Live with the beetle, and the wind.

On the day that Mary Oliver died, it was dark, damp and cold in Spokane. I thought of her: How would she have viewed the freezing rain that greeted me when Luna and I stepped out the front door that morning? These are the days I crave her poetry, her reminders that the world is teeming with life and beauty.

I spent my lunch hour that afternoon in the library, hunting for The Winter Hours, which I read last January, and was strangely delighted to find it had been checked out (someone new is about to discover it's the perfect thing to read in this season). Instead I took The Leaf and the Cloud and Long Life. I opened to this:

I rose this morning early as usual, and went to my desk.
But it's spring, 

and the thrush is in the woods,
somewhere in the twirled branches, and he is singing. 

And so, now, I am standing by the open door.
And now I am stepping down onto the grass. 

I am touching a few leaves.
I am noticing the way the yellow butterflies
move together, in a twinkling cloud, over the field. 

And I am thinking: maybe just looking and listening
is the real work. 

Maybe the world, without us,
is the real poem.

(excerpted from "The Book of Time," The Leaf and the Cloud)

Looking and listening is the real work: actively noticing the everyday things that we take for granted or let sit in the background of our lives, and considering our place in the universe. Part of the beauty of her writing is that her observations of life are also ones of death. We must take the time now to appreciate what is here.

When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider
the orderliness of the world. Notice
something you have never noticed before, 

like the tambourine sound of the snow-cricket
whose pale green body is no longer than your thumb. 

Stare hard at the hummingbird, in the summer rain,
shaking the water-sparks from its wings. 

Let grief be your sister, she will whether or no.
Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also,
like the diligent leaves. 

A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world
and the responsibilities of your life. 

Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away.
Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance. 

In the glare of your mind, be modest.
And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling. 

Live with the beetle, and the wind. 

This is the dark bread of the poem.
This is the dark and nourishing bread of the poem. 

("Flare," verse 12, The Leaf and the Cloud)

When I read back through some of my posts here, I am struck by how her writing has resonated so deeply in my adult life.

Not to mention how her devotion to her dogs has reminded me of the unique joy and heartbreaking love they bring to us (and believe me, I've needed these reminders). I've tried reading a few selections of Dog Songs aloud to Joel and found my throat catching each time.

What do you say, Percy? I am thinking
of sitting out on the sand to watch
the moon rise. It's full tonight.
So we go 

and the moon rises, so beautiful it
makes me shudder, makes me think about
time and space, makes me take
measure of myself: one iota
pondering heaven. Thus we sit, myself 

thinking how grateful I am for the moon's
perfect beauty and also, oh! how rich
it is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile,
leans against me and gazes up
into my face. As though I were just as wonderful
as the perfect moon.

("The Sweetness of Dogs," from Dog Songs)

Joel and I have a running list of writers, actors, musicians and public figures whose deaths we know will in some way shake us. Mary Oliver belongs on that list for me, though I didn't realize it until it happened. But mourning her loss means celebrating the world she illuminated for me and so many others, and there's no sadness in that. Her words bring me back to life.

(Further reading: Mary Oliver's Poems Taught Me How to Live)

Summer Journal: Week 6

The weather has been reliably hot and dry for weeks and weeks. It's exhausting, but I'm not complaining. When I think back to last summer, I think I can easily say this one is better. For one, I'm not suffering from insomnia. For another, I'm having a really fun time.

On Thursday, I left work early to head up to Priest Lake. We stayed where we always stay: with friends at their family cabin. It's good to know people with A Place on the Lake. But truly, it's just as much about seeing them as it is spending time in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Falling asleep/waking up to the sound of rippling water, nothing better.

Cruiser the dog gets special treatment. As he should.

We took a boat ride to someone's beach and spent the better part of the afternoon there.

This family knows how to cook. Every night is something special. I consider myself lucky if I can lend a hand to the production.

We were back in Spokane on Saturday, and something about all that relaxing gave me a killer stiff neck, so I spent most of the rest of the weekend taking it even easier. It's starting to feel better now but it's been a literal pain to deal with. One thing I could do was go to the movies, to see Dunkirk, which didn't do much to ease any tension though it was good. I recommend it if you can handle war movies.

We took Luna to cool off at the Spokane River. Lots of people floating.

Saturday night found us teaming up in the kitchen to make homemade, hand-cut herbed pasta (pappardelle) with a parsley and garlic sauce. We added grilled chicken for good measure. This was a recipe I'd saved from the New York Times several months ago and it was a perfect way to use up some wilting herbs in the fridge. I'd never blended herbs into pasta dough before and it was worth it!

The pasta dough used up a bunch of egg yolks, so I saved the whites and made lemon meringues.

On Sunday night Joel made pork chops with a red wine and grape sauce. It was incredible. I threw a bunch of kale and potato onto a roasting pan and was pleasantly surprised with the results. All in all, it was a great weekend for food.

...and then I made something a little weird. I'll share the recipe with you later. But for now, be intrigued.

Carwash, desperately needed.

As if I needed another appliance, I bought one. I'm overwhelmed with the options. Maiden voyage this weekend.

Summer Journal: Week 3

I camped this weekend! I haven't gone on a real-deal camping trip since 7th grade. A month or so ago, during a happy hour get-together, my gal pals and I started talking about how fun it would be to have a ladies' camping weekend, and I guess I must have had enough wine to enthusiastically agree that this would be awesome. A couple weeks ago, we settled on the weekend and the location. And then the dread set in. The temps last week had been 100+ degrees, and it had been a busy week at work. All I wanted to do that weekend was to veg out at home and sit in air conditioning. And I've never thought of myself as a camper - I don't have the gear, I don't know how to go two days without a shower (!), etc. But the more I came up with potential excuses, the more I heard a voice telling me that I needed to get over it and just do it (my mantra, you know). This camping trip was something we all needed for one reason or another, even if I didn't know what my reason was. So on Friday afternoon, I got home from work, loaded up the car, and as I drove away from town, I just trusted that I was doing something good for my soul.

After a gorgeous hour-long drive through the Palouse, I arrived at the campground where my friends had already set up camp and greeted me with hugs and a tin mug of rosé.

They knew of my camping apprehension, so my only job was to show up with beverages, bike and sleeping gear. They took care of all the food planning and other stuff that I don't know to think about in planning a camping trip.

We camped at Heyburn State Park in Idaho, at Chatcolet Lake.

Dinner the first night. No cooking involved! Mezze platter!

The trails and entire campground were covered with blossoming oceanspray. It was beautiful!

The lake, and our campsite, was right on the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes, a picturesque rail-to-trail bike path. 

We had beautiful moons on both nights of the trip. The first night's moon was moody.

There's nothing quite like conversation by a fire pit, wine in hand.

And around 6 a.m., this is what I woke up to:

The birds started chirping around 4 a.m., and the sunrise was not long after.

On Saturday morning, we hopped on our bikes and rode to Harrison, Idaho, and a bit beyond. We saw lilypads, pelicans, cherry and apple trees, osprey and osprey nests, annoyed preteens on bike rides with their families, sweet peas, tansy, daisies, many more wildflowers we couldn't name, chipmunks, and glassy lake water. I raced a motor boat and won. In all, we biked about 20 miles that day. Not too shabby.

We got lunch in Harrison at The Landing, which allowed us to sit on a deck, in the shade, overlooking the lake, as we charged our phones, drank adult beverages and ate fries. 

Then we walked across the street, where this lovely woman led us in a tasting of fruit wines. It was fun to hear her story and learn more about this little lakeside community. Fruit wine is weird, but a couple of them were pretty good, and I have a feeling they'd be great for wine cocktails or making into wine spritzers. 

After a hot day on our bikes, we found a good spot for a swim.

Another gourmet dinner that night - veggie and noodle stirfry!

And that night featured a Millennial Pink full-moonrise.

I learned the addictive dice game called Blisters.

Where we sat for awhile, staring.

Another glorious view of the campground

Home sweet camp.

As suspected, I was so glad I did this. It was good for my soul in every way. We couldn't stop talking about what a perfect little trip it was at various points during the weekend. It was so good to get away, spend time together and explore the woods, trails and water. I know as adults it's really hard to make time for these kinds of things - it's hard enough to coordinate a happy-hour sometimes. But now we hope that this can be something we can plan each year. We know how important friendships are to our quality of life, and this weekend surely was a worthy investment into each of our lives as friends.

Good Habits: Walk more, get more out of it

Sometime back in college, my friend Crystal and I went to Target and a guy stood out front offering "incredible" deals on gym memberships. As we passed him, he asked if we were interested in this opportunity to work out at one of the best gyms in town for no sign-up fee or whatever. I looked at him in the eye and said with a straight face, "I don't work out." That was completely snobby of me but hilarious at the time (okay, still a little funny now) and, as I recall, left him speechless.

Don't you worry - I've completely eaten my words as I've gotten older. But that statement did actually stem from one of my goals in life, which is to not have to drive myself somewhere to get exercise. I'd rather bike or walk to the store than ride a stationary bike or run on a treadmill. It's mostly about practicality, but there's also something about labeling activity as "exercise" or "working out" that makes me not want to do it. I figure that if I think of myself as someone who needs to get out and do something, I will get the exercise I need, and I will always do it. I've done okay in programming myself this way.

Then a couple years ago I got a FitBit and realized that even with the built in activity in my day, I wasn't getting close to the recommended 10,000 daily steps. It turns out that it's really not that easy to do, purely as a practical measure, unless you don't have a car or live in a carless culture. On one of those first few days of wearing my smart wristband, I remember going on a long walk (to get ice cream) and coming home to find that I'd only walked about half of my daily goal. That's actually pretty good, looking back on it now, but at the time I was shocked that it wasn't 10,000 steps. Motivated by that little tingle on my wrist that tells me I've reached my goal, I set out to find ways to get myself to walk more, and to consistently do so.

Still, it needed to be practical. Fortunately, we'd just gotten a dog, so I had a purpose in taking her for a good walk each morning. She loves it, and I feel like a good pet owner for giving her that chance to sniff around as she reads the neighborhood news (i.e., other dogs' pee spots). I get up earlier than I ever thought I would, but I've found that I really do enjoy being up before everyone else. I daresay it's kind of fun to notice the changing times of the sunrise, or to be the first person to walk on the sidewalk after a fresh snowfall. Best of all, it's fairly easy to keep this in my routine, because unless I'm sick and Joel's on dog duty (he's on dog duty most of the other times), I've got to get this poor dog out. I don't hit the snooze button...for the most part...but best of all, I have gotten to the point that when the alarm goes off, I just get up without thinking about it. 

But this alone was not enough. I had to deal with the other nine hours of my Monday-Friday week when I'm without my dog. That's when I remembered that there's a whole world of podcasts out there - ones I can learn from and be inspired by. I found my iPod and started downloading a bunch of fascinating-sounding episodes. (I do prefer using my iPod as opposed to my phone for this as it eliminates other distractions.)

It was through one of my podcasts that I learned that I'm "temptation bundling." This is the idea of combining something you should do (and find excuses not to) with something you truly enjoy or want to do as a way of getting you to do both. For me it means I save up podcasts to listen to only when I'm walking. Other examples of this: saving your favorite TV shows for the treadmill, or allowing yourself to drink scotch only while folding laundry, or taking a difficult relative out to dinner at your favorite restaurant. It's a way to power through unreliable willpower. So each week at fairly regular times during my workday, I pop in my earbuds and head out the door.

That's another key element to this system working: I've actually scheduled these walks as 15-minute meetings during my workday - meetings with my podcasts, I guess you could say - so I don't schedule over them. People who schedule my calendar can see I have these times blocked out and in very rare cases is it necessary to reschedule. And for the last couple years, this has changed my life. While out on these walks, sometimes I worry that others have noticed me laughing to myself or smiling for seemingly no reason. The other day I was holding back tears listening to Jason Alexander reading an essay about saying goodbye to a pet goldfish. But besides becoming an emotional grab-bag, I'm getting fresh air, clearing my head and enjoying time to myself, and walking so much more than I used to. It still feels practical to me because as I listen, I'm learning so much and have things to talk about other than work at the dinner table later. [As a sidenote, I've also signed up for a wine club and bought a very wonderful bra because of the brilliant advertising you get with podcasts. So I guess that's sort of a trade-off to a gym membership?]

If you're looking for a little listening inspiration for your next walk...or workout, here's a short list of podcasts (I could have listed closer to 20) that have stood the test of time for me, except for the first one, which launched just recently but I immediately love it and and read the column it's based on for years so I'm sure it will continue to be good.

1. Modern Love , based on the New York Times essay column of the same name. Try: Just One Last Swirl Around the Bowl (the one that made me cry)
2. Death Sex & Money, about the things we should talk about, but don't. I wish I were friends with the host, Anna Sale, in real life, but my day was made when she favorited one of my tweets. Try: Autism Isn't What I Signed Up For
3. On Being, which is always uplifting and inspiring to me. I try to listen to this one at the beginning of my week. Try: David Steindl-Rast - The Anatomy of Gratitude
4. Happier, a podcast from the author of several books about happiness, Gretchn Rubin, and her sister Elizabeth Craft. They are incredibly helpful in their discussions about how we form habits, and how people are different in their habit tendencies. Try: Save Your String (podcast 22)
5. The Splendid Table, if only to listen to the sultry voice of Lynne Rosetto Kasper. Try: Any of them, if you love food, but I did especially like $4 a Day
6. The Dinner Party Download, which is like a variety show for the ears. Jokes, culture, cocktails, etiquette, history lessons, music selections. Try: the one with John Slattery
7. Spilled Milk, my very indulgent choice. I don't expect anyone to like this, really. There is no real value to this show other than feeling like you are best friends with the hosts, which I would love to be. I laugh all the time at/with them. Try: Cocoa nibs
8. 99% Invisible, about "all the thought that goes into the things we don't think about." Episodes are brief, fascinating little history lessons and the ones I discuss most with other people after hearing them. I could recommend so many of them, but this one about awareness at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic is really, really good.

The week in photos: Nov. 23

I picked up my camera again this week in an effort to capture the beautiful and the blahs. A few phone photos thrown in for good measure.

We decided to bring champagne cocktails to Thanksgiving dinner. But we had to test a few variations first, of course. We ended up keeping it simple with a cranberry mix, triple sec and Brut with cranberries for garnish.

It's been really tricky taking my daily walks around campus after Windstorm 2015. Destruction everywhere.

It snowed this week so I took the bus to work. It's fun to be downtown.

My trivia team. We play to win. (We even won that Reese's bar.)

Moonset on Thanksgiving morning.

You can't make this stuff up.

Roll dough. I have made Oma's rolls for years and this week I'll post a modernized version of her recipe after trying to decipher my notes along her very basic instructions.

The best spot in the house on a sunny afternoon.

My brother has masted the art of turkey.