This week I am in a small Catskills village in upstate New York. It snowed today. I'm here with a friend, each of us far from home (he's also British, and unable to fly home during a pandemic) and wow, the simple pleasure of sharing your space and time with a dear friend is heady after so many months of solo living. We both decided we didn't want to be in two silos in Brooklyn over the holidays and since we have been in each other's pods all pandemic (and are similarly cautious and regularly tested) we rented a house and a car and packed our things and decamped. Alone together. I miss my plants and I miss my stationary bike and I miss my cast iron pans but I'm also A-OK without them. Most mornings my friend and I eat breakfast together: avocado and eggs on toast, muesli, coffee with frothy milk. We cook very nice dinners from the cookbooks we had meant to use more often during the year. On Christmas Day I roasted a chicken and also made 'Top 10 of My Life' roast potatoes. Some evenings we get a fire going. Every single night we talk and watch a movie or a TV show and laugh or cry together, depending on genre. We read the newspaper of record IN PRINT, section by section. We have pie in the evenings, and a cup of tea before we retire for the night. We haven't been asleep before 2am once, and we know we're going to regret it when life continues in the new year, but we don't do any better. The house we're in is medium-sized, and there are trees and mountain views all around. I feel like a character in a Hallmark thriller, whose secret is about to catch up with her, in the form of a villain from her past. (The past is my Brooklyn apartment, where I have no mountains, no snowy vistas, no in-unit washer-dryer.)
Waiting and Thinking
Waiting and Thinking
Waiting and Thinking
This week I am in a small Catskills village in upstate New York. It snowed today. I'm here with a friend, each of us far from home (he's also British, and unable to fly home during a pandemic) and wow, the simple pleasure of sharing your space and time with a dear friend is heady after so many months of solo living. We both decided we didn't want to be in two silos in Brooklyn over the holidays and since we have been in each other's pods all pandemic (and are similarly cautious and regularly tested) we rented a house and a car and packed our things and decamped. Alone together. I miss my plants and I miss my stationary bike and I miss my cast iron pans but I'm also A-OK without them. Most mornings my friend and I eat breakfast together: avocado and eggs on toast, muesli, coffee with frothy milk. We cook very nice dinners from the cookbooks we had meant to use more often during the year. On Christmas Day I roasted a chicken and also made 'Top 10 of My Life' roast potatoes. Some evenings we get a fire going. Every single night we talk and watch a movie or a TV show and laugh or cry together, depending on genre. We read the newspaper of record IN PRINT, section by section. We have pie in the evenings, and a cup of tea before we retire for the night. We haven't been asleep before 2am once, and we know we're going to regret it when life continues in the new year, but we don't do any better. The house we're in is medium-sized, and there are trees and mountain views all around. I feel like a character in a Hallmark thriller, whose secret is about to catch up with her, in the form of a villain from her past. (The past is my Brooklyn apartment, where I have no mountains, no snowy vistas, no in-unit washer-dryer.)