From the category archives:
I’ve started traveling with a few bags of DeTox tea; between eating out more and flying somehow I always retain water when I travel and it shows in vacation photos. A cup of this tea every other day and I looked great in all our photos this trip.
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Maybe the best part of our recent beach trip was that it drove me to find a great bathing suit; it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I think bathing suit technology (is that even a thing?) has gotten much better since my 20s or I’ve become more forgiving of myself now that I’m in my 30s. Or maybe its a little bit of both. Anyway, for years I’ve had a dutiful black one piece bathing suit that lurked in my dresser at home, and then lurked in the bottom of my weekend bag on our trips to Cape Cod only to never be worn, trip after trip. So, I decided that I’m done with black bathing suits. Life is just too short! I bought a navy MiracleSuit from Bloomingdales online and it lives up to its name. I highly highly recommend!
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Tim, Alex and I took a last minute trip to the Caribbean for a few days; blue water; white sand; roosters crowing and goats off in the distant mountains. Sitting in the sun, I felt truly warm for the first time in a long time.
I had already been doing a little summer wardrobe shopping and used the trip as an excuse to buy all my summer clothes in one go. I’d read Joanna’s post on packing in a color scheme and you know what — it really worked! I ended up packing blue, white and neon and it was so easy to mix and match the pieces. Ashley called when I was in a final packing panic and reminded me that no matter what you bring on a trip you usually settle into a vacation uniform by the second day, which is so true. I packed more than this but these are the pieces I ended up wearing again and again. The jeans were the hit of the trip; $45 from Lands End (and fit surprisingly similarly to the $160 Joe’s Jeans I tried on at Anthro!). PS up later in the week … all about bathing suits and sunblock.
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I grew up in a New England family where idleness was never part of the equation; my father writes five pages a day, day in and day out. My mother taught year round for most of my childhood; my sister routinely works an entire month without a single day off. As a family we never really went on vacation; we didn’t have the money when I was a child and later, when things were more stable, I think my parents had lost the taste for it. So you can imagine that as an adult, I don’t know what to do with myself when on vacation. So when Tim hatched a last minute getaway for us to Antigua I secretly had my doubts. But you know, as I’ve sat still for a few days and let myself get bored, and then relaxed (floating in the ocean as seen above), decisions I’ve been thinking about for months became clear without any real discussion or angst. Outside our routine and nyc busyness, things were suddenly illuminated in ways I couldn’t have anticipated (a good reminder, I guess, to stay open to new experiences).
PS: My friend Nancy recently posted this TED talk by Stefan Sagmeister. He talks about how every seven years he takes a full year off. Of course he can do that because he runs his own design firm, but, still, I think there is a lesson in his talk for all of us, even if a full year off isn’t possible. (I think to myself — what can I do now so that it could be possible one day?)
Tomorrow I’ll post all about my “vacation uniform” …
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You wouldn’t be alone in thinking we’d gone nuts for taking a weekend getaway trip to Minneapolis in February. As we boarded the plane, cranky toddler in tow, Tim and I looked at each other, like, what happened to our beach vacation!?!?
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The end of summer is always heralded by the meteor showers called the Perseids (Aug 13th this year). Growing up, we’d troop out to the back yard around midnight with our sleeping bags and watch the show. There was something so intensely comforting about watching the universe fly by with my parents and sister safe and warm by my side. While in the mountains my mother, father and I did a little star gazing but with the help of an amazing Droid app — Google Sky Map. I’m probably the last person to know about it — but it is pretty spectacular. You hold your phone to the sky and using GPS coordinates your phone tells you what the constellations are.
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We’re packing up (or rather, Tim is packing for all of us while I type this post) for a fourth of july weekend on Cape Cod with Tim’s family. There will be dogs, sand, a collective fascination with Alex, at least one meal at Grumpy’s and sadly, probably a fair amount of traffic (while sitting in the Bourne Bridge traffic we’ll be listening to our (don’t judge) Katy Perry channel on Pandora).
Both images from That Kind Of Women (via Ditte Isager and Wavy Meyers).
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I’m in Boston for a few days, doing research at Historic New England’s photographic archive. I haven’t been back to Boston in over five years (we visit family outside of Boston all the time, but, its different to be in the city, alone). I lived on West Cedar Street in Beacon Hill when I first lived in Boston (the building above with the tree in front). My apartment was the second floor unit. It is amazing what is the same (great Thai food at the King and I on Charles Street (order the Tofu Noodle!), the same check out lady at the CVS around the corner, the Home Style laundromat).
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This morning Alex cut himself for the first time in his two year old life and was inconsolable. Parenting an inconsolable toddler is _______. Having explain what pain is and that it will go away to a toddler who lives almost completely in the present moment. The hardest part for me is that he now knows he can experience pain (!!). On the one hand, simply part of growing up and on the other, heart-wrenching. He kept taking the bandaid off and touching his cut; which of course made the pain worse. What finally shifted the energy of the morning was something so simple; I started putting bandaids on places where he wasn’t hurt; first on both his big toes (giggles) then across all his toes (more giggles) and finally all over his feet (still more giggles). So when I came across this projet nid de poule: knitted, colorful patterns filling potholes in the streets of Paris (in 2009), I inexplicably felt that there was some similar impulse at work; to fix something that was broken or at least distract us. Found on Jumelle’s Tumblr and originally from juliana santacruz herrera .
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We drove out to Long Island on Saturday and went to the beach for the day. Alex romped in the sand and Tim and I soaked up some sun. (We had burgers here and blueberry peach crumb pie here.)
I love the stony beaches of Long Island. Sea stones and their almost unimaginable smoothness always make me think of this poem by P.K. Dufault:
PS I had to look up Hesperides.
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The best vacations are one when you come back feeling more alive and our trip to LA left us feeling that way. It is a great city, no surprise there. We stayed in an amazing bed and breakfast in Santa Monica that I highly highly recommend, The Channel Road Inn. I joined Yelp, so you can see everywhere we ate here. This was my favorite meal.
PS I loved carrying Alex in my ring sling.
PPS I miss LA!
NB: The Inn has a great “stay one night, get a night free” promotion that runs from October to March. We’ll be back next March.
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We’re headed to Los Angeles next week for a low key vacation. I just want to eat good food and explore the city since I’ve never been before. On my list: Tavern for breakfast and Bake Lab for sweets! Found via Happy Lady Eats. Also of interest: the Craft and Folk Art Museum.
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