Some Seminal Moments

 Some seminal moments of the last week:

-  Seeing my friend Kate for drinks on a patio. More than anyone else, Kate has been an inspiring force for me to do/keep doing/challenge/overcome and succeed in/ what I do. Our interaction over the pandemic has been limited to outside, porch-based, short conversations. Spending 2 hours having drinks with her this week was an unbelievable luxury that quite possibly changed my life.

-  Seeing IN THE HEIGHTS, in a movie theater, with other people. The movie made me cry, but even more so, sitting in a communal space, with others, did so.

-  Coffee with my friend Carolyn at the new coffeeshop at 550 Vandalia. The coffee shop is great, but Carolyn is more fantastic. We picked up right where we left off (we were schedule to have coffee last on March 16, 2020.)

-  Our Friday night pool party. Enough said. The people who need to be there are always the ones who come. They are perhaps more important now than they ever were before.

-  A Saturday full of celebratory graduation parties and birthdays. You people make my heart full.

-  A bonus daughter who shows up with donuts.

-  Celebrating my friend Siobhan's (and Meghan's!) birthdays. We started with axe-throwing at The Lumberjack (I will literally meet you there any time you want — it is SO much fun!). Then a rooftop dinner (#summerofrooftops), and an incredibly decadent dessert. After the group fun ended, Patrick and I headed to The Velveteen Speakeasy, which was even more wonderful than I had hoped, I can hardly wait to go back! Meanwhile, Beatrix spent the night at a birthday sleepover, which I think was equally transformative for her (Let's hear it for full vaccination! Yay science!)





-  Heading out to White Bear Meadery for Father's Day mead today. This poor place is raising money for a new mead hall, and dear god do they need it. It's a tiny storefront wedged between a gun shop and a car repair place. There are a few dumpster-diven tables on some asphalt outside, and a tiny storefront space filled with boxes and both and distribution items and some vaguely Viking decor nailed up on the walls. But the mead was solid, and we had a nice time.


It' hard to get back to whatever life means now. But it is also incredibly rewarding.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Do We Mean When We Talk About Race?

Image
 (sign from a NOLA bar) Probably the world does not need another middle-aged, white, cisgender woman writing about race. But the world DOES need my daughter's take on it, and she doesn't blog, so here I am. When we first knew we were having a girl, we knew she would have blue eyes, because mine are blue-grey and Patrick's are blue-green. The genetics don't vary much on that one. Other than that, we thought, with dominant genes and some luck, that she might look like her Aunt Patrice. Which she actually does. Except for the tiny little issue that somehow my Nordic genes totally went dominant rogue and she turned out to be blonde and very light skinned. (age 1.5 in the Scow family christening dress) So since she's been old enough to communicate, she's had people confused about her racial identity. She's been told she checked the wrong box on forms, she's had teachers deny her ancestry, she's had government officials question her Global Entry, she's
Read more

New Year's Eve 2023

Image
I did not want to be laying in bed, wearing a fleece onesie and still shivering, while my husband and daughter headed out to the several wonderful NYE parties we have planned. I have a beautiful new dress that I got in Duluth for tonight, and was looking forward to the collection of friends we would be seeing. Our friend Whitney in particular is throwing the last party at her B and B, and it's breaking my heart not to go. But I feel logey and coughy, and more to the point, I have a low fever, and I don't want to mess around with possibly getting anyone sick. I'm still holding out hope that I'll miraculously feel better and the fever was a mistaken reading, but I doubt that. And I feel lucky to have 3 sets of people who want me in their lives tonight and who I don't want to get sick. As our yoga teacher Viv says, it's not like a page turns and everything is magic. You get some things that are good, and some that are not, and life is living in the middle. -- In 20
Read more

Choosing Happy

Image
This post is brought to you by a few thoughts from yesterday: First and foremost, Patrick's new book that he wrote for Beatrix for her sixteenth birthday. Available for a hot second before we leave for spring break tomorrow. The response of someone he knows on the internet, who wrote yesterday that he had decided years ago that he would never be happy (and reading his posts, he seems to be right.). It was one of the saddest things I've encountered in a long time. A friend's social media post, in which she discusses another person's comment of " I really think a sizable proportion of the population has become addicted to being angry" with the sage response of " I think a lot of them are doing it because it's more enjoyable to be angry than to be depressed." A nd we finally finished watching this season's Fargo last night. I won't give any spoilers, but it's extremely on theme with this post. So this is the deal. There's a lot on
Read more