I came home and then mostly finished the wrapping. There are only a few small items left to do. The sibling presents (minus the 15-year-old’s since he ordered online for delivery today or tomorrow) are under the real, more informal tree (my kids call this the “tree of the people.”). The family presents for Christmas day are under the “fancy tree”  (the fake one with all white/silver/gold lighting and ornaments). My extended family’s presents are in my office, to be taken out when they show up this weekend.

I’m thinking maybe next year a goal could be to finish more of the shopping earlier. I start to feel more relaxed about Christmas when everything is procured and wrapped. So if this was done at Thanksgiving, December could mostly be about experiences.

Easier said than done of course, as people change their minds about their Christmas lists, and there are more gift-oriented items on sale by December. But something to think about.

In the meantime, here is a currently-unnamed sonnet. Looking for something catchy as a title!

Before the stars, before the planets set
into their orbits, which define a day
and year, then what was time? The alphabet
came after words, one could still chance to say

“I love you” never knowing what was “v”
or “l” or what it meant to write a thought.
These constructs come after the thing, we see
our rules imposed on things existing not

because of rules — and yet, how good to know
that if we say we’ll meet at 3 p.m.
at the appointed point of spin we’ll go
to our shared spot on earth and on a whim

we’ll write each other notes, sweet nothings, such —
these lines that mean so little and so much.

Yesterday we had a crew here installing lights on the trees. I’d decided to do  professional Christmas lights installation this year, and so it will be festive to look out the window and see the trees all wrapped in lights. I forgot to take a picture last night so unfortunately that isn’t an accompanying photo for this post, but hey. We’ve started working on scheduling in parts of the holiday fun list. It’s going to be a tight year because Thanksgiving is so late. We did buy 7 tickets to the Rockettes! And the breakfast-with-Santa tickets are purchased. Still trying to figure out when the Nutcracker and Longwood Gardens are happening…

(I’ll probably publish that list next week.)

In the meantime, here’s this week’s content round-up.

The Before Breakfast podcast interview featured Charles Duhigg, author of Supercommunicators, and The Power of Habit. We talked having better conversations and his own productivity tips. In the shorter episodes, I suggested that we “Don’t consent and resent” (it might be better to just say no!) and I asked “What’s on your holiday fun list?”

The Vanderhacks newsletter suggested that people “Set relationship goals” and “Reduce chores, don’t reschedule them.” I suggested that we can serve the people around us by being a calming force — “Be the eye of the storm.” Behind the paywall, I suggested “A little way to take your reading up a notch.” The Vanderhacks newsletter turns one later this month. I’ve had a lot of fun doing it, and hope to grow this newsletter over the next year. Please consider a free or paid subscription!

The Best of Both Worlds podcast featured an interview with Gabrielle Blair (the Design Mom). Over at our Patreon community, we’ve been discussing suggestions for filling the time from 5-8 p.m. when it’s dark and cold outside. We also — believe it or not — had a camp question already. Is it better to put kids in one day camp for the whole summer, or to curate different camps on different topics? There are arguments for both. Please come join the discussion! Membership is $9/month. We’ll have our next Zoom meet-up on November 26th to discuss holiday planning.

Finally, a sonnet, called “The coat.”

A London park, October, and the leaves
are bright amid the city’s settled gray.
Two people walk, our narrator perceives
that they are lovers, new ones, as they stray

from sidewalks we take notice of her coat:
a brilliant white, as shiny as their bond.
Would travel mar its luster? She might float
that thought, but then her roommate might respond

that no, you need to wear it — on this trip.
This is the girl that fell short on the rent.
Another mindset, but, my friends, we skip
two decades forward, care cannot prevent

a coat from turning beige. But memory’s true —
that coat is London, all still bright and new.

Aurora

The air turns cool, the dark descending fast
on this October evening, Thursday night.
I huddle in my coat, this is the last
of several happy outings, all is bright

beneath the street lamps, feel the bustle, buzz.
Two hundred people line up for a show.
They’ve stood all day, and now crowd, as one does,
to be the first inside, first standing row.

We hustle past — then “look up!” In the chill,
a streak of red makes brush strokes in the sky,
and through the camera lens more colors still.
We shout and join the faces pointed high.

The northern lights have come to play around
this autumn night, like music without sound…

—-
Bar Harbor, 4:45 p.m.

Now rocking on the porch, I see the light
turn golden, all the maple leaves aglow
on this cold island, all the aspens bright,
as even parking lots put on a show.

Some nineteen years ago we ran a race
to mark one year. A thought — did that seem long?
I only once had thought about this place.
Somewhere a book is written, we belong

to larger narratives, the great unknown.
We travel many years, if glad we can.
Tomorrow, I must wake before the dawn
with many miles waiting, per the plan.

Just always moving, here this tree still stands
a hundred autumns, chilling many hands.

So, when this happens, I am embracing the time. Last night the weather was lovely (high 70s, a little breezy) so I went and read a book on the hammock outside for 45 minutes until it was getting dark. Was it “tranquility by Tuesday?” Indeed, it was. Time can definitely open up as the kids get older.

Anyway, I also spent a few minutes yesterday flipping through an old copy of Time magazine I ordered. An early May issue from 1940 had a local character on the cover that I’ve been trying to learn more about, but beyond reading about him, it is fascinating to just see life in this week from 84 years ago.

There was a report about Germany and the allies (at that point not including the US) fighting in Trondheim, Norway. There were campaign stories about Roosevelt and Wilkie — and some general incredulity/fascination that Roosevelt was running for a third term (it wasn’t disallowed then!). There were a lot of questions of whether American was going to get pulled into a war — which is fascinating to see from the perspective of knowing what would happen over the next few years (also, it was definitely being called World War II by then…I guess I hadn’t really considered when the “Great War” got converted to World War I in the naming…). There is questionable medical advice; a round-up of the various forms of cancer mentions that the best protection against skin cancer is “soap, water and scrubbing.”

Then there was this fascinating little human interest anecdote from Princeton — apparently people used to steal the bell clapper from the tower in Nassau Hall all the time. A young man named John C. Seed shinnied up the drain pipe to get the bell clapper and then fell, breaking bones in the process. After treatment, he returned, in a cast, climbed a ladder and pried open a locked door with a crowbar and took the clapper. Normally, students were fined for this sort of thing, but apparently the university was so impressed with his persistence it waived the fine.

In the meantime… I was a guest on the Deliberate Day podcast this week. You can listen to me talk about the importance of back-up slots and such here.

And here’s a sonnet — this one called “Crabapple.”

Haphazard in the scrubby woods it grows,
right by the roadside, squeezed in other trees,
so unremarked, forgotten in the snows.
But in late April, suddenly the bees

can sense its scent, this fragrance in the rough —
a burst of blossoms, puffed and snowy white.
And for a week or two this tree, so tough,
is beautiful as roses. Watch the light

dance on the petals, fivefold; hear the hum
of insects drunk on sugared plenty; smell
perfume of springtime; feel the heat to come
in shade from where a single fruit once fell.

An accident, the main thing, tell me which —
is preening, basking, in this roadside ditch?

This week…I flew to Florida on Tuesday to give a speech on Wednesday morning. Continuing the theme of making the most of getting there the day before the event, I met up with Amanda (who was also at the NY orchid show in early April!) for dinner, and in the morning, I was able to run on the beach.

Since the end of my running streak (and especially given my back issues these days) I tend not to take my running gear with me on short trips. But I’d looked at the hotel I was staying at, and saw it was pretty close to the water. I also saw on my itinerary that my speech was not at the crack of dawn.

So I packed my shoes and went for an early morning run on the beach. I love the ocean, and it was wonderful to just take in the sky, clouds, sand, and morning sun. The run was not pain-free, but doable. I’m glad I paid attention and planned for that possibility. However…I will not be running Broad street this weekend. I had high hopes that I would be able to run 10 miles by early May but that is just not happening. Oh well. My husband plans to run it.

(It looks like it might be rainy … injured or not I am not a fan of running in the rain!)

Now that I have made it through all the organ music BWVs in the Bach project, I’m enjoying a little change of place. I listened to the English suite on harpsichord the other day (BWV 806) and quite liked it. I am moderately inspired to learn a few more of the 2-part inventions (to play on the piano).

It is May! May should have a number of fun things happening. I’ve got plans to take a quick trip with my daughter. I’ll be going to hear the Bach B-Minor Mass in Bethlehem again (BWV 232!). I am also just happy to have warmer weather. I feel constantly cold during the winter, so it has been delightful some days to not need to wear socks. I even painted my toe nails! Then the 4-year-old desperately wanted his toenails painted, so we chose a deep green color.

Maybe I’ll even (finally) buy a car. I put shopping on the list for this weekend. Stay tuned…

In the meantime, here’s another spring sonnet, currently called “April,” with a little nod to The Wasteland:

A fog as on the water, thick and low,
but here the misting clouds are lightest green —
fluorescent, nearly — buds all set to show.
The woods are glistening with their April sheen.

How many million leaves just lay in wait?
The branches, bare, concealing all this mass.
A bit of sun and warmth unfurls them, straight,
until the crowns are glowing like the grass.

Some Aprils might be cruel. I don’t know why.
The heady earth can seem so eager, still,
the sorrows linger even as the sky
turns gray to white to blue, and soon the chill

of morning flees. Viburnum-scented air
will comfort as it can, as spring might dare.

So I’ll try to hit a larger branch this weekend (and of course I welcome book suggestions for ordering!). I also ordered a new puzzle to work on at night, but its design is undermining my usual approach. I (like I’m sure most people) tend to put together the edge pieces of puzzles first. But the edge pieces in this particular puzzle are almost all the cream background color, and the design is in the center of the puzzle. So after a night of work earlier this week, I hadn’t gotten very far.

All of which led me to spend a lot of time scrolling last night instead. Oh well.

My boys are seemingly packed for their trips to that state technology competition. I did ask at 10 p.m. if one child had packed his dress shoes. He had not. Good thing I asked. I also had the fun parenting experience yesterday of coaching another child down from a tree (one of the blooming Kwanzan cherries, actually) that he had managed to climb. He had gotten up to a high limb, but then was having trouble getting down from there. I mean, there was the obvious way, but he was high up enough that this didn’t seem like a good idea.

In the meantime, here’s another sonnet, this one loosely inspired by the trip to Spain…

Ronda

A little window, in an upstairs room,
a wooden table, sturdy, like this chair,
outside the rain, a Monday full of gloom
but still the shutters open to the air.

Nearby a baby babbles, passed between
a dozen hands, all gathered for a meal.
Off in the kitchen flutter hands unseen —
paella in the pot — but so unreal

to find this place, a door, just barely signed,
a world away from where I often eat.
Yet in a day-long journey I could find
myself at home, with other little feet

that patter, not so very far away
from saffron, bright, amid the clouds and gray.

This is exactly what the Whitney English planner had: A lined blank page on the right, with the days of the week on the left (Monday to Sunday, and with Saturday/Sunday looking like real days, not tiny boxes). So I was planning to keep using this, but then Whitney English did not make a dated 2024 planner.

What to do? I searched around, and there was a thread on Reddit featuring other people with this exact same problem. Someone suggested a particular, mostly similar layout with Plum Paper (a customizable planner), and since it turned out Plum Paper was having a big Black Friday sale, I went for it.

The one problem? This layout has the blank page on the left, and the days of the week on the right. It is also slightly bigger than the Whitney English.

This wouldn’t seem like a big deal but…within a day of starting this planner I realized I was making my daily to-do list on a little accessory notebook. There were a few reasons for this. One is that I need to have my daily list close to me in order to use it. When I put the planner to the right of my laptop (which is where I usually put it), the daily part was far away from me. So it didn’t feel as useful. I could roll the weekly part around (and just have the planner half open – it’s a spiral) but then I couldn’t see the weekly part, and I like to see this to inform anything I add to the daily list, and also to cross off weekly priorities as they happened.

So then I tried moving the planner to the left side of my laptop. I moved my chair over and everything. But the way I have stuff arranged on my desk, I had to turn it perpendicular, which means the daily page is still far away from me. So I wind up just writing my daily to do list on the accessory notebook on my right.

Which is fine. Basically, I’m just using multiple planners. I like the Plum Paper cover (I chose it, after all, and it says LV…) and the weekly list page works. I’ve realized that my daily to-do list is a pretty disposable thing. I create it and cross everything off and then I don’t need to keep looking at it. A little notebook from Target is fine for that sort of thing.

As for the Whitney English…shortly after I bought the Plum Paper I saw that Whitney English was selling an undated planner with the week-on-a-page format. So I bought one (again, during a Black Friday sale) but since the Plum Paper + notebook can work I probably will just save that one for 2025.

Have you pondered the actual mechanics (like sides of a page, etc.) of your planning? I didn’t know how much a creature of habit I was until I realized what I was doing!

In other news: Yes, the photo of the Plum Paper spread illustrating this post was taken on my bed…where I am still confined. I have gotten up very few times today because every time I do I immediately regret it. This is all incredibly frustrating, for me and for my family that I cannot actively take care of. I guess maybe it might snow and lots of stuff will be canceled so the logistics of being down a parent/driver will be easier??

On the other hand, I am grateful for an incredibly flexible job. I’ve been doing all my immediate professional tasks from my bed. This would be much more inconvenient if I was, say, a dentist.

In the meantime, here’s a sonnet from a few weeks ago, called “Christmas Day.”

Two little boys exploring in the woods
The bigger one, he tends a secret spot
where winter-fleeing pirates store their goods
and long-time fallen branches start to rot

the little one, he tiptoes close behind
he follows where his brother clears a way
I hear them whisper, marvel where they find
a mushroom, brilliant spot in this decay

Inside, the shiny wrappings torn askew
the ribbons strewn beneath the glowing tree —
now pausing from these treasures bright and new
the older helps his brother look and see

these older gifts: A gentle, grubby hand,
a language only they will understand.

First: A quick plug for my (free) weekly newsletter, Week’s Worth. My choir director unexpectedly mentioned it in rehearsal on Sunday (it seems he is into spreadsheets, which was the subject of this week’s newsletter). If you’re looking to subscribe, just go to the home page and enter your email address in the box about getting a free time makeover guide. I send a weekly newsletter on Saturday mornings, and then a monthly newsletter called Just a Minute somewhere around the first of the month.

(If that’s not enough…you can sign up for the every-weekday-morning Vanderhacks newsletter over at Substack. Current cadence is four free posts per week and one behind the paywall, though I’m still experimenting with that.)

Anyway, there was some down time this weekend, two family outings, and we also managed three family dinners, so that was good. On Friday, during the 16-year-old’s voice lesson, I brought the 12-year-old to pageant practice. Then we came home, had chicken fajitas, and all went to the Morris Arboretum to see the holiday trains. This was a quick visit, in and out, partly because we were there at 7:15 p.m. and it closes at 8, but also because the 3-year-old at one point wound up lying down on the sidewalk and screaming. But the trains and lights were indeed festive. A favorite was the long train with a Philly Phanatic and the Grinch on the front. After, I helped the 14-year-old order his sibling presents online. We are now officially done with procuring those.

On Saturday, the 3-year-old went to his Saturday sitter for a few hours. I ran outside (5 miles), went grocery shopping, and sent the invites for my two post-holiday babies’ birthday parties. There was some downtime until 3:00, when a handful of my daughter’s friends came over for a Secret Santa gift exchange and holiday party. Let’s just say that the Squishmallow company and the slime companies are doing a brisk business if this group of 12-year-olds is typical! It was really cute. I had my husband bring the boys out for hair cuts during this, and I hung out in my office half-helping where needed, but she mostly ran the party herself. Progress!

We had family dinner — using up the tilapia that I’d bought on a “Let’s Eat Fish!” kick — then headed to the zoo for Luminature, that light display. The lights were lovely (I liked the giant jellyfish) and it is nice to walk outside on winter nights, but some adult in our family who is not me thought he had procured the tickets, but had not in fact procured the tickets, so after a frustrating wait at Guest Services, we wound up just buying them at a kiosk. This led to a discussion of whether we actually had the tickets to the other things this person procured tickets for but in fact we do. Phew. In the car on the way home, I listened to a livestream from the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus holiday concert (another NYC trip wasn’t going to fit into the weekend).

Sunday was church, then an afternoon of playdates — the 8-year-old and the 14-year-old both had friends over. So my job was to take the 3-year-old out of the house. We went to the library and read a bunch of books about Bear (of Bear Snores On fame) and then went to Wawa. After all the friends left, my husband and I watched football for a while, he tried a new recipe for shrimp curry (it was good!), and we had the usual evening activities (scouts and parkour).

Anyway, most of the presents have been procured so now it is on to the wrapping stage, which is going to be epic. In the meantime, here is last week’s sonnet.

Tannenbaum

This little tree once slept beneath the sky,
for ten years on a hill outside of town,
each summer drinking sunlight, reaching high,
and under snow in winter drooping down.

And all that decade we were growing too,
new babies in the Christmas card we send,
the children growing out of pants and shoes,
and as the winter shadows start to bend,

we load into the car, drive to the lot,
to see the stacks of firs, to choose our tree.
Or did the tree choose us? A little thought —
that all the while it grew, it grew for me

to make it dazzle, decking it with lights,
just like the stars watched over it those nights.

(Another “win” for the night: They had a bunch of friendly competitions to win ornaments, and one of them was who had the most frequent flyer miles — on any individual airline, in your account right now. My husband won this. I am not sure this is a competition you wanted to win!)

We left on time as we had to be up early Saturday morning to get the 14-year-old to an all-day robotics competition, starting at 7:30 a.m. Also, the 16-year-old and I had a church choir rehearsal at 9 a.m. We sang through all our concert pieces, and I think he was partially mollified about the early start-time with a Starbucks trip after. Maybe.

The 3-year-old was off with his Saturday sitter so after the rehearsal my husband and I went for a walk together on a nearby trail, and then I attempted to take kids #1, 3, and 4 shopping at a nearby Target for sibling presents, but this Target was deemed too small. So I took them home, regrouped, and took #1 and #3 to a bigger Target out in King of Prussia. We shopped (while my husband took kid #4 to go see the end of kid #2’s robotics tournament) and managed to finish their sibling shopping. Then I took #1 and 3 to Maggiano’s for dinner — kid #3’s request for getting an all-vowel report card. There had been some talk of my husband and kid #2 going to see Napoleon, but everyone was too tired (plus the reviews are bad) and so we all just hung out at home. After I put the 3-year-old down, I played ping pong with the 8-year-old, and then the 14-year-old and 12-year-old and I finished our Lego Alpine Lodge set (see photo, there are more over at Instagram, @lvanderkam).

On Sunday morning, the 16-year-old and I went to sing at church. As he noted, he spent about 7 hours this weekend on church music, plus the voice lesson he had on Friday and now he has a school choir concert this week. It is a lot! I had helpfully taken our larger carol books out of our choir folders since they made them quite heavy. Then we got to rehearsal…and I realized we were singing something out of there in the church service. So, I went home in between rehearsal and church to get the carol books. I was going to pick up my daughter, but she wasn’t awake. However, she did want to go to church youth group, so my husband wound up driving her over after I left to go back. Inefficiencies all around! Fortunately we live 7 minutes away. There was another Starbucks trip after.

In the afternoon I did a quick run on the treadmill and got cleaned up in time to go back to church at 3 (with the 16-year-old) for our choir’s Advent concert at 4. We sang with a brass group, and my son did one of the readings. All went well and we’d booked a sitter for the afternoon so my husband could come too.

On the agenda this week: Much present triaging! I have a giant pile of Amazon boxes in my office that need to be sorted through. Most are presents but some stuff is probably random household items. I need to figure out how many things each person has and whether things need to be evened out. Once I know this, I can begin wrapping. I’m debating whether I can actually put presents under the tree ahead of time this year. With lots of curious small children, I’ve generally not wanted to tempt fate. But they are all getting older…

In the meantime, I have been reading my old December magazines from years past. I mentioned that I was obsessed with a feature called “Camp Christmas” from the Better Homes and Gardens December 2016 issue. So I wound up making that the subject of last week’s sonnet (in my 52 sonnet 2023 writing project):

Camp Christmas

Some cold December weekend, once a year
I picture them, arriving not by sleigh
but in their pick-up trucks bedecked with gear
for skating, sledding. On this frosty day

the boughs are decked with whipped cream colored snow
and all the roof tops pure, marshmallow white,
a garland on the porch, red-ribboned bow,
a Frasier fir that twinkles, all alight.

Camp Christmas — see the bright wrapped presents’ sheen!
But all this now was seven years ago,
a moment in a fading magazine,
nostalgia for a crew I did not know.

They feel like friends, across deep time and space
one fleeting moment, in this festive place.

Friday night was actually pretty chill for me, as my husband brought the younger three kids to see the Trolls movie. This is the one thing that hadn’t fit over Thanksgiving weekend, so this Friday it was. My eldest went with a friend to a different movie (most definitely not Trolls) so it was just me and the 14-year-old, and he had some epic gaming night going on. I think I just kind of sat there. I debated starting a new holiday puzzle but I was just…tired.

Perhaps a little downtime was good as the pace picked up after that. Saturday morning was breakfast with Santa. I bought tickets to this event at an Italian restaurant, which had the advantage of being cheaper than the Neiman Marcus one we wound up at last year. It was…ok. The little kids were engaged in some serious naughtiness, despite Santa being RIGHT THERE, and the food was pretty eh. On the other hand, this Santa had studied his notes, and amazed the 3-year-old with his knowledge that he wanted Play-Doh. He also wished the 16-year-old well at his voice recital that afternoon, knew he was going to be singing “Let It Snow,” and had him sing a verse — and then wished him a good time in New York (the 16-year-old asked for a trip there for Christmas). How does Santa know all this? I guess it’s a Christmas mystery. I am not sure breakfast with Santa will make the holiday fun list next year but we will see what the kids say.

Anyway, after that, my husband took the three little kids downtown for the kids holiday party at his work place. They reported back to me that this was done really well with a balloon artist, a cookie decorating station, a scavenger hunt, and other things. Meanwhile, I took the big boys home and then turned around to get the 16-year-old to the voice recital. I think he was nervous about it, but it went really well, with him performing a jazzy rendition of Let it Snow. We stopped for Starbucks after, then I came home, waited for my husband to pack, and then we took off for NYC. (Our nanny came to stay overnight with the kids.)

This was our first overnight together since kid #5 was born. I kid you not. So…probably overdue. We had planned to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art before dinner, but we got a late start and hit traffic, so we didn’t check into our hotel until 7 p.m. We decided to fill the time before our dinner reservation by walking to see the tree at Rockefeller Center. We braved the crowds, snapped a few shots, then saw the lights at Saks and walked through St. Patrick’s cathedral. Then it was up to Aquavit, where we had our seven course tasting menu.

This restaurant has long been our “special occasion” place — we went there on our third date lo these many years ago. They still had the goat cheese ice cream birds nest as the dessert (pictured). It was an excellent meal, with a nice wine accompaniment. I don’t think either of us slept all that great after more wine than we normally have (and dairy for me – I decided it was worth it) but oh well.

In the morning we went to the Brooklyn Diner, which was a few blocks from our hotel. We were at a little table in the corner by the window when all of a sudden we see four fire trucks pull up. The manager comes out and says that they had a small grease fire and the fire department came, but it was all out now — still, lots of firemen in full uniform tromping through the crowded restaurant made for quite a spectacle!

We checked out, drove home, and made it back by noon. Then it was lots of kid stuff (coupled with a short treadmill run for me and a gym trip for my husband) and laundry until my husband took the 3-year-old to the “Live Nativity” at the church (goats! llamas!) and I took the 16-year-old to go sing a duet with me in the 5 p.m. service. This was quite fun (for me at least). We sang the “Canticle for Turning,” which is an Advent hymn – together on the first verse, him solo on the second, me on the third, harmony on the fourth. I had him sing the melody and I picked a harmonization out of the accompaniment, so it was a pretty cool sound to have the harmonization be higher than the melody. Also, I’m performing with my kid! That is a fun milestone regardless.

After that it was just the usual Sunday night activities — family dinner, Boy Scouts for the 14-year-old, and parkour for the 8-year-old. Next week we’ll be attempting to fit all the usual activities in with another holiday party, a Christmas concert, and an all-day robotics tournament. Should be interesting…

Poetry update: I mentioned that last weekend’s Dutch Wonderland trip was a bit of a bust, but at least I got a sonnet topic out of it. Jupiter was brightly visible in the sky. So, this was last week’s sonnet (as part of my 52 sonnet year-long writing project):

A million miles for each day of the year
through frozen space — a striped white giant glows.
Thick storms that swirl for ages cloud this sphere.
I try to fathom this strange wind that blows

so fierce — and yet from here a placid light
in this dark sky, a short hop from the moon,
now twinkling in the cold November night —
so silent as our own wind sings its tune.

The children bicker, shivering in these lines
beneath the Christmas lights and silver bells,
a blinking star that like the billboard shines.
A funnel cake, exhaust fumes, all these smells —

From Jupiter this storm is silent too,
a glowing orb — no matter what we do.

In other news: Have you subscribed to Vanderhacks yet? This is the newsletter I just launched on Substack, with a short, every weekday morning tip for taking your day from great to awesome. I am currently making all posts free but in a week or so will put on the paywall for 3-4 posts per week. You can subscribe as a free or paying member here.