Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay

The full version [by Jessica]:

Do you remember how 2020 started? It seems like a lifetime ago that things were the “old normal” and not the “new normal.” We used to ride crowded trains and eat inside restaurants without thinking twice! These days, time continues to blur days and months together…

Team Karlesky started the year with a quiet New Year’s Eve at home, not envious of the poor souls out at Times Square in the cold, misting rain. After a very busy 2019, we tried to promise ourselves that we would do nothing in January and take a rest. That really didn’t go so well, and for that, I’m truly thankful, because we had 9½ months of doing mostly nothing starting in March! 

If you remember, 2019 was the year Edenworks (now Upward Farms) finally got the funding to build a bigger farm and remain a viable company. That milestone was properly celebrated with the most epic laser tag experience in early January of this year (spouses/partners were invited, so I got to join in!) Michael continues his work there, and has stayed very busy this year preparing for the next big milestones and hiring more people to his team. Through the pandemic, the team has primarily been working from home, and the company was deemed essential business (agriculture/grocery), so they were able to keep things moving as much as possible on construction projects. 

We hosted Allison and Nathan White for what we dubbed, “Hot Chocolate and Choo Choos.” One of our mutual favorite hot chocolate spots, City Bakery, had closed its doors, so we were on the hunt to find new favorites. We found a delightful lavender hot chocolate at Maman and a thick and rich hot chocolate at Dominique Ansel Bakery. In between marshmallow-topped cups, we visited the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) Holiday Train Show. If you’ve never heard of it, it is a fantastic event! They recreate New York landmarks in miniature, using only natural materials (sticks, leaves, mushrooms, nuts, etc) and have electric trains running around the buildings and over bridges. The fine details and overall experience are really quite magical.

Keeping with magical experiences, we also got to play on an interactive art display of of light-up teeter-totters near Times Square that would play music as they moved up and down. In honor of Allison’s deep abiding love of Funfetti™, I made her a legendary Funfetti Millionaire’s Cake, with Funfetti cheesecake, cake, and mousse. So many good things!

We officially became members of our church, Reconcile Brooklyn. It’s a small, scrappy church full of diverse people who consistently challenge and inspire us to be better at loving our community. 

Over a long weekend we visited Rhode Island to see Priscilla, Marc, and Ruthie Liebenthal. I have secured a lifelong friendship with Priscilla, partially due to our shared history and deep, abiding love for each other, but also because she has become addicted to my homemade coconut almond joy ice-cream. I stock up her freezer whenever possible, and she then savors it at the slowest rate possible to make it last until the next visit. On this trip, we visited the Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut on a very cold day and enjoyed the vocal stylings of a sea shanty enthusiast while stomping our feet in time to the music. Michael taught four-year-old Ruthie to reply to someone saying, “Oopsie Daisy!” with a “Who’s Daisy?”. And, it was adorable.

Still in January, we flew to Houston to attend the wedding of friends, Jenny and Liffy Varghese. Like most trips to Houston, this one included squeezing in as many visits with friends and loved ones as possible, exploring our old haunts, and making the rounds with my dental care professionals. We kicked off the weekend with donuts and coffee at Morningstar with Whitney & Andy Reed and their three kiddos. We got to see Casey, Andrew, and Sadie Douglas for lunch at Bellagreen, spent the hour in the car to the wedding venue with Justin and Juliana Piche, and got after-party drinks at the best Tiki Bar in Houston, Lei Low, after the wedding with Juliana and Greg Leach (where we were definitely the best dressed in our wedding clothes at the dive bar). We all got carded by the bouncer, Michael got hit on despite mentioning his wife, and there was a woman in a full pilgrim costume! The next day, my mom, Claudia Schulte, made the drive over from San Antonio to have brunch with us, Pam & Doug Dunlap, and Greg Leach at Dish Society. As Pam & Doug have since moved, it was our last time visiting what had become our second home/home-away-from-home in Houston. In the evening, we met up with Melissa Posada and Jason Childers at Boomtown’s downtown location (rest in peace). We happened to notice the bouncer from Lei Low across the room! I guess one doesn’t easily forget a 6’5” man in a three piece suit walking into a tiki bar, because he remembered us too. What a small world! Before a dentist appointment and flying out on Monday afternoon, I grabbed coffee with Melissa at Blacksmith, and wouldn’t you know, THE BOUNCER WAS THERE TOO! At this point, it had become ridiculous, and we had to actually exchange names and laugh about it. I decided that if Russel was at the airport when we left, we were going to have serious questions.

I have to say, writing about that level of activity has me feeling exhausted! All those things, and we’re barely to February!

In February, Michael got us tickets for a tour of the Woolworth Building. It was once the tallest building in NYC, and it’s normally private—you can’t enter unless you have a real reason to go in. The tour was led by the great-granddaughter of the architect, and the interior space is just gorgeous. It’s full of beautiful mosaics, marble, and wood work.

We enjoyed a visit from the legendary Molly MacDonald and her son, Drake, on February 9. We dragged them all the way out to Brooklyn for amazing views from DUMBO before walking the Brooklyn Bridge, visiting Barclay’s Center for Drake, the NBA fan, and walking the High Line and visiting Chelsea Market. We had dinner at the Burger Joint (if you know, you know), and got them home to their hotel. Michael charmed them with NYC history and factoids, and we had an all-around lovely time.

Our last hurrah before Covid was our trip to Phoenix to see Michael’s sister, Kendall, and her partner, Jerry, from February 28 to March 3. Kendall and Jerry are lovely hosts, and we enjoyed all our adventures and their generous hospitality. We hiked up to the Hole in the Rock, ate at a restaurant named The Macintosh (a family name of significance), and then enjoyed a beautiful sunset over the valley from the top of South Mountain. Kendall took us to Saguaro Lake for a boat cruise that was beautiful. We spotted some long horned sheep and an adolescent bald eagle! Michael and I only had enough time to hike halfway up Camelback mountain, before we had to depart for the rest of the day’s activities. We had lunch at an old fashioned diner called MacAlpine’s Diner and Soda Fountain, where we all had variations of flavored fizzy water with or without ice cream. As has become a bit of a tradition with Kendall, we toured a Frank Lloyd Wright house, Taliesin West (his personal home and school). 

Back home in March, I redecorated our bedroom. This is not that interesting to the average reader, I expect. I mention it because over the course of the weeks spent on it, I managed to buy the same pillow sham (I mean the exact same physical specimen) thrice because of very frustrating return and price adjustment policies at West Elm. Word to the wise, you can’t return individual items from a bundle, and you can’t get a price adjustment, you have to return and repurchase. This is extra burdensome, when the returning involves schlepping items all over the great city of New York.

Did you brace for it? I mentioned March… you know what that means—the pandemic struck hard here in NYC. 

As case counts started rising in New York City, we started changing plans. Priscilla and Ruthie Liebenthal cancelled their plans to come for a weekend visit, Michael started working from home, and my orthodontist’s office closed until further notice. We already had a rhythm of having groceries delivered, but as demand surged, it became a stressful task to find and secure a delivery slot every two weeks. Our church quickly transitioned to do Sunday services on YouTube and life groups on Zoom. As there were so many unknowns about how the virus spread in those days, we weren’t even comfortable going outside for exercise, since it’s impossible to not pass people on the sidewalk at close range. We started wheeling our kitchen island out of the way to make room for yoga mats, and we have been doing YouTube workouts together. Michael would much rather bike for exercise, so the the indoor workouts are only achieved with pure will and determination. The endless positivity of the online instructors chafes at his nerves as they cheerfully announce burpees or mountain climbers. He may start his own “honest workouts” YouTube channel with appropriate amounts of cussing, grunting, disdain, and dread. As hard as it was to be in the epicenter, we have been really fortunate in our circumstances, and we don’t take that lightly.

We did a lot more volunteering this year in the face of so much hardship for so many. I started volunteering with an organization called Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly. Our friend, Jérôme Michaux, leads the NYC chapter. Before the pandemic, they were coordinating home visits by volunteers to isolated elders in the community. I joined up in March to help as they pivoted to making friendly phone calls to keep things socially distanced and safe. I have been talking to two new friends, Anthony (67) and Elsie (93) every week since then. Once a month, the organization drops off gift bags, so I have been able to meet Anthony and Elsie with masks and social distance. I also helped a bit with a Mutual Aid group called Bed-Stuy Strong that takes monetary donations and neighbors buys groceries for neighbors in need. I connected our church members with them as well as the volunteer Covid Relief Response Coordinator. Michael and I both did phone banking to get New Yorkers to respond to the 2020 census. Michael put up flyers in our neighborhood, and some of them are still taped to lampposts 3 months later. He is a true artist with packing tape on galvanized steel. We both also did phone banking to help with voter registration around the country ahead of the November 3rd election. 

There were some amusing things that the stay at home orders and general respect for Covid brought about. I got on board the sourdough train pretty early, and made so many sourdough things – bread, pancakes, cornbread, pizza dough, biscuits, cake, english muffins, cinnamon rolls, etc. I named my starter “Fran,” short for San Francisco. She is continuing to thrive in her mason jar abode. The worst part of this new hobby was worrying about running out of flour during the Great Flour Shortage of 2020, as so many decided to try baking while at home. Speaking of hairy situations, Michael decided to trust his mop of hair to me and a YouTube tutorial. It’s not a fast process, but he’s been a repeat customer. Check out my Yelp reviews. Since we weren’t going out for much of anything, buying greeting cards was paused. I used a watercolor set from Mom and Dad Karlesky to paint many original greeting cards. 

Our first outing after Covid hit was actually a Pray March Act protest after the murder of George Floyd. We met several other members of our church and joined with thousands of other members of Brooklyn churches to pray and march to affirm the need for systemic change to see racial justice achieved. We’ve been so grateful for how our church responded to the racial tensions and awakening of the summer. This service brought Michael and me to tears. There has just been such a spirit of confession, truth, honesty, love-centered action, absent of partisan agenda. We found that many in our life group were in a similar place, and we decided to read and discuss the book The Color of Compromise: The Truth of the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby together. 

We were able to get out during the summer for a couple socially distanced outings with Brooklyn friends. Avoiding public transit as much as possible, we walked to Evil Twin Brewery to see David and Andrea Jouppi and pupper, Arthur. We spaced out blankets in the park and were able to enjoy some 3-D human interaction. We also met up with Amory and Woody Davis for frozen treats and got caught in a torrential downpour in a park—a prime example of what it is to make a memory. 

Over the summer my parents went through the ringer on health issues. My dad had his gall bladder removed, and that surgery was timed so that he would be recovered in time to take care of my mom after a hip replacement. Covid cases were rising in Texas, and my mom’s surgery was completed just hours before the governor paused all elective surgeries. Recoveries were going decently well, until my dad suffered a scary bike crash in which his helmet saved his life. Thankfully, the damage was limited to a couple broken ribs and injured shoulder that didn’t require surgery. All of the sudden, my mom switched from patient to caretaker, and they were in rough shape for several weeks. With Covid, it didn’t make sense for us to travel to try to care for them, as it would have increased everyone’s exposure risk. Our life group in Brooklyn sent them sweet notes and GrubHub gift cards, and I was deeply touched. 

August was a month of joys, to be fair. Michael organized a Zoom birthday party for me after an excursion to a fantastic bakery, L’Imprimerie, and it was sweet to hear affirmations, stories, and memories from people across the nation. I made myself amazing vanilla, pistachio, strawberry cupcakes. We introduced friends of ours, Jeff and Ellice, over text message, thinking they might hit it off romantically. It turns out that we were correct, and having a front row seat to seeing their love story unfold was one of the brightest, most joyous parts of such a dark year. Speaking of love, we celebrated four years of marriage with an outing to some of our favorite spots in the city: Devocion Coffee, Domino Park, and Katz’s Deli. 

Priscilla Liebenthal drove down from Rhode Island to pick us up for a weekend visit. Previous plans to see each other were cancelled due to ever-changing state rules on travel and quarantining requirements. In Rhode Island, we hung out at the beach and went clamming. Four-year old Ruthie enjoyed collecting stones from the shore line and cleaning them with buckets of ocean water. The clams we dug out of the sand went into a seafood chowder alongside a proper surf and turf dinner. Ruthie and I baked some muffins together with zucchini from their garden. There was a lot of mixing and even more uncontrollable giggling involved—a really special memory. We ventured out into Mystic, Connecticut for some donuts at Young Buns and had a picnic in the park of pizza and garlic knots. We enjoyed a visit to the Savoy bookshop and savored coffee, new books, and the adorable fairy doors installed around the shop in its baseboards. Priscilla even drove us home to Brooklyn to keep us safely off of public transit. It was a wonderful gift to be able to spend time together.

September brought some great weather, fun outings, and projects. We celebrated my father’s long-awaited retirement. I edited together video and photo submissions from many loved ones as a celebratory gift. He was deeply touched by everyone’s words. Mid-month, Michael got us tickets to enjoy a date at the The Greens on the Rooftop of Pier 17. We had a personal, socially distanced lawn to enjoy the outdoors, views of the Brooklyn Bridge, and tasty cocktails. Our church needed life group leaders for the fall, so Michael and I volunteered to lead a group with our friend, Ellice. There were some growing pains in figuring out how to make it work for all of us, but our group members and the study on Esther through the lens of activism was really powerful and beautiful. We closed out the month with a day trip to the Hudson River Valley with Jenny and Liffy Varghese to go apple picking. Fresh cider and (more importantly) cider donuts made our mid-western hearts skippety-skip, and we loved the quality time with our fellow NY-TX love match now living on Long Island.

We took an actual vacation in October! We now distinguish between “trips” and “vacations.” Trips are visiting family or going somewhere to attend an event, etc. Trips are lovely, and we love seeing people we care about. No shade is being thrown on all the trips we’ve taken over the years! Vacations are pure relaxation and fun; and we were needing that in our lives. We realized that the last time we had a vacation was our mini-honeymoon in 2016! Our original plan was to go to Vermont for the fall colors, but after checking Covid restrictions and booking an amazing Airbnb, those restrictions changed to a level that we couldn’t comply with. We had to cancel the magical Vermont vacay and regroup. I had a hard time with it, since the year was so full of disappointments and nothing to look forward to. I had really gotten my hopes up for Vermont trip. I got my tears out, and we replanned a new trip, strategically keeping the first half in New York State, as travel restrictions continued to change, and I couldn’t handle being disappointed again. We rented a car at JFK airport and spent the afternoon with our wheels at the Far Rockaways walking along the oceanfront and eating on a patio on the water. We headed up the Taconic State Parkway the next day, enjoying the fall colors along the way, to our last minute AirBnb near Poughkeepsie in the Hudson River Valley. It was a lovely house that was rebuilt from an 1890s farmhouse. Some of the best moments were sipping hot coffee on the porch swing together, under blankets in the morning chill, with noisy squirrels and raucous turkeys as entertainment. 

While up the Hudson, we visited the New Croton Dam (new as of 1906). We enjoyed the view from the park below and then had to consult Trip Advisor to figure out how to get up to the bridge that runs across the dam. Turns out, everyone just parks with various levels of expertise along a dead-end road (on a hill and a curve) and backs their vehicles all the way out back down to the main road. The road probably hasn’t been maintained since the bridge was closed to cars following 9/11. The views were gorge-ous, and the engineering impressive.

We also got tickets to an event called, “The Great Jack-o-Lantern Blaze.” We had learned of it last year but didn’t get tickets in time. Imagine walking though a park with lighted displays made entirely out of jack-o-lanterns. That’s what this was. We enjoyed the limited capacity due to Covid precautions, as it meant it was way less crowded than normal.

There is a bridge that runs across the Hudson in Poughkeepsie. Well, actually there are two bridges. One was once a railway bridge and is now a pedestrian park. At 212 feet above the river, it is very high, very windy, and has great views. We walked across it and then walked back across an automobile bridge with a musical surprise. Midway across the bridge, there was an interactive station with buttons and speakers that played music as the traffic went cruising by. The music was created using only sounds sampled by the artist hitting the bridge with different things, and it was actual music!! What a delightful find!

After frolicking around the Hudson River Valley for a couple days, we packed up and headed to our second destination: Portland, Maine. On the way, we took a very scenic route and darted up into a gorgeous little baby corner of Vermont. She was serving me mountains and vibrant colors and we had a wonderful fall majesty moment. Shhhhh… we didn’t meet the quarantine requirements, but since we didn’t get out of the car, I don’t think it counts. (We listened to JVN’s audiobook in the car… can you tell?)

On our way back down to Connecticut, through the Berkshires, Michael got a severe weather alert on his phone, which seemed strange, since we had only seen light rain and blue sky. Upon further investigation, Michael realized there was a band of intense storms with 60mph winds careening toward us, and there was no way to avoid its path. We calculated that we had just enough time to get to the next town and find shelter to wait it out, since being on a densely wooded road with tornado-like winds wasn’t our idea of a good time. We got to a gas station just in time to watch the storm roll in. Trash cans were flying, the intersection lost power, and poor pedestrians and motorists were caught completely by surprise. After it passed and we got back on our way, we drove past several large trees that snapped and been toppled by the wind. It’s a surreal feeling realizing you could have been in dangerous circumstances had your husband not invested in a good weather app. Traffic was impossible twice—once because the road was blocked by a tree, and they were clearing it, and again because power lines were down and the road was completely blocked. In a scene straight from 1997, we actually had to go into a hotel and ask for directions, since all traffic was being turned around, and neither of us was getting cell reception (we assume the cell towers were also damaged by the storm). Never a dull moment!

In Maine, we hit up the flagship L.L. Bean store and the Portland Headlight Lighthouse. The lighthouse was commissioned by George Washington and has been active since the 1700s! We also had booked a whale watching tour, and it was the biggest disappointment of the trip. Michael and I are both prone to seasickness, so we went in prepared with Dramamine and pressure point wrist bands, but it was futile. It was very windy and thus, very choppy. The boat was tossed side to side so much that we got close to tossing our cookies. It was extremely cold in the biting wind, but we didn’t want to be on the lower deck inside the cabin due to Covid concerns, so we stayed up on the top deck. We spent most of the three hour tour with our eyes closed, trying to stay on top of the motion sickness. Oh, and we saw zero whales. We did see some seals hanging out on a rock, but they were not worth the green (of the money or the sickness). We redeemed the adventure by walking around the cute town of Boothbay Harbor to regain our land legs and stomachs and then had beers and lobster rolls as we watched the sun set over the harbor. We rounded out the trip with sampling multiple donut shops and eating several whoopie pies, as they are allegedly from that area.

On our way home, we stopped off in Boston for lunch and a quick tour of the Boston Common and Public Garden. To be honest, this detour was inspired by the Veggie Tales Silly Songs with Larry ditty, “The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything”—specifically the refrain, “And I’ve never been to Boston in the fall…” I had never been to Boston and the chance to go in the fall was irresistible. We wished we had time for the Freedom Trail walking tour and to explore more, but we did achieve my goal of seeing the “Make Way for Ducklings” statue from the famous Robert McCloskey book. From there, we made one more stop in Mystic, Connecticut to have dinner with the always delightful Priscilla, Marc, and Ruthie Liebenthal. We enjoyed some outdoor dining seafood and then ice cream cones in the cold. 

In November, we had a visit from Jeff Boone. He moved to NYC to be with his beloved (remember when we introduced him to Ellice in August?!). He has his things here and a bed to use here at our place when he is confirmed Covid-free. 

The holiday season kicked off with the Christmas Tree going up before Thanksgiving. I don’t want to hear any complaints. It was 2020, and rules about restricting cheer are not welcome. We decided to attend the Holiday Train Show at NYBG before Thanksgiving to avoid additional risk that we expected from a Covid spike from holiday travel. We went on a weekday, and it was luxuriously empty due to reduced capacity and time of day. We got to enjoy it in a totally different way from the crush of people at the 2019 show. Our next tour was of the Upward Farms new farm! Construction had made considerable progress, and those not directly involved in construction received a guided tour of everything happening. It’s amazing to see! I made macarons with several of the containers of spare buttercream that I had in the freezer, and it was joyous to share goodies with Michael’s coworkers again. 

Thanksgiving for us is normally a family affair with the Jordan clan (my mom’s family) in Michigan. It’s 20+ people in a house with lots of love and chaos. We decided not to attend for our safety and the safety of my family. For the first time ever, we cooked a turkey and all the fixings. It was a three day cooking adventure that turned out deliciously. Jeff was working in El Paso/Juarez that week, so Ellice, being in our bubble, joined us for the meal. We had a Zoom call with the extended family in the morning, and then a Zoom call with folks from our life group after dinner. 

We closed out the year just the two of us. We bought some new plants, and we are keeping them alive. One is a red prayer plant that we are just enchanted with. The leaves move dramatically to point up at night like praying hands and drop back down in the morning. We had a quiet Christmas as we normally would, with a Zoom call with the Schultes and a phone call to the Karleskys. Michael’s work has gotten increasingly busy as demands to get the new farm up and running press in. The company has doubled in size, but the workload has become a struggle to keep up with. I am keeping our lives running smoothly, and for the third year running, have had a lingering cold (Covid-negative) as the new year rings in.

We hope that love and reconciliation characterize our hearts, and that justice and democracy characterize our country in the year to come, with a heavy dose of health and vaccines to go around for all.

Previous Years’ Entries:

2016: https://karlesky.net/2016wasinsane

2017: https://karlesky.net/whatayear2017

2018: Doesn’t exist, may not ever

2019: https://karlesky.net/heywelivehere2019

2020: https://karlesky.net/blursday2020