Pictionary

This weekend, Patrick and I sojourned to my hometown for the purposes of appreciating the late-spring splendor of my mom's flower garden, carrying off twenty kilos of Mother Earth News, and perhaps dealing my parents yet another crushing defeat at Pictionary. We have played Pictionary with them many times, from this past Christmas eve all the way back to the first summer we were together. We have always won. Sometimes by a canyon-wide margin, sometimes by a daring little hop. But always, always. Until yesterday.

The thing is, I suppose, that my parents have been married for nearly 38 years. As "in tune" as Patrick and I are with each other, let's just say: my folks have us beat. At times, especially heated Pictionary-playing times, they don't seem to be of separate minds. My Dad draws a moustache, and the first thing my mom blurts out is, "Oh-I-don't-know, Charlie Chaplin?" Bingo. The ballerina looks like a tutu-wearing quarterback, but that doesn't phase them. They can read minds. Each others'. Patrick and I groan and eye-roll, smack our foreheads (me, at least) and watch them cantering around the board while we languish at the seventh square.

Sigh. I suppose our championship reign of Pictionary is over. My mom's onion bread pudding, bubbling with melted swiss cheese did somewhat make up for the flop.

Thank goodness for that.

Pea time

It's pea time. Has been for a few weeks, actually. It's so thrilling to come home from work and greet these gangly guys growing right next to our driveway. They were mere seeds a few months ago. Now they're the teenage boys of the vegetable world-- gawkish and roiling with energy, not quite sure how to inhabit their new and shocking bodies.

Where a more sensible person might plant begonias, I grow pea vines. Such is the plight of the die-hard gardener confined to a city lot.

For two weeks I've been picking almost daily, gathering modest bowlfuls to toss with pasta or or couscous or baked tofu, or else steam briefly and immure in freezer bags. Yes, it's begun, the local-foods-preservation-season. A good one. A busy one. T-minus one week until strawberry jam time, yee doggies.

What I'm Wearing: Cardigan weather

Cardigan: Thrifted

Tank: Thrifted (Plato's Closet)

Skirt: I made it

Shoes: Modcloth

Necklace: The Black Apple

Cardigans, cardigans, what would we do without you? How many shoulders have you warmed? How many rebellious bra straps have you tidily concealed? How many schizophrenic outfits have you neatly pulled together?

We've been getting a reprieve, this week, from oddly warm and precocious summer weather. A week of low-sixties temps is nice on the summer curtains, and nice on the spinach plants, and nice on the cardigan-ed shoulders. Dressing is much more fun when it's cool out.

This necklace is maybe my favorite thing I've bought myself. Miss Emily Martin is a fanciful and creative fiend.

The skirt is one I made last fall, after scoring three years of gorgeous poppy-printed voile at my favorite of fabric stores for $4/yard. It's the mate to the one I wore in this post a few weeks ago, both circle skirts from the same pattern.

The colors are so perfectly tuned-- skewed and tinted just enough away from the ordinary so they sing. Dijon, carmine, white, cream, and dusky gray. Oooo heaven.

Two years

Dear Patrick,

There isn't anyone I'd rather be with unpacking a car at a campsite on a Saturday afternoon. There isn't anyone I'd rather swat mosquitos with.

If I'm going to stumble upon an old cemetery, you are the single person in the world I want next to me.

If I'm going to eat a veggie burger cooked at aforementioned campsite, I want you to have been the chef.

If I see a red eft, I want you to be with me.

If I get dive-bombed by a goshawk, I want you to be with me.

And if I'm waking up early Sunday morning to hour after hour of torrential rain, rain that kept us bored, sticky, and tent-bound until late morning-- I would rather be bored, sticky, and tent-bound with you.

Happy 2nd Anniversary.

Love,

Kristina

The Deal

Are all men allergic to laundry? Patrick is. I'm not sure how I lived with it for so long: the slouching piles of clothes everywhere, the perpetually full hampers and baskets, the fact that he would treat the dryer more like a personal dresser drawer than an appliance: walk downstairs to the dryer every morning to retrieve the day's clothes, come back upstairs, get dressed, repeat.

If it sounds like I'm airing dirty laundry (pun intended), well, maybe I am. Just a little. But what this post is really about is how things have changed for the better. We made a Deal.

It didn't involve spinach, but I'm getting there. I had to include this picture, because, well, would you look at that freakin' spinach? This was what I carried back from the garden last night, to give to Patrick so he could uphold his end of The Deal. I do all the laundry. He cooks dinner once a week. I cannot describe what a blessing this has become.

I'm not sure how we got away from cooking together, really. We used to do it every night. I was ring leader, delegator, kitchen master. He was capable and willing sous chef. Then, something changed. I started canning obsessively, and baking bread, and making cheese, and refusing to put canned beans on the grocery list... and somehow the kitchen became almost completely my domain. Save for an occasional weekend batch of pancakes, Patrick was banished.

And I missed it. Oh, how I missed our nightly teamwork. Usually I was too busy pre-soaking next week's chickpeas to think too much about it, naturally. But now that slumped, mouldering laundry piles have decreed a return to shared kitchen duties, I couldn't be happier.

I pick the recipe. I shoot for something under half an hour, for the sake of patience and growling tummies. I leave the cookbook open on the counter, and retrieve all the necessary ingredients from the garden/canning cellar/chest freezer. Then I stand back, do some laundry, and quietly watch.

Patrick's cooking night is usually Wednesday, and for me it's the most charming night of the week. I wash his socks, he cooks me dinner.

And after all is said and done, we retreat to our upstairs porch and eat something delicious like Middle Eastern Bulghur-Spinach Salad, and enjoy the evening.

It's a pretty sweet deal, if you ask me.

What I'm Wearing: Green and simple

Shirt: Thrifted

Tank: New York & Company

Pants: Eddie Bauer

Hat: Liberty of London for Target

Sandals: Teva

Because I am running out of new and interesting summer skirts and dresses to show you all, I have resorted to capri pants and a button-down shirt. The only real resolution I can draw from this fact is: it is time, high time, to do some summer sewing.

I do at least love the hat.

Saturday scores

Let me set the scene: It was Saturday of Memorial weekend. A ripe time for yard sales. I knew my friend Kat was coming down for a little debauchery, while our respective men were away at afestival. Kat and I are both of good, frugal, resourceful upstate-New-York stock. We know how to re-fashion and re-finish and re-purpose, and most of all, we know how to haggle.

Was there any suitable way to spend the day but at a yard sale? But first, some waffles.

A good, hearty breakfast is important. Especially when perusing an entire table of elephant knick-knacks, and picking the one among the denizens that speaks to you.

The chair is my favorite: $10.

My Dad has one sort of like it: old and oakey, with brass fittings. Do you ever find your present desires shaped by something you loved and lived with 25 years ago? Me, too.

Not pictured: a lovely set of vintage sheets, white with the most delicate sky-blue viney flowers. They were taking a tumble in the dryer while I snapped these pictures.

What has the long weekend brought you so far? Good things, I hope.

Headed down to visit some wonderful friends tomorrow, be back Wednesday!