AROUND HERE LATELY

starting things off with a selfie. because! that's why. 

I woke up very early this morning, 4AM very early, with a dry, scratchy throat. My sister had been texting me since I'd been asleep. A long chain of notifications met me on my phone when I went to check the time, including a screenshot I couldn't quite make out and so help me Bob, through my blurry sleep eyes that screenshot looked just like an ultrasound, and then I was really awake. (It wasn't an ultrasound, it was a screenshot of a John Dehlin comment thread on Facebook, which, don't even get me started.) Shoving the covers away I stood up for a glass of water and looked down at the indent of me that I'd left behind in our nest of blankets and pillows and tea towels (another time). 

Lately, with this round of colds coming and going between the three of us, and with the odd sleeping hours that result and that particular need for soothing that seems to accompany a raspy cough in the middle of the night, we've been skipping routine all together and sleeping in a big Holbrook pile at night, all three of us, a jumble of legs and "move over, dad! and waking up in that weird H configuration, shoving toddler legs off your face. I looked down at that weird Holbrook configuration and I sort of smirked. Street lights gleamed orange through the window, I was surrounded by the sound of heavy breathing and the stillness of the early-early, and I thought to myself, Life is so small, isn't it?

Lately Brooklyn has been feeling a lot like Moscow, if Moscow were a thing one could reach by subway. Our days seem eerily similar to Moscow days--sending a boy off to school, writing writing writing, making the same recipes in our not-so-updated kitchen, going outside + freezing half to death. Our place now is exactly 100 square feet larger than our old place in Idaho, isn't that nuts? And that place had 3 bedrooms! And 2 bathrooms! This place here has zero bedrooms, and only one bathroom (but, claw foot tub), but I love this apartment and those exposed pipes and the one antique light that wonks out and requires twisting any time you want it on, which means you have to haul out the ladder because the ceilings are so high. As I traversed the loft from the kitchen to the bathroom I imagined my footsteps back in our old layout in Idaho and it all felt so close. I just feel so oddly connected to past versions of myself these day, and sometimes I'm shocked by the nearness of my memories. Brooklyn really is a lot of like Moscow, though a defining characteristic of Moscow was how isolated we were, and here in Brooklyn you're sort of the opposite of isolated; that feeling of far yet near in Brooklyn is a total illusion, just blocks in any direction and you realize what a silly idea your South Slope bubble of "quaint" really is; but it almost feels like time travel any time I take the train under the East river and come out into Manhattan, then take the train back under the East river and come out into Not-Moscow-Not-Brooklyn Heights Brooklyn. 

Then I tiptoed back to bed, where I thought to myself, you know, I should really write all this down. (But why????) So here we are.

Huck's sugar cheeks. :)

A few corners of our house, where all the bricks say hi. 

It is COLD. It is SO COLD. It is so cold that I have no clever metaphors for how cold it is. It is THAT COLD. I have been wearing SO MANY SOCKS.

(thank you Nononsense for replenishing my supply.)

The other day Jerry Seinfeld and I posted the same Instagram. 

I thought that was rather fancy.

Speaking of Instagram, I was looking through my IG the other day + I noticed I've been taking an awful lot of aerial shots lately.

What could it all mean!?!?

And then I put this little vignette together the other day and laughed, because how obnoxious am I anyway?

Heeeee! 

(Hey, my book was number one in style + clothing and number two in fashion design over on Amazon last week!! What!!!!!) (It is now #25 and #56, which I still think is pretty cool.)

So we've been doing a lot of painting at our house . . . 

. . . mostly on ourselves. The other night while wielding a paintbrush Huck decided to make himself into the Hulk, and me into his green Hulk Mom. It was a flurry of artistry and precision until tragically, we ran out of green paint. 

In other disappointing news, Huck is too big for the baby swings.

Anyway SoHo wanted to say hi. So hi! Happy Monday, we can do it!