• Believing - grief - small town life - writing

    An Old Age Home of Our Own

    Blogging has been slow here at LivingSmall because I just haven’t felt like I had anything interesting to say. It’s been a weird month — I’ve been a tiny bit depressed — I have to say, I sort of thought this grief thing would get easier at some point — like after I made it through the first anniversary, or got through the holidays — but it still just sucks. And trying to write this book isn’t helping — I mean, last January was SO horrible what with the crying on the couch with the dog in my lap, and…

  • domestic life - food - Making

    Food in a Bowl

    I have a perfect bowl. My cousin Elizabeth made it for me many years ago. It’s exactly the right size for a single-girl meal, and tonight, after a very blinky day brought on by one of those nuits blanches a full moon sometimes brings, I made some dinner in the Perfect Bowl. It was very monkey-brain in my house last night — I have a totally different job at my Real Job, and I don’t really know how to do it yet. So, it was one of those nights where one thinks about everything including many things one has no…

  • Living - weather

    Weather

    Last weekend it was five below, this evening I was sitting out on the front porch, enjoying the latest New Yorker on a fifty-degree evening, in a sweater and a light jacket. Lovely to get some fresh air again. Lovely to have daylight last past five o’clock again. No matter how dark December sometimes seems, the light and the warmth come back as always ….

  • domestic life - Thinking - writing

    Small World

    When last week’s article in the Boston Globe about food blogs came out and it listed Pim’s full name, I got to wondering. So I googled her and it turns out that Pim, of Chez Pim, and I not only work for the same very large computer company, but we’re in the same division, and even in the same building (which considering there are about 45 buildings on campus, is pretty interesting). Who knew? So I emailed her, and she IM’ed me this morning, and we made plans to go out next time I’m back in town. Small small world…

  • family - food - Making

    Truffles for Granny

    My grandmother is ninety four today. Ninety four! She’s still got all her faculties, although she’s got a glass eye, and an artificial hip. She started a lending library in her little farm town in Illiniois at ninety because she’d “retired” and she needed a project. So she got a lot of people to donate books, and she got a donated building, and she catalogued all the books. If you want to borrow a book from my grandmother’s library, basically you just write it down in the notebook, and you bring it back when you want. It’s a great little…

  • food - Thinking - writing

    Not Blogging in the New Year

    Argh — I feel like the Bad Blogger. I’ve been so consumed by the Tsunami, by the subzero weather, by a rousing game of UpWords with Maryanne last night, and by getting my New Year’s resolutions organized ( a:sitting again in the mornings, b: writing writing writing the second and third sections of the memoir and c: reading Virginia Woolf’s novels in order [as opposed to the letters and diaries which I love]), that I haven’t gotten around to blogging. As for cooking — I made a bomber bolognese sauce with hot italian sausage and ground antelope the other day…