Hey friends – it’s the tail end of the long Labor Day weekend in the U.S., maybe some of you are reading this at the beach? Or stuck in traffic trying to get home (if you’re driving, put the phone down!)
There was a time in my life when the expectation was that you absolutely had to get out of town in summer – to the beach or the mountains. If you were stuck in D.C. in August, especially Labor Day Weekend, well. You weren’t trying hard enough and needed to examine your life choices. We spent years joining friends and relatives at vacation homes on the Eastern Shore or the Outer Banks or Nantucket or Maine or the Adirondacks. And it was fun! But … I do not miss packing up four kids and a dog, and dealing with the travel and the traffic and the rest of that nonsense.
My side table looks something like this.
This year I am, once again, staying put. In more recent years in D.C., we stayed put as well, although as my kids got older they were often invited along on vacations by the generous parents of their friends. Honestly, though? D.C. in August was kind of nice in that it was more like when I was a kid. Everyone was gone, it was quiet(er) and traffic was much less intense.
Zozobra was Friday night, our giant Old Man Gloom who goes up in flames (fun!), here’s a link if anyone’s interested. I went last year with my daughter (and 60,000 other people) for the 100th anniversary, but this year I was content to hear the crowds cheering and Zozobra moaning from my home which is nearby. The crowds are huge and kind of wild now; I’m glad I got to take the girls when they were little and it was a lot more laid back. We are at Peak Tourist, the farmers market was jam-packed along with most of downtown. I’m not complaining – this place runs largely on tourist dollars – but I won’t be sorry to have less people everywhere as we head into fall. We will see; Santa Fe was declared the #1 U.S. city to visit by Travel + Leisure this year, so maybe there will be more folks than usual.
I’m reading a ton of books, fussing over my garden, trying some easy summer recipes like this one-pan dinner (including the dry pasta! It was delicious) to use up our bumper crop of cherry tomatoes, and otherwise taking it easy. I’ll be back with an actual perfume review next time.
What did you do this weekend? Any plans for the upcoming months? Oh, and here’s a final link, to Mr. Hulot’s holiday if you need a taste of the beach (the seaside in 1950s France, more specifically). I watch this sweet film at least once a year.
cover photo of Zozobra via the Santa Fe New Mexican; books via Pexels
It was over 90° here and a little humid. So I pretty much did nothing. A friend was in town and we went to Norms on La Cienega (he had a hankering for diner food and I’m always in the mood for pancakes) but other than running errands I sat in the air conditioning and watched crummy old movies. And I mean crummy: “Scream Pretty Peggy,” a TV movie with Ted Bessel as a discount Norman Bates and Bette Davis as a living Mrs. Bates. I think Bette took it because it was filmed a few blocks from her Colonial House apartment. And I read the Barbara Payton autobiography “I Am Not Ashamed” (which should be subtitled “But you will be for buying this”) chronicling he fall from B-movie vixen to arrests for public drunkenness and prostitution. Because when it gets hot in LA I get Klassée.