The only reason I left my house during the Jonas blizzard

I actually wrote this yesterday, Monday, and thought I'd posted it but apparently had not. Now the sun is shining even brighter and I may even attempt a walk on what I think will be mostly cleared streets today. Onto the post..

While people around me were freaking out about the snowstorm this weekend, I was excited. I'd just spent several days flying across the country, taking Ubers around Los Angeles, reporting and writing an article from SFO, and I was happy to be back home. My boyfriend was over his cold and I am still getting used to our new place, with its weirdly placed light switches and everything still a little haphazard from our move less than two weeks ago.

So Saturday my boyfriend and I simply watched the snow fall from indoors, admiring it dancing in the light, speculating how many inches we'd get. We did one of the many jigsaw puzzles I got as gifts over the holidays. He lovingly chastised me for not having read many of the classic book covers we were putting together, and we said things to each other like, "Where's George Orwell?" and "This is chainmail; it must be Beowulf!" Often our jigsaw puzzles stretch on for weeks, but this one we blazed through in a matter of hours. It was hard to get a closeup shot because the puzzle was so wide, but here's the final result:



He baked bread and we put away the rest of my books, the ones that bear my name on the spine, the ones that remind me on my worst days, You made this, so you can do whatever tough task you're facing.

We watched our streets get plowed, and I was grateful that unlike last year, when we were renting a house in Red Bank and had to shovel ourselves out, sometimes multiple times in one day, this time we didn't. The owners of our place do it for us. They didn't do a perfect job of digging us out, but they did well enough. On Saturday, we stayed inside, and the only reason I opened my door was to take this photo of my new book, because I'm that dedicated to it and really do believe it'll warm you up (please don't burn it though!)



Sunday, after the snow had stopped falling, we finally ventured outdoors, walking on the pristine light flakes while trying to clear out our driveway enough to get the car out. I was hesitant to be on the road, but we did get groceries, our original weekend plan, and the ride was surprisingly smooth. But I keep going back to Saturday and how magical it was. There was nowhere we had to be and nothing pressing we had to do. The snowstorm, even though it was right outside our door, felt pretty extraneous to our lives. I let myself let go a little bit of the constantly consuming to do lists and tasks that permeate my days, when I easily could have treated it as just another work from home weekend.

I discovered a newfound appreciation for living in a home that I truly enjoy. For so many years in Brooklyn, my home wasn't joyful. I was grateful for it, but it was such a disaster in every sense of the word that being snowed in would have meant feeling stir crazy.

Now I've come to embrace the concept of home in a way I couldn't have done in that Brooklyn apartment, at least, not the way I'd kept it. I couldn't even conceptualize a home with wide open swaths of floor, enough that I could plop down on and bask in the sunlight hitting me in just the right spot. I would have assumed that was how other people live, but not me, so to have the quiet and space I do now feels like a gift. Instead of just throwing random "important papers" into my filing cabinet, I use actual files that I access when I need them. For the most part, I know where my books and clothes live enough to be able to find what I want to read or wear in minutes, rather than hours. There's plenty more I need to organize, but it's a sea change from my old m.o.

I like my new home office even better than the last one because the sun shines in through my curtains onto my desk. Right now I have a view of the mostly cleared driveways of my neighbors, the snow slowly melting. Working from home and running my own business often feels like a mixed blessing; I miss some of the camaraderie I see between coworkers, the basic human contact during the workday. But I also appreciate the solitude, the noises and rhythms of a home running smoothly that allow me to tackle what I need to without the constant distraction that all my old clutter provided.

Would I say I want more snow or want to spend every weekend indoors? No. I'd be more than happy to do without another blizzard. But I liked that feeling of bunkering down, liked our first full weekend in what I hope is one of many years of weekends in this place.

In which I learn that living in a house doesn't mean you're rich

That's what I always thought growing up in an apartment. Now I live in a house, and here's my snow-covered swing and an essay all about it, including the vicious start to 2014 which led to the silver lining of moving into this cozy place that has skylights and a basement (!! after living in a Brooklyn apartment with no closets for 13 years, a basement deserves endless exclamation points), and the office where I'm now typing. My working title was "House Proud" but the title Thought Catalog went with was "How My First House Changed My Perspective Of Wealth And Contentment," which is also accurate.

Performance art in a Williamsburg apartment: Home by Noémie Lafrance

Last night Andy Horwitz invited me to go to this performance art piece in Williamsburg. All I knew was what it says here, which I'd barely glanced at. I didn't know you were expected to bring a camera, but I'm so glad I had my iPhone. We had to wash our hands before the performance, I can tell you that. I don't go to that much performance art, and certainly not like this. I was iffy on the hands-on part of it but wound up really enjoying it. There was plenty that confused me, but plenty that intrigued me. My hands got dirty. I'm not a theater critic, so I'll leave it at that and let my photos tell a different kind of story. More are here, use them if you want, just credit me, and you can read Andy's review at Culturebot. It reads in part:

I can’t tell whether its really cool performance art or Noemie’s “hippie earth mother phase”. I guess I just have to let go of the whole “either/or” thing and embrace it for what it is - a mystical performance ritual and journey through the cycles of life from birth to death to birth. Also the cycle of the planet from farmland to city to industrial wasteland to darkness to renewal. Also the cycle of woman - from mother to feral “woman who runs with the wolves” to subjugated house maid to sex kitten to business woman to mother to grave.







Home's official blurb:

The Home performances invite the audience to convene around the body, interact with the performer and explore the body as a place. By way of a series of mise en scene that depict the micro and the macro body(ies), the subject and object body(ies), the body(ies) as public vs. private space, Home unfolds as a surreal and sensual voyage on the body’s infinite landscapes.