Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes

• Last week (the week before?), Mark and I went to the pharmacy to get the latest in booster shots from a youthful pharmacist. When she asked me to confirm what shot I was getting, I said, "The...Covid...super duper booster?"
• Later we met a dog from Topeka, a golden retriever named Jersey with a pretty white patch on her chest. Her person (name unknown) went to grad school at K.U.
• I think I want to be composted when I die. I just have to hold off until they offer that option in more places (LIFE GOAL).
• Here's a tip: don't look up scalding on Wikipedia.

And now onto an actual adventure we had, visiting Isaac and Edna in New York for a whirlwind weekend. Thanks to Janet, we had a luxurious Washington Heights apartment as a home base. We also had such great luck with everything: the subway, the weather, and (knock on wood) the Covid. Highlights:

• A brief glimpse of Jonah (including hugs)
• FOOD. Ramen at Minca. Breakfast sandwiches and donuts at Win Son Bakery. Coffee (and art) at Amant. More coffee at Buunni. A Chinese feast at Birds of a Feather. Breakfast and treats at Dutch Baby. *
• Finally getting to be in Isaac and Edna's totally charming and cozy apartment and meet their even more charming cats, Kiki and Ilya. 

TBH as we drove out of Maine I thought "WHY?" but it turned out I was really glad we made this trip.

I mean, obviously I was glad. Being with these two in their natural habitat made me deliriously happy.

Isaac is magic.

Edna and Kiki at home.

*bonus: these were all outdoor dining situations, except for Birds of a Feather, where we sat at an indoor table beside a huge door open to the back patio.

I was a child of the shining meadow

Trying to write here, dear (and few) readers! I'm still attempting to surgically detach myself from very many of the Online Places, and this is one good way. April seems like an ideal month for such things. I'm also writing on paper, some. 

I filled my bird feeders and the Little Brown Ones are gobbling it all, once again battling each other for the cheap finch food in the red feeder that distracts me while I try to work. They can be pretty brutal with their little beaks, and always I wish I could communicate there's more than enough to go around, small friends. 

We're watching so many TV shows, keep intending to sit down to a whole movie but then getting pulled into series that keep us busy, plus the sportsball of course.* Here's a really good thing we're watching and loving: SEVERANCE. Here's a really bad thing we're watching and loving: Inventing Anna. 

I'm also reading. I liked Jonathan Franzen's Crossroads a lot more than I expected to, and about halfway through, I'm warming up to Klara and the Sun. I really loved Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso. I am also reading all the things about the Larry Ray trial.**

We have continued to have social interactions with a small number of actual humans, which is lovely. This week's plans involve more humans, on at least three days! And I can hardly believe it, but Adam returns to Portland one week from today!

*ROCK CHALK, though I may have just jinxed it for tonight, and they'll be rushing Franklin Street instead of Mass. 

**CW: bizarre and terrible cult details

Second

Mark's mom and his sister Linda came to visit us for a few days. Here is Isaac with his Grandma Nancy, both outfitted nicely for Halloween. We handed out candy on a rainy night, and then we subjected the relatives to The Birds, which neither of them had seen before.

Today was Christian's eighteenth birthday, celebrated with this photo frame, below, from Grandma Nancy, crêpes from Portland's new food truck, lattes from Tandem, and a little pick up basketball. It was fun to watch the seamless teamwork between Isaac, Mark, and Mark's sister.

This guy. Oh, hey, I got three cute little chairs from a thrift shop for seventeen dollars! This one's weirdly painted yellow (even the cane is painted), but I kind of like it.

On our way to the airport, we stopped at Two Fat Cats to get Mark's mom a whoopie pie (all the times she's visited, we've never managed this). The pumpkin whoopie pies there? So. Good.

and all of your kin

today's dog is my german shepherd cousin, ze, who lives in kansas. here he is, shopping for treats at three dog bakery with my uncle chuck.

yesterday i made maida heatter's recipe for ginger almond biscotti, and my house smelled so good. i love her quotes about baking, like, "happiness is baking cookies." i am slowly filling my freezer with cookies (isaac is also slowly eating them, but with any luck i will outpace him).

you know what else i made that was delicious? vegan fried chicken.

as i cooked and baked, i wondered, "why is sufjan stevens so sad about christmas?"

here in topeka

the past week's been a blur. last thursday, max left for his four month trip to spain and beyond, and the goodbyes were emotional.

that night, mark learned that his dad had died a few hours earlier. he had been diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis many years before and in recent months had grown more ill -- mark went to visit him in february knowing it might be the last time he'd see him. while it wasn't unexpected, it was very sad news. the four of us flew to kansas on saturday morning. we rented a car and drove from kansas city to topeka, stopping for dinner in lawrence at la familia, a mexican restaurant that was one of our favorites in college.*

entering god's country:

we drove past the sweet little house we lived in when we got married (which we did before we graduated from college. which may sound crazy, but it worked out pretty well in the end). we lived here with our great friend laura.

we also went by the house where i had my first apartment, which i shared with my dog ben. i lived on the second floor, and the first friend i made at k.u., megan, lived downstairs. i met mark in her apartment, where he was lounging around bouncing a ball off the wall (i know, romantic, right?).

it was wonderful to see mark's family. i haven't visited for years and years, although mark makes an effort to take zoë and isaac at least every couple of years.

i helped his mom sort through a bunch of old photos to take to the funeral home for people to look through.

i especially love these wedding pictures. mark's parents got married when they were seventeen and nineteen (every time this fact came up, mark's mom would rush over to zoë and cover her ears). they were married for fifty-two years.

the cemetery is near a pond with resident ducks and geese. after the burial, mark's sister tracey stopped to feed them.

in my very limited experience of death and funerals, i've found it to be an incredibly meaningful time. as sad as the occasion is, it feels like the most important thing in the world to gather friends and family together and talk and eat and laugh with them. i'm so glad we were able to be there.

oh, and i'm so glad we were able to pose with mark's dad's gun collection.**

*we met at the university of kansas in lawrence when i was twenty and mark was twenty-one. if you've never been to lawrence, you should go there because it is magically one of the best towns i've ever been to. no, it's not flat. also, la familia used to be located in a house in east lawrence. i mean, it was a house: you would walk into the living room and sit there or in the dining room, and if you used the bathroom you would see that there was a bathtub in there.

**note: we are not gun people. mark's dad wasn't a gun person either, but these belonged to his father, and he kept most of them in a gun rack in the laundry room. note also that zoë was not interested in participating in the gun photography project.

1938/1976

here i go again, stealing content from my librarian brother.the following film pretty much stars him as the adorable, happy toddler, with cameos by me and my other bruddie (i'm the one with braids):



i love this one, because except for adam's plaid pants and my mom's groovy outfit, this almost looks like it could be titled "my depression-era childhood." well, there's also the 1970 volvo to give it away (the same car, by the way, that i started learning to drive with about seven years later). i also love it because i have such incredibly vivid memories of this brief period of my life: we rented that house in olathe, kansas, around the time i was in second grade. the backyard was like an entire world - the dome climber, tire swing, barn, porch, huge vegetable garden - i can close my eyes and see it all exactly the way it appears in this movie (only bigger, of course). it's funny, i can't remember the inside of the house at all, really. and here's a detail that makes it seem even more like it took place in 1938: our next door neighbor (beyond the barn) was also our milkman. and his son was my second grade teacher. and his wife always had exotic, antique candy (like ribbon candy) in her house which she was very generous with. i could go on and on.

my first dog

my bruddie continues his family archive project, transferring old home movies to digital. this one is a surprise, because i thought we'd lost all of the film that actually featured my siblings or me. this is me as a baby, circa 1968, and it's worth watching to the end because

1. you'll see that i was then, as i continue to be, a "good eater."
2. i am the cuter baby of the two; i believe the guy on the floor was my first friend.
3. look at my red tights!
4. look at my adorable parents - and at the fancy "baby's eye view" of my mom (and her cool shoes).
5. there's a glimpse of a VW bus and my baby-faced aunt sooze and uncle david.

but most of all,

6. my first dog, bartholomew, frolicking in front of *924 mississippi street, lawrence, kansas, birthplace of me. family legend has it that i first learned to stand by pulling myself up while clutching the fur of this sweet dog.


*historical notes on this house include the fact that approximately 20 years later i lived two doors down, when i transferred to ku as a junior; also, this house was razed at some point (before i moved back to lawrence) to build a duds n' suds laundromat. correct me if i'm wrong on any of this, family historians!

getting a little ahead of myself

i'm so ready for salad-and-iced-coffee-and-flip-flop-season, aren't you? particularly this iced coffee. any flip flops will do as long as they cost less than five dollars. last night my boys were indulging in a particularly cheese-heavy dinner, and i was feeling a mite vegan, so i made a big salad with vegan caesar dressing and tempeh croutons*. OH MY GOD. it hit the spot. my only critique is that this dressing recipe is a little heavy on the mustard; i would recommend one tablespoon instead of three. but then i have been traumatized by mustard in the past. it was a mustard-heavy pasta dish i ate back in the early '90s at this place** in lawrence, kansas. to be specific. i've never gotten over it.



*i didn't find a recipe for these, so i basically just fried up some cubes of tempeh til they were golden and crispy.

**i should add that everything else i ever ate there was delicious. especially the onion rings.

i was born in kansas

i had the radio on just now while i was dealing with some laundry, and down memory lane was on maine public radio, which is actually kind of an adorable show. and guess who i should hear singing i was born in kansas but frank sinatra!? i never in my wildest dreams imagined frank singing that song. in fact, i only ever imagined my own kansas-born relatives singing it. or me, singing it to myself. i was born in kansas, and i was partially bred in kansas, and when i got married, i was wed in kansas. i'd certainly never heard this verse before:

troubles end in kansas, folks unbend in kansas,
everyone will be your friend in kansas
and they'll be there to help me celebrate
with my sunflower from the sunflower state

my boy

is on an adventure with my dad in kansas! here he is with his uncle david. we are having a busy weekend filming bean's third music video (more on that later), but it's not so busy that we don't miss our boy like crazy. however, we hear that he's having a fabulous time with all the boys on my side of the family (his great grandfather, grandfather, uncles, cousin, first cousins once removed, and great uncles) and some of the girls too. today they're all going bowling, which he's really been looking forward to. i can't wait to hear more details!

(thanks for the photo, sooze!)