Week 6

Necessary cheer

Sunrise from the bus window

What do we do with February? I feel like I'm living in a continuous loop. Routine, the kind I appreciate other points in the year, feels oppressive right now, so I'm fighting it. Despite all weather conditions, I've gone out each day for a therapeutic walk. I called my mom in the middle of the week for good cheer (thanks, Mom). I rode the bus and delighted in watching a 9-year-old boy read a giant book and politely engage with the bus driver. Where would he go once he got to the plaza, I wondered. As for me, I walked to Iron Goat for beer and pizza with Joel. On Tuesday evening, I walked home from the plaza, uphill through the snow, in my new down coat, and was so hot and sweaty when I came home I was confused by what season it was.

Plymouth Congregational Church on the walk home

Saturday brought the sun, long enough for us to get on our bikes and go to the museum to see the Pompeii exhibit (it was awesome). We came out and it had begun to rain. Instead of racing home, we rode on to a glass of wine and snacks at Wanderlust. The sky lightened again and Joel tricked me into going up steeper hills than normal on the way home. I made it.

One way to look at May 18, 1980

Cast of a slave who couldn't escape Vesuvius

Snack cones at Wanderlust. Genius.

Reading

Standing off to one side. Seeing only the world in fragments, there won't be any other one. Moments, crumbs, fleeting configurations -- no sooner have they come into existence than they fall to pieces. Life? There's no such thing; I see lines, planes, and bodies, and their transformations in time. Time, meanwhile, seems a simple instrument for the measurement of tiny changes, a school ruler with a simplified scale -- it's just three points: was, is, and will be.

(A lovely passage and recurring theme of Flights by Olga Tokarczuk.)

Also, this piece about Sesame Street and Syrian refugee children is wonderful.

Recipes

It was a good week for Bon Appetit recipes in our house. First was a Sunday Super Bowl feast of pizza with onion and provolone. Unable to find aged provolone in my usual cheese stores, I opted for a locally made aged mozzarella that was divine. I cut it with a scissors, just like the picture.

Second was a roasted cauliflower soup garnished with toasted hazelnuts and bacon. Yum.

Listening 

When I was in high school jazz choir (please keep reading; I know starting my paragraphs this way is risky), my choir teacher provided "listening tapes," thoughtfully curated collections of vocal jazz recordings he wanted us to get to know. On Fridays, he would play 5-second clips of the songs and test us on whether we had listened to it and internalized it. It helped us recognize chord changes, and many of the tunes were ones we'd eventually sing arrangements of. Through that process I fell in love with and aspired to be Karrin Allyson. Her recording of Quincy Jone's tune "Everything Must Change" was on one of these tapes.  We sang an arrangement of it during my senior year. Our soloist's mother was dying of cancer and he sang amid tears at the concert with his family in the audience as we sang our "doo-doo-dooo's" behind him. The solo was eventually transferred to someone else for future concerts toward the end of the year, and at that point, the words hit home that much more for all of us seniors. I thought about all of this - my emotional education of choir - with a lump in my throat on the rainy Thursday night, listening to Karrin sing, "There are not many things in this life you can be sure of, except..." once again after who knows how long.

Dolly Parton's America podcast. Yes, this is as good as people said it was.

Watching

Honey Boy on Amazon Prime: Shia LaBeouf's autobiographical-ish movie, in which he gave an impressive performance as his father.

Schitt's Creek/The Good Life: Sitcoms I'm trying to get into based on everyone else's rave reviews. I haven't gotten there yet.

Moulin Rouge!: Watched this for the first time since college, and remembered how good the "Roxanne" number is.

Frasier: We're petering off on this a bit...season 3 doesn't have quite the same punch as the first two. And I think we're just getting a little tired of it.

Making

I'm working on some mindless dish towels as gifts. I also made a Trello board to put together a sewing queue as I continue to develop my handmade wardrobe. Each card in the queue has a photo of the pattern, a link to the pattern, and in some cases, links to the fabric I'd like to use. Sewing requires more prep than knitting, but at least I'm making progress toward projects.