I sent my mom a shopping list a week before Thanksgiving–I make the dinner in our house, but she’s in charge of supplies. “I’ve got a veg pickup on Tuesday afternoon,” I told her, “so I’ll just bring home whatever I get and maybe we’ll have a little extra.”

WE HAD A LOT OF EXTRA.

I was not counting on showing up in New York with literally twenty pounds of root vegetables, only to walk into my mother’s kitchen and be faced with–yeah–another twenty pounds of root vegetables. On Sunday I wound up back in Boston with 2 giant butternut squash, five giant red onions, seven or eight red bliss potatoes, almost a dozen yams, and an enormous honking bag of carrots and parsnips. Plus I still have a pumpkin and two acorn squash. Oh and also a monster rutabaga. And a leftover bag of fresh cranberries. And also a big bag of string beans. And two celery roots. And some kale that, let’s face it, is going to wind up in the trash. 

Just so we’re clear: I live with a boy who likes neither squash nor sweet potatoes. Or parsnips, for that matter. 

OK good talk. 

So far: shepherd’s pie with ground turkey very, VERY loosely based on Rachael’s recipe. Butternut squash scones with cranberries, walnuts, and white chocolate chips, half of which got delivered to the neighbors this morning. Roasted string beans with olive oil, sea salt, and pepper.  Tonight: guacamole burgers (to kill an onion or two) and Ina’s mashed yellow turnips. Later this week: Bethany’s delicious-looking butternut squash risotto, a pumpkin pie, and maybe some sweet potato muffins. 

Help: Parsnip recipes, anybody? Hopefully ones that taste a little bit…not like parsnip?

No really I have a million parsnips.

Hit a roadblock today behind the kitchen door.

Like, a giant one.

Like, one made of concrete and rusty iron that homeless dudes pee on in the night and keeps people from easily accessing their offices in Federal Plaza.

But that’s all okay.

We are pushing forward. We are shrugging our shoulders and sucking in our gut and finding a way to squeeze around it.

We are Practicing Tenacity.

And we are drinking forty gallons of coffee while we do it. 

Meanwhile: concentrating on the other stuff. Long walk to Castle Island (it is 48 and gorgeous. i opened every window in this place). Doctor’s appointments made. Shepherd’s pie and cranberry scones (more on those tomorrow). Writing submissions. A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain. Our Handsome President’s speech on Afghanistan. Christmas cards to work on. Arrangements to make. 

You know, for what it’s worth, I always thought Tilted Arc was kind of awesome. Kept things interesting, at the very least.

Thanksgiving, White Plains, 2009.

We were at H &J’s the other day for Thanksgiving number one and when we went around the table to say what we’re thankful for, a girl I don’t know very well raised her glass, smiled, and said: “Rumble strips, birth control, and air-conditioning.”

I MEAN.

I am thankful for those things too, clearly.

But also.

A mom who would lie down in traffic for me. A dad who is funny and strong. A sister who walks around with half my heart always, my best good friend, my shadow self. A boyfriend who is going to pick me up from work in a couple of hours so we can blow this popsicle stand, and who will probably buy me an iced coffee for the ride. Girlfriends who make tasty dinners, who make it better, who make time. Paperbacks and Netflix and Dunkin’ Donuts and the thousand other creature comforts I take for granted every day. Public transportation and the people who keep it running. Clean water from the tap. My MacBook. Jeans with stretch. The fact that I get to vote. The fact that somebody taught me to read. Rumble strips. Birth control. And air conditioning.

I’m going home to my family, kittens. I’ll see you back here on Monday.

You all should go read this post by Elise. It gave me flaily arms.

I spend a lot of time feeling different from other people. Not in a bad way, really, but more in a sort of thinky, peculiar, I suspect we are having two very different reactions to this situation kind of way. I’m chattery and nervous. I’d rather be reading a book. I think about that scene at the beginning of Beauty and the Beast, townspeople whispering behind my back: no denying she’s a funny girl, that Belle.

Anyway, having put that out there, it’s always such a treat when I can look around a room and feel like I’m on the same page as the vast majority–if not all–of the women in it with me.  It doesn’t happen often, but it happened at my book club last night–or, as I described it to Tom, “my fancy dinner group where everybody reads the same novel.” Full of food writers and beer connoisseurs and Girls Friday with long Amazon wish lists, this monthly powwow is such an effing treat. Truly. Last night we ate coq au vin and drank cranberry lambic and talked–sort of, kind of, in a wandering circular way–about The Elegance of the Hedgehog, this month’s jumping-off point for a chat that covered, among other topics, the importance of correct comma usage and the crappiness of New Moon. By the time I trotted out into the cold to pick up the T, full of cheese and asparagus and winterberry pie (doesn’t that sound like I made it up?) I felt so refreshed–like here are some people I don’t even know very well yet, but who sure seem to be girls after my own heart.

I wish for everyone to have an awesome book club. And I am so very thankful for mine.

Oh hello weekend.

We are in full holiday swing around these parts. Last night I went to Trader Joe’s and walked out loaded down with pecans and golden raisins, walnuts and pignoli and two bags of chocolate chips. Pumpkin pie spice. Dried cranberries and candied ginger. I got it all home, laid it out on the kitchen table, and couldn’t wipe the grin off my face. Oh MAN, I like to bake. Look for some glamour shots of pie this weekend.

Also on the agenda:  shopping trips. pinot noir. book club. wintersong. merrymaking. dark roasts. sunflowers. packalacking for a long trip home. and prancing around in my brand new boots.

See you Monday, taters.

I do this thing where I associate seasons of my life with certain cds. Maybe you do it too. For example, I can’t hear Dave Matthews Band’s Live at Luther College without thinking of my sophomore year of high school, when all my t-shirts came from Abercrombie and I liked this ridiculous boy so much my brain damn near leaked out my ears. Paul Simon’s Graceland always reminds me of the summer after my freshman year of college, drinking iced coffee in Rachel’s Ford and doing the “You Can Call Me Al” dance at red lights.  And Telling Stories, by Tracy Chapman, stayed in heavy rotation for months as I began to do just that, sitting at my desk in my parents’ house and plugging away at one tiny fiction after another.

A truly disproportionate number of these life-soundtrack albums are by one John Mayer, who seems to have a talent for making records particularly suited for repeat-play: Inside Wants Out on my trip to Australia in high school; Heavier Things at night on the Greyhound on my way to visit friends in undergrad; Try! in the darkroom junior year, seconds ticking by as I waited to pull my photos from the fixer. I love John: his quiet voice, his moody guitar, his heartbreaking covers of old favorites and the odd lyric that makes me sit up and say, “YES, THAT.” If it wasn’t for his habit of serially dating and discarding women with documented low self-esteem, I’d probably have a giant crush on him.

Instead I only have a medium-sized crush on him.

Anyway, the point of all of this is that Tom is awesome and bought me Battle Studies yesterday. The notification from iTunes showed up in my inbox, I literally gasped with unbridled joy, and twenty-four hours later the play count is already creeping close to a dozen.  Oh, I’m in love with these songs. Personal favorites include “Who Says” and “Perfectly Lonely,” though “War of my Life” is a rather excellent hymn to being a divorced-kid-at-the-holidays and “I’m on Fire” made me all teary, because fundamentally I’m a giant ninny. Anyway, it’s vintage JM, swoony and sad and maybe just a little bit more grown-up. Like the rest of us, I guess.

Over the next few days I’ll be logging many, many hours in kitchens here and miles away, and I already know this cd is going to be the perfect companion. And I already know that when these songs turn up on shuffle in years to come, I’ll remember where I’m at right now.