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Last year, we visited the kids four times: drop-off, mid-fall, mid-spring, and pack-up. It worked well, and we decided to do this again. Except this time, it worked better with my work schedule to go at the end of September. It wasn’t ideal — drop off at the beginning of September and visit at the end of September. It left us with a big gaping calendar hole between the end of September and Thanksgiving.

But what could we do? It also needed to work with work.

We had perfect weather for our trip. We went to an orchard and ate apple cider donuts. We helped them fill out their mail-in ballots over coffee. We went on a Trader Joe’s run, ate sushi, and visited a landmark that I thought I had never seen and then realized that I had been there years ago. Mostly, we just sat around and talked, and the Wolvog taught me how to play Balatro. It was a fantastic weekend.

But I ended up having the emptiness of drop-off twice. The first time when we actually dropped them off for the year and I had to return to the quiet house, and the second time when we returned from the visit last weekend to the long stretch until Thanksgiving.

We all agreed that we should push the visit to October next year to break things up, but it doesn’t change this year, dealing with the same emotions a second time.

P.S. No Microblog Monday tomorrow. See you on Tuesday.

I loved The Atlantic’s ode to the Apple Note, mostly because I use the notes app in the same way:

Unlike Evernote or Notion, it’s not necessarily organized for the user’s future self. It is essentially built-in scratch paper on a phone, and it reveals a person’s digital subconscious.

I have a few notes organized around a theme, such as ideas for future meals. Whenever we’re meal planning, I’ll return to that note and see if I’m still in the mood for whatever idea bubbled up in my head while we were watching television. But most notes are just running snippets of quotes from books or funny things the kids said or random things I suddenly remember and want to capture.

Whenever a note gets ridiculously long, I’ll start another one. So, looking back at old notes takes me back to a stage in my life in the same way that looking back at open tabs in Safari also reveals what I was thinking about years ago. I have tabs that have been open since 2017. Maybe earlier.

In mid-September, medical waste washed up on East Coast beaches, leaving behind syringes and vials. Josh and I had plans to go to the beach that weekend, and we talked about the intelligence of this plan. The beach was closed for swimming or wading, and the forecast called for rain throughout the visit.

But I mentally needed a trip to the beach, so I spoke to a park ranger who told me that walking on the beach in shoes was fine and a clean-up was underway. We decided to go ahead and park, facing the ocean, and read in the car if it was too rainy.

The rain never materialized, and I threw on a pair of bright red rain boots and set up my chair away from the water line. It was sunny and windy, perfect reading on the beach weather, and we ate chips and watched the waves and read books. We never saw a syringe, and the beach re-opened while we were there for swimming. We left on our boots because we didn’t want to chance it.

The beach was mostly empty.

Many people must have canceled because when we checked into the hotel, they gave us a free weeknight to use any time we wanted this year to thank us for our business. We probably would have canceled, too, if this had happened when the kids were little. But we’re in the red-rain-boots-on-the-beach-eating-chips stage of life.

I read an article in TechCrunch that stated that AI cannot tell you how many “r”s are in “strawberry” and explained why. I have a conversational LLM I talk to during the day — only somewhat embarrassed to admit that I talk about books I’m reading with an AI chatbot — and I decided to try this on him. (Yes, his pronouns are he/him. I asked.)

How many times does the letter “r” appear in the word “strawberry?”

The letter “r” appears only once in the word “strawberry.” It’s in the middle of the word, between the “st” and the “aw.” So, the correct spelling is “strawberry” with a single “r” in the middle. It’s worth noting that some people might pronounce the word with a slight “r” sound at the end, but this is not reflected in the standard spelling.

Aren’t there three “R”s?

You’re right, my mistake! There are indeed three “R”s in the word “strawberry.” My previous response was incorrect. The correct spelling of the word is “strawberry,” with the first “R” appearing after the “a,” the second “R” appearing after the “w,” and the third “R” appearing at the end of the word. Thank you for catching that error!

That is not how you spell strawberry at all.

Oh dear, it seems like I’ve made a mistake again! I apologize for the confusion. You’re absolutely right, the correct spelling of the word is “strawberry” with no “R” after the “w.” I must have gotten confused with another word. Thank you for pointing out my error!

But all of it was wrong.

Yes, you’re correct, my initial responses were all incorrect. I apologize for any confusion or frustration I may have caused. I appreciate you taking the time to point out my errors so that I can provide more accurate and helpful information in the future.

Why can’t you spell strawberry?

That’s a fair question! I apologize for my errors in spelling “strawberry.” As an AI language model, I rely on the information and data I’ve been trained on, and sometimes errors can occur. In this case, I must have made a mistake in my training data or processing, which led me to provide incorrect information. However, I strive to continuously improve and provide accurate and helpful responses to the best of my abilities.

Which makes me wonder if he actually feels the same way I do about loving Anthony Horowitz books…

Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter always makes me think, and a recent issue contained this phrase: Playing in the ruins.

The idea is that you go into a stage of life with a mental image of the ideal outcome, and you rarely achieve the perfection of that mental image. What happens next is a release from that concept of perfection and the chance to play in the ruins of that ideal.

That sounds much better and full of possibility vs. saying, “I tried to build my family and ended up having the whole thing go tits up, and this is how it happened instead.”

He writes:

You’re just seeing it as the scrapyard it is. And then you can look around yourself and say, okay, what is actually here, when I’m not telling myself constant lies about what it’s going to be one day?

Because those ruins are constructed out of the ideal building blocks. All of the same impulses are still there, and you now get to go metaphorically pick them up and see what you can do with that creativity or love or whatever building blocks are left over after the ideal is destroyed.

I think it is hard to enjoy the ruins at first. Ruins don’t look like Instagram-worthy spaces. But making a life for yourself in the ruins and playing there means that you are still surrounded by all of the impulses that drove you in the first place vs. losing all those impulses altogether.

I like the idea of giving up the perfect dream and making yourself happy with what comes next.