Livin' and Lovin' in the ROC city

This season of life, if my infrequent blogging is any indication, is shaping up to be a busy one. Truthfully, I’ve only carved out the time to write something now because I’m avoiding tackling a task that requires a level of focus, brain power, time, and imagination that I just don’t feel I can manage today. These past couple of weeks have come as a bit of a shock to the system and have taken me by surprise. After well over a year of this strange period of our lives – of a lull in our usual flurry of activity, of waiting, of taking life at a slower pace while we collectively re-examined our realities and priorities and dedicated our days to simply existing without the pressure we’ve traditionally placed on achieving and performing – this resurgence of projects, deadlines, multi-tasking, and problem solving sort of snuck up on me. Not that I didn’t expect that, soon, we’d find ourselves falling back into a more steady pace of going more places, doing more things, and resuming some activities and parts of our lives that were on hold or moving in slow motion. But, I suppose, I imagined that we’d inch back into all of that so our bodies and brains would have time to adjust and work back up to functioning at a heightened clip. I didn’t anticipate the bustle and chaos would re-emerge quite so quickly, ferociously, or with such immediacy and vigor.

These past two weeks (and continuing this week and well into next week, too) have been stacked – for the both of us – with time-intensive and labor-intensive work projects ripe with rapid changes, tight deadlines, and the near-constant need for problem solving, flexibility, and re-rerouting of visions and action steps. On its own, that’s a lot of mental gymnastics. Add to that our big and long-awaited landscaping overhaul – which is finally happening after over a year of planning and many design revisions and delays. It’s shaping into something we think we’re really going to love, but hasn’t been without quite a few hiccups, misunderstandings, weather and material delays, changes, and that ever-necessary need to keep a close eye on things, and then scrap plan A and quickly work up a plan B, C, D, E….

We’re grateful to see another journey in this process of turning our cute albeit cookie-cutter house into our own unique, comfortable, and very “us” home come to fruition, but it hasn’t been without its challenges. We’re just in the thick of it right now, in that ugly stage of the project timeline halfway through where everything is a week or more behind schedule, started but only partially completed, covered with dirt and grime and bugs and cottonwoods and pollen and bird poop, tools and materials and machines are scattered everywhere, it’s hot, and the once beautiful, lush, green lawn we’ve been cultivating for the past two years is brown and trampled and shredded from digging, dumping, heavy machines, and pallets. It’s the stage that you struggle to love, even though you know you should try to see the fun and wonder in it all because it’s only temporary and will eventually transform from a caterpillar of a yard to a butterfly of an outdoor oasis, but right now it’s relishing in those awkward teenage years, and the light at the end of the tunnel is finally visible, but still feels so far off. How’s that for using every metaphor in the book?

And along with all that detailed-brain-power-laser-focus-time-sensitive work stuff I mentioned, there’s also this part-time job of keeping up with the moves of our landscaping crew (who are all excellent guys and great workers, and we’re tremendously enjoying having them around as they work diligently on this project of many, many complicated parts), and also the work of planning, packing, and preparing for a 2.5 week road trip (our first vacation in a very long time!), that – naturally – commences right on top of all of this. Furthermore, along with the daily stream of 2-3 large landscaping trucks with trailers full of gravel and stone and top soil filling our driveway and the street in front of our house and our neighbors houses, utility and construction workers with their 4-5 big trucks (and accompanying army of backhoes and excavators) are doing a bunch of digging and installation of fiber optic cable in our neighborhood. Of course, just this week, they reached our street, so all of their trucks and machinery are simultaneously navigating the same exact area of the same exact street (right outside our house) as our landscaping crew is. And then there’s the noisy equipment and machinery for all of the digging and hauling and pounding and sawing and dumping and backing up and water pressure use that both the landscapers and the utility teams are doing…so finding one moment of precious silence between the hours of 7am-3pm, while we’re feverishly working away on those deadlines with the little mental energy we’ve been able to salvage, has been a wild ride.

While it’s certainly busy, it’s not all bad. We knew from the start that all of these journeys – diving back into these big seasonal work projects we’ve been away from for so long, major landscaping renovations, big trips – would be messy and chaotic, but wonderful and rewarding. And they are. I just don’t think we anticipated the timing working out in such a way that they all landed right on top of each other in the same one month period. We also have two lunch double dates planned and coming up this weekend (two! I know! We went 14 months without any social outings and here we have two lunch dates in the same weekend!) that we’re very much looking forward to, and also can only laugh at the timing in hindsight and take a mental note that we probably actually need them to unwind a little – its life gently nudging us to take a break.

Somehow, in spite of all these big ticket things, we’ve managed to sneak in some early summer fun. Earlier this week someone in the neighborhood scheduled a taco food truck to swing by for about two hours around dinnertime, so we were able to enjoy some excellent tacos and lovely conversations – getting to know some people in the neighborhood better – while we waited in line. I also pulled out my snowcone machine for the first time this season and had my inaugural snowcone of the summer (cherry cola). A few evenings this past week, the weather (by 6pm or so) has been glorious and so I’ve been able to take a book and a glass of wine outside on the deck after dinner to relax, read in the shade, and listen to the chirping of the birds at our feeders. We also have a nest of finches tucked away in a little alcove in the upper eaves of our front porch, in a nook that’s shaded, cool, out of the wind, and out of the sight of predators. The mom and dad finch (who frequent our oriole feeders and seem to have taken a fondness to the grape jelly and orange halves we put out) had a number of eggs in the nest, who have just recently hatched into tiny little fuzz balls. It’ll be fun to watch them grow, just as we watched the baby bunnies last summer.

Over the weekend we pulled out the awesome cornhole boards that we made last year, along with the grill, and played a few rounds of cornhole with our next door neighbors and grilled up some cheeseburgers, ears of corn, and seasoned vegetables, and we also grilled the ingredients for a massive batch of my homemade salsa – which gives it a nice, smokey char. It’s been chips and salsa for dinner multiple times in this household over the past week (usually followed by a few chapters of a book in a nice hot bath before bed – gotta unwind somehow). We celebrated National Donut Day, and also went to one of our favorite local places – a cidery with wonderful hard ciders, excellent food, and a beautiful outdoor space in the country overlooking meadows and orchards – for an evening of lovely weather and baseball-themed eats on their 1st annual Lou Gherig’s Day to raise both funds and awareness of ALS. Then, early on Sunday morning, our She-Food group held a surprise birthday breakfast for one of our friend’s. With the pandemic, we’ve done things like this so sparingly (and only outside around a campfire) that it was such a nice change to put on a sundress and gather in the same space for hugs, catching up, coffee, mimosas, cinnamon rolls, eggs and bacon, cheesy hashbrown casserole, muffins, and smoothies. One night I made the first strawberry rhubarb pie of the season (my 4 beloved rhubarb plants are positively thriving, by the way!), picked up some new books from the library on a rainy afternoon, and we watched the new Cruella movie (and loved it!).

And, lastly, a movie we’ve been looking forward to seeing for a long time now (In the Heights) whose release was delayed in 2020 is finally out, so – if we’re lucky – we’re hoping to sneak away to the drive-in movie theatre this weekend to enjoy it once it’s dark out, after a round of mini golf while splayed out under blankets in the bed of our truck beneath the stars, eating a whole lot of comforting junk food.

There’s plenty I haven’t gotten to, can’t get to, and won’t get to. I’m trying to accept that and then just let those things go, prioritize what we can accomplish right now (one task at a time), and then make sure there’s plenty of time for all these wonderful, fun, summery things, because these are the moments I want to delight in and want to spend my time and energy focusing on, while I do my best to remind myself the rest of the stuff will shake itself out.

This past Saturday, for the first time in 14 months, we got dressed up (which we practically forgot how to do altogether and were pleasantly surprised and relieved to find that our fancy clothes still fit us and weren’t covered in a thick coating of dust) to attend a truly gorgeous and wonderful celebration of the marriage of our friends Ali & Emily.

We were honored beyond words to share in one of the most joyful and loving weddings we’ve ever witnessed. I cry at everything (just ask Ted: live animals, sick animals, dead animals, baby animals, senior or disabled animals, happy or playful animals, happy TV commercials, sad movies, happy movies songs, pictures, funny jokes, birthdays, gifts, memories, joyful things, stressful things, surprises…the list goes on). I cry at everything except weddings. I did not cry at my own wedding. I did not cry at any of the past several weddings we’ve been to. So I didn’t even occur to me to throw tissues in my purse before we left the house to drive an hour southeast into the beautiful Finger Lakes region for this wedding, but boy did I burst into tears at least 4 times on Saturday, including when Emily walked down the aisle (which I doubly did not expect since Ali is the bride I’ve known the longest and am closest to). The ceremony was an abundance of natural beauty, blissful happiness, and pure passion and joy-filled love (and, honestly, also sheer overwhelm at the simple act of being around more than 3 people in a social setting in over a year – I’m sure that was a contributing factor to my emotional state as well).

We were so thankful for such a stunning day for this small, outdoor, open air wedding. It was simply gorgeous out. You could not have planned more perfect weather. 70 degrees, sunny, light breeze, no bugs, no humidity, and a beautiful venue full of soft, lush green grass, towering shade trees, a pretty little river in the background, plenty of quiet places to sit outdoors in the sun or in the shade along the water, and a beautifully renovated open-air barn for the reception with soft romantic lighting and vintage, rustic charm.

The food was excellent (we may have filled up on shrimp and bacon wrapped scallops before dinner service even began). The drinks were plentiful (we stuck to a sensible selection of margaritas, gin and tonics, and jack and cokes). The highly personalized and intimate ceremony itself, the delightful and meaningful vows the brides wrote themselves, the toasts from their loving families, and first dances between brides and with their dads at the reception were all so beautiful and abundantly overflowing with love and joy. The two other couples we were seated with at our dinner table were also vaccinated (which was highly welcome and reassuring news), and we enjoyed some nice conversations with them here and there throughout the dinner and toasts. Fortunately, we were able to snag the brides for some hugs (our first hugs with other people in 14 months!) and a little bit of chatting and dancing. We also enjoyed a slow dance or two together as well, which is one of the things I always look forward to most at weddings.

It felt SO GOOD to finally be able to safely hug people you love and cherish, sip a margarita and share a laugh or a dance with other humans, experience a communal and synchronized heartbeat with other people (like you do at the theatre or at some other important or emotional event) when the music swells and the bride starts her walk down the aisle, and to actually socially celebrate love and wonderful things again. My heart is full from the brilliant love these two brides radiate, loving slow dances with my own silly sweetie, and a day so beautiful that my heart could hardly stand it. Overwhelming says it all.

Because we were either outdoors the whole time with plenty of space between families or groups of people, or in the barn (but with the barn doors all wide open all evening), we really only wore our masks when going up to a bar area to get food or beverages, and it was honestly somewhat weird being maskless (even though we’re vaccinated, even knowing most others were probably vaccinated, even outdoors, even with a fairly small wedding). We’ve been in masks so long when around literally anyone (much less multiple anyones) who isn’t the two of us that adjusting to not feeling the obligation to wear a mask to keep ourselves and others protected was unnerving and a little strange.

We were exhausted by the time we made it home at 10:30pm. We clearly haven’t had a late night out in a very long time considering just how tired we were and how our eyes had a good degree of difficulty adjusting to the brightness of headlights at night. It’s these odd moments that surprise you the most sometimes and cause you to think “wow, things really have changed, haven’t they?”

And then again, some things – thankfully – don’t change, no matter how many months pass in a “new” reality. Like weddings. And toasts and first dances. And wholeheartedly supporting those you love. And the beauty of nature. And awe-struck moments of wonder where you just sink back and whisper countless silent prayers of gratitude for how wonderful and beautiful life can be. And love. Above all, love.

Hey there and happy spring! Although, depending on where you’re reading from, it may still be winter yet, or even well into a toasty summer. Last year around this very week of May we had snow (annoying but not surprising), and I know the southern and western states are well into thunderstorm season.

Here, it’s the sweet time of year where the skies are a brilliant and cloudless blue, the sun is bright (and up for the day before 5:30am), the grass is a very rich green, dandelions dot the fields and meadows around our neighborhood, our daily soundscape is punctuated by the incessant humming of lawn mowers and string trimmers, a moderate breeze lingers day and night rippling through the trees and various yard shrubs (which are populated with white, pink, and magenta buds), and the temperature hovers in the perfect low-to-mid 60s – when it isn’t raining that is (so, every other week, as it roughly works out to be). The lilacs and magnolias are blooming and thriving (and smell heavenly), boldly colored tulips are in their prime, my rhubarb are flourishing, and this past week our neighborhood pond has been filled with the first of many families of brand new, fuzzy, yellow baby geese and a sweet little flock of cygnets that the mamma swan we’ve been watching for the past few months welcomed on Mother’s Day (appropriately).

Like last year, I’ve enjoyed being home and in more natural settings much more than usual since I am still working from home, and this affords me the flexibility to enjoy a lot of things I may have otherwise missed while working downtown and focusing on a busy morning routine of getting dressed, getting a lunch made and packed, loading the car, and commuting early in the mornings. Instead, I start my day with a several mile walk where I notice the change in seasons – the smells, the sights, the plant life, the animals (mostly owls and rabbits and the pups of the neighborhood, with occasional fox, deer, turkey, and plenty of birds), and how it all subtly shifts from day to day and week to week. I usually have breakfast and tea or coffee on the back patio or deck when it’s still early and chilly out, but the sun is warm and cozy. During the days, when I look up from my projects or take a break, I look out at the view of our lawn and trees and my rhubarb and the bird feeders. This is also when the lawn mowers are the most active. In the winter we put out suet feeders that attracted quite a multitude of feathered guests, and now we have a newly placed hummingbird feeder that we are hoping yields a few of those flighty fellas on a semi-regular basis. In the evenings, we also walk sometimes down to the pond before sunset to check in on the swans, frogs, snapping turtle, and other wildlife, or have dinner and wine out on the deck when daylight stretches well past dinnertime. This is when most of our neighbors are out walking their dogs, grilling dinner, taking a leisurely stroll, sitting in front of a gas fire pit on their driveway with a beer or wine, hosting a round of lawn games, and kids are riding bikes or playing ball. In another month or two, it will be hotter (or more humid) and these activities will occur earlier in the mornings and later at night, along with the frequent chugging, clucking, and hissing of lawn sprinklers and the desperate dodging of mosquitos at dusk when everyone darts back inside. But for now, there’s no shortage of outdoor enjoyment.

We’ve been busy these past few months making plans to bolster our own outdoor enjoyment with some landscape renovations. When we bought the house in January of 2019 there was a large stamped concrete patio out back with only a single (temporary) step down to it from the back patio door, and a little bit of mulch landscaping surrounding the house with a spattering of purple and green perennials: hostas, chives that blossom purple in the summer, lavender (a favorite to both myself and the bumble bees), a purple flowering sage, a purple iris plant, a few Elijah blue grass shrubs, and several hardy azalea bushes. Last summer we designed and added an awesome deck out back off the stamped concrete patio that constantly receives compliments from passerby’s on the bike path that runs through the far part of our backyard (we do love this deck and think it’s one of the best things we’ve done to and for this house), and we also added a stamped concrete walkway from the driveway to the front porch. But the mulch landscaping, which wasn’t all that great to begin with (though the plants themselves are nice) was looking pretty run down, and we’re not big into the upkeep, maintenance, or even the look of mulch itself.

Long story short, we’re gearing up for phase 1 of a new landscaping installation to start in a few weeks – a mix of re-homing the current plants to our neighbors and friends, burying the gutters off our house, adding stone edging, replacing the mulch with stone gravel, adding a step and walkway down to a new stone fire pit area, re-grading and leveling out portions of the lawn, re-seeding the grass in those areas, and adding a tree to the front yard and maybe one to the backyard as well. Hopefully, if it all goes as planned and looks how we envision it will upon completion, we’ll have a lovely backyard oasis to enjoy for years to come. You know, in a few months after the new grass grows in. I’m mentally preparing myself to say goodbye to the expanses of lush, healthy green lawn we’ve been cultivating for the past two year that I’ve grown fond of and to accept that, at least for a period of time this summer until the new grass grows in, our yard is just not going to look all that great – even with all the nice new hardscaping details. It’s also a big change to go from mulch to stone, and from large expanses of only grass to less grass with more stone and hardscaping.

Phase 2 (maybe starting in the fall, but in all likelihood next spring and into next summer) will be adding a composite decking boardwalk that matches our deck to the gravel fire pit area, perhaps installing a few more trees in the back yard (if we are allowed; we’re currently working our way through a conservation easement on the back end of our property where we want to plant trees that nobody from the town seems to know why is still in effect or if it even serves a purpose anymore, but cannot modify or remove without jumping through a bunch of hoops), and adding a number of statement planters to the rock garden surrounding the house where the flowering perennial plants we pick out will live. In sticking with the green and purple plant scheme, a color combination that I really like, our plants will primarily be clumps of lavender and maybe a few flowering purple sage, some purple tulips in the spring, and a few whiskey barrel planters filled with herbs, purple blossoming chives, and cherry tomatoes…in addition to my rhubarb, of course. Visually appealing, but cohesive and relatively low maintenance, is our goal.

The road to this re-design has been a process not for the faint of heart and definitely not recommended for those who lack motivation or willpower, dislike hours upon hours upon hours of research, visiting with town frequently to try to obtain permits on a yard full of utility, conservation, and drainage easements, crafting designs and re-designs to get a look we love but that still fits into our budget, or going back to the drawing board a dozen times for all of the above reasons. Finding a tree to plant in our front yard was, also, a deceptively difficult, long, and arduous process. I’m not a tree expert (though I may as well be now), but discovering and choosing a tree with some of the beautiful and unique features we prize and really wanted in a statement tree (like peeling, ornamental bark or something along those lines that set it apart and make it special) that also meets a million other criteria (including but not limited to low maintenance, soil adaptive, extremely cold hardy, wind tolerant, generally resistant to pests and disease, non-invasive roots, not too big or too small for the space we have available for it, somewhat speedy grower, multi-season color, not messy, not prone to incessantly reproducing hundreds more of itself in our or our neighbors yards, attracts wildlife like birds but not a million pests or rodents, etc.) has been a journey.

I have learned a lot in the past few months about grass, trees, landscape design, drainage, plants, hardscape, proper foundational preparations, and maintenance…and I have been given multiple opportunities to work on my patience, ability to persevere in the face of multiple failings, and compromise. But we’ve landed on something we think we’ll love, and now a new journey begins – one of even more patience and perseverance as we install phase 1, adjust to a new look, nurse and nurture our new grass to life, and wait to recoup enough time and money to start phase 2.

Ultimately, from this period of being home nearly all the time and spending more of our days and nights noticing the natural world around us, we’ve realized that a relaxing, beautiful, and less work-more enjoyment approach to maintenance in an outdoor area where we can enjoy the unique wonder of each season is important to us. It takes a lot to get there, but like so many things in life, we hope our efforts will be rewarded and we are looking forward to seeing what comes!

I hope everyone’s Easter was just as lovely!

Just another day at work (from the guest bedroom/my floating office)

Baths and books and bath bombs

Chicken pot pie with cornbread crust for Pi Day on 3.14

A pleasant way to start the day

Also a pleasant way to start the day. It’s cantaloupe season and I’m taking advantage of it

One of our favorite spring and summer meals: homemade salmon burgers with cilantro mayo, creme fraiche potato salad with mint, lemon, shallot, and capers, and tart lemon bars with the perfect crust to filling ratio

Another dish I always crave in the spring: shaved asparagus pizza with homemade crust, shaved Parmesan, fresh mozzarella, garlic and herb Boursin cheese, roasted salted & peppered asparagus, and green onions

Easy and hearty pesto pasta with some mint mixed in there for something a little different

Takeout breakfast from our favorite diner…because you can’t cook all the time and sometimes we just miss Sunday morning diner food.

A couple of kids very happy to have received dose 1 of the vaccine!

New summer masks (and more in the mail!)

One of the silver linings of working remotely for the past year has been the ability to work from, well, just about anywhere. As long as the work gets done on time and well, it doesn’t particularly matter if it happens from the living room, guest room, office basement, back deck in the sunlight, truck, or hotel room hundreds of miles from home. I find it interesting, and also somewhat amusing, just how many people (myself included) have realized that a decent portion of the work we do that we thought would be downright impossible to complete out-of-office 13 months ago is, in fact, entirely possible to complete out-of-office. Certainly not all of it, as those of us who work in the arts & entertainment industry can clearly attest, but a much larger portion than any of us imagined would ever be possible. Not that it’s always easy, convenient, or even the right or ideal way to operate, but necessity breeds innovation and creativity, and it’s interesting to remember, in a pinch, that more can be done from places other than our building than we’d previously thought.

A few weeks ago, just as spring was rearing, Ted needed to visit a job site about two hours southwest of home right near the southern New York/Pennsylvania border for some introductions, discussions, and photo documentation to start a quote process. It was only a quick day trip, and he suspected the drive would be scenic and interesting in it’s own unique way and invited me along. Never one to shy away from an adventure, road trip, or a spontaneous opportunity to travel anywhere, I readily agreed.

Loaded up with my to-do list, laptop, charger, lap desk, and internet hotspot, I had everything I needed to work from the truck both on the drive and while Ted did his site visit. A cozy sweater, thick and fleecy blanket, and caramel macchiato from our breakfast stop at McDonald’s on the early morning drive down to the Allegheny-Limestone area completed my office-truck ensemble.

The drive was, as suspected, a welcome change of pace and full of unique scenery. The regions of southern New York we drove through were quite hilly and would have been resplendent in the fall, but had a quirky, whimsical, and magical charm all its own in winter-almost springtime. Along the route, on these desolate and thin and well-worn country roads with significant peaks and valleys of hills and small mountains, we saw hundreds of run-down tiny farm dwellings dotted along full forests of beautiful, naked birch trees and established between streaming creeks and rivers. We saw wild turkeys, deer, cows, donkey, horses, geese, and a big black pot-bellied pig all right along the roadside, and then out of nowhere the phenomenal shell of what was once a grand Victorian mansion-home that you can only imagine was utterly majestic and gorgeous in it’s prime, but is now just a shell of it’s former glory, missing nearly all her windows and doors. But even in that dilapidated and abandoned state, it was nothing short of breath-taking and captivating, sitting by the side of a forgotten country road in rural farmland, framed by bare trees….so seemingly out of place among the tiny trailer homes and ramshackle barns and coops that you just knew it had a rich history and significance. We went home and researched it, learning all about the property and generations of former owners, while imagining the day someone finally restores it. We also saw a few Amish families in horse-drawn carriages, traversing up steep hills from their farms to their daytime work a few miles away building wooden sheds, and back again.

After Ted’s site visit while I worked from the truck, surrounded by really lovely and unexpected 360˚ mountain views with a brief snow shower and blanket of fog that settled in for about 30 minutes then cleared right up again to reveal a bright sun and clear skies, we stopped at the clearly irresistible “Cuba Cheese Shoppe” (which we’d seen advertised from the highway) and loaded up on an array of fresh, delightful, and funky cheeses (incredibly fresh cheese curds, smoked horseradish cheese, espresso and lavender rubbed cheese, earl gray rubbed cheese, and salt and honey rubbed cheese), local chocolates, nostalgic candies, cinnamon honey butter, pickled okra, and rye chips. This is the sort of thing I love about a road trip…happening across something interesting that you were completely unaware of and, without a plan, simply stopping to check it out and leaving with a treasure trove of goodies.

Many things about the past 13 months have been frustrating, disappointing, devastating, worrisome, or just plain hard. And so, when the same event that has bestowed so much grief also grants plentiful opportunities to keep up with work projects while breathing in country air and mountain views and hidden gourmet cheese shoppes and long sunny drives and quality time with your partner, it’s nice to acknowledge the silver linings where they exist and appreciate both the complexity and the simplicity of life as we currently know it.

A few weeks back, at the end of February, it was cold and snowy and I had a craving for a very specific kind of comfort food. Years ago, when I was a teenager, a Hungarian woman named Georgie (I am fairly certain this was not her given name, rather the Americanized version of her name that people in the States could pronounce – I wish I had thought then to ask what her real name was, but as a young adult, she was introduced to me as Georgie and so that’s what I called her without any further thought) came to stay with our family for a few weeks to learn from my dad about how to manage a specific type of non-profit business that she was interested in starting up back in Hungary and that my dad ran in Texas. She knew some minimal English, but we didn’t know any Hungarian, and so a lot of communication happened through hand gestures and piecing together words in other languages that my parents knew (German, Polish, Russian, French, etc.) that Georgie also knew. If my memory serves, her husband spoke more English than she did, but I recall a number of conversations make up simply of laughter, body language, pointing, gesturing, and words in any language that we all seemed to understand.

I don’t have many memories of Georgie’s time with us in Texas, although I know we must have taken her around and shown her all the fun and unique Hill County and San Antonio sights to give her a true taste of Texas. But one specific memory I do have is of Georgie in our kitchen back at the house I grew up in, making Hungarian Chicken Paprikash from scratch for dinner one night. I remember she made and rolled each spaetzle-like noodle by hand, or perhaps with some small noodle-forming hand tool she had brought with her. Either way, these noodles did not come from a package and the work was a labor of love. She cooked the chicken and made that savory sauce, authentic to her family recipe, and without a printed recipe altogether. I remember it was a sunny day and she was standing at our kitchen island. I also remember how incredible that Hungarian Paprikash tasted. It was bursting with flavor, piping hot, a beautiful shade of red-orange, creamy, sweet and a little smokey, served atop these perfect little noodle dumplings, and a dish I would dream of making myself for years to come.

A year or two later (the timeline is a bit fuzzy) Georgie and her husband invited us to Hungary to stay with them at their home in the countryside for a few days, a trip that we took during the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college and combined with a visit to Budapest, followed by Germany, where my brother’s family was living at the time. I have much clearer memories of touring Hungary with Georgie, her husband (who’s name escapes me entirely, although he was lovely and I really enjoyed being around him), and their warm and welcoming family.

They took us to gorgeous lakeside towns with roadside craft markets and picturesque chapels, past ruins of castles in the hills, to a large pottery studio where we saw artisans at work and enjoyed a fantastic afternoon tea, into cities to see the statues and architecture, to water-front restaurants with an incredible fish stew I can still vividly smell and taste in my mind to this day served with plenty of bread, bubbly sparkling water, and red wine, and – of course – Georgie’s cooking and Hungarian Paprikash in their beautiful backyard, with her garden in fragrant bloom, the paprikash cooking in a cauldron over an open the fire, and their adult children and their grandkids playing in the sandbox and with toys and games in the grass, as we all cobbled together conversations however we knew how. I remember a long, jet-lagged nighttime drive from the airport to their town, morning breakfasts on their patio overlooking the small garden with baked beans, tomatoes, and sausage and coffee, Georgie cooking in her kitchen, dogs and cats aplenty around their sweet home, and a marvelous triangle attic room I occupied as my guest room during our stay – warm, comforting, cozy, and intriguing. I can still see it in my mind. It was a very special trip. Even as a grumpy and hormonal teenager who was likely not always pleasant to be around, I remember so much of this experience and the love, warmth, beauty, vibrance, and smells and taste of Hungary.

But something about that paprikash has stayed with me and I had been craving its warmth and comfort lately in the midst of a deep winter and strange world. So I looked up a number of recipes, and found the most authentic one with the highest ratio of authentic Hungarian ingredients, highest user ratings, and most reviews from old Hungarian grandmas who were born and raised in Hungary that argued over this or that minor little thing in the recipe (because every family has their way and does it slightly differently) but ultimately said this was the real deal. And that’s the one I made. And though I don’t know if anything will ever taste like that first bite did back in our old house, or that first bite in their rose-scented backyard on a summer evening in Hungary, it was pretty darn close and just what I had been craving. This is the recipe I used: https://www.daringgourmet.com/chicken-paprikash-paprikas-csirke/.

I took a shortcut and did not make the dough for or roll out my own individual spaetzle noodles, which this website also had an authentic recipe for and I had considered doing (and may still do in the future), but I found a noble substitute in the imported food aisle – packaged spaetzle noodles from Germany. I also realized while everything was simmering on the stove that evening that I wanted some sort of side dish with it – a vegetable or salad of some kind. Nothing I thought of seemed like the right choice or complement to the meal until I opened up the veggie drawer in the fridge and saw an English cucumber – cool, crisp, refreshing…the perfect pairing and contrast to that ultra savory paprika, in color, texture, temperature, and flavor. Perfect. It wasn’t until a few days later when I was browsing through our Hungary trip pictures that I looked closely at a photograph from the dinner setting in Georgie’s backyard and realized that a cucumber salad was what Georgie had also served with her paprikash and spaetzle and I had forgotten about it entirely. A happy accident.

Here are a few pictures from our time in Hungary I found:

In my past few posts, I’ve talked about Katherine May’s book Wintering and how it inspired me to take a closer look at my own relationship with time and rest, historically, seasonally, in our modern society, and also as the seasons of my own personal life shift and transform and the need for rest and recovery becomes more immediate and apparent. In an almost serendipitous turn of events, I happened to have a healthy amount of unclaimed vacation days. This is extremely rare for me, especially this late in my company’s fiscal year. Usually, my vacation days are spoken for as soon as they are accrued – and well before – with trips scheduled to visit our family, attend events, and explore places we’ve been eager to experience. With the pandemic halting my usual rush of travel, I realized I had 5 weeks of personal time and vacation days to use (time off that does not roll over and cannot be cashed in, I should add) and about 5 months with which to use it or lose it. At the time, we were operating under the assumption that our opportunity to get the vaccine was still a fair ways off and so travel was still off the table until late summer or early fall (after the time off for the year had expired). Why not take a week off to do nothing? Miraculously, I had the time and my schedule at that particular point was fairly light (or at least flexible). And, so, not without a small amount of guilt at least – as a person unaccustomed to doing nothing and because I know this is not an opportunity afforded to everyone (and it really should be) – I scheduled a week off for myself in late February with no plans to go anywhere or do anything other than exactly what I felt like doing at any given moment.

I took a few photos along the way – not of everything, but enough to serve the memory and capture the essence. And, I’ll warn you now, they’re not very exciting or compelling. Which was, in the fact, the whole point. Everything I did was ordinary – naps, baths, puzzles, coloring books, long walks, cooking and baking, reading, listening to music, watching movies, simply being outdoors, noticing the way the air feels and smells and how the sky looks – but when you aren’t in the habit of dedicating time to doing nothing, these simple and enjoyable everyday things get overlooked or skipped altogether. It was an interesting experience to not consult my calendar for my next step, and to stop and think “what do I WANT to do now?” And if the answer came back take a nap in the sun…then I did. And if the answer came back to turn on some music and work on a puzzle or to take a walk or to make a stew for that night’s dinner because it sounded good…then I did. I did nearly everything alone, expect for a few weekend things with Ted.

I also took note of things May did in the book to aid on her own personal journey toward rest and recovery – the lessons she learned about incorporating cold and heat and nature and sleep and appreciation for gifts of offerings of both daytime and nighttime. Those also loosely influenced the shape of my week and what I chose to focus on or spend time doing and when. It was bitterly cold week with some sun here and there (perfectly tuned for practicing the art of “wintering”), and aside from a lazy weekend jaunt with Ted to visit the owls at a birds of prey sanctuary (animals have always brought me a great deal of joy and peace) and a short excursion to the conservatory to cozy up to the cactus (which are comforting and remind me of warmth and home), my only other “big outing” was to drop a few meals worth of the food I’d made off at the doorstep of a friend who was having a tough go of things lately and definitely didn’t need to be worrying about what was for dinner – but, honestly, even that brought a sense of comfort to my week. I left the house plenty for chilly and meandering walks, but I found most of my peace within our immediate area.

In the hustle and bustle of modern, everyday life in this century and in this society, where we’re all so busy and expected to be places and to be doing things and keeping up with a million commitments and obligations to everyone and everything but our own self care and rest, quite frankly, I find we rarely ask ourselves what we want to do anymore – what would bring us pleasure, or would be good for our mind, or would boost our morale or make us feel good, or would be healthy for our body, or would make us feel whole and give us our spark back when we’re feeling adrift or run down. And then actually making it a priority to cast aside everything else that can wait to do it. Or not scheduling ourselves so tightly or demanding so much of ourselves altogether in the first place.

Refreshed feels like the right word to describe how I felt on Sunday evening. A few weeks later now, I find myself tired again as the pandemic wanes on and the emotional and mental toll of all the adjustments and waiting continue to shift, and the seasons change, and spring cleaning is looming, and vaccinations are out there which means travel is possible again sooner than expected (which we want to prioritize to see our families again), and work picks back up…but it all feels manageable. Although I obviously suspected that taking time to prioritize rest and sleep and fulfilling the “wants” and simply being would be beneficial, I can feel the difference. I don’t feel “behind” on anything – sleep, fun, doing nothing, doing what I want to do, personal work, or job work. I felt ready to embrace what a new day will hold and not like I need to catch up on a dozen other things first.

In her book, May writes about the cyclical nature of rest and retreat – how our bodies are historically and biologically designed to crave rest in the winter months as we recover from the work of the previous months, and prepare for the work we’ll do again when spring circles back around. It explains a lot about why we often feel sleepy or lazy or mellow in the winter months and how that’s our mind, body, and spirit preparing for survival and regrowth. And, already, as it’s suddenly mid-March and tulip buds are emerging, birdsong is prevalent, built-up snow has melted, and the smell of rain punctuates the air, I feel more alert and focused, just as we know to be true every year, but rarely purposefully recognize or think about the mechanics of how or why that’s behind it. It’s a more thoughtful and intentional perspective and approach to understanding nature (human and otherwise), and one that I’ve found helpful and plan to return to each year to see what new thing I discover or how it hits me differently, and also because it seems like a kind thing to do for yourself.

In my last post, I wrote about a book I read recently (Wintering, by Katherine May) that hit really close to home during this current season of my life. It very much influenced me to give thoughtful and meaningful consideration to a number of things, including how I’m taking care of myself, and mentally and emotionally managing the transitions and adaptations of the past year. It also inspired me to take some time to do something I’d never done before: take time off work just to rest and do anything and nothing, all at once.

I’m an incredibly Type A personality. I have lists for my lists. I have tasks I’d like to accomplish planned out until 2023…in detail. Google Calendar is a tab that hasn’t been closed on my web browser since 2012. I plan everything within an inch of its life, for better or for worse (and it’s often both). I have a list of usually two dozen tasks to complete each day. As a child of military parents, with OCD coursing through the veins of my immediate ancestors, and years spent doing three theatre productions at a time, at all times, while also going to school and working and traveling and volunteering and taking dance classes and leading or heavily participating in social events and clubs and organizing things for myself and others and making time for family and friends and…well, it’s not hard to see where my tendencies originated and why I both love and hate this particular quality about myself, and understand it for what it is – both a great blessing and an infuriating curse.

Thinking back, I can’t recall a single time, since I entered adulthood, that I used my vacation days or time off work to simply rest or do nothing. Every single personal day or vacation day has been used to travel, visit family or friends, attend a wedding, explore something (with a plan, of course), go somewhere, or stick to be pre-arranged agenda of fun. After all, I love to adventure, and I really don’t want to reach the end of this life and look back on my time alive, only to have to reckon with myself for missing out on the wonder, beauty, and awesomeness of the world. I used to think, what was the point of taking vacation if you weren’t going to really embrace it and live it to the fullest – actually go somewhere or do something meaningful with it? And, so, all time off or vacation days involved…yup, more planning to get ready for that rest! Booking flights and hotels, researching destinations and restaurants and things to see and do, making packing lists, buying travel insurance, preparing the house and pets for our absence, cleaning, etc. It was exhausting. And hardly ever restful, despite being fun and exciting and rewarding.

As I daydreamed about all the wonderful, inviting, and cozy suggestions Wintering had for how to re-learn the art of rest, retreat, and recovery, it dawned on me that I had no idea how to just…be. How to not have something scheduled or somewhere I should be or something I should be doing. My brain is not programmed to think that way (or to not think at all) by society, or by myself. Truthfully, if not for the pandemic, I’m not sure I would have discovered or read this book, or ever even tried taking days off without intent to do something specific with them. I’m aware that this is a strange thing to say, and I’m very sure this someone out there (probably many someones) would be utterly horrified by this, or find themselves rolling their eyes so hard that they rolled clear down the street, or thinking “cry me a river” or simply basking in complete dumbfounded bafflement and perplexion, but once I decided to take a full week off to do nothing but rest and relax with no plans, I knew I was in for a challenge. Learning how to rest and relax, when you’re not used to doing it, is actually hard. And that feels like the most privileged and entitled statement I’ve ever written, but it’s also true and I have to come to terms with that and own it.

I should also add that I feel very fortunate to have been able to take a full week off of my job to do something like this. I recognize that many, many people do not have the privilege of things like paid time off or vacation days with which to work on the art of doing nothing. Many people work four jobs, none of which are salaried or offer paid leave benefits, and when they’re not working or do get a rare day off, they’re doing anything and everything else they have to do for survival – theirs or their family’s. And that stinks. I really wish it were different. I wish everyone was paid an appropriate and comfortable living wage for the work they do, and that taking time off to not work or think about work, but instead to take care of one’s own mental and emotional health or to recover from something or to simply enjoy living or alone time or time with loved ones or to travel and appreciate the world or to have the mere opportunity to rest was treated as a right everyone is entitled to rather than a luxury. But that’s not how most western countries are set up or operate. And I think that’s a real shame and contributes immensely to quite a lot of personal and societal issues. If we just started prioritizing people over profits and invested in taking better care of ourselves, and if society and places of employment supported that, I think we’d all be much happier, healthier, efficient, and profitable. The proof lies in other countries who have successfully navigated this and are reaping the positive results of this investment in the dignity of human needs.

Anyway, I fought back, mostly successfully, each impulse I had (and they were frequent, at first) to plan fun things I wanted to do each day. I compromised by scratching up a list of ideas of things I could do, but in no order and with absolutely no obligation to do any of them – just things that, if I felt antsy or bored, I could peek at this list and think, “yeah, I would like to work on a puzzle right now, that sounds nice!” And that’s about as un-planned as I get – and, for someone like me, it took real intention and effort to do nothing more than that.

As the vision for this week of rest was to give my mind a break and simply follow my impulses to engage in what I wanted or needed to do for myself when it felt right, I laid a few very basic ground rules to help myself make the most of this time: I wanted to catch up on sleep. I wanted to make sure I continued my daily exercise (which I don’t even think about doing anymore, it just happens by habit) and that I gave myself plenty of water and nutritious food. I tried to severely limit social media or time spent on my phone, online, on social networks, or taking in the news and events of the world – none of this is problematic on its own, but when it becomes a constant influx of information 24/7, it can be harmful and I needed a break from it all. And that was it. Those were my rules.

By Sunday night, I was giddy with excited for this week to come, and – truthfully – exhausted and wholly ready for it. I’ve said it before, but even though I feel like I’m doing less than ever before with working from home and the pandemic and no commute and no social obligations and limited everything else, my brain is still working to process all this and learn the new skills I need for this new time and way of living. My brain is still adapting and coping and figuring out how to focus and motivate, and how to do the work I do (work that is wholly dependent on being in-person and extremely communal and community-based), remotely and without people. And I while I’ve battled over and over again with myself about this, I’ve ultimately begun to grant myself some grace and accept that all that different thinking is tiring, and that extra brain effort and work turns into fatigue and manifests itself mentally, emotionally, and physically. So, even though I work from home right now and feel incredibly fortunate to do so and to be healthy and secure and comfortable, there’s still coping and worry and anxiety of all kinds happening, and there’s still exhaustion, and I need to learn how to rest so I can recover. And that’s what the intention of this week was about.

In my next post (’cause this got, unintentionally, lengthy!) I’ll finally share how it all went, what I felt like doing, and how it tied back in with the book and the concept of wintering.

Over the past several weeks I’ve been reading Wintering by Katherine May – a book that a close friend mentioned she was reading and found fascinating in our current climate.

Synopsis: A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May’s story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination emerges from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormice hibernation, C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath, swimming in icy waters and sailing arctic seas. Ultimately, “Wintering” invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season.

After reading the synopsis and discovering that the book was about “the power of rest and retreat in difficult times,” I knew I was interested.

For me, and I suspect for many others, this past year has been full to the brim of new experiences, sensations, and states of being (or, perhaps, not new, but prologued in a way we are generally unaccustomed to, as well as the onslaught of all of them occurring simultaneously): the surprising and unexpected, feeling regularly caught off guard, lengthy periods of unnerving transition, significant changes to nearly every aspect of life, timelines that are mere placeholders at best and change frequently, the inability to plan or stick to a plan because of regular said changes, general confusion or lack of information or rapidly changing information that one feels obligated to keep up with, news and media overwhelm, dismay or disappointment, missed opportunities, missed milestones, concern or worry and even fear for our health and the health and safety of our loved ones, months on end of “hurry up and wait,” frequent adjustments and the need to constantly exercise extra adaptive flexibility, a forced slowing down of the pace of life that we didn’t feel prepared for, learning how to think differently, altering perspective, shifting focus, general uneasiness, feeling adrift, loneliness, a deeper connection with nature, a strange relationship with time, emotional turmoil, social unrest, political frustrations, mental exhaustion, the waxing and waining of faith in humanity, a subtle nagging sensation of feeling like the world is off its axis but having no solution or tools with which to correct it, etc.

Not all of it has been bad, of course. I, personally (and I acknowledge that this is different for everyone), believe I have been fortunate to experience plenty of goodness and silver linings to balance out the struggle and unease over the past year. I have been nourished by the easy addition of long morning walks to my daily routine, sharpening skills and acquiring new ones in order to continue making my work…well, work, re-kindling long-neglected hobbies and enjoyments, more time at home with Ted, relishing in noticing the nature, animals, and intricacies of the changing seasons around our region in a way that I haven’t before, and the completion of projects I never thought we’d get around to. I have also been frustrated by lacking information and feeling very behind yet simultaneously not wanting to keep up because the news is not a great thing to be obsessed with these days, feeling very much fearful and anxious of the impact Covid could have on my loved ones if they contracted it, feeling deeply disconnected from certain aspects of my job that used to bring me joy but no longer exist in the same way in their current structure, struggling to make plans (something that I thrive on) when time is a slippery thing, and feeling generally mentally overwhelmed. I am lucky that, in the grand scheme of things, our problems are relatively small and more usually more existential than immediate or survival based.

Regardless of whether they are positive or negative, changes have been increasingly apparent lately, in ways big and small. Questions have been looping through my mind for the past several months like, “Why I am so tired when I make it a point to get plenty of sleep, exercise, and get outside daily, and I feel like I’m doing less than ever before? I need 10 hours of sleep every night just to function and do less than I usually do.” And, “Am I becoming complacent? What happened to my spark?” Or, “Why do I feel like XYZ? This is so unlike me. Will I ever feel like ‘me’ again?” And, “Are these new feelings and ways of living temporary or permanent? Is this who I am now?” And, “How much of this has to do with the simple fact of just growing older, or the pandemic, or the weather, or changes in the literal season, or changes in the seasons of my life?” I suspect the answers are a little bit of everything.

But this book provided me with a cozy sense of warmth, comfort, familiarity, and understanding – like an old friend who gets you or has weathered this before – and it helped me parse out some of the things I’d been puzzling and feeling, along with giving me different perspectives and methods to examine my wonderings by. Perhaps it’s because I read it in January and February – in the depths of winter when everything is silent and chilled, hushed and solemn, sleepy yet sparkling, and ripe for rest and recovery. Perhaps it’s because I read this book in the 10th and 11th months of this pandemic when my soul is somewhat flailing, just trying to keep up with everything new or different that has come its way in 2020 and is exhausted from constantly staying aware – ready to leap and cope with the next new change at any second.

In both cases, I have been experiencing the literal season of winter (which always feels pensive and like I’m leaning into hibernation in whatever small ways I can), along with the wintering of a transitional and complicated season of life where I’ve had to adjust and re-adjust and – even when things are going well – my body, mind, and spirit are still working to keep up with the ongoing relentlessness of it all. It seems I’ve been wintering in my own small ways since last March, but really feeling the full scope of wintering since actual winter set in around December.

I appreciated that May’s writing focused on the concept of wintering in the literal sense and season of the word, along with its historical significance and bare bones necessity, harking back to nordic traditions and the survival of humans, animals, plant life, etc. as they prepared for months in bitterly cold climates and with very little daylight. And how that same instinct carries through our DNA today, as people who live in all kinds of climates all across the globe, and even as we – as a society of individuals – actively fight against it and try to pretend that the need to winter, rest, and allow ourselves the time and space to recover from whatever ails us does not exist.

That’s the very American and European approach to life – keep plugging away, despite everything going on in the world and in your personal life and against all odds. Our society is designed to ignore our winters, and what winter originally was, and what it meant historically, and what its purpose is in the life cycle. We are taught from a young age to strive to cast aside the entire winter seasons of our lives, when we (and other species) are intended to focus on preparing ourselves for cold and darkness, and when we are meant to nourish ourselves, and to take time to rest and recover. And yet we desperately try to ignore both the literal and metaphorical change in seasons until it builds and builds and builds, and then it all – eventually – becomes too much for us. We try to operate, function, and exist the exact same way whether we’re on month 3 of 11 degree weather with only 5 hours of daylight, or week 2 of sunny, breezy, 70 degree days that stretch on seemingly into eternity bathed in daylight. Or struggling though a period of deep grief, general life difficulty or transition, or recovery, or happy as can be in a period of great prosperity. And we’re not programmed to work that way – to ignore the natural ebbs and flows of the seasons of nature or of life.

This book called out a lot of things for me to consider more thoughtfully, supplied a diverse smattering of information that was both interesting and helped illuminate the path toward eventual answers to questions I have been asking myself lately, and offered up a number of ideas to experiment with, along with a basis by which to generate my own ideas.

This is rarely the sort of book I feel drawn to, much less compelled to drop all my other books to read immediately (and I’m not sure why that is, considering how much I enjoyed it and how much I felt I benefited from reading it), but this book is one that I am certain I will return to on a semi-regular annual or so rotation. For me, it was one of those reads that offers up something new each time you read it and as you age and journey through different paths and seasons of life, you gain fresh insights, or they imprint on you in a different way. I found this first read of Wintering to be rewarding, fulfilling, and exactly the sort of thing I needed this winter and 11 months into an upheaval of life as we knew it. I also found it comforting and hopeful, and it inspired me to take action in the form of my own week of intentional wintering, which I’ll share more about in my next post.