March, Now

And so we've somehow passed the last two weeks or so, filling the not-so-wintry winter with board games, time with friends and family, silly dancing in the kitchen, making giant messes and cleaning them up again. Plus there was a kids-free trip to Chicago (and a very indulgent afternoon at the spa for me, plus too much eating and drinking to mention, though I will mention Girl & the Goat and most especially the green beans we had there, which I am attempting to recreate tonight, and I will also mention that the cocktail Jason had there tasted like my grandpa's pipe always smelled. Appropriately, it was called "Smoking Jacket," and it inspired me to drink a Manhattan later that night at the tiniest bar in the world called The Matchbox, and I blame our friends for all that ensued.)

The end of February looked like this:

(The desserts at Hot Chocolate also deserve a mention. We got the pecan pie solely based on the fact that the menu informed us that all pie crusts were made with bacon fat, and how could that not be the Best! Thing! Ever!? It pretty much was.)

Suddenly it's March, which means the traditional mobbing of Jersey Junction on March first, the day it re-opens for the season:

and, mysteriously, more snow today than we've seen in a couple of weeks. I left the house for yoga at 10:30 a.m., returned at noon, and promptly showered, changed into elastic-waistbanded clothes, and put on my under eye cream, so sure was I that I would not be leaving again. Jason and I spent the day readying our upstairs for the painter who is coming this week to transform the upstairs into Little Girl Sleeping Quarters and toting bags of giveaways and garbage out the door while the girls played some sort of elaborate Hawaiian wedding scenario that involved more clothes changes than I've seen before. Now I'm standing in the kitchen, drinking a Left Hand Milk Stout, perusing catalogs for lamps and rugs, listening to Iron & Wine, grateful for this low-key day and the piles of fresh, folded laundry on my bed, waiting to be put away.