Summer Reading List

I am trying to up my reading game this summer, below are a few books on my list. I'd love more recommendations!

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Ashley's War by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

NW by Zadie Smith

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2011 (Ok I started this in March and it is l o n g, so my goal is to finish!)

Unbroken by Lara Hillenbrand

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (Because everyone's doing it...)

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

New Orleans

Last month I was scheduled to attend the International Studies Association Annual Convention for work. The conference changes location every year, and this year it took place in New Orleans, and coincided with Mardi Gras. Sean doesn't come along very often when I am traveling, but this was too good of an opportunity to pass up. Miriam and Aaron also joined us, and we stayed in the French Quarter for a few days before the conference started. It was....an experience! We got our fill of southern food, parades, and bead catching, and made sure to visit a cemetery, and of course the classic Cafe du Monde.

Since it was Mardi Gras, we didn't venture too far outside of the French Quarter, but I would love to have an excuse to come back and see more of the city. This photo is pre-extreme bead collection!

Tiny Apartments

I cannot pretend that I don't wish for more space fairly often. But after nine months in what my sister has lovingly nicknamed the "dollhouse" apartment, I have learned a few tricks that help keep me sane. Indulge me (and be grateful if you have more space and have never had to think about this!).

1. Clean, and clean often. You get a lot more up close and personal with your dirty dishes and dust in a tiny apartment, so I have noticed that cleaning more often is a requirement. The good news is that there are less windows/rooms/floors to clean!

2. Declutter. It may seem obvious, but while there is less room for clutter in a small space, it still accumulates quickly and has to be purged all the time. Maybe this is one benefit, there is really no room for that stack of mail you're avoiding. We also have a rule that if we forgot we owned something/haven't used it in over a year, we probably don't need to keep it.

3. Throw pillows and blankets are your friend. It's hard to resist the urge to go very minimal when you're dealing with a small space, but in my experience throw pillows, blankets, sheepskins can help a room feel more like home in any size apartment, even the tiny. Also true if you're lucky enough to have a tiny patio with your tiny apartment, weatherproof outdoor pillows are no joke.

4. Buy fresh flowers and keep some houseplants. I often have the reaction of, where are we going to put this? There's no room. But there is always room for a vase of daffodils or a windowsill plant, and they make the apartment infinitely more cheerful.

5. Space heaters in the winter, nice fans in the summer. Nothing is more depressing than a tiny apartment that's freezing or boiling. It has been worth every penny to invest in a nice space heater, and also a fan that we don't mind looking at all the time all day long. Added bonus is the white noise provided to block out the sound of your upstairs neighbor clomping around at 4:00 a.m.

6. Cook in your tiny kitchen! It is super intimidating and maybe there's barely room for more than one person and the endless supply of take-out options is beckoning to you, but with a little flexibility even the smallest kitchen can make a great meal. Extra points if you invite friends over for dinner and don't apologize about the size of your apartment.

7. Let go of the cost savings benefits of buying in bulk. I know it is much less economical to buy single rolls of paper towel, but when there is hardly any storage space, and you live one block from a Duane Reade, it's not worth the fight.

8. Finally some space saving items that we have actually found useful:
-Over the door shoe racks. We have no entryway so this saves us from tripping over all our shoes every time we come home.
-Collapsable drying rack for laundry, it fits in the tub and we hide it behind the bed when we're not using it.
-Stainless steel rods and hooks from Ikea that we hang pots, pans, mugs, dish towels, and even a dish drying rack from in the kitchen. Lifesaver.
-Platform bed with built in drawers. Not a necessity, but we needed to buy a new bed when we moved, and I am so happy we got one with drawers.

Happy tiny apartment living!

'Tis the Season...

....for my annual dose of Christmas sickness. Almost every year for the past probably five years I have come down with a bad cold or flu once each year, either right before, during, or after Christmas. It is really a Christmas tradition to look forward to. The few weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are always exceptionally busy which means it's the perfect time to be stuck to your couch/pajamas/tea mug/kleenex box.

I am in need of a major holiday miracle to get over this one. This year Sean is in the midst of finals/his thesis, we are struggling to finish up Christmas shopping, and are looking forward to Miriam and Aaron visiting for a weekend right before we head to Michigan for the week of Christmas. We have big plans to show them all the best New York Christmas sites (the Rockefeller tree, the Union Square holiday market, skating in Bryant Park...) and Miriam and I have tickets to see the Nutcracker tomorrow night at Lincoln Center which I have been wanting to do since we moved to New York. I am trading in my festive beverages for Dayquil and Therefalu. Here's hoping it works!

Don't you just love New York in the fall?

Sometimes I make Sean watch sappy movies with me, (and by make I mean that he is completely willing most of the time). Recent classics have included You've Got Mail, with the best line ever "Don't you just love New York in the fall, makes me wanna buy school supplies," and Return to Me.

We had a wonderful time a few weeks ago when Miriam was in the city for work and stayed over for a long weekend, joined by my Mom and Aunt Dee. The weather was not ideal but we still explored a fair bit of Central Park, visited the World Trade Center Memorial, and the Museum of Modern Art. We also saw Matilda on Broadway (songs were stuck in my head for the rest of the month!) and took them to Blondies for a Saturday night MSU football game and the best waffle fries around.  On Sunday after Mom and Aunt Dee had to leave, and Sean had to study, Miriam and I walked around the new section of the Highline (so nice that this park is expanding!) and then I took her for her dream come true New York activity, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. I have only walked from Manhattan to Brooklyn and I have to say the view was much more exciting the other way around! Fall really is the best time to visit New York.

October is also Sean's birthday month and we take birthdays very seriously in this family. Unfortunately I was in Atlanta for a quick work trip on his actual birthday but we made up for it by taking a weekend trip to Massachusetts to visit Jocelyn and Cory and finally enjoy some beautiful fall trees (the trees in New York take forever to change), hiking, and a corn maze which was Sean's favorite activity. Also, tried out the Amtrak quiet car on the way to MA and it was AMAZING. I am definitely doing that in the future.

So I am writing this super interesting blog post today because I have a random day off for Veteran's Day and I have grand plans to do nothing. Clean the apartment, maybe watch a movie, go to the park and pretend I have a puppy, you know big deal, staying in my pajamas until noon stuff. I needed this day and I am going to take full advantage!

xoxo,
Ruth

Tap, tap. Is this thing on?

I can't remember the last time I wrote a blog post and I have been meaning to! Summer really flew by this year, especially August. Sean and I actually took a two week vacation which was pure magic and I hope to repeat next summer. After a really wonderful and relaxing week in Michigan with our families, we flew back to New York and in search of a cheap/easy vacation, headed up to the Catskills for some hiking, kayaking, and doing absolutely nothing. Sean and I had both been busy in July, so we really needed that first week to get our heads out of the weeds of work/school, which made the second week all that much better.

At the end of August I headed to DC for a work trip to hang out with a bunch of political science nerds at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, and Sean joined me over Labor Day weekend. After some lovely weather during the week, the weekend was HOT but Sean and I forced ourselves to walk around the mall, visit the portrait gallery, and wave to the White House.

Now fall has started with a vengeance and I am really missing those Friday's off, but enjoying the cooler weather and obviously thrilled about the return of ALL THE FALL FOODS. Sean made some delicious pumpkin muffins last week and I forced us to roast an acorn squash. Despite Sean's protests that it is "too early," we are going all in this year.

So that's what we've been up to. I am recommitting myself to more consistent blogging! It's going to happen!

Over and out

Summertime

Here are some things I have done this June and July:

-Celebrated my birthday and Miriam and I received the same gift. Totally independent of each other, normally we DO talk to each other about every item we would love to have but this time we didn't.

-Spent a weekend in the ever lovely Finger Lakes and wine tasted to my hearts content. Also stopped at the Jimmy Johns in Ithaca one our way home as one does because it's basically the closest one to NYC. (Sprouts are back!!)

-Resurrected my summer iTunes playlist. Every year this is a fun exercise because there are gems on it from last summer that I have to decide whether to keep or delete and new songs to add. I believe this playlist was born in 2007 and it is excellent. (Sean thinks this is particularly ridiculous.)

-Learned a lot about places to rent cars from in Manhattan and spent many hours lamenting over why it is so much more expensive than if we could just get across the bridge to New Jersey.

-Speaking of rental cars, we drove up to Rhinebeck one of my favorite Hudson Valley towns for the day to hang out and go to a lovely engagement party for my dear high school friend Lindsay.

-Jocelyn and Cory visited. Big highlight was that everyone insisted on making Bailey's milkshakes. I can't complain, they were tasty. We also saw a lot of turtles in Central Park.

-Brooklyn! I finally went to the Brooklyn Museum and it was really wonderful. I also finally went to Brooklyn Brewery and it was not quite up to the hype.

There you have it. Summer in a nutshell. The weather has been pretty glorious. Yet to have a real heat wave and we are having mild success keeping our plants alive on the patio. The end.