Christmastime is Here

If there was any question about the holidays being here, it was most definitely answered this week. You know Christmastime is here when suddenly it's Friday afternoon and the last thing you remember is listening to The Splendid Table on Sunday morning. Instead of calling the week that's been a mess/disaster/other negative term that I'm apt to use, I'm instead taking the week at face value: a lovely week of family and Christmas preparations and maybe not so much getting work done.

Lezbehonest, there's been a lot of the bare minimum going on around here when it comes to work, but if we can't let go of endless to-do lists when the holidays draw nigh, what kind curmudgeons are we?

The Etsy holiday rush basically wrapped up on Monday and I took that as my cue to put my feet up and have another cup of tea. All week I've been looking at the work to-do list and asking the following questions: What do I want to get done today? What needs to get done today? What will happen if it doesn't get done? Can it wait until after Christmas? I realize this sounds a bit like procrastination, but I assure you it's more about lowering expectations, because it's ridiculous to expect that we can maintain a typical workweek (at least when you have the luxury of working from home) and wrap all de presents, do Christmas baking, and have a clean and festively decorated home.

My brother and his girlfriend were around at the start of the week for a quick holiday visit and Andy and I got into town on both Monday and Wednesday to spend some time with them. Despite the fact that the heavens like to open forth with snow whenever my brother and I are near (whether it's on his turf in Michigan or here in MN), safe travels and good visits were enjoyed by all.

Mom made us pose for a Christmas card photo

We received a slight reprieve from the subzero temps throughout the week. That said, it's been below zero more often than not this week. This fact has not stopped Andy from using the new snowmobile. He just puts on approximately 40 lbs of clothing and heads out regardless.

Folks dressed up like Eskimos

We finally got our Christmas tree yesterday. I was kind of thinking that we might be able to get away with not having a tree this year, thinking that perhaps the assortment of holiday knick-knacks would be good enough. That said, I'm glad we got the tree (even if it does displace some living room furniture in a cabin with no place for displaced furniture) - it's so nice to have the Christmas lights on in the morning and evening, especially as the darkest day of the year approaches tomorrow.

Except for one last outstanding package, all of the presents have been wrapped and placed beneath the tree with care. I'm glad to see the presents all gathered in one place because it makes it so clear where my holiday gift budget went. I'm not even mad.

The Christmas baking is basically done, except for some quick stuff on Christmas Eve (Is it bad that I'm already kind of weary of Christmas cookies?) and all of holiday cards and packages have been mailed. I'm so prepared for Christmas that I'm going to have to start doing actual work. Le sigh.

Andy and I went for a ride down the snowmobile trails yesterday. It was pretty, but cold. I'm pulling on the bib snowpants next time.

Happy Solstice!

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Gone and Back Again

I assure you, I did not fall off the face of the Earth this week. Honest.

I've been off in the lower peninsula of Michigan with my mom visiting my brother and his plus one (Ashley). While I intended to post a couple times over the course of the trip, I got really involved with doing nothing during my downtime and the aforementioned blog posts only got written in my head. Bad on me.

I got back to cabin in the late afternoon yesterday after a full travel day that started a 4 a.m. (CST) so I'm having a less than stellar day today while I get my land legs under me again after a week at (the proverbial) sea. Funny, how a five day trip always really amounts to a seven day vacation because the day both before and after coming and going end up blurry messes.

It's a 15+ hour drive to Grand Rapids, MI where brother lives, so we opted to fly from Minneapolis. While flying does cut down the amount of actual travel time (the flight is just over an hour), it still ended up being a 13+ hour journey from my doorstep to brother's on Saturday between three hours of car time, a 2.5 hour shuttle ride, the hour flight, and various "connecting" time. *yawn*

View from our MSP gate on Saturday

At the Meijer Gardens on Tuesday

Grand Rapids isn't exactly a tourist hot spot, but we managed to find quite a few public attractions to visit. On Sunday, once brother got back from work mid-afternoon, we headed over to the Meyer May house just east downtown. The house was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the early 1900s and is now maintained by the Steelcase Corporation. After enduring what seemed like an excruciatingly long audiovisual presentation on the house's restoration, we got to tour the house's stunning interior. That said, I forgot my camera back at the apartment. Oops.

On Sunday, we also baked a delicious (if I do say so myself) loaf of Irish Soda Bread to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. 

There was quite a bit of downtime during our visit and took advantage of the quiet time spent chatting and watching Netflix to build up my inventory of owl coffee sleeves for the Etsy shop. 

I also introduced their cat to the pleasures of playing with yarn. He loved watching my mom and I knit! (If you follow me on Instagram -adawrites - you already know some of this.)

On Monday, my mom and I headed over to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in downtown. If you were naming underappreciated presidents, Ford (a Grand Rapids native) would probably top the list, but the museum is actually quite fascinating. We were also lucky enough to visit when a selection of Madeleine Albright's extensive pin collection (which she wore on state visits to communicate her emotions about a particular meeting or issue) was on display in the temporary exhibit space.

We were treated to some pretty spectacularly snowy/miserable weather during our visit, but on Tuesday we braved the crappy weather and headed over to Meijer Gardens to view the special butterfly exhibit. I took way too many butterfly photos, so I'll write more on that in another post. 

Outside on the garden grounds. Yuck!

We made it to Marie Catrib's (a place Andy and I meant to hit up on our last visit) for supper on Tuesday. Just as we were finishing our delicious dinner (the cafe specializes in imaginative sandwiches) the sun finally popped out for a beautiful magenta, purple and gold sunset. 

Waiting for a table at Marie Catrib's

On Wednesday, Mom and I headed over to the Grand Rapids Public Museum to enjoy their hodge-podge of exhibits. (Sadly, Furniture City - a highlight from the last trip - was closed for improvements.) A high point of this year's visit was the special exhibit on the Titanic, which featured artifacts that have been recovered from the shipwreck. If this exhibit ever rolls into your town, I highly recommend it.

Main hall at the Grand Rapids Public Library

Although our flight on Thursday morning was delayed slightly for de-icing, we made all of our connections easy-peasy yesterday.

Waiting to be de-iced at the Gerald R. Ford Airport

Whenever I return from a trip, I'm always reminded of that old quip: North, South, East, West; Home's Still Best.
  

P.S. All that time knitting gave me an opportunity to work on designing some new items for the Etsy shop. Hint: if you're a tea drinker, you'll love them. Check them out!

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This Thanksgiving I Knit A Sock

I packed up the Corolla on Wednesday morning and poked my way down the snow-packed Gunflint Trail to start in on the Thanksgiving festivities. I packed up enough clothes for four nights away from the cabin and threw in a bag of knitting that looked like this:

My mother coordinates the annual community Thanksgiving dinner in town, so this is always a busy time of year. I'm just one of many, many volunteers who help to bake pies, roast turkeys, pick up various supplies, set tables, help cook, deliver meals and etc, etc. Somehow I ended up on sweet potato this year which went really well on Wednesday when we were peeling, chopping and parboiling the potatoes, but got a little frantic on Thursday morning.

For the dinner we make a sweet potato recipe ala Better Homes and Gardens circa early 1970s. It involves a syrup of butter, brown sugar and ginger which is added to the sweet potatoes along with peaches and cashews and cooked in a roaster for several hours. I went about making the syrup and kept cooking and cooking the syrup, wanting the sugar granules to completely dissolve, but in actuality making caramel. When I poured the "syrup" over the roasting pan full of cold potatoes, the syrup immediately set up into caramel. I know that "caramelizing" food is seen in a positive light these days, but hunks of caramel mixed in with sweet potatoes was really not what I was hoping for. The roasting pan of sweet potatoes was heaped so full and every time I tried to stir the concoction, bits of peach and potato fell onto the floor. By the time dinner was served at 1:00, the floor around the sweet potato operation was a sticky mess, but the caramel chunks had all dissolved, the potatoes had cooked beautifully, and my folly was forgotten. Whew!

We fed approximately 140 people and by 5:00 all the dishes were washed, the leftovers packed and the tables cleaned up. It was time to put our feet and get a little knitting done before collapsing into bed.

On Friday we set off to the Cities -- clickety clack, clickety clack go the knitting needles on the five hour drive-- to spend time with Andy's family. Time spent with family is often low-key and low-energy and by the time we were driving home from the visit yesterday morning, I had a sock that looks like this:

I know spending an entire long weekend knitting a sock doesn't sound especially impressive. Yet I came home with a bunch of fiction and essay ideas scribbled on a Caribou coffee napkin which I'd stuffed into my knitting bag.

People often stress the need for quiet time for the creative process, but, good Midwestern girl that I am, I sometimes struggle with confusing quiet time with a waste of time. And still, I'm continually frustrated by my lack of fiction ideas.

It's a funny thing about fiction ideas. You don't seem to get any unless you have time to spend sitting around, maybe knitting a sock, thinking about nothing in particular. When you're constantly thinking about what you should be doing or what happens next, your mind whirs past the "what if?" thoughts necessary for spawning fiction writing.

It's a good thing to have time to sit and knit socks.

I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving filled with just a touch of drama and lots of quiet, thoughtful time before the holiday season is truly upon us. 

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