Like clockwork

Tagging along with me on this crazy ride of twenty-something-hood is my sister, L. I went to visit her in DC about a month ago. We wandered around Georgetown, took long walks with our cousins' puppy, and saw a silly movie.

But what I really want to share with you is a wall in her apartment.

L and her roommate live above a bookstore (this is all I needed to hear to know that this would be an awesome place). The place is tiny, like most city apartments, but it's got character coming out of its ears. The best part is below:

A giant clock face painted on the wall by the stairs! One of the previous tenants must have designed it. And if you look closely, you'll notice that the face is painted backwards. So whenever you look at it, you feel as though you're living* inside Big Ben.

I'm counting the days until I can go back.

What about you? Any particularly unique features in your apartments?

*The whole experience reminds me of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a thoroughly original MG book by Brian Selznick. In the book, the orphaned Hugo winds the clocks in a Paris railway station and spends a lot of time behind the scenes, running through tunnels and hiding in the kinds of nooks old buildings have. I love the idea of watching the life of a railway station through the eyes of a giant, old-fashioned clock.

A complicated relationship

This morning I got sucked into the New York Times' recent series on twenty-somethings living in New York City. The articles describe how some young folk will go to any lengths to get by in the city when they could be living anywhere else in a much more comfortable manner. Then you can listen to several of these brave people discuss the "dark moments" of first moving to the city and their creative strategies for making a living.

I was fascinated partly because a few years ago that was me. I lived in Williamsburg for a year and worked in publishing for a less-than-living wage (by New York standards). I had those dark moments and worried that I would never make any friends. I holed up in one of those postage-sized apartments that once lost all water for a long weekend in January because the pipes burst in the first-floor apartment. Mostly I looked forward to escaping when the end of my year-long lease came up.

But now I miss certain things about it. Sure, I love Providence, and it's great to live in an apartment three times the size of the one in Williamsburg for a lower rent. But when I go back to visit my friends, I miss being able to wander the streets and find ten new stores or restaurants and know that we'll never be able to try them all. I miss feeling like there were endless possibilities crammed into that tiny island. Today I almost envied those folks trying to get by (didn't quite wish that I could go back and try it again, though).

Oh New York, why do you tease me?

On bread

At home in Cleveland, my dad bakes bread every few months or so, when he feels he's done enough in the yard to spend an afternoon in the kitchen. He's worked through a selection of recipes from Beard on Bread over the past 30 years, teaching himself the art of bread-baking. And his bread is delicious: crusty egg-brushed exteriors yielding into soft slices, all with a warm yeasty smell. Even our dog loved it (she notoriously stole half a loaf off our table one summer, and we still tell the story).

Dad's tried a number of recipes, but he generally turns to his old stand-bys: Cracked-Wheat and Mother's Raisin Bread. He's obsessed with the cracked-wheat, and my mom hints not-so-subtly for raisin when he's in a bread-baking mood. And when he bakes, he devotes himself to the process. Watches over the rising loaves like each one is his first-born. He's been known to sit up hours after the rest of the house has gone to sleep, as he waits for the loaves to bake to burnished perfection.

His favorite part is soaking the raisins in bourbon. (Or gin if he's feeling frisky.)

He's the one who taught me to bake bread. How to follow recipes to the letter, how to test the temperature of each liquid to avoid killing the yeast, how to knead dough until it's soft and pliable. I avoided a lot of first-time mistakes when I started baking on my own because he made them first and told me about them. But mostly I learned to associate the smell of bread and yeast with home, with family lunches around the kitchen table and plates of buttered cracked-wheat toast.

So on Sunday, with nothing but a long, lonely day of grading ahead of me, I set aside the afternoon to bake. Bread takes planning; it takes afternoons (especially when you're as slow as I am). I queued up some old Gilmore Girls episodes and got to work. And it only took 6 hours (I said it was a commitment!) before that yeasty, warm smell began to waft through the kitchen/living room and replace the stale air of my apartment. And I didn't feel so lonely anymore.

I've baked many a pastry over the past few years, but nothing fills me up more than two stout loaves of cracked-wheat bread that make any place feel like Cleveland.

New England fall

We are in the midst of comment season at school. This means frantically grading every piece of homework that's been piled up on our desks, followed by a solid weekend of writing narrative comments about each and every student's progress in our courses. Along with all our other class preparation.

Needless to say, I need a break.

So yesterday I went for a walk during a free period, just to get some fresh air. Lo and behold, fall is still beautiful in New England! My photos don't do it justice, but I wanted to give you a glimpse of early November over in my corner of the world.

Now back to the desk...