Mystic

On Friday evening, LB and I picked up a Zipcar and headed out of the city for a much-needed weekend away together. We had been discussing going away to celebrate our engagement, and also to celebrate LB's upcoming graduation from law school (he officially finished his papers and exams on Friday!), and knowing that the next few weeks are going to be very busy and chaotic, we booked a room at the Whaler's Inn in Mystic, CT for two nights. I can't even begin to explain how wonderful it was to be out of the city and to spend time together. We arrived late Friday night and relaxed into our comfortable, cozy New England-style room, slept in on Saturday, and braved the rain to browse the stores in downtown Mystic. We visited an old ice cream parlor that had a delicious soy latte for me and a heaping scoop of lemon chocolate chip ice cream for LB, and found a spice store that left us dreaming of all the things we could cook with bacon salt and pinot noir salt. 

For dinner Saturday night, we made reservations at a restaurant called Oyster Club. We arrived early and sat at the bar for fresh oysters and Bloody Mary's, both delicious, and enjoyed the rustic feel of the place. The outside of the restaurant is lined with adirondack chairs and oyster shells, and the inside of cozy, warm, and beautifully lit. After drinks and oysters, we were seated in the main dining room and our dinner was probably one of the best meals I've ever had. Oyster Club's menu changes daily, depending on what ingredients they get from local farms and fisherman. Everything is amazingly fresh and local, and the chefs butcher, cure, and make every component of every single dish on the menu. LB and I both loved our meals. I had Rhode Island-style clam chowder with bacon, potatoes, and parsley and a smoky steak with pickled onions and black beans. LB had the house-cured charcuterie plate with homemade breads, mustard, and pickles. He then had the burger, which he said, and I quote, was "the best burger ever." Imagine a delicious, juicy hamburger with bacon and a fried egg. It was that and so much more. Even though my steak was amazing, I was making eyes at his burger all night. 

Oyster Club was the perfect way to celebrate our engagement and to toast LB's accomplishment of finishing law school. And, even though I love New York, getting out of the city is so needed sometimes. When life gets busy and crazy, a weekend away is a perfect way to relax and recuperate, and our short trip to Mystic was a wonderful way to celebrate the exciting things in our lives and enjoy a weekend together.

Stormy Mystic seaport

Taking shelter from the rain with a delicious soy latte

Oysters and Bloody Mary's

A Quick Trip Home

This past weekend, I flew home to CA for a whirlwind weekend. One of my closest friends from elementary, middle, and high school got married on Saturday, and most of the weekend was spent celebrating and participating in various wedding festivities. It was so nice to be home and though I didn't have much time to relax, it was great to see wonderful friends and the weather was beautiful. Also, bright and early Saturday morning before I met up with the bride-to-be for hair and make up, my mom and I went to visit our wedding venue! We are booked for October, 2014 at the rustic and beautiful Outdoor Art Club in my hometown of Mill Valley. I couldn't be more excited. 

All in all, it was a quick but wonderful trip. Here are some photos from my visit and I can't wait to go back in July for more time at the beach, more time spent with friends and family, and a little bit of relaxation.

Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge

Stinson Beach

Stinson at Sunset

View from the Rehearsal Dinner

Bridesmaids

Friends since 2nd grade!

Reunited with friends from high school, loving the photo booth!

Boston

After the Sandy Hook shootings, I felt compelled to write something about it, but as I sat at my desk with tears in my eyes, I just couldn't figure out the right words to say. It seemed like there was nothing I could write that would help me make sense of what had happened. Similarly, as I sat at my desk yesterday while I was waiting for my client to arrive, I started to see news of what had happened at the Boston Marathon. I still feel in shock that things like this, senseless acts of violence, continue to happen all over the country and our world. It makes me sad, angry, disappointed, and confused. 

Every day, large and small acts of violence happen around the world, some which are reported on the news and in the papers, and others that are not.  Taken together, the amount of violence happening around the world at any given time is probably more than anyone of us would want to realize, more than we could actually imagine. Between shootings on the street, gunman on college campuses, bombings in Boston or in the Middle East, and domestic violence in the privacy of houses and apartments, violence is happening all the time and it occurs in many shapes and forms.

As an individual, a citizen of this country and of this world, and a social worker, I feel overwhelmed with how much we as people are hurting each other. As an individual, I worry about my loved ones when they aren't with me, and whether they could be caught in the line of fire somewhere when a person or group of people decide that the only way for them to express their anger is to place a bomb in a public place, or start shooting. As a citizen of this country and world, I worry that we are not on a path to peace, and that unfortunately, we are quite far from it, for the most powerful people in the world condone violence as a way to solve problems, and that idea trickles down to the rest of us and influences the way we think and act. And finally, as a social worker who works with children, I worry that one day, one of the kids I see will grow up with so much anger and hate that they will hurt another person, or even worse, hurt a lot of people. I worry that these children who I see every week for therapy not only are growing up in a world where countries are bombing each other, schools aren't safe, and now wonderful historical events like the Boston Marathon are under attack, but they have experienced violence in their own families at such a young age and have learned from their parents that punching one another, breaking some one's bones, and hitting is an appropriate way to express anger. 

I do have hope that one day things will get better, but events like what happened in yesterday in Boston are jarring and scary and I can't help but feel like there are more and more of these kinds of things happening every day. However, seeing how people come together shows me that there is still good in the world. I am sending my love, thoughts, and prayers to those who have suffered and those who are suffering in Boston, and around the country and the world. Hopefully, we will one day figure out how to reach individuals before they do such damage, and to become a people, a country, and a world that does not immediately gravitate towards violence.

Engaged!

Big news on the home front...LB and I are engaged! As of last Sunday afternoon, we are officially betrothed and I couldn't be happier. I've told the story a few times over, but for those of you who haven't heard it yet, here are all the details.

LB and I have been talking about marriage for a long time, pretty much since we moved into together almost three years ago. In the fall, the marriage talks became more serious and focused, and we started discussing getting engaged in the spring or early summer, around the time LB graduates from law school. As spring approached, I knew it was coming soon, and though I had accidentally foiled a few of his proposal plans, I wasn't quite sure when he was going to propose. We had a ring (more details on that later), so it seemed like things were falling into place.

LB's parents came to visit us a little over a month ago, and LB told me that he wanted to speak with his parents in private. As his parents were making their way into the city, I scurried out of the apartment and went to get a manicure so they could have some time alone. As I was sitting in the nail salon and was thinking about the fact that my boyfriend was sitting in our apartment telling his parents his plan to propose to me, I realized that I felt left out. A few days later, I told LB that I wasn't feeling this whole surprise proposal thing, and surprisingly, he was feeling the same way. We agreed that it didn't feel very us to not be talking about this, we felt like we wanted to plan this big moment together, for each other. 

As we started talking about what we wanted our engagement day to look like, the plan that LB had already come up with was actually exactly what I had been thinking as well. LB had been planning to propose with my mom in town (she already knew the plan!), so we took his original plan and created a day that was meaningful to us.

Here's what we did:

LB and I hired a car to take us to three different places in the city that were meaningful to us and to our relationship. Our first stop was at the school in Brooklyn where we worked together five years ago, and the second stop was at LB's old apartment building in Brooklyn. At both of our stops in Brooklyn, we wrote little notes to each other. LB's note to me at our second stop was amazing. He found our old gchat conversations from before we started dating and read aloud some of our sweetest pre-relationship chats. They were so cute. LB found the conversation where we were discussing our first date where he told me "prepare to be charmed." In that same gchat conversation, LB had told me to meet him at a specific street corner on the Upper West Side for our first date, but wouldn't tell me what we were going to do.

The last stop was where LB told me to meet him for our first date, at the corner of West 79th Street and Riverside Drive. LB got down on one knee, said some wonderful things that I can't remember while I cried hysterically, and I said yes! We celebrated that evening with champagne at our apartment, dinner at Babbo with family, and drinks at a Belgium beer bar in the West Village with our close friends. It was an absolutely perfect day, and even though I knew exactly how the day was going to go, the surprise emotional element was still there.

Lastly, the ring...In January, LB brought home his great-grandmother's engagement ring. He told me that we could either keep it or sell it to put money towards a new ring for me. From the moment I saw the ring, I knew I wanted to keep it. And, it was exactly my ring size.

We are pretty excited to start planning our wedding, though we both want to enjoy this special time and not rush ourselves. So after booking the venue, which we hope to do in the next few months, we hope to sit back and relax and enjoy being engaged!

The school where we met in Brooklyn.

The street corner that will now be known as where we got engaged.

Celebrating with beers!

Easy Weeknight Meal: Pasta with Slow-Cooked Portobello Mushrooms

Last night, after a long day at work, I settled in for a quiet night at home, watched my Bravo trashy television shows and cooked one of my favorite pasta dishes. I've been craving some pasta lately and wanting to make my dinner slightly on the healthier side, so I decided to make a meatless meal and also use whole wheat pasta.

My mom sent me this recipe a few years ago, and it took me a long time to actually make it because I thought it looked difficult. In actuality, this recipe is really easy, simple, and delicious, and it doesn't require a lot of ingredients. My mom found it in the New York Times, and I've slightly adapted it to make it my own.

Pasta with Slow-Cooked Portobello Mushrooms

Adapted from the New York Times (Recipe)

8-10 ounces mushrooms (I used a combination of portobello and bella mushrooms)

3 cloves garlic, minced

2-3 sprigs of fresh thyme

Approximately 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes

A little bit of red wine

Whole wheat penne pasta

Rinse mushrooms to remove grit and slice into small chunks. Combine in a medium skillet with about half of the olive oil and 1-2 of the garlic cloves, and salt and pepper. Mushrooms absorb a lot of oil, so you may need to add more oil to the pan every few minutes (about 1/2 cup oil total). Cook over a low heat so that mixture bubbles, but the mushrooms do not brown. Continue to cook, stirring infrequently, for 30-40 minutes, until the mushrooms have shrunken in size. 

Begin boiling the water for the pasta.

Add the remaining garlic to the pan, as well as the tomatoes, red wine, and thyme. Add more salt and pepper and stir together. Raise the heat to medium and cook until the pasta is done.

When the pasta is done, drain it and toss it in with the sauce. Enjoy!

Delicious sauce!

 

 

Writers Block

I have been trying to write a new blog post for weeks now, and it just hasn't happened. I have at least three different posts half written, but I kept finding something wrong with each and every one of them, and decided to move on. I'm not sure what it is...maybe it's the spring air that has transformed New York City, or maybe it's that life has just been busy lately. I feel like I've been saying that a lot over the past few months, but it's true. I expected things to calm down after February, but I was wrong. It's now April 1st, and I still feel like I'm still running around crazy! Don't get me wrong, all the things that have been going on are good, but man, it's hard to believe that it's April. Time has flown by. Work has been busy and my caseload is pretty much full. I've been reconnecting with friends and making plans, trying out some new restaurants and exploring new parts of the city. LB and I were in the Boston area last weekend visiting his family for Passover, and on Thursday, my mom arrives for a wonderful 10 day visit. Then, after she leaves, LB starts his last final exams of law school, I fly to California for a friend's wedding, LB graduates from law school, we go to two weddings in Massachusetts, LB studies for and takes the bar exam, and then it's September. Seriously...life is flying by.

My goal for this week, before my mom arrives, is to take some time to live in the present and appreciate my life at this moment in time. I feel like I've been spending too much time thinking about what's next and our plans next month, and while that's all wonderful and fun, for my own sanity, I need to calm my life down just for a moment and appreciate.

Tonight, while LB is at class until 10:00 PM, I plan to watch my trashy television, cook a delicious dinner, and sit on the couch. Nothing more, nothing less. I'm pretty excited about it. Maybe I'll even write another blog post, who knows! 

For now, I'm going to end my post with a note about today's weather. It's 61 degrees here in the city. The sun is shining, I'm wearing flats with no socks and my spring jacket. It's amazing how great sunshine feels after months of winter. Here's to a beautiful day in the city!

Thank You

I got to work this morning and after settling in, I started my usual routine of checking the blogs and websites I like to read while I drink my coffee. I logged onto Blogger and I was shocked to see that my little blog has reached 5000 page views! I'm not quite sure how that happened, but thank you to everyone who has read my blog once or many times. It means a lot to me.

I started this blog back in November of 2011. I was in strange place at that time where I wasn't feeling connected to a lot of things in my life, particularly graduate school and my budding career as a social worker. I had recently discovered several blogs that I really enjoyed reading, and I wondered if I had the courage and motivation to start one on my own. It seemed a bit daunting and scary, but I pushed myself to do it and I'm so glad that I did. Within a few months of starting the blog, I was feeling better and I credit writing as one of the things that helped many things in my life start to fall into place. This blog has become something for me, a place where I can write about the things I love and a forum for channeling my sometimes hidden creative energy. It's been a truly wonderful part of my life. So, thank you to everyone for reading my posts and for your thoughtful comments and blog love. I'm not sure how "Everyone Loves a Social Worker" will evolve over time, but I'm looking forward to many more recipes, travels, work stories, and adventures that I can write about and share.