Rabbit rabbit

 

So, 2024, despite being numerologically pleasing (to me, based on my own private superstitious preferences, which involve even numbers in general and the number four in particular), sucked.

As in any terrible year, there was plenty that was wonderful, including moments woven into (and even intrinsically part of) the horrible parts — the terrible/beautiful of it all. (But not the politically horrible stuff, that was 100 percent rotten). I thought I'd make a list of some highlights from the year:

• Further development of my positive relationships with crows in my neighborhood (ask me about my peanut budget).
• 2024, Year of the Rabbit(s), aka Year of the Backyard Bun.
• The Northern Lights at last!
• I read 97 books — in 2023 I only read 37 — and watched 38 movies.
• Countless beautiful loaves of sourdough bread were created in my kitchen.
• I got marginally braver about flying? (at least very short flights!) I flew to North Carolina eight times in 2024, which means I got myself on an airplane SIXTEEN times.
• Puffins, little cartoon birds as seen through binoculars from a boat bobbing wildly in the churning ocean, with Stella and Ben and Mark: none of us seasick.
• I dug so many holes in the ground and planted so many plants in the holes, and saw tiny seedlings turn into green, leafy, gloriously flowering plants.

Some of my plans for 2025:

• I intend to wash my windows this year. They are so grubby.
• Plant more plants!
• Bake more bread.
• Keep getting on airplanes.
• Visit Canada.
• Replace more Instagram time with book-reading time.
• Cook biryani and yakisoba and okonomiyaki and tiramisu and pupusas.

Also keep taking deep breaths.

By the pricking of my thumbs

Woke to frozen pipes* in the bathroom, after not even the coldest night this week. I took Clover for a long walk in the cold to a completely deserted park. Back in our driveway, she paused and looked up at the branches of an evergreen tree — I looked, expecting to see a squirrel, but it was a small woodpecker. A female (black and white without red all over). Now I'm not sure if it was a downy or hairy woodpecker, not recalling how long its bill was or even if it was "small" or "medium" sized. I didn't hear it pecking, but Clover clearly did. It made me miss Gus, the way he would watch birds all the time: how do they do that?

In the back yard, I saw a nuthatch, a bird whose name I always grasp for, skipping over "titmouse" before I get there. I don't know, I guess it doesn't evoke nuts or hatching — it's the upside-down, gray and blue guy with the pointy bill (they always stand upside-down on the trunk of the willow tree). I tried to draw one:

It kept coming out looking like a narwhal. 

They say Wordle is is the sourdough starter of 2022 and that's fine with me!

The Tragedy of Macbeth was stark and stunning. Wow, what a bleak play. It's not my very favorite, but I still remember** Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow after being told to memorize it in ninth grade English class, and there are so many great lines. 

*It's a work in progress, but we've unfroze em before and we'll do it again!

**I will be quoting this in my dotage, no doubt, driving my caretakers crazy. Ditto The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. 

You want it to be one way

It's snowing, gorgeous fluffy snow, plenty of it, and unlike past years when I've been sad that the wintery weather held off until after Christmas, this time we got both: actually perfect Christmas Day snow, and this lovely melancholy January storm.

Clover wears her boots proudly, after an initial comedy routine of about 30 seconds, in which her feet and legs look like they're being controlled by an inept puppeteer. It's like an extra treat we get every time we put them on her, a moment of hilarity. (Without the boots, she limps sadly over salted sidewalks and stops every five minutes to clean snowballs from her fancy feet.) 

Okay, I should be writing some things so there will be actual money in my next paycheck, but I had to quickly link to this Tilda Swinton profile because:

"My ambition was always about having a house by the sea and some dogs."

And

She’s smiling, and says she’s got a surprise. We head off towards her car, Swinton marching ahead imperiously. In the car there are four springer spaniels in the back and a fifth, the eldest, Rosy, is in the front passenger seat.

We went to a January 6 vigil for democracy last night which was a little bit lackluster. Or maybe that was just me. There were a few guys with a flag that said FUCK BIDEN and fuck you for voting for him. One guy had a megaphone, but the crowd was large enough that it could drown him out pretty easily. The speaker said, "Don't engage!" and although the group was mostly middle-aged and older, I imagined a shared feeling among us all, the holding back of an impulse to surround those jerks and tear them limb from limb like in a Shirley Jackson story.

Elmo and a regular-ass rock

This is why I need to write stuff first thing in the morning. This is my brain in the afternoon.

It's on sale BUT WHAT IS IT

Whirlwind

Home, after a really lovely quick visit. I forgot to mention ice cream in the blustery cold, watching Passing, and cat cuddles on the couch. 

It's easy to get distracted in Holly's kitchen by the river rushing past, just down the hill from her back yard. Also, the pleasure and ease of talking to someone who's known me for forty years is one of my favorite feelings. The drive home was brilliant, all of those softer, deeper miraculous November colors. I saw other autumnal sights along the highway, including:

• wild turkeys 
• a whole bunch of pumpkins someone had apparently tossed out of a car?

Fingers sticky if I could only hear it

The air is translucent again, after days of thick, sticky heat, and birds singing through it in the yard. It feels like Maine!

Isaac was here for almost a week, and so was Oona, and there was some A+ cousin time, Zoë and Isaac and Oona (and sometimes Jonah) heading to the lake, to visit the food trucks on the Eastern Prom. Friday night, Adam, Oona, Zoë, and I watched Stop Making Sense in Congress Square Park, alongside a five-year-old's rollicking birthday party (birthday boy in a suit, much dancing along to the movie). 

I do keep thinking I should write more here, as a way to keep track of the Things and When they Happened.

Like this, a Kettle Cove picnic-by-the-sea on a hot August evening, with banh mi and cold seltzer and a raspberry swirl pound cake made by Oona and me. No Frisbee was played, no swimming was done, but there were Good Dogs there.

Or this, early on a Saturday morning, after we heard a rumor that Cong Tu Bot had reopened for breakfast only, and just the four of us headed out first thing to sit outside and try their breakfast sandwich and coconut yogurt with lychee and mango and sweet Vietnamese iced coffee and brilliant green pandan coffee cake. Pictured: walking there from where we parked the car, from across the street, I thought, my family!

Sound of Metal

So loud, so quiet —

The complex layers of sound

Play a starring role

Mank

I loved the details

But not the movie itself.

Truth: my mind wandered.

Minari

David's cowboy boots,

good dirt, Mountain Dew, card games,

"Stop fighting" airplanes.

You can't have it all, but there is this

My latest aphorisms:

The ugliest smoothies are often the most delicious

A dog pees on your leg, seven years of good luck

Related: a tall, friendly hound dog named Baxter peed on my leg this morning. I also made a smoothie that came out a sickly avocado green (almond milk, half a banana, frozen blueberries and peaches, matcha, a handful of baby spinach, a spoonful of almond butter). It was so good.

I can't stop thinking about Nomadland. I truly can't recommend it highly enough! 

And that thing that's kept me going through the endless month of JanuFebruary has happened at last: one of my two favorite brothers* bought a condo in Portland!!

Sneak peek!

I am beside myself with excitement about this and now have to patiently wait out the rest of our pre-vaccine life until Adam and Jeannette come to set up their (part time, for now) household here, a 15 minute walk from my house! 

*now to scheme a way to get the other favorite brother here

Nomadland

 

The geography

of solitude and freedom:

almost lost, but not.

*One of the best movies I've seen in a long time, although I'm biased because Frances McDormand

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Achingly gorgeous:

tragic love; the female gaze:

the way art consoles

Judas and the Black Messiah

Still learning Black history

I was never taught in school.

Highly recommend.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always

 

Tense and powerful:

says ten times more than films with

twice the dialogue.

Promising Young Woman

Imperfect revenge,

Cartoonified rape culture —

And yet, I liked it.

On the Rocks

Rich people problems.

But Bill Murray is charming, and

I like Rashida.

Diversions

You'd think this working at home thing would be a breeze around here, but my number one priority these past several days has been finding a way to focus and do any work at all, given the distractions, the generalized sense of anxiety in the air, the limitations real and imagined caused by near-quarantine, and the fact that there are now four humans attempting to do this in the same house at the same time.

Still, my second goal is...not to accomplish anything in particular, but to focus on some things. I am hoping to read many books, catch up on my pile of New Yorkers, binge some good TV, cook and bake many delicious foods, buy a ukulele and learn how to play it, go for the longest walks. I have a couple of suggestions for you!

• On SkillShare, you can take classes from experts on a nearly infinite number of subjects, from singing lessons to vegan baking to chair massage to how to do calligraphy. If you sign up for Erin Boyle's class, you can get two free months of SkillShare Premium (you can find this offer all over the place right now, this is just the one I actually clicked on). Even if you're not interested in minimalism, you can be like me and take a personal essay writing class with Roxane Gay or memoir writing with Mary Karr!
• Joe Pera Talks With You is so odd, so quiet and strangely charming, so deeply calming. I find it just as good at reducing stress as The Great British Baking Show et al.
• The YMCA has exercise classes and yoga classes online, as do lots of other places!
• I made a Pinterest board for COVID-19 cooking/baking, and I'm keeping track of what we've cooked and adding notes. So far, I have done the lion's share of the cooking around here, which I am (thus far) extremely happy to do, since I find it really soothing. We'll see how long I can keep it up (last night Edna exclaimed over my soup and no-knead bread: "This is like a really expensive farm-to-table restaurant!!")

What else? I have a pile of books, but if I make it through them I'll probably check out the New York Public Library, which has 300,000 free books you can download (as well as the ebook offerings at my local library). We have been too sleepy to watch movies the last few nights, but we've got plans to view all kinds of good ones this weekend. The sun is due to come out any day now (I mean this literally). 

Thanks, neighbor.

Love in the time of COVID-19

(Updated to add links)

Oh I keep meaning to write something here, but I find myself scribbling in a journal instead (literally, scribbling little sketches of stuff, i.e. dogs, as well as writing words and lists and so on). Here's what's been happening in my house/life:

• Isaac and Edna are here, in limbo as they wait to learn how online instruction will work for the remainder of their semesters. It's a bizarre, sad way for Isaac's undergraduate career to end.
• We've been watching movies:
• Knives Out
• Jojo Rabbit
• And TV:
• The Plot Against America
• High Fidelity
• Better Call Saul
• Homeland
• Even after searching the stores for flour in a frenzy, once Mark had come home, victorious, with a bag from Whole Foods, it took me a few days to decide what I wanted to bake and to actually start baking. Here's what we've made so far:
• Socca, eaten with two friend eggs on top (chickpea flour required)
• Vegan pumpkin pecan bread
• No-knead bread (this is rising right now, and if it works out we'll eat it with this soup tonight)
• Isaac whipped up some focaccia last night, topped with rosemary and flaky salt

It was a more innocent time.

Good things:

• Bare footprints in the sand on the beach 
• A V of Canadian geese flying north overhead
• Clover in her new bed, looking like she's asleep in the arms of a stuffed animal
• The calming properties of a piece of buttered toast
• A video of a man playing Moonlight Sonata on a piano for an elderly elephant's listening pleasure

And finally, notes on getting a massage, which I jotted down over a week ago, which now feels like the distant past (when will we be able to do things like get a haircut or a massage again?):

It sure is weird right now, at this moment in history, to be doing something that involves a stranger putting their hands all over your body. 

Wild Nights With Emily

Unloved spinster? Nope.
Gingerbread-baking poet/
Lover of women

Hustlers

Capitalism,
sure, but also J. Lo is,
just, oh my god, wow