Nobody loves automobiles more than Andy. His love for cars is akin to my love for Madonna. Each borders on obsession, but each has its limits and is bound by what is more or less reasonable. His latest Audi is his favorite, but it’s come with its own set of issues – some easily resolved, some not so easily resolved. We are currently awaiting word on whether one of the bigger changes (of a transmission no less) will work out.
I’m hoping it does, because a happy Andy makes for a happy household, and there’s nothing I enjoy more than seeing him content with his car – it is one of his favorite passions and I love seeing him excited about something. He tells me this dealership has been very good to him, it’s just been a series of strange setbacks the past few months, which is an apt metaphor for life in an upstate New York winter. Stalls and setbacks are par for the course – our success depends upon how we react and deal with them. Andy is doing his best, as frustrating as it can be.
No matter what happens next, at least we know we’ll always have the Woody.
A couple of days ago a quiet little marker passed as I realized I hadn’t had a drop of liquor in three months. This is far from the longest I’ve gone without alcohol, and at first I didn’t feel the need to make note of it at all, until I saw someone post on Twitter that they had fallen off their sobriety path.
I haven’t made any serious sobriety promise, as that is usually the kiss of death for any serious lifestyle change. I’ve chosen to not drink in an effort to live in a more healthy manner and take care of this body for as long as I may have it. Not drinking was one of the first steps in doing better for myself, and it had almost nothing to do with addiction or sobriety as it did for bettering myself. Because of that, it seemed rather a minor accomplishment. Yet as soon as I saw someone stumble in their own quest for sobriety, I felt a bit of an impulse to share this little triumph of not drinking with them. Surely if someone who has more than enjoyed his share of cocktails over the years can change, then perhaps there’s some inspiration to be found here.
I wish I could offer some insight or wisdom or simple advice on how I did it, but I’m at a loss, and that may make me the exception for those who have had trouble stopping. Mostly, I was wanting to stop for a while, it just took a bit of tough love from my husband and family and friends to help me see that now was the time. But the main impetus was my own realization that I simply didn’t feel as good when I drank as opposed to when I didn’t. And why would I do something that makes me feel bad?
Anyway, I realize it’s a lot harder for some people not to drink, so this little milestone is being marked in honor of them. I know it can be tough. I know it can feel impossible. But it can be done. And if you have to start over and over and over until you can do it, that’s ok. The stumbles and falls only matter if you can’t get back up again. If you make it to another day, you make it to another choice. I’m grateful for every chance I have at making a choice. It’s nice to be in charge.
As for the celebration of cocktails that this website once espoused, I’m still enamored by a pretty drink, only now these are alcohol-free. For those who are looking for some good mocktails to extend a dry January, stay tuned for some recipes. Just because I’ve forsaken the booze doesn’t mean I’m going to forsake the beauty.
Earl Grey tea ebbs and flows in my existence. There are periods when I’m all for it – craving and demanding its floral notes in tea and cookies and scones – and then there are long stretches when I want nothing to do with it. Lately, I’ve come around to it again, maybe because a nice floral tea seems designed for winter mornings like this one. Unexceptional Tuesdays when a sweeter, quieter start of Bergamot is needed to cast its exquisite spell and see us through the rest of the week, or at least the remainder of the day. Such moments of peace are by their nature smaller and more elusive, and so I value them more. Let’s sip on that for a bit and not rush ahead just yet.
It was a week filled with sickness and a slow but steady recuperation. Felled by the flu, I spent half the week alternating between chills and sweats, and the rest of it racked with overall body aches. That made for hours of bed-bound contemplation and feverish deliberations, none of which came to much. It’s not good to be inside your head so much, or inside the house so much either. I had no choice in either, and so I did my best to get better – drowning myself in hot green tea with lemon and honey, regular doses of Tylenol in the morning and NyQuil at night, gallons of water, and freshly squeezed citrus in whatever else I was drinking. On with this sickly recap so we can leave it all behind…
There are some who forsake the garden in the winter. They do not wish to see it mid-slumber, in its quiet state of hibernation. They prefer only to visit when its at its most beautiful, and I cannot begrudge them for that. Yet those people miss all the wonder that is the garden in winter, a time when stillness and serenity take the place of chattering waterfowl, and snowflakes take the place of flower blossoms.
Whenever I’m unsure of things, when I worry too much and wonder about what the future holds, I return here, no matter the time of the year or the day, and it calms the heart. On this morning I found peace again, and I found hope. It made me want to start again, to be better in whatever ways I could.
I’d forced Kira to get up earlier than she would have liked, but by the time we reached the garden she was coming around to the idea of its beauty, and as we wound our way through the cleared paths, she gave in to the contemplative Sunday morning and its surroundings.
After getting a number of photos, I brought us to the Lenox Hotel, where we looked up brunch spots as we warmed ourselves by their fireplace. It was the loveliest way of closing out our winter weekend. We made it through the winter storm. We made it through the wilderness. We made it through the beauty.
Kira and I slept in on Saturday morning, as she wasn’t scheduled for a swimming lesson until noon. Sleeping in seems to be a luxury that grows more and more elusive with each passing year of age. Whereas before I could sleep happily until noon, the past several years have found that wake-time creeping earlier and earlier; these days I’m generally up by eight even on weekend and when left to my natural waking instincts. One of the blessings and curses of older age, I suppose. On this day we took our time getting up, even if there were peeks of blue sky and bits of sunshine before the storm was set to arrive.
We shared the ride to Park Street then separated as Kira went swimming and I went on the hunt for winter clothing bargains (there were several to be found). While our custom was to go out for dinner on Saturday, the snowstorm was scheduled to arrive at the same time. Not wanting to either walk or find an Uber at such a conflux, we agreed on another homemade meal at the condo. The only question was what to cook.
My bout with retail therapy complete, Kira and I met up on Newbury Street and we commenced the dinner discussion. With visions of endlessly-percolating stews and simmering soups in the further recesses of my mind, we opted for something much simpler, since we would normally be sitting down to someone else’s hard work. The Senor Sandwich was a happy compromise – simple but flavorfully substantial. It was also easy enough to be construed from what we found at the local corner market and Eataly, since Trader Joe’s already had a storm line snaking throughout the entire store.
The storm made its entrance as we exited our last food stop. Bits of snow sputtered from the sky and the wind picked up again. In the air was that cozy anticipation that accompanied a proper snowstorm, particularly one which could be weathered from a safe vantage point. We arrived back at the condo just in time. The snow began coming down in earnest, the street turned white, and a dinner made and shared between friends turned it into the perfect evening.
Standing at the window and looking out over Braddock Park, I felt the same sense of calm and serenity in a snowstorm that I’ve had the good fortune to feel whenever I passed a storm in Boston. The warm glow of the hardwood floors, the occasional rush of water through the baseboard heaters, and the flickering of a few candles lent heat literal and figurative throughout the space. On the other side of the window the snow continued to fall and the occasional passer-by walked quickly through the pretty mess. The plows came a little later, their hum and beeping a comforting sound reminiscent of the hopeful wishing of snow-days and school-days.
We retired relatively early, as we had an early start planned for the next day. I’d been waiting for a snow-covered moment to get some photos of the Public Garden, and we were gifted with the ideal set-up.
Preparations began the night before I left, as I put together a version of shakshuka that could travel and then be assembled with the final flourish of eggs and fresh herbs added at the last minute in Boston. That Friday was due to be exceedingly chilly, with temperatures in the almost-single digits and with a ferociously-biting wind. Kira would be arriving in the midst of an icy night and I wanted to welcome her with warmth and sustenance.
Most of my Boston visits with Kira involve a free stretch of time while she finishes her work week, and in this window of freedom I will usually do some shopping and roaming before Kira arrives. I started out the same way, until the cold and the winds drove me indoors and back to the condo early. It was cozier that way anyway, and I was grateful for the bit of quiet. As dusk arrived, I started dinner, lit a few candles, sipped at a cup of tea, and settled in to the moment.
When Kira arrived, a plate of charcuterie sat assembled at the dining table and we instantly dove in to the food and the catching up. She brought a bouquet of flowers which completed the minimalist tablescape in lovely fashion. We loosely plotted out the next day, barely finished dinner (lesson: a big-enough charcuterie platter will suffice for a future Friday night dinner), and watched a bit of ‘Now, Voyager’ before retiring. Time with a good friend was indeed tranquility, and something we needed when a storm was brewing.
It’s been a fun point of contention, debate, and occasionally-serious attempted-reconstruction over the past several years. We’d narrowed it down to a few films, and finally two finalists: ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ and ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’. One of them would have been the first movie that Skip and I saw together, and we have spent way too many subsequent movie nights trying to figure out which one it would have been.
The truth is we had known each other for a few years prior to that fateful evening. I’d started working with Sherri in the summer of 2005, so it must have been the holiday party of later that year at which I first met her then-boyfriend Skip. Sporadically seeing each other at parties and work events, it was always a fun and easy camaraderie we enjoyed, but we didn’t hang out on our own until that first movie, casually agreed upon, likely at some party or gathering where we would have been talking and plotting a future plan.
Our first salient memory when we began to look back was of a guy, one of the only other people in the theater that night, who fell asleep repeatedly during ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’, and gave up a very loud series of snores which left us both in hysterics. But while that made for a memorable outing, I wasn’t sure it was our first, but when the memory popped up on Skip’s FaceBook from January 2012, it seemed like that might have been the case.
However, on my third day with a flu that had me housebound, I wandered unsteadily into the guestroom where my date planners were roughly organized on a shelf, and I pulled out 2011 to see if I wrote down anything prior to 2012 about seeing a movie with Skip. Once upon a time I kept detailed notes on the daily events of my world (I’m a Virgo through and through) so I perused the pages and days of 2011. It took the whole year, but eventually I found the very first documentation of that first movie night, on December 27, 2011.
It made sense – we would probably have been talking about the new David Fincher film at a holiday party, and our shared love of dark and disturbing directors and their films instigated the movie date a couple of weeks later. I didn’t know then that one of the best friendships of my life was emboldening itself, gradually becoming a happy foundation and fundamental part of my adult years.
The past year has brought about a number of Madonna reinventions, some of which have been the most striking of her storied career. Witness the challenging ‘Madame X’ album, a tapestry of music culled from around the world, most notably Portugal. Witness the accompanying theater tour for the album, which found Madonna in some of the most intimate venues since she first hit it big. And, most startling of all, witness her perhaps-unwanted turn as mere mortal, given her reported knee and hip injuries, which have caused her to cancel a number of tour dates.
After one such cancellation, she posted an Instagram video of her carefully ascending a set of stairs with a “vintage cane”, looking slightly hunched over and defiantly un-Madonna-like. My heart broke a little for her then, as I’ve seen some of the ticket-holders’ reactions to her canceled shows. (By the way, I’m not one of those lucky folks who got to see one of the shows that went on – I had tickets to a Boston date, all of which ended up being canceled, so I speak as one of the affected parties. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but I got over it, and at this point it’s clear that there are some serious medical issues at work.)
After almost four decades of thrashing her body in the name of entertainment and pop superstardom, and doing so in relentlessly top-of-her-game fashion, Madonna has spoiled us, and maybe herself, tricking everyone into assuming she would run forever. Up until now, she really showed no sign of slowing down. Even a brutal fall down a set of stairs didn’t stop her step for more than a few scary seconds. This time feels different, and I can’t imagine what Madonna herself might be feeling. I do know if anyone can make the best of a difficult situation and turn it to her advantage, it’s Madonna. I will keep my hopes in that and wish for the best in her recovery. She’s one of the last great pop stars still standing and creating, and now she deserves a break.
“Elegance is usually confused with superficiality, fashion, lack of depth. This is a serious mistake: human beings need to have elegance in their actions and in their posture because this word is synonymous with good taste, amiability, equilibrium and harmony.” ~ Paulo Coelho
Way back in 2003, when I first put this website up, I didn’t have any notion of how long it might last, but I certainly didn’t envision the year 2020 and a personal website’s endurance for such a stretch. That said, I’m happy to have had such an outlet. Artistic and creative expression is worth years of therapy – really good, intense, helpful therapy – and I will always find a way to express my artistic ambitions. Yet to the observant visitor, my posts have generally been on autopilot of the past few months, perhaps years, and my heart may not be in it as much as it once was. It began a few years ago when I took my first summer off from daily blogging and it was so wonderful. Reconnecting to daily life and living each moment as it came without thought of documentation or blogging about it reminded me of what we should be doing. Ever since then, it feels like we’ve moved into the fall, and now winter, of this site’s grand trajectory. It puts me in the mind of this music – ‘The Malady of Elegance’ by Goldmund. Do give it a long listen.
Winter is good, no matter how much of a bad rap it gets, and I’m as guilty as others have been in condemning it. Its stark harshness, its unrelenting viciousness – it all has a purpose. Yet as much as I know how necessary it is for the true enjoyment and health of a proper spring and summer, I still dread and recoil at the horror of its frigid days, its icy winds, its way with chilling the heart. But there is beauty in the cold, a beautiful crystalline truth and clarity that only comes when you strip away the leaves and foliage and flowers and examine the bare bones and structure of the world. It’s frightening, and I can admit that I’m a little scared, but it’s absolutely necessary, and ultimately it will prove beneficial.
And so we enter the wilderness of winter for this website. I’m not sure how it will all pan out, whether it will simply fade slowly away with diminishing posts, whether it will go out with some big glorious bang, or whether I’ll simply disappear without a word, vanishing into one of the hidden corners of the anonymous world wide web. I’ve been pondering my own mortality of late, wondering what might happen if I suddenly got hit by a car, my life instantly and unexpectedly snuffed out by some freak accident or tragedy. This blog would sputter out a few more pre-populated and then posthumous posts, a ghostly trick of our technological world. Those who only knew me here might think I was still alive, still writing and creating, when I would have already gone.
Such pondering of my own life found a focus in the past week when I was stricken with the flu, missing a couple of work days, a therapy session, and limiting the usual three-posts-per-day schedule this blog has managed to maintain. It put all those things into perspective, most especially the latter, and it suddenly dawned on me that the only person putting pressure on myself to do three a day, to maintain this pace and volume, was me. As I get older, and hopefully wiser, I am learning to let go of such perfectionist goals. I’m also learning to look ahead to the eventual end of this website as we know it. As far as personal blogs go, or websites in general for that matter, this one is a dinosaur, and I say that and own it with pride. Name your favorite blog right now and I bet I have it beat. This site is older than Twitter and FaceBook and Instagram. Think about that for a moment.
At 44 years of age, I’m way older than those social media sites as well, and some would, not inaccurately perhaps, proclaim that I’m too old to be doing a blog, and that blogs are all but over anyway, and that’s a fair take on the whole scene. The idea of a blog has likely passed its highest point of potency. There are too many easier outlets to make a creative name and channel for oneself. I’ve also grown a little too comfortable with the format and limits of this site, and any time the hint of stagnation rears its still head, I get a little restless and look for a new challenge. At this point in our technological history, that new challenge may be a return to a mainly off-line existence, an unplugged life not lived for documentation or recaps. Where not everything must be noted or annotated for future reference. When I think of the freedom involved in that, I get a little giddy. I almost want to slip away without word of warning or notice, in the middle of an otherwise ordinary night, never to return again, never to explain or say goodbye. Yes, that appeals to me as someone who has always preferred an Irish goodbye.
I don’t intend to go out in such a way, if I do in fact even have a say in it, so I’m hopeful I’ll get to design my own exit strategy, and we have a few more months or years to figure that out. It’s good to have a little preparation though, a plan of how this journey might go. The best thing about winter is that it is the springboard for spring, for the next rebirth. We will honor that in the snowy world. We will honor that in our slumber. We will rest and prepare for the next igniting of the phoenix.
And sometimes they don’t signify anything more than brightening up a week in winter. The world needs more roses at these times. Beauty will always make things better.
This bouquet is comprised of some dark pink spray roses and a few traditional long-stemmed pink roses. As we get closer to Valentine’s Day, their cost will become ridiculously prohibitive. For now, they brighten our home, nestled lovingly in a favorite vase, gradually opening and becoming the blooms they have aspired to be.
Oh magnificent amaryllis! How you stun with your saturated redness, how you thrill with your scarlet bloom! From such a plain bulb of brown, how gloriously you burst forth with your floral explosion, followed by straps of vivid green leaves. You are life and beauty and power in a world sick with mundane mediocrity. You give me hope. You give me pleasure. You give me prettiness in the midst of a bleak day. What price on such a piece? What bounty on such a head?
It is enough simply to exist when you are so richly red.
This post is enough to supply the day with the magic it wants.
Once upon such posts populated this blog, providing a brief haven for those who deigned to visit, a quick little respite while a cup of coffee or tea was had before the workday began in earnest. A return to the simple and the true. A return to beauty.
As if the universe knew exactly which test to administer at a moment when I need it most and want it least, I’ve just been ferociously and furiously felled by a fever of 102.2 degrees and croaking a prayer that it’s not the dreaded flu. I’m typing this post out on my phone- a handy little trick about which I know the bare minimum, so bear with me as I alternate between chills and sweats. If you could see me now… anyway, cue Shirley MacLaine because I’m singing her song and seeing her visions and I’m way way fun to the casual observer when I’m sick, not so much to the devoted caretaker.
