Chrysalis

Late last summer while snipping some parsley for dinner, I was startled to find what seemed like hundreds of bright green, yellow and black caterpillars blanketing the plants. The sight had me both repulsed and fascinated - totally transfixed. I remembered having bought a little pink butterfly cage in the ‘impulse-buy-cheap-things-for-your-children’ section of Target that spring and decided to adopt a couple of them for Emerson to observe.

Cakewalk

This is the first winter I didn’t dread approaching. I wasn't even salty about the last week of single digit temperatures, snow, ice and school closings. I realize I’ve only been back in a state that even has a winter for four short years, but still. One reason, I’m hot a lot. In fact, is it hot in here?. Another reason, I think, we did so much traveling through the summer and fall that I’ve just wanted to nestle in - as much as our apartment makes me tremendously claustrophobic. I’ve become, like, so high maintenance.

You Ain't Goin' Nowhere

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

Those are not my words. They belong to Joan Didion. But when I stumbled across them recently, I felt that familiar, almost forgotten, tug. Why I write. Why I wrote. Why I kept journals from childhood to adulthood, why I had, have, a blog, why I’m writing this. I unpack my thoughts and feelings, deconstruct them, understand them, via the written word. I often go back through the journals and blog posts to recall how I took on life, how I took on myself, when I wrote those words.

Phyllis

Not long ago, I was doing my weekly volunteer work for Meals on Wheels, delivering food and whatnot, and the most unexpected thing happened.

To my family,

First of all, to my readers,

It's been some time since I've written. But, for me, our country's election results have caused family and politics to cross. As a result, I felt strongly that I needed to put some words "to paper." These words could very well be relevant with regard to differences many of you may be having with your own family, friends, neighbors or co-workers in lieu of recent events.
So I thought I would share them here...

To my family,

Ever since I can remember my family has been of paramount significance and importance in my life. Mom and Dad, obviously. But aunts, uncles, cousins, first, second, and third, grandparents, every single one of you, I looked forward to seeing, catching up with, sharing a meal every Christmas Eve, and now, just any time I can get. I have greeted all of you, all of you, with smiles, hugs and love each and every time I have seen you throughout the forty-two years of my life.

Go, go Galette

I just dug up this beautiful personal project Fred and I did this past summer. We made a galette (and took pictures of it). For the life of me, I don't think I had ever made one before. We went about it using my mom’s pie crust recipe and adding a liberal sprinkling of sugar and cinnamon into the dough. Then spring-boarding from a NYT Cooking recipe for the rest, we were all set.

The Salad Days *part 2*

Do we know when we're in the salad days when they are happening or is it always something we reflect back on with great wistful fondness? I mean, I mostly know when life is hitting all of the high notes. When things are good. But I'm not sure I know when it's time to revel. To spin around on top of a grassy mountain top and exude Sound of Music exaltation.

The Salad Days *part 1*

Don't you like when the winter's gone?

And all of a sudden it starts gettin' warm?

The trees and the grass start lookin' fresh,

And the sun and sky be lookin' their best.

Birds be singin', flowers be bloomin',

A lot of brand new cars be zoomin'.

Yes, Biz - and thank you for that - it is, in fact, Spring again.

Stand by me, this big chill.

Right around the holidays I got news that a high school friend died. Took her own life. I hadn’t thought about her in years, but I remember her well. She was one of those people you don’t easily forget.

Toy Story

'Tis the apex of Holiday-Orama. I just recovered from some weird twenty-four hour stomach bug that was pretty unpleasant. Fred too. Even Emerson had some little nannyboosky situation in addition to her newly ever present runny nose. But, it's now Christmas Eve Eve, and we all three seem to be prepared for the big day, full bore. Go Team.

Lay, Lady, Lay

As an adult you don't really consider your friends' parents a whole lot (do you even know their names?), but as a kid, they can potentially have about as much impact, as much influence as your own. Especially if it's like your BFF. Countless sleepovers, after school times that run into dinner times, tagging along on family trips, our friends' parents had to feed us, care for us, love us (or pretend to), discipline us, very, very often. Think about it, on sitcoms there is almost always the omnipresent neighbor or friend who is part of the every day fabric of the protagonist family.

Chester Copperpot.

One both wonderful and maddening thing about living in a part of the world with four distinct seasons is that by the end of each one I am waiting with bated breath for the next. The anticipation and preliminary elation over the change of each season is thrilling and, in my book well earned. That's the wonderful part. But the being like so over a season before it ends is a bummer.

I'm OK, You're OK.

This past week I had a really weird day. Wednesday, over my morning coffee and email catch-up, news broke that a reporter and photographer for a Virginia news affiliate were gunned down, killed. It happened near the town where my parents and some close friends are from, where a good deal of my family live, and a place I've spent my whole life visiting. Each time these almost commonplace gun massacres occur, I've been thrown and emotional, but this one was closer to home. Both literally, and maybe because of the whole media sphere association.

A few minutes later I got a call from the doctor informing me that the results of my very recent mammogram came back and a couple things didn't look quite right. That sinking feeling. I was able to make a same-day appointment so the doctors could take another, a closer look.

Goodnight Tomato.

I still want to do everything. Though I have Emerson and I'm not yet willing to spend a single night away from her, I still want to do all of the things. That I want to do. Within reason. My late nights partying in heels and stand and model clothes are gone. And I am happy – relieved – about that. Most evenings my preference is to eat in, watch my stories on TV and go to bed early. But the wanderlust, the hunger to travel, explore, adventure, that's still there. As long as Emerson can go with me.

So when my friend, Jess, recently asked me to zip off to Atlanta for a couple of days, primarily to check out a tomato festival there – and Emerson was totally welcome – the answer was a pauseless yes. It sounded perfectly reasonable. A few days out of town, a little road trippin' with a friend and my baby girl, a tomato festival – all on my old turf.

Truly, Truly, Truly Outrageous

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

I'm going to be brief today, but I want to give a big nod to the history we've made in the past few weeks here in the US of A. Healthcare and marriage for everyone! Punching it in with Cuba! BP has to eat it, big time! And a birthday! No, it hasn't all been positive. Some extraordinarily sad stuff has happened as well. But the optimist in me is hoping it all leads to a Greater Good. Movement forward. For the first time since I entered college, voted in my first presidential election and had my vote count (when Bill Clinton won his first term), I feel hopeful for, and a little proud, of my country. I feel like I'm a part of it; a rare emic approach to my United States. Doesn't it kind of feel like we're in the middle of a “Mercy Mercy Me” or “Turn! Turn! Turn!” video? Like, it's all happening. Now.

The Speed of the Sound of Loneliness

Man alive. Crack an egg on the blacktop because Summer is here, folks. This past week it's been far too hot – even with the air conditioning – to consider using the oven, also too hot to step out into the elements to grill. Plus, The Mosquitos are coming. Since my visual cooling aid, Game of Thrones (its Winter hath finally cometh), has wrapped things up for the year (RIP Jon Snow), I may very well have to seek out some Dr. Zhivago. All three and half hours of it.

I'm not complaining. Well, I am. But also, I'm not. I love Summer. I love all of my memories of Summers. But the thing is, those impressions I recall, when I really dissect them, were all before age twenty-five. Every damn one. The wistful recollections of cicada-filled dusks, leaping off twenty-foot high rocks into the river at night with reckless abandon, sitting out on my back deck in a tee shirt and cutoff shorts watching a thunderstorm, scampering around a field of grass at dusk trying to catch fireflies, camping with my friends in the woods, on the beach. I was wild and free. I know the smells, sounds and sights of those Summers like I know my own reflection.

Beyond The Boom

The day after college graduation – the middle of the night, actually – my boyfriend and I packed up our dorm room, our then everything, loaded my car and drove to Atlanta to begin our adult lives together. We were a couple through most of college, lived in and backpacked throughout Mexico, traveled to Philadelphia to protest in support of Mumia Abu Jamal, to Cleveland to protest against the Contract With America, to anywhere we could see De La Soul, The Roots, Poor Righteous Teachers, and the like. We journeyed.

After about a year or so in Atlanta, we were pretty settled into our new post-college, kind of grown up lives. We lived in a sweet, little duplex, got a kitten we named Milo, and a plant or two. We had lots of good friends, and his family; a network. I worked in a so, so cool video store, and his DJing was picking up traction. We had the perfect, fun, action-packed and inspired early-twenties life.

Getting to the Meat of Things.

I was recently in Chicago for a few days. My friend, Emma, was there for a business conference with her baby, Samuel, who happens to be precisely one week older than Emerson. Emma and I attended college together, which included a three-month 'co-op' in LA. She was a nanny in the Pacific Palisades. I, despite everyone's best efforts, could not get a paying job. So I crashed on the futon-couch-thing at Emma's friend's apartment in Brentwood – a stone's throw from where Nicole Brown Simpson had only just been murdered (the police tape was still up). I ended up working for free doing script coverages for Oliver Stone's production company, and was even an extra in Nixon. I played a sleeping hippie on the steps of the 'Lincoln Memorial' who was oh so rudely awakened when Nixon and whoever James Woods played walked past me. Regardless of being in so so shiny Heidi Fleiss-y LA in my early twenties, the intrigue of being in such close vicinity to the most humongous murder scene since Manson days and the seemingly cool Hollywoody-ness of the Oliver Stone/Nixon stuff, I was miserable. By the end of that Summer, I vowed never to return to the vapid cesspool commonly referred to as Los Angeles.

Collaboration Station + A GIVEAWAY!

Beginning with my last trimester of pregnancy to just a few months ago (almost a year now), I have had a really hard time finding my written voice. What is usually cathartic, (en)lightening, and fluid has been an uphill - two miles each way, in the snow, barefoot – battle. As a result, there has been a glaring dearth of content and, worse, I feel like I haven't given you, or me, what we want to find or come away with here.

Grill Your Garden.

Emerson Rose is almost ten months-old. Just like that. Crawling, laughing, 'talking', responding, acting, reacting, selecting, loving and eating. This kid loves to eat. She's amazing. Almost as amazing: Spring has finally arrived - sunshine, warmth, green, flowers, short sleeves. As she was born late last Summer and spent her first few months being teeny tiny, and fragile indoors, Emerson has not yet been able to be IN the air. And what better a time for her to be with all this exploring and adventuring she's getting into. She squeals with delight swinging on the swing, is fascinated with the sandbox (and it's apparently very delicious sand), and the grass (with it's equally palatable dandelions), and is 100% happy on any and all walks in the stroller. And, man alive, this girl is head over heels for baths and swimming. We're even inflating the baby pool this week!