make-believe: cold weather.

I mentioned on Friday that I was combatting a bit of a cold last week. Well, it got a little worse before it got better, but I think I managed to wipe that sucker out before it did the same to me. It wasn't anything that multiple cups of herbal tea with honey and a hot toddy or two couldn't cure.* It did manage to get me feeling a little guilty about the number of paper tissues I ripped through. In my never-ending quest to reduce our household waste, I've been pondering the switch to handkerchiefs. I promise I won't start stuffing them up my sweater sleeve à la my grandmother, but I was recently in a home where the family had filled a wooden tissue box with pretty hankies instead of tissues and the whole setup was pretty impressive. The only real problems I forsee is amassing (and storing) enough hankies, and being able to get them to the laundromat fast enough that I don't lose my nerve. What do you think? Could you do it? 

*In case I'm not so lucky next time, I'm planning to make a big batch of elderberry syrup to get me through cold season. Are you guys interested in seeing a few herbalism remedies here, too?

1. handkerchiefs 2. hudson manhattan rye whiskey 3. honey dipper 4. massive mug 5. tissue box 6. elderberry syrup

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< two fifty: life in a tiny apartment.

Tackle what you can. Don't doubt yourself.

Living in rental apartments generally means living with a lot of things that you're not one hundred percent pleased with. (Take the fan saga, for example). Sometimes you stumble upon a gem of an apartment with the most beautiful porcelain sink you've ever seen and the cheeriest kitchen a duo could wish for, but more often than not, you're left with a thing or two that you'll likely choose to ignore, they being too costly, or too cumbersome, or too gross, to fix to your liking.

But, just be sure. Sometimes things seem more unfixable than they really are. A few summers ago, I spent the summer living with my sister Cait and her husband, Curt. In their tiny East Village apartment, the bathroom door never latched properly. One day when they were out, I had at with a utility knife and a screw driver. After a minute or two of scraping at layers of old paint, out popped the latch and the door was fixed. Hero-sister! In our current apartment we have a very noisy stove. When the subway rumbles below (every 15 minutes or so) the entire thing vibrates, causing the metal racks in the oven to make a racket like you can't imagine. Mortifyingly, we thought this was something that couldn't be helped. Over the weekend, James discovered that the little leg that evens the thing out wasn't screwed down properly. In five seconds flat he'd fixed the shaking. We moved in 15 months ago and only this weekend did we sleep through the night without a rumble. What fools these mortals be.

I think our previous lack of action stems from a combination of not owning the place ourselves and not wanting to bother the landlord about cosmetic or otherwise trivial things (minus that fan bit). But chances are, the things that bother you in your place are more fixable than you imagine, too. Bottom line: Remember your toolbox and muster a little elbow grease. Painted over window panes, orange rust stains in the tub, crooked bathroom mirrors, and hissing radiators, consider yourselves warned.

PS. Mulling spices/witches brew on the stove. 'Tis the season.

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spice season.

It's the time of year for mulling spices. If you don't have them in your cupboard today, you might decide to get them there tomorrow.

Cinnamon and cardamom, dried orange peel and allspice, star anise and cloves.

The whole versions are best, but powders will do in a pinch. Wink.

Spices for gift giving, here. And my thoughts on autumn smells over at the Equals Record.

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the green fields of the mind.

Around my sister's table on Saturday night, we ate an autumnal feast of butternut squash risotto and kale salad made with October's sweet leaves, and fresh, thick slabs of salmon crunched up with hazelnuts that we call filberts for Curt's sake.

We traded stories, mostly centered on the impending birth of Cait and Curt's child. There's news for you. Come February they'll be a new baby in the family and we're all so excited you might imagine the conception had been immaculate and we're awaiting the second coming of a savior. We sat at the table and listened to this piece, produced by a friend I made one summer in college, and made our own guesses about whether the baby will be a boy or a girl. The guessing is half the fun.

While we waited for pears to roast in the oven, I made boasts about seeing Paul Giamatti twice last week, prompting Curt to read aloud this piece written by Paul's dad, a college pal of Curt's own father.

It's a small world after all.

I've never been a real baseball girl, but I've caught wind that it's the season to be paying attention and Bart Giamatti's essay is the kind of work that could convert any non-believer. If you have a minute over lunch, I hope you'll give it a read.

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my week in objects (mostly).

five little things that made my week.

1. this sweater.

{because it belongs to james, but i wore it all week}.

2. these ferns.

{because they're still so green in bk bridge park}.

3. this rusty fence.

{and its love affair with the mid-afternoon sun}.

4. this old dodge.

{because it reminds me of the car my dad drove when we were little. affectionately dubbed: the weirdo car}.*

5. echinacea tea.

{because i felt the beginnings of a cold a few times this week but i think i've mostly staved it off. alvita is the best. just echinacea in those bags, nothing else}.

other things:
we're going to see this tonight. empanadas!
slipper season.
cooler weather makes we want a rug. this one.
this print.

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make-believe: witchy woman.

October always has me feeling a little witchy. It's the weather, and halloween, and the reappearance of my black cowgirl boots, surely. But this October I've also been doing a lot of thinking about womenfolk, and if there's one fairytale character that belongs firmly in that camp, it's the witch. Awesomely. And not so awesomely.

I'm sure it has to do with getting married, and being in the throes of a challenging career shift, and  preparing for other friends to get married, and listening to a lot of political rhetoric about women, but lately I'm feeling (as someone I know would say) pretty fired up.

I feel like everywhere I go I've been encountering portrayals of unsure, uninspired women. I blame part of this on allowing myself to stream fall TV pilots. Thanks to this thoughtful assessment, I'm not feeling quite so all alone. This one was interesting, too. But still. What do you guys have? Books? Articles? Movies? Blogs? Long talks over whiskey cocktails? I'm game for anything. I haven't read Caitlin Moran's How to Be a Woman yet (though I did listen to this interview), but it's on my list. Have you?

1. perfect black dress 2. how to be a woman 3. quartz ring* 4. tarot deck candle 5. boots 6. rouge

other things this week: this tweet. and this response.

*Stone & Honey is a Reading My Tea Leaves sponsor, but this is not a sponsored post.

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< two fifty: life in a tiny apartment.

Outerwear. {Part I in a two part series about winter clothes and tiny apartments}.

Let me start by acknowledging that the blog world--and perhaps all the world--appears to be utterly and totally obsessed with the weather and even more so, the changing seasons. From the moment the temperatures take the slightest hike or dive, my twitter feed and blog reader erupt into ecstatic accounts of the joys of a particular season. In late spring, it's all about how much lemonade we're ready to drink and how great it feels to get our feet into green grass. In late summer it's apples and turning leaves. Any day now we'll jump right into rosy cheeks and hot cocoa and scarves. We love this stuff. I love this stuff. The sensory descriptions are irresistible and changing seasons make such good use of onomatopoeia. In my world today there'd be pitter patter, crunch, crinkle, creak. You? 

I'm not sure precisely the reason for the obsession, but the best answer I could muster would have to do with human nature and habit and, if we got really into it, survival. Doesn't everything roll back around to that one? For this tiny apartment dweller, the most recent shift in seasons means at least a bit of a change in expectations of sparseness. Here's why:

For six months of the year, the back of our apartment door is host to a bag full of canvas totes, and depending on our laziness and/or frequency of biking, our bike helmets. It's not glorious, it's not terrible. But come October, that fearsome month when the wind whips and whistles through increasingly bare trees (see? seasons are fun), the back of the door starts to accumulate a pile of coats. In early October, things aren't so bad. James has the Carhartt sweatshirt (kinda like this) he's been wearing since his landscaping days in high school (hot damn), and I have my woolly cloak which James not-so-secretly thinks looks like something out of a witch's closet. I take his opinion as a compliment, I rearrange the coats so that my cloak covers the sweatshirt, things are manageable and mostly neat. 

But then the wind whistles some more and out comes James's peacoat. Then his scarf. Then my huge puffer-of-a-sleeping-bag-coat, then his, and I promise you, the scene is bad. There's not really a great solution. I have a pretty high tolerance for annoying tasks that maintain the peace in our tiny place, but unlocking the padlock that keeps our hall closet safe from intruders and hanging up my winter coat each time I use it, is not among them. In another life, we might have room for a coat rack (how pretty are these?), but for now, the solution is mostly to not give a damn. 

Also this:

If you realize that you haven't worn your Carhartt sweatshirt in two months, 'cause it's way too cold and you're not exactly doing any landscaping anyway, hang it in the hall closet (insert your own out-of-reach place). Same goes for your windbreaker, and your poncho, and that fancy velvety number you wore last week to the ballet and won't wear again until New Years (I wish).

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