The Full Suburban: As the suburban seats empty, it’s time to sign off

When I first started this column in December 2018, my oldest child was a freshman in high school and my youngest was an impish 3-year-old with an impressive track record for flushing things down the toilet.

Now, five years later, I have two “adult” children (whatever that means), two teenagers, one tween and a baby who looks astonishingly like an 8-year-old boy. Two of my kids are out of the house, and my Suburban isn’t so full anymore; there are two empty seats. I’m left to wonder: How on earth did this happen?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from writing this column each week, it’s this: People get really angry when they read stories about cats getting locked into drawers. But also this: Change is inevitable.

Which brings me to my rather drawn-out point, which is: The time has come for me to step away from writing this column. It’s a bittersweet decision, and not one I have arrived at lightly. But in the words of the great Taylor Swift, “You know when it’s time to go.” And no matter how much I’ve loved it, it’s time.

Back in the early 2000s, blogging was really becoming a thing, and many of my friends had jumped on the blogging train. I loved reading about all of their goings-on, but I never considered writing a blog of my own.

“It seems so presumptuous to blather on about myself on the internet and assume that other people will want to read it,” I would say each time Logan encouraged me to start a blog.

It took several months of cajoling, but I finally caved and began a family blog during the waning years of Logan’s time in dental school. It was a cherished outlet for me, one through which I could share the funny, the sad and everything in between. Kind of like this column.

Writing “The Full Suburban” for The Spokesman-Review has been a joy and a privilege. To think that all of you actually want to read what I have to say each week is as astonishing to me now as it was when I was contemplating starting a blog in 2007. Thank you for coming back each week – or whenever you had a free minute in the bathroom or before you lined your hamster’s cage with newspaper.

Some members of my family are breathing a sigh of relief now that they’ll no longer wake up to stories about themselves in the newspaper. As for me, I’ll miss having a place where I can share things that I find hilarious or poignant.

Like today, after I had pulled out my credit card to pay for our dog Maggie’s latest veterinary visit and realized that our big Christmas gift this year might have to be Maggie’s urinalysis.

Or last week, when my daughter Jane came for the first time to one of her brother’s (rather stinky) middle school wrestling meets and said, “This gym smells the way middle school feels.”

What am I supposed to do with that? It’s pure gold!

Writing for this very newspaper is something I’ve always wanted to do, from the time I was an elementary school kid lying on my living room floor reading the funnies. To have been able to do it for five years as a regular columnist has been an absolute dream come true.

In fact, I used to tell people that this gig was so fun, I’d do it for free (but don’t tell The Spokesman-Review accounting department that – they might want their money back). And what made it so fun was you – all of my readers.

Thank you for letting me “blather on” about my kids, my husband, my cows, my vacuum cleaner – anything I wanted to, really. And thank you for your kind emails, usually hilarious and heartwarming. I would often respond that your messages made my day, and they did. They meant the world.

I hope you’ll check in with me now and then at dittojulia@gmail.com, if only to tell me the latest quip you overheard at a middle school wrestling meet or a parenting fail that you want to get off your chest.

After all, good material and good people are sometimes hard to come by; lucky for me, Spokane is rich in both.