Summerstay Christmas Letter 2020

We were thrilled to add Ellen to our family in January via our wonderful friend and gestational surrogate, Amanda! Ellen hasn't seen many people as a baby because of ᴄᴏᴠɪᴅ, which is sad, but she is a super happy and overall easy baby. Doug took two months off work when she was born, and then ᴄᴏᴠɪᴅ hit and the silver lining has been that he's been able to work from home with no commute and flexible hours. He also taught a class at University of Baltimore (online) spring and fall semesters. Recently, after trying to make his own Artificial Intelligence adventure game, he decided to instead build it for a startup as a second job. My health continues to be a struggle, so we are going to get some help. Daniel graduated from high school amidst ᴄᴏᴠɪᴅ shutdowns, and then started college at BYU this fall. I'm sure ᴄᴏᴠɪᴅ protocols  made starting college away from home for the first time much more disorienting, but he found a great group of friends in his acting class. He was cast in two BYU mainstage theater productions, which is apparently unusual for freshmen.  -Lesli

TV and Movies

Doug- If I made a trip to Tokyo just to see the giant Gundam robot statue, would that be considered a pilgrimage to mecha?

[Lesli watching the TV programme The Mentalist]

Daniel- Is this funny?

Lesli- Not at all.

Doug- Come on, it's hilarious! It's like Psych except he's older and has a secret sorrow.

‘I dreamed I was walking down a sand dune and a man in a robe was standing beside me. I asked why during the hardest times in my life I saw only one set of footprints. He said, “Sand people always ride in single file to hide their numbers.”’

                                                             -Doug

Daniel- Is Austenland a chick flick?

Lesli- I think so.

Daniel- I'm not really clear on what a chick flick is.

Lesli- I don't think chick flick is a very good name. Anyone one can enjoy anything. It’s not like we call action movies ‘dick flicks.’

Daniel- We do now.

Daniel's friend Jackson [after doing filming for a movie of ours featuring a parody of 2001's Dawn of Humanity sequence]- I just had to explain to my bank teller that my voice sounds weird because I just spent 30 minutes screaming like a monkey outside.

Academics

‘Today, I took my midterm exam in Computer Programming and got the note 'Your code is neat and well organized, and you do a good job picking names. Keep up the great work!'

I have perfected 50% of Computer Programming in more ways than one.’

                                                             -Daniel

[To get this you need to know the famous quote by Phil Karlton- “There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.” -Doug]

Lesli- I wonder what it was about my Facebook page that made Facebook send a targeted ad to my feed for GPS trackers for teens and adults with special needs... 

[Impressive Academic Team buzzes]

Moderator- In A Christmas Carol, this Shakespearean character is mentioned on the very first page...

Daniel- Hamlet

Moderator- Romeo's hot-headed…

Daniel- Mercutio

Moderator- This novel opens 'It is a truth'…

Daniel- Pride and Prejudice

Moderator- The Millennium footbridge goes over this...

Daniel- the Thames

Moderator- This British party was once headed by Ramsay...

Daniel- Labour

Moderator- This member of the fellowship was the son of the stew-...

Daniel- Boromir

Lesli [to Daniel about college]- Don't stress about graduating in four years. Stress more about how to enjoy school— without stressing.

‘I was given an award for Academic Team called ‘First Team Honors.’ I guess if the county ever faces a situation that can only be saved by those with the most academic trivia knowledge, this signifies I'll be on the call list.’                                                -Daniel

Daniel [pleased]- I just fixed a spelling error on Wikipedia. Guess who's just become self-actualized?

Doug [after determining the best course to solving a puzzle on the back of a cereal box was to create and solve a system of equations for 14 different variables]- Since when do they have puzzles on the backs of cereal boxes that you don't immediately know the answer to?

Daniel- I guess Cinnamon Cheerios is trying to develop a different audience.

Douglas- Right? It's like the MENSA of breakfast cereals.

[note- it turns out the instructions had left off an important constraint -Doug]

Merrick- Daniel, do you think you could answer this question for me?

Daniel- Depends on the question...

Merrick- It asks you to identify tasks in the daily lives of the iron age Celts.

Daniel- Yes! This is my speciality! I wasted far too much of my childhood playing bbc.co.uk/history flash games!

Merrick- I'm sure you did, Daniel, I'm sure you did.

Daniel- Now all the time I wasted on this game has not been in vain.

Daniel's calculus teacher put an encouraging message for the AP students in a calculator program review sheet—

'Remember, there are a lot of kids far less prepared than you— looking at you Alabama'

Politics

Daniel- [playing a mindless, silly little flash game about running for president]- SUCK IT! SUCK IT, YOU SICKENING FASCISTS! THE CHAINS OF YOUR OPPRESSION WILL FETTER NEW JERSEY NO MORE!

Daniel said that if he could make his own slogan in the running-for-president game, it would be ‘All you have to lose are your chains.’

Doug- Did you hear the angel Moroni lost its trumpet today? That's the second trump; there are only five left.

Daniel- What was the first?

Doug [as though surprised he had to ask]- Donald! You know, the antichrist.

Daniel: Do you think if Lenin hadn't died he could have stabilised the Soviet Union?

Doug: Well, Lennon was an amazing songwriter but I don't know if he could've done that.

Books

Doug [replying to a braille joke]- You raise some interesting points. I feel goosebumps. 

The story was touch-and-go there for a while. Things were looking rough.

Lesli [trying to say Lord of the Flies]- Did they ever make you read Lord of the Rings for school? 

Daniel- I have read Lord of the Rings, yes.

Lesli- It's super depressing.

Daniel- I wouldn't say that.

Lesli- Well, you'd be wrong.

Daniel- Have you read Lord of the Rings?

Lesli- I've read bits and pieces of it.

Daniel- Well, you've seen the movies haven't you?

Lesli- As I said, depressing.

Daniel- I think J.R.R. Tolkien would take exception to your analysis.

Lesli- Why would I care what J.R.R. Tolkien thinks?

Lesli- [to Daniel, upon hearing that Mr. Darcy in ‘Pride and Prejudice’ was more than 10 years the senior of his sister Georgiana]-  You're going to have the same relationship with Ellen, right?

Daniel- Yes, I certainly intend to prevent her marriages to vagrant men on a regular basis.

Lesli- No, I mean you will take care of her. And you'll both be really wealthy.

Doug- How exactly is he going to amass his fortune?

Lesli- He's going to inherit it, from us. 

Daniel [trying to navigate our bonkers bookshelves and failing spectacularly]- Poppy, if, when I grow up, I ever double stack bookshelves, I want you to shoot me.

‘You know how the Necronomicon drives anyone who gazes into its pages mad? Well, they don't need ancient Egyptian cursed tomes for that. All they would need is to put a different number of buttons and buttonholes on these onesies and it would push me right over that edge.’ -Doug

Plays

Daniel- Do you know why the author of Our Town was actually a more radical playwright than the author of The Importance of Being Earnest? Because one was Wilde, but the other was Wilder.

During an online performance, Daniel sent a group chat to the Sense and Sensibility cast saying, ‘Finally I can cross heckling myself during a performance off my bucket list. I didn't think that would ever be possible.’

Daniel [about his character in BYU's The Tell-Tale Heart]- Can I just say, I was surprised how bloody adorable middle-aged me is.

[watching a 30 Rock episode where Tina Fey buys a wedding dress]

Lesli- That would be embarrassing to buy a wedding dress when you're not getting married.

Doug- You did it. You bought a dress at Goodwill. [note- for costumes, when we'd been married for years] I tried to get you not to. Everyone thought, 'What a jerk, won't even let his fiance buy a wedding dress from Goodwill!'

Pandemic

Daniel- I shall go to the store as well.

Lesli- Wear a mask.

Daniel [pensively]- I'm always wearing the mask...

Mad Max: Fury Road vs Real World 2020

Rampant Disease------x ----- x

Bad government------ x ----- x

Economic depression- x ----- x

Masks------------------ x ----- x

Ventilators------------ x ----- x

Blood transfusions--- x ----- x

Empty streets--------- x ----- x

High price of oil------ x

Lesli pointed out that actually, the dystopian movie OUR lives most closely resemble right now is A Quiet Place. -Doug

[overheard Doug saying in the other room in mid March]

Doug- Not going anywhere, not seeing anyone—I've been training for this my whole life! I am in peak condition! I'm totally going to rock this quarantine!

Doug- I think the church is going to have to revisit their ‘no masks at Halloween’ policy.

Daniel's ‘graduation’ consisted of about 3 minutes of  stage time for Daniel so we could take pictures with his diploma, and that's it. In the car heading home, Doug said ‘Well, that was the best graduation ceremony I've ever been to.’            -Lesli 

Baby

[Kathryn had brought a large trash bag filled with hand-me-down baby clothes to our Christmas Eve party at Steve and Kelli's house.]

Lesli- Doug, put that bag in the car.

Doug [confused, but willing]- So, are we bringing home their trash, then?

Doug- Are you looking at the ceiling, baby? It's not the best ceiling, but it's up there. 

Lesli to Ellen [at 7pm]- are you ready for sleepytimes?

Doug- Oh my gosh, am I!!!

[Telling Ellen the plot of the movie Lesli and Daniel are watching]

Doug- He's afraid to go up the stairs. But you're not afraid, are you? You don't know the meaning of fear. Or of stairs.

Doug [to Ellen]- You love whistling! 

Lesli- She does love whistling. She always gets a smile when I whistle. What she loves most, though, is someone paying attention to her.

Daniel- That's what we all love most.

Lesli [reading baby info from hospital]- It says she's supposed to poop once on day one, 2 times on day two, 3 times on day three, 4 times on day four, but what I want to know is how high does this pattern go? Where does it end? Is she supposed to poop 1 more time every day forever? At day 365 is she going to poop 365 times? The paper doesn't say anything beyond day 4. If we were doing a math problem with that information, the answer would be that it continues up forever that same way... 

[Ellen was crying as we wiped the ink off of her hands with a cold wipe after doing foot and handprints of her at one week.]

Doug [to Ellen]- You think that's bad. Just wait until she does a plaster cast of your face.

Lesli- That shirt already looks almost too small. What size did you get?

Doug- Men's large.

Daniel [examining the shirt]- The tag is in Chinese.

Lesli- That is not men's large.

Doug- In China it is...

Food

‘Having unthinkingly bought more milk when I already have half a gallon left, I now have to rapidly drink the rest of this gallon to make room. [with resolve] Well, it's not like I learned nothing at scout camp…’                                         -Daniel

[email with picture from Daniel looking at a popcorn box at the store]- This product, despite mounting pressure, steadfastly refuses to use any imaginary ingredients.

Daniel- Baby carrots are carrots for people who aren't savages.

‘I wish that other foods besides honey would come in mandatory yet somehow also arbitrary animal-shaped packaging.’   

                                                        -Daniel

Lesli- Are you going to eat those [expensive, weird-tasting, gluten-free, sugar-free] snickerdoodles I made?

Doug- I guess.

Lesli- Because I was planning on just putting them in the freezer for a couple months until they get freezer burned and then throwing them away.

Lesli [not allowed to have gluten or hardly any sugar and dairy because of inflammation etc]- I really want a treat. I need a treat.

[later] 

Lesli- Do you know what I am having for my treat? An apples and cinnamon gluten-free oatmeal packet that isn't mixed with a plain oatmeal packet, and with real milk, instead of almond milk.

Doug- You're really living la vida loca. 

[Lesli originally wrote down “la dolce vita” which is funnier -Doug]

Doug [to Daniel on the phone]- I cleaned your room. Ellen helped. She tasted all your stuff to make sure it still tasted good.

[cooking frozen chicken nuggets]

Lesli- Don't give him so many. He doesn't like them, he just tolerates them.

Doug -True but for Daniel, tolerate is like 9.5 on the how-much-he-likes-it scale.

Going to College

Lesli- What is this?

Daniel- That's the school's list of materials I was responsible for returning which is funny because it's incomplete.

Lesli- Did you return everything on the list?

Daniel- Of course. And more, that's my point.

Lesli- So we can't be charged for anything?

Daniel- No. In fact, they owe us money.

Daniel- I just screamed ‘I hate myself’ in the middle of Heritage Halls. How many passers by looked surprised? Zero.

Doug [on phone with Daniel]- I found an unlabeled document in your hand on the floor of the basement this morning. Is it career goals? Roleplaying game characters? It seems a little heavy on ghost-related professions:

Actor, magician, IT manager, Lawyer, detective, spy, ghost, assassin, Bouncer, ghost tamer, dinosaur tamer, lion tamer, Danish King, Vengeance-crazed Hobo, Vengeance-crazed Noble, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book author, time traveler, vigilante, revolutionary, pirate, schizophrenic, forger, chess grandmaster, Shakespearean analytic, fugitive from justice, fencer, military general, ghostbuster, shepherd

Daniel- Yes, career goals is correct.

BYU friend- Aw, Daniel I love your clothes— you look so warm.

Daniel- Yes, I appreciate winter because wearing many layers makes me look like an actual adult man instead of like a stick.

Daniel [to his mother when he got home from his first semester at college]- I think what I missed most was the cats.

[Daniel is using his Swiss army knife like a letter opener]

Friend- Daniel, did you bring a letter opener with you to the green room?                                                   _                                         3

Daniel- No, it's just my normal knife.

Friend- If I had to identify one person to be the one who would bring a letter opener with them everywhere, it would be you.

Computers

Lesli [playing minesweeper]- I won. 

[pause]  Why don't I feel fulfilled?

Daniel- Why in the world didn't they name Windows WindOS? It was right there for the taking!

Identities, Personalities, Character

[taking photos of Daniel and wanting to get him to smile]

Lesli- I'm going to say something funny.

Daniel- That's a joke in and of itself.

Doug-They say the nova will occur in 2084 + or - 16 years, so you'll live to see it.

Daniel- No, I won't.

Doug- I'll live to see it.

Daniel- Ha! No you won't.

Doug- I think you severely underestimate the life-extending inventions that will be developed over the coming century.

Daniel- Look, if you were Batman, maybe.

Doug- Who's to say I'm not Batman? I could be Batman. None of you would know.

Lesli- Batman was a billionaire. You're not a billionaire. [pause] If you are secretly a billionaire you are very, very evil.

Religion

Lesli [referring to comments in Daniel's Sunday school class that dismissed his insights]- Well remember, Daniel, it's important to be kind. These people can't help their stupidity. 

Daniel- [laughs]

Lesli- OK, that lesson didn't come out as I'd planned.

Lesli- You shouldn't use a Halloween basket for Easter. They are exact opposites in holidays.

Daniel- Well, they're both holidays celebrating people rising from the dead.

-the end-

(Drop us a line at dsummerstay@gmail.com)

I’ve been playing solitaire quite a bit for several years.

jeani taught me to play spider solitaire. I marveled that she could play 4 suit spider solitaire while dying of cancer (with all the brain fuzziness that entailed). I could only ever play two suit.

I taught doug to play 2 suit spider solitaire about a year ago.

recently he started trying 4 suit spider solitaire, and learned how to do it, and how to win about 1 in 5 games. It’s so hard. I just thought it was practically impossible and never wanted to try. But since I taught him, and then he went beyond me, I felt I had to do it. so he taught me how to do 4 suit. the first time I won I was very excited. I can now win maybe 1 in 10 games (maybe less). I usually don’t try very hard unless I get to a point in the game where I realize it’s winnable, and by then I’m not doing very well.

Anyway, in really difficult solitaire games, like 4 suit spider solitaire, and the more difficult layouts of Freecell, and some regular 3 card draw solitaire games, you find that the way you’ve played it, even though you made moves that seemed to make sense because they moved your further forward than any other moves could at the time, have ultimately made it so you can’t win, and left you stuck. At those points, you are in a bind. You are so far along in the game that you don’t want to go really far back because that would take too much work. so you keep trying to find ways you can win without going too far back. And you go around in circles for a while. But eventually you realize you have to go back and undo the moves a long time ago that made it seem like you made obvious progress and do counter intuitive moves (moves you only could know you need to do from having played it out other ways) and then, having undone your game almost to the beginning, and spent a lot of time and effort, you are able to go forward again and win.

So today I was thinking that life is like that insofar as we get to points where we realize, having gone 20 moves down a certain road, that a long time ago we made choices that seemed to take us farther forward but that now we know actually really screwed our lives up and there is no way to make further progress. Only, the difference is, now that we know the key choice areas where we could go back and change those choices to have a better life (health being the key thing I’m thinking about in my own life) now, we can’t go back and change them! it’s so unfair.

old poems

old poems i came across today

Love Song

Will the old bottle be lost in time,

a cool trinket found in the attic

by young fingers—

something to blow in,

something to break,

something to wonder at

and imagine Granny young and in love?

I fill this bottle with flowers

picked only tonight,

and, for a moment, feel myself old,

watching their faces, now bleached

and brittle with sunlight.

In her senior photo

my mother’s skin is freckled, smooth,

her eyes full of train-whistle dreams.

This child is not her.

She was always dead or fifty

and I will always be eighteen.

Somehow, these flowers

already make me sad.

1992 (18 yrs) (edited 1998)

Rain 

There are slow-sleeping nights

when I envy her ability

to sink through these layers

of clay and cold earth

into the quiet underground.

1997 (23 yrs)

We Play Marbles

As children

Watching them spin and collide

and roll across the room.

Often we hit them too hard–

they scatter

with a sound of glass

that rushes through our heads.

We run to stop them

knowing that for each one we capture

twenty are escaping,

and we will need to gather them up

one by one,

from underneath furniture,

from down the stairs.

We never find them all.

1993 (19 yrs)

Ocean City

Seagulls float into harbor 

trailing V's of water.

Johnny and Martha kneel on the dock

and tie a plastic bag to the dock rope. 

They hope to catch jellyfish.

Seagulls sift through the wind

to land at port

on wooden water poles.

Johnny and Martha scrape their knees 

on the board plank

and scare the fish away.

Dark spots on the concrete

mark years of bubblegum.

A woman walks barefoot across it.

Seagulls wobble when they meet the wind

and shy off or burrow into it.

Martha's orange hair stands up 

and runs along the shore.

She doesn't mind tangles.

Sparrows beak at broken shells

and pitter-patter through the people.

Paper bags sweat around a trash bin.

Boys call out of a passing car.

The water raises its neck to look around,

bends gracefully over and slaps itself.

A man sweeps cigarettes into the gutter 

and scrapes slime from the pool floor.

Two herons circle the horizon 

and sit calmly down to sea.

We see them on the upward thrust.

Martha combs her hair.

Johnny throws a ball but cannot catch it.

The orange sun puddles at the edge

and slips off.

We never worry.

There are many suns.

1995 (21 yrs)

Sexual Objectification of Wonder Woman

Okay, I'm tired of hearing the praises of the new wonder woman movie sung. I haven't watched it, but it's clear from the pictures and previews that she is very, very objectified and presented as sexual attractiveness being her main important visual aspect. This could have been a great, wonderful, empowering movie, if they hadn't kept that part so emphasized. I'm tired of shows that ultimately are built on a lie-- speaking and telling one thing-- empowerment for women, strong women, but showing another-- scantily clad, objectified women whose main purpose is sexual attractiveness and titillation, while pretending to be powerful. They made her look just like the sexualized comics.  Overtly sexualized is not a good role model for girls-- it teaches them that that is their main value. It's a message they internalize from the images no matter what is spoken or what action there is. This is not a matter of being prudish or not. It's about being used! 

Wonder Woman's breasts are carefully molded and perked by her wonder woman uniform, in a very unrealistic and unnatural way. Who originally came up with the overtly sexual images of comic book heroines? Men--they were male sexual fantasies. Some women (more and more lately) have bought into them over time and internalized them, but they are buying into a patriarchal lie.
The Casualties of Women's War on Body Hair
I changed "hair removal" in the following quote to "being sexy," something people use to justify Wonder Woman's outfit, and it applies equally well.
"[Being sexy], at its core, is a form of gendered social control. It’s not a coincidence that the pressure for women to modify their body [] has risen in tandem with their liberties, Herzig argues. She writes that the effect of this [being sexy] norm is to “produce feelings of inadequacy and vulnerability, the sense that women’s bodies are problematic the way they naturally are.”

And yet, if you ask many women why they voluntarily shave or wax, they might say that it’s a method of self-enhancement. That they want to, it’s a personal choice, and they just feel better when everything is smooth. [Being sexy] as self-care might be one of the biggest lies women have bought into. It keeps us in an impossible loop, one in which we are constantly in pursuit of velvety limbs and the moral virtue of [sexiness]."

12 Lady Superhero Costumes Redesigned By Ladies

excerpt: "We've already been over this, but it bears repeating. Tube tops are not practical battle gear. They just aren't. Wonder Woman, warrior princess of the Amazons, deserves to save the world in pants and a cute supportive top, not a metal-emblazoned '50s swimsuit."

Age When Girls First Feel Ashamed of Their Bodies Is Shocking

excerpt: "I remember the first time my daughter came home from dance class talking about the fact that some of the girls in class "had abs" and some of them didn't.

She was 10.

And while it may sound young to be worried about scoring a six-pack, my daughter is far from an anomoly. According to a new Yahoo Health survey of 1,993 teens and adults ages 13-64, while the average age Americans first remember feeling ashamed of their bodies fell between 13 and 14 years old, teens ages 13-17 reported that their first bout of body shame occurred as young as 9 or 10.

According to Robyn Silverman, . . . much of the blame falls on the media. "Younger kids are getting messages earlier about how they should appear," she told Yahoo Parenting. "We've also got sexualization happening earlier on. Kids feel more hurried to behave [older] and wear adult fashions, and feel that their body needs to look a certain way. All those things taken together are creating a more self-conscious society."

Make sure your kids are media-literate. "That means not just sitting with them and talking with them about what they're seeing, but really being able to dissect it," Silverman said. "It's explaining to them that the girl on the cover of the magazine doesn't even look like the girl on the cover of the magazine. It's puling back the curtain.""

P.S. This this doesn't mean i couldn't potentially enjoy the good things about the wonder woman movie. 
If you like Return Of The Jedi but hate the Ewoks, you understand feminist criticism
excerpt: "“Return Of The Jedi is great, but the Ewoks are so annoying.” That’s a pretty common refrain from Star Wars fans. In fact there are whole fan edits dedicated to removing the little fuzzy bears from the film’s climax; I can only assume they’re made by the most hardcore of Star Wars lovers. The idea that a movie can be good despite its weaker elements is one of the most basic tenets of film criticism. Yet when it comes to dissecting films from a feminist viewpoint, we seem to have trouble keeping that in mind.

When I tweeted about my frustration with the female characters in Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes (one human, one primate, both of whom contribute very little to the plot), a friend replied, “Sorry to hear it’s a bad movie.” But it isn’t a bad movie. In fact, it was one of my favorite action blockbusters of last summer. Yet my specific feminist frustrations were extrapolated into a larger condemnation of the film. No one assumes that critiquing the Ewoks means you dislike Star Wars. So why did my complaints imply I hated Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes?

We’ve fallen into an all-or-nothing rut with feminist criticism lately. Battle lines are immediately drawn between movies that are “feminist” (i.e. “good”) and “sexist” (i.e. “bad”). And that simplistic breakdown is hurting our ability to actually talk about this stuff."

Rescued Robin (on Feb 20, 2015)

I was driving Daniel to school, hurrying because we were a little late, and suddenly I saw the car to the left of me run over a robin, on Rosemont Avenue. We were all going about 45 to 55 mph (even though the speed limit is 40). I turned around and came back and as I was trying to do something for it I saw two more cars run over it, with it between their wheels--feathers flying. (I don't know how many more cars ran over it while I was turning around. Probably a few. I saw it run from the left lane to the right lane in my rear view mirror after I passed it, but then it got stuck in the right lane, not moving.) A fourth car was about to run over it and maybe do a direct hit.  I didn't know what to do so I pulled my car over into the oncoming traffic in front of the bird and stopped the traffic. The woman who had been about to hit the bird made a mad face at me, but I got out of my car and went back and picked up the bird and as she went around me in the next lane I showed it to her cupped in my hands and she made a sorry-and-now-I-understand face. 

Then a police man pulled up, facing my car head on with his car (since I was facing the wrong way in traffic). But I showed him the bird too and explained that I was saving it and he said ok and that he would stop traffic while I turned around (which was a good thing since it was rush hour) and that there was an animal shelter up the road. So I gave the bird to Daniel in the front seat and he held it very gently and I turned around and drove to the shelter. But they were going to call the officer to take it to the only wild animal vet to be evaluated for either being helped or put to sleep and they said I could take it to that vet instead. So I decided to take it there myself. (At this point we knew Daniel would be late for school.) So I ran back home (we were only about 3 miles away) for something and I took a couple of pictures and low and behold, it flew out of the box!! I was so glad it could still fly. It landed on Doug’s dresser. The picture I took was blurry. Then I gently captured it again and took it to the vet. I think it had an injury on its tummy, but I sure hope it was okay and that they fixed it up. At least it didn't have a broken wing. 


On a side note, after we dropped the bird off at the vet (Daniel said he wanted to go with me to the vet before going to school), we took Daniel to school, and it turns out he wasn't late at all. In fact, he was way early because school was two hours delayed because of the extreme cold (below zero F with wind chill). But if I’d checked my email and realized school was delayed, we wouldn't have been able to rescue the robin.

Here are pictures of the robin (as well as other birds I've been photographing this year)

Bird gallery