Am I the only person who didn’t love—or is not really into talking about—Normal People? I’m referring to the book primarily, but also the television show. Surprisingly, as I love a good Irish accent as much as the next girl, I just wasn’t captivated by the show. (Granted I only made it through 10 minutes, but still. Ten minutes of TV watching in parent-of-a-baby time is like 3 hours in regular people time.)
Read moreDOUBLE GINGER MOLASSES COOKIES
One bit of constancy to the world (especially these days, with less to reliably ground us) is that things can change in an instant. One minute you’re having a rather nice day, reading a new novel on the dock after a quick and refreshing swim or walking on your favorite trail in the woods, the ground dappled with late afternoon sunlight, and the next minute you hear the ping of an incoming text message.
Looking back, you watch yourself reach for the phone, still feeling relaxed and loose, not realizing that scary news sits there like a spring, tightly wound inside a string of words, ready to unfurl rapidly and blaze hotly like a comet across your day.
Read moreCOOKIE-FILLED POUND CAKE
I read an article recently about the importance of having things to look forward to. One of the challenges of 2020 is how many ordinary—and out-of-the-ordinary—experiences the pandemic has robbed us of. There are no weddings. No baby showers. No one was packing their trunk for summer camp or their duffel bag for a weekend trip upstate to play tennis and go canoeing. August didn’t bring trips to Target for kids, flip-flops slapping on the hot asphalt of the parking lot before entering the cool store and piling colorful binders and file folders and packages of neon-hued markers in a shopping cart.
Read moreSESAME PRALINE GRAHAM CRACKERS
I tap open the weather app and see a bold red “flood warning” above the day’s hourly forecast. It’s not yet 7 AM—an hour at which the day usually hasn’t declared itself, weather-wise. I step outside into a cloudy, opaque world: fog and mist obscure the street, making the houses and trees and cars appear pale and shadowy.
(I realize I talk a lot about the weather here. Either I should consider a career as an amateur meteorologist, or it’s a reflection of the fact that when you live at the beach (and anywhere really), a sunny day versus a rainy one greatly colors your daily experience. Anyway. Roll with it, okay?)
Read moreCOCONUT LIME SABLES
Where would you live, if money and jobs and real life logistics were no object? Would you pick a flat in London or a pied-à-terre in the Loire Valley, surrounded by vineyards and all the Sancerre you could possibly drink? Maybe you’d want to live in Austin—eating the world’s best breakfast tacos and listening to great live music on the weekends. Or you’d pick a cool apartment in a cool city like Los Angeles or Sydney or Hong Kong, or in a suburb with tidy green lawns just outside Chicago so you could vacation on weekends in picturesque Door County.
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