In the Dead of Winter

Happy New Year! In my last post, autumn was only just arriving while I was dreading the start of winter. Here were are, in the thick of it. Thanks for all of your suggestions on how to survive. Some of those included: 

• Get outside regularly, no matter the weather
• Make a ritual of visiting a local restaurant (rituals in general)
• Cozying up on the couch, watching TV and knitting
• Photo walks outside
• Binge read a book series
• Make plans (crafting or otherwise) for the coming warmer seasons
• Visit a sauna or take a warm bath

A thread through all of these survival mechanisms is to get out of the house into the world. I'm currently feeling very cooped up, but looking through my photos from the past few months, I reminded myself that I have gone out into the world, no matter how cold and gray.

In November I took a solo trip a few hours away. I was originally planning on going to New York City, but trying to find a hotel that wasn't insanely expensive proved impossible, and the whole trip started to feel very overwhelming. Instead, I went to a book-themed hotel! I stayed in the Daisy room, and you better believe I took every interesting book off the shelf, threw them on the bed, and spent a blissful few hours reading a few pages of each and adding to my TBR.

I was familiar with the area because I went to grad school there many years ago, but I hadn't been back for at least 15 years. I visited Winterthur (where I used to work) and enjoyed the misty, autumn weather. 

The next day was spent at Longwood Gardens, which has the best conservatories anywhere - believe me! It was late in the season and the next day they were planning to close to start setting up Christmas decorations, so the mum display was looking a little tired. It was definitely still beautiful, though.

I had a sophisticated (carb-based) afternoon tea with some friends from work:

And my mom booked us tickets to a lantern festival that exceeded my expectations:

January has been more challenging with the constant grayness and freezing temperatures. Soon I will be going somewhere warm and sunny though - somewhere VERY far away. Can you guess??

It's also goal-setting season, which I will be sitting out. Maybe I'm as self-improved as I'm going to get? At this point in my life it's mostly about maintenance and survival. I just try to show up for work everyday, get the kids to school and drive them places, clean the house, exercise so my bones don't turn to dust, and repeat. In terms of reading, I had similar thoughts to Diane, who pointed out that she will never read all the books on her TBR, so is focusing on savoring the experience of reading. I am vowing to ignore the new books with the biggest marketing budgets to instead focus on authors and types of books I know I will love. So many of my favorite authors have new books coming out this year: Daniel Mason, Maggie O'Farrell, and Claire Fuller, among others. 

Recently I was on a walk and needed a new audiobook immediately (do you ever do this?) so I downloaded a bestseller that a lot of people seem to like because it would be an easy listen. And I didn't like it and it was a waste of time. This year I will be focusing on my singular reading desires and not reading any listicles like "The 437 Books We're Excited For This May".

My favorite genre of book is "really long and follows a set of characters over generations". I'm happy to take recommendations! I have loved: North Woods by Daniel Mason, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne, The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher, Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, and Flashlight by Susan Choi. I'm currently reading The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, and I can already tell it's going to be an all-time favorite.

I leave you with photos I took on a photo walk (inspired by one of the comments on my last post!), which was of an abandoned house I often drive by. I think the colors in this photo embody winter in the Mid-Atlantic. SO GRAY. I have heard of "stick season" being a thing in New England before the snow comes. Well guess what, it is stick season all winter long here. UGH.