Well Hello

It’s, uh, been a while. Anyone still out there? Is this thing on? Bueller? (Sorry.)

So I haven’t written here in more than a year. That feels strange. I started this blog back in 2005, when I barely knew what blogs were, and ever since then it’s been a constant companion, a small but semi-permanent recording of my life in real time, patches and pieces and recipes and photos, never regularly updated but always present. Always something to return to.

And so here I am! Returning! The last year and a bit has been wild. I moved to the Hudson Valley for a job. A phenomenal but an intense job. It consumed me and all my hours and most of my life. I loved it. But now I’m returning to Boston for another job, one that I’m likewise wildly excited about. I missed Boston, and am happy to be coming home.

What else. I wrote a bit. I read as much as I could. I edited a lot. I made new friends and reconnected with old. I spent a lot of time flying to Texas, trying to make a long distance relationship work. I cooked only a little, but drank, well, like a journalist. I ran on trails in the woods, early in the fog-ridden mornings, and discovered that if I forced myself to both sign up and pay for the evening hot yoga class before noon, I might actually attend. I survived a breakup, mainly by watching Jane Austin-inspired movies on my laptop over and over for a month.

Many weekends I took the Amtrak from my tiny upstate town to NYC, hurtling along the Hudson River to attend parties and book readings and dinners with my brother, Ben, perched at the bar of one funky restaurant or another downtown. Sometimes I went to the city just for the particular thrill that comes with being anonymous.

When I finished my last day of work, I went to Maine for a week by myself. I wanted the scent of the ocean and the sound of crickets at night to rid my brain of the static built up over the last year.

After four days alone, I was happy to spend time with my friends Steph and Kathy, both who live nearby. On that Thursday night Steph and I shared some of the best deviled eggs I’ve tasted at The Black Birch in Kittery. On that Friday night, Kathy cooked. We drank rosé and walked around her sweeping garden, all tomatoes and potatoes and asparagus fronds. She grilled a huge pan of paella and we ate it in the yard as the sun went down. Later that night we listened to a New Orleans-style brass band in a one-room theater space in town, and I sat in the back and tapped my foot and watched an older, white-haired man dance magnificently in the center of the room, alone.