Crazy Bananas
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Crazy Bananas Creative Studio is a personal blog about photography, design, parenting, recovery and life in general!
Crazy Bananas
2y ago
Last summer – when my dad was just starting treatment again, but still very healthy – I sat with him on the back deck of our family lake cabin and asked him to write something for me. I gave him a piece of scrap paper (a to-do list for work on the back) and asked if he’d write “Love you” on it. He chuckled and said sure, scrawling the words with his left hand hooked around the pen, like he had since he was a kid and the teachers told him even though he was left handed, he had to make his letters slant to the right.
I wanted to get a tattoo of his writing, but over the last year, I never got ar ..read more
Crazy Bananas
2y ago
Brian Sandford Spooner, Sr., of Manhattan, Kansas departed this world on June 4, 2022, at the age of 84 after a long battle with cancer. He was surrounded by his loving family, who already miss him more than anything. Brian was a husband, father, and passionate researcher. He recently retired from Kansas State University after 51 years, during which time he was named a University Distinguished Professor, as well as served as the Director of the Division of Biology and Interim Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded the title of Emeritus Dean in Spring 2022.
Born on December 27 ..read more
Crazy Bananas
3y ago
Dear Tate,
Today you turn 10-years-old. What a decade! What a life you are living! I am so grateful for your sweet nature and kind soul. This year has obviously been a challenging one as a parent, but you make it easy, buddy. You are always looking for ways to help and ease the burden on others. A few months ago, you came up to me after a long day and said you had a surprise. You had created an entire spa in our living room, complete with pillows on the floor as a bed, soft music, candles and even plants and greenery. You then told me to lay down and put an iPad in front of my face playing ep ..read more
Crazy Bananas
3y ago
It’s 2:07 a.m. and I can’t sleep. I don’t feel particularly filled with anxiety over anything…but I also feel the low hum of slight panic all the time. I think that’s the story of motherhood during this pandemic, at least it is for almost everyone I know. As a person in recovery, I am well versed in living one day, sometimes one moment, at a time, but it’s still challenging. I feel like each day brings a new bucket full of decisions, and I simply don’t have any answers to the questions I’m faced with.
We are keeping our kids home from school this year. It’s incredibly difficult. And I have no ..read more
Crazy Bananas
3y ago
Everything is so hard right now. I say this as a person with extreme privilege, and I admit I feel so much guilt for even sharing that things are hard when I have been more than lucky during these crazy times. That guilt has kept me quiet, especially online. I decided to delete a few of the social apps from my phone and only check for work (which is my job, so I can’t completely disengage), but it wasn’t a planned hiatus. I just really haven’t known what to say.
I still have a job. So does my husband. I am still working from home. We have good Wifi access. My kids are schooling from home inde ..read more
Crazy Bananas
3y ago
I’m writing this the day before our first day of school for the year. Our family chose to do remote learning this semester, as I’m still working from home and we felt that was the best option for our family. And technically, right now all the students in our school district are remote for the time being, but knowing that we have a full semester ahead of us feels a bit daunting. Instead of focusing on the unknown, I’m looking back at the summer we were able to have, even with the restrictions due to the pandemic. We are so grateful to have had the opportunity to safely and cautiously travel a b ..read more
Crazy Bananas
3y ago
I have been thinking a lot about the intersection of sobriety and social justice. Seven and a half years into this journey of recovery, I know I could not do any of this work in the world without my sobriety. It comes first, and I must protect it at all costs.
I feel like so many of my friends and others in the world are waking up right now. To be sober is to be awake. You wake up on that first morning after your last drink or drug, and you look around with bleary eyes. “This can’t be right? Is this what the world really is like?” You are slow and sluggish. You are hungry for knowledge an ..read more
Crazy Bananas
3y ago
I am incredibly grateful the organizers of this event asked me to speak. I have been struggling with how to use my voice in this time in our country. As someone who has been involved in social justice for many years and has never been one to stay silent, the last few weeks have been a reminder to me of the importance of stepping back and listening. I am sometimes asked why I haven’t run for political office yet, and often my response has been “I don’t think our community needs another privileged White lady telling them what they need, I’d much rather support a female candidate of color.” I fel ..read more
Crazy Bananas
3y ago
Dear Lulu,
Happy 14th birthday, my beautiful girl! I know this birthday isn’t exactly what you were hoping when you thought about turning 14. I mean, for one, I’m sure you didn’t imagine you’d be a few months deep into a quarantine due to a global pandemic? But here we are.
It’s hard for me to even look back on your 14th year on this planet without getting stuck in the pandemic section…we have remarked that February feels like a hundred years ago. But there was a whole 10 months of your year before coronavirus stopped the world, and they were a good 10 months. You really grew into yourself at ..read more
Crazy Bananas
3y ago
*pretends my kids have been actually completing their distance learning assignments when really they’ve been sleeping until noon and playing with foster puppies WHATEVER I’M DOING MY BEST! ? Here’s to all the quarantine parents trying to make this thing work, without totally ruining our kids for life. Just keep going. We can do this.
The post Last Day of School 2020 appeared first on Crazybananas ..read more