Oh hi, what’re you up to today? Are you at work or working out or creating something? Hey, good for you. Oh, me? I’m just going to spend the entire day staring at these pictures my mom sent me of niece Olivia hanging out with a creepy doll because honestly: best thing I’ve seen in days. Each picture is a skittle but for your eyes. Here’s a select few:

On this Fourth of July, let us not be distracted by tiny flag shorts and giant hot dogs and things that go Boom in the night, but instead remember what this day is really, actually about, which is of course MY NIECE WEARING THIS OUTFIT.

Happy (38th?) wedding anniversary to these two fresh faced youngins,

Who, I forget but it’s true, because this is how time works, who were once youngish grown ups in their 30s just like myself,

EXCEPT FOR YOU KNOW THEY HAD FOUR KIDS AND A MORTGAGE AND IN GENERAL JUST WAY BETTER SENSE OF STYLE / REALLY STRONG COUPLES’ CHRISTMAS OUTFIT GAME.

NBD, just some very cool locals cruising around the Paramount lot like a couple of Hollyweird veterans who remember when Lucille Ball opened the daycare for her kids. THEY’VE SEEN IT ALL, FOLKS! They know all the ins and outs! Mostly where we keep the sparkling water, and that the trees outside the Pearson houses are not actually real trees!

Off of the suggestion of a co-worker, I’ve been rewatching the Wonder Years, and by rewatching, I think I mean watching for the first time, as I really don’t think I ever watched it the first time around. We weren’t a big TV  family, so I feel like there’s a bunch of stuff from the 80s / 90s that I missed. Its characters are familiar like people I went to middle school with but I’m pretty sure I never actually hung out with them. But they are my NEW FAVORITE PEOPLE. They’re all trying so hard just to live and relate to each other, they’re all a little right and a little wrong, there’s always a little sadness, a little longing, and always a hope at the end, and meanwhile, it is all so very subtle, and even a little bit weird. Has there ever been better TV other than of course M*A*S*H and also Little House on the Prairie the Nellie Years and also Lois and Clark staring Dean Cain and Terri Hatcher and also seasons 1-3 of Touched by an Angel and the other things the Brunstetters randomly DID watch together as a family?  I THINK NOT. BUT I REALLY WOULDN’T KNOW AS THAT’S BASICALLY ALL OF THE TV I’VE EVER SEEN.

My sister in law informed the whole family via text this morning of a new word, nibling. Just roll that around in your mouth for a minute. NIBLING. It’s  a gender neutral word that refers to nieces and nephews.  I mean. Is there any other word on the planet that is more befitting of this little nibling?!

I SAY THERE IS NOT.

I am very bad at squats but I keep trying to not be bad at them. Some people do them like they spent their entire womb-life squatting, like they are actually followed around by a series of invisible chairs, but I do them desperately, like I’m constantly falling, like I was born without muscle. But instead of being upset about my poor form and utter lack of athleticism, it makes me kind of happy, because I recently discovered that my brothers can’t do squats, either. We are just all genetically pre-disposed to not doing squats, for whatever reason. Not only is this a remarkable excuse for squatting like I’m pooping really cold play doh, it also just reminds me that I have three brothers, and no matter where we all are, we are connected, and we are the same, and we cannot squat.

One of the many things I like about hanging with Morrison’s family is that his Dad has a brain like an inquisitive encyclopedia stuffed full of knowledge,  spanning back centuries, and sometimes centuries into the future. We tend to get into big conversations, like the other night: is life, in fact, too inexplicable to be random? Is it, in fact, a just simulation? If we’ve come so far as a race to be able to create simulations of a race, how do we know that we are not a simulation that we created? Not his Dad’s theory per se, just a theory that he passed along, that’s currently popular.  I, along with his Mom,  of course found this idea to be deeply upsetting, and I ended up shouting something like BUT WHAT ABOUT MY CONSCIOUSNESS?! We eventually arrived at this idea: all of the scientists forever could gather in a big old science room with all of their science tools and studies and books and data, and there would still be parts of the world  they could not explain, not matter what. To me, that part is God. I don’t know if he IS that part, but that’s where he lives, or rather hides, or rather, waits.

Verb: to get on a plane and fly through the air for the sole purpose of hanging out with your nephews; to spend the next three days following them around and clocking their every move like the world’s most loving and attentive stalker; to be made to eat your own hat.

Usually when I come home for a visit, my Mom has left me a series of books in my room that she thinks will be good for my soul.  I am usually so consumed by the undulating dramas of my own life that I rarely read them. But no part of me could resist this trip’s offering, the love story of Chip and Joanna Gaines, stars of HGTV’s Fixer Upper:

Basically the show just follows this adorable married couple as they flip houses for other adorable people, while he does things like ram his head into walls and put spiders in her hair and she just laughs with the shy beauty and grace that only a half-Korean half-Texan could bear. Perhaps a book ONLY to be read snuggled into bed at your parents house, drifting off on a soft sea of Melatonin, but a charm of a  book, just the same.