Ben was making a left turn and got hit almost head on, just slightly from the right, causing the car to spin about 540 degrees, ending up towards the center of the intersection. And that (angle of impact) has made all the difference. At another angle, perhaps the car would not have spun around, and there’s no telling whether injuries and/or deaths would have resulted. I shudder to think.

This was roughly 8 months ago. No one was injured. The car was totaled, though, and so it led to buying a used car that we really now regret buying.

Why am I sharing this now? Because I’ve been thinking about it a lot. This was eight months ago in the Fall of 2021, and it seemed to precipitate other changes in our lives, which in turn have caused me to feel a little sidetracked from baking. This is, after all, supposed to be a baking blog, right? For some reason, I just don’t feel a strong urge to post about anything that I bake or cook lately.

Shortly after the car accident, we ended up contacting a realtor who helped us look at possible places to move to, and in December we purchased our first property after years (3 decades for me) of being renters. We now live about 5 miles north of where we lived before.

This photo was taken roughly 6 months ago in a place called Llandover Trails, right around dawn. I’m not sure if there was a better way to take it, but if your interested in the photography settings, I used my Canon Rebel T6 with 50 mm lens set at the lowest settings–f/1.8, ISO:100. Mounted camera on a tripod and it took about 4 seconds.

I share it because it was one of the last pictures I took while we still lived at our old neighborhood. It’s hard to believe that this secluded area is only half a mile way from “civilization”, i.e., apartment buildings, paved roads, sidewalks, utility poles, etc. Although we had lived in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle for almost exactly 7 years, I only found out about this greenspace during the pandemic. And now I miss it. And it reminds me of that poem by Robert Frost, which is why I used it for the title of this post.

I’ve been painting lately. Mostly acrylic on canvas, but some are acrylic on wood like the first two right below. Those were done shortly after hearing about each of those mass shootings, which is what dictated their names. The latter two are simply semi-representational abstract paintings that inspired their names.

I don’t know where this is going to go but for now, I simply enjoy doing/making them immensely.