So long for now

I think this is it, friends. I feel so bad, so often, for not posting enough. So bad that when I do post, all I manage to ramble on about is how busy I am and how bad I feel, and that, you don’t need me to tell you, is a giant bore.

When I started this blog six and a half years ago (!), it was a new medium. I was new to Paris. I was looking for an efficient way to stay in touch with family and friends while living thousands of miles away in the City of Light (and Dark Chocolate). The funny thing about blogs, of course, is that they’re public. Soon enough, strangers were reading my posts. Then commenting. Then entering my world and becoming my friends.

This blog has been an amazing experience. When I was living in Paris, it helped me capture, process and translate my life: all the exhilarating experiences and profound moments and situations of lost-in-translation confusion. It helped me better understand my thoughts, ideas and feelings. It led to my book.

Even when I returned to New York, it kept me connected to Paris—to the community I knew and the friends I had made there. But now I’m cranking away as a creative director in New York. I’m in the thick of Parker’s toddlerhood, and her endearing growth and discoveries. If and when I have downtime, all I really want to do is thumb through Vanity Fair or lounge on the couch with Andrew or play with Parker. Or nap.

So it’s time to call it quits. I love this blog and all it’s been and meant to me. I love all you who still follow me and have shared the journey. I have nothing but gratitude and happy feelings. But I don’t want to be a bore. And I don’t want to feel bad. So I’m doneski.

That said (!), I’m hoping there will be a sequel to the book. In which case, I will need a “platform.” In which case, I might hit restart. In which case, I will let you know. I hope you’d consider joining me again somewhere down the road. In the meantime, let's stay in touch on Facebook, Instagram and/or email (startswitha@gmail.com).

Gros bisous. 

Amy xo

My Vegan Monday

Like many things in life this past year, going vegan on Mondays has become victim to my more lackadaisical side (after a lifetime of being ferociously Type A, who knew I even had a lackadaisical side?). Oh well. That’s what 5am wake-up calls and the commuting-working-mom lifestyle thing does.

All that is to say I had a cheese panini, turkey chili, and milk chocolate malt balls today. (But no red meat for over 15 years!)

Elsewhere in life, we’re cooking. Parker turns 1 (seriously!) on Thursday! It’s crazy. Crazier still, she has started walking. She has 7-8 teeth, a wicked appetite and endless curiosity.

Early autumn has been filled with activity and local travels. We were up in Maine for a family reunion that included ample eating, drinking, bocce, cliff walks and making music videos, and we head to Connecticut this weekend for a cousin’s wedding. Luckily, Parker is proving to be a champion traveler. The car knocks her right out and sometimes she even goes right down in her Pack and Play.

I cooked this past weekend: made ratatouille, pesto and chocolate chip cookies. We’ve also, along with the rest of the world, tried Blue Apron. Good for convenience; decent meals, but nothing has blown my mind yet.

We’ve been so lucky with weather, having Indian Summer right through September. I know we’re lucky but I still get bummed when I think of every day for the next six months being colder and darker than the previous.

Have been watching Chef’s Table on Netflix – fascinating characters and stories. I’m also reading Danny Meyer’s Setting the Table, after taking nearly four months to finish Rebecca Solnit’s scarily brilliant The Faraway Nearby.

Oh, I’ve even discovered some new music as of late: Jamie xx, King and Catfish and the Bottlemen.

So life is good. For Milo, it’s more of a mixed bag…

Summer vacation

What? It’s the middle of September and it’s been nearly a month since I posted despite my pledges and here I am talking about vacation. Oh well. That’s life these days.

I’ve been up to my eyeballs in work and little Miss P is keeping us busy, too. She’s cutting teeth (which brings sometimes fever and colds and broken sleep), suffered a couple weeks’ worth of diahrea and has taken to waking up for the day around 5:30. But she’s just as delicious and amazing as ever.

By summer’s end, we had gotten to Connecticut, Pennsylvania and upstate. Here are some photographic highlights.

Memories, Brooklyn treks, and monkey toes

My new goal is a simple Monday roundup. Once a week. A recounting of the highs and lows. A sharing of key moments and observations. It’s doable. I will try (except next week. I will be on vacation – hurrah!). I hope you will come along with me.

So. It was another beautiful week. I think this summer goes down as one of the most perfect on record. It’s a bit steamy at the moment, but for the most part, it’s just been sunny, in the 80s, always with a refreshing breeze. You can’t ask for more.

My good friend, chere Sarah was in town from Paris and we had dinner at the delicious Andrew Carmellini restaurant, Little Park. I had a few minutes at the bar by myself before she arrived, which felt awfully indulgent, and then the conversation with and the sight of her brought back a flood of Parisian memories. God, those were great years and experiences. I seriously think about that time, those two years, and it was such a gift. I see so much of it with such clarity. My memories are so acute. It’s hard to believe it was me and my life, so changed are things now and yet how vivid and special those times were.

Now it’s all about the peanut. It still makes me anxious and emotional sometimes, how much I love her. But I do. I just love her.

It was very much a Brooklyn weekend. Andrew and I tried to go to the Jazz Age Lawn Party, just to see everyone so nattily dressed, but the line for the ferry out to Governors Island was crazy-long. We would have been standing under the beating sun for probably an hour so we high-tailed it back to Brooklyn. A little stroll through Brooklyn Heights, lunch at River Deli, another stroll to Gowanus, a drink in the backyard of Lavender Lake with Bennie, and then home. It was great to be out, walking and enjoying the summer.

That was the idea on Sunday as well. I met my girl Mel in the park and it was a glorious day, in the shade of a tree. Suddenly, as we were packing up to leave, it started raining. We ducked under a tree, expecting it to be the fleeting summer sprinkle, over in five minutes. But what ensued was the craziest, fastest storm. It came out of nowhere, bringing flash floods, sideways winds and panic. 

But in the end, it made for another unforgettable memory.

This is life

I know the few times I post these days, I spend my precious minutes and word count lamenting that I don’t have time to write, which is idiotic. And yet impossible to avoid. (This article on The Cut—which has been producing amazing coverage of relationships, feminism and motherhood this past year—better articulates my battle with the clock, with quite a positive spin).

But this is why I don’t have time:

Because Parker is all-consuming, absolutely entertaining, and even though I miss the threads of my former identity—reading, writing, working out, going out, movies—I'm absorbing and relishing every second of it. Even if some days I'm bone tired, I know this is all fleeting. And precious. And fun in its own insular way. Besides, how do you say no to the cutest peanut on earth?

Summer, where art thou going?

August already? How did that happen? How did I start writing this post two days ago and couldn’t even manage to finish that? It’s like I’m on supercharge, yet moving through molasses.

Life. I’ve been working plenty at the office. I even wrote apost for this fine company.

Parker had her nine-month well visit (well, almost a month ago now). The little pipsqueak is in the 70^th percentile for weight. She’s over 20 pounds and every bit as delicious. Her hair and teeth are slowly coming in, and she’s crawling and cruising all over the place. In my humble opinion, she’s cuter than ever.

Though I have yet to have a summer lobster roll, nor have I made my annual pilgrimage to DQ, we spent a great weekend in Connecticut with family and trained outside the city to spend a day with dear friends. This past weekend, we journeyed to Denver to visit other friends, which was decadent and fun. P traveled like a champ.

In between it all, Andrew and I are watching Louie. Cruising through magazines. I’m reading (albeit at the slowest pace imaginable) a Rebecca Solnit book, which is so massively interesting and impressive. I’m also trying to carve out time to finish my own book proposal. Maybe it can happen by summer’s end. Oh summer, where art thou going??

My Vegan Mondays

It's a rarity, I admit. These days, these Mondays, that I consciously, mindfully remember about and practice Vegan Mondays. No excuses. I just don't have the wherewithal I used to. But when I do remember, and when I can accommodate it, I do do it. Just you see...

Morning
Coffee (cough) with half and half - my one dairy concession for the day; on auto pilot, and without choice
Oatmeal
Banana

Afternoon
Veggie sushi
Dark chocolate

Evening
Couple glasses of wine (my one night out for the week)
This tasty veg recipe (I didn't add the parm)

And every day I snack on this delicious peanut. Who, for her part, is always putting something in her mouth...

A good week

Parker rocked her first pair of jeans this weekend. It was occasion to go to the local playground so she could strut her stuff.

Lol. She doesn't have to do much to make me laugh. She's crawling everywhere. Gnawing on bagels. And she's taken to playing peek-a-boo. Such a big girl.

Beyond the world of Parker, in which I reside normally, sadly with blinders to happenings in the rest of the world, it was such an amazing week for our country. I'm so proud of our increasing acceptance and fight for equal rights, moved by the idea of possessing grace and hopeful that minds will continue to open and hate will cease.