LivingSmall

I made it back to the gym today. I’ve always been a sporadic gym person at best, but last fall I had been back in the gym about six weeks, and was really enjoying it, when Patrick died. Afterwards, I tried a couple of times, but I just couldn’t do it. The treadmill seemed like […]

I splurged and bought Goodbye Babylon from Dust to Digital — an outfit who is, as their website says dedicated to re-issuing music from old 78’s. This five-cd set (six if you count the bonus cd of sermons) is SO fabulous — there’s everything from shape-note singing to holiness string bands to jubliee gospel quartets […]

There was a really dumb article over at Salon the other day about the heartbreak of being a midlist writer. The anonymous author is being duly spanked this morning in the letters for her whininess, and for the amounts of money she’s made over the past few years, which hardly seem to qualify her at […]

Yesterday I planted peas (2 kinds) and radishes, arugula, a raddiccio mix and an endive mix (from Seeds of Italy), an intriguing-looking plant called Saltwort, also from Seeds of Italy which is apparently all the rage in the finer restaurants of that fair land, laccinato kale, and interplanted spinach seeds amongst the transplants (which are […]

I organized the basement propagation center this weekend — it’s fabulous! I took one of the five-shelf utility units from Patrick’s storage unit, bought some cheap shop lights and grow-light tubes, and I now have four shelves set up with lights. Last year, I bought a couple of heat mats to help with germination, since […]

In the freezer there was both ground lamb and ground elk (thanks Parks!) and after Maryanne and Jimmy’s magnificent dueling sauces for our Soprano’s-spaghetti-and-meatball-dinner on Sunday, I was inspired to make meatballs. I do not come from a meatball people, so meatballs are one of those things I come to late. In fact, I’m not […]

I have deeply mixed feelings about the Martha Stewart verdict (says the woman who just blogged about ironing for goodness’ sake). On the one hand, it seemed pretty clear from the beginning that she was guilty of insider trading, but on the other hand, insider trading happens every day among folk of her ilk. Why […]

I’ve blogged before about ironing. I iron — or at least I did before. I got teased for it a little bit last summer by Patrick and his girlfriend — they’d come over for dinner in the backyard and we’d have a nice, ironed tablecloth and ironed napkins. I believe in table linens, they were […]