Brooklyn sans bébé

 

We left D in Seattle for five days in early October while we traveled to New York for the wedding of a CMU friend.  It felt luxurious to uber to and from the airport and pass on major tourist activities in favor of a low key Brooklyn weekend with friends, confident in the knowledge that this wasn’t our first or last trip to New York.

The wedding was held at the roller skating rink in beautiful Prospect park.  After a slightly wet ceremony we retreated to the covered, open air rink for skating, dancing and dinner.  Skating uses muscles in the shins and feet I apparently never use, so it was surprisingly hard.  Luckily the groom was quite comfortable on roller blades, zooming among the guests.  There were 13 former CMU architecture students in attendance, so it was quite the reunion.

Traveling without a kid, or actually traveling at all, since we’ve mostly stayed close to home during these house-building years, was heady stuff.  The plane ride was un-interupted reading time.  Arriving in New York late at night is no problem and we had a delicious meal in a bar at midnight, which we were awake for, thanks to the time change.

We walked a lot, as one does, and followed our friends to local favorites like Gorilla Coffee, Betty Bakery and the Brooklyn Cat Cafe.  The smallest kittens were in a sort of terrarium.

We also enjoyed walking the high line (the old elevated train line reclaimed as a park http://www.thehighline.org/about) with the newlyweds and visiting an underground (in the literal, not legal sense) ping pong bar.  I bested Jack in a close set!

Fortunately D didn’t mind the separation much and had a good time sleeping over with a PEPs friend and staying at our house with Grandma Lori.

hygge elements of our house

During the design phase, I worried that our modern house would feel cold and uninviting.  I’m happy to report that my fears were misplaced.  There are many ways to feel cozy, and not all of them are craftsman.  I was reminded  of this article I read last year [Nordic hygge] about the Danish word, hygge, which in a difficult-to-translate way refers to the cultural pursuit of taking pleasure from the presence of gentle soothing things.

Though Seattle’s climate is far milder than Denmark's, the long dark winter provides plenty of motivation for hygge, as I imagine early Nordic settlers to Seattle knew.  

Since our tall modern house has no eaves and has plentiful south and west windows exposed to the wind, the rain makes an impressively loud pitter patter and water pours down the outside of the windows, blurring the view of the lights outside.  I think the distant views and the water on the windows emphasizes the distinction between the cozy inside and the busy, hectic outside world.  Having space for guests and a kitchen table, however small, is also deliciously hygge.

One of the luxuries of our kitchen is the multitude of drawers making this delightful tea setup possible, vastly increasing my enjoyment and frequency of drinking tea.

Oh and I’m pretty sure having heated floors and lots of natural light during the short winter days is hygge too.

house = home

For the past four weeks we’ve been living in the house and today the first regular mortgage payment was withdrawn so it’s official.   I have lots to say and pictures I want to share but no time at the moment, so I’ll be brief.

A few things that are great are the kitchen, the view and the master bathroom.  The third floor, where the kitchen is, feels almost like a treehouse and if you’re sitting on the floor, as one does when there’s no couch, almost all you see out the windows is the beautiful sky.

On the other end of my opinion spectrum, meaning things I don’t like, are not having had the time to put things away and organize and the fact that the water we worked so hard to get is undrinkable.  We installed new PEX pipes, as almost all new plumbing uses these days, and the water smells and tastes like gasoline.  It’s disappated a bit, but according to the internet it could take up to two months to go away.  That means we are halfway, but I’d say I have a strong sense of smell so it might take longer.  We have a Britta now, but I find that I am often thirsty and going up a couple of floors for a drink isn’t fun.

We got some nice houseplants as gifts.  Some even came in the mail!