Tag: home

Cozy Posts

Stormy October Morning

Beth DeFries1 Comment

Hello, dear readers, dear friends. It’s been a little while since I’ve written here and I thought I’d draft a snippet of a picture for you all of a cozy, little morning on this stormy, October day. I invite you to bundle up in a big, comfy sweatshirt or a warm sweater and imagine yourselves drinking something rising with swirls of steam that warm your cheeks, the ceramic of your mug pleasantly hot against your palms and fingers as you join me on the big, blue couch. Help yourself to a squashy pillow for your back or a warm throw for your lap. Kick off those shoes, put your feet up, and get yourselves nice and comfy.

The wind howls outside and the waves of the Atlantic are churned, abundant with choppy white. The branches of the trees dance, the fragile leaves rustle, and the seagrass bows with the occasional strong gust. The bones of our home creak with each brace against the elements, sheltering us well from the storm as we look on from our perch, set high in the hill.

Inside, the lamps are glowing, casting little pools of gold in the corners of the room. The curtains are open to take in the view of the gray, blustery day outside- a Nor’Easter, in fact, a storm not bad enough to have a name, but a storm no less.

I taste the faint hint of orange peel in my tea and savor the lingering warmth from a hearty breakfast of steel cut oats with peanut butter and maple syrup. Soon it’ll be time to reheat the kettle. Would you care for a cup? Tea, hot cocoa, coffee perhaps? How do you take it? Milk? Sugar? Cinnamon?

Today calls for reading, don’t you think, something inviting and adventurous. I’ll pick a book or maybe two from the wooden shelf stocked with favorite reads, family photos, handmade pumpkins, and the little, wooden chess board that my dad made. Where shall we venture today, friends? I’m favoring a visit to the Burrow, myself, I think. I slide Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets off the shelf and flip to page 32 for a healthy little dose of cozy.

I’m a skip ahead-er when it comes to my favorites, finding the scenes that evoke a sense of comfort for me. Any other skip ahead-ers here with me on the big blue couch this morning? What are you reading today? Where are you off to in the imaginary world? Who are you off to see? To meet?

The rain drip, drip, drips from the door overhang outside and the neighbor’s coffee pot bubbles next door. I still miss the sound in my own kitchen some days.

I imagine the deer, who often visit, sheltered from the wind this morning, huddled and warm somewhere beneath a colorful arbor of branches, enjoying a breakfast feast of lingering greenery and late blooming flowers, undisturbed by people.

I’m headed to the Shire next to savor some peaceful nature, myself. It feels like a good time to pay another visit to a merry band of sweet, brave hobbits I’m acquainted with as they embark on an adventure that I’m absolutely certain will be bigger than four little hobbits could ever possibly anticipate, while somehow being just the right size, all the same.

You are welcome to linger as long as you like. Don’t mind me. I’ll just be nestled over here in the crook of the long, cozy seat of the big, blue couch with some squashy pillows for company, wandering another world for little whiles at a time.

Cozy Posts · Nostalgic Posts

My Desk

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

Well hello there, you! This morning, I am sitting at my desk in what we call “The Big Room”. The desk, a scuffed up IKEA dining table bought by Mike’s roommate sometime in 2011, has served many functions over the years and has more than a few scars to show for it. It is imbued with the soul that comes from years of multipurpose use. It has served as a dining table, a catch-all for clutter, a boardgame and puzzle surface, an art studio, an interview office, a Friendsgiving buffet, a Christmas tree stand, and a TV stand, among other things I can’t recall. I am sure it is embedded with heat stains and maybe even a little grease from Williamsburg Pizza boxes and the condensation of water rings from ice cold bottles of Lagunitas IPA and Bell’s Two Hearted, fresh from the bodega down the street on Union Avenue.

When we first moved back to New Jersey, we used it as our dining table for a little while until my parents visited briefly during the pandemic to drop off some essential supplies and my mom laughed at how small it looked in the space. And so, our little, old table was retired from high traffic use and replaced by a newer, bigger, blander model from Amazon. I squirrelled the old one away in the laundry room for a while until its current purpose dawned on me. Afterall, every writer needs a desk. Wasn’t I a writer once?

Nestled in the corner of the Big Room, topped with a jar displaying two Harry Potter wands that my cousin and her husband made for me, a rock my sister brought back from Ireland, some 40-watt soft-white lamplight, and a pink, paper box of my nana’s that contains my writing books, this space is my main access to creation. It is rare that I sit at my desk and feel any sort of writer’s block. It has helped me through blog posts, fiction projects, plot holes, a play, poems, greeting cards, resumes, cover letters, emails, and even text messages. When I’m feeling unmotivated and uninspired, the awareness to sit down at my desk weighs on me and pressures productivity. And, like the drunk, scarred, slob that it is, it isn’t quiet about it.

My Desk

I like writing in the Big Room with the curtains drawn and the table lamps on. It’s cozy and dark and when I turn the heat up or bundle up in chunky-knit sweaters and sweatpants with a mug of tea near at hand, it’s even warm. Perhaps the best characteristics about the room however, for the purpose of writing, are that we don’t sleep in here for much of the year and that I can close the door to distraction.

In his memoir, “On Writing”, Stephen King mentions the importance of writing a first draft with the door closed. I am easily distracted and when my focus is interrupted, it starfishes onto something new and the suction can be a force to be reckoned with. If I am sitting up in the main area of our home, my closed door is represented by a large pair of headphones. That being said, being able to close a physical door comes in handy for me.

The Big Room is usually where we put guests when they come to visit. It has more space for luggage, kids, and pets. It even has a desk and a comfortable chair. I originally intended for the Big Room to be “our room” and hung our two framed wedding pictures on the wall, but by the time it got really cold our first year of living here, we learned pretty quickly that the little room holds heat in much better and so we make an annual migration in the fall and spring between the two. And so, our guests are stuck with us looking all glammed up when they stay in the Big Room. I guess I’ll just apologize for our not looking quite that pretty all the time!

Anyway, I’m using this post as a warm-up to jump back into a fiction project and I feel like it’s time to switch gears now. I’ll take a little break and make some tea and then come right back and get to work. Old Pizza Stains McDenty Face has me on the clock and my attention’s good and starfished.

Cozy Posts · Nostalgic Posts

Good Bones

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

The heart of the shore house beats with the influx of familiar faces after the renting geese who flocked here for a change of scenery migrate home. The stairs creak in welcome at the sound of our identifiable steps and the walls sigh with relief as we walk through the front door and exchange warm greetings amongst family. The smiles, raised glasses, wagging tails, and toddler hugs refuel our tired spirits and remind us that although we share this place with so many, it is ultimately ours and together, we are home.

The shore house, though never my primary residence, is the home that I remember best from my childhood. It is where I spent my summers with my Nana and my Aunt Arlene. It is where I learned to cook with way too much butter and salt which I’ve since learned to remediate. It is where I learned the manners of a lady and sometimes defied that lesson by channeling a hereditary instinct to be wild thanks to the generation before me (though it is now impossible to mislay the cup, napkin, knife, and fork in a table setting).

The shore house has seen me shattered, coming back to a gloom within its walls that seemed they’d never feel full again the day my Aunt Arlene lost her battle with pancreatic cancer. The shore house helped me to start the healing process in the days that followed. It is where I learned the benefits of solitude, self-reflection, and the great company and support that you can find on the pages of a book.

The shore house, along with my Nana and Aunt Arlene, is why I know my family so well, why my cousins are more like sisters to me and my sister, and why I feel a need to spend so much effort nurturing a building, these days, despite the fact that doing so can push me to my stress limits better than anything else can.

With the shore house, my Nana and her sister created a home for all of the family to feel is ours. Nurturing the space reciprocates a respect for the value that it adds and has added to our family’s shared experience. In our shared home, we strive for functionality and something that is easier to care for, for the benefit of our migrating guests, but we also make sure that there is an abundance of coziness for ourselves as well.

Coziness, to me, is a combination of functionality, minimalism, and personal identity. Sometimes coziness seems like something else entirely to other members of my family. We make it work, though I can’t fully say I understand how.

Conch shells, Bananagrams tiles, paintings of ships in storms, lighthouse figurines, and donation bags coexist.

Sisters, cousins, grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, husbands, fiancées, Daisy (and Dixie), and friends coexist.

Someone always has to sleep in Room 6 and wake up with a head bruise or two, courtesy of the steeply sloped ceiling.

There are often more than twenty-five pairs of shoes by the front door. The TV volume always fuels debate for what is to be considered a reasonable volume, as my Nana used to say. It takes hours to settle on a movie to watch and then someone inevitably leaves the room just after we hit play.

At the shore house, we drink way too much whiskey, too much wine, and just enough beer. Cheese and See’s Candies are considered reasonable meals. We stay up too late talking and laughing on the porch. We wake up to Daisy sniffing at the bedroom door and come downstairs to the perfume of coffee, the sound of cartoons, and a chorus of good mornings in the living room with each new entrant.

There are porch people and couch people and beach people.

The showers are usually taken.

The showers are cold when it’s finally your turn.

The kitchen is stifling in the evening no matter what setting the ceiling fan is on.

Eggs, oatmeal, bacon, and Del Ponte’s treats nourish us in the mornings – and coffee, of course. “I could do another cup,” sings the chorus of porch people.

We smell like sunscreen and the ocean. We are fiercely competitive at Five Crowns and The Fishbowl Game. Our shoulders sparkle with dried, Atlantic salt. We find sand in unexpected places. We could write an encyclopedia of inside jokes at the end of each summer, but sometimes forget how they originated.

We welcome, we nurture, we work hard and together. We keep the dream going for another year and another year and another year, thinking it’s getting easier until something hard happens. And then we remind ourselves that despite occasional stress fractures, it’s possible to heal, and our house has good bones.

Cozy Posts · Health & Lifestyle · Minimalism

Too much honey…

Beth DeFries2 Comments

Hello again friends; I know it’s been a while.

I’ve been struggling to get back to writing, unable to give confidence to any particular idea. Right now, I am just typing and sipping a glass of Malbec, hoping that each word (and my grape juice) will help tug me out of Rabbit’s doorway and into a post worth your time and my own. Thanks in advance for bearing with me and I’m sorry if this is absolute stuff and fluff.

I admit that sometimes, even after reducing the amount of items that we have in our home, the laundry basket still overflows, the entryway table hides beneath the camouflage of grocery receipts and sheathed credit card offers, the throw blankets rest in crumpled piles on the new, blue sofa, and there are shoes seemingly everywhere.

No matter how many steps I climb to get closer to my own ideal of cozy minimalism, I think I’ll always gravitate towards a messy reality. I could have three things and at least two of those would somehow find their way to the wrong spot the next day. I need to learn to accept that.

My mind is a curious, cluttered place that doesn’t match my curated home. I struggle to cope with the mental mess a lot of the time, sometimes leaving the door open to too many thoughts and baseless insecurities, allowing them to sneak in amidst the darkness like unwelcome Heffalumps encouraging self-doubt to take the reins and to make the sensible parts of the oversized, aspic-walnut in my head go numb.

Alas, I run on.

When I am down, I am not able to express what I am thinking in spoken words, and words are supposed to be my rescue ledge. Their abandonment is greatly unappreciated. Sometimes my brain thinks faster than my words which leads to stumbling over them and then a deeper lack of confidence. This is why I need to get back to writing. I know that I am capable of intelligence, confidence, and true expression on the page. I can use my own words as a map to navigate my own creative woods.

When there is clutter in my physical environment, it is difficult to decompress, relax, and feel cozy. I crave cozy constantly and when it’s not there, it’s easy to get lost in my composited mind. Cozy wraps me up in welcoming, warm snuggles and tells me, “You can fucking do this.”

I find cozy in empowering conversations with my husband, family, and friends, in warm cups of tea with too much honey, in dry red wine, and in stretched out sweatpants and squashy coral pillows. I recognize how incredibly lucky I am to have people in my life who love me and to be able to curate a home that fosters my happiness to the best of my ability. In theory, I should never want for more and yet sometimes, I am an absolute Eeyore. In the words of somebody, somewhere who Mike and I quote all the time (most likely the writers on Psych), “That don’t make no sense.”

So here is my attempt at diving back into my pond of words, hoping for a little black rain cloud to float on by with a heavy rain that will irrigate my potential and grow my creativity. I am sorry if it doesn’t last, but I would like to give it a shot. With my strong support system, I know I can never be stuck for long. “He-ho, e-o, there she goes!“

Home and Hindsight
Cozy Posts · Nostalgic Posts

Home and Hindsight

Beth DeFries1 Comment

Exactly one year has passed since we packed up the 15 foot U-Haul that Mike valiantly parked against the curb on Union Avenue outside of our Williamsburg apartment building.

The panic and uncertainty of the looming pandemic shook up the timeline of our move by a week. Fueled by a wild sense of urgency to escape the city and move into our very newly purchased home in New Jersey, we did not know if the growing tidal wave of NYC Covid-19 closures would come crashing down on the shores of Staten Island, barring our escape route if we waited any longer.

Though I had pared down my belongings over the course of the years, the sight of the hastily packed boxes and bags that consumed most of the living room and kitchen still presented a daunting challenge for our time frame.

Exactly one year has passed since adrenaline toughened our muscles and surged through our blood as we carefully and repetitively climbed down the wooden stairs of our apartment building, our arms full of boxes, bags, furniture, suitcases, laundry bags, and loose items – and then up again in what seemed like a Sisyphean effort.

We poured three hours of energy into a grueling operation to amputate the legs of our couch so it would fit through the doorway, the heads of the long screws that connected them to the wooden sofa frame stripped to ragged circles. We earned the rush of victory we experienced when they finally relented only to be gut-punched with a crushing sense of disbelief when faced with the realization that, at almost an inch too wide, the damn thing would not fit through the doorway.

Armed with determination, an incomprehensive tilt, the thought that the furniture movers had somehow gotten it into the apartment, and some aggressive shoves and pulls, we were finally able to get it fully through our doorway and down the steps to the first floor landing, sure to take some of the burgundy paint from the door frame with it, a battle wound tattooed into the turquoise chenille.

Once the U-Haul was mostly packed up, aside from our bed and the items we planned to put in Mike’s mom’s Honda in the morning, we parked the truck under the BQE for the remainder of the night and headed back up to our nearly empty apartment.

Beyond exhausted, covered in sweat, and starting to feel the aches, blisters, and bruises of persistent heavy lifting and screwdriver twisting, we ate plastic spoonfuls of peanut butter straight out of the jar for dinner and drank cups of tap water and Coca Cola. We leaned on the kitchen peninsula for the last time and sat on the cool, brick-colored, tile floor. Dirty and drained, we slept in our nearly empty, sweltering room for one final night, lulled to sleep by the gentle clang of steam pipes and the muted city sounds of early pandemic Brooklyn.

A year later, I sit on the couch with Mike, getting sleepy as I type this post, feeling very much at home in the place where we have spent at least part of every single day for the past year. I am considering grabbing a spoonful of peanut butter from the kitchen before I go to bed and am thankful that there is no U-Haul parked outside hungry to be packed full of all of our belongings.