BIRTHDAY WEEKEND PART II: AIRBNB

This was my second Airbnb experience (the first was for my parents in VA beach) and so far, I'm all in. Due to my nomad blood, I love pretending that I live in the city that I am visiting, and staying in someone’s apartment helps that all seep in. You get the feeling that you may be visiting a friend or family that lives in that particular place, and it becomes that much more personal. For our visit in DC, instead of a hotel, I found us a cute little apartment in a neighborhood behind Adams Morgan, and it was the exactly the cozy getaway we needed.

It also provided us with the space to do that languid and rolling around kind of rest in between our morning and afternoon activities, where you drape yourself over chairs and couches and finish up conversations that started at breakfast, and maybe one of your gets a quick nap in and another starts to reads a poem out of a book that she has been reconciled with, and yet another looks through the books on the shelf and repeats the phrase, ‘my heart is in Hawaii’ over and over again.

BIRTHDAY WEEKEND PART I: UNION MARKET

Union Market was pretty much the perfect place to spend the first half of our day in DC.  Four ladies and a baby made our way to the market in the new hours of the morning. It was before all the stands set up outside and even before most of the stalls inside the building had opened, but we reveled in the slow unraveling of a marketplace, taking rest in the quiet and soaking in the murmurs of sunlit space.

We found our haven in between the stalls of Lyon Bakery and Peregrine Expresso and had ourselves a marvelous breakfast of fresh sourdough bread, farm fresh organic bright yellow butter, coffee, grapefruit, and the freshest strawberry greek yogurt I have ever tasted.  The food could have kept us there for the entire day.  We sat over our feast, eating and talking, drinking and listening. My mom shared with us what her pregnancies were like with each of us, and Sloane got her first taste of sourdough and butter. We took our time there, toying with the idea of spending our entire day there, choosing to ignore that any time was passing at all.

IT'S BEEN 30 YEARS

The bad news is I have caught some kind of a cold and I feel like the only right way to be is to be horizontal.

The good news is that I had the most wonderful weekend to celebrate my venture into year 30 and beyond. I turned 30 last Friday and I am the better for it.

There is this place here called Cancan Brasserie, and it has done such a wonderful job of creating what you would imagine a French brasserie would/should be. I met some lady friends there Thursday night to celebrate birthdays and got giddy on bourbon cocktails and delicious sweets and cheeses.  

On Friday, my current posse (mom, husband, Sloane and I) made a trip up north for some shopping and ended up at the Peking Gourmet Inn in Bailey’s Crossroads, VA, for a scrumptious birthday dinner. The only reason why I call it a birthday dinner is because it was on my birthday and it was a meal that I have been hankering after since I first had it three years ago, so it warrants a special label.  Afterwards, my mom, Sloane and I headed into DC to meet my two sisters and therein we commenced Kim ladies family time in a way that we usually never get to do. Sloane was in on the fun and she stayed in it like a champ.   It was exactly how I wanted to ring in my 30^th and I am grateful for such a time, cold or no cold. More on this (and oh so many pictures) to come, but for now, the gaggle of pretty ladies from Thursday night:

A HAPPY CONFLUENCE

This isn’t going to be so much of a sharing of a successful recipe as much as it is a description of how I come up with a lot of meals these days.  The food above is a wreath made out of crescent rolls stuffed with a sweet potato, apple, bacon, and onion hash. It came to be because I had some of the hash frozen in my fridge from the week prior, and I have been wanting to stuff that hash into something breaded.  I also made individual crescent rolls stuffed with scrambled eggs, bacon, and cheddar cheese, all of which I had in my fridge, and which I actually liked better than the wreath version (the big and buttery version of crescent rolls that I used for the wreath was too big, too buttery). I’m always looking for new ideas for breakfasts and what I do nowadays to save on money and time is to think about what I have in my fridge at that very given moment, and then google those things in combination with the word recipe at the end of them to see what the internet gives me. I have come across a lot of interesting recipes like that, and usually I do have everything I need already, or I just need to get one or two things to complete the list of needed ingredients. It’s easier than looking for entirely new recipes.  And there is great satisfaction to be had by using up items in the fridge that may have gone to waste otherwise.

Before I came across this, I googled something like ‘phyllo dough, eggs, breakfast recipe’ and the internet came up with a recipe for Brik, a Tunisian tuna and egg turnover, which I will attempt any day now because I have all needed ingredients in my kitchen. Thanks, internet.

MEETING EVELYN ROBINSON

Before bearing child (BBC), a new baby meant a lot of cuteness surrounded by a sense of mystery.  After bearing child (ABC), a new baby still elicits out of me gushes about how beautiful it is, but now I have this incredible sense of reverence that I didn’t have before. It’s different than the vague sense of mystery and wonder that I had about babies before; I am stilled and struck and near silenced by how the baby came to be. My heart feels the weight of the joy, the fears, the anticipation, the exhaustion, the exhilaration, gratitude, grace, and lessons while I hold the newborn in my arms.

A few of us traveled through the forest and over the hills this past Saturday to get a glimpse of this new life and to visit with the dear friend who is now the mother of two girls. The baby is beautiful. The mother is radiant. The baby’s older sister is vivid.  The father made us all delicious ham and vegetable wraps for lunch (good man!) I miss them all already, especially little Simone because I could have played with that girl all day.

On the way back, sweaty and sleepy, we ruminated on the peace that came from traveling through the mountains and each reminisced about the memory lanes we were repaving through the travel on 64. I daydreamed about the person that I used to be, all the places that I have been, and about the little girl of my own that was waiting for me back at home.

THE WIND THROUGH MY HAIR, THROUGH MY BONES

It was a day that would end in a long wait in the Emergency Room for Ken because he got hit with the worst of a case of food poisoning, followed by what felt like the longest and darkest drive back home to Richmond ever, but in the wee hours of the morning, I was oblivious to all that. Front and center in my mind was the goal of getting myself to the beach again. Ken stayed back, partly due to exhaustion, partly due to wanting to sleep in, and partly due perhaps to the beginnings of the queasiness. Sloane stayed back, mostly due to a dry and hacky cough that had kept her waking up several times the night before.  I was probably just as tired as the rest of them, but the ocean was calling.  And driving down to Sandbridge, where my parents were staying, meant that I could get some extra time with them. I charged on, and ended up having the most glorious drive, the kind where your body is flush with possibilities and freedom.  It was already 90 degrees by 9 o’clock in the morning and it was humid as a pocket, but I rolled down all the windows and turned up the best radio station I could find.  The hot wind hugged every inch of my skin and the warmth sank down to my bones, which then radiated inward to the deep and scrunched up parts of my muscles, relaxing them and then traveling outward to combust in spurts of joy evidenced by my hair wildly waving back and forth. It felt like I could drive forever.  I hadn’t felt like that in so long. 

Thanks to 96.1FM,  songs like ‘My Body’ by Young the Giant, and ‘Royals’ by Lorde have found their way to my mixtape for The Best Roadtrip Ever, if I ever get around to making it.  

Close to the beach, I stopped by a little corner market in order to see what kind of breakfast I could scrounge up and walked out with strawberry and blueberry greek yogurt and garden vegetable flavored pita chips.  I was officially a vacationer.

When I got to the place where my parents were staying, my dad handed me a giant mug of coffee, like he always does, and we went out to the back porch to set up our fare. We sat there talking for a good hour or two about every which way and thing, the way that we used to but hadn’t in so long. We eventually trekked out to the beach again where we went back and forth between laying in the sand and taking dips in the water until it was time to go. I am grateful for this sliver of stillness, comfort and warmth, rest and peace.

SLOANE GOES TO THE BEACH

It’s only the middle of July and it may be going down as my favorite month of 2013 so far, albeit the sporatic and incessant thunderstorms and relentless humidity.  There is so much more to come this month but let’s make a list of what has been, shall we?

^We got to put our new deck to use

^We had so many babies play in our little kiddie pool with Sloane

^Fourth of July weekend meant time of work and get togethers with friends

^The walk through the woods to try to get to Texas Beach. Unsuccessful, but refreshing

^That time we probably had fleas – not a pro, but memorable.

^When I finally accepted the fact that my baby is most definitely now a toddler

^My parents came to visit!

^Both my cousins, Joe and Lois, stayed with us

^My sister Sharon came into town with her fellow

^My sister Eunice got married!

^We celebrated my dad’s birthday all together

^I got to take a few days off work to go to the beach

^I got to finish a book I’ve been wanting to read for a while (David Sedaris’s “Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls”)

^Ken ending up in the ER due to what we suspect was an especially bad case of food poisoning. Also, not a pro, but it seems like it should make it on to the list.

And with that, one of my favorite things this month – baby Sloane meets the beach!

^sloane steps on sand for the VERY FIRST TIME!^

^clinging to papa^ 

 ^looking amusedly on at me doing....^