A Handful of Happy Things
31 Oct 2013
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these posts, but there has been plenty of happy going on in the past few weeks. Here are a few of the treasures I’ve collected. The prettiest fruit.
Book plates I’ve had since I was a little girl. I put them in the books I gave the girls for their birthday.
This vine grows on the wall outside Eric’s building. The greens, the velvety purples, the deep reds. It is so stunning every fall.
Hillary is basically a saint. Not only is she an awesome friend, but she also lets me tag along on her Costco trips and orders things for us, since she has Amazon Prime. This box came last week. Note the name she put on the box. Hahaha!
Gin and tonics with grenadine at Hillary’s. A gin and tonic was pretty much the first drink I ever had, and it was my signature one for a long time. Eric is such a cocktail master that we are mostly trying new things every weekend, and let me just tell you: I forgot how delicious a good gin and tonic is. VERY DELICIOUS.
I have heard that pineapple tops grow new pineapples if you plant them. Since we don’t have much light in our place, I am donating this one to Hillary, and hopefully sometime soon we will have a tropical treat to share.
Today there was a pumpkin carving contest at the post office. Fun! I love that one with the big hairdo, and I like the one being stabbed too.
The hands and the nerd glasses are a really nice touch, but I think Einstein takes the cake!
I got these at the Depot. There is only one thing to say about it: yessss!!
And I got this little guy in Oakland last spring. I love it so. It gives me so much pleasure to be able to call this majestic place my home.
One more happy thing: Happy Halloween!
Do you ever have something in a restaurant that is so hauntingly delicious that you become consumed with the idea of recreating it at home? Well, friend, that happened to me with this salad. Way back in April, when we were in Monterey, we went out to dinner at a place we feared would be too fancy (read: expensive) for our taste, but it turned out to be delightfully affordable: 
This is what it looked like at the restaurant: piled high with blackened chicken and bacon (mmmm), feta and walnuts, cranberries and cucumbers, apples and arugula. It was salad heaven. So I got to work in the kitchen.
Here is the party getting started.
I don’t actually know how to make blackened chicken (or blackened anything, for that matter), but maybe I should learn because it is so delicious. In any case, I grilled the chicken, and it was still fantastic.
Lalla served their salad with a cherry vinaigrette, but I mixed up an orange pomegranate dressing similar to 
Mmm. I made a gigantic bowl of this, and we ate it all week.
And, just for fun, here’s my man at Lalla. I love him. That will be all.
The old adage is definitely true: you never know how much stuff you have…until you try to move it. I remember being horrified at the amount of stuff I fit into my shoebox of a dorm room in college, and every move in grad school was a huge incentive to dislocate my shoulders hulking heavy bags full of books and clothes to Goodwill. When Eric and I got married, we did a collective purge of our things and crammed the rest into the moving van (well, actually the movers did, and in record speed). Since we moved to Pasadena, we’ve been in one place, and I am so grateful for that. It’s a marvelous location, we have a good bit of space, and we are so happy that we’re able to stay put for a little while. But all of the work on our place in the past few weeks has definitely got me thinking not just about the amount of stuff I have, but the kind of stuff I have, and whether or not I actually want it.
In all the upheaval in the last few weeks (lots of work on the apartment and associated cleaning), I have been really happy to get back to making things. It’s difficult when things are not in the places where they normally live, but time and again I find that not making things is sort of like…not showering for me. Well, less smelly, of course, but I really really miss it when I have been away. I have some fairly new scrapbook stuff that I bought for crazy cheap (no, ridiculous cheap) at Big Lots, and I was excited to use it. A lot of it is travel-themed, which is perfect for me and my million peregrinations.
It is kind of crazy that I am just now scrapbooking something that happened a full year ago, but I maintain that in twenty years, no one will care when I made it. The point is that it’s made. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it! I tried a new type of picture-mounting here, since this paper is very busy. I love its travel theme and general crowdedness, but it was making the pictures hard to see. I like these mini-mats and the tiny bit of journaling space they provide.
One of the places I was most excited to see was Orhan Pamuk’s 
What I love best about the novel (as if it’s possible to only love one thing above the others) is the deep understanding of the importance of everyday objects as reliquaries, as repositories of memory. I believe in that so deeply–that tiny little things hold entire worlds within them–and seeing it in the novel and in the flesh was just…incredible.
After visiting the museum, we had a nice wander through vine-laden Cihangir. So very lovely.
We saw this horse-drawn wagon weaving its way through the narrow streets, its cart piled high with splotchy yellow and green melons for sale. A treasure.
This was a big day, since next we were off to the Grand Bazaar! I don’t know of a girl in the world who wouldn’t want to look at all the shiny and beautiful things there, but there is also so much incredible history in this little city of shops.
It was so crowded that we didn’t take too many pictures inside, but this is one of the main gates.
Just outside the bazaar was the book bazaar, and that is a place I could never pass up.
And neither could Eric.
In other news, I could not stop taking pictures of these beautiful images of old Istanbul, posted at the tram stops. I would’ve gladly bought the whole series. (Also! Do you see that little compass? I love it.)
I had too many awesome things to fit on just two pages, so this bonus page for day 5 is full of them. With a purple sequin border at the bottom for extra funz.
This was our ticket from the Museum of Innocence. Swoon.
Kiva Han, a traditional Anatolian place where we ate for dinner, was stuffed to the gills with pretty postcards and such. So, naturally, I took one of each.
Just gorgeous, no? And thus concluded another day of fantastic adventures!
Every year we get the sweetest package from Eric’s parents. This tradition started long before I ever met Eric, but I am so happy that now I get to be part of it. Every fall when Eric’s parents start harvesting at the farm, they send an ear of corn to the boys. Over time this has grown into the happiest fall package you could ever hope to receive, chock full of goodies. This year’s was the brightest spot in the busiest week. Eric’s mom knows how much I love little gourds, so she always sends me some. This tiny glass pumpkin is so adorable, and I love it. The yellow part inside the clear glass has the warmest kaleidoscope of yellows and oranges, and I keep spinning it around to get a closer look.
The corn this year still had the husks on and is so pretty! We have it displayed on the table, and we’ve been wondering that it was a 
We also got soybeans this year! They are so adorably fuzzy. I popped one open to find the most perfectly round pale pellets. I think I will have these in a vase for a long time to come. I have only ever seen the beans early in the season, so it’s a treat to hold the ones that are ready for harvest.
One of the sweetest things about these packages is the leaves. I love fall so much, but we don’t exactly get one here in LA, so Eric’s parents always send us pretty leaves and acorns. I smile every time I think of them picking out pretty ones for us. I’ve never been to the farm in the fall, but I am so looking forward to being able to do that one day.
A special addition this year was a collection of gorgeous rocks Eric’s mom gathered on one of her trips this year. Purple is my favorite color, so I especially love these! The historical note and the chance to see some of my favorite handwriting was an added bonus.
Isn’t this amazing? I am always so excited to open this box with Eric each year, and I always feel so loved when we do. Anything that makes the distance feel less is a good thing. And so is chocolate. Which we ate long before I took these pictures. Big thanks to Eric’s parents for sending fall (and chocolate!) our way!
This ice cream is the whole reason why we bought an ice cream maker. Years and years ago, I had a pint of pomegranate chocolate chip ice cream from Haagen Dazs, shipped to me in dry ice! I have friends in high places, or cold places, I guess. This was way back in grad school, and a box full of ice cream was manna from heaven to a girl going through qualifying exams. I fell in love with that ice cream, and then they discontinued it. A travesty! My heart has been pining after it ever since, so I made some of my own.
It is a really simple recipe, using fresh pomegranate juice. We bought a half-gallon jug (for a pretty penny…) at Whole Foods. This saved us the effort of squeezing a ton of seeds, and it saved our kitchen from looking like a crime scene. That juice goes everywhere! Eric used a bit more of the juice to make 
This is my platonic ideal of ice cream: tart and fruity, with a chocolate crunch. Hurray for making dreams come true!
It’s been a hectic couple of weeks around here, but I’ve loved them just the same. Hectic days make you appreciate cups of tea and the bittersweet crunch of an almond as you pop it into your mouth on the run. They make you appreciate a fifteen-minute window for painting and a more indulgent novel-reading session on the couch. They make you appreciate oddly shaped acorns and gnarled agave leaves. They make you appreciate being able to wave at your husband on your way home from the post office. Every time I mail a package at the post office on campus, I walk over to the sidewalk outside Eric’s building and text him, “Look out your window!” His window is actually about five feet off the ground, so it’s pretty hard to look out of, but most times I can see his hand waving back and forth. This day I looked and looked at his window, and I couldn’t find him. Then I looked to the left and realized that he had stepped into the hallway to see me better. I took a picture of him because it was precious, and I want to remember this. You can always count on a scientist to find a more efficient way of doing things, even if it’s just saying hello.
I so loved this month’s 
I used a smaller square to block off the center, and I sprayed the edges with metallic spray ink, which I got for a song at the Depot, and which are my new best friends. I put a little bit of glitter on too, for good measure. I love the marbled look it has. I painted my word with a tiny brush and a new tube of copper paint I bought for Bloom True (my painting class).
It looks aged and opulent at the same time, somehow.
I started writing, with a copper metallic pen, of course, and the words just flew onto the page, in the straightest lines and in the most impeccable penmanship I think my hand has ever produced. Magic.
It’s hard to read in some lights, but if you angle it right, it’s clear.
Here is the second half, in slightly different light. I’ll let the words speak for themselves this month, except to say that this exercise was so well-timed for me, and so much fun. I am looking forward to being able to flip through all of my pages at the end of the year. And starting to think of my word for 2014! At the moment, I have no idea what it will be, but I am sure it will come to me. All I have to do is stay open.
I mentioned on Friday that there’s been some work going on in our building and in our unit. It’s all too boring to go into, but it came as a surprise this week that significant work needed to be done in our home. Boy howdy, has it been a busy week. Everything is fine, but we are definitely in a state of upheaval, and we’ve been doing lots of prep work and cleaning and such, and finally getting to some now-or-never-type cleaning. Like, “Ah, this would be a good time to scrub the baseboards and finally wash the comforters” sort of stuff. I can’t remember the last time I was this tired, and things like this are never convenient, but there isn’t anybody I’d rather be doing this with. This whole thing has definitely brought us even closer than we already were before, and Eric has made me laugh so many times in the past few days. He is a treasure. We spent a very large chunk of the weekend at the laundromat, where I was charmed by these city light designs. I love laundromat themes so much. Perhaps I should do a photo series of them.
There weren’t very many places to sit at the laundromat (but! it was so very spacious, and we never had to wait for a machine!), so I savored every little fifteen-minute break, during which I’d devour more of my book. To give some idea of the scale of things, we’ve been sleeping in our office all week, and most of our stuff is in the living room. It’s kind of like moving. Exhausting. But I have been so buoyed by the breaks and the little pleasures, and that makes me happy. I don’t know when I’ve ever looked forward to coffee and the Sunday paper more. Being this busy has definitely made me more aware of the present moment, and I am grateful for that. This morning before we got up, we were turning our thoughts toward the attack plan for the day. Groggy and bleary-eyed, I smiled and said, “You know, I don’t want to talk about it yet. I just want to enjoy this.” And enjoy it I did.
My dad called this weekend from Baltimore, where he and my mom are spending the weekend, and after we made several jokes about The Wire, we talked about the house situation. (I don’t have a picture of this Facetime conversation, but this is the wifi hotspot they used to call me, seen here in Seattle with my dad’s beautiful smile). He was calling to check on us. I told him the whole story, and I emphasized the funny parts, because you just have to laugh when you can. My dad’s laugh is one of my favorite sounds on earth. It bursts out like an ocean of joy splashing out of a tiny saucepan, unexpectedly and always radiantly. It raised my spirits so much to hear it. My parents can commiserate–they spent the summer re-doing their bedroom, so they are no strangers to living out of plastic bags and sleeping in unusual places. They started calling the room they slept in their summer home, and that just makes me smile every time I think of it. We are in our autumn home, I guess.
The best thing that happened this weekend was the birthday party of my favorite five-year-olds! Vital information: since I read a Star Wars book to the girls on our Oakland trip, we have all taken on a Star Wars identity–the girls are Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, and I am Darth Vader, of course. We were a bit late to the party, but when I got there, the birthday girls threw their arms around me and gleefully yelled, “How’s it going, Dark Vader?!” It was the greatest thing ever. The party was a blast, and we met so many great people. It was the shining star of the weekend, for sure. We all jumped in this bounce house, and Hillary told me that before the party the girls were trotting out the raise-the-roof move we did on the way on the way to Malibu and chanting, “Push the roof up!” I laughed so hard on Saturday and smiled so much I thought my face might break. What a Godsend these sweet friends of mine are. I love them more every day.
Also, this map of California was drawn by the sweetest little boy, and I fell in love with it. I especially love those teeth at the bottom.
After more laundromatting on Sunday, we headed out for a quick dinner, a little treat for all our hard work. All I wanted in the world was a hot tortilla full of refried beans, and I got it. We were talking over dinner about how going through all of our stuff has made us realize how much stuff we have…and how much of we don’t really want or need anymore. There is going to be quite a reckoning of my wardrobe, I think. I realized that I have been just been keeping a bunch of shirts around that don’t fit/are really worn out/I don’t like. But then I never buy new shirts because I tell myself that I have shirts. (Am I the only one who does this? Send me encouragement from your post-purge closets.) My life is different now than it was in Berkeley, and we live in a different climate. A lot of the stuff I have either needs to be stored or passed on, perhaps even some of my first (terrible!) alterations and sewing projects that I have been hanging onto for sentimental value. I hope that paring things down will encourage me to wear the things I like more, the ones that have been hiding behind things that don’t fit (ahem, silk dress that I hemmed way too short). If there’s anything that I really can’t part with, then I’ll save the fabric and make something else out of it. That seems like the wise thing to do. I am trying to pull the threads of this post together, but maybe they should stay loose. By way of summary: busy, busy, busy, lots of revelations, the greatest birthday party ever, major gratitude. Pretty great. Pretty grateful.
I keep doing this thing. That thing is this: I make a detailed blog calendar and then I go out of town a lot and forget what I had scheduled. This is not a complaint. It is more a moment of humor. I like to do a “currently” post on the 15th or so to check in on how the month is going. The 18th is close enough, right?
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