My black-tie guy

We only have one wedding this year. One! It was last weekend, and so much fun. Three words: Springsteen cover band.

Another big reason for the fun? My absolute favorite game: Ken doll! I love when T dresses up. There's a part of him that is a bit from another era, and nothing brings this out like formalwear. See also: inheriting his grandfather's collection of formalwear. (The same grandfather whose seersucker suit T wore on our wedding day.)

Exhibit A: Vintage mother-of-pearl studs:

Exhibit B: Dapper tuxedo shoes.

It can be hard for a gal to keep up with this guy. I try my best.

By the end of the night, though, I don't care what's around this guy's neck. To say my heart is full is a complete understatement.

[Final note: Staying in a fancy hotel in your own town just because? Highly recommended.]

Pretty in Pink

It's that time of year again... DC's Tidal Basin explodes into bloom, tourists descend, and just like that, the peak is over. But just as the craziness winds down a couple of miles west of our house, our very own cherry blossom trees - one in the front yard and one in the back - explode into bloom.

I can't get enough of them.

Can you blame me?

Happy spring, everyone!

Recommended reads

I love to read, and have been doing it less each year, until recently. I've found over the last few years that the amount of pleasure reading I'm doing see-saws with blogging. Blogging nonstop? Not reading. Blogging break? Nose firmly implanted in a book. In a perfect world I could do both, but I suspect that world does not involve earning a paycheck.

Here are some of my favorites from the last few months, and I think it's fair to say that these books are not for everyone. No chick lit (obvs). I like my books a little bitter, a little bruised, and a lot of beautiful. See below:

The Middlesteins, by Jami Attenberg

What a heartbreak, this book. But not in an emotionally wrought, painful-to-read kind of way. Heartbreak arrives here through wryness, through observations, through humanity. I keep wanting to describe The Middlesteins as "The Corrections with a heart," but it's more than that. Food addiction has never been so... tender.

Arcadia, by Lauren Groff Oh goodness, the beauty in this prose. We begin in an idyllic commune, watch the commune's growth and eventual (inevitable) destruction, then follow the trail of that destruction through the lives of its former members. This novel is its own world, one that for most of us is just a brief visit. It would be easy to tell this story in a more contrived, condescending way, but Groff treats her characters with reality and respect.


Telegraph Avenue, by Michael Chabon
If Arcadia is its own world, Telegraph Avenue is its own universe. Chabon takes us to a subset of Oakland obsessing over obscure vinyl, battling gentrification, stressing out midwives, breaking up and making up, dredging up old memories, and complicating the lives of adolescents. This is probably the hardest book for some people to enjoy in this grouping, but I personally couldn't get enough of this crew.

Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel
I'm totally on board the Thomas Cromwell train. If you love historical fiction that's more textbook than bodice-ripper, these novels are for you. I'm fascinated by this period of time all over again, and terrified to read #3 for our hero's sake. Protect your neck, TC!

The Casual Vacancy, by J. K. Rowling
I think many Potter fans were disappointed by Rowling's first non-Potter novel, but this is exactly the sort of plot that I adore. Small-town politics, private lives open for public consumption, human weakness in all forms. Some of the best themes there are, running rampant here amidst City Council meetings, quaint storefronts, and dinner tables. How could I not love this one?

Just Kids, by Patti Smith
Let's end on a gorgeous note. Patti Smith's memoir of discovering herself in New York City with Robert Mapplethorpe is the literary equipvalent of a gorgeous, seeping scar, one we should be so thankful made it onto print and into our worlds. Their youth, their passion, their dedication, their love... It's the most tender thing I've ever read. What a marvel, this one.


There are many more I could have added, so jump onto Goodreads for a thorough round-up. Tell me... what should I read next?

April (?), randomly

Spring. Spring! Or so we've been told.

It snowed last week. I wore tights to work today. I've been shivering for fires at night. But I'm choosing to believe that change is around the corner - arriving late like DC's cherry blossoms, but bound to arrive nonetheless. A warmup is needed around these parts, and stat. I did come home with an obscene amount of ranunculus recently to make things a little springier around here. Oh how I love these flowers.

Some random please-make-it-spring thoughts:

• The Nationals are back! Today was the first home game and day game. Day games are tough for me because my office is across from the ballpark. Imagine me at noon, sitting in my tights and dress, looking wistfully out at the bustling sidewalks and filling stadium, a sea of red everywhere, wishing I had a beer in hand and sunshine on my face. Sigh. Maybe next time I can sneak away...


• I figured I'd get a lot of "You don't get Good Friday off?" last Friday (we get nothing off... just nada), but what is up with how many people asked me if I really had to work on "Easter Monday" today? Is Easter Monday really a thing? When did this happen?


• Veronica Mars is coming along nicely. We're about to finish Season 2, and the cameos keep coming! My recent fave was an episode featuring George Michael and Maeby Funke, not being George Michael and Maeby Funke.


• Also, The Voice is back. This is The Voice!! Love this show, absolutely my biggest guilty pleasure on television. I'm really not sure what I'm going to do without Cee Lo this year. I'm always on Team Cee Lo. Shakira is the upgrade of the century from Christina, in my opinion. (And yours, I'm willing to bet.) (Seriously your loss if you have no idea what I'm talking about - everyone needs a good guilty pleasure show.)


• We also finally watched Season 1 of Homeland, a million years late. I know this sounds like a lot of tv... remember that whole hermit thing I wrote about two posts ago? Television marathons are made for hermitdom. And reading a ton of books. Which I've also been doing ... so there. But back to Homeland. T has this longstanding hatred for Claire Danes stemming from her being an entitled biotch in college, so it took us forever to get on board with the show despite that fact that everyone and their mom told us we would love it. The fact that CD isn't meant to be likeable helps. And yes... we love the show just as much as you all said we would. Season 2 needs to get to Netflix asap.


• There is no way to gracefully transition to this one... but Eleanor has a major thing for my underwear, and it's out of control. I've replaced at least ten pairs! And am now having to do laundry frequently enough so that the hamper lid can actually fit onto the container to keep her little paws out! The outrage! So gross.

So what's happening in your worlds this "spring?"

My latest, greatest soup

I'm obsessed with this soup. It's been a cold, dreary March in these parts, and a bowl of this deliciousness has warmed me up on multiple occasions this month. With April fast approaching and snow in the forecast this week (?!), I'm pretty sure I'll be making it again soon.

This soup is hearty without being too filling, comforting while still being healthy, and jam-packed with flavor. Give it a try. And bonus - it's totally doable on a weeknight. One note: don't skip the garlic oil topping. I thought I didn't need it, and then realized what I've been missing all these years. Garlic oil should top everything.

Sausage, Chard, and Lentil Soup

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Serves 4-6, depending on appetites. (Serves only 4 in my house.)

 

 

Ingredients

- 1/2 cup olive oil, divided
- 2 large links of sweet Italian sausage, casings removed
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 2 celery stalks, sliced or diced
- 2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced into half-moons or diced
- 4 cloves garlic, sliced (reserve half for later in recipe)
- Kosher salt
- A pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
- 1 cup brown lentils, sorted and rinsed
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
- 6 cups water
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 3 to 4 cups shredded or thinly ribboned Swiss chard leaves (kale works, too)
- Grated Pecorino Romano cheese to finish

Directions

- Heat 1/4 cup olive oil in a large pot on medium heat. When hot, add the sausage, breaking it up with a wooden spoon until it starts to brown, about five minutes.

- Add the onion, celery, carrots, first two garlic cloves, a pinch of salt, and a pinch of red pepper flakes. Cook with the sausage until the vegetables soften a bit, another 5 minutes.

- Add the lentils, bay leaves, tomatoes, water (6 cups = two of your empty tomato can), more salt and black pepper to taste.

- Bring to a simmer and allow to cook until the lentils are tender, about 40 minutes.

- When the lentils are cooked, add the chard and cook until the leaves are tender, just a few minutes more. Discard the bay leaves.

- To finish, divide soup among bowls, then add the remaining 1/4 cup olive oil and 2 garlic cloves to a small skillet and heat over medium until the garlic softens and hisses. Drizzle this over soup bowls, and top with fresh Romano, passing more at the table.

The worst and the best of it.

People ask: what's the worst thing about IVF? Well...

1. The cost. I already complained about this one. Holy CRAP, the cost. It's absolutely debilitating. Enough said.
2. The side effects. If I was one to post photos of my stomach online, I could show you. I'd show you the span of bruises, a range of sizes and colors, ringing my entire abdomen. I'd show you how pregnant I look before an egg retrieval, belly as full and round as I imagine it might look in happier times. Baseball-size ovaries feel just like you think they would, actually. And the fatigue is a new level of fatigue, of a body doing things it's not meant to and continually asking you why. Everything hurts... a lot. 
3. The alienation. An IVF cycle takes over your life. There's really no other way to put it. You can't leave town. You have to show up to the clinic nearly every day. You have to stay off your feet and can't do anything remotely active at all. You are an incubator, plain and simple. The only way to feel more normal through it all is to try and pretend that it's not taking over your life, pretend to be normal. And so you try to be normal with people who don't understand what's happening and you fail miserably. Faking normality is painful. And then you just give in and let it take over your life for real. You become a hermit.
4. The reaction. Is there a worse feeling than trying desperately to be happy for someone else's good fortune, but failing? IVF girls know what I mean here, and it's heartbreaking. Feeling like a bad friend is the worst feeling of all. I'm so very happy for your pregnancy conceived after one month of trying... now please let me shut myself away for the next three days. It only gets harder over time.
5. The "What If?" What if we go through all of this again, and it still doesn't work? How many times can we try? How old will I be then? How broke? When do we switch to Plan B? What is Plan B?

And now, let's do something that used to come much more naturally to me. What's the best thing about IVF?

1. The science. Without a doubt, the science of IVF is some cool shit. I'm not a science girl, either, and this stuff amazes me. Our bodies are amazing on their own. But the ways brilliant people have devised to help biology along? Astounding. Growing dozens more eggs at a time than our bodies normally produce in a cycle is painful as hell, but the fact that we can even do that at all, then mate them in a lab and insert them back into the right environment, all of it manipulated precisely? It's crazy. For the first time ever, I can honestly say I think it'd be cool if my kids became scientists.
2. The ownership. One thing I've learned waiting in countless morning monitoring lines is this: IVF gives women choices. Nothing makes me happier for my gender than choice. I've been in line with women freezing just in case, women starting a family with their wives, women with a second chance on life and love... all kinds of women. IVF is a tool that gives all of us dramatically better chances than we've ever had before, and we make all the decisions - whether to go through this at all, how to go through it, how many embryos to implant, how many to freeze, whether to use or destroy them. We choose. That's a beautiful thing.
3. The hope. Few jump into IVF first - our roads there are usually long and littered with frustration and grief and even tragedy. With other assisted reproduction techniques, insurance typically covers several procedures, so there's not as much risk or sacrifice involved. With IVF, we put everything on the line because it's the end of the road, because we believe, and that kind of hope is intoxicating. It makes the failures all the more heartbreaking - oh god the heartbreak - but I think it might make the successes more exhilarating, too.

One other note, in case someone you love is going through IVF. You might feel weird sometimes, and that's okay - we feel weird, too. Being there is all you need to do - you don't need to know the right questions to ask or anything at all about this crazy-science-magic. You just need to keep knowing us, and that's enough. With any luck (and some of that hot science, too), one day it won't be so weird anymore.

"Hey handsome... what do you say we slip out of here and inject a trigger shot in that fancy hotel bathroom we passed?"

Oldie but goodie

Update: So seriously, I start watching this show right when the Kickstarter movie campaign begins? What are the chances?? Nice work, V.


Some things I wish I could go back in time and tell myself in 2004:

• Nothing will turn out the way you think, but it will turn out even better.
• This is the most self-indulgent time you’ll ever have – act like it!
• Savor every minute with your girlfriends.
• Watch Veronica Mars!

I know, one of these things is not like the other. And sure, I was eyeball-deep in graduate school and everything that came with it in the fall of 2004, meaning television didn’t happen very much for me then. Plus there was a certain World Series that October. But this show!

8.5 years after its debut, I’m loving:

• The always-adorable Kristen Bell as a spunky Nancy Drew type
• Quick wit and funny writing
• The high/low plot point mix
• Awesome father/daughter relationship
• Amazing cameos from then-unfamous actors
• A great heart
• Hilariously bad lighting

So this is me these days – laying super-low and watching old television. I can't get enough of this fun fluff!

And yeah, this is also me deciding that blogging at all is better than blogging importantly. Enjoy!

Still here...

...keepin' on keepin' on.

I think my least favorite word is "busy." Such a lame excuse, no? And yet... that's my only one. Busy. Thank you for your sweet notes and concern, but I have mostly just the plague of the working world to blame, and the havoc it can sometimes wreak on our emotional breathing room. I'm always over on Twitter or Instagram, you know. No need to craft paragraphs there. No need to format. Other platforms work a little better for the dreaded "busy."

I also haven't opened Google Reader since around Thanksgiving, so I apologize for not sharing your own spaces more frequently. Like so many things, I'll try to be better at that.

A song for today. (For every day.) One of my all-time favorites, given such sweetness by the Lumineers.



To slowing down, then... sooner (ideally) or later (more realistically).

Salted Caramel Pie

The most indulgent thing I've done in ages is to eat this salted caramel pie. I actually meant to share it with you a year ago, when my sister and I first made it for Thanksgiving 2011. So I'm only a year late on this one. We never stopped talking about the pie, so I made it again for Thanksgiving 2012 and took it the family farm in Bertie County, NC. It was a hit.

And that trip, by the way? So peaceful.

But back to the pie. It's dangerous. My brother doesn't even like sweets and he had two pieces. It's easy to put together, just time-consuming. Have a slow day at home to yourself? Think about whipping this baby together. It's hands-down the best dessert I've ever made, and I'm prepared to make it for the rest of my life, if family requests are any indication.

 

 

Salted Caramel Pie

From Food & Wine

 

 

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs (about 5 ounces)

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

1/4 cup light brown sugar

Two 14-ounce cans sweetened condensed milk

Fleur de sel

2 cups heavy cream

2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar

 

Instructions

 

1. Preheat the oven to 350°. In a food processor, pulse the graham cracker crumbs with the melted butter and light brown sugar until the crumbs are moistened. Press the crumbs evenly into a 9-inch glass or metal pie plate. Bake for about 10 minutes, just until lightly browned. Let cool. Increase the oven temperature to 425°.

 

2. Scrape the condensed milk into a 9-by-13-inch glass baking dish and sprinkle with a scant 1/2 teaspoon of fleur de sel. Cover the dish with foil and place it in a roasting pan. Add enough hot water to the pan to reach one-third of the way up the side of the baking dish. Bake, lifting the foil to stir 2 or 3 times, until the condensed milk is golden and thickened, about 2 hours; add more water to the roasting pan as necessary. The consistency of the caramel should be like dulce de leche. Don't worry if it is lumpy; it will smooth out as it chills.

 

3. Scrape the caramel filling into the pie crust, smoothing the top. Spray a sheet of plastic wrap with vegetable oil spray and cover the pie. Refrigerate until the filling is chilled and set, at least 4 hours.

 

4. In a bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the cream with the confectioners' sugar until firm. Remove the plastic. Mound the whipped cream on top of the pie and sprinkle with fleur de sel. Cut into wedges and serve.

Unfiltered

Right now there is a puppy asleep on my feet, a cat being spooned by the sleeping husband beside me, another cat on the windowsill pondering life's mysteries, and a wheezing computer trying its hardest not to die on me as I type. There's a body that doesn't feel at all like mine, but hasn't for months anyway, a brain that's crammed much too full of work to tell a proper story or be socially engaging, and deep fatigue. Eleanor just emitted one of those great deep puppy sighs, and girl, I am feeling you on that. Let's all sigh together.

I used to love the phrase "grace under pressure." I aspired to rise above whatever life threw at me in a series of triumphant Clairee Belcher moments featuring resplendent hair and heartwarming sass. My reality, however, is that I don't know how to properly blow out my own hair and I'm too tired for quick wit. My reality is that I'm working way too much in a high-pressure situation, that T and I will have one weekend alone in our house in two months' time, and that fertility medications continue to be someone's idea of a pretty crappy joke.

But. There is a Christmas tree! Our first tree together, believe it or not. It's twinkling downstairs amidst a messy living space, making stacks of mail and piles of shoes look almost charming in all its twinkly glory. A Christmas tree is like Instagram for your house, I swear. The tree's a good three feet shorter than my heart wants it to be and it happens to have many large holes that weren't quite apparent in the Eastern Market tree lot, but it's ours. What I'd love now is the time and quiet space inside my head to devote a night - or even an hour - to just looking at it and feeling peaceful. Is it possible to schedule feelings of peace and goodwill, or is that a stretch? I'm really looking for life Instagram, aren't I?

The list of things I wish I was better at right now is lengthy. Cooking. Housekeeping. Blogging. Seeing friends. Going to the movies. Reading. Making time for a haircut/facial/massage. Having energy. Any energy at all. Lately I'm good at working, medicating, and seeing family. Those are important things, but I miss the small stuff. I miss moments that don't need a filter. I know they're out there, somewhere. I'd just really like for them to make their way toward my Christmas stocking.*

*Not yet hung and currently in a pile on the mantel. But you get my drift.