Happy Happy, Dewey!

This is Dewey.

Dewey is my sister, and last Wednesday was her birthday.

I love Dewey for lots of reasons. Some of them are:

1. Dewey is always up for doing fun activities. Whether it's a bike trip to the Boston Harbor islands or a taste-tripping party with a full array of sour foods to try, you know you'll have an adventure when you're hanging out with Dewey.

2. When we were little little girls playing pretend games, Dewey always let me be the very very rich lady, and she would be the servant.

3. The meanest thing I've ever heard Dewey say about someone is that they are a grump.

4. Dewey has style. More than almost anyone else I know. And she's generous with her style- 90% of the times people complement my outfit, Dewey picked it out.

5. My sister is the wittiest person you'll ever meet.

6. Dewey's sense of self is admirable. While most college seniors obsess over finding the perfect high-paying corporate-type job, Dewey took her cum laude diploma and became the cook at a preschool. Now she makes (really delicious) hippy food for Cambridge babies, and has plenty of time for her various and sundry other interests, too. She figured out what worked for her, and she went with it.

Happy happy, Dewey!

I'm so glad you were born.

{photo shamelessly stolen from facebook.}

I went for a walk in the woods yesterday. It was perfect.

I'd been in a funk, the kind where I wanted to scream every time the people around me had the audacity to do something crazy, like breathe. I needed some alone time.

Even though it was raining, I needed to get out in nature, by myself, away from anyone who might breathe too loud.

I rode my bike to some conservation land on the bike path, and I walked in the rain, and I sat under a tree, and I got soaking wet.

I felt better immediately, and all was well again. I highly recommend it.

Sometimes, it is Thursday night, and you want some brownies.

So you make them, and you feel like Katherine Hepburn (they are her family recipe, after all), and then you are happy.

The End. Happy Friday, friends!

Item Number 20? Complete.*

There are good weekends, and then there are actively good weekends, the kind where even little mishaps don't get in the way of everything else being just awesome.

This weekend was the second kind. On Saturday, Anna and I went to a party on a little lake in New Hampshire. She was the only person I knew there, but by the end I knew everyone, my green bean salad had been devoured, ridiculous kayak trips had been taken, and we had danced for two hours.

I woke up on Sunday morning to a text from Christine asking if I wanted to go hiking. Neither of us had ever done Monadnock before, so following a mishap involving being locked out without any shoes on, we hopped in the car and drove right by the little lake on our way to the second-most hiked mountain in the world (Mt. Fuji is number one.)

You guys, it was amazing. Neither my photography skills nor my iPhone can do it justice, but we arrived on the top, sweaty and out of breath (Mt. Monadnock can be hiked in a leisurely manner. We did no such thing.), and we turned around, and it was beautiful.

It was a perfect weekend.

*I have now Gone Hiking in New England. I hope to do it lots more while I'm 25.

Twenty-Five in Twenty-Five

{Honorary List Item #26: Play with more sparklers.}

So, I turned 25 two weeks ago.

25 is kind of a big age for me; I have this belief that by the time you're 26, you have to have your shit together in terms of becoming a grownup, or at least be on the path to having your shit together. Which means that as of two weeks ago, I have a year to figure some stuff out before I have to actually pretend to be a real grownup.

Whew. Does that make any sense to anyone else?

Anyway, by the time I'm 26, I want to be on the path to being a really awesome grownup. Inspired by Katie's 25 in 25, and Maggie Mason of the Mighty Life List, my plan for world (or at least life) domination in the next year:

1. Get a freakin' drivers' license.

2. Leave the country at least once, even if it's just to Canada.

3. Go back to California to visit the friendsies.

4. Run a 10k.

5. Get a grip on my finances.

6. Meet a blog friend in real life.

7. Follow 100 blogs.

8. Go on a date with a stranger.

9. Buy a digital SLR, and learn how to use it.

10. Find a monthly or weekly volunteer opportunity, ideally with children.

11. Sew something really cool.

12. Make my apartment a place that I really love (with the roommates).

13. Do a Martha Stewart project.

14. Buy a piece of artwork for my gallery wall.

15. See live music six times.

16. Have a really fun party with good music, cocktails, decorations, and dancing.

17. Try being a real vegetarian for a whole week.

18. Try out weight watchers for a month with Dewey.

19. Grow a garden.

20. Go hiking in New England.

21. Come up with a five-year plan.

22. Plan and execute an overnight reunion trip with my high school friends.

23. Paint a picture worth hanging up.

24. Learn to make a really delicious signature cocktail.

25. Get back in the habit of eating five fruits and veggies every day.

I know the last one is kind of lame, but hey, fruits and vegetables are really delicious, and I'm missing out on them by only eating a few every day.

{Photo of me at my birthday picnic by Anna, roommate extraodinaire.}

{Emma's a pretty extraordinary roommate, too.}

{Neither of them read this blog, so I'm not sure why I'm so worried about their feelings here.}

{UPDATE: Anna reads my blog. Hi Anna!}

Every now and then, I'm struck by just how lucky I am.

Tonight my roommates and I sat on our new back porch, drinking champagne and enjoying the evening. It was perfect.

Right now, I'm so thankful for:

1. Perfect summer evenings, and back porches on which to enjoy them.

2. Roommates who have turned into friends.

3. Champagne with which to toast new houses.

4. This song:

p.s. Many many thanks to my sister Dewey for introducing me to, among others, Brandi Carlile. I am also lucky to be surrounded by people who have such excellent taste in music.

It is ice cream week on the kitchn.

I feel that my life is about to get a lot more exciting.

(Let's not talk about what that says about my life, okay?)

(I mean, seriously. Ice Cream Week. Don't you get excited just typing it?)

{Image source}

There is something about the ocean in New England.

With its freezing water and quiet beauty, I feel like the ocean in New England is a good stand-in for New England itself- my part of the country is not too flashy, and all the cold weather makes us seem a little unfriendly to the rest of the world.

Once you spend a little time here, though, you see just how gorgeous, how magical, the northeastern states can be.

I love it. A year later, I'm so glad I moved back.

Guest Post - Cait of MiddleGround

So, Sunday was my birthday.

Yesterday, this arrived in my inbox, along with formatting instructions.

Cait is the kind of friend who shows up to help you move whether you asked her or not, who looks up what a ranunculus is so she can embroider one on a hankie, and apparently also the kind of friend who writes a birthday post about you, the kind that makes you cry on the first day at a new job (that was a little awkward). She also is a brilliant writer, and if you do not already greedily await each of her posts, go read her blog, STAT, and see what she can do when writing about topics more interesting than yours truly.

{Cait and I both know the importance of checking one's teeth before a photo op. If that turns into the photo op, so be it.}

To the readers of Abbie Babble, who clearly exhibit good taste from the get-go:

My following of this blog is, to say the least, passionate-- from stalking Abbie's gchat status to see if there's a new posting, to the inspiration to start my own blog. As you all well know, one of the features of this bright spot in the internet universe is the birthday post. Being with Abbie yesterday on the anniversary of the occasion of her birth, I requested the opportunity to be a guest-blogger so that she herself could have a list (albeit woefully short and massively abbreviated) of her own.

This is our Abbie.

I love Abbie for lots of reasons. Some of them are:

1. Abbie an amazing sense of origin. She loves the place from which she came, and when you watch her walk through Cambridge or Boston, you can feel her radiating her love of home and it's clear that Cambridge and Boston love her back. She is also adventurous, because she went to a galaxy far, far away in San Francisco for a while (but we are very glad she's back now because we Boston people don't like to share).

2. Abbie knows lots of amazing things. To give one brief example, when she came over to make scones, she taught me that when you cut butter into the flour, you actually cut the butter with knives, and that you need to fluff the flour. It was as though my KitchenAide had sighed in relief: now here was finally someone who knows what she's doing.

3. Abbie is the most inviting person in the world. Some people guard their origin and knowledge jealously, but not Abbie. She invites you into all of the amazing things that she knows and into her sense of belonging, so that you feel like you know things and belong too. She'll also invite you to go apple-picking and picnicking and all sorts of other things that turn into the best afternoons on record.

4. Whenever I think of Abbie, I only think of pleasant things, like: solid colored tights, All Stars, pretty skirts, raspberry crumble bars, Pimms Cups (said with particular flair), silvery blue rooms, ridonculous ranunculus, mason jars, window sills, tree lined streets, orange wedges and apples.

5. Abbie has the amazing and extraordinarily rare quality of being able to be honest and kind at the same time. Most people just look once and decide they know everything, but Abbie makes the effort to look underneath a problem and understand why it is the way it is, and empathize. I think this is one symptom of her overwhelming generosity.

6. Abbie reminds me a lot of Miss Rumphius because she has an amazing ability to make the world more beautiful every day. She'll say it's the Holga or her photo processing website, but it's not-- it's the Abbie lens that when you look through it, ordinary things become lovely and full of the possibility of making you unexpectedly happy.

So Happy Happy darling Abbie-- patron saint of baked goods, window sill flowers, and all other things kind, lovely, and delicious.

We are so glad you were born.

Many, many thanks to all my friends and family for the birthday love on Sunday. You can't possibly know how much it made my day.

P.S. I realize it's a little awkward to post a whole list of reasons why I'm wonderful. I'm doing it for two reasons: 1. I am currently covered in paint and moving detritus and thus have no time to write a post, and also 2. When Cait tells you to do something, you listen. When she gives you formatting instructions and a gorgeously-written (if horribly undeserved) blog post, you post the thing, damnit.