The Way I Live Now...
a smattering of habits and minor eccentricities
June has been a whirlwind of travel, deadlines, guests, hosting, etc (how is it barely the middle of the month?) and somewhere between being squeezed into a (granted, stylish) 275 sq.ft hotel room in NY which cost 1/6 of our mortgage a night, and showing people around DC and Fredericksburg, I started reflecting on how different my life is to my life before we lived in this house and this perfect town.
My running summary of my life is that I spent my 20s not needing sleep and having everything to prove, my 30s pretending I don’t need sleep and that I have proven everything I set out to prove, and now in my 40s - I am catching up on both sleep and whatever ambition hangover I still nurse. Oh, and my 50s are clearly reserved for a best-selling mystery writing career, so you can start looking forward to that.
All half-jokes aside - I am out of the loop a lot more than I used to be, and it is not only OK but GREAT. I have discovered that I am (wait for it, this should come as a surprise to possibly everyone but my Mother) breathtakingly introverted (though I love the right people, still), and that running on adrenaline for a decade and a half of living and working in the most social way possible has emptied my tank in a way only moving to a 100 year old house that used to belong to National Park Service could fix.
So, today, a small collection of things and rituals that make my CURRENT existence a thing I delight in daily:
Just flowers everywhere, all the time - in DC I somehow normalized that farmers market flowers should cost 100s of dollars (somehow) but here they’re everywhere and fresh and like $10 a bunch (I still buy a bunch of bunches, because I am drunk on my newfound flower power) and make everything better immediately.
Making a tea before anything else - my college go to order for coffee was a QUAD SHOT Caramel Macchiatto and while I am grateful to not have died from a heart attack as a result, it is only in recent years that I have turned to the GENTLER forms of caffeine. My preferred options include: Yorkshire Gold, Assam (inspired by Kristin Scott Thomas in Slow Horses) and Dorset too. I put sugar and milk into mine, and this is the only caffeine I have all day.
Having people visit us/stay overnight - I have NEVER before now lived in a place where people can visit ME. There was a brief worry when we moved that we’d stop seeing our friends - but a. we still go places and b. having people come for a weekend is THE BEST - so much more quality time, and I love running a pretend bed and breakfast out of our little upstairs (which is painted a dusky pink, further enforcing the effortless British cottage energy that Audrey Gelman wishes she could capture-jk, or am I?)
(not my actual home, but close)
In return - visiting people overnight.
Walking my dog first thing (like 6am in Summer) in the mornings through the park while there’s no one there, and to this Farm we have next door - he loves the cows (are they giant dogs? I hear him think), the rabbits (are these just squirrels that can’t climb trees? I can work with that! - his little tail lets me know) and I love that there is a perfect little general store there AND that they have a little free library
Speaking of - the amount of time I spend on the Little Free Library ecosystem around me is out of control - I tend to my own (next to the barn, and inserted in a tree trunk), I do a weekly walk-around the 10 locations I am aware of in the 1 hour walking distance and merchandise them - this, to the uninitiated is where you take books that are NOT moving from one of them and then place them in another, so the selections keep rotating and all the books find their audience eventually. This is an insane hobby, I know.
My neighborhood book-club - I am obsessed with us. I still don’t quite know how it came to be (we had an open house when we moved in, and all these people came, and I mentioned I'd love to be a part of a book club and next thing you know there’s 16-20 women gathering every month and actually reading the books). The oldest person in it is 80, and the youngest is 30, and the VIBES ARE AMONG SOME OF THE BEST I’VE EVER EXPERIENCED (and I’ve had brunch with Antoni from Queer Eye and Michelle Buteau in my day)
Taking the train into DC or NY - the VRE has a perfect little double decker set up, and Amtrak has still not quite figured out its wifi - so this time is TRULY a gift.
Making a perfect martini (which my friend Kat taught me how to half a decade a go and it is truly the #1 skill I bring to any social environment):
2 parts gin (or vodka if you swing in that direction),
1 part vermouth (dry, though with gin you can do half and half with Bianco),
and a lemon twist (if you do olives, add 2 teaspoons of olive juice in)
stir over ice / drain / pour into something beautiful (I am more of a coupe glass human - and love these and these)
Having what I call a picnic lunch or dinner - this is basically taking the concept of a charcuterie platter to meal level: arranging tinned fish and roe, spending money on the good butter, cutting up VERY COLD radishes and a bunch of herbs (dill, green onions etc), layering meats and cheeses, maybe a few dips, and a fun salad and then carrying all that out on the patio and eating at a table and just picking at it all for a meal (pairs great with above mentioned martini)
Chilling all wines - including red.
Cooking the eggs quite softly - it should be noted I am very grateful I married a man who agrees with these two points with me, otherwise this would never have lasted.
Hiding from my husband and dog in the guest room upstairs and reading, and them letting me do that. Also: all 3 of us taking a nap when they do join.
Hiding from my phone - seriously, this is what I am doing every night and weekend, if I can.
Putting books on hold at the library - OMG, the best feeling ever and then you get a little email and they hold it for you for 6 days after they arrive - what is this even? In fact, I think my library hold page is my most visited non-work related tab. Here’s some recent ones in the mix:
Rolling into the local Friends of Library bookstore sale (happens 2x a year, and it is worth making a daytrip to here for, trust me) and coming out with 30 books minimum
Going to a minor league baseball game - we have a baseball team here (the Fred Nats) and they and reading “Evvie Drake Starts Over” have single handedly made me want to go to baseball games. The food and drink are great (and there’s no lines), the community pageantry is amazing, baseball is still baseball and I love that I love it.
Using a fan OUTSIDE! OMG - so genius. We have outlets on our deck now and settling in to read/work (we also have Eero so the internet signal goes all the way into the woods basically) and then turning a pro-level fan on - it is heaven. It wafts mosquitos off and it keeps things breezy (very breezy event).
Settling into 3-7 hours of British pastoral murder, just like Ayo Edebiri - I have the following streaming apps: Acorn, Britbox, PBS Masterpiece AND rotate in and out of Viaplay and MhZ and canceling them would be a serious sacrifice.
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Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserFollowing people on instagram, just to see what they are reading (vs wearing, buying, traveling etc) - most recently Elin Hilderbrand has really been stepping things up in terms of potential BFF-dom since she read In Memoriam, The Guest, All Fours, and Fates and Furies and LOVED THEM ALL.
Spending Sunday morning with a tea and the Sunday NY Times (Book Section first, always) while my dog looks at me.
All the amazing small town stuff we have going on: the fact that our neighborhood is an actual neighborhood where people know each other and host things etc (I’ve never lived anywhere like this), that our train station is sitting on top of a German restaurant, The Holiday Parade (OMG), the First Fridays, the small town version of Restaurant Week (which is pure chaos marketing wise, but it is kind of better for it), the best little taco place in the world which is our cheers, effectively, the weird little live music things seemingly everywhere, the kitchen shop that I truly can’t not stop, etc - just the best.
Going to be before 10pm a minimum of 6 days a week, and kind of being ok with going to bed before 9pm here and there too. (gotta get up for that dog walk)
Working during work hours and not outside those - it was so easy to just fall into endless networking/social events etc - I truly believe I am going to live 10-30 years longer due to this adjustment to my schedule.
And there’s more. I just realized I’ve sort of rambled on for a minute here - and, don’t get me wrong, I know writing a newsletter like this is indulgent and privileged, but my point is - I am very grateful for this smaller, but fuller life we are living now. And being able to write this and have people actually look forward to the newsletter, feels like an extension of that luck.
So, thank you.
P.S. We are off to Europe etc next week (weddings and all), so - stay tuned for how the vacation schedule newsletter plays out.