Hey Jen: Thank you

Hey, Jen: A newsletter on food, home, life, and things I pick up off the side of the road.

I had a conversation with my lifelong best friend, Kate, earlier today. We are starting a podcast that I’ll be over the moon to share with you once it’s ready. We’ll release it in short, six-episode seasons because we both have busy lives and while we don’t feel we can keep up the pace of a weekly podcast, we also know that we have so much to share with the world. So, we’re doing it in short bursts. It’s what works, practically speaking, with our daily lives.

We recorded our first episode today, and it felt so beautifully nourishing to revisit our lifelong friendship. We met when I was four, and Kate was five, in Mrs. Smith’s kindergarten class and we’ve been friends ever since.

Our conversation made me think about the way that one big aspect of my life, both literally and figuratively, has been living like I’m on a daily treasure hunt. I am known, among my friends and children, as someone who loves to pick things up off the side of the road. This trait was, of course, a major embarrassment to my youngest child, who would sink down into the seat of the car so nobody saw him while his mom shimmied a piece of roadside furniture into the back of the car.

But, when my kids were young and I was on my own with them, I had to let myself be delighted by small things. The household I raised my kids in was full of collected items literally found on the side of the road. If not found, they were thrifted, found on marketplace for a steal, or snagged at a yard sale. Necessity taught me to see beauty and usefulness of things that other (normal) people would pass by. Finding those things and bringing them home made me fall in love with the feeling of reaching outside of my economic situation to have things that I couldn’t possibly have had without a creative eye and elbow grease. It helped build my aesthetic, my sense of adventure, and my love for uniquely beautiful things.

I do want to pause here for a moment, however, and say very very clearly that I do not mean to use the ways that I found beauty in moments of lack to be a way of romanticizing poverty. There is no possible way to romanticize it. Poverty is aggressive. Poverty comes for everything you have - your sense of peace, your sense of possibility, your sleep, and your last roll of toilet paper. Often, it comes for your health and your dignity. Poverty is brutal. And people living in poverty need support, meaningful government programs, pathways to bettering their lives, training, childcare, healthcare, help with food, not judgment.

I didn’t find beauty because of poverty, but in spite of it. Interesting things; small projects I could sink my soul into in order to make a tiny corner of my world more beautiful, more inviting, more…acceptable to society, made me also feel a little more invited by, and a little more acceptable to, societal norms and expectations.

I made it my life’s work to change the scenario for my kids and myself. And along the way, the collector’s journey became the way I live my life. I still love to find things that feel beautiful, interesting, and unique. I go to rummage sales and thrift stores and still love a good roadside find. I want things that are worn in, and as a result, have a good kind of life force to them. I want to be surrounded by items that know a thing or two.

And it’s not about just things. I also love to pick up inspiration, commonality, lessons, and people that I find along the side of the road of my life.

I look to those things, those people, those lessons, like guides. If you have beautified, healed, inspired, or helped me along my path - even if you are a wooden cabinet or a vintage swivel chair - I am so terribly, utterly, deeply grateful for the way you’ve affected my life for the better and can’t believe my good luck at having crossed paths.

On a day when I feel like maybe there isn’t a lot else to say, I guess it’s always best to say “thank you.”

So, thank you.

P.S. If you couldn’t tell, it’s been a tough couple weeks. It’s all okay, everything is fine, but I just haven’t had my usual ability to show up and do the thing. Turns out, at my age, I really value my own care, and I put that before expectations, and I think that’s a good thing.

Don’t feel bad for me. I ate a lot of frozen pizza and ice cream and watched a lot of Grace & Frankie and drank a decent amount of sparkling wine this weekend. But I didn’t, for example, work on my bedroom which I’m supposed to be styling and making delicious, and I didn’t write a fully fleshed out newsletter, because I just couldn’t. I did shower. Once. Jax is a very good co-conspirator in all things being lazy (which is deliciously healing) and the cats love me. I went thrifting with Jax and Sydney and I know the coming weeks will look better than the previous. I know it will all be okay.

Proof that I am alive and (mostly) fine: my at-home outfit and DELIGHTFUL year-round pine-tree and star slippers (not Christmas tree slippers…actually, they are totally Christmas slippers and I do wear them year-round).

Jax and I did have a delicious dinner at one of our all-time favorite spots:
Provisions in Vallejo.

I was a very good audience for a private concert by this lil guy.

And I had a glass of chardonnay at Far Niente, which means that I am, indeed, an asshole for saying that I had a tough week. Which I did. But I also had this, which was very nice.

I think (hope) I’ll be back to some sort of normal(ish) next week. I think I will be. If not, we’ll do something else that feels soothing.

Thanks again for being a part of my road. I really appreciate it.

Xoxo,

Jen