Hygge Season

This is as good a time as any to talk about hygge, I suppose. It’s a chilly rainy Sunday, I made a big pot of soup and a crock pot of buffalo chicken dip for the Eagles game, and while my sons spew foul epithets at players (who just an hour before were “studs,”) and speak in barbed tongues about traitorous interceptions and predictable sacks, I’m wrapped in a plush blanket, drinking pumpkin tea and trying my best to ignore them.

Doesn’t get much more hygge-like than that.

(I grew up with three brothers whose lives revolved around the Eagles’ performances, and the climate of our household was predicated on it. Now I have three sons for whom the same theory applies, and it’s like I have been thrown into Doc Brown’s Delorian and driven back to 1981. In Super Bowl XV, I was present when Herman Edwards recovered the ball and ran it back for a touchdown to defeat the Dallas Cowboys for the NFC championship. My brothers sailed on that victory for years, a victory that also cemented Dick Vermeil as a golden god in our household. More on the Birds another day).

“Hygge” (pronounced “hue-gah” or “hoo-gah”) is a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being, and is regarded as a defining characteristic of Danish culture. Here, October and on through cold soggy spring is hygge-season, and those of us who love sweaters and fuzzy socks and fluffy flannel comforters and cups of steaming hot tea and fires and gray skies and Hunter boots and rainy days and snow drifts and Uggs consider hygge practically a religion.

Not everyone seeks hygge. I have heard unsettling tales of people who emerge from six months of hot and humid summer weather only to travel to Florida (on purpose!) for six more months of hot and humid summer weather. Back-and-forth, back-and-forth they go, loving the sweat, the killer sun, and omni-present desperate flight into air conditioning. They wear shorts and flip-flops all year long, golf on Christmas day, and get a tan on New Year’s Eve.

Lunatics. But to each his own.

(If Dante consigned me to a circle of hell, that would be mine. Banished to humid Florida weather twelve months a year. Nay. Give me Antarctica or give me death).

It is universally agreed upon that hygge is best created and enjoyed in cool and cold months. However, while summer does not lend itself easily to hygge, it is possible to create it. Think moonlight beach bonfires. Firepit parties in a backyard with lantern lights and a soft playlist. Candlelit dinner parties. An air-conditioned restaurant and an ice-cold gin and tonic after a long hot day. Even a simple umbrella propped up over a beach chair, providing much needed cool shade on a hot beach day can provide a quick dose of hygge. You know that feeling when you take a dip in the ocean on a hot day, and you come out feeling your skin sizzling with relief from the cool water? Then you collapse in your beach chair, your entire body shimmers with delicious goodness, and you just…smile?

Hygge.

Not everyone needs or seeks hygge. These people don’t sleep with fluffy comforters. Even in the cold winter months they see no need for boots, candles or soothing playlists, and say “No thanks” when offered hot chocolate in a snow storm. Fires seem to hold no charm for them, nor fuzzy socks or thick warm blankets.

They baffle me. I can only assume they are sociopaths.

Some people appreciate the idea of hygge but are unsure how to create it. Like any ambience, hygge is a practiced art. And while it does come naturally to some, others have to work at it. Because hygge is texture, length and width. Hygge is light scheme and muted tones. Hygge is rounded corners and soft shapes. Hygge is feeling warm but not hot, being friendly but not overbearing, feeling safe but not suffocated. Hygge is not loud, or bright, or garish, or uncertain. It is solidity, and surety, and assurance. It is confidence, it is contentment, it is credence, it is conviction.

Hygge is not just a physical presence. It is a state of mind.

You can enter someone’s home in any season and sense the lack of hygge. The home is rife with sharp corners, awkward angles, and forked tongues. The home has garish lighting, shrill volume, even cacophonous language. There are no visible places to cozy up, and the home does not exude warmth or contentment; rather, it oozes discontent and chill. These are the places you excuse yourself from as quickly as possible, for reasons you yourself do not quite understand.

For hygge is as much internal as it is external.

I differ from many hygge-lovers in that I believe one can have too much hygge. When you look up the opposite of “hygge,” words you find are discomfort. Discontent. Confusion, unease, disgruntlement. I disagree with these antonyms as it applies to living life, because while having hygge in your soul can bring peace to your home, it is also important to seek the world, a world which is unfortunately filled with ire. But it is the hygge in your heart that will temper that discontent. It will mute it, and water it down. If you are a hygge-practicer, no amount of the world’s distemper can eradicate the peace in your heart.

I don’t mean to make it sound easy. It’s not. I struggle with it too. That feeling of sitting down at the end of the day, looking around and saying, “This is enough.” The size of my home is enough, the make and model of my car is enough, my salary is enough. My kids, my wardrobe, my education, my job, my expectations for what I wanted to accomplish in my life is enough, goddammit! But alas, we are humans. We are built to achieve, strive, build, create. Settling back and feeling content is almost blasphemous to some of us. To some of us, it is the feeling of…defeat. I am done, you are saying to the universe when you feel content with your life. I don’t want to achieve anything else, I am happy NOW.

Scary. What does one do when one no longer feels the need to create?

I like to earn my hygge. I could never cower under a blanket 24-hours a day. At the completion of this blog on Monday morning, the weather is more inclement than it was yesterday. My blanket is warm, and my house cozy. But I have a day, and many things (some highly unpleasant) to accomplish in this day. There will be no cuddling and tea until way into the late afternoon, but when it arrives, you can bet I will enjoy it. Even when cowering in my home from blizzards, Nor’easters and derechos, I eventually need to get out. Being out in nature’s fury makes me feel alive.

Moderation in all things. Yin and Yang. All things existing as inseparable and contradictory. Each side having at its core an element of the other. Neither pole superior to the other, with a correct balance between the two reached to achieve harmony. No order without chaos. Hot skin, cold water.

Hope you find your dose of hygge on this October 12th Monday.

Simplicity

Happy Friday.

I’d like to discuss simplicity today. One of my favorite topics, besides hygge.

We humans just love to worry, don’t we? Mortgages, illnesses, strife, career. Houses, cars, colleges, portfolios. Yards, pets, closets, laundry. And it never ends. When we fix one thing, we move onto the next, so we can be sure to always have something to worry about.

Well, some worries are justified, you say. Indeed, the loss of a child, homelessness, illness, debt, mental illness, all very serious topics. But is the guy who is unhappy because he lost a job promotion better able to rebound than the guy who is unhappy because he lost his home? Or can it be said that deciding to be happy is ubiquitous regardless of one’s circumstances?  

So there we have it.

Is eradicating worry and fear from one’s life really a complex topic? Is it really so complex to just decide to be happy? To wake up in the morning and tell yourself that worrying never solved anything? To realize that you’re only here on this Earth for a limited amount of time, so you have decided to enjoy it?

Tough questions. Entire shelves in Barnes and Noble contain books that try to answer these questions. I’ve read them all, and I still battle with the answers. But one answer stands clear:

Simplicity.

I think everyone can benefit from a little simplicity in their lives

Everyone has their strengths, and mine do not include housework, patience or liking sushi. But something I am good at, something I have always excelled at, is appreciating simplicity, the little things.

I am just simply charmed by the beautiful, small things in life. I always have been, even as a young girl. So here are some things I am beguiled by right now, things that are making me smile:

  • My kitchen towel- it has a white ghost on it with the word “Boo” written across the ghost’s body.
  • The way my dog’s ear fluff is waving in the breeze as he enjoys the Indian summer day in our entryway door.
  • The mums and pumpkins that instantly brighten up my yard.
  • A good conversation with my kid an hour ago.
  • This guy.
  • My mid-day cup of coffee and the pumpkin spice creamer I will treat myself to.
  • The thought of tonight’s dinner of lemon chicken and asparagus.
  • A picture my neighbor’s granddaughter drew for me which she taped to our refrigerator.
  • My son’s bed blanket getting a nice fresh air dry on the clothesline.

And that’s just off the top of my head. I could go on and on.

But despite my best intentions, and despite the happiness I enjoy (that has been described in such detail for you), there are still days which test me. Just because I’m happy doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated, and this past week there were some doozies. And when I can sense that shitty feeling trying to edge its way into my day, I have a list of things I do in order, basic things, that hold it at bay.

  1. Eat an apple. Maybe my blood sugar is off, maybe I’ve been eating too much salt, not enough veggies, whatever. The first thing I do when I feel out-of-sorts is eat an apple.
  2. Drink a cold glass of water. Not a bottle of water. Filtered water from my Brita, poured into a standard sturdy drinking glass. Then I drink another. And I wait to see if the combination of apple and cold fresh water balances my electrolytes.
  3. Eat a spoonful of peanut butter. Maybe I need some fat and protein? One tablespoon of peanut butter. If I have apple left, I dip it in the peanut butter. If these three things still leave me feeling empty, it’s not physical, and it’s time to soothe the heart, soul and mind.
  4. Listen to classical music. Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Vivaldi, Beethoven.
  5. Cook. I go in my email, find a recipe for which I have all the ingredients, and just start chopping. I create something beautiful and delicious, something I’m proud to serve my family. Takes my mind off silly problems.
  6. Read something inspiring. Tolle. Singer. Dyer. Any writer can remind you of what’s important. These writers remind you of what isn’t.
  7. Do a load of laundry.
  8. Journal.
  9. Tidy something.
  10. Hug my dog.
  11. Move. I will walk, play nine holes, stroll through a farm market, hit the gym. Last week I was out-of-sorts, and the last thing I felt like doing was getting my golf bag ready. But I grabbed my bag and my son, and we had a great time. We golfed at 3:00 p.m., which I realize now is magic time in the fall. Mostly everyone is either working or getting their kids out of school or to school activities, so we had this Indian summer late-day golden- flushed experience all to ourselves.

I wish we had played better, but you can’t always have everything.

(Author’s note: if #s 1-11 do not work, you’d better believe I’m packing a suitcase).

So have a great weekend and remember: life is about the little stuff. And that’s the good stuff.

Learn to Fly

I dress to fly.

When I fly, I like to look sophisticated, clean and sexy, and at the absolute least, neat and pretty. I meet a lot of people when I travel, so first impressions are crucial. I’ll wear maybe a sleek black skirt with a black tank top. Maybe a black loose sheath dress, or a white dress shirt with a pencil skirt. If it’s very hot, maybe a sundress, and if it’s cold, cashmere. Always cashmere. I’ll wear a small heel that I can slip off in the security line, so usually a kitten heel or a leather mule. Diamond studs, clean minimal makeup, maybe a hooded cardigan to slip over my tank top in case the plane is chilly.

I don’t dress for where I am going, I dress for where I am. I don’t wear a floppy muumuu just because I’m going to Hawaii. You won’t catch me in clunky boots and a ski parka just because I’m landing in Alaska. If the weather of my destination is substantially different than from the airport I fly out of, I will pack the correct clothes in my overhead. When I landed in Iceland, I was wearing Nicole Miller. Within five minutes, I had changed and looked like a local in black tights, black boots and a 66º North jacket.

It may sound pretentious, but since traveling is a privilege, I dress for that privilege.

Oh, so you say you like to wear pajama pants? Natty worn yoga tights with an oversized t-shirt? A faded jean jacket with jeans? Even worse, you don’t put one single thought into it, and just wear whatever? What a tragedy, because you are missing out on one of the easiest opportunities to bring joy and significance into your life.

“I want to be comfortable,” is the most often-repeated excuse for looking like a slob on an airplane, especially for a trip, say, to Australia, a brutal flight that takes 24 hours. But what’s more comfortable than a cool cotton skirt and tank top from Prana, with a warm cardigan and a pair of low sling-backs? Or a pair of sleek black tights, an oversized slouchy cashmere sweater and a pair of leather ankle boots?

“Who cares?” others say.

I care. I care how I present. I can’t babble nonsense about the attractiveness of trash cans and then look shoddy and cheap on a flight to Boston.

Here is a small list of other things I find important to have stocked away in my leather tote bag when I fly:

  1. *No smelly food onto the plane.
  2. Noise-cancelling headphones
  3. Burts Bees tinted lip balm
  4. Tin of Altoids
  5. A small Moleskin notebook and a Pilot pen
  6. A small novel and one interesting magazine
  7. Squares of dark chocolate
  8. Small bottle of Fiji water
  9. Sunglasses
  10. Breathe spray
  11. Visine Allergy drops
  12. Portable back-up phone charger

*Please try to get to the airport early enough to eat in the airport, so you don’t have to haul chicken fingers, garlic bread knots, greasy pizza, tuna-fish sandwiches or meat-stuffed burritos into such a close space as an airplane. Have some consideration, and realize the smell is unbearable to others, no matter how hungry you are or how good it smells to you. Or bring something that has no odor, like vegetable sticks, a muffin or plain bagel.

Notice the lack of electronics on the list. I don’t worry myself with electronics. I know, I know, I’ve seen the people with their iPhones, iPads, laptops, etc. That stuff definitely helps pass the time. But when I fly, I like to enjoy the experience, and watching five movies on a laptop doesn’t do it for me. I like to listen to beautiful music, read beautiful literary passages or maybe some poetry. I’ll shut my eyes and think about good sex, I’ll listen to Handels’ Water Music, or Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Since I usually fly first-class (more on that later), I am afforded the space I need to relax and zone out, mind-boggled at the thing that is air travel.

There is not one thing in your life, trash cans included, that you cannot devote yourself wholeheartedly into making it a beautiful experience. Use cute bags to pick up your dog’s poo. Buy the patterned paper towels that are fifty cents more expensive than your usual cheap brand. Wear kitschy socks under your boots, even if no one knows they are there (that goes for beautiful sexy lingerie as well- MUCH MORE on that another time). My favorite pair right now are a recent gift from a friend, and depict a woman with a book and the caption, “Fuck off, I’m reading.”

Be grateful for the fact that you can board an airplane and land in a different place that will, no matter how insignificant it may seem, change you. And let your dress reflect that.

Bright Copper Kettles

I read my favorite blog a few times a week, a blog that shall remain nameless here because it’s so good, so polished and so popular that I am jealous and don’t want to give the few readers I have to HER. I hate to be like that, but one day, when I attend a blogging conference for only the most famous bloggers in the world, I will apologize to her personally. Unless I’m more famous than her by then, which in that case I won’t talk to her because she will be beneath me.

Moving on.

On her blog, she is currently selling the “reading sweater.” The concept is that when you wake up, you don’t have to think, you just throw on your slouchy reading sweater and you’re ready for the morning. It has big pockets that hold your books and other assorted thingies and comes in a variety of bright or neutral colors, depending on your taste.

I like the concept. But if I was wearing it and suddenly decided I didn’t feel like reading, would I feel compelled to change? If I buy it primarily to read, I feel like I should follow the rules. I don’t think it would be ethical to wear it while walking the dog, or doing laundry. Also, the fact that it is a sweater assumes that reading is only done in sweater weather. Some of us read in the hot weather, so what do I do then? Will she sell a reading tank top? A reading sundress?

I think I’m owed some guidance on this discrepancy.

Regardless, I am considering the investment. I like the idea of having one beautiful thing that you utilize for one beautiful (or even dreaded) task. A thing you put on or use without having to think, because that is the thing you use for the task you are doing. I am going to share just a few of my favorite things on my post today. Please read to the end, or tomorrow’s post will confuse you. I fly home tomorrow, and I won’t have time for your nonsense.

  1. Pilot Precise Ultra-Fine pens. I stock these in my purse, my travel bags, in my home office, my workout bag. The only pen I use.
  2. Moleskin journals. If you journal or write or take notes, you probably already know about these buttery-paged notebooks that come in a variety of sizes and colors.
  3. Birkenstocks. I have fluffy Birks, green suede Birks, navy blue Birks. I use them on cold mornings, I use them to transport my tired feet from climb to climb to give my piggies a break from hiking boots, and I use them even with dressy outfits. A good pair of Birkenstocks can look amazing with a sharp linen dress in the summer. Insanely comfortable and well-worth the expense.
  4. Tumi luggage. It’s expensive. But if you travel a lot, getting a sharp set of luggage is a good investment. I get compliments on my light gray leather bags with black piping every time I travel. It makes me happy just to touch the buttery leather.
  5. LL Bean Daypack. This thing has seen me everywhere, to so many countries and mountains and beaches and deserts that I’ve lost count. I never unpack it, I just leave it in my closet packed with my hiking boots and my Hydroflask, so when it’s time to go, it’s less I have to think of. It has pockets for my Burts Bees lip balm, my phone and my neck buff, and plenty of interior room for my travel journal, layers, snacks, hats, you name it. Unrivaled.
  6. Burts Bees lip balm. Yep. Again. I buy them in bulk. A tube of Burts Bees is never more than a few inches away from me at any time. There is one on my nightstand right now. I buy a big variety pack of Burts Bees tinted balm for myself every Christmas and put it in my stocking. I live in fear of running out of it.
  7. Frye boots. Love mountain towns and want to look like a local? Frye boots. Not to sound repetitive, I KNOW they’re expensive, but They. Will. Last. Forever. Hey, I buy shoes from Target too, but a good pair of Frye boots has no equal.
  8. Ray Bans. Mine are prescription. I have Clubmasters, Aviators, and Wayfarers, and they all have a different purpose- to cut down on glare on the water, to stay close on my head during heavy activity, or just to be comfortable and sophisticated when I’m driving.
  9. Boll and Branch flannel sheets. There’s no way to expound on the wonderfulness of these soft sheets that get softer with every wash. Always have a spare ready.
  10. Lonely Planet travel books. I have more than I care to admit. It’s an obsession. No better source of information to really get into a place you visit.

So those are just a few of my favorite things. But what I would really like is one perfect travel dress. I dress to travel, and that is a post for another time. I am currently in talks with a close friend who is a talented kick-ass sewer, and we are designing a few travel pieces for the sophisticated traveler. Well into the future, but I’ll let you know.

An Ode to Rubbermaid

All moms worry when they’re away from home. I’m worried about my dog’s limp, my father’s blood sugar, and my ever-lengthening To-Do list that will wallop me like an anvil the second I walk in the door.

I’m also worried about my trash cans. I’ve become quite intimate with my trashcans.

Not in the weird way. It’s not like I surprise them with Pocono weekends, give them neck rubs or bring them souvenir coffee mugs home from vacation.

It’s more like a form of appreciation. They hold all of my stinky, smelly crap without complaining. They’re sturdy and dependable, and easy to transport. I love my outdoor trashcans so much that I wonder why no one has ever produced them in prettier, brighter colors. The row of heavy-duty trashcans at Home Depot looks like a G.I. Joe aisle at the toy store. But imagine a splash of coral or garnet at your curb, or even some cobalt blue. Daffodil yellow, eggplant, seafoam green? Wouldn’t that be cheery? I think our trashcans deserve it. They deal with more shit than most people, and they do it with dignity and honor.

This is a recent obsession. While many people think that crow’s feet, balding, and eating surf-and-turf at 4:30 in the afternoon are all signs of aging, I maintain that becoming preoccupied with your trashcans is an unequivocal way to know that you have formally subscribed to AARP magazine.

You begin to worry about your trashcans. You worry that the lids are going to blow away, you worry that the grayish maleficent puddle of brackish water at the bottom will morph into a gelatin monster and kill you in your sleep, you worry that the alignment of the recyclable cans at the curb is Just. Not. Good. Enough. I have become that old lady in curlers and a bathrobe who watches out the window for the trashmen to pull away at 6:30 a.m. so that she can quick scurry out to put them back behind the garage.

No one in my house takes care of the trash like I do. Buffalo wing corpses are thrown carelessly into the cans, bottles are tossed in with non-recyclables, cardboard and paper tossed into the can and bottle receptacle, and maggots having a field day over all of it. You can find me many summer mornings picking through the filth with my bare hands, doing my utmost best to contain the mess and make the already unpleasant job of our amazing trash collectors a little less disgusting.

Trash cans reflect the standards of the people inside the house. Our lids are zip-tied to the can. Our house number is spray-painted neatly on the side. The trash weight ratio is always even on trash day, so that the sanitation workers do not have to lift anything heavier than necessary. Yard clippings, metals, paint cans, electronics, all disposed of correctly, quickly and efficiently.

Life is messy. Keep it off your curb.