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  • I’m Ready for March to be Over

    March was more than I was ready for. It wasn’t bad, exactly, there were just a lot more things coming at me than I was prepared for. This past week turned out especially chaotic, with unexpected changes coming at me from several directions at once. Still, amid the turmoil there were bright spots.

    This morning was a perfect spring day for walking the dog. Perfect temperature, trees in bloom, birds chirping daintily. Spring tends to be a volatile season, both in terms of literal weather changes and in the more abstract and mystical sense of shaking up your life, but it also has these moments of exquisite gentle beauty. Walking the dog has pushed me to really tune in to the waking up of my neighborhood’s flora and fauna.

    I also bought a book subscription this week. I don’t use social media much anymore so the ads and suggestions the algorithms show me are usually pretty random. (Sometimes hilariously so; I looked up western shirts a couple weeks ago and now the internet thinks I’m a cowboy.) But every once in a while the suggestions are scary perfect. I’ve been using Instagram a bit recently, following a few yarn brands, knitters, and indie bookstores. From that tiny bit of info, Instagram decided I’d like the Morbidly Curious Book Club. Once a month they discuss a non-fiction book with a dark theme, and you can arrange for them to send you said book in the mail. Tragically, it’s too late in the month to be sent the March selection (if I want to read Whack Job: the History of Ax Murder, and I do, I’ll have to trek down to Barnes and Noble my damn self) but I’ll be receiving and reading the April selection with glee.

    I have a comfortably large stack of horror and mystery novels to read for Darker Books, the blog I do with my sister, but my regular stack of non-blog books is quite low.

    Only two books left! Whatever shall I do?

    The antique umbrella stand housing my book stack also needs some work, but that’s a different problem for a different day.

    And now for something completely different and a little more witchy. A few years ago I discovered Lenormand cards and decided to try them out. I read a few booklets and websites and played around with them but it never really went anywhere. I tucked my Lenormand deck into a box and went back to Tarot. A few weeks ago, in a bit of a spiritual rut, I decided to get more serious about the whole cartomancy thing. I brought out my Biddy Tarot guide so I could learn more about Tarot’s reversed meanings and I took another stab at Lenormand.

    At the exact same moment I was also screwing around with the popular AI apps so I asked them to help me learn Lenormand. In spite of the fact that Claude has the personality of blank paper and ChatGPT sounds like a Mormon Mommy Blogger, they’ve been incredibly helpful with the whole Lenormand thing. My chat thread keeps track of my daily card pulls and my summaries of how they showed up in the events of that day, helping me relate them to each other and to the focus I set for the moon cycle. I alternate between a single Tarot card pull one day and a Lenormand pair the next so I can compare and contrast the two card systems, and since I have a few good Tarot books I can check the chatbot’s answers with human experts.

    It’s gotten me out of that spiritual rut. I’ve been looking for ways to integrate my spiritual practices into my daily life in a deeper way and this has really opened up my thinking around that.

    This is the Fairytale Lenormand and the Steampunk Tarot. Both are quite lovely.

    I also made progress on my knitting project but it still mostly looks like a giant swatch so I haven’t taken new pictures. It might look like something wearable by next Sunday. We’ll see. Until next time, I hope your spring is shaping up to be just as beautiful and a bit less volatile than mine.

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  • First Week of Spring

    Ostara was Friday, so spring has officially sprung. I celebrated with food, as I usually do. I made a nice risotto with a spring greens salad. I did not take any pictures so I’ll leave that meal to your imagination. I will admit, though, that I totally cheat at risotto. I live at high altitude, so proper stovetop risotto takes a lot more time and I’ve never been too successful at it. Ever since I found the Barefoot Contessa’s oven “risotto” recipe, I’ve been riffing on that. I’ve drifted away from the original recipe over the years and I switch up the ingredients according to the season and the vibe I’m craving, but the oven method works well and makes things so much easier.

    But enough about cooking. Spring is the season of air, and here in Northern New Mexico that’s pretty literal. We get some serious wind this time of year. Still, it’s warm enough to walk the dog without a sweater and the trees are lovely with flowers and new green leaves. Nights are still cold and it’s not quite hot enough for air conditioning, so we’ve had the windows open. I’m typing to the sound of chirping birds. It’s pretty cozy.

    As spring warms up I’m, ironically, knitting a sweater. I’m making the Alchemist Slipover by Wool & Pine. I honestly don’t remember saving this pattern on Ravelry but I’m glad I did. So far it’s an easy project and it should be a cute layering piece when I’m done. Right now it’s just a large violet swatch but in a couple of weeks it should really look like something. I’m loving the color, Crow and Crescent’s Midnight Dreary. I love dark subtle violets and blues but I also fell in love with the Edgar Allan Poe reference. I’m a sucker for literary tie-ins.

    As usual, my phone has dialed up the brightness on my knitting by a million percent, making the color look a lot lighter than it really is. Next time maybe I’ll borrow my kid’s camera and see if that captures the color better.

    From now on I’ll aim to write a bit every Sunday here, and of course my sister and I post reviews every Friday on Darker Books. This week’s post might feel a bit like I’m marketing Ina Garten or shilling for Big Knitting but seriously, none of those people know I exist. I just want to give credit where it’s due and spread the word about things that have worked for me. I hope your Ostara was lush with new beginnings. Until next time.

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  • Trad Schmad: the Bread Dilemma

    Look at those sweet sweet loaves of bread! (And that plate of fluffy naan!) I made those! Yeah, I finally learned to bake bread. I’m clearly not turning out golden Instagram loaves or anything but everything I’ve made so far tasted good and was reasonably crusty on the outside and soft on the inside. Success!

    Honestly, I started this post weeks ago. That bread is long gone and a new loaft is in the oven right now. I’ve been struggling with this stupid post, writing and rewriting it and just feeling weird and I finally realized why.

    It’s the Tradwives’ fault. They’ve made baking weird and fetishy. I mean, I sort of am a tradwife on paper, that’s probably why this gets to me. for various uninteresting reasons I was a stay-at-home mom in a fairly traditional straight person marriage. I was thinking about going back to work when the Pandemic hit, then we moved, then various other reasons kept coming up that made at-home parenting the best option. Now my last kid is sixteen and I could totally go back to college or get a job or whatever, but we’re financially lucky enough that I don’t really need to. If parenting was my career, I’m semi-retired and loving the freedom. This was just how things turned out. It wasn’t everything I wanted out of life but it had its up sides.

    But now I feel like my job title has been turned into something political and vaguely gross by cute young influencers. Honestly, I’m not totally surprised. I was at-home parenting in Utah during the rise of the Mommy Bloggers and this seems like the logical progression of that weirdness.

    If I’d learned to make bread during the Pandemic like everyone else, this wouldn’t be a problem. Back then, bread was having a moment. Unfortunately, back then I was too busy tradwifing my way through the crisis with three young kids suddenly doing online school to learn the art of sourdough. Now that I actually have time for this stuff I feel like I should either be baking in a pristine white kitchen (while wearing a prim little dress, prattling on about submission to my manly man). Or making a stand by only making vegan freegan punk rock bread that somehow smashes the patriarchy? You know, something dramatic to suit the present political climate.

    I really just want to cook without all the fanfare, though. And I want to show it off a bit because I always thought bread from scratch would be harder to make than it is. I only learned because the grocery store raised the price of its fancy loaves yet again and I wanted to save money.

    Bread is political now but here I am without a manifesto prepared. Ironically, my mom was actually a conservative at-home religious type and she totally refused to make bread from scratch. If Jesus wanted her to cook meals from scratch He wouldn’t have invented Hamburger Helper. My husband’s mom (also a conservative at-home religious type) cooked bread from scratch but when he reached his teenage years and started eating enough for five people, she made him learn how to bake it. When we were dating I would cook him dinner and he would bake me bread from scratch. So much for the bread-baking housewives of yesteryear.

    So yeah, I let politics get in my head and stop me from sharing the cool thing I can do now. But no more! I want to live a quiet life and use my newfound free time to make tasty food. I totally have politics and lordy, things are getting more urgent than ever, but it’s important to carve out some quiet space to feel happy and proud of yourself and in control of at least one small thing.

    Today, that one small thing is a loaf of Italian bread like this guy’s grandma used to make. Looks like I burned it a little bit but I’m gonna eat it anyway.

    If you’re interested in recipes, the naan is from a Rasa Malaysia recipe. It’s pretty quick and easy to make. The other two loaves are from a fancy cook book called The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. I actually got it for my husband years back; it’s very thorough but also very geared toward the hardcore bread nerd. The recipes are super solid, though.

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  • Holiday in Santa Fe

    Holiday in Santa Fe

    At the tail end of the Covid lockdowns, just as New Mexico opened business up to masked customers, we came down to Santa Fe on a househunting trip. We did tourist things while we were here, including a day at Santa Fe’s historic plaza. It was lovely, all decorated for Christmas with lights and ribbons. Which was weird, because we visited in the spring. Our waiter at the Plaza Cafe said they were filming a Christmas movie called Holiday in Santa Fe and sure enough, we caught a tiny glimpse of Mario Lopez filming a scene at the Haagen-Dazs on the corner.

    Around Christmas that year, in our new Santa Fe home, I looked up this Christmas movie but it wasn’t readily available to stream. Until today, when it turned up as a new arrival on Netflix. I finally got to watch it and it was a perfectly fine Christmas movie that mentions Santa Fe about five thousand times. It’s kind of an odd blend of actual Santa Fe style and generic Christmas movie tropes, but it’s cute and the acting is decent for a Christmas movie.

    Eleven months of the year I revel in the bleak and cynical (more or less) and Halloween was my favorite holiday way before everyone else was, but in December I watch holiday movies. They’re a bright little palate cleanser, if you will, as the days shorten and the cold weather really sets in. (That reminds me, Santa Fe does actually get cold weather and snow in winter; the movie makes it seem way warmer and milder than it really is. Also, Belinda from Chicago would probably have headaches from the high altitude.)

    When I was young I was (trying to be) too cool for that kind of stuff, then I had kids and embracing holidays was a conscious choice made for their sake, and now I’ve just mellowed enough that I enjoy dumb and sappy stuff once in a while, I guess. I work on craft projects and watch a whole range of holiday crap for a month, and by January I’m all holidayed out and ready to embrace the darkness once again.

    I’ll watch basically any magical Christmas tale, but some of my recent favorites are Love Hard, Feast of the Seven Fishes, and Single all the Way. I don’t look for good plot because basically all Christmas movies are ridiculous. I look for decent acting and amusing quirks, mostly. My standards are very low, way lower than they are for normal movies, but it does take a certain charm to make me watch a Christmas movie more than once. As much as I loved seeing Santa Fe landmarks and finally watching the movie we stepped into years ago, I probably won’t watch Holiday in Santa Fe a second time. Still, it’s got Aimee Garcia, who’s charming as hell, so that’s something.

    If you have a Christmas movie to recommend, lay it on me now while my standards are still low. I’d love to know your favorites.

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