The Brilliance of Light

While some might consider the plight of modern-day Pittsburghers to be the city's lack of job opportunites, its jaw-dropping population loss, or crumbling infrastructure, I see a totally different problem: Eight months of mind-crushingly bleak weather. Sure, most of the steel mills are shuttered now, so the lung-blackening soot that my grandparents and great grandparents had to chew on as they walked 30 miles (adjusted for dramatic old-timey storytelling inflation) to punch a timeclock is no longer a concern. But from late October often through mid-May, the City of Champions is hidden beneath a canopy of dark clouds that looks less like a winter sky and more like a cluster of dirty cotton balls glued to the roof of an abandoned warehouse. In other words, it's depressing. This past weekend, however, marked what will hopefully be the beginning of an extended period of warm weather and light that lasts into late Fall. To celebrate, the fam (Michelle and Ethan) and I kept it low key and decided to enjoy the weather and also celebrate some recent good news.

Friday, Michelle and I dropped Ethan at his Grandparent's house and struck out for some veggie dogs, French fries, and beer at D'z Six Pack and Dogs. This particuliar D'z is not the flagship shop located in the Regent Square neighborhood of Pittsburgh, but rather the satellite location in suburban Monroeville (a spot that was formerly a Pizza Hut... and it shows). Besides having a waiter who was too-cool-for-school, and the beer menu being tapped out of my first four choices, the excursion was fun. Plus, Michelle and I got to talk, uninterrupted, which is becoming a rare thing these days. Usually one of us is balancing Ethan on our head, while the other is dancing around making him laugh; or one of us is changing a diaper while the other is waiting in the wings to run that soiled diaper out of the house at lightning speed (i.e. baby poop, it stinks). The outing was also a celebration for a new writing assignment I'm working on. I'll keep the details of the assignment brief for now, just mentioning that it's an in-depth magazine article about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the subsequent rise in the suicide rate among troops [Last Thursday the military released this report on the topic]. I'll be writing about the topic in greater detail here in the coming weeks as I do research, interviews, and immerse myself with veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a topic I've been wanting to tackle for the last year or so.

Saturday was even more low key, as the three of us enjoyed the sun and stuck around the house.  We struck out for some pizza later in the day ("Cheese!" as Ethan calls it), and did our best to combat global terrorism, stopping at Lowe's to pick up some flowers, a Butterfly bush, and a wall-mount hose reel. Yeah, I know, riveting. Sunday we headed to Beechwood Farms, a nature reserve located atop a hill in the ridiculously wealthy area of Fox Chapel. I saw oodles of BMWs cruising around, no AMG models though. What's wrong Chappies, lean economy got you down? Beechwood Farms has a ton of trails that cover its 134 acres, and is rarely all that busy. Occasionally you bump into fellow hikers, but not too often. Ethan loves it there, as you can see in the pictures above. It's incredible to see him discovering everything for the first time. He makes me want to slow down and pay closer attention to my surroundings. It's something I'm not very good at. The trail we chose was a little over an hour trek. At first I felt like I was rushing, then we got into a rhythm. Back at the homestead, Ethan took an afternoon snooze, while Michelle and I tended to our needy yard. No joke, the woman we bought this house from was insane. She transformed what would have been an ordinary backyard in something out of Lord of the Rings. There are circular stone gardens, ornate pathways, and dozens of varieties of plant life. We've been spending the last five years trying to make the yard more manageable while still retaining its woodland aesthetic. It's no simple feat. That's all for now... over and out.