{"id":7915,"date":"2021-07-10T15:45:45","date_gmt":"2021-07-10T20:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/?p=7915"},"modified":"2021-07-10T15:45:45","modified_gmt":"2021-07-10T20:45:45","slug":"hugs-are-free-no-matter-what-snoopys-sign-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/2021\/07\/hugs-are-free-no-matter-what-snoopys-sign-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Hugs Are Free (No Matter What Snoopy’s Sign Says)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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MY PARTNER AND I<\/span><\/strong> share a home office, which works out surprisingly well, all things considered. It\u2019s a big space, and I have my cluttery cubby-ish space at one end (it\u2019s kind of a nook under the front eaves) lined with bookshelves and filled with baskets of magazines and other Susie-stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every surface is covered with little ceramic dishes, old family photographs, oddities like dried straw flowers and pressed pansies and packets of seeds, and more books. Inside the little ceramic bowls and cups (mostly handmade, given to me by my best friend over many years) are the usual things like paper clips and rubber bands, ear buds and USB drives, sticky notes and colored markers, and more personal things, like a collection of all the anniversary coins I\u2019ve gotten in sobriety.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The walls are lined with bulletin boards which I\u2019ve covered with favorite quotes (a lot of\u00a0Wendell Berry<\/a>,\u00a0I realize), more old photographs, photos of beautiful gardens and flowers I\u2019ve ripped out of magazines, and other odd bits of art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On the floor, nestled in the nook behind my desk chair, is a fleecy blanket that Farmer settles into on cold days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other side of the office, the lawyer has a tidy desk, neat piles of manila folders, and stacks of cardboard file boxes filled with case files.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An assortment of odd throw rugs winds around the furniture from here to there. An orchid blooms improbably under the north window. My desk faces east. His, west. He gets the sunsets and the garden view, I get the sunrise (not that I\u2019m ever at my desk to see it), the crows (hanging out in the roof gutters), and the treetops (tall oaks strewn across the field in front of our house). Bonus: I can see cars turning into the driveway!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the middle of the room are two low credenzas pushed together. They neatly divide our space; technically we split the surface area on top of them. But my half is covered (currently) with a stack of African-American cookbooks, a bag of camera equipment, two framed photos I\u2019m hoping to hang, a West Tisbury Farmers\u2019 Market tee shirt, an old grey wool sweater I\u2019ve had for 20 years, six\u00a0Fine Gardening<\/em><\/a>\u00a0magazines, a box of art supplies, and a stack of\u00a0Vineyard Gazette<\/em>s<\/a>. There is also a coffee cup and a sandwich plate waiting to go back downstairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On his side, there are three pieces of paper and a stapler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is a very good sport about the differences in our office d\u00e9cor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every once in a while, I get up and go over to his side and give him a hug. Every once in a while, he does the same. (He is an excellent hugger.) He also brings me a freshly brewed cup of Tazo tea every night when I return to my desk after dinner. Coffee in the morning, too. He deserves a lot of hugs (not just for the coffee and tea, but for many, many reasons).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other day, I thought he really needed one (a hug, that is), so I devised a way to let him know that one (or more) might be available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I still have my old blackboard-painted farmstand sign, currently propped up against our outdoor shower. I use it as a surface for photo shoots, but I\u2019d been toying with the idea of drawing on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started thinking about the Peanuts comic strip where Lucy sets up a booth and a sign that says \u201cPsychiatric Help: 5 cents\u201d on the top and \u201cThe Doctor is IN.\u201d on the bottom. Snoopy thumbs his nose at her (she isn\u2019t getting any business) and sets up his own booth that says, \u201cHug a Warm Puppy, 1 cent.\u201d \u201cThe Puppy is IN.\u201d So I figured I\u2019d advertise free hugs on my sign and see if I got any (particular) takers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yup, it worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Corny, I know. This compulsion I have to write things down and collect neat little sayings and quotes to sum up what I\u2019m thinking is not going away any time soon. In fact, it’s getting worse. A few months ago, while off-Island shopping with my sister at Target, I bought a\u00a0letter board<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 you know one of those things with changeable plastic letters like you see outside of churches and barbecue joints, only smaller. A home version (only $15!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I unpacked the (cheesy) plastic letters and figured I\u2019d put a favorite quote up and change it out every so often. The act of spelling it out would help me remember it, and then I\u2019d look at the board for inspiration from time to time. I decided I\u2019d channel\u00a0Amanda Gorman<\/a>\u00a0for starters. \u201cBe the Light,\u201d I spelled out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I put the board on top of one of my bookshelves facing in my partner\u2019s direction. When he gets cranky I point to it. He does not appreciate this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I haven\u2019t changed the quote because I think it is going to be a very long time until I feel like I\u2019ve soaked that up. Actually \u2014 probably never. I need that reminder every day, not only to keep my head up for other people, but for myself, too. Some days, life can be so complicated and frustrating that all I can really do is offer a hug. Or ask for one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And pick flowers, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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LOOKING FOR RECIPES?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Visit\u00a0cookthevineyard.com<\/a> and\u00a0sign up for the free weekly newsletter<\/a>. (Something I do as part of my day job.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And hey, by the way, the featured recipe in this week’s newsletter is one I know you’ll really like. Check out Summer Squash, Corn, and Pearl Couscous with Coriander and Herbs<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If you arrived here from the internet and would like to subscribe to the Sixburnersue blog, click here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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MY PARTNER AND I share a home office, which works out surprisingly well, all things considered. It\u2019s a big space, and I have my cluttery cubby-ish space at one end (it\u2019s kind of a nook under the front eaves) lined with bookshelves and filled with baskets of magazines and other Susie-stuff. Every surface is covered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[149,163,164],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7915"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7915"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7924,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7915\/revisions\/7924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}