Showing posts with label durham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label durham. Show all posts

Friday, February 18, 2022

I look upon time as no more than an idea

Home from a trip to North Carolina with Isaac and Zoë that feels a bit like a dream now, but hey: what doesn't? We were treated to sunny, almost warm days there, sat outside with coffee, walked in gardens, observed more than our fair share of birds, played games, ate food, all with some of our most beloveds.

The road trip part was fun with my copilots, falling asleep in our Aloft to the sounds of HGTV and Food Network and something about a Bigfoot-type creature in Alaska except it's a bird, and the two of them laughing together. Our ritual stop for really good biscuits in Richmond.

The Durham part was an opportunity for much-needed hugs and sorting through photographs and listening to stories and being together — and also Buckaroo Banzai!

A.k.a. buttermilk sky

Now I'm home and it's basically winter again and I put my Bean boots back on and walked under a mackerel sky on the beach. A bit of false spring, a thaw before the weekend. Soup and tea, movies on TV, dog naps. Isaac is back in New York, Zoë finally off to India for her work, after a year's delay. It had been a while since we had the vicarious thrill of watching her move around the globe on a flight tracker! 

Friday, April 10, 2015

Road Trip

Mark and Gus and I drove fourteen* hours south of here, and there we found spring! We spent a deluxe long weekend with David, Ellen, Stella, Ben, and their good dog Miles. The day we arrived, it was actually hot, hot enough to wipe Gus The Furry out after short walks, hot enough to make us strip off our jackets and scarves and remember what it feels like to sweat a little bit, hot enough for David to present us with the first iced coffee of the year on their sweet front porch. There is a huge pink cherry tree in their back yard, and as you drive along the highway, there are pink and purple and floaty white blossoms mixed in with the pines.

Our host.



I got to spend a whole day with Ben, taking walks and eating snacks and visiting a coffee shop and a comic book store.

Blue skies, grass, trees, Ben.

Ellen and David treated us to live music, too--Sylvan Esso outdoors under a starry sky on a night that felt like August in Maine, and The Mountain Goats--both hometown bands, and great shows.

We ate amazing food, including food truck crêpes outdoors on Easter, tapas with David and Ellen at Glass Half Full before The Mountain Goats, biscuits with eggplant "bacon" and incredible donuts at Rise, more donuts (also incredible) at Monuts, handmade chocolate at Videri, homemade Indian food at Vimala's, and so much more.

We came home knowing it wouldn't actually feel like spring yet, but still it was surreal to drive northeast watching the landscape get increasingly brown and gray, patches of snow start to show through the trees, to get out of the car at a rest area and remember suddenly what it's like to feel freezing (and this happened in Baltimore, not to mention Massachusetts).

I said it on The Book of Faces, and I'll say it again: this is what April 10th, also known as February 69th, looks like in beautiful Portland, Maine.

Ahh, home. I brought a miserable cold/cough home with me, the cough tubercular-sounding enough that Mark dropped me off at the Urgent Care place as soon as we pulled into town yesterday. They did not cure me of this stupid cough (they prescribed some useless medicine, in fact, I say after a sleepless night of croupy coughing), but I did get to have my very first chest X-ray, which didn't reveal anything fishy. And so I cough.







*my lucky number

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

so much depends upon*

home! after a wonderful week in north carolina with the sweeties. here's one sweetie, david and ellen's long-suffering oldest child, miles. i like this picture because he looks so happy and silly. and look at his racoon-ish paws.

























the newest sweetie, little ben. i want to call him "small baby," or "this baby," the way zoë's hindi teacher, rita, referred to her own baby. as in, "here, you take this baby."

























my stella, who only paused briefly in front of the butterfly house sign before running to the dinosaur exhibit when we visited the fabulous museum of life and science. check out her jazz hands!

























i always love to go to caffe driade when i'm in chapel hill -- they have such good coffee (they know exactly how to make an iced americano, for example, with perfect espresso shots), and this time we got to interact with the scary CHAI GUY, who yells at you if you order chai, to make sure you know that they don't serve the kind that comes from a box, and that if that's the kind you want, you're stupid. i identified him because of this interaction:

david: i'd like a latte, please, but not in a bowl.
chai guy: oh, you don't want it in a bowl. well, what do you want it in, then?
david: oh, whatever -- a glass, or a to-go cup.
chai guy: well, i'm not very good at making decisions. so...
david: a glass, i guess.
chai guy: okay. you want a latte. in a glass.

so then, after you've recovered from something like that, you get to sit outside on their beautiful woodsy patio, surrounded by twittering birds, by which i mean actual birds, making bird sounds. all the birds in north carolina are loud and bright.

























one night, david and ellen's friend joyce had a party at her house in durham. she has a vast backyard full of perennials and vegetables and chickens. below, joyce and baby oliver. below that, gratuitous photos of various chickens.






























































































you know what i like about where david and ellen live? there are so many places to sit outside while you eat or drink coffee. we did that many times last week, including parker and otis in durham. here are ellen and ben sitting on the porch.
















































many more photos here. and here's my advice, re: train travel. if you have the extra time, DO IT. just bring good snacks and your dad's ipad. sometimes i had a seat mate, but at other times i had the whole thing to myself. talk about leg room.

























so, back to wearing sweaters for a while, but i apparently missed an entire week of rain, so things are green and kind of glowing here, through the fog. and on friday, my baby boy turns fifteen.



*red wheelbarrow, white chickens, et al.