Honbons: And Other Soothing Balms

The pinch of time I got to spend with my Hon fam right there at the end of September might not qualify for an official "Honbons and Other..." style title, as those are reserved for lengthy, if not also highly attended HonUnions. Brett and I only stayed two days and three dinners with them, but my folks stayed a whole week, AND the Hons drop nuggets so abundantly, I feel I can make at least a dense snack out of them. 

So, we gathered on Topsail Island...

 

There was the ebbing of a storm, perhaps a tropical one, but I can't remember. Our sunny drive gave way to storm clouds and a drizzle as we pulled into town, but once we unloaded the cars, the feeding frenzy began. The following is a list of edible highlights: peanut butter filled pretzels, cookies and brownies, boiled peanuts, manicotti, chips and crackers, focaccia bread, peanut m&ms, and an assortment of carbonated beverages. There was also Frosted Heroin, but no one broke into them the first morning or even the second. Brett had been dilly-dallying around, waiting for a bun, and finally asked for one not long before he had to pack up his suitcase to go home. 

We met the newest member of the Honbon family, played some Shang, and sat to stare at each other in various venues. There were morning chats with coffee on the porch and evening chats with coffee at the dinner table. Brett attempted to surf the stormy waves while I watched anxiously from the porch. Evan helped me keep an eye on him until the tide pulled him out of sight. "I don't see him anymore..." She shrugged and then performed her school's morning announcements, complete with daily lunch menu. 

Evan was notably less interested in me than last time - a combination of not being roommates, her being older and cooler now, and the apparently off-putting news of my marriage to Brett. She is energetic, enthusiastic, highly expressive, and an interminable conversation. I think she might have inherited it from Papa Don. He's also always talking, but his musings are so low in tone you often accidentally write them off as the hum of a large appliance.

Equally enthusiastic, Ellen arrived with Liv on Sunday, and she had a surprising amount of vigor to her. We were all excited for Evan and Liv to meet - the next generation of HonUnion, oh boy, what big flip-flops to fill. Naturally, Ev was all-in even prior to their arrival. Liv took approximately ten minutes to warm up and then they were off with their matching mermaids and plastic egg creatures, and I think maybe some purses. They had craft time, drew on windows, and impressed all of us with their inventive moves the dance mat. They were thrilled about sharing a room with bunk beds, each planning to sleep on the top of their respective set. They were less thrilled when told they had to sleep on the bottom bunk (there was a good bit of whimpering) but then the whole thing imploded. After about a half hour of trying to sleep, Livvy came upstairs and whispered, "Evan won't stop talking." Liv slept in Ellen's room the next two nights. 

The quietest person in attendance was new baby Heath. Only the Unions think he's quiet because we were all sleeping upstairs and all the Hons were sleeping downstairs. I don't think I actually heard the little guy cry the whole time I was there, but the morning report was usually that of Heath's desire to stay up and party. During the day, he just sat in his little bouncy chair grinning at people, or was being passed from person to person like a basket of rolls at the dinner table. Baby Heath is really cute and smiley and squishy. I wish I had more to say about him but he's still working on holding up his own head, so we can give him some time. 

As is the case when given the opportunity, I followed Will and Katie around and asked them questions about life. What are you eating these days? What about books? Where are you shopping? What do you think life is really about? We discussed all manner of important topics from celebrities to espresso machines. I found out they got hit by an ambulance, and I heard a story about a library encounter that made me especially proud to know Katie. 

Meanwhile the adults played rounds of Shanghai to music that never changed. Will put on an album that cycled through itself at least eight times but no one noticed because they were deep in giggly conversation. He attempted the same stunt the next day, but his plans were thwarted after only three cycles when someone requested some french cooking music.

Brett and I took The Papas for a rainy morning out while we ran errands. We dropped them off at a coffee shop while we went to the grocery store. "We'll come back and get you when we're done," we told them as we waited for them to climb out of the backseat. Don said this must be what it's like to be Millennials, spending a day doing nothing in a coffee shop. I told him he'd have to have soy milk with his coffee and he gave me a classic Papa Don expression that I can pull to mind in an instant, and it elicits a giddy squeak from me every time.

Despite the soggy grey scenery, my memories are a sunny yellow. We took tiny beach walks to get energy out of the three pups, and Brett was again enchanted by Wando's ability to do what you tell him. Brett got a quick recap tutorial on Wando's proficiencies and then the two of them played professional fetch with dueling enthusiasm.

I sat with Lollie on the porch where she worried about me, patched me up, gave me precious advice, and was an advocate for those with high cortisol when the family heckled me for my tiny dinner portions. 

"I wish I had that problem," Ellen stated. "Cortisol makes me fat!"

"Me too," a few others agreed in unison. 

Ellen, Liv, Brett, and I headed home just as the sun came out and beach week could properly start. We had an eventful ride back complete with washed out roadways, lengthy detours, a quest for a car charger, a really gross lunch, and Livvy barfing up a bunch of red Starbursts in the parking lot of a Chevy dealership. Our four hour drive wound up taking eight hours. We were all scared of how Liv would fare, but she was a chatty champ and finally sacked out for the last hour or so. 

Up in the front seat, Brett I were deep in a discussion about the meaning of a good life as looked at from different perspectives. Why do people live in any particular place? If you removed x, would your purpose shift? Yes but that's not a universal value - in fact, I'd say it's a learned one. Well I'd argue the opposite actually because think about this...

After a half hour Ellen said, "Are y'all seriously still talking about this?"

"What do you mean?"

"How is there this much to say about it?"

"Well what do you and Lee talk about?"

"We talk about farts." 

We tried to pull her into it. "No, I don't know. I don't know about this stuff," she said.

"Sure you do. It's just your outlook on life," we told her, "Consider the scenario and tell us how you see it."

"I can't!" She fought us for a long time, unaware of her own philosophical abilities.

"Fine. Answer this, how has your life changed since having kids..... ok, and if you lived in a society with x instead, how would it be different?"

Well, Ellen caught the fun of considering and pondering and hypothesizing, and she waxed and waned poetic as we pulled into town. Brett and I were stifling our proud grins. 

"This is phase one," Brett teased, "Won't be long until you're radicalized!"

I spent the rest of the week lamenting my early departure on account of Brett's work schedule and my cortisol levels. The rest of the family did get to enjoy some sunny beach days and the bulk of the delicious snacks. Right there at the end I requested a family photo and I had the great fortune of receiving a Live Photo, so hearing people laugh while Health screamed, and Laurie talking as she blocked out Papa Don made it the best family picture I could have received. 

Most photos from the Hons.

A Summer Sumry

The summertime imagery in my brain is the likes of salt marshes, the greenest grass, bike rides down oak avenues, beach towels, brilliant blue swimming pools, and hammocks. Oh! And screen porches. I imagine for people in the mountains it's bike rides on dirt roads, dips in chilly streams, climbing trees, and wooded explorations in dense, earthy scented labyrinths. For city folks I reckon it's hot cement. 

As a squirt, summer was so much longer than it is in real life, and it was full of potential. Just about everyday was open to you. In those first 16ish years, I learned summer to be a time of leisure, freedom, and possibility. I remember the first few summers where I had jobs that didn't disappear just because the weather went nice, and I had to reckon with the adult reality that summer is no different than any other time of the year, except that the weather goes nice and you've got the lingering feeling that you're being shafted somehow. 

This past summer, this summer of 2024, will go down as my least summery summer, if not also the most fast-paced, adulty, data-driven summer. I went from grad school to a job that was too big for me to a meltdown state and then back to calm nothingness again just in time for Fall. A true whirlwind - though also highly educational. 

So, in-between the left-brained mayhem, there were these colorful moments.

Just the best team of people I've ever gotten to work with.

Gregory Alan Isakov and Ray LaMontagne's concert... in the grass... with my favorite food truck present.

 I was beside myself.

I Quit The Dream Job

I wrote a whole big thing about this, but as has been a theme in my little blog space, I really can't publish it here on the very off chance that it is discovered by the people, places or things I'd be lambasting. Or in the case of writing on the dream job, there are a few pieces to the puzzle that I'd rather them not stumble upon. 

But I'll go ahead and tell you that things took a surprising and difficult turn. It bothered me a lot, and made me lose too much weight, which upset my parents. I hemmed and hawed and toiled before just finally throwing in the towel. It wasn't a towel I wanted to throw on account of how much I believe in the mission of the wonderful organization that took me right in with open arms, found me strangely impressive, and understood all the things I hate without me having to explain it.

Brett and I frequently muse on the different types of people it's good to have in your circle. You need the challengers and the comforters and the comedians. But the one we want most, and we've yet to find, are the ones that are looking through the same lens you are on the things that matter to you most. And it's not just that they're looking through the same lens, but they've also spent time doing the research to make sure it the right lens. A lot of us just borrow the lens that our parents or coaches or school peers gave us, and we never step back to analyze it, consider the other options, and confirm that this is, in fact, the lens that gives us the clearest view on life. (And of course there are multiple lenses for multiple topics for all the multiples of people.) 

When the thing you care most about is something that most people don't want to know about and will argue with you over even though they've never done the research, it can be especially exhausting to move through the world. People are personally offended by my food choices - and they want me to know it. The irritating bit is having heard all the "retorts" people give me on why I'm incorrect or being silly, possessing the knowledge and data and research to nullify their concern, and still being written off as unreasonable because they don't want to consider anything that might upset their lifestyle or belief system. And I do understand that - these are known as the theoretic paradigms of cognitive dissonance - which every human has, but folks don't like when I try to explain that. (It was one of my favorite topics in grad school. "People invested in a given perspective shall—when confronted with contrary evidence—expend great effort to justify retaining the challenged perspective" without truly considering the evidence provided.)

Anyways, over at the dream job, everything I wrote up there is already understood, and the work we were doing started from there. So if it goes well, we understand what a huge win it is, and if it goes poorly, we don't have to explain any ounce of why it's such a loss. They just get it. They're looking through my lens. And Brett and I don't have that in our in-person friend group - so that was a hard thing for me to let go of - in addition to all the food system progress I might have made for people in Charleston.

Therefore subsequently, I am unemployed, and I'm on a bulking cycle because I can mostly eat all my meals again, which I've learned is something I took for granted. 

So I'll just be here, eating my protein oatmeal and scheming my next big thing...

Photo taken by friends we love who pretend to tolerate my lessons on cognitive dissonance.

Other Summer Bits

If my blogging skills were suffering prior to having a real job, they've sure taken a deeper nosedive. Don't think I haven't noticed. I haven't had time to observe and muse, which leads the blog to offering only the pithy update. Now that the occupational threat has been neutralized (more on that later), the pressure is on to save this sinking ship. So let's get caught up. Where were we in the story... the big Italian adventure, Brett got a surfboard...

Let's start with babies. We've gotten a good crop yield this year. In order of appearance; Cormac, Heath, Margot, and Logan. 

Small photo because these are not my babies to be posting to the interwebs. 

Which reminds me, we had a beautiful baby shower for Ari. Nevermind the new human, I was particularly thrilled to get to play with flowers again. 

Back in August, Brett and I went up to Richmond VA because he needed to do an inspection. Someone hired him to wander around an abandoned high school to determine it "past repair." Brett said the place was so scary that he didn't even go into a few especially dark corners. I've never seen Brett scared of anything ever - so it must have really been a doozie. 

We were staying in the downtown, tall-builidng section of town, which, no matter what city I'm in, does bum me out. You can't see the darn sky! There weren't many people down there, so it felt important but abandoned. There were also few "places" to be besides the offices in the area, but outside of Downtown, you zoom through an up and coming artsy section and then you're in a Mary Poppins kind of residential chunk that we found lively and charming. 

In fact Brett and I found ourselves on Zillow lookng at the houses for sale just because they were so cute.
"Do you actually want to live here?"
"I don't think so."
"Me neither, but I bet life in that house would be pretty good."
"Oh for sure. You just wouldn't have real problems if you lived in that house.

We explored most of the different neighborhoods in Richmond - some industrial chic, others more bohemian. We must have visited 75% of the area's lawn care stores looking for something as atrocious as Wilhelmina Pigglesworth to leave on Will and Katie's front porch, but everything in town was much too tasteful. We had a few great cups of coffee, a big Jewish breakfast, a wander along the train tracks, some fresh baked cookies, and a visit to a beautiful cemetery so big that we got lost in there for a half hour. "Is this how they populate the place!" Brett declared as we spun the car in circles trying to find our way out. 

Back here at home, the UniBartEnhauers chug along with Sunday dinners, unannounced visits to Mom and Dad's house in the afternoons, and days running errands with Mom. Dad maintains that he is bored, however he's always scampering around town doing things for people so we don't really know what he's talking about. Ellen and Lee are drowning in plastic toys and butter noodles, while Brett and I both consider our futures.

Stay tuned for the next episode of What Do I Do With My Life?

Little Has Changed

I wrote this almost six years ago and I just found it. 

* * *

In my recent musings about life I’ve discovered how silly life is. As a wee little’n I didn’t like to be told what to do because I’m stubborn and pompous and was certain I knew me better than anyone else. I like learning as I go, working with my hands, touching the hot stove to figure out that I don’t want to do that again. I say that, but now, as a nervous adult, I tend to avoid all metaphorical stoves because I don’t want to get hurt or find out that I enjoy masochistic abuses to make up for things I think I should have done better.

I’ve been thinking about the strivers and achievers in life and I chuckle a little at them. It’s a respectful chuckle. I’m glad there are people willing to solve problems that I can't even finish reading about. I’m happy for people interested in the sticky inner-workings of the human body, the mathematically precise calculations that keep a building standing upright, the people that experiment with tasty foods, and I really love the person who invented the heater. I’m so glad these people exist. Without them, natural selection would have gotten rid of me ages ago. But now that everything is up and running over here in the US it seems silly to me to keep editing and rebuilding things that don’t need to be messed with. There are other places that don’t even have heaters yet.

And I’m not chuckling at the everyday achiever. I’m chuckling at the greedy and socially unconscious strivers-for-more. When I was sixteen, I followed Dad on a business trip to Hawaii and we went down into a valley between two mountains (that’s how valleys work) and there were just a handful of people living in that valley and they grew rice and taro and had mango trees, horses, and a beach just a few steps outside of their tropical jungle. It was the first time it really occurred to me that I could choose a life very different from the one my teachers were preparing me for back home. (Thus started the ten year angsty phase.) The trips I had followed Dad on in the past all seemed like a fantasy life and the idea of living anywhere they didn’t speak English seemed very much like a bad idea when I was a little girl. But The Hawaiian Valley made sense; the growing your food and enjoying your day bit. I liked that a whole lot. Suddenly I felt like I had to leave the contiguous US to live the kind of life I wanted. 

Now hold on to your eye rolls and chuckles. I wasn’t looking for a life void of work but rather a life full of time. Taking care of myself on my own watch. Tending to things that need tending to without having to run my thoughts past other people. Because other people are idiots. And other people don’t really have the answers either. The adults you look to for answers are adults for the first time, so they’re just doing what they think is best or what saw their parents do. That all makes sense I guess, but realized I could decide to be my own version of myself and not the paper-pushing version I was being shaped into by The Man.

Now that I’ve been a practicing adult for a few years, I see that it is scary to leave the security that The Man provides in exchange for heaps of your time, and life is terribly lonely without other idiotic people in your Hawaiian Valley.  I was thinking about how I’ve set up my little life here, working for The Man in a roundabout way so that I feel like I’m beating the system. But then I start to think about all the lives that don’t have heaters and I'm reminded that I'm living in a pretty great little bubble. Then I thought, “If my bubble caught on fire, what would I grab on my way out?” and other than Pippa and a box of letters, I couldn’t come with anything. In some ways, I’d be relived for all of my crap to burn away into ash. I don’t need that crap. I just need a place to stay warm and enough money for food. That’s all anybody in any pocket of the world needs.

What would I do with heaps of money? How would I feel as a famous person with no privacy and so many judgmental eyes watching how I lived my life? What happens when you crash your expensive car or buy a house that’s too big to clean in one day? I’ll tell you. You lose time. You lose it to working for more money for a new car or you lose it to maintaining the things that you’ve bought with all of your money. You spend your weekend cleaning the boat and manicuring your giant lawn. I don’t want to sound like I’m poo-pooing these things. I’m a spoiled person with an addiction to once-in–a-lifetime vacations and expensive ice-creams. It’s just that I’ve been watching so many people make such greedy and selfish decisions that it makes me feel foolish to be part of such an existence. 

I guess these people do things these with a motive to be remembered as successful, but think about how little thought you actually give to the handful of people from history that we do remember for great things. What about the billions of other lives? Billions of unremarkable lives came before you. I’m going to die one day, an unknown speck on the timeline of existence.

That really takes the pressure off. 

I say be judicious with the time you have and do something nice for someone. 

Two Months in Two Minutes

How about it. A whole two months without a pithy update. You must be starving. 

I have lots of what I label as noteworthy occurrences and I think to myself, "this is the kind of thing I wish I would write about on my blog." And sometimes I'll do just that. I'll scratch out my feelings on something that happened or something I thought about, and when I read it back, I see the presence of said feelings and I have no choice but to delete them. It's never particularly personal or dramatic. I keep that sort of thing to myself. But boy, seeing your feelings in print makes them feel cliche and shallow. So most of the time I find I double down and instead, give you pithy updates that are cliche and shallow. "We're all busy. We still have pets. See ya next time!" 
Most commonly though, I forget whatever it is that I thought might be worth scribbling down in the first place.

Similarly, in recent months I've lost my tolerance for people that have nothing to say. I've always got something up my sleeve for when people say, "Hey Lue, what's new?" It's not that my life is an adrenaline-filled exploit, a series of wild campaigns I lead to victory. Nor am I highly dramatic and can make a whole meal out of a tiny inconvenience. (That's not true at all. Have you read this blog?) So how come no one ever has anything to say when you ask about their weekend or simply say, "What's been going on?"

Oh well, let's see.

I sprained an ankle. Something strange bit my finger. I didn't see it happen but get a load of this weird rash! Brett has taken to making blueberry pies at strange hours. A new cat now consistently arrives on our porch in the evenings demanding food. (Brett named her Stacy.) Pippa tore an ACL. I haven't heard much my from my sister. I was accused of being too quiet at work and had to participate in a defense of my natural disposition. We've watched two especially bad movies lately. I've come up with a new theory about the color of peoples' shoes. I picked figs out of our tree and made my own Fig Newtons. Brett bought a surfboard. I went into a deep work panic and came out the other side again. Started reading a few new books, looked at houses for sale in the English countryside, and have been working on perfecting a focaccia bread recipe. 

My impromptu birthday gathering.

That's my boss up there. As a birthday treat, he conducted our entire meeting as a piece of cake.

These aren't monumental things. In fact I'd say they're the mundane bits of life, but what else is there? I'll talk at length about all of these things and I bet I'll make you laugh in the process. So in mulling over why no one ever has an answer for "what's new" I've decided that it must be a mindset. I guess they think they have to say something big for it to be worth hearing about, or else they'll make their life sound boring. Except that you having nothing to say is what makes you boring. Maybe people aren't looking at their lives like it's an ever-unfolding story that they don't really have any control over. Who knows what will happen tomorrow! Or maybe people aren't looking for stories in their days if they aren't inclined to write them down.

So, to contradict everything I just wrote, let's focus on the bit where I was interrogated for not having anything to say. The workplace is confused about why I'm always listening. Can you believe that? They want me to contribute more to meetings. I would like that too however, I don't have anything novel to add and don't enjoy talking just for the sake of it - not in a business setting anyway. There are already enough people in meetings talking for the sake of it, and frankly, I don't want to draw out an already too long meeting. I've always been quiet - it annoyed 90% of the teachers I had in school - and foolishly, I suppose, I thought my quietness might be taken as a sign of deep interest in what they were saying, or perhaps some intentional strategizing about your words. Wisdom. Respect. Those kinds of things. What have the loudmouths ever really contributed to a meeting? It's like they've never come up on an introvert before.

Ferguson hinders my productivity.

At the moment, there's a tropical storm dumping rain on the town. It's not a big deal, but Brett and I have a low spot in our septic field - something or other - so on the phone last night, Dad said it's possible that we'll get "backed up." 

"So just don't flush the toilets that often... only flush the hard stuff!" - Dad

And then he howled with laughter.

Photo Dump (As They Say)

 There are still so many goodies. I'll just put them here.