French Country Calling

January 19, 2016 by Erin 7 Comments

I’ve always considered myself a city mouse. A born and raised city girl, I tend to fall to pieces (or just plain fall) when in nature. I need the constant buzz of traffic, buses, police sirens, pedestrian chatter, and concrete. A familiar place where I know that if I’m murdered, someone nearer than five miles away will hear me scream. It’s the little things, you know?

But then, a friend on Instagram tagged one of her friends in a post, I clicked through out of curiosity, only to discover the most wonderful account I think I’ve ever come across: Cat in France, an American expat living in Normandy in an old chateau with a farm. On the surface, nothing about that lifestyle except “France” should have been attractive to me. But within a few photos, I was seriously considering packing it all up and moving to the French countryside. I mean, look:

french country

If you can look at her photos and not feel the same urge, more power to you. I’ll be over here crying into my lone Le Creuset and hanging dried lavender all over the house. Her feed delivers daily doses of chickens, goats, beautiful produce, and a kitchen that would make even me (a reluctant cook to say the least) want to become the next Julia Child.

In the meantime, here are a few things I can buy to bring a little French country to my own kitchen. Which isn’t in Normandy, and isn’t in a château. Oy.

French country kitchen

1. Lavender Box / 2. Striped Towels / 3. Duralex Glasses / 4. Tray / 5. Copper Colander / 6. Weck Jar / 7. Mirror / 8. Vase / 9. Chairs / 10. Market Basket

Happy Birthday, Fitzy!

January 7, 2016 by Erin 15 Comments

fitzcute

mar12fitz3

Somebody had a birthday yesterday! Fitz, you wonderfully weird little ball of love, you turned five yesterday! FIVE! …Um, possibly. His birthday could also be the 9th, according to his adoption paperwork. There are three entries with his birthday, and two of them say 1/6/11, and the other says 1/9/11. Transposition error? We’ll never know. Like a stolen masterpiece, Fitz’s provenance is a mystery to us. Where did he come from? (Outer space.) Are there more like him? Who had him before us? We adopted him at eight months old, and he’d already been adopted from the shelter once and then returned. I’d love to meet the heartless monster who did that to my sweet boy, but it’s probably better that we never, ever cross paths. And besides, Fitz belonged with us all along. Whatever trauma and separation anxiety he internalized from spending the first six months of his life bouncing around shelters comes with the territory of adopting a dog, and I’ve never regretted it.

It’s been such a rewarding four and a half years being this little guy’s personal assistant (let’s be real) and Official Cuddle Provider. This last year was a big one for him: we stopped crating him during the day, giving him unfettered, unattended access to the entire house. Risky, given his track record (ahem), but he has more than lived up to the trust we placed in him when we disassembled his crate, and he now spends most of his day snoozing on the sofa, not shredding a single area rug, box of tissues, or the recycling. He’s matured so much in the last year, and while I did just catch him drinking from the filthy water in the christmas tree stand, he’s developed into a mellow old soul at this age. That doesn’t mean he won’t turn into a Mexican jumping bean when someone new walks in the door, and he still screams his head off at the slightest jingle of a dog’s leash somewhere in a three block radius on walks, but we’ll take any sort of progress we can get.

This was also the year we stopped giving him Prozac. You might recall that our vet prescribed it for him almost immediately upon adoption, and we diligently gave it to him every morning in a scoop of peanut butter in the hopes that it would help with his many (many) anxieties, but at his annual check-up in October the vet opted not to refill Fitz’s prescription. It wasn’t worth the side effects, and honestly, I don’t know if this is good or bad, we haven’t noticed a difference yet. Prozac Pup no more!

Fitz, I love you so much. Happy birthday!

And now, some throwback photos of my favorite boy, from 2011 to 2013! (When he was still technically “a puppy” and approximately 12lbs lighter)

fitz snow

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The Gap

January 5, 2016 by Erin 2 Comments

Ira Glass’s thoughts on there being a “taste gap” for creative beginners, gorgeously animated by filmmaker Daniel Sax.

Nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish somebody had told this to me — is that all of us who do creative work … we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good…

A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people at that point, they quit.

…And the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work — do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week, or every month, you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions. It takes a while, it’s gonna take you a while — it’s normal to take a while. And you just have to fight your way through that, okay?

Okay, Ira Glass, I’m listening. Do you guys –any of you who do creative work– necessarily agree with this sentiment? It’s comforting (though obvious) to hear that you shouldn’t expect to be good right off the bat. That like anything else, it takes practice. Glass’s words are simple (and old; this interview is from 2009!), but they alleviate a lot of the (self-imposed) pressure that comes with writing, at least for me.