Behind the clouds the sun is still shining

 

Mise en place

November's getting down to business out there today. I'm trying my best to keep it hygge in here on a Friday work day, the day my brain 100% believes is the weekend.

My life goal is to be a good iced bun.

I love you, Great British Bake Off/Baking Show

Lizzie 2021

Okay, forward through a rainy work day and into the weekend (full disclosure: the weekend is usually also a work day, plus extra sleeping in and watering plants and puttering in the yard, but I'm actually visiting Holly tomorrow so it's going to be a very weekendy weekend)!

Insensible losses

Insensible loss must be the most beautiful medical term ever. The smoke your breath becomes when it's bitterly cold? That's an insensible loss. Peeing? That's a sensible loss.


I have a pile of library books to dive into. I've walked the dogs, extra walked the little one in the woods, watered the plants, and cleaned the litter box. I started my day with homemade butter coffee (butter is basically ice cream, you know), homemade granola, yogurt, and sweet, ripe strawberries.


Here's my latest Google Street View idea: 

Kid, immortalized

I don't know — something about people who are caught unawares by the Googlemobile or whatever it's called. Maybe involving thread.*




*this is basically how my creative ideas go.

Thirteen

Mark is watching the scene from The Wire where Snoop buys a nail gun. I think that's going to be the theme of our home improvement weekend!

Atlantic

Atlantic Ocean, my friend! I love you under blue skies, and I love you when the fog horn is calling out over you, and my dog is alone on the beach chasing driftwood and digging holes in the sand.

Crispy new potatoes for dinner, The Queen of Versailles, coffee with the Dancer, the weekend, new red mailbox, melting snow, clean laundry, wanting everyone I love to be at least content, if not full of joy.

Weekending

We had our girl for a whirlwind couple of days. Although we didn't make it to the play, we did make it to the doughnuts. Zoë and Isaac rode their bikes there, and we all had coffee and sampled different doughnut flavors. We also had a feast of a lunch at Asmara on Saturday, and just enjoyed being, all four of us, together. I don't know if she'll be back until...September? It all depends on her travel schedule this summer.

I'm missing her today, feeling a little gray. We moved Isaac, for real, into Zoë's former bedroom. He makes me laugh about a hundred times a day, and he has a new spring wardrobe consisting of various Hawaiian shirts from Goodwill. He likes to lie around listening to records. He is so tall. I can't even tell you how often he begins a sentence this way: "Ready, Mom?"

i like slow things, the way they happen again and again

scenes from my perfect weekend in cambridge, massachusetts.







































mom and dad have a pied à terre in this lovely old house, under that pretty blue sky.







































we went to the isabella stewart gardner museum, which was packed with people but so much fun to see. it's full of art, luxurious silks and velvets and leathers, (wall coverings, furniture) faded tapestries and books and paintings and crumbling sculptures. it's a wonderful combination of grand and cluttered-eclectic. plus, you can get so close to everything (which makes for some high-strung security guards, not to mention the history of thefts there). also, no photography is allowed, but i snuck this one picture of the lush courtyard at the center of the house.







































here are two of many many delicious foodstuffs we shared this weekend. boston cream pie and banana cream pie (both vegan) at veggie galaxy. so good, i can't even tell you. we also had amazing meals at red lentil and thaitation.







































oh, wallace. he held my ring for me whilst i was receiving a paraffin wax hand treatment from my maman, and despite the fact that i took this picture, i forgot to put it back on. so here i am in portland, maine, sans wedding ring. in addition to the wax museum hands (i wish i'd taken a photo of them--they looked so weird, but felt so good), i also had a massage and was generally spoiled in every conceivable way. we walked in the sunshine and met up with my sweet old friends scott and michael for coffee and watched 30 rock and i got to read books and sleep in and see a great movie. see what i mean about perfect?


trees, their legacy of green, by paavo haavikko

they go and you stay

you're going to be so jealous when you see our collection of...plugs.

and what household couldn't use ten old cellphones?

 


















amirite*? with the boys away for the long weekend (well, the boys except for my loyal compatriot dog), i am organizing things that probably don't desperately need to be organized (again with the tea shelf, etc). if i could gather and photograph every cord of every sort that lives in my house, you would be tempted to call hoarders and book us on the show.

this poem, oh my god. by fay zwicky.

i could live very happily for a long time on coffee, kale with tahini dressing, and roasted potatoes.

*my sources predict that this will be an actual word in the dictionary one day in the not-too-distant future.

"go to the fair, templeton. you will find that the conditions at a fair will surpass your wildest dreams."

remember how last year we finally went to the common ground fair? well, i for one am hooked on it now, and i can hardly imagine letting september get away from me without going. this year we were sans zoë, isaac, and jason "pie cone" read, but we were accompanied by mom and dad, who were also won over by the charms of organic potato chip fries, iced coffee from rock city roasters, organic wild maine blueberries, adorable rabbits and strange chickens and brilliant border collies and personable farmers.

what you can't quite see is that these guys, above, are both looking at cell phones.

our fair day last year was chilly, and we huddled beside fires and drank hot coffee and ate indian food. this year it was hot: cold cider and lemonade weather. still wonderful, and i still kind of want to live there forever.




“'I'm staying right here,' grumbled the rat. 'I haven't the slightest interest in fairs.'
'That's because you've never been to one,' remarked the old sheep. 'A fair is a rat's paradise. Everybody spills food at a fair. A rat can creep out late at night and have a feast. In the horse barn you will find oats that the trotters and pacers have spilled. In the trampled grass of the infield you will find old discarded lunch boxes containing the foul remains of peanut butter sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, cracker crumbs, bits of doughnuts, and particles of cheese. In the hard-packed dirt of the midway, after the glaring lights are out and the people have gone home to bed, you will find a veritable treasure of popcorn fragments, frozen custard dribblings, candied apples abandoned by tired children, sugar fluff crystals, salted almonds, popsicles, partially gnawed ice cream cones, and the wooden sticks of lollypops. Everywhere is loot for a rat--in tents, in booths, in hay lofts--why, a fair has enough disgusting leftover food to satisfy a whole army of rats.'
Templeton's eyes were blazing.
'Is this true?' he asked. 'Is this appetizing yarn of yours true? I like high living, and what you say tempts me.'
'It is true,' said the old sheep. 'Go to the fair, Templeton. You will find that the conditions at a fair will surpass your wildest dreams. Buckets with sour mash sticking to them, tin cans containing particles of tuna fish, greasy bags stuffed with rotten...'
'That's enough!' cried Templeton. 'Don't tell me any more, I'm going!'"

-E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

delicious autumn

it's that apple acres time of year again! on saturday mom and dad picked mark and me up on their way to a quick l.l.bean reconnaissance (isaac was busy helping to film the first episode of food coma all day), and then we drove in the direction of south hiram seeking apples and cider donuts. we were surprised to discover that there was some kind of apple festival going on, complete with a bluegrass band on the hill and what appeared to be a town-wide yard sale throughout the little village of cornish.

we ate dessert first, delicious warm donuts right out of the fryer. then we had sandwiches on the porch at krista's, where we could enjoy the attractively babbling brook that runs behind the restaurant and the colorful paper lanterns above . the food was okay--not too many vegetarian options, and towering heaps of not-quite-hot french fries--but my salad was fresh and green and enormous, and our shifting team of waiters were all extremely friendly.

 
























"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.” - George Eliot

i like the maps and the instability of the geography that situates places in my head*

mark and minnow and i went to grafton notch state park on saturday, a two hour drive through pretty little villages like harrison and waterford, into the white mountains (which make me say, "ooh!" even as i recognize and immediately feel apologetic for how relatively little they are, mountain-wise. they are still pretty impressive to a coastal girl like me).

as you can see, adventures ensued, many of them involving minnow sitting patiently in scenic locations while i took his picture. we saw hills and waterfalls and lots of moss, and we hiked a very little bit of the appalachian trail. minnow was an enthusiastic hiker, forging through streams and up rocky hills with fortitude. then he fell sound asleep on the back seat the whole way home. jeeze, this state is a lovely place.


*from memory of water, by reina maria rodriguez

all overgrown by cunning moss

last weekend mark and i drove up to the josephine newman wildlife sanctuary in georgetown, where we walked past warnings about deer ticks and braved a field of poison ivy before taking a peaceful hike along a rocky wooded path. we saw so many mushrooms, so much brilliant green moss, but not a single other human being.

i sort of want to live in the woods.


all overgrown by cunning moss, emily dickinson

the speed of light

frisbee in the park, tennis as the sun goes down, staying up late with a heap of library books by my side. food cooked on the grill, or not, and eaten with friends.* digging in the dirt, playing with dogs. it's almost iced coffee time, and there are only two more weeks of getting up at five thirty. i sit at the computer and try to stay focused, but spring is happening outside!

*marinated portobello mushrooms and aparagus, vegan barbecue, coconut-lemon bundt cake, lime popsicles

1,3,7-trimethylxanthine

seventy degrees on saturday. i know, again with the weather report, but may i remind you that i live in maine? and that it is march?

friday and saturday were outdoorsy, with stops at arabica for coffee.
























m and boo went on long bike rides all weekend, and bean and i took lots of long walks.
























we were pleased by bard's sidewalk sign showing the chemical formula for caffeine.
























the low point of the weekend was when m, boo, and i went to see the ghost writer, which was okay, but not as good as i'd hoped (and left me with the nasty sensation of just having seen a movie directed by a creepy old man, not because of its content, but because i'd conveniently forgotten that it was a roman polanski film). and we emerged from the theater at midnight to find that our car had been towed. i'm not blaming anyone, but let's just say that i was not the one who was driving the car that night. we had a short mental list of people who might be available at 12:30am to drive us to south portland to retrieve our car, and number one on that list was bean's friend max* who just happened to be hanging out with bean and who gallantly came to our rescue.
























the above photo was taken inside the theater by boo. this current series of movie trivia makes me crazy: it is full of grammatical and punctuation errors, is bizarrely written ("thick-gummed"?), and check out that font at the top...










*i doubt i am permitted to say anything more about this.

sunshine

this weekend truly felt like spring -- like spring in baltimore in fact, which is appropriate since we've basically had baltimore's winter this year, while they've had our winter. which is a-okay with me. on saturday, m and i went to see an education after we sat in the sunshine for a while sharing a latte from bard.
























and then on sunday, while boo was skiing with some friends (i can't tell you how weird it feels to say that, not being a skier myself. it's as if he were playing polo with some friends. or. something exotic and expensive like that), bean and i took a long, leisurely walk all over the place. we paused to eat bagels from the works in the sunshine. i could've fallen asleep.fifty-five degrees.
























and then it was time for our oscar party, complete with ginger beer floats and tiny samosas. if you haven't already watched this trailer for every academy award winning movie ever, i really think you should.

A Trailer for Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever -- powered by Cracked.com

friends

the weekend was a blur of wonderful food and delicious friends.






























also? if you haven't played katamari forever on a giant projector screen? you pretty much haven't lived.