grateful

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Seven for Saturday 

It has been a fine week, with lots of good things, and nonetheless I have been alternately crabby and weepy all week. Thank goodness for Elisabeth, who, through her F.I.G. Collective, is encouraging us to find joy in gratitude, every single day, all month long. 

Saturday, February 1: 

  • I spotted tulips for the first time this year in the grocery store and bought a bunch. Not only do they brighten up my kitchen, they remind me that spring is on its way and soon my yard will be full of blooms.
  • My parents came over so my dad could work on a school project with Carla, and my mom and I got to go for a long early evening walk. This is one of the unexpected joys of having them nearby – they can just pop over for a couple of hours! We can simply go for a walk together! We had a nice talk and moved our bodies and enjoyed the crisp February air. 
  • When we returned, Carla was hanging out with my dad while he told her stories about his childhood. Oh, my heart! 

Sunday, February 2:

  • We got caught in a snowstorm on our way home from an epic back-to-back Costco/Target spending spree, and the whole world was magical again for a few hours. I don’t love driving in inclement weather, but I love it when everything is coated in white.
  • My dad came BACK to our house for the second half of the school project. He and Carla were making chocolates as part of a request to showcase a family tradition. My dad has been making chocolates for decades, and when I was a kid, I would make them with him at Christmastime to hand out to friends. We started with rolled truffles, like the ones he and Carla made, and eventually branched out into dipped and filled truffles. It was a tradition I loved and have managed to execute once or twice with Carla. (I found a photo of the three of us dipping truffles back in 2015! Carla was so small!!!!) I love that she remembers making truffles with her grandfather and that this was the tradition she wanted to share with her classmates. 
  • Carla, her dad, and I snuggled up together to watch Groundhog Day, which was more poignant than I remember. My goodness do I love Andie MacDowell’s hair in that movie. Between Andie and Julia Roberts and Keri Russell, the 1990s were full of such amazing hair.  

Monday, February 3:

  • After the grocery store (yes, if you’re keeping count this is three days of shopping in a row), I got in a good strength training workout, which always makes me feel strong and healthy.
  • I had an online writing session with a friend! This is so inspirational and motivational to me – to set aside time with a friend explicitly for writing, to discuss our concerns and writing triumphs. I also love it because we set aside a few minutes before and after we write to gab about other things and THAT is delightful in a totally different way.
  • I had a hankering for pasta primavera, which I’ve made before with limited success. But I tried this recipe and it turned out great! I also tried a new type of pasta (I am such a sucker for variations on regular old Barilla) (which I love, don’t get me wrong) and it was just as good as “normal” pasta. 

Tuesday, February 4:

  • Even though it was quite slippery outside, I met up with a local friend for a walk. Neither of us fell, for which I am very grateful. 
  • After our writing session, I was still in a creative groove. Then, my husband texted to say he would be done with work early and offered to pick up Carla from school, which was on his way home. Yes please! That saved me a whole hour of driving and allowed me to keep writing and writing.
  • My husband and I started watching a new show, which is extremely well done.

Wednesday, February 5:

  • My husband took Carla to school AND picked her up from school! That is TWO HOURS of extra time, right off the bat. I was able to get a sweaty HIIT workout in before eight…
  • …and then my local writing friend came over for our second writing session of the week. 
  • Since I didn’t have to drive Carla to and from school, I had two extra hours in my day and ended up doing tons of laundry, vacuuming the house, going for a quick walk, AND getting a ton of writing done. Such a productive day! Then, to make up for not getting much time with my kiddo, we spent extra time reading our book before bed. We are getting so close to the end, so pretty much every page is exciting.

Thursday, February 6:

  • This morning, I met up with a friend for tea. Due to kid illnesses, call schedules, and various other obstacles, we hadn’t seen each other for a very long time and had a LOT to catch up on. We talked and talked until she accidentally looked at her watch and we realized we’d been chatting for two hours. Whoops!
  • Today was my scheduled call with another long distance writing friend. I am so lucky to have THREE people with whom I can share ideas, complain, brainstorm, and discuss the ups and downs of trying to put your story into words.
  • My husband and I met with our new accountants, and they are so awesome I kind of want to be an accountant now??? and then we picked up Carla together and spent a pleasant hour at the mall, smelling perfumes.

Friday, February 7:

  • My parents are coming over for the Super Bowl on Sunday, and I stopped in at a local gourmet food shop to pick up some snacky treats. I am VERY excited about trying them. 
  • The sun was shining, so I got in a nice long walk in the bracing cold. 
  • The tulips I bought last Saturday still look gorgeous! 

If I were to summarize what I’m grateful for – at least this week – it would be creative time, time moving my body (especially outdoors), and time with the people I love. When I look at the abundance of those things in my life, it makes a lot of the bad feelings seem very small. 

Thank you, Elisabeth, for helping me find joy and gratitude during a week that felt unaccountably bleak.

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Fall Photos Friday

Elisabeth’s walking challenge has been surprisingly challenging for me this month. So far, out of 25 days, I’ve only managed to take a walk on 15 of those. (I plan to take a walk today, but it’s early yet.) I’ve spent a lot of time berating myself: how hard is it to take a ten-minute walk? Especially when you have access to a) a very walkable neighborhood and b) beautiful walking paths and c) A TREADMILL. Comparison is the thief of joy and all that, but I feel like an utter failure compared to someone like Engie, who has a full-time job and still manages to walk multiple times a day. Perhaps I need a dog. 

This week has been much better. (And I did walk on Wednesday, with two friends and a dog. I have a clear memory of programming “outdoor walk” into my watch, but seem to have done something to prevent it from recording.) 

The weather – which has been beautiful beyond belief – makes me want to be outside all the time. It’s been the best of all seasons here: warm and sunny, but not humid, and flowers are still blooming, but also the trees are a panoply of vivid colors. Mornings and evenings are cool enough for a jacket, the days are warm enough for tank tops and even shorts.

I keep goggling at the leaves, trying repeatedly to capture their vibrancy with my phone, and failing. It’s a beauty I’m unable to adequately translate to digital imagery. Every time I’m outside, I’m drinking in the colors, trying to store them up for winter’s bleak monochrome.

I keep pointing out trees to my daughter on our drives – “Look! Look!” – and she has been humoring me, and pointing out especially beautiful specimens herself. The other day, my husband picked her up from school, and apparently wanted to stop to photograph some startlingly red trees on the drive home, and my daughter moaned, “You sound like Mom!”

Carla has been “hired” a few times to puppy-sit for one of our neighbors. It’s now dark when she goes to do his bedtime routine, so I’ve been accompanying her. (I don’t go into their house at all; that would be weird. I just lurk outside in the dark, looking at my phone, which is much less weird.) She and I take the puppy on a final evening walk, both of us inhaling deeply of the night air, tinted with the promise of winter, both of us gazing up at the stars. Carla tries to get the puppy to admire the moon; so far, he is unimpressed.  

My husband, not usually one for walks, has initiated two! walks! this week alone! Fall is his favorite season and I wish it would last forever just for the opportunity to trudge through the fallen leaves with him, hand in hand, talking about all sorts of the mundane things you discuss with your partner. 

One of my favorite things about fall is stepping on acorns. The crunch under my heel is so satisfying. I am a little reluctant to do so when I’m walking with others, though – there’s something a little childish, a little embarrassing about doing so among friends. Perhaps that’s why there’s so much joy in it, because it feels like a call back to childhood? Another thing I love about fall is the cloud cover. It’s not oppressive, as in winter. It’s joyful and painterly and somehow distinct from the sky in other seasons.

I have been obsessed with a bank of trees I walk by frequently. It’s a copse of ALL the colors, their brightness cranked up to 11. We had a windy day the other day, and they are beginning to release their leaves to the inevitability of time’s passing, and I’m trying not to see it as a loss, but as a harbinger of the austere beauty to come: snow and ice and bare limbs scraping a cloud smudged sky.

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Saturday Superlatives: Thanksgiving Edition

For my outside-the-US friends, is your country’s celebration as food-focused as US Thanksgiving seems to be? I feel like it seems lower-key in Canada, and much more relaxing. Then again, maybe I’m one of the few who find Thanksgiving stressful. (I seem to find a way to make everything stressful.) 

If you celebrated this week, how was your Thanksgiving? Are you sick of leftovers yet? While I could happily eat a bowl of mashed potatoes and gravy for breakfast until Christmas, I avoid all other Thanksgiving foods until next Thanksgiving. Turkey is something I eat one day a year. My husband is a big fan of leftovers though. This year he has even vowed to make the infamous turkey tetrazzini that people swear by for transforming leftover turkey into something new and fabulous. 

This was a week of highs and lows, emotionally. But it was also overall a nice, low-key week. As the Holiday Table staffer at Whole Foods said when I told her we were down to three from seven people, “Nice! No stress!” And then quickly and ruefully added, “Well, there are pros and cons to all things.” 

Here are some of the superlative moments from this Thanksgiving week.

Worst Moment: When we had to tell Carla that her beloved cousin was no longer coming for Thanksgiving. She sobbed and sobbed. Hopefully we will find another time to get the families together. 

Sweetest Moment: Carla and I sat on the couch one day and watched movies together. Then after dinner we watched Jeopardy! together and she held my hand the whole time. All the heart eyes. 

Most Uncomfortable Moment: I think I mentioned previously that our real estate agent gave us a free apple pie as a thank-you for using them when we bought (and sold) our house. Carla and I were doing Thanksgiving prep work at the house when my husband texted me to remember the pie. So we dashed out to pick it up from the realtor’s office. I was wearing leggings and a sweatshirt under my winter coat (outdoor leggings, of course; not my bedtime leggings) and Carla was wearing a flannel shirt and shorts. Why yes it was only 40 degrees outside but PYB, people, PYB. It was pouring rain and we wore masks even though we’d both tested negative, just in case. I expected to run in, grab the pie, and run out, but no. There was a PARTY being held at the office. People in dressy casual clothing, milling about with drinks. A long table set with drinks and pastries. A special room set aside for children. A fire in the fireplace. My realtor was wearing slacks and a nice sweater. I was in leggings and a mask, dripping wet, my hair plastered to my makeup free face. Once again, Carla was wearing shorts. All I wanted was to get my pie and escape. But my sweet realtor wanted to chat about the house and our Thanksgiving plans. OMG. It was so horrifically awkward. Nearly as bad as those dreams where you go to school naked or you show up for your wedding without your dress. Also… I feel like this is probably rude of me to even ask, but do my realtor’s clients… enjoy parties like this??? Our orthodontist throws a party every year, too, and… it’s nice to do something festive for your clients, but… I don’t know any other orthodontia clients? And it’s not like a bunch of my friends and I all bought houses together. Are people who buy homes in the same year expected to form a club together? Maybe we’re supposed to be schmoozing about lawncare companies and the best place to buy lamps… but I just can’t imagine doing that on purpose. Is this what it’s like to be an extrovert? You just… go to parties purely to socialize with strangers? 

Most You-Win-Some,-You-Lose-Some Moment: The kind people at Whole Foods were so understanding about our change in holiday plans. They refunded me the cost of the green beans and asparagus. While I was standing in line at the Holiday Table waiting to “check in,” with shoppers pushing past us on both sides, and Carla asking if she could please buy a watermelon and what about the chocolate Advent calendar or maybe could she go look for some hot dogs? and what about buns, she really wants to try buns with her hot dog this time, I noticed a display of Ramona Ruby Grapefruit Wine Spritz. I glanced at the label which I thought said $8.99, which seems like a reasonable enough price for four bottles. (My husband and I had Ramona this summer and loved it, and I haven’t seen it anywhere before.) We checked out and it turns out that each four pack is $18.49. OMG. I mean, yes, you could buy a bottle of wine for $18.49 and probably wouldn’t bat an eye (although I am more of a $10-a-bottle kind of gal), but. OMG. Good thing we saved all that money on green beans and asparagus so I could turn around and spend it on booze. (It really is delicious. But still.)

Most You-Really-Should-Be-A-More-Careful-Reader,-Suzanne Moment: Turns out that every single box of Covid tests in our house was expired. And, while several of them had expiration dates that had been extended to nowish, I thought it would be prudent to get some new unexpired-in-any-way ones. I looked up my options at the local Target. The top results cost $35! That seemed like a lot, when I was used to getting them free (I just ordered the latest batch of free ones). I scrolled down a bit in the results and spotted a pack of four tests for $12.99. Much better. Carla and I put on masks and drove to Target for their drive-up service. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized I’d purchased drug testing kits. SIGH. 

Funnest and Funniest Moment: This year, Carla helped me with a ton of the Thanksgiving food preparation. She made the cranberry sauce pretty much independently, cut all the cornbread and French bread for the dressing, and helped chop mire poix for the various things that required mire poix. Most helpful was when she helped me deal with the turkey. I am very squeamish about touching raw meat and have used a variety of kitchen tools in past years to prevent me from touching the turkey. This year, I just powered through and touched it with my bare hands. *Shudder.* But one thing I will not do is touch any part of the turkey’s innards, and that’s where Carla came in. Like a champ, she removed the neck and giblets from the turkey cavities with kitchen tongs, while we both squealed in disgust. It was the most fun I’ve ever had dealing with raw meat. (Less fun for her, because I made her wash her hands about 80 times and then gave her a mini lecture about salmonella as I sprayed down the counter with antibacterial spray.)

Favorite Blog Comments: While I adore every comment you leave, sometimes they feel like they’re just for me, you know? Which is fabulous. Other times, they are full of GOLD that I want everyone to read. It was an utter delight to read everyone’s take on pets and pet names. But I think the GOLD this week is in the comments of this post. If you haven’t added your own thoughts, I would love it if you took the time to add your own thoughts about blogs and blogging. And if you haven’t scrolled through to find new bloggers to follow, please check it out. 

That’s it from me, Internet. Now I need to go scour my house clean after having my (ravenous and less-than-tidy) child home with me for eight days straight and prepare (again) for my delayed houseguests. 

Any stand-out moments for you this week?

I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join the fun, check out San’s blog here.