Butterfly Mind

Road trip writing

January 1st, 2019

I looked around after Christmas at all the fun stuff my family was playing with and smiling about. My husband strummed his new guitar, our daughter colored with her new Prismacolor markers, our son admired his new gaming monitor he couldn’t wait to set up when we got back home. I was happy. This Christmas was one of those where watching everyone open their presents filled me with glee: they were going to be so excited!

After Christmas, when we ran out to the music store to get guitar strings, and to the marina to look at boats, I thought about my family’s hobbies and how everyone has something they’re into. They have interests.

And suddenly I felt very boring.

I read, but that’s consuming someone else’s creation. I garden, but it’s currently off-season for that. The longest-running and deepest creative interest I have is writing. But I rarely do that anymore. Or I should say, I write every day, but it’s just journaling.

I’m in a rut. My mind is an endless recitation of arguments.

“I’m journaling because I enjoy the act of writing. It doesn’t have to go anywhere.”

“But I’m not creating anything new. What I’m writing is not interesting. It’s just what I did today or what’s on my mind.”

“So what? I’m writing. I’m putting words on a page.”

“But it’s boring. Who cares? I’m not intentional. I’m not selecting satisfying words. I’m not writing anything I’m proud of. I’m not improving.”

“Maybe I’ll feel better if I switch back to pen and paper instead of writing on the computer. I get so sick of the computer.”

“But then I have to buy notebooks and store them somewhere, and then they just create clutter on the shelf, and I’ll never look at them again anyway.”

And so on.

This argument played out in my head through much of our time in Florida, and again in the long car ride home when there was nothing else to do but think.

We passed signs for grapefruits, lemons, and red navel oranges while I ruminated about my boring self. Citrus is zesty and happy. I was tired of feeling bad. I decided to take inspiration from the citrus stands and to stop Eeyoring. I remembered the sense of place the names of winding Appalachian mountain roads convey, like Dark Hollow Road, and how they tickle me and I should write them down when we’re travelling.

So I pulled the pink mini moleskine out of my purse and started collecting words. I collected words we saw on painted plywood citrus stand signs. I collected street and business names on Highway 301. I collected words all those words made me think of. And as I collected, I felt my mood shift. Yellow lemons. Pink grapefruit. Pip. Tang. Zing.

I brightened. Particularly when our daughter, who didn’t know I was collecting words, said from the back seat, “We could get some red belly buttons!”

Don’t get me wrong. The writing arguments continue in my head. So I have this list of words. Now what? It’s not like I’m going to write a novel set in central Florida.

But they’re fun! Maybe I’ll use them one day. Or, I can just read them and enjoy the feeling they bring.

Florida words
Christmas in Florida

December 31st, 2018

For the first time since the kids were born 15 years ago, we awoke on Christmas morning away from home. Instead of driving down to visit family the day after Christmas like we normally do, we decided that since the Virginia to Florida drive is so long (16 hours), we would show up on Christmas Eve instead. The stay is too short for that many hours of driving if we wait. The kids are big enough that they didn’t mind being away this once.

Reading, barefooted, on the lanai in December

We relaxed in sunshine. We saw grandparents, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins. We ate lots of food, visited lots of family. We gabbed. We swam. We shopped. We walked a marina during the day and the beach at sunset.

Moored sailboats in Sarasota Bay

Sunset, Siesta Key, Christmas Day

Siesta Key sunset on our final night in Florida

We looked for seashells.

Seashells on Siesta Beach

One of the unexpected gems of this Christmas was the beautiful blown crystal martini glasses my mother-in-law pulled out of a blue Tiffany & Co. box on Christmas Eve. They keep all sorts of good gin at their house — Aviation, Hendricks, Tanqueray — and in addition to all the visiting, beaching, shopping, and other merriment, a highlight of the trip for me was drinking fine gin martinis out of Tiffany glasses.

Christmas martini

It was a happy Christmas :-).
We got some snow

December 10th, 2018

December 9, 2018

I think we got about 15 inches in Blacksburg, Virginia. Our daughter and I made her birthday cake (tiramisu) and dinner rolls for her birthday dinner while the snow came down.

Front garden in early December snow

Rose & herb bed in snow

Snow coming down

Snow plow
How do I make mini apple crumble pies?

November 21st, 2018
We’re having a bit of a pie crisis. Our daughter had her heart set on a strawberry rhubarb pie, which we made last year and it was everyone’s favorite. This year, I’ve been to 6 grocery stores and cannot find rhubarb anywhere. The Krogers say they haven’t been able to get it. The Food Lions don’t have it. Our local natural foods store, Eats, hasn’t seen any in a while.

The family all agreed we also want cherry, so we have one pie for Thanksgiving. It’s on this second pie that we’re falling apart. I want pecan, our son wants apple, my husband already made a pumpkin pie because that’s what he wanted and he knew nobody else would want it on Thanksgiving. Our daughter, distressed by our inability to make her first choice, can’t put her finger on what she wants instead. As is often the case when the first choice is a bust, nothing else compares.

She said she wants to try something new. Something we’ve never made. When I asked what she wanted, she couldn’t articulate it. “Some kind of small pastries, like individual ones.” Sounds easy :|.

We’re all kind of hovering around apple pie, and our daughter mentioned maybe some kind of apple tarts would do. I told her about the best apple pie I’ve ever had, which was made with a shortbread crust, and how I tried to replicate it once but working with the shortbread resulted in nearly as much swearing as caramel cake. She knows this level of swearing. We’ve made caramel cake before.

“I bet if we did small pies, we could use shortbread and it would be easier to work with,” I said. “And we could make a crumble topping for something different.”

She likes this idea. So the question now is this: how do we make these pies? If you’ve ever successfully made mini apple pies with shortbread crusts and crumble topping, please help! My primary questions are these:
- Can we bake these in a muffin tin or do we need special mini-pie vessels?
- If muffin tins are usable, what diameter circle do we need to cut the rounds of dough?
- What recipe have you had success with?
Thank you!
Reading spree

November 20th, 2018

I’m not sure what happened, but I’ve been tearing through books — and their writeups — for my Andrea Reads America reading project. Maybe it was the realization that I’ve been at this for five years now. Maybe it’s the time of year. Or maybe I just needed to unblock myself by reducing the number of blogs I maintain from six to two.

Whatever it is, I like it. In the past two weeks I’ve published book roundups for three states: New Mexico, New York, and North Carolina. I’m not saying the writing is good, but at least the posts are done.

Andrea Reads America: New Mexico

Andrea Reads America: New York

Andrea Reads America: North Carolina

Publishing the writeups is the hardest part of my reading project and is what slows me down. Maybe part of my recent spree is that I’ve stopped putting pressure on myself for those roundups. I treat them more like a diary — I write as if nobody is reading.

Given this recent spurt of activity, I’m wondering if I can finish this project by the end of 2019. I’ve got 17 more states to read. At 3 books per state, that’s 51 books in 13 months, or 4 books per month, or 1 book per week. Plus all the writeups.

Hmmm, maybe that’s too ambitious. Though I published these writeups within two weeks, I didn’t read all 12 of the books within two weeks. I think I was almost finished reading New York before I even began writing up New Mexico. And I often find it hard to stop at just 3 books per state (see New York above).

I’ll see where I am at the end of 2018 and then decide. With the end in sight, I’m getting pretty excited about what I’ve read so far, what’s left to read, and what it’s going to feel like to have done this.
Sailing in November

November 19th, 2018

When we took our boat out a couple of weeks ago, I thought it would be our last sail before winter. I was wrong. Yesterday it was warm enough to layer up for a couple of hours on the lake. Even if there wasn’t going to be any wind, we wanted to be on the boat.

The peace that comes with the silence of a November sail is a rare gift. Most people have pulled their boats out of the water by November, and for those whose remain, it’s too chilly to be on the lake. What that means for us is a flat, wake-free surface and enough quiet to hear the sploosh of a fish, the gurgle of our hull moving through calm water, and the honks of Canada geese echoing off the mountainsides.

When the lake is smooth, our little sailboat can be moved by the slightest breath of wind. Without boat wakes to break our light momentum, we glide along in liquid silence. It is one of the most soul-satisfying feelings I know.

Foggy and 40℉ (4℃)

Fog is burning off

Sailing on smooth water

The last of the autumn leaves

Quiet enough to sail to the dock (instead of motoring)

Drying the sail before putting it away for the season