Barthanie Flatt

Verified with a random toddler that my dress is blue and my shoes are yellow. Knowing our colors was a real self esteem boost for both of us.

Two things helped me transition back to physical books: 1) using a bookmark under the current line to keep me focused on just one line at a time and 2) listening to 8d music helped keep my mind and eye on the page. It only took a few weeks before I didn’t need those supports anymore.

Watching reruns of both the Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days in the late 80s was very confusing. Ron Howard was simultaneously a child in black and white and a young adult in color in the year 1960?

Go big or go home? Buddy, my pants are off and I’m eating leftover Halloween candy in bed. I’ve been home for like an hour already.

Coastal California is just a gathering of all the people who still wear trucker hats.

Fuck every one of you motherfuckers who did this.

A restaurant window has a poster that reads “Make America Healthy Again” alongside another sign that says “Jesus is king.”

Found the worst people in Wheaton, IL and trust me, the competition is *fierce.* The restaurant is called Moveable Feast. I hope they get everything they dreamed of (dysentery).

“Will those swimsuit bottoms hold in all the farts?” Jim helps the kids with their summer clothes shopping.

Every week during their zoom piano lessons, my kids quiz their teacher on our mostly identical black cats. She quizzes us about which of her dogs is barking in the background. It’s adorable.

People don’t dance about penguins enough, in my opinion.

Yellow-green grass slopes down an open hillside with darker green trees leading up to and lining a low ridge in the distance, all under a deep blue sky.

The east bay was east baying today.

Doing this in Beachwood is a statement. My stepdad grew up there and was one of like four gentiles in his elementary school.

Dear lord. Buried in that article is the fact that a parent posted a video of his daughter crying when he told her the robot was going away. Wtf.

A rocky dirt trail leads the eye higher through a series of hills covered in scrubby bushes under a brilliant blue sky.

Yellow flowers blooming on low bushes line a dirt trail that leads into a switchback. In the distance, low clouds cover green hills.

Small trees and bushes give way to lower greenish brown hills that meet the blue sky in a line of white on the horizon.

A snake (probably a gopher snake) stretches halfway across a dirt trail.

Wednesday trail run. I prefer winter running, but this’ll do.

Thank you for saying that because she definitely thinks I’m mostly annoying.

Watched Arcane with my teen over the last few days. I love the peek into my kid’s brain and heart. Whatever your kids are into, listen to it, watch it, experience it with them when you’re invited. It’s an act of love to watch them light up.

The Two Princes - Wikipedia

They didn’t use that as the tagline, but this queer royal romance podcast is otherwise perfect: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two...

Golden fiddleneck flowers in the foreground among tall green grass. Rolling green hills dotted with oaks in the middle ground. Mount Diablo rising in the background under a brilliant blue sky streaked with white clouds.

Thursdays are for long runs where I play peek-a-boo with Mt Diablo around the rolling green hills.

I worked in international education post 9/11 and I thought that was the lowest point possible. I can’t imagine what my colleagues are dealing with now.

This is what the internet is for.

Green grass and shrubs line a dirt and rock trail along a ridge that disappears as it climbs into the clouds.

Small yellow flowers in the foreground of a grassy, slanted hill side with fog in the background.

Sparse snow dusts the trees that form an arch over a rocky dirt trail, lined with the same snow.

Above, thick white and gray clouds part to reveal a patch of striking blue sky. Below, bright green hills fold over each other.

Thursdays are also for long trail runs. Bonus: snow in the Bay Area.

Rolling green hills dotted with scrubby oaks in the foreground lead to a reservoir in the background. The sky is full of clouds, alternatingly dense and wispy, ranging from dark blue-gray to bright white.

Wednesdays are for long trail runs.

A sepia-toned photo features a baby with Down Syndrome wearing a white gown and tiny little shoesies sits in a white chair. She has dark hair and round, kissable cheeks.

A sepia-toned phot of two girls in white dresses sitting on a bench. The older girl has Down Syndrome and wears a white bow in her hair. The younger girl looks directly at the camera.

Couldn’t sleep last night, so I combed census records until I found my grandma’s sister. I only knew she had a sister because of a random photo shoved in a closet. Her name was Anna, born in 1915 to my great grandmother who was 40 at the time.

Why are you there? Leave. Get up and walk out.

I tell my kids masks are just basic hygiene, like washing your hands after using the restroom. And the number of people we see strut out of a public bathroom without washing their hands… it explains a lot.

A burrito for breakfast, a burrito for lunch, and a sensible burrito dinner.

Shout out to the seniors on NextDoor alerting us to every scam phone call, text, and email they get. Keeping this neighborhood SAFE safe.

It helps to think of any republican without power as a temporarily embarrassed fascist.

Found an empty bowl in the shower. Rosie, 11, nonchalantly tells me it was for cookies. You know, shower cookies.