Skipping Town

The title of this post is a summary of today's searches. As we settle into the basement kitchen, each day brings its own mysteries. Tonight, though "cooking dinner" consisted only of reheating chicken parmesan from the freezer and boiling pasta, it was complicated by the lack of easily-found potholders and colander. The potholders remain missing, but I did find a colander. The tablecloths, though we have several, seem to have disappeared into thin air. They are essential since our basement kitchen table, usually just a craft table but now called into action as a table where we eat, is covered with unremoveable swirls of super glue, candlemaking wax, glitter, resin, and acrylic paint. The workmen came today and prepped for demo. They covered all the floors with heavy planks of cardboard and taped them down securely. They sealed off the doors to the dining room. They sealed off the laundry area but with a zippered opening so we can still get in there when needed. The work h...

Andrew and I flew down to Houston on Sunday so I could meet with my doctor at MD Anderson this morning for a treatment consultation. I feel so fortunate to have access to the expert in this rare cancer. He laid out several treatment options and advised us which he would recommend for me right now, which is a different option than the one my doctor at home recommended. We'll talk to her on Wednesday and determine a path forward, which I imagine will be the new recommendation. This one has fewer side effects but a complicated insurace-approval aspect, but we will persevere.  It's reassuring to hear that there are many treatments. There is currently no "right" order to try them, but trying one doesn't rule out the others. It is, as they say, a journey.  After lunch at Navy Blue in Rice Village, we headed to the airport, where we are currently sitting in the United Club, waiting for our flight. (Just for the record--when we arrived last night we ordered Torchy's T...

With the basement setup nearly complete, today Andrew turned his attention to our wi-fi, a big question mark and issue. The wi-fi whatever whatever is hooked up to some kind of cable in our family room, and now it has to be reconnected to something somewhere else. Andrew explained the issue with a word salad that included words like cable, tower, router, mesh network, wi-fi, internet, TV, and more. This is actually a serious problem because we need to have wi-fi on every floor of our house. My home office is in the attic, Andrew's office and the girls' bedroms (where they do homework) are on the second floor, and our smart TV (which requires wi-fi or cable or something like that to function) is in the basement. Andrew and I work from home quite a bit, and having strong wi-fi is essential.  Anyway, the only phrase that stood out for me in all this as Andrew grimly described the complexity of the project was "mesh network," and I asked a barrage of absurd follow-up ques...

Today we continued moving things out of the kitchen and family room and into the basement. We are at peak inconvenience right now, running up and down the stairs to complete even the smallest task. Ready for lunch? Great--it's in the upstairs fridge. Go down to the basement for a plate. Back upstairs. Oops--I need a serving spoon. Back upstairs. Back downstairs to heat up the food and eat it. Forgot water--back upstairs to fill a glass. Forgot a glass. Back downstairs and then back upstairs and then back downstairs to eat. Back upstairs for the dishwasher. By the end of tomorrow, we'll be fully moved, but today was comical (and annoying).  Lucia spent most of the day hanging out at a friend's house, and Greta spent most of the day doing a puzzle. She has rediscovered a love of puzzling since we gave her a cute puzzle for Christmas and Mom and Dad gave us a puzzle table-top with drawers as a family gift. It is the best. I spent most of the day organizing the kitchen, reading...

Let the 2026 edition of Skipping Town begin. And let us begin with a renovation. Before Molly, Jeremy, and Luca left today, Jeremy helped Andrew move all the furniture out of the family room. This was no small task: two couches, a massively heavy bureau, a large farmhouse table, a leather armchair. Once they left, Andrew did the rest: a glass coffee table (with Greta's help), lamps. Mom and Dad came over in the afternoon to help us with the next phase: moving out all of the plants and all of the contents of every kitchen cupboard.  It took a few hours, but we did it. We have relocated our kitchen and family room entirely to the basement. The plants are now collected in various areas, and I hope they survive this time away from their favorite windows. Andrew and I spent the rest of the day organizing, putting away, storing, arranging. The end result is actually quite cozy and functional. The farmhouse table is in the Long Room, a perfect spot for playing games by the fire. The large...

New Year's Eve--my least favorite day of the year. I dislike the energy of transition and ending, and the weight of the year ahead. It feels oppressive, heavy, and dark.  Twenty years ago, just a couple of months before I moved to Barcelona, I wrote a poem called "New Year's Day, Planning to Leave New York," which I'll share here because it's NYE and melancholy is my default mood:  New Year’s Day, Planning to Leave New York At the curbs, trees cry needles, stray tinsel glints winterly. The vast expanse of year ahead makes the air feel thin, jittery. Nothing weighs it down, no months yet mistake-scarred, no days lived or endured.  Too many what-ifs and might-bes, too few should-haves, regrets, give this city a false skin of optimism.  We are better at rehashing than living. My year stretches forward like good ceramic tiles:  pieces of change nudged together, each beautiful alone, more beautiful together. Without you I’d skirt past these trees, untangle tinsel f...

I read 50 books this year, some good, some bad, many spectacular. Here's a roundup of my top 10 for 2025, along with my Goodreads review if I wrote one, in no particular order: An absolutely stunning memoir, a balm for these chaotic times. It's hard to overstate the beauty, empathy, reverence, and wonder in these pages; Dalton conveys all of these while steadfastly respecting and maintaining the hare's essential wildness. I'll be rereading this forever. One of my favorite reads of the year so far. Immersive, wrenching, frustrating. Every member of this family made me want to scream. I couldn't put it down. An absolutely stunning book. It shattered me. Likely my favorite read of the year. The companion novel, Writers & Lovers, is also a top favorite of the year, but since it was a re-read for me I'm not including it in this list. Gripping and horrifying. I'll be recommending this one. Amazing. Horrifying. This book was just an incredible deep dive into th...