wanna know what’s great? Last night I woke up in the middle of the night to make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich… and ya know, it was my kitchen, it was my refrigerator, it was my apartment… and it was the BEST peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I have had in my entire life
wendy in St Elmo’s Fire
we’ve been keeping strange (late) hours recently.
not sure why.
that’s a lie.
everything’s changing and so we can’t sleep – we’ll be leaving new york, exiting Corporate America, giving away the teapot, the Diana Vreeland framed print and the original Avedon shot (on the vinyl) of Barbra.
but. not. quite. yet.
it’ll all be happening shortly (depending on your notion of shortly – ours is fairly hazy) – but definitely leaving New York by the holidays (the one with a tree as a central design motif, not the pumpkin one).
and so (because we’re Very Sentimental, if you’ve just joined us and Didn’t Know that, darlings) we think about this every time we use a household object – especially when whipping up a plate of late night (whole wheat) spaghetti with a good olive oil sauce and a slightly sad looking plum tomato.
as we use the small french enamel saucepan or the red iron bottomed casserole (which we can barely lift – Julia Child must have had the most Awesome upper body strength) or the white plates (Conran, naturally) we have a running list (helpfully being kept by Jonathan) of To Whom aforementioned object will be given upon our leaving New York.
you see we like to travel lightly.
and there are things we have had to buy in New York (suit jackets, Lacroix scarves) that we won’t need in our new life in Los Angeles (black jeans, black t-shirts, espadrilles).
there are also things that we don’t want to ship – because we can replace at the other end – and buy things that will fit into wherever and whatever we find ourselves upon arrival – on another note – that’s the odd thing about moving – but not moving quite yet – we wanted to renew some subscriptions But We Don’t Yet Have An Address (an odd, slightly fuzzy in the stomach feeling that one – but it’s not our first time doing this moving thing).
the list has sentimental value: pictures we won’t need in L.A and that we know people like NmP will treasure and our teapot can go to KOC because we went to tea at his place the other day and he said he didn’t have one so we said “you can have ours” and he said, “then you can visit it!”
which is sort of the point.
like pollinating a little gloria-ous-ness back East when we physically will live on the Other Coast.
it can backfire, this leaving stuff behind.
we did it once in London and then – due to circumstances beyond our control (heartbreak) – we ended up living with them again at a friend’s flat while we tried to piece ourselves together sleeping-on-the-sofa and emigrate a few days later. the cups and bowls didn’t seem so delightful so early in their new household as we sobbed on the counter and ate more muesli than necessary.
so – the late hour of writing to you now – is also accompanied by Having A Cold (which Everyone in the office has had apart from us because we were on holiday) and so the Cold waited for our Return – voila – sneezing – but not serious but since you-know-what we are Very Careful with our battered immune system due to lacking certain glands and such.
and we’re eating spaghetti.
whole-wheat and – this makes us giggle – we were reading, in bed, and suddenly felt Hungry so padded to the kitchen (alcove) in our bare feet and thought “what shall we make?” and the fridge yielded nothing much (comme tous jours, darlings – this being New York and we work Late and so eat Out a Lot) and then we did something we’d seen in the movies.
we took the single (plum) tomato (almost off its game, to be honest) and some Good Olive Oil (from Portugal) and garden peas from the freezer (we did grow up in England, everyone has peas in the freezer there) and added excellent sea salt from the delicious herb store round the corner and whipped up a small gourmet feast – just like they do in fine novels.
and here we sit, listening to the dulcet late-night-tone of Mark Lawson (from the BBC) talking about Shakespeare (which they do a Lot on Radio 4) on Front Row, eating spaghetti and wondering if we trust ourselves with a pot of decaf or whether we’ll pull out the wrong mason jar of coffee and be buzzy all night.
we’ve already called in sick tomorrow.
we need to sniffle and sleep and get better.
and keep making the list of where everything will go and to whom and you-know – late night thoughts that will probably seem Quite Different in the light of day.
even a monday.
or perhaps especially a monday.
it’s a strange life.
but an exciting one.