Would you like a piece of kate?

Hi interwebs.  It’s been a while, huh?  You wanna know why? 

I’ve been living my future life.

Wait, you don’t do this?

You don’t check out of all contemporary social responsibilities and spend endless hours searching for your dream house, and the fabric you would sew your future curtains for it with?

You don’t anguish over whether or not your future cute red barn should harbor goats, or piglets, or both?

You don’t find it totally reasonable to spend a third of your long weekend driving to and from a town you know nothing about, in a state you’ve never been to, to see if this is the place you should plant dahlias, start a baked-goods-heavy farm stand, become the cross country coach of the local high school, and have many babies?

Well, I do.  I did!  

Here are some photos.  

This is the first amazingly beautiful, and shockingly affordable house we looked at.  It had a wrap around sun porch and an attached barn!!

It’s there! Right through that white door. A multilevel, multifunctional, totally adorable barn.

You see?

Do you?

And that little ladder, that goes through that little square, goes into that room with the door. But there are all these other levels:

Like this one: Where J’s favorite part of the house was. (The place where someone (awesome) wrote “Led Zep Rules). Keep in mind there were these other parts too:

This mudroom, with that totally classic back staircase.

This chicken coop and compost area.

Did I mention the coop was beautifully intact and had a secret door that you raised with a pulley system?

And every room was this bright, and warm, and wide plank floored? So yeah… this one was amazing. There there was this other gem too—for which I will let the pictures do the talking:

oh hai doggy!

homina, homina, homina—aooouuuuuuga!

THIS HOUSE. On 20 acres.

With this across the street. I could conclude this post with my comments and concerns about the job market/distance from family/ blah blahdiness that would take away from the magicalness of the place. But. let’s just leave off wondering about what delicious things we would cook in that hot bitch of an oven together after a long day of sea kayaking, brushing baby goats, and laying on the cushy cushy moss of Maine’s forest floors. Shall we?

Things that made me sad on my way to work today:

1.  Wee squirrell trying with all its might to cross the busy street.

Things that made me happy on my way to work today:

1.  Man in bright orange beanie playing guitar as he walked down the street.

2.  Woman in bright yellow flats walking, unknowingly, to the beat of the music on the radio in my car.

So happiness won out.  Good, good.

The downside to biking to work:

1.  No splash guard wet butt crack area blues.

The upside to biking to work:

1.  Saving $20 a week on gas.

2. Reducing my carbon output by 106.45 lbs a week.

3. View of the early morning sky over Pulaski Bridge.

4.  Feeling BOSS.

5.  Inexplicable urge to “meep meep!” like the road runner when pedestrians step into bike lane.

6.  No BQE!

7.  No urges to muder people!

8.  No BQE!!!!!!!!!

Hi!  

Do you know what tastes better than most other things?  Garden fresh vegetables.  Because, there is this ownership-of-deliciousness that can not be matched by any other food than when you have grown a piece of food from a wee seed.

Fresh pasta is pretty good.  But, did you grind the wheat into flour?  Did you take care of it over the course of a few months?  Did you design a pretty little home for your wheat and nurture it until you mercilessly pulverized it into something you could shape into fruity little bow ties?

If you did…SHIT that must have been some damn good pasta!

Personally, I just grew some vegetables.  Correction “we.”  I painted the used pickle buckets from the beer hall to grow the seeds in.  And I helped shovel many loads of compost from the recycling center into the back of my Subaru on a hot, sweaty, smelly day.  And I smacked Yoshi’s butt when I snuck up on him nom-noming on cherry tomatoes.  And I helped bring those babies indoors when a bitch of a storm threatened to smush them into ketchup and babaganush.  

So I didn’t grow them entirely…But, anyway, I ate them.

And listen to this.  Watch out I’m about to go all HIPPIE on you.

Listen to the amount of love that went into the meal we had last night.

It was squiggly pasta with tomato sauce and fried eggplant… when I say that you’re like, “what of it?”

The sauce contained tomatoes that we grew on our rooftop in Queens; leeks grown at my htb’s house in the town we both grew up in; Oregano grown by our close friends, outside of their basement apartment in Brooklyn; and the eggplant was grown from seeds purchased outside of a small town upstate, where I dream to one day own a small farm.

Now, THAT IS a special meal.  It was a meal that made me happy and satisfied on many levels.  I have this far fetched idea that EVERY meal could be like that meal, one day.  

That day will be the same day I wake up to run with my dog in the morning, and do all my laundries, and call my grandmother, and not buy anything at all.

But, today I housed a Jr. Whopper with cheese and a medium fry while driving 80 mph on the LIE.  So, today’s not the day.

BALANCE Kate.  You’re getting there.

Um, hi… anyone who is reading this.  I’m feeling sheepish.  Sheepish in the “I have no sassy excuse for not writing an entry in over a month (2 months?) kind of sheepishly sheepy sheep way.

You see, I want to write.  It let’s me express myself creatively whilst touching base with a few friends who read and a few random strangers.

But, when you haven’t done it in a while, you start to feel awkward about doing it again.

Like when I PROMISE my Nana Kay that I’ll visit her every Sunday because “I live in Queens now and it’s SO EASY!”  And then one Sunday goes by where you (read:I) are so hungover you can’t get out of bed until 5pm?  And then the next Sunday you go out east and turn your cell phone off for the entirety of the day because you don’t want to be in touch with anyone, ever?  And then the next Sunday rolls around and you hope that your Nana Kay has developed Alzheimer’s (j/k knock on wood!!!) but you call your grandmother and she is still able to recall your promise (not to mention what she had for breakfast on July 23rd, 1937) and is wondering where the fuck you’ve been?   Yeah.  It’s like that!

And so it’s not that I haven’t had quirky life experiences, or poignant thoughts, or eaten delicious dishes, or heard good music lately. 

So, in theory I could tell you about the earthquake several weeks ago and the resulting  conversation that I had with my friend about how bizerko the internet would have gone if facebook existed when 9/11 happened.  That would’ve been an interesting thing to write about.

I could also tell you about how just a few days after the anniversary of 9/11 I was moved to tears thinking about the ironic uniqueness of human altruism when I heard an NPR segment about a group of retirees that have offered to go back to work at the fukushima plant in Japan to spare the young men and women who are working there now the risk of radiation poisoning.

I could give you the recipe for a meal I prepared a few days ago that my husband-to-be said he liked because, “It tastes squishy.”

Or I could share a live recording of Umphrey’s McGee covering TLC’s “Don’t Go Chasin’ Waterfalls” from a show I went to last weekend.

BUT, you know what strangers who have stumbled upon my little space of interwebs?  I’m not gonna tell you all about those things, because their time has passed.  

Instead I am going to complain about my lack of commitment to most things.

Waking up and running with my dog in the mornings?  FAILED.

Vegetarianism?  Turkey sandwich for lunch.

Laundry on a regular basis?  I’ve gone commando 3 days this week.  It’s Wednesday.

Not buying stupid shit?  $68 on paper lanterns, place mats, incense, and god knows what else at a chinese novelty store in soho yesterday.

This blog?  WE ALL SEE HOW THAT’S BEEN GOING!

So, do you get what I’m saying here?  I can’t commit to writing a blog on a regular basis.  It’s too hard.  It’s to COMMITTAL.  

But, Ima try harder (amongst other things (ahem, that shit I listed up there that I failed at.)

So, don’t give up on me yet.  Nana Kay didn’t.

Oh, hi friends who read my blog!  Surprise!  Here I am!  So, as you can see- this hasn’t exactly been/probably won’t be a “daily” dose of me.  

HERE’S A TISSUE FOR YOUR TEARS.

As it turns out, I have been happily active, with less time to diary about my woes, or joyous moments.  SORRY COMPUTER, get a face, or a soul, and then I’ll forever tell you my secrets.

But, since I am currently sitting in front of my be-stickered laptop with a beer and a burger in my belly… with no intention of getting up and being “active” for another hour or so…I’ll go ahead and share with you some of the stuff I’ve been up to.

Without further ado, Thankful Thursdays brings you… my life as of recent times.

My parents threw J and me a lovely engagement party.  Everyone drank a lot o beer, played a lot o corn hole, ate some good food, and there were 5 dogs there (2 of which were puppies.)  Good wedding preview.

Then, some friends from the Czech Republic came into town, and, serendipitously, there was an outdoor Czech band and film showing at the adorable sculpture park down the street from our apartment.  A weird ass storm rolled through shortly before, and left our visitors this lovely view to the East—near the river, with a breathtaking sunset in the West.  Score!

We went to a local music festival where we danced, and, whilst in the beer tent, I chatted up the fiddle player from Railroad Earth about birding on LI.

Oh hey Tim, nice call on the Osprey with the fish.  Nice talk, see ya out there.

The morning after, I adventured off to San Fran with my brother from another mother, just cause we needed some K and T time.  We rented a convertible, which we named Sally for obvious reasons… and drove a little north of the city (wine), a little south of the city (hiking, kayaking, general natureness), and stayed in the city (shopping and food).  We also baked pies with our friend, my future sister, none other than one of the three babes: http://threebabesbakeshop.com/

To conclude the three consecutive weekends of general awesomeness, I went to the wedding of Brooklyn’s cutest couple, where they led their loyal band of friends in salsa dancing, cupcake eating, Mad Libs (their centerpieces were games.  The bride is allergic to flowers, and they’re cool) and after party beer pong.

Their cake toppers were Wii Miis!  

So, dems my stories.  I’m back in the swing of things now, workin’ like a dog.  (But, not really, cause this is what my day is like:

(He was pretending to be a pollinator.)

So, I guess life’s pretty good. Hi Karina!  I posted! 

Check back soon!