From the breakfastcam

Friends, as surely as day follows night, breakfast porn must follow clown vomit, and that’s how we know all’s right with the world.

Something has happened to me this year. When I first moved to New England, my attitude was that I hated the whole East Coast, so it didn’t matter what town I lived in. Then I moved to Cambridge, and what a difference a few miles makes! Even though we had what my friend Donna referred to as a “20th-century hovel” (it got no light, the neighbors screamed night and day, and there weren’t a lot of amenities nearby, especially after the Druid changed hands and became totally sterile), being in Cambridge was way better than living in the far reaches of Boston suburbs.

Two years ago, when we found our new neighborhood, I loved it immediately because the density felt so homey to me. Sidewalks, porches, trees, gardens, and crazy paint jobs. I thought of it as Berkeleyville, and I really wanted to move here. But I never quite fixed the place up, because in the back of my head, I was still thinking “oh, it’s not California, I don’t have the view and the weather I crave, I can’t grow what I really want here, and I’m not staying all that long anyway, because I’m gonna move back home soon, me! This is just temporary...”

Isn’t that awful? The day I actually became aware of that thought, I shaped right up. I started eating breakfast on the balcony at every opportunity. And using the nice linens and favorite china. And I am paying attention to the garden this year. Because everything is temporary, and maybe I could just allow myself to enjoy, right now, enjoy what I do have.

Check out the cactus! I hope they’ll all be happy together. The plant stand was trash-picked and the oilcloth was left from a kitchen project. I thought the thumbtacks should be visible - kind of like a poor woman’s upholstery tack. It has a little shelf on the bottom too - have to figure out what would be happy there. Suggestions?