And then, because I had way too much going on with no time to take a break, my body said “enough!” and I got a bad cold. I’ve missed 3 days of work and have watched all the television. Yes, all of it. And for me to stay inside and do nothing is nearly impossible. I have my little “recuperation station” set up in the living room, with my laptop open to my work email and buckets of tea, vitamins, and tissues surrounding me. I am surprised the tv and laptop haven’t burned out by now.

So there isn’t much going on, really, just a mix of unusually warm weather mixed with painfully cold weather, a little snow, ice, and fog, and my dreams of summer and a vacation by the ocean. I am learning to bake more things (painfully failed at making soft pretzels). I am trying not to waste my evenings, and was on a decent workout routine before I got sick. I miss my friends as I always do, and love morning brunches and quiet afternoons. I wait not-so-patiently each week for a new episode of Downton Abbey, and am horrified that I can’t watch Sherlock until May. Sometimes I meet new people and it makes me happy.

This is winter in Chicago.

She made the noises of machine guns to indicate her home country, and said that she cleaned homes, that her sister was trying to teach her to speak English but it was hard. She laughed a lot, and so did I. She reminded me of the women I would see sitting on park benches in Israel, staring into the past or talking to each other.

I don’t know her name. But I think about her several months later, after I delivered her and her groceries to a small apartment where she invited me in for tea but I couldn’t stay. I think about how we don’t interact in any meaningful way with strangers, that I have begun craving that connection with people I barely know, if only for a few moments.

* Cooking and baking gluten-free items in a more deliberate way, including using my baking scale.

* Using Pinterest to find DIY projects and recipes that I can do around the house during quiet evenings.

* Trying to get back to the gym. Mostly because I can’t sleep at night and need to work through all of my stress. I’ve started going once a week and I’ll work up to more.

* Getting back into sewing. I have a sewing machine, and it silly not to use it.

They were the original cabinets from 1968. I had to take the cabinet doors off to paint behind them and to paint each side. It took me about 2 weekends to finish everything. I used paint deglosser, then one coat of primer, and then semi-gloss paint to finish.

Finally, this weekend, Brendan helped me to do the final installation of the doors!

The kitchen is so much more cheerful now. I spend a lot of time in my kitchen, cooking and baking, so it feels good to have a space that I want to be in.

Brendan also installed new blinds that I bought a few months ago, cut to measurements of the bay windows in my kitchen and bedroom. Having blinds that work is fantastic.

Nothing major, just little things, like the phone that I just had replaced a few months ago getting a cracked screen and needing to buy a replacement on eBay.

And interesting times at work, getting busier (which is great!).

And all sorts of things that surround life, missing some friends, dealing with sadness and figuring out plans on a very busy calendar.

By the time the weekend came, I needed a break. I needed a lot of food, friends, love, and sleep. I had run out of these amazing oatmeal chocolate chip cookies:

It was a sad situation. Luckily I had arranged to spend time with some wonderful loved ones, all of whom lifted my spirits and helped me a great deal. Sometimes we need to know when to throw our hands in the air and ask for some assistance.

So as I look forward to Thanksgiving and all of the good things that go along with that, I am looking forward to starting a better week.

I want to take pictures, fill my camera with a million moments with you, and write stories to go with it. I am afraid of losing the stories. The click of my keyboard replaced the scratching of the pen on paper, glow of my screen instead of candlelight.

I am turning my phone off this weekend. Need to escape from everything, take some real time to make my thoughts stop jumping around so much. Sometimes I forget how much poetry I found in the moments between, in the silence before the bombardment. I have forgotten how to write, how to be ok in stillness.

Of course I won’t say what I’m making, the costume is a surprise, but it is going to be fun. I have just enough sewing skills to put together a pillow, hem pants, or alter an already existing dress. I was worried that I didn’t have a pattern, but then I realized I could project it up onto my tv screen and trace it onto the muslin. It was cheaper to buy 10 yards of batting (that giant roll in the photo), so now I have about 7 yards of the stuff. I’m going to have to take up quilting or something (riiight).

When I left work last night, the air smelled like leaves and rain. It was raining on one side of the building, but not on the other! And then there was a hailstorm as soon as I passed into Wilmette from Evanston, but luckily the hailstones were small. Oh, Chicago. You’re so strange. But the sunset was amazing! (Taken with a cameraphone, so this doesn’t adequately represent how beautiful it was.)

I bought a pumpkin last year for Halloween. Didn’t carve it, just put it in the corner of my dining room. I threw it out 6 months later, it looked as perfect as the day I bought it. I think it was possessed or something. Creepy pumpkin.

The other thing I can’t wait to do is take photos of the fall leaves. We’re still pretty green here, but southern Wisconsin has started changing and I hope to go there soon with my camera. Last year was lovely at Starved Rock, but it was raining so it was hard to get some of the shots I wanted. We’ll see how it goes this year!

Please excuse the randomness of my thought process in this post. I seem to have had too much coffee this morning and not balanced it with enough food. I shall remedy that problem now.

Tonight his friends and some family will gather at the Baha’i Home in Wilmette to remember him, laugh together, and pray for the progress of his soul in the next world. Bahhaj recorded his version of a song in Gavin’s memory. Below is a video that his friends put together for the first memorial last year.

Gavin Badi Welch Memorial Video from Jennifer Brandel on Vimeo.

When I left, I ran into the Daley Plaza Farmers Market…fresh fruit and veggies abounded, though I had to restrain myself as I had to take the train north to get home.

Tonight I decided to make my favorite new dish: battered chicken. I cut chicken breast into long strips, dipped it in 1 beaten egg, then in a separate bowl that had half corn meal, half rice flour mixed together, then threw it in a pan with some olive oil. Fried up fresh zucchini with paprika, butter, salt, and pepper…yum.