Weekly recap of my ritual of existence in this liminal space called life. (See here for more info.)
- Weather
Chillier yet, with the average high of 66.4°F, ranging from 74.7°F to 50.7°F. Lows averaged 47.3°F, with the lowest low 41.9°F and all the rest in the 40°Fs except overnight on Thursday 58.1°F. We received 1.89 inches of rain. Still abnormally dry as of Tuesday.
- Beginnings/Firsts
My youngest sister and her family moved to a new house on Saturday!
- Wild Things (Flora, Fauna, Fungi) in addition to others elsewhere in this post
probably some of the last monarch caterpillars in the garden
🐛🐛🐛
birds heard by Merlin this week in the garden and at the lake
- Wandering
Wandered to Baltimore and Rehoboth Beach on Friday (through next week) to hang out with college friends and one of my sisters. At home, my husband and I walked around the lake on Tuesday and on a woodsy/marshy trail on Wed. I also walked in town on Mon., Wed., Thurs., and Fri., and in Boston a bit on Saturday, then on the beach and in town at Rehoboth on Sunday.
in town
lake
trail
Boston
train station/travel
Baltimore and on the road to the beach
Rehoboth Beach (lots more in next week’s edition!)
- Curiosity & Discoveries
at Fresh Market in Rehoboth — 💕
this green stink bug camouflaged almost perfectly on a hydrangea leaf!
- Creating
I made another batch of pesto using basil from the raised bed and the regular veggie garden, on Tuesday.
- Repairing and Maintaining the human(s), the cat, and the cars
Human: I worked out four times (4 hours) this week, using the Body Electric streaming program. I walked more than 10,000 steps on six days, more than 13,000 steps on three days, with a high step count day on Monday of 16,392. I meditated on only four days (before my trip), totalling 2 hours 10 mins. I’m spending a week with some of my most favourite people!
Cat: The cat started using the 2nd litter box in the guest room bath on Monday, and again on Sunday. It’s been there for about 7 years, we clean it out periodically to keep the litter fresh, but he’s only used it maybe once in all that time. What up, cat?
Cat photo shoot in the sunny spot on Saturday morning before I left:
Cars: The BMW went to the shop on Thursday to replace the A/C, thermostat, and some hoses. Back next week.
- Nesting
Cleaning/Maintaining: I ran two loads of clothes laundry this week, on Tues. and Thursday, and I watered the houseplants twice, on Mon. and Thurs. My husband patched a small rip in my pants on Wed.
Admin/Financial: I backed up the laptop on Monday and Saturday. I cancelled my trial Boston Globe subscription on Tues. before it renews at a much higher rate.
Food: We continued eating leftover Chinese food on Monday (+ grilled shishito peppers with homemade garlic aioli), and my husband had leftover Chinese on Tuesday while I had gemelli pasta with pesto and shrimp, and we both had corn in the cob + cukes, peppers, and tomatoes with that aioli. On Wed. we ate out at a restaurant in a lake harbor — I had the grilled trout with piccata sauce, chard, and fingerling potatoes, my husband had crab-stuffed flounder and same sides. He finished his Chinese leftovers on Thursday and I finished my gemelli pasta, and we had corn on the cob and the same raw veggies as the night before but with humus. I don’t know what we had on Friday but we went to a wine tasting around 5 and had some light snacks with it. I was away on Sat. and Sun; Saturday I ate on the train, a delicious burrata and hazelnut pesto ravioli, roll, and the tiniest broccolini I’ve ever seen. Sunday we didn’t actually have dinner at the beach, just snacks after a late lunch outside at a Mexican restaurant (that wasn’t that good) on the way to the beach.
- Garden
I spent about 2 hours in the garden this week, weeding the wild front bed, pinching off more tomato stems, and harvesting (see below on that).
garden pics this week
- Sleeping & Dreaming
This week I slept an average of 7 hours 34 mins per night, with a weekly total of 13 hours 21 mins REM sleep and 7 hours 46 mins deep sleep. My (Samsung Fit 3) sleep scores ranged from 82-92, averaging 88.3. I had some nights & mornings of vivid dreams, especially from Monday to Tues. and Thurs. to Friday.
- Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching
Reading
BOOKS: This week I finished Dave Eggers’ Contrapposto (2026), a novel about two people growing up together, and apart, over about 65 years, as they cross paths in the art world in the U.S. and abroad, their face-to-face lives together lived obliquely, as perhaps the title suggests. It’s divided into seven sections that follow each other chronologically and it’s told entirely from Cricket’s point of view. Cricket and Olympia meet when he’s nine, a budding artist living with his mother and an abusive stepfather in Indiana. From the start and throughout the entire book, Olympia is the person Cricket most desires and Cricket is the person Olympia uses as her safe haven and her pure muse. It’s tempting to describe their on-again, off-again relationship (almost entirely at Olympia’s whim) as abusive — but Cricket, once he’s past his teenage years, isn’t love-blind, and still he affirms endlessly that he wants whatever time and attention Olympia gives him, even though Olympia, who seems supremely confident but who has an inability to sit still and a destructive need for risk when it comes to men and drugs/drink, disappoints him again and again with her poor choices; she calls him to her when she needs him (sometimes with a job offer), she’s never around for long, she usually has a romantic partner in tow (though she’s jealous of any woman Cricket interacts with even superficially — which pleases him), and she amuses herself at his expense. I guess it’s a can’t-live-with-you, can’t-live-without-you relationship for both of them. When they’re actually together, they spend about half the time having volcanic sex and the other half musing about what art is, what it isn’t, whether copied art is art, is it acceptable or not for an artist to use their skills primarily to make money, and so on. I appreciate the lifetime arc of this story and felt excited by some of the conversations about art: what makes someone an artist, the art market and the contrived way people talk about art or explain their art, arts vs. crafts and trades, what brings us happiness or contentment in work and life, what gives life meaning, aging in our scarred bodies, etc. The story holds together beautifully, satisfyingly, and the writing is a pleasure to read, with a couple of caveats: The second half engaged me much more than the first — I almost gave up after the first three sections; and while embodiment (its presence or absence) is at the center of this novel — e.g., the detail about the life drawing classes and the sketches included in the book, the sex, the several instances of bodily damage, the title itself, et al. — at a few times I became aware of both protagonists as less than fully embodied people, Olympia a colourful swirling blur and Cricket almost invisible, a mere reflection.
Here’s an excerpt that gives a flavour of the novel:
OTHER
Kind of interesting … “When Middle Age Actually Starts: Trying to attach some numbers to a fuzzy phase of life,” by Julie Beck in The Atlantic (link should be gifted), from which “Because American culture has such a negative view of what it means to be “old” — all aches and pains and forgetting where you put the car keys — if someone is aging and feeling good, they may think I can’t possibly be old, because I can do everything I want to do, Lachman said. And if they don’t feel old, they may continue to identify as middle-aged well into their 60s and beyond.”
Listening
a few Shazam’d songs this week
- Connections & Community
Local Support: My husband volunteered at a museum for 10 hours this week, and he repaired one of their wooden geese.
On Monday I bought four corn on the cob, one summer squash, and three Asian pears from the local farmstand. We also bought a couple of items at the local (independent) drug store. I had a long lunch with a friend at a local café/bakery on Wednesday, and I bought a couple treats there on Thursday. My husband and I had dinner at a localish restaurant in the harbor on Wednesday night, and we returned on Friday evening to the harbor for a wine-tasting at a cellar/pantry there (and bought a bottle of wine and some cheese). My friends and I ate at a local independent Mexican restaurant in Milton, DE on Sunday afternoon.
Relationships: Gave some friends and neighbours tomatoes this week (ED, SS&BT) and my husband got a bag of peaches from our neighbour/friend (LD). Chatted with a friend (ND) and her son (SS) for 20 mins at her house on Monday. Sent a card on Monday to my niece for her birthday and to my sister on Friday congratulating her on their new house. Had a 2.5-hour lunch with a friend (RL) on Wednesday. Salon met on Friday with six of us for two hours. On Sat. night I started almost a week of spending time with my college friends (RVN&ChN) in Baltimore and at Rehoboth beach, and a few days with one of my sisters at the beach. FUN!
- Endings
Endings: The ficus, which has spent its glorious summer outside, came in this week for the season, with low temps dipping down to 40°F.
Harvests: About 30 sweet millions tomatoes, 8 Matt’s wild cherry tomatoes, a few Amish paste tomatoes, 4 cucumbers, some wild Concord grapes, and more than 4 cups of basil (for pesto). A friend came over for two Amish pastes.
- All This Useless Beauty
I love the way Asian pears smell & taste (perfume — light, fragrant, enticing) and look
sun in the pineapple brandy coleus
the more fader, the more better
Leave a Reply