are you there, bl*g? it's me, kate

Hi there. Long time no see. A year! It’s been a year to the day since the last time I posted here. A long and crazy-ass year.

Let me start off by saying that I’ve missed you terribly. I’ve missed cooking gruel for dinner and telling you about it. I’ve missed complaining about the weather and posting far too many photos of my dog. I’ve missed your comments and friendship and the little community we were making together in this quiet corner of the internet. I’ve missed writing—you gave me a reason to, and I haven’t much for the last 18 months. They’ve been tough ones. Real bitches, in fact (I apologize to all my bitches for taking your name in vain). And, in many ways, quite wonderful, too.

This bl*g was ostensibly about food, but it was also about my little dog and the man I was married to and the life we were making together in a little city perched on the edge of an ancient glacial lake surrounded by mountains in northeast Vermont. 

A life that felt as sure and inevitable as that lake. I slept on its shore, swam and was tossed and floated in its waters. For more than ten years that lake was my home.

If I were going to work this life/lake metaphor to the bone, and apparently I am, I’d make reference now to toxic sludge, or cyanobacteria, or whatever else irrevocably damages a lake. But instead I’ll tell you the good news: Chester is lying next to me on the couch as I write this, and he has not gotten one lick less handsome since you saw him last. We’re in front of the fireplace in my new apartment in…Philadelphia (I know: weird, right?). 

This is the view from my tiny back deck.

I’ve learned some things in the past 18 months that I wouldn’t have chosen to about impermanence and resilience, but I’m glad to know them. I’ve learned some things about friendship and family and community—lifesaving things—that I’m so, so grateful for. I wonder sometimes why we human beings are so rotten to each other. And I marvel at how we love and care for each other. How lucky we are that we all exist.

I don’t know if you’re still there, but I want you to know, one year after my last post, how glad I am that you exist. I have no idea what the future holds (it’s hilarious to me that I ever thought I did!), but I hope it includes more writing and cooking and reading, things I haven’t done enough of in the past 18 months. I hope it includes sharing those things with you, either here at GFD or in a new corner of the internet. Either way, I’ll keep you posted.

Love you, bitches.