Life at a "Swell's" pace

Portland Art Museum

The Portland Art Museum: Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal… exhibit.

Halloween (Last Minute Costume Idea?)

Okay, I'll admit, being in school fulltime and working on other things, we ran out of time to make Skylar a costume.

But, I think we nailed it anyway with this last minute costume idea. Yeah?

Him standing at the door hit me right in the creep factor, and I love horror!

Happy Halloween!

A Bicycle Helmet saved Skylar

Yesterday afternoon, while Skylar was out riding his bike through our city, he wrecked. But, he didn't just wreck, we don't know what happened.

We get a text that he had wrecked and needed to be picked up. Thinking it was just a bike crash and he didn't want to ride home because of bruised feelings and scrapes, we asked where he was. He said, "At the end of the street." Meaning, our street we live on. The Mr. and I both looked at each other thought, 'what the heck?!'

After walking to the end of the street we realized, this was more than just a simply bike crash, something had happened.

He was pretty beat up and his helmet was cracked, his bike bent and scraped up, and he couldn't remember what had happened.

I was immediately pissed. The Mr. and I came to the conclusion that he needed to go to the hospital ASAP!

Our city has an Urgent Care and we took him there. Assuming they would just patch him up and "possibly" need to patch him up with some stitches, but it was much worse than we had suspected.

The doctor on call checked his bangs and bruises out and cleaned him up, but also determined that he had a concussion, and told us that we weren't the first people to come in Urgent Care with a similar story. The others that had come in had been hit by a car. I was livid! How dare someone hit my baby and drive away, leaving him in the street. I asked if there were police needing to be involved, but because of the hit and run, there was nothing we could really do other than report it. Which, we did.

Needless to say, he was right, nothing could be done other than ask neighbors if they had doorbell cameras, saw anything, or security footage that faced the street-there was nothing. Someone had hit my child, drove off, and sadly, he remembers nothing from that day. My heart sank.

The city we live in doesn't take to bike riders all that well, for whatever reason. We know the risks when we ride our bikes here, and this isn't the first time a member of our "family" has been hit by a car. The Mr. was hit on a busy street, in the open, with many cars around us. I was hit by a minivan the first year we moved to this city. The city is slowly putting in bike lanes, but it just isn't enough if drivers don't pay attention, or respect bicycle riders, no matter who they are.

This accident adds to our frustrations and nervousness of riding through our own city, where we live. We try to avoid the city streets now, because this accident was way too close of a call. I do hope that the driver is caught, or at least has some sort of remorse, knowing that he left a child to suffer in the road.

After a few weeks, Skylar's injuries are healing, but he still has no memory of the entire day, much less, his accident.

If you pass a bicycler, no matter who they are, give them at least six feet of space. Don't crowd them, and definitely don't speed past them. At any given moment that bicycle rider could lose control of their bike and fall into the lane of travel. And, if you come up to a stop sign with a bicycler, don't be a jerk, give them the right of way. Remember, SHARE THE ROAD!

Five simple things

Hello.

The cold has come and now it's gone. We took advantage of the chill in the air for a few days and painted our deck (a post is in the works). We went with a textured surface with color and it really turned out well. We also decided to grab up some textured paint for the front step area, too. We are hoping to get a coat on that soon before the winter season comes. On a different note, today marks one year since we lost our sweet, loving dog Baz. It still hard for us to think about and my favorite and hardest times this past year have been when all three of us gather in the front room with no distractions and just talk about him, or other topics. I really enjoy that time we spend together because it seems to allow us to be more connected. I have Baz to thank for those moments because it really started after he passed away. God we miss him. With Meia and him being gone, and with having them for almost 20 years, our lives have definitely taken a different path now. It's been a hard year, but the healing is happening. And although we are healing from their loss, we will never get over how much they affected our lives and left a permanent mark on our lives. We will live life at a Swell's pace and also never forget how the little things matter so much. Here are five simple things that made this week good.

1. This harvest...

With the Harvest Moon we went ahead of picked and dug all of the vegetables we could gather. We were extremely pleased with the potato harvest and the last of the tomatoes are slowly ripening up.

2. These crab pots...