Dear friends and family,
September 14th, Hanna and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary. We celebrated by taking Thursday and Friday off work -- thank you labor movement for earned vacation time! -- and enjoying some peaceful time at home.
On Thursday, we went out for breakfast at the coffee shop near Back Bay station that we eat at every Thursday before Hanna's standing appointment with her therapist (also our therapist who has worked with us since before our wedding and said our fifth anniversary made her feel old :'-) ). Almost every week we arrive between 7:00-7:30am and there are two regulars -- we refer to them as Rumpled Suit and Cargo Pants -- who almost without fail are there before us, always at the same two tables (unless one or the other has been late and some rude newbie has nicked their spot). Rumpled Suit brings his own coffee mug and sits reading the Wall Street Journal. Cargo Pants prefers the latest Tom Clancy or Dennis Lehane and Flour's delicious range of pastries. They often make small talk over the business section of the WSJ but never share a table.
It's lovely to frequent certain coffee shops in Boston regularly enough that not only are we familiar customers, but we recognize the other regulars. The coffee shop where Hanna and I got married in 2012 was one such shop, on the walk from our apartment in Allston to the office where our therapist was then practicing. We would go to Tatte every Friday morning before our standing appointment and enjoy lattes and fresh brioche, served with butter and house-made jams, served on mis-matched antique china.
After breakfast and therapy on Thursday we walked through the Boston Public Gardens and caught the subway at Park Street to travel over the river to Cambridge and visit one of our favorite local fabric stores, Gather Here. Among other things, we managed to independently select exactly the same fabric design in two different colors. #WifeCompatible
September is settling in here in New England, despite the inevitable high-80s heat wave that usually rolls around just as we're in the mood for a few celebratory days off. On Tuesday I brought home a delicious apple crisp from the Red Apple Farm stall at the Boston Public Market, and thought longingly of Crane's Apple Orchard in Michigan.
Schools are back in session, both K-12 and higher ed, which means more bodies moving around on public transit as we commute into the city on weekday mornings and back out in the evenings. While I continue to be gratefully not in formal school, I am excited to be "auditing" Dr. Adrienne Keene's Introduction to Critical Race Theory at Brown. I've been following Dr. Keene's work at Native Appropriations (@NativeApprops) for a number of years and it's a pleasure and an honor to learn from her.
Last Sunday was the first service of the church year at Arlington St. Church, which runs from the Sunday after Labor Day weekend through Boston Pride. During July and August services continue, but many other church activities are put on hold and the worship team takes a holiday, leaving worshipers in the able hands of volunteers from the congregation. It was nice to have the choir back, and they sang two of my favorite songs from the spring: Swimming to the Other Side (YouTube) and Life Calls Us On (SoundCloud). I'm terrible at carrying a tune, but sang in choirs during adolescence and have always loved the practice of group singing. Probably the lure of doing something with people that requires very little unstructured interaction.
Thanks to a couple of long days at home, I was able to finish the quilt top for my church auction quilt and yesterday evening put the quilt "sandwich" together on our dining room table. With Teazle's supervision, of course.
I'm looking forward to finally doing the quilting bit of this project, where the texture of the hand made design really starts to come together. And I'm beginning to look ahead to a number of small post-quilt project this autumn, including a commissioned "resist / persist" cross-stitch, an embroidered table runner, and some Kindle cases for my parents-in-law who finally broke down and let us buy them Kindles for access to their library's e-book collections. (Remember the matching fabrics above? Those will eventually be quilted Kindle cases.
I hope all of you are finding small ways to move forward and make the world a slightly better place this season.
In friendship and kinship,
Anna
September 14th, Hanna and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary. We celebrated by taking Thursday and Friday off work -- thank you labor movement for earned vacation time! -- and enjoying some peaceful time at home.
Vacations are exhausting for kittens.
On Thursday, we went out for breakfast at the coffee shop near Back Bay station that we eat at every Thursday before Hanna's standing appointment with her therapist (also our therapist who has worked with us since before our wedding and said our fifth anniversary made her feel old :'-) ). Almost every week we arrive between 7:00-7:30am and there are two regulars -- we refer to them as Rumpled Suit and Cargo Pants -- who almost without fail are there before us, always at the same two tables (unless one or the other has been late and some rude newbie has nicked their spot). Rumpled Suit brings his own coffee mug and sits reading the Wall Street Journal. Cargo Pants prefers the latest Tom Clancy or Dennis Lehane and Flour's delicious range of pastries. They often make small talk over the business section of the WSJ but never share a table.
Wedding brunch, 2012.
It's lovely to frequent certain coffee shops in Boston regularly enough that not only are we familiar customers, but we recognize the other regulars. The coffee shop where Hanna and I got married in 2012 was one such shop, on the walk from our apartment in Allston to the office where our therapist was then practicing. We would go to Tatte every Friday morning before our standing appointment and enjoy lattes and fresh brioche, served with butter and house-made jams, served on mis-matched antique china.
After breakfast and therapy on Thursday we walked through the Boston Public Gardens and caught the subway at Park Street to travel over the river to Cambridge and visit one of our favorite local fabric stores, Gather Here. Among other things, we managed to independently select exactly the same fabric design in two different colors. #WifeCompatible
September is settling in here in New England, despite the inevitable high-80s heat wave that usually rolls around just as we're in the mood for a few celebratory days off. On Tuesday I brought home a delicious apple crisp from the Red Apple Farm stall at the Boston Public Market, and thought longingly of Crane's Apple Orchard in Michigan.
Schools are back in session, both K-12 and higher ed, which means more bodies moving around on public transit as we commute into the city on weekday mornings and back out in the evenings. While I continue to be gratefully not in formal school, I am excited to be "auditing" Dr. Adrienne Keene's Introduction to Critical Race Theory at Brown. I've been following Dr. Keene's work at Native Appropriations (@NativeApprops) for a number of years and it's a pleasure and an honor to learn from her.
Last Sunday was the first service of the church year at Arlington St. Church, which runs from the Sunday after Labor Day weekend through Boston Pride. During July and August services continue, but many other church activities are put on hold and the worship team takes a holiday, leaving worshipers in the able hands of volunteers from the congregation. It was nice to have the choir back, and they sang two of my favorite songs from the spring: Swimming to the Other Side (YouTube) and Life Calls Us On (SoundCloud). I'm terrible at carrying a tune, but sang in choirs during adolescence and have always loved the practice of group singing. Probably the lure of doing something with people that requires very little unstructured interaction.
Thanks to a couple of long days at home, I was able to finish the quilt top for my church auction quilt and yesterday evening put the quilt "sandwich" together on our dining room table. With Teazle's supervision, of course.
I'm looking forward to finally doing the quilting bit of this project, where the texture of the hand made design really starts to come together. And I'm beginning to look ahead to a number of small post-quilt project this autumn, including a commissioned "resist / persist" cross-stitch, an embroidered table runner, and some Kindle cases for my parents-in-law who finally broke down and let us buy them Kindles for access to their library's e-book collections. (Remember the matching fabrics above? Those will eventually be quilted Kindle cases.
I hope all of you are finding small ways to move forward and make the world a slightly better place this season.
In friendship and kinship,
Anna