It is with the heaviest of hearts that I am making a post after a near 6-year absence. Around this time, six years ago, chaos started, and it quickly evolved into Hell. It was tough for our family, but it was always hardest for my son. He was once a sharp student who had As and Bs, was a brilliant baseball player, and a gifted multimedia artist. Unfortunately, over the past 6 years, his mental health degraded and by the end, he believed he was useless and didn’t deserve love. He told me time and time again that he didn’t want to be here. He tried multiple times to leave. We were fortunate to find people who helped us try to help him. The only solace is that he is finally at peace. This is one of our last selfies, taken during a brief window of calm. Rest in Peace, Jasper.

(originally posted to Instagram April 6, 2024. It was a couple weeks after his passing and I was starting to get texts and calls asking if rumors were true. I wanted to post to answer those questions where most people would see, but I didn’t really want to engage. I’m posting it here, because I feel like I really should have this on my blog.)

Baseball season is starting up and I was searching for the location of our practice field. It happened to be near our house. Since I was "in the neighborhood," I decided to scroll over to see what our house looked like.

Based on the arrangement of the table on hte back porch, this photo was taken two summers ago.

That also means that those light patches you see in our front yard mark where The Boy & I stood when playing catch.

This captures the summer before the year he actually joined a "real" baseball team. We would stand on either side of the driveway and toss the ball back and forth.

As this was a new activity for us, and accuracy was still an issue, I stood just on one side of the driveway. (I'm the upper light spot). The Boy stood across the driveway (his is the smaller light-spot, near the red car).

Nowdays, I'm under the tree, and The Boy either pitches from the same spot, or does diving catches a little south of the driveway. (towards the bottom of the picture).

On Top of Portland
Originally uploaded by a.k.a. Little L

Yesterday, Mooj & I rode in the Providence Bridge Pedal. It was fun.

This was our third time. We missed last year, but the year before was a cluster. I think that the event suffered from its own success. It was so crowded that we were caught in a couple of big traffic jams. For example, a couple of years ago, it took us about half-an-hour to cross the starting line. We crossed a bridge and hit another jam, where we crawled along for about 45 minutes. It was very frustrating for a little one.

But this year it was very smooth. When I see the large crowds and the combination of riders of various skills and good/bad manners, I’m amazed at how well it works. But this year was the smoothest ever. It was fun!

In our previous two attempts, we did not get to the Fremont bridge before it had to open back up to traffic. This year we were determined to make it.

As we were waiting to start, the organizers announced the availability of a shortcut. We missed the Ross Island and the Hawthorn. Lots of cool pix from the Portland Bridge Pedal photos on Flickr.

My sister-in-law shares her experience on her blog. We met at the beginning of the ride, but were separated shortly after the start.

I just uploaded a bunch of photos to Flickr. Over the past 6 months, I’ve been moving from iView to iPhoto, transferring tags, and updating sets, etc.

I’ve taken quite a few self-portraits of my son and me. They’re arm-length and now, after eight+ years, becoming a quite a collection.

If you look in the widget over at the side of this page, you’ll see my Flickr stream, but it doesn’t give you a feel for the chunk of pix that I’ve just tossed up.

I still need to fix the titles and add some comments. Another project!

The Boy & I in The Gorge
Originally uploaded by a.k.a. Little L

via my simple Nokie and T-Mobile

We took a drive out to Stevenson, Washington, looking for "The House of Loudness." We found the "Thunder Shack." It was beautiful out there. We will definitely be heading out again. We saw some neat places that we want to check out. This also gave me a chance to test some of my new techno-weaving I've been doing with my phone-Flickr-WordPress-Twitter

J is home from school, today. He had a hard time sleeping through the night for the second night in a row. Coughed and coughed. It didn't wake him up, but he never acheived a deep sleep. Yesterday, he was wiped when we got up for school. So after another night of coughing, we decided that he would be better off not going to school.

Every year, when the seasons change from Summer to Fall, or Winter to Spring, his breathing is affected. He always seems short of breath. When it's worse, his coughs squeak, and it sounds like he has some fluid in his lungs. In the evenings, he starts to have a dry cough. Sometimes it'll be a series of coughs, with several minutes between coughs. Sometimes it gets worse, and there's only a few seconds between a cough.

It doesn't really slow him down. He says he feels fine. (which is good. He doesn't see this as "being sick.")

We've been dealing with this for the past 5 or 6 years, and we finally feel like we know what's going on, and this no need to panic. Just have him do a treatment, and watch.