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| Mist on the Missouri River |
We've been back in the Midwest for over a month now, and I still don't know what life is supposed to look like. Zach is back to Walmart (in online grocery pick-up), I just finished the Legends and Lanterns Halloween festival, and we are both working a lot and trying to catch up with friends and struggling to find equilibrium and direction in our new life back home. It wasn't the roughest transition in the world, but it's been long, very long.
My instinct is always to rush myself, to get my life together right now, but I'm pushing back against that and trying to take things in bite-sized moments. One step at a time, we're trying to figure out what we want, and what we should do, and what "normal" means in this phase of our life.
Here are some bite-sized bits of what we've been up to lately…
New housemates!
The biggest news is that we have housemates now! Lydia, who's been my friend since high school, lived in and took care of our house over the summer, and it worked out best for everyone for her to continue living here while we moved back in. Our other housemate is Lydia's adorable cat, Eddie— he is one of the friendliest cats I have ever met, not even trying to pretend that he doesn't adore us and want to be around us all the time. All the benefits of a cat without any of the responsibility!
New car!
The other big news is that our old car (a 1993 Oldsmobile) finally gave up the ghost, and we decided that it wasn't worth repairing yet again. After some serious discussion and consideration, we decided to buy a very new car— a fully electric one. We are now driving a Chevy Spark EV, which has a range of about 80 miles and we plug into a regular outlet at our house. I'm going to write a whole post about why we chose an EV, so if you're intrigued, stay tuned. (UPDATE: Here it is!)
Legends and Lanterns
As I mentioned, I just finished the St. Charles Halloween festival. Other than a single day of rain, the whole festival had absolutely perfect weather, and we enjoyed large crowds come to celebrate the spookiness! My favorite part of the festival are the regulars who come weekend after weekend— they are welcomed, included, teased mercilessly, and find a place where they truly belong.
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| Baba Yaga, the most famous witch of Slavic folklore |
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| A Weird Sister from Macbeth, Baba Yaga, and a Victorian mourner |
Making music videos
Our friends Tyler and Adrienne were in town, and we got the chance to film footage for upcoming music videos for our band, Insomniac Folklore. This involved spooky lighting effects, vintage white gunnysack dresses, smearing fake blood on each other's faces, and trying reeaaaally hard not to get blood on the aforementioned vintage dresses! I was so glad for the chance to sing and perform with them a bit before they head back to Oregon. Although the videos aren't up and won't be for a while, you can still check out our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/InsomniacFolklore
Taming the garden
It's no secret that our garden is a jungle, and unfortunately we haven't worked on it as much as we've wanted to. I'll post a proper garden update soon, but in the meantime, just know that we've harvested a respectable amount of food with very little effort— raspberries, strawberries, figs, elderberries, volunteer tomatoes, amaranth, daikon radish, some sunchokes (we have a whole forest of them to harvest after the frost), and, of course, ridiculous amounts of kale!
Fermenting adventures
Zach and I are committed to having more live food in our diet, and have gotten some fun ferments going. We've been eating sauerkraut every day, and soon we'll have some red sauerkraut (made with red cabbage, beets, and apples) and some pickled beets to try! Zach has also been brewing kombucha, and, as always, we have our milk kefir and sourdough. Next up: water kefir!
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| Soft focus on the pickled beets! |
Foraging
It's wonderful how many things there are to forage this time of year! We haven't had a huge yield of anything yet, but we're learning a ton, and have so far foraged pawpaw, gingko nuts, and sumac. I'm going to write a whole blog post about this later.
Hiking
We've been able to do a bit of hiking— at the Lewis and Clark Trail in Weldon Spring and at Pere Marquette State Park in Illinois— to reconnect to the flora and fauna of the Midwest. Autumn is my favorite season, and I'm so glad that we've gotten to see the leaves turn from the very beginning.
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| Views from Pere Marquette State Park |
Reading:
Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse (Update: After reading reviews from Diné (Navajo) critics, I can no longer recommend this book. Roanhorse is a member of a different nation than the one she wrote about, and appropriated sacred religious figures in a way that the Diné reviewers found harmful. You can read more here.)
The Sacred Enneagram by Christopher Heuertz (A deeply thought-provoking book discussing the Enneagram personality lens and how it affects our spirituality as Christians.)
The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri (A gut-wrenching novel about one Syrian couple's journey to England as refugees. I felt really depressed after reading it, but it was an amazing book that reminds us of what refugees must go through to reach safety.)
Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin (Almost through my third reading of this book. I love it so much!)
What have you been up to lately?
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