Category Archives: Family

tgif – bizarre times in dreamland

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Is anyone else having crazy dreams? My nocturnal ramblings have been very bizarre this week, from not being able to pack chaotic luggage to missed flights in Japan to being lost in technicolor Asian shopping malls to being tricked into ingesting Epsom salts at my grandparents’ house and having subsequent dream-within-a-dream hallucinations.

It might be the weather, which has taken a precipitous dive from somewhat mild to sleet, snow, and deep freeze temps for this weekend. We are overdue for some real winter.

Those of you who follow me on IG know that I finally cast off on my Pink Memories sweater last weekend! I plan to block this weekend and have a knitting post next week. In the meantime, I’m noodling on some sock yarn mittens and pondering my next project.

Miss L got a major haircut this week, losing 9 inches from her red locks in the sweetest, sassiest bob. There is always something about a slim little back of the neck with a sharp edge that I love, probably because my hairline at the back of my neck is full of cowlicks and never looks clean like this.

It looks like Brandon’s furlough will soon be over as his company ramps back up. It will feel lonely around the house during the day without him. We each have our own daily routines and I’m in my home office most of the day, but we enjoy our lunch breaks together. He’s made the most of his break with skateboarding, writing, and doing extensive renovations and repainting in the house. But he’s eager to go back and you know, a little space in togetherness isn’t such a bad thing…

It never fails that either he or Miss L or one of the cats will come looking for me when I’m in the bathroom. Privacy!!!!!!

I hope everyone stays warm and cozy this weekend and has a great array of snacks for Super Bowl Sunday.

sweet little things

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I know this was a terrible year and sharing holiday cheer feels somehow wrong. But it is also right to express gratitude for what we have, and take pleasure in the little things when so many big things are very wrong. So here are a few things that brought me some joy this holiday.

The joy we find in our community. Running and walking in our neighborhood, enjoying the sled hill on a snowy morning and our Heritage Park trails and historic buildings, our local businesses and the friends we have here.

Being together. My daughter, Brandon and I spent so many enjoyable hours doing puzzles, art, taking walks, crafting, sledding, cooking and relaxing with each other- we had the gift of time.

Taking great joy in celebrating the holiday with pleasures like a nice meal and a table with a tablecloth and our nice dishes and some candles, even if it’s just the three of us.

Getting outside even on cold days to get some steps, fresh air, clear the cobwebs and do some birdwatching.

Enjoying our furry family.

I hope, even in this awful year, that you were all able to find some joy and peace in this season and if not, know that you are not alone and that things will be better. Until then, we will have to muddle through somehow.

week two of the new normal

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Alrite.

How’s it going.

(To quote Karl Pilkington, for any of my readers who are fans!)

Our second week of isolation is going well. I’m back into a good groove with my home office and Miss L has set up with me to do her online classwork. (Huge props to our school district for a quick move to online learning- they’re doing super cool things with Google Classroom assignments and keeping kids connected via Hangouts and video conferencing a couple times a week!) She has also been keeping us well supplied with baked goods from a cookbook for kids that my folks got her for Christmas- she’s made brownies from scratch and chocolate chip cookies this week.

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Emmett has been our faithful home office companion and we call him out unpaid intern for as much time as he spends hanging out with us at our work table.

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Although our governor has issued an official stay-home order, Brandon was deemed an essential employee by the company he is doing work for, so has to go into his workplace every day. He’s been a trooper about it but I know it causes him a lot of personal and ethical conflict and concern. We’re trying to take extra good care of him.

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The weather has been nice (for Michigan) the last couple of days, with mild temperatures and sun. Brandon got Miss L’s bike out yesterday and we went for a walk while she rode. It was amazing how many people were out – hanging out in their driveways, on porches, doing some early yardwork, walking their dogs. Everyone maintained wide berth from each other but it was very reassuring to have some contact, waving and calling hello, sharing gratitude about the sunshine.

I only want to knit in simple, mindless, meditational garter stitch so I’ve pulled out the log cabin blanket I started a couple of years ago.

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I hope you are all well and experiencing similar moments of goodwill and gratitude wherever you are, amidst all the worry and strain. xo

solstice celebrations

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We’ve been up north for a few days celebrating the solstice with my folks. We’ll be home for Christmas but in the meantime we’ve been enjoying the unseasonably mild temperatures and doing some last minute shopping and adventuring.

We hit Glen Arbor to visit Cherry Republic and loaded ourselves down with free samples. The big joke in my family re. Cherry Republic is that when Miss L was a tiny thing, we were driving home from an expedition there and I heard her in the backseat munching on free samples she’d stowed in her pockets.

We also visited the exceptionally wonderful Cottage Books, where they gave us a bag full of graphic novels that they’d gotten as complimentary copies. Of course we HAD to buy books as well so we were laden.

And we had our traditional winter solstice hike. The sun did its valiant best but by 3PM was hanging low in the sky, its strength spent. No matter- we’ve turned the corner now. Brighter every day ahead.

My mom and I took a short road trip to a yarn shop in Cedar that I’d seen on several blogs and ‘grams and vlogs. Wool and Honey is so beautiful and the owner is just a lovely, warm soul. We were instantly charmed and comfortable and spent a long time looking at their yarns and notions and extensive selection of patterns. Their Sleeping Bear Yarn club has some exquisite colorways that truly embody the natural beauty of this part of the state combined with artisan fiber craftsmanship. I was so happy to be able to visit and buy a couple of skeins of different types of wool for gifts for my own self.

We love this part of the world and always feel like our buckets are filled after a few days here.

That being said, we will also be happy to be back downstate tomorrow for our Christmas Eve and Christmas celebrations, and reunited with Brandon, Emmett, Sarge, and Pot Roast.

I hope you all have a very happy holiday week no matter what you celebrate.

My warmest wishes to you and yours! xoxo

parental valor, planners and a finished object

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I had a tummy bug on Monday and let me tell you, the unsung moments of parental heroism really come when you are valiantly striving not to humiliate your child by vomiting in the middle school dropoff line. Miss L may never fully appreciate this enormous act of valor but I certainly felt proud of myself! I slept most of the day and was better within 24 hours but man, it was touch and go for awhile.

So THAT was a poor start to the week, but the weekend preceding the ailment was great. Miss L and I drove up north for a quick visit with my parents and we took my mom to see The Nutcracker as performed by the Interlochen Arts Academy Dance Company and Orchestra. It was the first time for Miss L and I to see Nutcracker live and it was a beautiful performance.

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And now it’s the week before Christmas and I’m trying my best to clear my desk off at work and be ready for a long holiday break. I finished a trial run at a pattern I purchased just recently – The Petite Jumper by The Petite Knitter. I saw this on the Fiber Tales vlog and immediately wanted to make it. This first one turned out a bit wonky as I twisted the needles on one of the sleeves when knitting in the round. But the second one I just finished (in the same colors) is much better. I’m doing a couple to accompany Christmas presents for near-and-dears and then I’m going to do a couple more using the same colors but in different mixes – so a cream body with red and brown accents, a red body with cream and brown accents, etc. – for a little garland. It’s a very quick, cute pattern but, as Fiber Tales noted in her vlog, it is a little fiddly and requires some concentration (I’m just happy I remembered how to do a color chart in the round).

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In the Happy Mail department, I got some boxes full of materials for soap-making (more on that in the New Year) and I’ve received my 2020 planners – I went with Hobonichi this year. I want to do a better job this year with bullet journals / planners. We keep a Google calendar for Miss L, so both of her households can stay up to date on her activities, but for my own personal life, I’ve never really adjusted to an electronic calendar and much prefer paper. Additionally, working for a Japanese company, I love the Japanese minimalist aesthetic and the cultural emphasis on making organization and efficiency an art form.For work, where I need more writing space for meeting notes, I got the Hobonichi Techo, which has monthly pages and pages for individual days with inspiring quotes / factoids at the bottom of each 2-day stretch. In addition, it’s the Steiff limited edition so it has the Steiff bear on the cover underneath the Hobonichi kanji. I really love this planner and wish that I’d gotten the Techo for my personal planner, too (I strictly separate my work life and personal life – separate phones, separate notebooks, separate planners – working in a Legal department will do that to you). Instead, I got the Hobonichi Weekly for my personal planning and I feel a little sad that it is small and doesn’t have individual day pages. Still, though, it’s a great size for my purse or knitting bag or work satchel, and I ordered several cute pens and markers and washi tapes when I placed a recent order from a Japanese pen/stationery shop for Miss L’s stocking.

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So these are just a few notes from Suburban Elysia. I hope you are all enjoying the best things about the holiday season and letting go of anything that doesn’t serve you. Be well and take some time for yourself before things get any more hectic. xoxo

thanksgiving, some links, & a finished object

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Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays because you get all the gratitude, joy, and time with family without a lot of the extra nonsense and pressure to conspicuously consume. You just eat and watch football, and when everyone goes home you have some extra time to put up the holiday decorations and take naps! What can be better than that?

Brandon & I started the day with the Detroit Turkey Trot, which is sponsored by the Parade Company and runs along the Detroit Thanksgiving Parade route. It was clear and cold and despite my initial reluctance to roll out of bed, I was so glad that I let Brandon convince me. The vibe is fun and excited, with folks camped out on the streets before the parade, slapping high fives to the runners and calling, “Happy Thanksgiving!”  We’d initially planned on doing the Drumstick Double (which would be the 10k and the 5k) but it cut it short to the 10k so we could get home a little earlier to prep for dinner. It’s a fast course, mostly downhill for the last half, and we had a tailwind, so I was pretty happy with our time.

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I heard there are around 18,000 participants for the Detroit Turkey Trot.

My parents drove down from northern Michigan to spend the day with us and meet their grandkitten Pot Roast. My mom makes the best pumpkin pie, and Miss L baked her famous cheese rolls for us. Brandon carved and my dad introduced him to the delicacy of the turkey neck, heart, and gizzard. (Barf.) Although Miss L did classically Thanksgiving-themed placecard drawings, I went with a more Scandinavian-themed table setting this year, which I always really like.

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We spent the rest of the weekend getting the house decorated for the holidays, and I watched some new-to-me YouTube knitting vlogs (Fiber Tales from Denmark!) while I finished up my Garment House hot water bottle cover. (Raveled. And it was purely a to-be-used knit, so I didn’t bother with gauge, switched to a slightly larger circular from dpn’s halfway through, and ran out of the stashed Cleckheaton Mohair that I was holding with a plain Lion’s Brand worsted. So it’s wonky but since it will spend most of its life tucked at the bottom of a bed, I’m not stressed.) Brandon’s cousin came over to help install the replacement dishwasher for my old Bosch, and Miss L started her Advent Calendar!

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Harry Potter Funko Pop! Advent Calendar 2019!

Sadly, my car “Finn” did not want to start when the long weekend was over, so it’s been a Monday with a tow truck and working from the car dealership. I was dreading the outcome – new starter? new alternator? new CAR?!? But needing a new battery was the best (and likely most inexpensive) outcome so I am now ready to face the rest of the week with a working car AND a new dishwasher!

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He felt like all the rest of us on a Monday morning after a long weekend…

I got creative with leftovers over the weekend and apparently I was not alone – Brandon texted me that all of the guys he works with brought turkey pot pies today for their lunch.  🙂

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I hope my American friends had a lovely holiday and all of my overseas friends had an equally lovely weekend. To close, I wanted to share a couple of links for anyone who is as Moomin-mad as I am. Finland is definitely on my bucket list!

What the Moomins can tell us about climate change

My search for the real Moominland

leaf peepers

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Miss L and I blew this downstate pop stand and headed up north on Thursday night. My folks live up there and we love visiting them at any time of year, but fall is especially magical. On Friday, while my mom worked her gig at a local historical museum, my dad took us into Traverse City for an emergency yarn run (mitts for Miss L) and shopping at one of our favorite bookstores, Horizon Books on Front Street. I picked up the new Philip Pullman (wait for it – Show Us Your Books!). It felt very conspiratorial as the streets were still bustling with folks in Friday work mode while we played hooky; but there was the indisputable growing excitement of TGIF and the inevitable WEEKEND right around the corner.

Saturday was one of those spectacular autumn days with a cerulean blue sky, and you don’t know how to dress because it’s so warm in the sun, but chilly in the shade, or on the lakeshore with the wind. We went to Arcadia and walked the new marsh boardwalk, and then up the Baldy Dune overlook, with Lake Michigan turquoise below and the Frankfort Light in the distance. The weather is syrupy and golden-honey now but very soon will show its teeth, with the gales of November and the immense black winter laying heavily down along the shore.

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Miss L and I made my dad stop for pumpkins at a roadside stand; it was full of bushels of apples and squash and the scent of cider. I wanted one of every kind of squash – acorn, butternut, spaghetti , delicata – but we just left with two four-dollar pumpkins. Miss L and I sat on the back deck in that rare sunshine and carved them into jack o’lanterns to leave with my folks to scare all the evil Halloween spirits from their old farmhouse.

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We drove downstate on Sunday, in lines of leaf peeper traffic, and took a few short detours for some color touring of our own. Highway 115 between Thompsonville and Cadillac was at or slightly past peak. Hurry if you want to see color, as the rain is coming in again and will likely take all those bits of sunshine with it.

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regardless, there are always highlights

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No one really wants to hear about the weather in a blog post, unless it’s raining grasshoppers or something else unusual, but it’s stupidly hot in Michigan. I always forget that September really is still summer, despite my dreams of frost on the pumpkin.

I’m grumpy because of the heat and what felt like a short weekend mostly spent, it seemed, preparing for another work week. Nobody tells you that once you’re a grownup, a 40 hour work week is just the tip of the iceberg. You also need to count hours spent commuting and doing laundry and grocery shopping and food prepping and all that other stuff just so you have your shit together just to spend all those hours at work.

Regardless, there are always highlights. Brandon and his cousin got his shelves installed, and Emmett promptly had to crawl all over them to investigate.

Saturday night we walked down to our local 1920’s-era movie theater, which is a thriving contributor to our little Main Street, offering live music out front on summer weekend evenings and $5 shows for not-quite-second run films. We saw “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”, Quentin Tarantino’s reimagining of the Manson Family murders. It was a bit bloated, but I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed a movie more in the past year or so. I’ve done a lot of reading about that timeframe and being able to see the Spahn Ranch, Cielo Drive, etc – or at least reasonable facsimiles thereof – was fascinating. I loved both Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio in their roles, and seeing faces like Timothy Olyphant and Bruce Dern in cameos was fun, too. Sharon Tate was miscast, and although Tarantino admirably restrains himself from his usual penchant for gratuitous violence during 98% of the film, the 2% in which he lets loose and indulges himself is pretty stomach-churning. Despite that, a very fun film, and we stopped off at our local corner bar to have a drink and decompress before walking home. I love that about our little village- Main Street’s bars, restaurants, movie theater and library are just a short walk away.

We went for a run that was supposed to be 10 miles but only ended up being 8, just due to our schedule, and Miss L and I hit up the season’s first vintage toy & collectible show. I love these things. The people are awesomely geeky and there are always treasures. I snagged a couple of vintage horror comics and a print of the Creature from the Black Lagoon for my retro horror mantelpiece display.

Pot Roast had another visit to our neighborhood vet last week and after a vitamin shot and another mega dose of probiotics, and another round of antibiotics (“time to pill the Roast” is a common evening statement in our house), she’s on the mend. Pooping in the litterbox is a vastly underrated skill in a cat that you don’t admire as much as you should until they don’t.

Hope you’re all enjoying your early week thus far.

xo

dow gardens

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Brandon’s parents are retired and relocating to warmer climes soon, and, as always seems to be the case before one leaves a homeplace, they have a short list of Michigan things to do and see before they go. We helped them cross one of their items off their list this weekend, with a day jaunt to Dow Gardens and the newish Whiting Forest canopy walk. I still have a bit of PTSD from living there after graduating from college, when I worked for the Evil Conservative Chemical Company empire that rules the roost up there, but for Brandon I suppressed my shudder of distaste.

We loved the gardens, and they had an origami sculpture event going on, too, so the whole afternoon was really enjoyable. The canopy walk was a little less than I expected, but Miss L really enjoyed it and so did Brandon’s folks. There isn’t any significant color change in the trees  to notice yet, but it can’t be far off.

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I’ve been knitting baby mitts for the asylum seekers in Maine, and watching “Outlander”, and listening to a great book on Audible, “The Stranger Diaries” by Elly Griffiths. It’s perfectly gothic and creepy for early autumn. Miss L is collecting bits and pieces for her costume to visit the Renaissance Festival in a couple of weeks – an Elfin warrior queen – and we had a supremely enjoyable girls’ day on Saturday, shopping for shoes and new outfits for middle school, and a sushi lunch. Pot Roast is still periodically afflicted, but seems improved and we’ll ALL be glad when the nightly “pilling” sessions of antibiotics are over – she has a follow up visit on Wednesday and hopefully all will be well.

The next six to eight weeks are my favorite time of year. We have Ren Fest for Miss L to look forward to, and vintage toy show season is starting up, too – I’m hoping to find some good Halloween collectibles. We have long runs at Kensington to prep for the November Rock & Roll half marathon in Savannah and we just signed up for the Detroit Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day before the big parade (we’re doing the Drumstick Double event, both the 5k and the 10k). Lots to look forward to, life is good.

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the short week

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Why do short weeks always seem the longest? I think because everyone has to fit 5 days of work into 4. Plus, although Labor Day is a sort of secondary holiday in the pantheon of US holidays, it marks a big seasonal change for those of us far enough north to experience it, and it’s also sort of the unofficial “New Year” for everyone in school or with school age children. So in my house, the short week after Labor Day is summer end; it’s back to school, back to a different schedule, more routine. Which translates into getting up earlier – Miss L’s school starts an hour earlier, she is riding the bus, so her mornings are early and now mine are too. I actually really enjoy this – I’m most productive in the morning hours and getting to work at an earlier hour means I just get more done, I feel better, etc.

So last week’s short week was also stressful because as a mom, I was full of trepidation and anxiety about Miss L’s transition to middle school. I remember middle school as an absolute horror show. I was miserable to the point of feeling sick every day when I had to walk into what felt like an absolutely chaotic zoo full of mean kids, the horrors of gym class and lockers with combinations, and teachers who didn’t care about me because I was just one of many. This of course was not true, but it took me a solid year to find my footing and feel even a little bit comfortable there, and I was terrified that Miss L would have the same experience. However, she is a different kid than I was, more confident, independent, and resilient, and although I know it won’t all be smooth sailing (understatement of the year), her first week was better than I could have hoped for.

Pot Roast’s tummy troubles continued and necessitated a vet visit. She did not enjoy this one bit and was so grateful to be home with us when it was over, even forgiving me for sprinkling her food with probiotics and forcing antibiotic pills down her throat once a day.

Anyway, it’s Monday again and let’s hope this normal-sized week feels better than the abbreviated one, for us all! I’ll be back tomorrow with a quick update on our weekend dining adventure in Detroit.