First, a confession - I'm trying to quit saying "super". I still say "super" all the time instead of "very" and maybe now that I'm over the third-of-your-life milestone, I should hang up "super" along with the "totally" on my wall of retired sayings. Ya think?This spring has been especially beautiful in Boston and also extra high in nasal allergies for me, but no complaints. This peony was blooming in our yard when I came home from work today. Speechless.
My new memoir class at Grub Street has been a true blessing. I am writing down a lot, I am editing a lot, I am thinking about my stories in the car, I am dreaming about them at night. I am reading other memoirs of women who were my age when they wrote. And I love my classmates' work. I am so excited to be part of this group of writers. Each Thursday I also get to visit the Public Garden en route to class which is glorious with tulips and swans this time of year.
My first workshopped story yesterday was a mixed essay of going on and on about how much I love Duckie and Iona from Pretty in Pink among other 80's movies, combined with a short story about my kinship with Jose in high school, and how severely in denial I was that we should "like" each other back then.
Jose and I pooled our funds to buy him a Martin guitar for his birthday, and he has been testing out a lot of eric clapton unplugged and jack johnsonny tunes which fill the house with the most beautiful sound every morning while I'm making coffee and shuffling dogs around. My favorite is he sometimes plays "Jane Says" (I'm done with Sergio ♪). I don't have great music ambitions, but I've offered to learn harmonica and tamborine someday.
I am tooling around with quitting facebook for good.
I have never spent an hour on it that I didn't want to take back, and I especially am angry at the thumb-scrolling phone habit that it started for me.
Instagram I'll keep 'cause it seems to be positive messages and a safe addiction of gorgeous travel photography or cute dogs like Maymo and Maddie.
As far as our Memorial Day weekend, I am proud to say we did a heck of a lot of nothing whatsoever (I did a lot of writing, though), including finally building our fantastic wedding gift of an outdoor fits-two hammock in the yard. It wasn't long before the dogs wanted "in".
No point in fighting it.
A week ago, Kate came to visit and since she's seen a lot of Boston before, we took her to her first Red Sox game, to the island where preppy was invented, Nantucket, and then we took a Beacon Hill secret gardens tour on her last day which was the perfect sunny day excursion.
Lastly...since I forgot to share this last summer!
Jose and I thought it would be fun to recreate a photo of my mom and dad (Judy and Charlie) on their third date approx. 50 years ago (yikes!) when they were sitting by the Harvard boathouse on Memorial Drive. His camera was on a timer then. I had always loved this photo of them. My mom took it very seriously, recreating their clothing and everything.
1964-ish
2014-ish
