
• Lots of TV (good for when I’m sick, tired, or just can’t even, hah!)

This massive list was an evolution that started with nothing. There were several Google searches around things to do with kids, and then we had to tailor it to what our kids actually like. But we never spent much time around kids before having our own, so it’s all been a learning experience. Plus, these are pandemic kids, we couldn’t leave the house for two and a half years and had to get creative. No play groups, no library activities, nothing that I would have normally hooked into to keep the kids engaged with the world.

To help sort through this and make the kids less anxious about “what are we going to do?” we have a physical visual schedule that they can operate themselves by picking out pictures from the options I provide. We implemented the visual schedule over the summer to help bring some structure to their days so they knew what to expect, but it works brilliantly for evenings and weekends now that they’re back in school.

Still, as much as I value this time together and these activities, I miss my old hobbies and I’m an introvert who needs recharging time. A while back we decided to get a babysitter once a week so I could spend the evening on whatever I want, without parenting responsibilities. Unfortunately, we got busy, things came up, and I didn’t make an effort to prioritize these nights, and so they didn’t happen. I think I was getting a little burnt out over the summer after some rounds of sickness through the house and some extra things on my domestic plate. Lyz nights had to make a return! And this time, with a priority flag. I started taking them in early September.

I spent my first Tuesday just relaxing in the back yard in the hammock and some TV on my tablet. Another evening on my own I went out to the local one-screen theater in town and saw Beetlejuice 2 and then went out for sushi at our favorite local place.

Our local library is open until 8PM on Tuesdays, so that’s a nice place to spend time at if I’m just looking for a quiet place away from home to read for a little bit, which I often am. Last night I spent playing a Wallace and Gromit game on my Meta Quest 2, which I hadn’t touched in months! It needed updates and the controllers needed new batteries, hah. I then watched a little TV and picked up some pizza from The Slice House, which recently opened in town.

I expect to do some grander adventures in the future outside of town and with friends, but again, we’ve all been reeling from a series of colds and I’m putting a higher value on rest right now. Most importantly, having this time to myself allows me to look forward to tackling projects or just taking a break from the weight of responsibility that parenthood has brought. And this break allows me to recharge a little bit more, and be my best self for my family.

My first A’s game!

Over the years we’ve gone with friends several times, and made date outings as well. In the fall of 2021, one of the first big outings we had was taking the boys to their first MLB game there at the Coliseum in a rented suite. Sometimes when I just needed an afternoon off and some fresh air I’d grab some last minute tickets and take myself out to a ball game.

We celebrated my 40th birthday there, ran the bases on Father’s Day, and generally really enjoyed having a connection to the team and the stadium.

It’s been clear for several years that the owner wanted to move the team, and after rounds of negotiations, the deal was sealed earlier this year, the A’s would be moving to Las Vegas. This was their last season in Oakland. It’s been sad difficult to accept, but as the end of this era of Oakland baseball is upon us, we decided to see one final game at the Coliseum. On the afternoon of September 8th we took BART over to see the A’s play the Detroit Tigers.

We snagged seats in Section 122 and invited our friend James out to join us. Gaby also came with us, so the six of us ate helmet nachos and ice cream as we watched the game and took in our final laps around the stadium.

The boys definitely had their patience wear out toward the end of the game, but I get it, they’re young and an entire baseball game is quite long to them. They were kept slightly engaged only by the promise of walking the bases at the end of the game, one last time. That was a lot of fun too, even if there was a very long line for it.

We weren’t multi-generational fans, but there are memories and we’ll miss going to games so close to home. It’s not an end of baseball for us though. We enjoy the San Francisco Giants, and we’ve spent much of this season following the Phillies. Still, it’s sad for us and Oakland lose the last major sporting team.

Farewell, Oakland Athletics.

The day before a friend of mine had been contacted on Facebook to see if anyone knew about his whereabouts. I passed along the message to his local HAM community, but I didn’t think much of it (because Facebook, right?). His death came as a tremendous shock to me, and I spent moments here and there throughout my day on Thursday talking to my friends in ##phillyhams. Sharing in grief helps a little.

I met Jim when I joined the Ubuntu Pennsyvlania Local Community team in the mid aughts. He was active in events and finding new communities for us to be engaged with. He had many connections throughout the region and was eager to get Ubuntu-based computers in the hands of folks in need. As a result of his outreach, he worked with everyone from computer recycling organizations to non-profits that helped young people. It was a real golden age for the promise of desktop Linux that had been renewed by the development of Ubuntu. Jim was a whirlwind of welcoming energy at all these events, making sure newcomers were seen and encouraged, and encouraging us all to try new things.

He also always made sure we were all fed. His day job was for a bakery and so he’d bring goodies to all our events, and had the inside scoop to venues that would be good for Ubuntu release parties all around Philadelphia. As I was looking through photos on Thursday (which I’ve collected here), I was reminded that even for events he couldn’t participate in, he’d drop off some pastries and cake for us to enjoy. I fell in love with those Oreo cakes, and even once I moved to California, I could depend upon him bringing one to the annual FOSSCON event in Philadelphia, which I almost always attended.

I don’t recall the precise timing of when he joined the amateur radio community, but once he did, we all heard about it. He brought even more enthusiasm to that community and my visits to Philly kept seeing more and more of my technical friends getting into or resurrecting their interest in amateur radio thanks to his encouragement and excitement. Even I succumbed to it, getting my ham radio license had always been on my to do list, but I am not sure I ever would have prioritized it if not for Jim’s encouragement. In the summer of 2021, I passed my test with him right there with me (virtually, pandemic times). As I read through the AJ3DI – Silent Key posts on the The Phil-Mont Mobile Radio Club mailing list, I could see that his involvement and encouragement of others was tremendous.

From Linux to radio, Jim encouraged countless people to be fearless, and to tinker and fail. Then he was right there with us to celebrate our successes, and immediately jump into our next challenge. As someone who tends to be a careful perfectionist, his voice was what I needed at key points in my life, even on matters that were a lot more personal. We kept in contact via IRC, so I was still chatting with him a couple times a week, even though I moved to California over a decade ago. The last conversation we had was just last week about my kids, and some of the challenges I was experiencing. His wise words of acceptance were, once again, exactly what I needed to hear.

I will be a bit unbalanced without his humor and guidance when I start taking myself too seriously, there aren’t many people in my life who throw out raw wisdom like he did. I already miss him.

Oy… I started this just for fun.. I prolly wont continue to use it, and there is no way for me to delete my account, hmm… %)

In retrospect, this is pretty hilarious. I’ve now had a blog for over 20 years. Above, I linked to a post that’s currently self-hosted on a WordPress instance, but at the time the “account” I mentioned was on an old blogging site called Xanga. It was popular at the time and a couple people I knew had started doing this “blogging” thing over there so I decided to check it out.

I eventually moved to LiveJournal as community momentum shifted, and I brought all my Xanga posts over. A couple years later I started self-hosting with a WordPress instance and I once again moved everything over. When I did that migration, I considered doing some editing of posts, since looking back at those old posts is pretty embarrassing. I was young (20), very bored, and my writing was very bad. The early posts had the rawness of a stream-of-consciousness rather than anything carefully written. I never expected it to last, and I certainly never expected to eventually become a published author!

I am also dyslexic, and had a lot of support when I was really young to learn to read. Writing was a tremendous challenge throughout middle school, and only slightly improved in high school. When I was starting my blog, I still had a long way to go, but I just sat down and wrote every day. It was silly, self-involved, and random, but I got it down, and ultimately I kept it up. My blog posts today are much more polished and thoughtful. Seeing this all laid bare it’s a reminder to me that we aren’t born knowing how to write, it takes practice, which is what I happened to spend years doing aimlessly.

People often ask me how I got into writing. I wouldn’t recommend the aimless route I took. If your goal is actually becoming a writer, it probably makes sense to go down one of the paths of using writing prompts and doing more than just pouring “what I did today” notes into a public blog. Still, it did work for me, even if it took a long time.

As to why I did it, I think it was the same reason we use short-form social media today. It was a way to keep in touch with people, save moments of my daily life, and be part of a community beyond my desk. As the LiveJournal grew in popularity there was a community like you see on social media today, you became friends of friends after seeing their comments or link to each other’s posts, and other friends from other spaces of the web would make their own blogs that would show up on your Friends list.

By the time most people had moved on from blogging and over to mediums like Facebook and Twitter, I had started to see the value in blogging for myself as a reference and sort of autobiography. What year did we take that trip? When did I last visit that festival? Who was the intro act to that show we went to? All these questions are quickly answered by my blog! I’m reminded of this every time I fall behind on posting or am building up the momentum (and often skipping sleep) to write about something. I also know the value in owning your own words and thoughts, if I was serving up that stream of thoughts and moments to a company hosting it at no cost, with no guarantee of preservation, I’d be deeply concerned about control and posterity. I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed with what they’ve lost as the cracks start to form in our digital footprints.

A great story shouldn’t end here, but I don’t have anything revolutionary to say about this milestone of 20 years. I don’t think I’ll be making any real changes to what I do today. I don’t publish as much as I used to, but that’s really just an artifact of how much my life has changed, I simply don’t have as much time as I used to. I also found that my blog has trended to be much more positive and less raw and critical. As I’ve matured I’ve realized that I’m no longer just throwing my words into a black hole. Every time I throw a thought out that’s critical of something someone else has made, that has the potential to land with a real person, and I don’t want my thoughtless, throw-away comments to hurt someone. The positive nature of my blog today is related to this, but also a result of my struggle to write at all when I’m not in a very good mood, so I don’t. I do sometimes worry that both these things make my blog less genuine than it used to be, and that may be true, but I think I’m OK with that. I still think I’m more honest here than most people are in public, and this blog was never meant to be a private journal that I kept locked in my bedside table.

When I moved to Philadelphia in 2001, one of the first communities I got involved with was the Philadelphia area Linux Users Group (PLUG). I had just started dabbling in Linux with the help of my boyfriend at the time, and with the first meeting I ever attended being about Beowulf Linux clustering, I was quite out of my depth. Still, I stuck with it and slowly got familiar with the community, and the leader of the group, CJ Fearnley.

CJ Fearnley leading a PLUG meeting in 2015

CJ gave me my big break. During the dot com boom I dabbled in web development, but that quickly fizzled out along with everything else, and I ended up getting a job doing accounts payable work for a large corporation. It’s not the kind of job that one has a passion for, but it paid the bills, and I was able to keep an eye out for any contract tech work. That’s what caused me to be available when CJ was looking for junior folks to help with installing servers for his clients. I jumped at the opportunity and here and there I’d make myself available to pick up a server, drive it to the install location, haul it into the data center, or whatever closet it was living in. From there, I had my trusty Debian installation CD and would do the install and load up the default packages it needed. After a few months and an in-person which culminated in seeing Richard Stallman speak in Philadelphia, CJ offered me a full time job with his company, LinuxForce.

The first thing you need to know about working for CJ is that he’s very principled. His passion was for open source software and among his goals for running LinuxForce were spreading open source and Debian. He believed in the technology and he believed in the philosophy, and we was often uncompromising when it came to both, which is refreshing to see from someone running a company. And that company would never make him rich, but it did provide a living for himself and a small handful of employees like myself. He also believed in giving people a chance, particularly minorities in tech. He would always have me keep an eye out for smart folks with non-traditional backgrounds who might like a position where we could mentor them into success. His track record was great, several of the people he had on his payroll over the years have gone on to have remarkable careers in systems administration, and him giving them a start was key to that for all of us.

I spent six years at LinuxForce. Each day we’d spend 30-60 minutes syncing up with the latest client needs and plans for the day. This included division of labor, and frequently the opportunity for me to work on something new or otherwise sparked my interest.

When I began, I wasn’t sure what I wanted from my career, just that I had grown quite fond of Linux and open source in general, and wanted that to be a big part of my career. Early on, he asked me, “do you want to be a systems administrator or programmer?” and with the limited experience I had, I didn’t know how to answer, so his answer was to throw everything in my direction and see what stuck. I started out with Debian packaging, did a lot of programming in Perl, and then developed a fondness for systems administration. I found with systems administration I could have my hands in various technologies and still build things I was proud of, so that’s ultimately the direction I took under his mentorship.

CJ kept me on when I moved to San Francisco, and I worked a couple more years for him before I felt I had outgrown my role there and wanted to move on to something different and more challenging. What was his response when I mentioned I wanted to look for something new? Complete support, which I’m sure comes as no surprise to anyone who knew him.

We kept in touch throughout my successive moves. When I visited Philly I’d often stop by a PLUG meeting, sometimes to even give a presentation on the latest thing I was working on, and we’d catch up after the meeting over pizza. The pandemic did a number on my personal relationships, and so has being a new parent, so the last time I saw CJ was in the summer of 2019 when I came by the PLUG meeting to give a presentation about Linux and open source on mainframes. We caught up as always, and I figured I’d catch up with him when I was in town again. That dragged on a bit with the pandemic, and before I knew it, I had a shocking email in my inbox explaining that he was suddenly quite ill and didn’t have long to live. I was able to get a quick message off to him expressing my care and thanks, and within a couple days he was gone. He was only 55.

Because of CJ’s influence, I was the first to jump at the opportunity to see a Buckminster Fuller exhibit that came to the SF MOMA. I went to more than a few events put on by the Long Now Foundation. In 2013, he came to my wedding with his partner Jeannie.

CJ and his partner Jeannie at our wedding in 2013

There are a lot of reasons this loss has hit me particularly hard, especially since it was so sudden, but I think the core of my despair comes from the fact that his mentorship was pivotal to me at a critical time. I learned a deep level of Linux systems administration that I think would have been difficult to gain elsewhere, especially as a woman in the field at the time. He was patient and thoughtful even when I struggled with things, and while no boss wants their employees to make mistakes, he fully adhered to failure being a part of learning, and stood by that when mistakes did occur. Tech stuff aside, he also taught me to be uncompromising and genuine, both of which have served me extremely well in my career. Losing a mentor and friend like CJ is devastating.

But he lived a full life following his passions and had the love and respect of participants from every community he was involved with. There are so many people who got their start in the Philadelphia Linux community who continue to thrive in the industry, and those I’ve spoken to since his passing have all credited him with helping them get their start. Whether it was attending PLUG meetings in high school or getting them set up with their first shell accounts, CJ was there to run meetings and help lead the way. And as one friend pointed out to me today, he “led from the trenches” which is a style of leadership I’ve come to embrace.

Audience at a PLUG meeting in 2013, including CJ in the foreground

In the small pond of the earliest Linux adopters, CJ was one of the kindest people I knew. His willingness to share his passions was the bedrock of the Linux community in Philadelphia. It’s going to be hard to move forward without him.

Thank you for everything, CJ.

That said, the pandemic has put a real strain on me. I don’t have the help around the house I expected. I’m no longer traveling for work. I barely get time alone. As much as I love my kids, I am an introvert, and time alone is tremendously important to my well-being.

So I recently decided to take a couple days off from work and go to a nearby resort for a night, all by myself.

Due to some weird behavior with the car I was planning on taking, I ended up going with MJ’s 2000 Oldsmobile Alero on this little trip. The resort was just 30 minutes from home, so it wasn’t far, but it actually ended up being a really pleasant bonding experience for that old car and me. I have driven the car many times before, and it’s very similar to the Pontiac I owned before I moved here to California, so it was a car I was comfortable with. Still, getting it gassed up, a car wash, and then a lovely journey out to Livermore was nice.

It was weird to be driving a car without any cameras, or any of the other fancy features that cars have today. I’m happy to say that I still know how to drive without all that, and it’s still a fun car to drive. I’m now taking it out regularly, and I’ve already joked with MJ that it will be the “old car” that Adam and I fix up some day as a hobby project when he’s a teenager.

But on to my trip! I got some cookies and stopped for lunch, and at 1PM I arrived at the resort for an early check-in. I spent the first couple hours just being lazy around the suite I booked, a glorious indulgence I hadn’t had the opportunity for in ages.

In the late afternoon I explored the grounds, spent some time by the pool.

They had a complementary “wine and snacks” tray, that I had around 5PM. I skipped the wine because I wanted a sober time away, but I did have a soda, which I hadn’t had in a long time. That evening, I grabbed some take-out sushi and enjoyed a book in the rose garden.

The choice of book was somewhat amusing. I had been meaning to read Colossus since I picked up the trilogy last year, but my to-read list is quite long. Still, I decided this night away was a nice opportunity to finally dig into it. I didn’t realize that I’d be reading it just a couple miles away from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, home to one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, and which is run by the US government. Now, the Sierra supercomputer is a good computer and couldn’t have the plot trajectory that Colossus had, but it was still an amusing coincidence.

I spent the rest of the evening reading and catching up on watching TV, something I haven’t been able to spend much time doing. I brought along my Nintendo Switch, my personal laptop, and some other little crafty things, but they stayed packed away in my bag, maybe next time. I was able to go to sleep blissfully early, and woke up to an enjoyable breakfast on the patio.

Before my checkout at 11AM, I spent more time reading and did one more visit to the hot tub.

In all, a beautiful time away that allowed me to unwind a bit and sleep responsibility-free for a night, which is precisely what I needed.

I still have to work on the day to day things that will help me feel balanced and recharged. I no longer have the luxury of time that I did when we were child-free so I’ve had to pause and learn what activities inspire and recharge me, and what ones feed into my feelings of being drained or unhappy. I owe it to myself, but I also owe it to my kids to make sure I’m as happy and healthy as I can be.

The first few weeks were scary, but for us they were also fun in a strange way. Suddenly we were all home all the time. We had an au pair living with us, so we had no problems with childcare and MJ and I just closed ourselves into our home offices to work during the day. No commutes! No travel! Just all of us hunkered down together at home for a few weeks! We played board games, cooked more, got caught up on some projects that our hectic commuting and travel life prevented us from.

Local businesses remained hopeful, and in an odd way, the community came together (apart!) to support one another.

Little did they know, “soon” would turn into over a year

I spent a lot of time during those early days wondering what the end game was. I read up on how pandemics have gone in the past. It quickly became clear, according to historical accounts, the outlook was bleak. But it’s the 21st century! We had prepared for this! Surely we had a better story than the flu pandemic in the early 20th century.

The good news is that we were better prepared for this. Vaccines were available more quickly than we would have expected in the past, largely due to a wealth of prior research that was applicable to our current circumstance. The nationwide approach was abysmal, due to shifting tides in political leanings and alliances, but ultimately most people Did The Right Thing and we prevented massive death in a lot of the more densely populated areas. The death toll was staggering and tragic, especially to those of us who’ve lost loved ones, but it wasn’t at the levels we’ve seen with historical plagues.

We quickly learned that the first shelter-in-place date would come and go, and we’d have to adjust to this new situation. It stopped being “fun” very quickly, as the weight of the situation really hit us and we started feeling isolated.

We started doing our own haircuts, some local businesses continued to have a sense of humor as take-out business picked up and they found ways to cope.

It’s hard to admit that I’ve come this far in the post without talking about how illness and death touched us, but it took about six months before I learned of a friend dying. There have since been several people we’ve known who have died or been severely impacted by their COVID-19 infection. I suspect the occurrence of long COVID is underestimated, especially in people who have other health problems. We had been cautious and mindful all along, but when it strikes you personally, there is an added layer. This has played a part in the mental anguish of the pandemic, compounded by the inability to grieve in a traditional way. How do you close the door and say goodbye when you can’t have a funeral together?

We observed holidays at home, including Passover, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur, along with Halloween and Hanukkah. I got pregnant and delivered our second child before 2020 concluded.

Our first virtual Passover Seder, in 2020

I did a couple virtual beer festivals, where a case of beer showed up at my doorstep and I loaded up the YouTube stream.

I did some virtual 5Ks, which were actually a lot of fun, and as a new mother they were ultimately the only reasonable 5K I could expect to do anyway without making arrangements for childcare. Much of the time, these 5Ks were done with the kids!

A 5K with my baby passenger!

By 2021 we had adjusted to pandemic life as much as we could. We were able to bring a new au pair into our home as the program concluded for our first, but even that was logistically tricky with continued travel restrictions. But on the whole, we continued to be very lucky that we didn’t have to deal with a lot of critical childcare problems or take risks we weren’t comfortable with, especially while we had a newborn at home.

It’s all worn on us though. I still don’t have the support I would like to live my life the way I want it. We had always planned on having help around the house so I wouldn’t be spending all of my “free” time doing chores. Before the pandemic I had a rich hobby life that has largely been put on hold because I’m overwhelmed by duties that we may otherwise have gotten help with. What was tolerable for a couple months of shelter-in-place was not going to lead to happiness in the long run for me.

The only thing that kept me sane was how truly grateful I’ve been for the closeness and time we’ve been able to have as a small family. We often have lunch together, and MJ and I can put the kids down together. Even when we have long days at work, without commutes or travel we’re still “away” less than we would have been during normal times. Plus, we we are all healthy, something we really can’t take for granted during a pandemic. We welcomed lovely little Aaron into our family at the end of 2020 and he didn’t get so much as a cold until Adam started going to preschool in early 2022.

The last quarter of 2021 offered a lot of hope around a return to normalcy. Vaccine approval came in for kids aged 5-12, and the trials for under 5 were humming along. Things started opening up as infection graphs trended down, and we even felt safe enough to have my father-in-law come visit and meet little Aaron for the first time, and to have a small outdoor birthday party for the boys. Alas, this was quickly followed by the omicron variant wave. Then the news rolled in that the clinical trials for the Pfizer vaccine in children 2-5 didn’t offer enough protection, and they’re going back to trials with a three dose regimen. Instead of being hopeful that a vaccine could be out by the first quarter of 2022, we’re now looking at the middle of the year. Moderna may actually end up coming out first, and we’ll rush to be the first in line.

We’ve made it through this pandemic so far with our health and a strength and closeness forged in adversity, but I long for the life I planned on having. I want to travel, see my friends again, and get back to my projects. I want to bring my kids to all the glorious, indoor places that I also miss. Most of all, I want us all to feel safer out there.

$90k is a lot for a car. It is definitely the most, by far, I’ve ever spent on a car. But it’s on the low end of what people pay for high-end luxury, sporty, sedans. It’s what you’d pay for a nice Audi, and less than you’d pay for a Telsa Model S or a BMW M5. But the impression everyone has is that they’re much more expensive. Indeed, every time I disclosed that I had a Maserati, people had fantastic views of how much it must cost, usually their number was a least double. There are certainly Maseratis that fit the bill, but I had the Maserati Ghibli SQ4 with the GranLusso trim, and even with all that it came in around $90k.

The only reason I start off like this is to level-set. We’re San Francisco Bay Area tech folks who make more money than your average American, but we’re not running around buying Ferraris and Lamborghinis, those are really expensive! Folks I know and work with around here have cars in similar price ranges. Still, it was a fancy indulgence for us. The other two cars we have here are a 2000 Oldsmobile Alero and a 2018 Hyundai Santa Fe.

But I really did want to talk about my car, finally. I didn’t blog about it when I got it because it felt like some weird bragging. The experience of having this car has been a delight, and one I’ll never forget. The three year lease ended this week, and I’ve been pretty sad about it.

So, story time! How’d I end up with a Maserati, anyway?

First of all, I like cars. I subscribe to Car & Driver magazine, I’ve watched tons of Top Gear (and Grand Tour), and I stay up to date with car news, increasingly with an eye towards the latest on electric cars. If I had time for more hobbies, I’d learn vehicle mechanics and delight in tinkering with an old sports car. I like to think we’re open-minded and reasonable when we cast a net for a new car, and that means we’re not really loyal to a brand. The Hyundai Santa Fe we have as a family car was a great choice, and we’re really happy with it. We know our cars.

Having a Maserati makes no sense.

They don’t hold their value. They aren’t reliable. They’re not the fastest or most powerful car in their class. They’re gas-guzzlers. The air-conditioning in them isn’t even that good!

But the first time I took one for a test drive, I knew I had to have one some day.

First off, I loved driving it. The sound of the engine is like nothing else, and it’s so much fun to drive especially through hilly, windy roads. I didn’t even need to be going fast to enjoy how the car took those turns. Secondly, they’re beautiful. Imagine standing in line for your sandwich and glancing out the window to admire your own car. I did that often. Finally, it was comfortable. That’s what you get for going with a nice trim in a luxury sports car. No stiff racing seats for me!

I started off with a toy model, which has lived on my desk since 2017. But when we lived in San Francisco I didn’t drive very much and we only had one parking space, I’d have to wait.

Fast forward to 2019. We had our first child and I was getting ready to start a new job. That’s a lot of change! And I wanted something to tether to me to my pre-child life, but made sense in our new life. Now that we were no longer in the city, another car was something we needed anyway, so we went big.

We brought home our Ghibli in March of 2019. And it was a blue SQ4, just like my toy!

And I snagged my vanity plate.

The first year was a ton of fun. I took it to work, of course, but MJ took it to work sometimes too, it was the car we took out on date nights and errands all around the bay area. When we gave the keys to a valet, they always kept it out front, sometimes to the chagrin of our friends who had cars that were more expensive and got parked in the lot. It was beautiful and fun to drive.

The second year was 2020. In March 2020 everything shut down due to the pandemic. Suddenly, neither of us were driving to work. We weren’t driving anywhere! I didn’t even leave my county for most of 2020, and rarely left our town. So I’d still take the car out when I went to Target or the grocery store, but road trips and fancy dinners were now off the table. I also got pregnant in 2020, so we were particularly cautious and stayed close to home. 2021 largely continued this trend, though I did start going out to parks more often to work for an afternoon here and there, and I drove my car to get there.

As we entered March of 2022 and the lease ran out, we had a decision to make. Do we get another car? Do we buy this one and keep it another year? Do we return it or sell it? Given how much we drive it and the expense, we decided it was time to let this all come to a close. The pandemic has also caused supply chain issues for cars, and the used car market is booming, so it actually made sense for us to sell it instead of turning in the lease.

Last week I took it out a couple times to say goodbye, I joked with my friends that we were out on a date.

The sale was finalized and they picked it up today.

Driving this car always cheered me up and I’m sorry to see it go, but it was a delight while it lasted and I’ll hang on to that.

So what made me finally decide to have kids?

The big one for me was a desire to share our lives with a couple of our own children.

We’ve been very fortunate in our lives. Both my husband and I joined the path to tech by following our passions, but ultimately we’ve both been able to build very successful careers out of it. We’re experts in our respective fields, we travel the world for work and pleasure, and we live in a beautiful place where we can routinely have luxurious brunches overlooking one of the most beautiful bays in the world. We had it made! But as my late 30s approached, I had to make a choice. Do I want to continue this lifestyle, or do I want to settle down a bit and build a family? I didn’t specifically think I was missing something in life, I was very happy, but I realized that ultimately I didn’t want to keep this all to myself. I wanted to share the experience of life with some little ones.

For me, this meant not losing myself in my kids. My goal is to share my life with them, not change who I am. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve struggled a lot with this in these first few years. I even bristled at the term “mom” when people would use it to define my identity. Plus, small children take up a lot of time, and at times I feel like all of my time is spent either working, sleeping, or caring for little children and our home. My vast collection of hobbies has fallen by the wayside, and that’s been a painful process. Through a busy schedule and sleep deprivation, I keep having to remind myself of the goal: sharing our lives.

So now I’ve now started to weave more of my hobbies back into time I spend with them, and even come up with new ones! Adam and I now do art together. The typewriter I am getting refurbished will be used, in part, to type up poems and songs that Adam and I can decorate together. I’ve resurrected my love for the outdoors by taking the kids to the park every Sunday morning, and building out our back yard so the kids can play while I hunker down and do a bit of writing or reading. I’ve been studying for my amateur radio license, so when I picked up an alphabet poster for the kids, I made sure it included the phonetic alphabet and Morse code for me! I’ve also got creative at work by continuing to weave my niche technical interests into my job, which has been a boon for connecting with other technologists on a personal level. For me, bringing my whole self to my work has really been a benefit to my career.

The pandemic has definitely made some things difficult, but we even have been able to do some outings. We recently rented a suite at a baseball stadium during one of the less expensive games of the season so we could share our love of baseball with the kids. We go to zoos, a big one for me! I’m looking forward to other adventures as the pandemic wanes where I can share my love for trains, and history, and computers with the boys.

Our life is very different than it was four years ago. Every moment of alone time is precious and I find myself being much more careful about how I spend it. I’ve also changed a lot, but I like the person I’ve become. I’m much better at time management, I’ve had to become more patient and am slowly learning to let small things go. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a brunch by the bay, and even work travel has had to change a bit (even before the pandemic), but we’ve found ways to replace some of these experiences. I definitely miss the flexibility of being able to just leave my house on random adventures at any time, but I treasure what we’ve gotten in return. There’s really nothing like sharing new experiences and everything I love with my kids. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Then I stopped and left it all behind, with a bitter taste in my mouth.

The downfall of my childhood art journey began one Christmas when I was a teenager, my father bought my younger sister a bunch of art supplies and he got me tracing paper. He constantly complimented her original art, and dismissed mine that was based on existing characters (mostly from Disney movies). I was actually good at drawing, but feeling like it meant nothing to him was incredibly painful.

As a parent myself now, I have more sympathy for his actions, he never meant to tear me down. He wanted to support my middle child sister, and I was doing fine. I was always fine! Unfortunately I was a little more fragile in this area and quickly left art behind for STEM pursuits where I could quantitatively measure my success, instead of relying upon the squishy world that was art.

Throughout my 20s, I was downright negative on art. I love museums and vaguely appreciated fine art, but I was pretty dismissive about art programs. Why should funding go to art when there were Real Problems and Real Jobs that needed to be done? We don’t die without art! And don’t get me started on how ridiculous I thought abstract art was. Finally, I thought amateur art was a total waste of time because it was not “good” art. I bristled when people would post their painting-with-wine paintings and everyone would gush about how great they are (they aren’t!).

I was wrong about everything. I finally came around to this in my 30s.

First of all, I had a poor experience and it colored my perspective. I was bitter and unreasonable.

Art funding? Without art funding, art would be the playground of the wealthy and privileged. What kind of miserable world would that be? A pretty miserable one! Practically speaking, it also means that art we take for granted in our everyday life wouldn’t exist. We’re surrounded with things that are designed, and someone has to do all of that.

Abstract art? I still have a kneejerk reaction of thinking a giant canvas covered with yellow and a single red dot hanging in a gallery is kind of silly. My toddler can make that “art”! But that’s the wrong perspective. It’s all about aesthetics and how it makes you feel. Does a yellow canvas and a single red dot make you feel something? Would it look nice in your living room because your couch is red? The amount of effort that goes into a piece does not create value. Something can look nice and be simple and abstract. Admittedly, I still struggle with actually liking most abstract art, but I do appreciate and understand it more now.

As for amateur art, that’s what prompted this blog post. A few years back I started buying art supplies again, and picked up Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. You see, if I was going to take up drawing again, I wanted to make sure my art was good. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make much time for it, so it fell into my pile of untouched hobbies.

Then I had kids. Little Adam is 2, and now old enough to drag a marker across a piece of paper and have fun with finger painting, even if he’s not quite at the stage of making recognizable designs. I discovered that doing this together is FUN!

Fun.

And every time I look at the chalk drawings outside or see one of the pictures we made taped to a door, I have great memories of spending time with my son. That’s what those painting-with-wine paintings are about! It’s fun! You have memories!

Memories.

You don’t hang it in your living room and share it on social media because you’re suddenly some talented artist, it’s because you’re happy, and that’s worth sharing and celebrating.

Happiness!

So this is where I am. Adam and I now “create art” most weekends. We hang it around the house and share it on social media. I’m still uncomfortable about it not being “good” but by sharing it I’m trying to let that go, and hiding behind calling it “toddler art” (he does provide a lot of artistic direction!).

But I also remembered something, it wasn’t just drawing I did as a kid, I made tons of collages. As a big Disney fan, I’d clip an article or picture I really liked from a magazine, and I’d build a whole collage around it using stickers and other small pictures. I did this for The Lion King, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and more. I created them on poster board and hung them in my bedroom. They’re all lost now, but I did capture part of the Pocahontas one in one of my pictures of my teenage bedroom.

So hey, I have a head start on experience with collage art! And that’s what I naturally picked up with as I’ve started making new art with Adam! Maybe it’ll even get good at some point as we refine our skills together!

Or maybe we’ll just have fun, make memories, and be happy. That would be OK too.