October ended quietly: my roommate and I spent Halloween in, eating delicious pumpkin oatmeal raisin chocolate chip cookies and watching America’s Next Top Model with our downstairs neighbors. The last week of October was a whirlwind of activity (helping my boyfriend move, hosting dinner for my mom and grandma – I made lamb chops with pears and balsamic sauce and they were delightful (which was a pleasant surprise because I’d never cooked lamb chops before), seeing Rodrigo y Gabriela in Boston at the Orpheum Theatre, failed dinner plans that turned into an errand night), so it was nice to have a low key night in with good people.
On that note, a few words about the last week of October, which was filled with family and more good people. It marked the first half-month of being 25 (that’s a thing people count, right?) and it couldn’t have been better spent. I hadn’t seen my grandma since last October when she sold her house up in MA and moved completely down to Florida (she’d been dividing time between the two for some time), and I was able to show her my apartment for the first time. The kitchen alone (we’ve since unfolded that table and the space looks even bigger) demonstrates everything I love about the apartment I share with my roommate, and also is precisely why my grandma loved it. It reminds me a lot of her old house at the Cape, actually, so I loved the symmetry of being able to show it to her for the first time on the same visit she was going back to the Cape** for the first time in over a year. It’s funny how things work out. The night my grandma flew back to Florida was the night T and I went to see Rodrigo y Gabriela, which also happened to be the (sold-out) last night of their tour. It was wonderful, and I’ve been lucky enough to go to more opening/closing nights of tours than seems statistically feasible given that I don’t plan it that way, and the energy is always elevated in a way that’s hard to tangibly describe. It’s phenomenal how talented they both are.
Cape Cod in October is the best.
Calamari + Pizza (though I’d never had the two combined before…) + Rodrigo y Gabriela = happy!Melissa
November got off to a strange start: the first weekend was rainy(/snowy on Sunday) and cold, but it was somehow also cozy and very November-in-New-England-y. It poured all day Saturday – with crazy wind – so it was a good day for errands and coffee out and sprinting between the car and store entrances trying to keep dry, and it was also a perfect night for hot chocolate curled up on the couch watching Parks and Rec. That first November weekend was also the weekend T and I went to the aquarium (library passes: the best), which was super super fun. (these guys – little blue penguins – are my favorites).
seriously, though, how cute are these guys?
Stepping back in time slightly, on Halloween, I decided – in earnest – that I’m going to attempt NaNoWriMo this year; I’ve tried twice before but never with much success. It’s been slow going so far because I forgot that I needed to account for falling back into the writing headspace, but at least I’m writing. And now it’s three weeks later and I’m still writing, though this post has been unfinished for a week and a half and words have stagnated. It’s incredibly unlikely that I’ll hit my word goal (or anything even close to it) nine days from now, but if nothing else, nano got me writing again after a long time away from it, and that has been wonderful. I’ve missed words. I need to work on making writing more of a routine again, because I wrote best when it was habit and necessity and comfort, and I’m trying to get back to that place without the negative connotations it had, off and on, for a while.
This past weekend was a much needed break from everything: from work, from struggle!writing, from stress in general. It was time spent equally between old friends and baking and new friends. Sunday marked the first Friendsgiving I’ve been to, but I just had to think about that for a moment because I was peripherally involved in a few in college. It was lovely and filled with good food and an embarrassingly wonderful amount of discussions about America’s Next Top Model. (Sidenote: I stopped watching YEARS ago, but my roommate watches regularly and this season – cycle – we’ve been watching together, and I still haven’t wrapped my head around the fact that there are guys, too, now, and all the drama that entails, and I’m sad the guy with the beard weave (!) is gone, because seriously what even, and I miss Nigel, and it’s fun and terrible and great all at once.)
This weekend might bring a day trip to Portsmouth and a low key diner with T’s downstairs neighbors, but mostly it’s going to be a weekend of low key, cozy productivity, and I’m very much looking forward to it.
*This post was originally titled endings and beginnings because it very early November when I started drafting it. And then life happened, and time got away from me, so. Now it’s just a happy November post and all that entails. I can’t wait for Thanksgiving.
**I still am planning on a Cape Cod picture post, but, well, I am all sorts of behind with regards to pictures (all of the pictures in this post are largely unedited cell phone pictures, though those two Cape Cod ones were run through Afterlight). But it hasn’t been a month yet! So it’s fine. Probably maybe kind of sort of. I’m going to try and sort through pictures this weekend, so hopefully I’ll have a (wonderfully picturesque?) Cape Cod post for you guys soon. Life, though. How does time move so fast? I can’t believe that Thanksgiving is less than a week away.