(hank LOVES dressing up for thanksgiving!)
even though the corona is STILL effecting us all (nearly TWO YEARS later… HAY SEUS!) the pandemic has made me really grateful for a lot of things i took for granted PP…
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my lovely gas fireplace
in pet, residential interior, hank
(hank snuggled up by the fire)
even after eleven years in boulder, i am always caught off guard by the weather. this year we had a stunning, temperate fall with outrageous rainbow colored trees and then POOF - the wind rolled through, the leaves fell down and we got this freezing sleet/rain/snow with temps in the low thirties. my body just could not process the drastic change (hank’s didn’t have to as he simply refused to go outside) and i was FREEZING, despite my hat, scarf and jacket.
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happy, happy halloween! x00xx
halloween is one of my least favorite holidays… i don’t like bloody stuff or getting scared or being out in the cold - more than once we’ve had halloween SNOW here in boulder - or staying up too late. (one year lucy got the barfing flu and she could not go trick or treating - i have to say i was so HAPPY to stay home and just hand out candy - she wasn’t feeling TOO bad. it WAS a little unnerving because i wasn’t sure i should let her rest on the sofa in case she threw up again, but other than that nagging concern it was the BEST halloween!) i DO like candy and i LOVE seeing my kids dressed up (as long as there is no blood or wounds or axes or spooky masks.) unfortunately, they don’t appreciate when i weigh in on their costumes anymore… PRAISE JESUS i have hank.
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restoration
each summer when we return to boulder from our long stay in california i have “reentry” problems… i feel jumbled and foggy and a bit overwhelmed. so i have developed a (compulsive?) process of restoration that helps me adjust back to my boulder life - basically i CLEAN everything. i start with the laundry, of course. the last two summers we have road tripped to berkeley and back (the first summer because of the corona and this summer because hank can’t fly anymore… he used to travel as an “emotional support” dog but all the airlines changed the rules as people started bringing “therapeutic” peacocks and donkeys on their flights. hank is too big for the carrier you can keep at your feet and with his smush face it’s not safe for him to be placed in the underbelly of the plane so the only way to get him to california is to drive.) even if we leave the west coast with suitcases full of clean clothes, after a week in the car we have tons of dirty stuff. this may take several wash loads, which gives me time to clean out the dressers and pull all the items that are too small or otherwise deemed unnecessary. this year i was delighted to realize that i’d sorted through the dressers and closets right before we left so i could put the clean clothes back straight away.
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lisa stamm's bespoke animal portraits
(hank by lisa stamm)
i met lisa stamm in my twenties when we were tottering around new york city in impractically high heels, drinking martinis, going to gallery openings and late night parties, brunching on sundays and having pre children adventures. she introduced me to my first husband at a champagne bar, did my make up at my wedding and supported me through all kinds of milestones and changes. she has been an incredible friend and i have known her a long time. but i had no idea that she is an artist. about two years ago i was scrolling through my facebook feed and saw a soulful, impassioned pencil drawing of a beagle that she shared and was completely captivated. i was not alone. lisa received such a big response to the tribute drawing she had done of her beloved dog, scooby that for the first time she considered taking commissions. and so began the pet project shop.
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kaleidoscope
in exercise, family, hank, living room, pet
(fireworks over the white house on inauguration night; photo: nbc news)
for the past several months my brain has felt like a kaleidoscope - loads of tiny fragments of intentions and obligations and responsibilities and information that i think i am about to get a handle on and then someone twists the cylinder just a tiny bit or A LOT and i am left scrambling to understand the new design. between the pandemic and homeschooling and the kids going back to school and homeschooling again and BLM and the election and the capital riots and my classes and my work it’s been difficult for me to keep it all straight.
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my article on dutch "gezellig" published in boulder county home + garden, winter 2020
in family, hank, holiday, living room, pet, residential interior, sofa
as we all struggle through this crazy global pandemic, we are missing the ability to travel and experience the customs and traditions of other cultures. i had so much fun writing this article for boulder county home+ garden about dutch “gezellig” (coziness) and remembering our time living as ex-pats in amsterdam. all three of my sweeties made it into this piece (hank and my darling children) as well as my living room! MANY THANKS (as always) to heather knierim of HBK photography for the lovely photos! wishing you all loads of gezellig as we all bunker down this winter… HAPPY, HAPPY HOLIDAYS! x0x0xx
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happy, happy halloween! x0xx
what’s better than a banana split? wishing you all a safe, corona halloween! x0x0x
to read about halloween in more “normal” times click here
bananas
in family, hank, pet, living room, sofa
i’m not going to lie… the last couple of weeks have been completely BANANAS and overwhelming. living through a pandemic alone is pretty unsettling what with the social distancing and the COOKING and the home schooling. then there is the election and all the news that logically i shouldn’t watch because it’s all so crazy but i am the worst kind of rubbernecker where i have it on all the time so i don’t miss anything but really i just want to miss ALL of it. then when we finally got into a home schooling rhythm (which wasn’t smooth by the way - lucy and i both cried over her fractions several times a week. sometimes i had to email her teacher that she was missing the google meet because we needed a minute to collect ourselves and wash our faces and eat some chocolate. PRAISE JESUS that unit is over!) our district announced that the kids are going back - lucy FULL time and theo one day a week. i know the people who manage the schools and these decisions are doing their very best but it felt like a BIG leap to go from nothing to four days a week for lu. of course, i am thrilled that they can do some live learning and i AM relieved that we got through so many months of online schooling and my children are still alive. that was a valid concern for me - EVERY time you read about a mother who drove her kids into a lake, she is ALWAYS a home schooler.
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on the road again... corona road trip part 2
because the scenery on our road trip from colorado to california was so uninspiring, we decided to take a different route back in hopes of seeing lots of ocean and even those elusive, giant red rocks. we left our darling cottage at the crack of dawn and hopped on highway 1, the road that follows the coastline, to take us to los angeles. my kids had been questioning why we were traveling a way that would add hours to our journey, but as soon as we hit half moon bay, they understood. it was a LONG day (we were in the car for ELEVEN hours) but my heart was swelling as we traced the coast and viewed the pacific in all of its iterations: rocky cliffs, pebbled beaches, sandy dunes… we detoured in pebble beach and took the 17 mile drive - breathtaking! my girlfriend grew up there so we had her on the phone narrating our journey as we drove through pebble and carmel. she directed us to the most adorable sweet shop on ocean avenue (it was still too early to go in, but we are determined to return!)
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california corona
somehow against all rational thought i imagined going on holiday in california would also be a break from the corona. of course, the closer we got to the golden state, the more the virus was spiking in our destination. we arrived to a berkeley even more bunkered down than boulder, where EVERYONE was wearing masks in public, where most of the restaurants were closed (except for take-out), where many people still had not had a proper haircut (most notably my parents who look like a couple of the founding fathers - my dad favoring thomas jefferson [normally he looks more like jimmy carter] and my mother’s curls reminiscent of john adams’ with the middle bit filled in) and people practicing really conservative social distancing. nevertheless, we were DELIGHTED to arrive.
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corona projects
pre corona my day ended by 2:55 pm for school pick up (actually 2:40ish because i had to get there.) from that point on i was making snacks, helping with homework, schlepping kids (my own and other peoples’) to soccer or hip hop or tennis or trumpet, prepping dinner, and schlepping back to pick said children up from soccer or hip hop or tennis or trumpet, squeezing in trips to the safeway or the UPS or the walgreens and trying to send out work emails or texts in the odd ten minute windows that were available. by the time we got through dinner (and all the nagging and threats around eating “five more bites” or no dessert or no phone or whatever else i could think of, i was exhausted. and i would put us all to bed very early because i had no “cheese” left.
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a slice of cheese
now that we are all spending so much time together, we’ve had to negotiate how to share space, energy, attention and generosity of spirit. it’s become more and more clear that we all have different needs at various times throughout the day and they often don’t coincide.
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corona hank
hank has had it with corona. he REFUSES to go on walks now. i can hardly get two blocks with him, let alone all the way to the lake that it took so much effort for me to learn how to find. when i put his leash on he’ll maybe get to the corner and then just lay down all spread out so he’s completely planted. even with his svelte new figure, he is far too heavy for me to carry (i am lazy too!) so i have to stand there and coax him with ice cubes (it’s already blazing here in boulder, even though we had loads of snow just weeks ago.) and this goes on… walking half a block, him laying down, me waiting and begging, walking another half block, him laying down and me waiting and begging and then finally me saying, “all right, do you want to go home?” at which point he pops up and RUNS at a clip all the way there. i know now that he speaks perfect english, as well as his native french. so i have to go on dog walks without my dog… and when i pass people they all ask after him (he is quite well known in our neighborhood) and they are clearly disappointed that it is only me.
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corona "gezellig"
in art, dining room, family, family room, hank, living room, pet, residential interior, sofa
one of my sweetest, most poignant learnings from living in the netherlands for nearly six years is the idea of “gezellig,” the dutch word for coziness. gezellig applies to social concepts like inviting or friendly people, parties, situations and meals, but what i have been really thinking about lately as we all “shelter in place” is how the dutch instilled gezellig in their homes. in a land where it rains at least a portion of most days, our amsterdam neighbors knew how to create welcoming spaces to retreat within and enjoy their families, while the rain drummed outside. corona is pushing us all inside now and we can learn from the comforting, warm interiors of the dutch.
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routine
hank and i are very comfortable with routine. week days, i typically wake up pretty early (6ish) and head right downstairs for coffee. i always set the machine the night before so all i have to do is press one button. hank usually sleeps a little longer and comes trotting down by 6:30. he likes to have his breakfast straight away, while i need my one and a half cups before my scrambled eggs. after eating, hank likes to go outside for his potty. he is pretty quick about this and then goes back to sleep in his favorite sofa corner. sometimes, when he’s had a particularly arduous playdate the day before with his girlfriend dharma, (this is his second girlfriend… ellie moved away) he goes back upstairs and returns to [my] bed. it throws me when i don’t see his big bat ears poking over the arm of the sofa and i walk around the house calling for him until i remember his secondary routine. (unfortunately, hank doesn’t really understand about weekends when i would love to sleep maybe all the way to seven. he sits over me and sighs and breathes noisily until i open my eyes to find his face hovering mere inches above mine.)
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boulder halloween
halloween in boulder is outrageous. when we stepped out to go trick or treating our first year in colorado, i thought we’d wandered onto a movie set. literally EVERY house in our neighborhood was decorated, and not just with a pumpkin or two but with strings of orange lights, giant spiders and webs stretched across the houses, skeletons and zombies and werewolves emerging from the lawns and ghosts and ghoulies hanging from the trees. and when you ring the bell, the homeowners answer in full costume. sometimes they jump out at you and sometimes they just smile and offer the kids candy and the parents a glass of wine or a beer. yes - if you accept all the libations presented, you will be quite tipsy by the end of your neighborhood rounds. there are even a few famous addresses that do full spook houses… i took lucy to the one on 10th street when she was a little too young and we were both traumatized … i nearly peed my pants when a gazillion enormous spiders dropped on us and she let out a wail that lasted for at least two blocks. we had to retire for the evening after that.
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hank has been immortalized
hank came home with us on december 5, 2017 and we have been beside ourselves with love for him ever since. we love the way he rotates his big, bat ears around, we love his snorty, white noise machine breathing, we love his little button that is too tiny to wag, we love when he rolls around on his back looking for a belly rub, we love when he snuggles up with us on the sofa, we love when he howls along to theo’s trumpet playing, we love when he picks up sticks four times his size and carries them around, we love when he flops down with his legs splayed out behind him like a frog and we love the way his bum wiggle waggles left to right when he is trotting about the neighborhood.
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strawberry shortcake
now that we are in the thick of summer, i am reposting my favorite summer dinner… strawberry shortcake! ENJOY!
every summer when i was growing up, there would be one night where we had strawberry shortcake for dinner. no broccoli or pork chops or mac n’ cheese… just a heaping plateful of home-made(ish) strawberry shortcake. (i say “ish” because my mother always made the shortcake recipe right off the bisquick box… which is DELICIOUS, by the way.) there was nothing more exciting for me than having dessert for dinner. it literally felt like christmas in july.
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hank's diet
many of you have been asking how hank is doing on his diet. i have to say, it has not been easy. with the big drop in temperature, we tried on his favorite sweater from last winter a few days ago. last december, it was cozy, yet roomy, but this year, it fits him like a crop top a la britney spears, early nineties. i’m wondering if he is going to be one of those dogs whose closet is filled with a range of sizes he dips into depending on how much bacon he has had. will he need enough space to house his “fat jeans” and his “strictly following the paleo” jeans?
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