My Wife: A Photo Essay

This is a guest post by Dear Husband, in honor of our 18th wedding anniversary, of some of his favorite pictures and facial expressions. 

Baaaa-by!

(Not ours, a colleague's.)

Ready to eat a dinner of leftovers from the Hayhurst family picnic

while spending the night at a tiny cabin.

Pre-s'mores grin.

(What could she be so happy about?)

Mmmm, hot tea with breakfast at the diner.

Napping in the car on the way home after church; note the partially open mouth.

Coda: DH asked to snap a picture of me enjoying dessert after our anniversary dinner, but then he didn't tell me he had taken the photo, so I held the pose until I finally opened my eyes and laughed because he was still watching me with his phone camera up.

Everything's a metaphor, notes from the Love Shack

While crashing through the underbrush that had overgrown what we finally determined wasn't actually the "nature trail" (there was too much nature), Dear Husband regaled me with a metaphorical reading of our predicament as it related to our marriage (setting out with good intentions, unexpected obstacles, etc.). Our path in life has been no better signposted, as we work together to try to figure out the best way forward. 

Later we made s'mores, and I reflected upon how making and tending a fire is a lot like a long-term relationship with its ebbs and flows--whoops, wrong metaphor. At any rate, it takes a great deal of effort and some resourcefulness early on to get damp wood to light. Eventually you notice healthy flames licking across the logs, but after awhile, the fire settles down again and has to be coaxed into flame again.

We humans sometimes do ridiculous things, like build a campfire in the sweltering August heat, or buy a big expensive white dress to wear for one day in your life. In both cases, we do them to say we've done that thing, and/or because they carry other meanings (nostalgia, tradition, comfort, conformity, ...).

DH and I rented a tiny cabin at a wooded campsite for one night to celebrate with one set of rituals the 18th anniversary of another. This one was decidedly smokier but no less satisfying for having been spent at a trailer with the tiniest possible bathroom. 

We ate leftovers from the family picnic, took that ill-fated "hike," and tended a fire for several hours.

Even when I spread out the coals at the end of the night, in preparation for dousing them before bed, it was surprising how much heat they gave off.

Okay, if not the smallest bathroom, than the worst designed. You had stand between the wall and the toilet to close the door. It should have had a sliding door, or an accordion-folding door, or a door that opened into the main room instead of into the bathroom. As you can see, we survived. But it kinda puts a cramp in your glamping style if you get wedged in the shower. I'm just saying.

A perfect summer day

Dear Husband plays with an Argentinian folk-jazz fusion band called Tierradentro, which was invited to the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts. This is a large street fair of handcrafts plus performances around Penn State held every July. Luckily, I finished 2 weeks of hospital service the day before the gig, so after a quick dinner, we packed up the car and headed east. Actually, I had to do some work on the computer while he drove, but then I could relax until we got to the hotel. I'll spare you the ordeal of the room keys, the dead-fish smell coming from the trash can in the hallway, and the bathroom ceiling that dripped condensation.

"You are loved. You are welcome here."

Mural on the side of the United Methodist Church where we parked.

In the morning we went to the home of a dear friend who used to pastor a church we attended. He and his wife fixed us a delicious breakfast to enjoy while we caught up with each other. Then it was off to walk the streets, ogle the art, and be hot in a way that I enjoyed, because I missed a week of vacation in June and felt like I had thus far spent the whole summer in office buildings. Yuck.

Left: colorful fabric banners hang above the streets.

Right and below: sidewalk chalk drawings are one of the festival's specialties.

So much art! Garden sculptures. Animals made of driftwood. Paintings. Glass on metal "sketches." Photographs. A metal armadillo. Handbags made out of old record album covers. Woven wool blankets.

Lunch was a delightful affair of food truck fare eaten at a shared picnic table under the shade of mature trees while a toddler blew bubbles all around us. Summer magic. We had ice cream from the Berkey Creamery for dessert, natch.

Back at home base, I played Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails while DH prepped the set list with the band. Then it was off to campus to listen to them play. We finished with dinner at a brewery before everyone scattered. It was a perfect summer day.

Gastronomical Adventures

At the start of the academic year, I wanted to collect the recipes I was trying and revisiting. This week was unusual, because I was rounding in the hospital and also Dear Husband's parents came to visit for the Fourth of July holiday, so I was preparing more food than usual. One night my FIL helped me slice a LOT of squash and zucchini for a gratin dish that looks beautiful in the photos, although I would add more cheese and salt if I make this again. Recipe in the link; I skipped the white wine altogether, and the dish was moist enough. The trick to getting it in the dish is to make a "rose" or spiral until you can't hold it anymore, then put in the dish and wrap, wrap, wrap the slices until you're squeezing them against the sides of the dish. The trick to getting it out of the dish is a knife to cut the sliced veggies into wedges, or just a big spoon to scoop an appropriate amount. Here is the uncooked dish with the leftover leek tops (I used the stalks to line the bottom of the dish), and then the lower shot is of the finished meal with a Brot Box roll and a lemon-marinated London broil.

Another night we had one of our staple meals, what we call "curry packets." It's brown rice with one or two of those microwavable packets of Indian dishes like masala or daal or saag, a veg like frozen peas--or, in this case, fresh green beans from one of DH's congregants--and some garlic naan that Aldi sells. Sometimes I'll even get us some mango lassi to go with it (it's DH's favorite part of eating at an Indian restaurant).

For lunches, I had made this recipe for a spinach and feta quiche with a sweet potato crust at this time last year and finally tracked down the instructions. It is vegetarian and gluten free. Serving suggestion: with a "fizzy water," fruit salad from your MIL, a 1/4 of the quiche, and carrot rounds, eaten at your computer while answering patient messages.

Next, with the leftover ingredients from the gratin and the quiche, I made sweet potato leek soup, which I don't seem to have photographed. I added too much red pepper flakes, and the texture was kind of grainy because I had to use a traditional blender instead of an immersion blender, but really the taste was all right.

Then, to use up the rest of the squash and zucchini, I decided to master cooking and folding an omelet for breakfast. Here are three attempts on different days; I think I am scared of over-cooking the egg and so do not let it set or brown enough to be successful flipping and folding it. The salsa covered a multitude of sins in both flavoring and technique.

When I ran out of quiche (and energy to cook), I treated myself to a cafeteria salad and an ice cream bar for lunch. The oven-roasted veggies are de-lish.

What recipes have you been experimenting with this summer, or what techniques are you trying to master?

A little slice of Bavaria in SW Pennsylvania

On my Pittsburgh bucket list was the Bayernhof Museum (pronounced "bay-ern-hof myu-see-am" rather than "buy-ern-hof mu-seh-um"). It was the private home of Charles Boyd Brown, III (1935-1999), also known as "make-a-buck Chuck" for his financial prowess in the gas-light industry and for being a cheapskate when it came to spending his own money (except on lavish parties). He decorated the 19,000 sq ft with Bavarian kitsch because he wanted to, and it is now home to >150 rare musical machines, because he needed some other reason for the public to want to visit. Turning his house into a museum was his idea of living forever, although his neighbors weren't thrilled about the idea after he passed away from kidney failure caused by chronic gout. They're open 7 days a week except for major holidays, so I booked us a tour on one of my days off.

Probably the best part of the tour was the guide, a retired music teacher whose joking demeanor reminded Dear Husband of some of his uncles and that he described as a relic of the 1980s. Which is, incidentally, also when the house was completed, after 6 years of work. The first two rooms completed were a bedroom for the general contractor and the pool room. Priorities. All told there are 2 living rooms, 3 kitchens, 6 bedrooms, 8 full and 3 half bathrooms, 10 fireplaces, 12 wet bars, 17 staircases, and 1 each formal dining room, office, observatory, wine cellar, boardroom, gambling room, and billiard room. My favorite part was the subterranean water features.

Brown's great-grandfather, John Schneider Loresch, had immigrated from Bavaria. (That's a life-sized wooden carving of him in the entranceway.) Brown collected almost all of the furnishings, light fixtures, kitsch, etc., during trips back to The Old Country, so the décor looks a lot like you would expect (Biersteins, dirndls, drinking monks, etc.), and then some. Apparently he was also a trickster, so I won't say much more in case you ever visit us, and we take you for a tour. It's a whole experience.

The guide demonstrated a number of the music boxes, which range from Edisonian wax-cylinder Victrolas to the first juke box to player pianos to orchestral set-ups, including one from the 1930s that lights up. I didn't take more or better photos, because we missed the very beginning of the tour, and possibly the part when guests were asked not to take photos. So I mostly kept my phone in my pocket and enjoyed looking and listening instead. You'll just have to see for yourself! (You can also read about and listen to some of the music boxes at the first link above.)

May I Remember, 2023 edition

I've been having too much fun to make time for blogging, so here's a photo essay to share the highlights from May 2023.

In March, Dear Husband got a new job as the music director and organist at Sewickley Presbyterian Church. In May, he produced a beautiful service with choir and orchestra called "Word Sung." You can watch the whole performance here, and his sermonette explaining everything here. (Think of it like spoken liner notes--it's really good.)

Our second spring in this house, we are still enjoying the garden, and even adding a little to it, mostly native plants, but hopefully also some raspberries, if the dryness doesn't kill them.

For Memorial Weekend, DH drove to his family in Ohio, and I went to mine in Maryland.

We celebrated my father's birthday / retirement at a brewery that used a butterfly for its logo.

I got my brother a new boardgame for his birthday: Trekking the National Parks. Reminds me a little of Ticket to Ride but with some of its own twists. Easy to learn, hard to master.

And we got a whole big group of us to attend a Baltimore Orioles game (they won!). The best part was that I managed to score seats with old family friends, and one of us got a baseball. It was hot, so I treated myself to Rita's chocolate Italian ice topped with the orange and vanilla custard swirl = Orioles gelato.

When it got back it was time to write a grant proposal for external funding, and then I attended a pediatric clinician-educator symposium over at the children's hospital, where I gave one of three podium research talks (and won the award for best presentation). I also took a lot of notes!