TeamReedBlog.2020

I've often lauded our small neighborhood for its charm, friendliness and proximity to a bunch of fun and necessary things. I have a love-hate relationship with the trees which are great until they dump their spent leaves knee-deep in the yard if I don't keep up with them. We also have a great and low-key neighborhood association, whose twin focus on snow removal and fun activities, makes it the best neighborhood association in the city, if not the world. Lat Thursday night, for example, they brought The Chauffeurs , an instrumental, jazz-funk band, and food trucks to our tiny park. The Captain and I used to be regulars at these monthly summer events, but softball and other things crowded it out. This week, though, we took a bottle of wine, a couple chairs and a credit card and settled in. What struck me most was how many kids were there. Tall kids. Short kids. Kids who climbed on rocks. They were everywhere, and I realized that I'm not one of those parents anymore who bring...

I was working at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management when I first learned that a birthday could be more than a day-long event. Dana Reed Wise (no relation) was a beautiful, smart and fun woman who never had a nail unmanicured, a facial blemish or a dress-down day. So when she announced it was her birthday week, I took it in stride as a Dana thing. She was fabulous day in and day out. She was, it turns out, also a trend-setter because everywhere you look now it's someone's birthday week or month. Growing up, birthdays were remarked upon but not celebrated with a bounce-house, balloons and a theme. The them was you were one year older and still the annoying sibling to six other kids in a house with one bedroom. There was cake, for sure. And maybe a party, but when you have six siblings, it's kind of a party crowd every day. I'm not complaining, more explaining that the idea of stretching your birthday beyond the actual day of your birth was not something I ...