Bearfins in Rhode Island

baby easter party

Easter from John Hewitt on Vimeo.

merry christmas from the bearfins

merry christmas from all of the bearfins.  we managed to fill the season with almost every ny activity possible...  the tree at rockefeller center, santaland, the christmas windows on 5th avenue, fao schwartz and nature brought us a heavy snow last week that lasted through christmas day.  crafting even occurred despite the flu and a week of wretched night float. 

 

a new york city pigeon ornament.

stockings...rhys' was done already from last year but we added john's and mine.

 

 

and a quilt for the baby boy.  i mean quilt in the loosest sense.  two pieces of fabric sewn together.  but comfy and he loved it.

 

we spent christmas eve with our friends jeff, amy and gus.  christmas day was with melissa, chad and jasper.  dara came over last night after a 10 hour day in the bellevue emergency room to watch some charlie brown christmas and share in a christmas meal.

 

we think the baby boy had a wonderful day.

more 50s books

1953. Bearfins like dinner.

from Cowboy ABCs circa 1960.  this book has made the debate in the house about the cub's next halloween outfit fairly heated between baby cowboy or baby astronaut.  i feel astronaut is slightly ahead. 

this is new york by m. sasek

  finally, baby rhys has his m. sasek book circa 1960 with beautiful illustrations of the city of his birth.

 

spring soon please

I'm ready for the blooming to start.  This winter hasn't nearly been comparable to anything in Chicago but it's seemed long to me and I'd like to see some signs of life soon. I remember in the midwest being disappointed that the flowers didn't seem to emerge until late May; hopefully it's earlier here.  This will be the bearfins' third easter together where John will wear the designated bunny ears and there will be the egg dying competition.  We don't seem to do much craft that doesn't compete.  We're competitive crafters. 

the squid and the whale

Yesterday at the Natural History Museum, the bear made it a point to take a picture of nearly every diorama.  Here I am prior to becoming thoroughly annoyed.  We learned about aye-ayes and archelons and saw the squid and whale diorama.  The place is enormous and I don't think we even saw half of it.  Next time I want to see a show in the planetarium.  It's an amazing place and a new bearfin favorite.  Museums like this are nostalgic for me because one of my favorite trips my family would take is over to Golden Gate park in SF to the California Academy of Sciences where we'd see the aquarium, the natural history museum and the planetarium. We'd also would go to the Japanese Tea Garden for afternoon tea.  To this day, green tea reminds me of those trips.  

Here is a bear looking very serious about extinction.  After we returned, exhausted from learning, we had dinner at Carda's house and watched the shockingly bad but good Death Race 2000 (circa 1975) and had vegan smores.  Yum.

mommie dearest

I forgot to add one more book to my list of new year's reads: Joan Crawford's My Way of Life... an apparently exhausting example of what narcissism, OCD and unlimited funds can do for you. Her energy for entertaining with the army of servants she employed is boundless as is her forced optimism for each day. "I like to get up early in the morning because I can't wait for the day to begin." Her instruction in entertaining runs the gamut from assembling the guest list (include a physicist and a burgeoning actress) to instructing the help so that the evening is stress free for the hostess.  Joan encourages wives to be informed about their husbands' daily routines in order to better converse with them in the evening while fetching their slippers and pipe.  She even attended her husband's business meetings, because she needed to know all aspects of his life, and encourages the other wives to take similar interest. There are, of course, other brilliant tidbits... "When you're ready to say yes to a purchase, wrap it up, pay for it - but don't go home until you're sure you have exactly the right accessories. You should be ready to emerge in your new ensemble the next day!" There's advice on how to sleep, stand, dress, shop, what foods look bad together on the dinner table and how you should never let your husband see you exercise as it would spoil the image he has of you being the svelte beautiful woman you are.  Between the egg shampoos and the 'ladies exercises', I think I've found my guilty pleasure for the month.

    

a new year

Unexpectedly, I have New Year's day off, and so bearfins were able to fully enjoy NYE at Carda's house. Bear made his cupcakes and we had curry and some of the best mac 'n' cheese I've had in a long time.  It was so weird to see times square on tv now that we've been there.  I was thinking this morning about how much changed since last January...  I was still interviewing at the time and crafting slowly (not yet madly) for the wedding.  I had February off (the last year of medical school is kind of a joke) and spent most of it recovering from the interview season which sent me almost to a different state every night for a month.  Match day was in March and it was the most bizarre experience, opening an envelope that is sending you to a new city for the next 4-6 years. (Clara and me on match day below) When John and I saw NYU we were both yelling and jumping like the rest of the room and then there was this moment where we looked at each other like, 'holy shit...we're going to new york' and for the next 2 days I was convinced I couldn't do a bigger city.  Our apartment hunt in April was more difficult and expensive than we ever thought possible and it wasn't until the second to last day that we found this place.  I had a bachelorette party at Clara's cabin in Minnesota where we cooked practice wedding food, played hilarious board games and gave ourselves oatmeal facials.  John took and passed his Series 7 exam a week before the wedding.  We were married May 12th at a barn outside of Chicago and it was the most perfect wonderful day of my life.   Paul and Sang made the food in addition to being in the wedding, Erin, Chrissy, Laura, Aparna and Elizabeth made appetizers like mad fiends, my bridesmaids Sara and Talia helped with crafting, place setting and general barn construction as did my parents who arrived weeks early to help with what was almost an entirely homemade wedding. John's sister Emilee helped craft birds, decorate, cook and with Shauna, threw me a bridal shower that was great.  Mark Gindi officiated, and Clara Filice, my maid of honor kept me sane in all ways by taking care of every little thing about which I had a small nervous breakdown.    

I graduated a week later and unlike Linfield, where I half assed my way through most classes and felt like I'd accomplished nothing at commencement, medical school had kicked my ass and I felt like I'd really earned that diploma.

John and I took a honeymoon in Spain where his only Spanish, "I like to play basketball" and my waning french did us no good but we enjoyed the goats in the road and the tiny 18th century cottage we stayed in and cooking with lemons right off the trees in the When we returned, we packed up the rental truck, said goodbye to our friends and John's family and drove east to Queens.  I started internship July 1st at Bellevue, on wards, on call.  I'll count that as one of the most nervous days of my life.  I didn't know how to draw blood, or place an IV or do an abg or drop and NG tube but I learned quickly carrying 12 patients at a time. I only cried at work twice that month which is good for me...I tend to be a crier when people yell. John got a job at Bear Stearns and quickly had to study and take another exam, this time the Series 63.  We made it through the months of medicine and 2 intense months of the hardest psych ward at NYU. And here we are. Things get easier from here. John's finally settling into his job and even though they pile more responsibilities on him every day, he's handling it and on most days, really likes what he does.  Almost everything I do from here on out is psychiatry with it's fantastic hours and patients that don't code overnight. And I like that.  We still miss everyone we left in Chicago and Champaign and Portland (still) and California terribly and every day, but I think the bearfins are finally settling in.

bleary

It's late, and I'm a little loopy having taken awful veteran's day call complete with a spiking-fever-cholangitis-stat-culture-holy-shit-rush-to-the-micu evening.  However, I found these photos from historical archives of Penryn, California circa 1940s.  Our house bordered an abandoned fruit packing farm and the enormous shed complete with conveyer belts and packing boxes was explored weekly by my brother and me (kind of dangerous actually...all kinds of black widows in there...shudder). We'd dig around in the 110 degree heat and bring home treasures of rusted kitchen utensils, warped pre-war calendars and once, a single leather strapped ski. Occasionally, I'll run into the fruit packing labels from this farm at antiques shows. When I went home this last Christmas, the barn had fallen in on itself, reduced to a pile of wood.  The old trees were still there, unkempt but still riddled with fruit and tasted just as I remembered.

they don't love you like I love you

Over a period of two months, no less than five articles have appeared in the NYT regarding my adopted, and for the last several years much idealized, hometown.  Portland has been proclaimed the most sustainable, most reasonable, most artistic place in the universe in every section of the times.  WWeek is as disturbed as I am.  Disturbed and quietly flattered...with disturbed tipping the balance.  In my own way, I probably promote like mad as well. I'll wax nostalgic about the nights of crafting at Nocturnal as people of New York look on, shocked that a city would endorse intoxicated people wielding needles and hot glue.  I've always loved how the city is infused with nerd hubris.  That at any given moment, several people on the bus are knitting.  That potluck dinners and themed parties are the rule. 

I've tried to find the Portland in every city since.  Chicago had a bar with board games and a monster of a weekly antiques sale where I found many aprons and a beautiful chair.  And New York, I know I haven't even touched in terms of discovering the kitsch, but it doesn't permeate the city the way it does in Portland.  The apartment I had there was right at the edge of the pearl district and northwest, 2 blocks from Powells (sigh...even their website is cool) and walking distance to Trader Joes...for a third of what I pay now.  Hrm, there I go again. Showing off my Portland but bitching about others discovering it.