Hi, lovelies… It’s been a long time! It’s odd thinking about how when my kids were little, I was blogging so often that a couple of weeks between posts felt like forever. My kids are way more independent now, and yet… I seem to have more difficulty getting to the blogging. When I consider it,…
Author: dilovelyadmin
Feeling grateful for rivers, quilters, friends, and family
There is someone out there I will never be able to thank for the gift they gave us. I don’t know who it is, but I picture a retired lady with kindly eyes and a sewing room stuffed to the gills. That person made a tiny quilt for a tiny person they didn’t know, belonging…
The Uke Heads Experience: “The album that became a community”
Back in 2022, an opportunity arose that I had been awaiting for years, although I didn’t know it. My ukulele hero, James Hill, sent an invitation to his mailing list, asking us to be part of an album of songs he’d been working on. He and his friend-since-childhood Chris Parsons had a nutty idea: get…
Thoughts on the Humbling Experience of Extreme Lower Back Pain
For the last four days, I have been dealing with my first truly humbling episode of back pain. And when I say humbling, I don’t just mean that it put things in perspective, though it totally did. It also literally put me down – on all fours – for the first part of both Friday…
The New Year Questionnaire – What Was Up in 2023
Here it is! Been working on the New Year Questionnaire since New Year’s, predictably. It’s still January (barely) and not yet Lunar New Year, so it’s still “timely”. What did you do in 2023 that you’d never done before? D: Attended the Annual General Meeting of the provincial Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario in Toronto….
The Comforting Presence of Trees at Solstice
There is a tree growing outside our dining room window that I dearly love. It is a rowan tree (also known as mountain-ash, though it is not an actual ash tree) of the American variety. I took this photo on the first of December. That weekend, as Sean and I sat at breakfast, two pairs…
Something Small and Simple
I have been struggling to write lately. Mostly because there’s this big, horrendous thing happening that weighs heavily on many of our minds… And it’s a thing that feels impossible to write about, but also impossible not to. On social media today, one f/Friend posted this: And another posted this: It’s American Thanksgiving, and although…
Ontario elementary schools are in crisis. The government is fine with it.
In Ontario, we are three weeks into the school year. Those who work in elementary schools are glad to be with students and colleagues, but there is a weariness too. We have a feeling it is going to be a long year. It’s been several long years in a row already. There are two main…
Dilovely’s 90s Coming-of-Age Playlist: The Canadian Edition
Well, you’ve either been waiting on tenterhooks or perhaps completely forgotten about it… but here is the Canadian Edition of Dilovely’s 90s Coming-of-Age Playlist(s)! My top thirty. The kind of blog post that seems manageable-ish even at the end of a whirlwind summer where the news cycle was devastating every single effing day. SONGS, people. Put your…
Maybe a little bit of birthday celebration
Dear Sebastian, A week ago Sunday, as I was making black raspberry cobbler for your 12th birthday, I realized something. I thought back to the day of your birth, and your first and second birthdays, and how impossible it felt to “celebrate” the day back then. I could not conceive of making cake or blowing up…