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even death is beautiful in Ireland
Just around this time last year, my darling daughter Katie (who was born Katherine Kennedy Galloway, such a pretty green-eyed Irish girl) and I went to Ireland together. It was her first trip out of the country, and she’d always wanted to see Ireland so I felt incredibly lucky to have the chance to take her. I was attending an academic conference in Dublin, so we went several days early, and stayed in a gorgeously wonderful little B&B in Lough Gur, under the eagle-eye care of a marvelous woman named Bridget. After traveling around for those pre-conference days, Katie explored Dublin while I conferenced at Trinity University.
Ireland is even more beautiful than people say it is. I think it must be one of the most beautiful places on earth. Thanks to Pip for her comment in the previous post, mentioning Galway. It caused me to look back at my flickr set:
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Well, anyway, we’ll be flying over the North Pole when we go to Laos and Cambodia in the fall. Want to see? I’m so excited!
That leg will be 15 hours, following a Great Circle, then we’ll change planes and fly 3 hours to Phnom Penh. We’re flying Cathay Pacific, which may well be a great airline, but it’s not Singapore Airlines, which is the airline we flew to Vietnam. But I don’t care! It’ll be my 2nd flight over the North Pole, I am a very very lucky girl. Here are the specifics, once we’re there:
I just finished watching The Big Sleep and spinning – what a nice morning! I slept in so late – 9:30! – and wish the day weren’t half over, but what to do. You need a lazy day now and then, right? Now I think I’ll make some bread, my favorite ciabatta recipe, and then do some knitting, and maybe a little more movie watching. One of my goals is to see all the AFI’s top 100 films, so there’s an abundance waiting for me. I hope you’re having such a lovely Sunday too!
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This was the newest post on Dropped Stitches, and it just caught me at the right moment to think about the question myself. What makes me happy?
great big blue skies full of mountains of white clouds
the smell of bread baking
certain songs that make me so happy i cry. and they’re often unexpected, like the ending of Say You’ll Be There, by the Spice Girls. (SPICE GIRLS!!! really? I’m 51 years old with way too much education!)
that shift in the light and air when fall has really arrived
brownies
my kids’ voices and hands, any time
my husband’s eyes when he looks at me with love
the plane lifting off the ground
the smell that means i’m home
those moments when i feel peace inside myself
You play along, too! It’ll make you feel good.
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Places on my list of ‘where to go’ – outside the US. Stuff that’s red, I’ve completed (and you can click to see the blog). Stuff that’s blue, I’ve started.
- India
- Vietnam
- Machu Picchu, Cusco, and Lake Titicaca
- Morocco
- Senegal
- Laos
- Croatia
- Spain
- Greece
- Turkey
- Mongolia
- Southern China
- New Zealand
- Prague
- Scandinavia
- Paris (really want to go with my sweet husband)
- Tuscany, Rome, Florence, Venice
- Switzerland
- Southern France
- Cuba
- Argentina
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First, this is a reservation. An actual, already-booked reservation. Here’s the legend:- JFK = JFK airport in New York
- HKG = Hong Kong
- PNH = Phnom Penh, in CAMBODIA
We’ll be going to Vientiane and Luang Prabang in Laos; Phnom Penh and Siem Reap and Kep in Cambodia, and of course, Hong Kong as a transfer point. The blog is set up, and I’ll add information there as the itinerary firms up. For now, what I know for sure is that I’ll be spending Thanksgiving in Laos or Cambodia. Isn’t that amazing?
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Yep – next Thursday is our wedding anniversary, but we’re beginning the celebration in about an hour. We’re heading upstate, to a little hamlet in the Catskills called Phoenicia. We love the area, and always eat at a great little restaurant called Brio’s. In fact, we celebrated my birthday there last November, and I could’ve just linked to that post but OH YEAH my blog died. Crashed. Burned. I lost all those old posts. Which just means I have a new opportunity to post about it again!
We’ll stay in the same place we stayed in last November, eat at the same place we always eat, hike around in the woods as we always do, piddle around Woodstock as we always do, and just enjoy each other’s company. As we always do. Happy anniversary to us! Photos to come.
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I had a wonderful weekend – got a lot done on the wedding dress (but not too much, since Marnie is coming for a fitting at the beginning of May), had some great food, got outside a bit, and did a bit of knitting on my husband’s blanket:
love the pattern
I do love the pattern – Totally Autumn, by Anne Hanson – it’s great fun to knit, and the scrunchy dimensionality of it is fun to touch. The yarn, though, not as much. I’m using Cascade 220 for the first time, and finding it a bit hard. Ravelry lists it as the most popular yarn, and I got it on a great sale at Webs, but it’s not soft, and the hand is a bit heavy at this point. We’ll see how it goes; it’ll be just fine for what it is, but I’m not sure I’d use this yarn for anything that needed to go against my skin.
we had joy we had fun, we had blanket in the sun
And in other news, we may just be taking an exciting trip in September. We’re not sure yet, there are some impending changes in our lives that make it a little uncertain, but if we do go, here’s the masthead for that blog:
We really did love Vietnam, so much, and we’ve heard that Laos is amazing. I hope I hope I hope I hope I hope……….
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……and, we’re back. Roatan was just wonderful – even better than last year, in many ways. We weren’t able to be online with any ease, so I just put up one giant post on the Roatan blog, with a flickr slideshow. It was great to be there, and kind of awful to be facing work tomorrow. I only have 235 emails, so it could definitely be worse, but I can’t bear to look at them today. Tomorrow will be soon enough.
I did a lot of knitting on vacation, partly because I had a dreadful cold the first couple of days, and there was an amazing storm for a couple of days. I finished the holey socks, and am ~75% finished with the other pair:
side view of the holey socks
holey socks, accompli!
- Pattern: Holes in my socks! By Nicole Okun
- Yarn: Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock Multi (Colorway: Beverly 209) – 2 skeins were more than enough
side view of the monkeys
looking down on the monkeys
I’m going to try to knock out the rest of sock #2 and get them both out in the mail to Katie asap, then I need to return all my knitting time to the wedding shawl.
While we were gone, spring seems to have arrived in full force here in Manhattan! It’s sunny and gorgeous outdoors, and people seem refreshed. Today is the post-vacation normalizing for us – piles of laundry, straightening up and putting everything away, getting ready for the week.
One thing that makes it better, coming home from vacation, is that we always start planning the next one. Our current idea is to go to Laos, with a trip to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat and maybe a side journey into Thailand, avoiding Bangkok if at all possible. Or to the degree possible, anyway. The child sex trade there is too horrifying to bear, and I don’t want to give a penny to the country that supports it. Every country supports horrors of one kind or another, and there’s little gradation between things at that far end of the spectrum, but that one in particular is unbearable for me. So we’re focusing on Laos, and trying to figure out how best to get there at a reasonable price. We loved Vietnam so much, and especially enjoyed Hanoi, so we may just make a stop there, too. Fun fun fun, anticipating and planning. It makes the coming home a bit easier.
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knitting in croatia
If you met me, you’d see a tall 51-year old woman with a big smile and bad posture. You’d hear my deep Texas accent, which I can’t seem to hide even for delicate New Yorkers’ ears, no matter how hard I try. You’d also hear about all the things I love – my dear husband and our many travels; my oldest daughter and her husband, who live in Austin; my 2nd daughter and her husband, who live in Chicago; my son who lives here in Manhattan and who is a dashing man about town; and my youngest daughter, who is a sophomore in college, far away in Texas. You’d hear about social psychology, since I have a PhD in the subject and until very recently, acquired books in social psychology for a famous university press, the one that published the very first book. Now, I am a writer and editorial consultant, and I assist publishers with market research for online product development.
You’d also hear – of course – about all the creative things I love to do, and have been doing since I was five years old. I started embroidering pillowcases during play periods in pre-school, and graduated to crochet when my Aunt Meecie (Aint Meecie, if you’re from the south) taught me how to chain stitch. I’d chain stitch my way through skein after skein of acrylic yarn, always begging my grandfather Big Daddy to run to Ben Franklin’s for more yarn. He’d grumble, then put in his teeth and make a yarn run. Gradually my handwork and creative outlets became more sophisticated, and I branched out: handwork such as knitting, quilting, spinning, weaving, lacemaking, a bit of crocheting, and sewing; photography; and baking.
Or we could talk about books! I’m always up for a discussion about any books by Rushdie, or Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, anyone? anyone? Bueller?), or Victor Hugo, or Vonnegut, or Robert Solomon, or Moby Dick, or poems by Yeats or Heaney or Milosz. Lots more – I love to read. Or we could talk about movies – I tend not to find blockbusters very interesting, but can talk til the cows come home about “littler” movies.
my other blog
Food is always an easy subject to talk about, since most people like it. My husband and I keep a food blog called Luscious – check it out! I love to bake, though when my kids were at home, I cooked big dinners every night. Now, I’m just the baker, and baking bread is one of my weekly activities, most weeks. See? I haven’t met a recipe I didn’t love to bake. My husband does the cooking for us, and he’s a wonderful natural cook, no recipes for that guy. He has a fantastic taste imagination, and daydreams about what to make us for dinner.
I also really love art of all kinds, especially the art of a young printmaker and book artist based in Chicago whose work can be found here. Check her out, and buy something!
And finally, just so you don’t think I’m all fancy Manhattan-like, my secret shames include America’s Funniest Home Videos, Poptarts, and Cap’n Crunch. I can’t stop laughing at the first one, and could eat the last two until the end of my days.
I adore your comments, and try to answer every single one. But if you want to talk off-line (well, off-blog-line anyway), feel free to email me; I also have a little business making mastheads for blogs and websites, so you can write me about that too! The icon below is a clickable link to my email address:
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