(halloween hank as a turkey! i think he’s worried that we’ll throw him on the thanksgiving table…)
there are two things i love about halloween: dog costumes and candy. all the scary, bloody, gruesome stuff i could really do without. also the WORRY about whether my kids will make it home alive. this year hank is going as a ROASTED TURKEY! i am beside myself because i think his back legs already look like drumsticks.
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at the beginning of the month i had another bout with covid. this time felt very different than when i had it two years ago…rather than being almost delirious with a horrendous sore throat and feeling like i might die for well over a week, i was headachey, nauseous and had a bit of a sore throat for a day and a half. i thought maybe it was the twenty-nine hour flu. at first i was flat - the kind where you contemplate getting a glass of water for like half an hour before you actually make it to the sink. and then i felt MUCH better. this was super exciting because i couldn’t go out, i couldn’t take meetings, i couldn’t run errands but i was actually pretty functional. you can get out of ANYTHING when you have covid. my first husband was making market and pharmacy runs, my meetings were all pushed and i didn’t have to cook because no one wanted to eat any food i prepared, including me. i only had lucy (and hank) with me because she’d had covid recently and we thought she’d still be full of antibodies. so i was in this funny little time cocoon where i was stuck in my house but i could do whatever i wanted. and to top it off, people were dropping off lovely get well treats! it was kind of awesome.
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BIG MAMA is getting ever more brutal. she had a guest arrive a few days ago… i thought she might be a niece or a younger cousin (she was quite a bit smaller than BIG MAMA) who came to check out CU and our darling coach prime - did you see how he squeaked past arizona state just when you thought he wouldn’t? I LOVE HIM!! anyway, the niece or cousin was mostly hanging out on the upper deck sunning herself as college age kids are apt to do and then all of sudden she was wrapped up in a ball of BIG MAMA’s web, sucked DRY! i’m pretty sure this is cannibalism… familial cannibalism even, which feels worse. i am really disturbed by BIG MAMA now. i don’t do well when creatures eat their guests or roommates. years ago, we had two goldfish: nemo and blemo. one day i saw that blemo was just floating on the top and his fins looked all tatty and frayed. i tried to convince myself that he had gotten caught up in the filter, even though he did look a little eaten. after the funeral in the backyard, i procured a new roommate for nemo. and a few days later that blemo was floating at the top as well. at that point i figured nemo had had plenty to eat so i just stopped sprinkling fish flakes in the tank. eventually he was a floater too and that was the end of our goldfish. nemo was unceremoniously flushed down the toilet, NOT buried properly like the two blemos he ate.
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please VOTE for our winter park project to win 5280 TOP HOME OF THE YEAR! we were so excited to be included in the magazine but it would be AMAZING to be the reader’s choice. click here to vote! thank you so much! x00xx
here is a link to see the full project!
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(here is my mother checking under the hood of her friend’s car in college)
periodically, everything needs a tune-up… your car needs the oil changed, the filters need to be replaced on your HVAC, the dryer vents need to be flushed out, you are due for a bikini wax… our nervous systems also need check ups and repair. the summer after my divorce i went to a retreat at the chopra center to work on restoring my psyche, which was pretty much a mess. i learned LOTS of helpful things like how to meditate (who is better equipped to teach that than deepak?), the benefits of green smoothies, yoga and gratitude and how detrimental refined sugar is, possibly worse than crack!
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(BIG MAMA a few years ago with a big dragonfly she caught!)
it is the beginning of october and there are now witches and skeletons and ghouls and black cats and gravestones all over boulder. it is startling to walk around my neighborhood… hank and i are constantly getting surprised (and frightened) by all the decorations so we are hanging out in the park now to avoid the grotesque. one lady we can’t avoid, however, is BIG MAMA. she the humongous spider who takes up residence under the corner drainpipe of my house each fall. we can see her perfectly because of the giant window in my stairwell. as much as i try to avert my eyes each time i go up or down the stairs, i am inexplicably drawn to her presence and almost always peek, risking TERRIBLE dreams.
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i am a super loyal fan. i grew up in the bay area so my teams have always been the cal bears, the niners, the warriors and the A’s (billy ball!) back before the TV networks determined the times of the games and scheduled them for all different crazy times, the cal game was always saturday at one. fall saturdays were spent cheering for the bears (GRRRR - RAH! GRRRR - RAH!) in the “family section” of the stadium. you didn’t have to sit anywhere particular once you were in so it felt like an extension of high school where we roved around and chatted about the party from the night before. we didn’t have to pay too much attention to the game because the bears were never very good (save a few glorious moments like THE PLAY when we beat stanford - i WAS present for this unbelievable touchdown but didn’t understand what was happening until i heard the cannon go off, indicating that cal had scored.) sundays were frequently spent at candlestick cheering for the niners… they WERE good, so good that they brought home FOUR superbowls under joe montana. he still makes my heart flutter (i seriously considered becoming a flight attendant after i read that he met his wife, jennifer in the air!) we were always dressed properly (blue and gold for cal, red for the niners) except for one unfortunate saturday when my dad mixed up his gear and sported a red niners shirt at the cal game. he had to endure hollers of “TAKE OFF THAT RED SHIRT” (stanford’s color) for the entirety of the game. so fierce was my loyalty that i was stunned when a dear friend of mine decided to attend stanford. never mind that it was and is one of the BEST schools in the country, i just couldn’t wrap my head around how she could cheer for a team whose mascot is a walking tree after a lifetime of growling for the bears. she managed… in fact she LOVED it, but did admit recently that she never felt comfortable wearing any stanford stuff when she was home in berkeley… not even a hat.
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(hank thinking about his transgressions during the year)
* i am reposting my story about yom kippur as it is approaching… l’shana tova! x0x
this week is yom kippur, the day of atonement in the jewish religion. while i never converted, i am raising my children in the faith of their father (with santa and the bunny thrown in) and i have spent more time in temple than i have in any other religious setting. i have hosted loads of seders, rosh hashana dinners and break fasts (i can cook all of the holiday food, except brisket - my brisket is TERRIBLE - so we have roast chicken instead), i know a fair bit of the prayers, or at least the tunes and i have a general understanding of the fundamentals of the religion.
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(hank sharing his sweet rosh apples)
when we moved to boulder we did not join a temple straight away… first we collected a group of jewish (or half jewish) families that we have been celebrating shabbat, rosh hashana, yom kippur, hanukkah and passover with for over a dozen years. this special group has made us feel grounded and connected and has been such an important aspect of our lives in boulder. also, several people in the circle know how to make a proper, delicious brisket, which is my achilles heel, so my kids have been able to ENJOY that signature dish, rather than dread it.
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we moved to amsterdam from san francisco when i was pregnant with my first baby. we stayed there for nearly the first five years of his life and the very beginning of my daughter’s. traveling with babies is not easy… particularly on eleven hour international flights. and then when you arrive there is the horrendous jet lag that kicks in (there’s a NINE hour time difference between california and the netherlands.) so i only brought my children home once a year, but we would stay for at least a month to stabilize and enjoy the visit before heading back. now that we live in colorado we have continued this summer tradition. the kids LOVE their camp in berkeley (kee tov) and i get to spend time with my family and all my growing up friends.
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(one of kristen abbott’s pieces from “the language of leaves”)
seeing something beautiful always gives my heart a lift. on friday my girlfriend, rachel, (a very talented designer with a great eye) took me to the opening of kristen abbott’s solo show “the language of leaves” at the new local annex. kristen uses actual plants to create the organic silhouettes featuring carefully curated foliage on her canvases. the linens and silks are colored via a process using cyanotype that produces hues ranging from indigo to gold. the results are stunning. the show is up for the rest of the month!
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my juniper home office project was included in an article on houzz! thank you kyle trautman for throwing my work into the mix. thank you also heather kneirim of HBK photography for the lovely photos. following are additional images of the space. x0x
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(theo on the first day of kindergarten… obviously he couldn’t read yet as he agreed to wear that shirt)
i am a crier. i cry about happy things, i cry about sad things, i cry when things change, i ALWAYS cry on the first day of school. (i do NOT cry when people get hurt, even my own children… then i laugh, VERY inappropriately, which has caused a fair bit of upset.
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(artwork: aaron alvarez)
* i am reposting this story because our summer time in california has come to an end. we ate and ate as much as we could. this summer we were forced to explore new spots because cesar, one of our favorites has closed…i am still SLAYED about that. here are some of our new places:
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* i am reposting this story because it includes the recipe for plum cake… a few summers ago the plum tree at our cottage went bananas with fruit. early each morning i went out to harvest (i DO have farming roots) enough to make plum cake. sometimes i gave it to someone, but most days we ate it. they are so DELICOUS! unfortunately, i totally over plum caked lucy and i don’t think she will ever eat one again. that is truly unfortunate. (i also did that to her with scrambled eggs - a big bummer both because i make AMAZING scrambles and because i think they are such a healthy way to breakfast.) today when i popped over to my parents’ house the yummiest smell was wafting around… mom was having her quilt friends over for lunch and had made the coveted cake. i was beside myself so, of course, i stayed for lunch! ENJOY! x0x
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(hank likes to ride shotgun!)
due to some poor planning on my part i had to interrupt our california holiday with an expedited road trip back to boulder with hank. usually i make this drive over a minimum of three days but prefer to extend it to a week so i can stop in LA and see friends. this time we powered through in TWO DAYS! we were like true truck drivers. i am proud to say i didn’t get lost once and was super vigilant about refilling the tank whenever it was half empty because last year lu and i came uncomfortably close to running out of gas in the middle of nowhere. so logistically, hank and i did quite well, but it was boring as SHIT! we stopped midway in a town called “wells” on the nevada border. there was literally nothing in this town except our hotel, a mcdonalds and two gas stations. so we had dinner from the chevron shop (across the board, everyone has told me i should have had a big mac instead of a gas station sandwich, which is probably true), holed up in our room and left at the crack of dawn. hank was the perfect companion - we didn’t argue about when to stop or what snacks to get or which podcast to listen to… we were always aligned on that stuff (teriyaki beef jerky and “fly on the wall” with dana carvey and david spade interviewing anyone from SNL). i left hank in boulder with first husband and lu and i am safely back in california now. i MISS my sweetie hanky… i felt teary eating a banana alone this morning (we always share) and haven’t been sleeping as well without his soothing, snorey white noise.
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(barbie lives at the end of an incredible cul de sac surrounded by all of her friends)
last weekend i went to see the barbie movie (with my seventeen year old son - it was VERY sweet of him!) and it was just as pink and plastic and campy and delightful as possible. i was beside myself. i would LOVE to work on a project like this. the houses were all open plan (and open walls) with mid century architecture and furnishings. the details were impeccable. it was so much FUN! x0x
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(the literal QUEEN of the wave!)
when my kids were in elementary school there was a grandma on the “i” street who was almost always sitting in her front window as we drove to school. we started waving to her and after a bit she began waving back. we were beside ourselves. when the pandemic hit and school was closed we incorporated the “i” street into our dog walks (hank wasn’t best pleased about this as we live between the “c” and “d” streets and FIVE blocks is quite a haul for him!) we got so much JOY out of this wave exchange with the little grandma we never formally met, especially in the midst of all the stress and worry of the corona.
my dad has always been a big waver (his is really more of a salute.) he waves at drivers coming toward him or at people who happen to be on his route when walking rosie. he takes that extra beat to connect. three months ago he had a tough fall and was first in the hospital and then in a rehab facility. a lot of the other clients in rehab were non verbal (some were REALLY verbal) so when we took walks through the halls with dad he waved and waved and waved at the people in their rooms. i started waving too. it seems like such a small thing, but then i happened upon an interview where the guest was a scientist who studies the benefits of “weak/casual interactions”… turns out that each of these waves sends a surge of serotonin (the feel good stuff) right through you.
dad is home from rehab now. he likes to sit in the sun on the front porch and WAVE at the various people walking by, raising the serotonin levels of all his neighbors! x0x
