Happy 2023, everyone! I don’t know about you, but it’s already been an adventure for me in a variety of ways…Peter is walking independently, and our dishwasher decided to spring a leak while we were gone for Christmas. Let’s get into it!
Adventurer
In a big swing from my last blog post, my adventurer self has been wildly indulged in the last month and it’s been so very good. Jonathan and I got to go skiing a couple of times while we were at his parents’ house; they had a ball watching Peter and we had a ball getting to ski together. When we had just started dating, the majority of our time together was spent on some kind of adventure, whether we were skiing at Eldora or Winter Park, hiking around Boulder and Golden, or biking in Fruita. Our relationship is built on being together outside, and it always feels really good to get time like that together.
We also got to go skiing at Powder Mountain, a local hill, with some friends of ours on New Years Day. It just so happened it dumped all night the night before and the whole time we were skiing. Powder Mountain limits the number of passes it sells, so there were still completely untracked runs at 2:30 that afternoon! That was about as long as my legs lasted; I was sore for two days after that. It was a really special day and a really nice break from the aforementioned kitchen adventure (which I’ll describe in more detail in a little bit).
Just yesterday I took Peter skiing in the Burley at the Ogden Nordic Center. I put my skins on my backcountry skis and towed him around for about an hour. It felt really good to get sweaty and move my body and see the snow on everything.
I don’t think I’ve had as many reminders this close together, but I need outside in my life. I know this – I start each year with a New Years dawn hike to great the new year by watching the sunrise. But I tend to forget the things that are good for me. Going outside takes work, especially in the winter. There’s a lot of gear involved in staying warm and dry and it’s hard to overcome the inertia of being cozy on the couch. I’m not always strong enough – my knee has protested some of (most of) this activity. I need to keep getting strong. But the actual adventure is worth it. It’s always worth it.
Nerd
Books, friends. So many books! I got six novels for Christmas, as well as four non-fiction books. I’ve barely made a dent and I’m so excited about it.
The other reason I can say there are so many books is because I’ve been checking board books out from the library for Peter. He loves the variety! He will still pick out some of his own books to read, but mostly he brings me his library books. It’s been interesting to find and revisit books I remember and think about them from an adult perspective. One we’ve been reading a lot lately is The Little Red Hen.
For those who are unfamiliar, the premise of the story is that the little red hen finds some wheat seeds and goes through the whole process – planting, cutting, threshing, grinding, and baking – to turn the wheat into bread. At each step, she asks her three friends “Who will help me ________?” and the three friends each reply, “Not I!” Until of course, it’s time to eat the bread; then each friend says “I will!” The little red hen denies them any bread and instead shares it with her chicks.
I remember loving this story – I liked the repetition and I also liked that the little red hen stood up for herself and the other lazy animals didn’t get a reward they hadn’t earned. It felt like a lesson in fairness.
Now as I read it, I find myself wondering a lot about accountability and generosity and fairness. In the particular version of the board book I have, the other animals are depicted flying kites, boating, napping, and generally playing while the little red hen works really hard. On the surface, the little red hen is holding them accountable for their behavior and that’s a really important thing to learn. But I also think about the other narrative about laziness I ran into all the time, which is that of The Lazy Student. The Lazy Student doesn’t do his homework, doesn’t participate in class, sits on her phone, and usually asks what extra credit they can do to fix their grade two days before the end of the grading period. I tended to reject this narrative because there were so many assumptions built into it about why The Lazy Student was doing what they were doing. It was important to me to try to seek understanding and to try to balance accountability and grace in dealing with these kids. When is it the right thing to do for the little red hen to just share the bread anyway?
Then I realized I’d finished the book several minutes ago and Peter was squirming off my lap to get another book, and I felt a little silly for getting so deeply wound up about a children’s story. But maybe that’s the point of children’s books. I’ve had similarly complex responses to The Little Blue Truck and The Rainbow Fish, among others. And this is why I love reading – there’s always something there to ponder.
Old-Lady-Hobbit
This has been the source of my highest highs and my lowest lows this month. Buckle up, friends.
As I mentioned, our dishwasher decided to start leaking while we were gone for Christmas. We came home to a bouncy and very wet kitchen floor that has since been totally ripped out, leaving me with half my kitchen packed into boxes downstairs, no counters, no kitchen sink, and no stove.
We were very lucky in a lot of ways. Our kitchen is over top our laundry room, which was completely unfinished and had a big drain in the floor! Aside from the kitchen floor itself, the only damage is that I’ll need to get a new cover for my ironing board. We were also lucky that we could leave the oven, the fridge, and the microwave in place.
Even with the oven and microwave, I’ve had a hard time figuring out how to feed my family. This is very, very, very stressful for me. The biggest constraint is washing dishes; the bathroom sink is in fact smaller than my crock pot, my cutting board, and any baking pan I could use. I also really miss the garbage disposal – I laughingly say I’ve only clogged the bathroom sink once so far, but I’m sure I’ll manage to do it again. I’ve cooked a couple of times, but we’ve been eating a lot of microwave freezer dinners and take out. I’m slowly figuring out what kinds of things Peter will like and where to find them in the grocery store. It’s been incredibly hard. I miss my house smelling like yummy food. I miss being able to use food as a celebration or pick-me-up for Jonathan, or for me.
But there have been beautiful things too. Our friends down the street have had us over for dinner four different times, and we have a standing invitation to join them until our kitchen gets put back together. A mom I go walking with frequently made me a batch of the zucchini muffins I often feed Peter for snacks, and she brought me some flowers she’s growing. Mom sent me gingerbread cookies. I knew, at some low level, that I was finally starting to build a community here in Utah, but I didn’t realize how strong it was until everyone has been so kind.
We don’t really have an ETA on a new kitchen right now – it’s still in the grips of insurance. We’re also planning on making some changes to the kitchen that we’ve talked about for a long time. But in the meantime I’m getting better at cooking in new and interesting ways and I’m so incredibly deeply grateful for our friends.
Musings
If 2023 has taught me anything this year, it’s that good things come from hard things. It’s worth it to get the gear together for Peter and I to get outside. It’s worth it to push my body. There are still gems to be found in reading the same children’s book for the eighth time that day. The strength of a community is revealed in a different way when it’s tested. And hopefully we get a beautiful new kitchen out of the mess it currently is! In a lot of ways I feel like I’ve been going backwards – back to my childhood hobbies, back to children’s books, back to a different way of cooking. It’s frustrating, but it also serves to pop me out of ruts and to remind me of why I valued those things in the past.
When I write it this way, it almost sounds trite. It sounds like one of those inspirational posters or memes that pop up a lot. But it feels different to me right now because it’s coming out of a collection of lived moments. I’ve really struggled in this last month in the day-to-day, and it’s only in stopping and reflecting now that I can see this string of light moments. Writing is also hard work, and it also serves to deliver good things.
I hope you had wonderful holiday seasons and you’re finding some good things in getting back to some of your routines in this new year.
Hej då,
Jamie
A Three Part Woman 