Barry

There was (apparently) a barred owl in New York that drew the attention of people because of her (researchers said it was a her) comfort with humans. She died last week, and the New York Times published a really lovely story about what she meant to the community. 

It's not every day you read a moving tribute to an owl. But I highly recommend. (Also: The photo of her gazing at her reflection is sublime.) 

Fresh pasta

I called a friend on a whim as I was driving near her house to see if she might want to eat falafel with me in her driveway. Sounds great, she said, but I'm already making pasta. How does that sound? 

Pretty delicious, actually. Tasted pretty delicious, too. She'd made pesto the night before, so my heaping pile of spaghetti was topped with fresh pesto and a generous helping of parmesan. And she sent me home with peppermint bark, on top of that. 

An excellent detour, and nice to have a tiny bit of spontaneity when it's so hard to these days. 

This weekend

I watched a movie outside, picked some apples, sat around a fire and talked with friends. If not for the masks and the distance, it might have felt like any other October. It wasn't ideal -- after all, there's still a pandemic -- but it was something.

Here, kitty, kitty

I visited a friend on her porch last night, and was surprised when a cat greeted me as I pulled into the driveway. She's always been a dog person, but it had been six months, and maybe she'd added a pet.

The cat was friendly and followed me into the backyard. It hung around after I slipped and fell in the mud. (That's a different story, but it's been so long since I fell in the mud! There was something weirdly nice about that, too!) And it walked up the stairs with me to the porch.

It did not belong to my friend.

But for the whole two and a half hours I was there, it made itself at home. It leaped on the chairs, the table, each of us. It challenged her dog, who had come to the door to see what was happening. It strutted along railings and went after some bugs. It was the most self-assured cat I've ever seen.

And when it was time for me to leave, the cat followed down the stairs. I had to lure it out the gate. It scampered among the rosemary as I picked some on my way out. My friend joked that it was going to follow me in to my car, but I made a (mud-covered) run for it. The cat was nonchalant, and meandered away, to the next house.

I'm not an animal person at all, but it was really sweet and soft and friendly. If it had jumped in the car after me, I would have been hard-pressed to kick it out.

In the oven

A blackberry pound cake, from blackberries I picked and using a recipe I printed out years ago, aspirationally, and am finally making use of.

(It smells great.)

The past few days

In no particular order:

A COVID-19 friendly art show.

A walk in the woods:

Seeing the face of a friend going through town.

Good news for someone I care about very much.

Correspondence.

Ice cream.

In-person conversations from a safe distance.

Sharing is caring

I had a socially distanced picnic this evening, and there was another group doing the same in the same park. They were kind enough to walk over to us with a bottle of margaritas, ice and glasses and offer to share their bounty.

We chatted a little, and it's the first time I've *really* talked to strangers -- at least in a non-work setting -- for months. It was a nice gesture in the midst of continuing madness.

Strawberries

I go strawberry picking every year, and I was disappointed last year to learn the patch I had been going to planned not to plant any more. So between that, and the coronavirus, I had low expectations for my strawberry options.

But then! I saw a story about some places that were doing socially distanced fruit picking. And strawberries came into my life again!

I went yesterday and ended up with roughly five pounds of berries. I've given some away, have eaten a couple handfuls and my make something out of them. But it was nice to get out and do this thing I'm used to doing in some form or fashion.

Birthday party

Sitting in a park today with a nice breeze and three other people, celebrating one of their birthdays from across an open field.

Buttercream

I made (raspberry) buttercream frosting for the first time today. It went on top of lemon(ish) raspberry cupcakes. And most exciting of all, it was an experiment in combined recipes. I brought them to some friends and they seemed to go over well. So I'm declaring it a success!

Seeing Newnan

Over the past few years, a friend and I have created what we call adventure club, where we look for interesting things to do around town. As you might imagine, that's a little harder in a pandemic. But today, we found a way.

Several of us went to see a public art exhibit, Seeing Newnan, of 17 portraits of residents taken in the town. May I just tell you: it was fabulous.

On their own, the pictures are well-done portraits on the side of buildings. But this was so much more than that.

The artist spent two years in the city, getting to know people and taking pictures. And the context for her project is really interesting; Newnan is a city of about 40,000 that's about 60 percent white; it was also the site of a neo-Nazi gathering in 2018. But as this story will tell you, the perception of the city hasn't kept pace with the population of the city. And that's where Mary Beth Meehan came in. Her website has really fabulous biographies of everyone she shot, and the context made for a really wonderful experience -- particularly, for me, in some of the placement of the portraits.

In this one, a fifth grader in her Cotillion clothes is on the side of a building she wouldn't have been allowed into in another era. And that's just one.

If you're in Atlanta, it's worth the field trip.

For me, the other thing that was so great about it was the humanness. No, I couldn't give my friends hugs, but I could walk around town with them (an acceptable distance apart) and have a picnic (same) in an empty park and share one of the only social experiences I've been able to of the pandemic.

Plus someone brought houseplants, so now there's something green (and alive!) in my house. Not shabby at all.

The height of fashion

I pulled a pair of sweatpants out of the drawer that I had apparently not worn for a very long time, because I could feel the elastic cracking and crumbling as I pulled them on. The waistband was soon far too large, and with no elastic spring, they were suddenly eight sizes too big.

What's a girl to do? I suspected the other pants in that drawer were in a similar condition; after all, these were the ones on the top of the pile! But wait -- there was a rubber band. Perhaps that could solve my problems.

I gathered the extra waistband (into a very unflattering silhouette), wrapped the rubber band around the excess and voila! I had pants that fit!

It's absurd and mostly functional (I did have to re-wrap the rubber band two or three times today) and saved me from doing laundry for another day. And luckily, when I forgot I was holding my pants up with a rubber band and went outside anyway, there was no one else around to see me. Success!

I'm so good at yoga

(This is actually veryyyyyy far from the truth.)

But the most exciting thing to happen today is that a friend who teaches yoga decided she was going to livestream classes. The timing worked today for me to hop on. And it was so nice -- it was nice to do it, but also nice to feel encouraged by a friend! I've never taken her classes before IRL, but she was great.

And then we started an email exchange when I thanked her for doing it. And it's been a long while since I've seen her, so that's great, too.

Other positive things today: what's become a weekly dinner date with some friends. A walk outside for the first time in forever. Grey skies and crisp air. A Crazy Ex-Girlfriend meme. Cooking real food (of a sort) for the who-knows-what-time in a row. Peanut butter M&Ms. (They're sure to make a repeat appearance.) Various forms of contact with various people.

And it was yesterday, but I made a super tasty martini (or two) with some hazelnut espresso vodka I brought back from Portland last year. Yum.

Because it's time

I've been meaning to write something for a while, but work and life and general bumminess have meant that instead, I haven't taken the time to pull out the marvelous and share it with you.

But it's the last day of January. And I got an email from a friend -- one who means a lot to me, and one whom I always mean to talk to more than I do -- imploring me to update more often. She's right.

I still don't have a lot of time or energy tonight (so that e-mail I've owed for several months -- and the newest one -- will be yet delayed).

But I can share this, from a trip I took earlier this month to a land of snow. It was a friend's first snowman and (hopefully to the delight of the aforementioned friend who wants me to update more often), his name is Nigel.

Enjoy him. We did.

Saturday

For the birds

My sister is back in the country now, but she spent the summer studying abroad, with only sometimes-Internet. As such, getting an email from her was always exciting.

Particularly amusing was this one, which she sent to my siblings, my parents and myself:

So I was sitting outside a cafe for the past few hours and I made this comment, "I feel like a tree." Since there were leaves and pine and things all over the place. Then a bird pooped on my arm, not two seconds later.

Of course, that made me chuckle.

But what really amused me was the subsequent string of emails between family members, where we all recounted our own bird-poop experiences. Mine was at an amusement park and, as I recall, we subsequently went on one of the water rides ad nauseum (although, let's be honest -- we would have done that anyway) until I was comfortable with the fact that it had been rinsed from my hair.

From my brother:

I got pooped on once, too. I was walking to class in the rain and didn't notice til I got onto campus. I tried to wipe it off of my jacket with my bare hand before I realized what it was. That was unpleasant.

And from you?

Of hashtags

Last year (Was it last year? It was not -- it was Dec. 2009!), we brought you the fantastic hashtag #washingtonpostcorrections. Today, I share another: #JerryMealsSaysItsSafe. (You should click that link, if you click no other links in this post.)

Jerry Meals is a Major League Baseball umpire. In the 19th inning of a Braves/Pirates game Tuesday night (that actually ended Wednesday morning at 1:50 a.m.), he made a widely debated call at home plate, saying that a runner who was tagged out was actually safe. That meant that the Braves won the game, and it knocked the Pirates -- who were in first place in their division (and for the Pirates, this is a feat!) -- back out of the lead.

I hope I didn't lose you with that background. Now, angry Pirates fans (and others with a sense of humor) are making lists of other things (Well, OK, click this one, too.) that Meals says are safe, that are as far as far can be from safe.

Some examples:

• WhyteDynamite: Think I may go for a ride in a zepplin this wknd. I've always wanted to look down at Earth and smoke cigarettes. #jerrymealssaysitssafe
• DBergz13: jumping out of an airplane without a parachute cuz #JerryMealssaysitssafe
• uncleyucki: Playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun. #jerrymealssaysitssafe
• hamsandcastle: An island full of dinosaurs in captivity? Count me in! #jerrymealssaysitssafe
• jesslag: Gonna cross these mountains with my new friends the Donners #jerrymealssaysitssafe

There are more about Casey Anthony as a babysitter, Amy Winehouse's drug ingestion, playing in traffic and condom use -- among other wonderfully inappropriate things.

Read. Giggle. Enjoy.

He speaks the truth

It has been far too long without an update. My apologies, on behalf of all of us. It will still be long between updates, but at least I can tell you a couple things:

• My sister has come to visit. We've been exploring Atlanta and Georgia, including her new favorite place: Babyland General Hospital. They're thinking of building an amusement park.
• It's snowed here, too. It even stuck. A little.
• I met a Santa Claus who keeps every list children send or hand him, and scrapbooks them. He could not explain why.
• I flew in the Goodyear Blimp. And it was awesome, like a boat ride in the sky.

It's hardly everything, but it's a few things. And maybe you're still out there, looking for joy.

Of food trucks and other joys

The sun is shining, the grass is green and Cleveland now has food trucks.

We've had hot dog stands on many downtown corners for quite some time, but this is different. Not only is it something I can eat (street food + vegetarian friendly hadn't previously been the case), but there's a bit of mystery in where the truck will be on what day, and whether it can be found.

Earlier this week, I tracked down the first truck, an Asian-inspired one (though my menu won't convince you that's the case) where I had delicious gazpacho, tater tots, a veggie taco and a sushi push-pop. Yum.

There was bright, beautiful graffiti near where it was parked, and a gentleman with a long gray braid down his back on the trolley I took over. Another word about the braid: it petered out so slowly, and at the end, was simply several strands that must have wanted to stay together.

In the news

Two things to share with you, both from New York Times stories this week.

This, from a story about the new Olympic sport ski cross and its competitors, had me laughing loudly: "Others included Richard Spalinger of Switzerland, whose hobbies were announced as football, anger management and bowling."

And this, sweeter, is from an obituary of a guy who created a number of magazines. The quote is from his wife: “Would you say he was a strong outdoorsman? No, but he tried everything,” Mrs. Welsh said. “His whole motto was, ‘Life should be lived like a cavalry charge.’ ”