Growth

When the hubs and I moved into our house, it was an exciting change, but by far the best part was the chance to grow a garden. We both grew up in homes with great gardens, and I was eager to finally have the chance to create my own. I had images of climbing green vines, colorful blooms, and lush growth everywhere. In my imagination, we would create a wild English cottage garden in Northeast DC.

Yeah...

As it turns out, it's actually a bit labor-intensive to start a garden. There's consideration about what will grow well in the region, when certain plants should go in the ground, where they will thrive best in the yard... not to mention those squirmy worms that live in the ground. Oh boy, those worms. In all of my fantasizing, I had forgotten about the creepy-crawlies that live in the dirt and make themselves known as you start digging around. Those were a delightful surprise.

Are our gardens magazine-worthy? Maybe not. But they are ours, and though they are young, they reflect the joy and hard work we put into our first house in our first year of marriage. We will add to them over time, even if this house is only ours until next fall. Sometimes it's not about creating a magnificent space. Sometimes it's about creating a special space, digging in the dirt, feeling the sun on your shoulders, and knowing that you are so very alive.

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Sunday Currently : 29

There are so many different emotions and thoughts running through my mind right now. This Sunday marks a big ending in my life, as it is the last time I will be in my childhood home. My parents are moving this week, and as it turns out, saying goodbye to the home I grew up in has been exceptionally difficult. It's not something I've written about much in this space, and while I will eventually share what this has all been like, for now I'm going to try to focus on the good, like the calming sound of the waves at the beach and the comfort of the crook of a worn-in couch. Endings can also mean beginnings, and there's some hope in that, even it means grieving a loss along the way.

reading : Linger, a YA werewolf novel. I finally finished Catch-22 and even managed to read two Pretty Little Liars books this week, so I am officially back in the swing of reading. I haven't decided what my next books from the 100 Best Novels list will be, but I'll pick one soon. 

writing :  Some scheduled posts for the next couple of weeks. I'm especially excited for tomorrow's post, which features the gardening work the hubs and I have been doing, as well as a very special video treat. :) 

listening :  To a neighbor mow the lawn. Oh, the sounds of Sundays in suburbia. Lawn mowers, dogs barking, and birds chirping. 

thinking :  About too much. Every step of this house carries a dozen memories, and they've all been flooding my mind and making me very nostalgic for all the stories our house has held. 

smelling :   A hint of fall mixed in with summer. It's cool this morning, and wind is carrying in the scent of wet leaves and grass through the open window. 

wishing :  For a time machine so that I can relive my childhood. :) (Which, coincidentally, fits in very well with this Tuesday's post!)

hoping :   That the hubs and I don't hit traffic on our drive back to DC this evening. We probably will, but still... a girl can dream. 

wearing :   Mesh shorts and a t-shirt, both of which are covered in dust and grime from my little adventure earlier digging around our crawlspace attic. I wanted to say goodbye to all of the hidden corners of the house, and I had a feeling there were still some long-forgotten treasures up in the crawlspace. They were indeed propped up there, nestled on the beams and pink insulation, waiting patiently to be found again. Success.

loving :  This house! I can't say it enough. This was a lovely place to grow up, and it has always felt like home even after I graduated from college and moved out on my own. It has always been familiar and warm and peaceful. 

wanting :  To head down to the water in a little bit to chase seagulls on the docks. The water is good for satisfying feelings of nostalgia and longing, don't you think? I'm all about the romance of the ocean these days. 

needing :   To wash off the dust and cobwebs from my attic adventure. 

feeling :   Nostalgic, sad, upset, bittersweet, and so on. Sigh. 

clicking :   On not much at the moment, though I do need to catch up on blogs from last week. I'll be clicking around the Sunday Currently link-up on the drive back this evening! :)

Linking up with Lauren for the Sunday Currently 

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Last week on The Quixotic Chica:
Sunday Currently / Hot Hot Heat / The Sands of Morocco / DC Brau

DC Brau

Last weekend the hubs and I decided to stop by one of DC's local breweries, the aptly-named DC Brau, to visit a friend who works there and to do a quick tour. It was the tail end of the crazy heat wave, yet the humidity wasn't showing any signs of mercy, so a cold beer sounded like the perfect afternoon treat.

The brewery is hidden away in one of the far corners of the city, and almost completely invisible. Its entryway is in the back of a strip mall, and unless you know where to look, you would probably completely miss it. Luckily, the hubs had been before and knew where to lead us. As we turned the corner, we saw lots of other like-minded twenty-somethings gathered around the food truck parked outside, and we mozied on indoors for our free tasting.

However, our friend ended up not being on the schedule to work that day (though we did see another friend who works there!), and for the first time in a very long while, there was no scheduled tour! Apparently the owners were off at a music festival in Ohio, so the brewery lacked any official tour guides. We were a tad disappointed, but we managed to entertain ourselves with a self-guided tour of the facility as we sipped on our pale ale.

 

It was really cool to just hang out in the space where they do all of their work, and everyone seemed to be having a good time as they tried out different beers and relaxed with friends. It's a no-frills, industrial type of environment, and I think that's what made it so fun. This isn't the type of place where you gather at high-top tables or munch on gastropub delicacies. Instead, you walk around with a beer in hand, peek in at the loading station, tie your shoe in front of the canning equipment, and lean back next to a crate of cans waiting to be shipped out. Want a snack? Sit down on the floor with a slice of pizza from the food truck outside. DC Brau is honest and open, and it's a chance to glimpse the day-to-day operations of a small brewery.

If you're in the mood to skip the formalities and flash and want to jump right to the production of beer, DC Brau is a place to check out. The hubs and I will definitely be back to fill up our growler... and maybe even to get that tour.

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The Sands of Morocco

I unintentionally slipped away from posts about our honeymoon to Spain and Morocco, but I am back today with one of my favorite honeymoon moments. Essaouira, a seaside fishing town in Morocco, captured my heart and imagination in more ways than I had anticipated. My love letter to the town explains why, but it doesn't include just how much fun the beach's residents can be.

 

 If you walk down the beach for a bit, trudging again the powerful winds, you will eventually come to the land of the camels. Guides run up to you and try to offer various treks along the beach, and their camels perch in the sand, their backs strapped with colorful blankets, waiting for their next passenger.

 When I met Cappuccino, a sandy camel with beautiful dark eyes, it was love at first sight. I knew we had to go on this beach ride together. The hubs was paired with a white camel named Jimi, and off we went!

Our guide turned into a maniacal photographer, and in between leading Jimi down the beach towards a point of jutting rocks just begging to be climbed on and explored, he snapped away and probably took about one hundred photos of us riding our camels. As goofy as he was, I really can't complain. How many times in my life will I be able to ride a camel??

I must have been laughing or smiling the entire time. It was so much fun to loll down the beach, basking in the sun, taking in the views of the beautiful ocean. It might not have been a trek through the Sahara (which, by the way, remains on my "things to do" list), but it was fun and new, and it was a special experience to share with my husband.

 

 

 

We left Essaouira a bit wind-beaten, our skin turned tan from the powerful sun. For weeks afterwards I found sand in my pockets and shoes, and I smiled as I remembered our time with the camels. That's the wonder of a place like Morocco. The senses are dazzled and awakened by the different experiences, and you leave with your mind swirling with the fantastic adventures you had there. We will always have the camels.

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Pssst! Did you miss my other Morocco posts? Don't worry! You can wander the wonders of Marrakech (part 1 and part 2), Casablanca, and Essaouira right here!

Hot Hot Heat

It has been the type of hot where the heat seems to hang in the air and make each step exceedingly difficult, as though you are futilely trying to break through an impenetrable barrier of sludge. It smacks you in the face and clings to every single part of your skin. It seeps into every part of your being and just hangs there. Smothering. Suffocating. Sickening.

It's been the type of hot where even the air conditioner is sweating, and you snap more quickly than you used to. The heat has struck a match under every little annoyance, and then poof, there goes the fire. Your thoughts revolve around how hot it is, how great it would be not to be so hot, and when will it stop being so freaking hot. This, incidentally, does not make it any less hot.

It's been the type of hot where even the doorways are bloated, and the paint sticks to the doorframe and exposes the wood beneath. Every single surface seems to emanate heat, and they all do so in protest. You begin to memorize on which step the hot air hits you as you begrudgingly walk up the stairs, and you would give a big uugghhhh, but then you remember that speaking makes you feel hotter, so you just sweat some more.

It's been the type of hot where it brings out people's accents, as though the heat has somehow melted away our filters until each Midwestern twang and Southern drawl rattles around in our voices and exposes where we really came from. You almost want to make fun of these suddenly exaggerated pronunciations, but really, it's too hot to put too much effort into anything. It's better to just lean back into your chair, where you're suctioned to the seat anyway, and give in to your Long Island vowels. 

But then there's a gust of cold air from an open door, or a heroic breeze that lifts your heavy hair from your sticky neck. There's an ice cube, or a lemonade, or maybe an ice cream, and it bravely fights the heat and reminds you that you will get through this. You will find the shade. It won't last forever. It can't last forever.

There will be relief.

And sometimes, there will also be Bell's Oberon. 

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Sunday Currently : 28

Oh, heat wave, you really need to be done now. I'm thankful that I spent the brunt of the heat wave indoors at work, where the AC blasts and turns us into ice cubes, but since Friday was my last day of work, I must face the next week and a half on my own until my new job/clinical placement starts. I'm hoping that today is a little bit cooler, especially since the hubs and I are headed up to Baltimore this afternoon to see the U.S. Men's National Team play El Salvador, followed by a Honduras v. Costa Rica match. As long as we don't all die of heatstroke, it should be a fun day of soccer!

First, however, is a farewell brunch for one of my friends who is leaving us for the beaches of Hawaii, where she starts her her internship next week. Most of our little group will be staying in DC, so it's especially hard to think of one of us being so far away. I think we'll need to do a lot of Skype and searching of airline deals to go visit her.... any reason for a Hawaiian adventure is a good one!!

reading : The very end of Catch-22. I'm almost done, I swear! I do, however, have to pick my next book to read while I'm up in New York later this week. Suggestions?

writing : Post ideas for this blog, mental to-do lists... I am finally putting up the rest of our honeymoon posts! I haven't even started on Barcelona yet, and that will probably require at least two or three posts. Stay tuned!

listening :  To the AC running and to the cats running around chasing each other. I'm glad that they've finally gotten to this point where they can play with each other, even if there is still the occasional bop on the head.

thinking :  About the balance between doing fun social things and doing enjoyable stay-at-home things. As much as I do truly love being out with friends or going out to big events, I find that I'm not recharged until I get some quiet time at home.

smelling :  The heat. It's just... hanging there.  

wishing :  For a plane ticket to Hawaii to visit my friend. I probably won't be able to visit until internship is over next summer, but maybe I pinch my pennies I can hop on over there? Maybe?

hoping :  That our backyard fence gets replaced soon so that I can plant some more flowers alongside it. We used to have excellent privacy and coverage from the giant shrubs that lined our property, but they were sadly ripped out to make room for the fence that is supposed to be installed. Now we have a shell of a fence and no shrubs, which is a major eyesore.

wearing :  My usual PJs combo, but since I have brunch and soccer later today, I'll need to change into real clothes pretty soon.

loving : How happy new flowers make me. There is something so exciting about planting flowers in the yard and tending to them that can make the whole experience the highlight of my day. It's nice to take care of something. 

wanting : New clothes. I put about a third of my closet (this might only be a sliiiiight exaggeration, but still) into a pile for donation, and now I must face the reality of not having enough work-appropriate clothes to get through my new full-time working gal status. Banana Republic, you have tempted me with your dresses and skirts, but I must wait for a discount code before I give in...

needing :  To get moving. It's just so hard when all I want to do on Sundays is laze around and move slowly!  

feeling :  A bit anxious about how quickly this summer seems to be going by and a little sad that I didn't really have much free time to have fun around town. There are the weekends, of course, but wouldn't it be great to have Tuesdays or Thursdays wide-open to visit museums or grab lunch at a downtown food truck? 

clicking :  On the New York Times. This week, I've loved this article about President Obama's reflections on the reality of being a Black man in this country, as well as the NY Times Magazine discussion on race. As a research nerd, I find the issue of the social constructions of race to be very interesting, and these articles made my mind work.

Linking up with Lauren for the Sunday Currently 

Also, I've added my Instagram account to my social media links down below, so feel free to start following me there!

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Tick Tock

Time is sliding away.

I grasp at it clumsily, but my fingers feel heavy like lead and move in all the wrong ways. I miss time by minutes and months, and I feel slow and dumb and dull. I blink, but my eyelids move too slowly, and by the time they have opened again, the field is blurry and wrong, and it is gone. Time has passed me again, leaving me behind, confused, sluggish, and too late.

In other moments, I forget about time, and I frantically whirl about, racing forward, tumbling onward. Time has no place, and we have never met, and I keep whirling whirling whirling, and the dizzness whirls and whirls and whirls. Then I suddenly remember, and all things halt. I frantically try to gather time around me, grabbing at it with both hands, inhaling it, devouring it, melting it. But then it is gone again, and it has left a mess, and I am alone, ravaged and askew. It is too late to make amends. It has left me, or maybe I have left it. I call out to it, begging, crying, full of regret. I'm sorry, time. I'm sorry.

Occasionally I am successful in remembering time, and we are one, languid and floating, laughing and dancing. Time is everywhere, and it is abundant. Time is golden, and I am golden, and together we glow like the fireflies and the candlelight and the stars, and everything is good again.

When it has flitted away, I try to beckon it back to me, recalling the quiet moments spent in peace, simply being. I can find it there in the sun, in the walks, in the laughter. What good times time and I had together then, when we relaxed and reclined as old friends. Perhaps time will slowly return to me, and I will be careful not to startle it by moving too fast or yelling too loud. I will approach it slowly, step by step, breath by breath. It will stand still, watching, waiting to see what happens next.

Tick tock.

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