Year End Love

Last year, I posted a list of resolutions around this time: things to make, things to do, things, things, things.

Well, I still don’t have a cheese press, and I haven’t made soap from scratch with fats and lye, and I might even have to throw away a vegetable or two from the fridge today because I didn’t use them before they got funky, and I still don’t compost here in my city apartment with no outdoor space, though I did reach out to some local gardens and urban farms about taking in my scraps this year, so progress, right?

Last year, at my birthday time, the resolutions felt a little manic. It had been such a difficult year, a time of huge transition, trying changes, and all I wanted was to shed old skin, enter a new decade, be OK, and breathe. Being creative, writing down creative goals, was a way to celebrate that inner spark, to push it out to the surface a bit.

At a meeting the other day with some new ladies in my life, we talked about intention. Among many other things, we talked about what we thought intention was, how it differed from goals. I said I thought that goals were something that you work toward, and that intention was living in the work. This was a work meeting, mind you, and there is a chance this comment had more relevance in context, but I am always big on reflection around the time of my birthday, which comes just before the end of the calendar year. And it feels good to look back at that list of goals, things to do, and to realize that I’m not at all sorry about the things I planned to but did not create.

The desire to be creative, the intention set to make myself and others happy, the year of living inside my values, well these are just the best things that I could hope to have. Looking back and looking forward, I can say that the things I wanted most out of my thirtieth year have come my way: opening and settling, calming and centering. Breathing. I love the new shelves in our spare room. I love that there are shiny jars on these shelves, summer’s bounty preserved, labors of love to be given and shared this holiday season. But these things don’t compare to the comfort I feel in my own skin, newfound and gracious, as I enter this next year.

Tomorrow I will walk to the Grand Army farmer’s market in the hat a dear friend made by hand this time last year, chat with people who work the land around here, tote home bags full of vegetables, early winter harvest. Tomorrow I will cook for friends, break out some liqueur from the workshop party, celebrate the year that’s just passed and the new one coming the best way I know how.

As the air gets cold and the winds turn bitter and as 2010 ticks into 2011, I wish you, nice readers, much coziness, much love. I wish gifts for you this holiday season, woolly hats and shiny jars changing hands, but mostly I wish you a cozy home, comfort in your skin, ease of breathing, ease of love. Thank you for being a part of this last year and all its wonders. I am wishing you the best in all that comes next.

Happy Birthday, Little Blog

SMS visitors, please note that the giveaway is the next post down…

It seems it’s been a year since I set to blathering about the greenmarket, little pieces of nature here in the city, things that heal my heart nestled in between the brick and mortar and concrete of this city.

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Since that time, I’ve watched a lot of things I love about the city continue to blossom, and the title of this blog has felt like more of a misnomer as farming, DIY-ing, canning, fermentation, and similar activities have continued to tear along the path of returning to city life, folding into Brooklyn more and more, becoming truly urban pursuits. I still pine for big old open roads, for trees towering higher than buildings, but, a year on, I’m still so happy to be here on my block of brownstones, doing things I love to do, sharing them on this blog.

To celebrate the blog’s first birthday, please scroll down to yesterday’s Giveaway post to win a little something from me.

Or just enjoy these snapshots, taken on a recent Brooklyn stroll. These are some of the aforementioned heart-healing snippets, the bits of blue sky or gray, the green expanses that help the city breathe and me along with it.

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Ha — in the last year, I have also stopped making Shawn take pictures of projects and have become handy with the camera myself, slightly obsessed.

On an Unabashedly Personal Note

Married With Children fountain, Chicago

It took a while to find an appropriate photo for this post, a nice one of Shawn and me together (this one is rather silly, but that just might be fitting). There is a surprising dearth of pictures of us, given the amount of time that we have been together. What I did find were hundreds of pictures of places we have been, pictures of me holding his little nieces and nephew, my own little niece in his arms, infatuated. Pictures of his family folding me in and mine his, friends, too. I found pictures of our apartment when it was new, lovely and bare bones, and our old apartment cramped and packed full. Stunning landscapes. Farmers market veggies in the sun. A goldmine of terrible pictures of yours truly lolling about the apartment, making ridiculous faces in a variety of beautiful places, pictures I would never want to share, a testament to the fact that Shawn must really, really love me to think such moments are lovely and worthy of documentation. Ah love.

After all my big talk about Valentine’s Day, platonic love, being content to be single and surrounded by love on that day, after sticky buns and ruby rosas (my version of the mimosa — pink grapefruit juice and prosecco instead of OJ and champagne — holler if you have a better name for this beverage) and afternoon coffees, Shawn suggested that we walk across the Brooklyn Bridge before dinner. Always happy to walk, I jumped at the offer. The light on the bridge was crazy — bold and golden coming in off the harbor, stormy blue over Manhattan — and I made him stop to snap a few photos as we walked. When we got to the first support towers, the Brooklyn side, he asked if I minded stopping. It was very windy. It crossed my mind to suggest moving to the other side of the tower where we would be more shielded, but I did not get the words out. Even I was able to pick up on social cues and realize that it is impolite to suggest moving when one’s boyfriend is getting down on bended knee, fumbling in his pocket for your great-grandmother’s ring, asking you to be his wife.

I was not a little girl who dreamed about my wedding day. I have always been rather opposed to the wedding industry, the vast quantities of money spent on one day, couples starting married life in wedding debt. And yet, and yet…the past 10 days have been a flurry of phone calls, emails,  DIY blog-reading, general daydream scheming. I am super excited. This will be a hippie, crafty, DIY affair. It may be a potluck, because I love potlucks, because I believe strongly that food is love, and because I want my people involved.

Time will tell. Crafts will be documented. I will do my best not to turn this here blog into a forum about how I’m obsessed with wedding planning (I vow not to go Bridezilla, but I can totally see how that happens now). But some people have been wanting a story, and this seemed as good a place as any to lay it out. So there you have it. After 4 years of co-habitation, 5 years of being together following less than a year (but my oh my did it feel like more) of being new BFFs (the kind where the boy was secretly in love with the girl), after baby-faced travels, hundreds of small adventures, amazing and heartening lessons learned, Mr. Shawn and I are opting to hold onto this relationship, this feeling of home and boundless support, this love, for the rest of our lives.

And that, my friends, is where my head has been.