boardwalk recruits

We need to print pictures like we keep saying we're going to, 

well like I keep saying I'm going to and you keep saying "You keep saying you're going to and you never do" 

and put them in frames and put them on the walls next to Joni and Billy and Paul and Art. Because our apartment just looks like a bigger version of my bedroom, kind of, and because the focal point of my decor can't forever be the purple tapestry I bought in seventh grade and have brought with me everywhere I've lived since 

(yes it can.) I took this the day my fifty-dollar birthday camera came in the mail, remember? 

In pursuit of things to put in frames, I spent the last hour looking at the pictures I've taken since January and playing with them and thinking about all of the things I didn't get pictures of. 

I'm going to invent a frame for sounds a person remembers, or a frame that smells like things that remind you of other things. 

I want to take visitors by the elbow and lead them to a frame and show them how I've captured the way your t-shirt wrinkles over your arms when you hold yourself up next to me. 

I'll say, Don't his laughs really tie the whole room together? 

(You have different laughs, they each need their own frame I think.)

I know what you're thinking: "She didn't take this one. It's of herself!" 

Well, I'll have you know that one of my hobbies now is to take tripods to

beer gardens as dates. 

No it isn't, why am I being weird?

I haven't slept in a long time, is why. 

You should have inferred that by the fact that I am talking to the internet,

which I only ever do if there is something I HAVE to do SOON that I'm putting off

or if I'm very tired and laying somewhere but too tired for sleeping.

Also someone I know is getting me some cheese from Brooklyn 

and so the polite thing for me to do is stay awake until he gets home

even though I won't because I'm rude.

I didn't take this one either but
look how good I am at being a model in it.
You can barely even tell how much I'd rather be at home
wearing pants with a forgiving waistline.

"There's nothing wrong with a baby going to a fashion show, and dogs doing flips is normal nowadays." 

A Classmate Of Mine. This is almost, ALMOST as good as the boy in my Spanish class a million semesters ago who said, serious as a heart attack, "Soccer is a grown man's sport." The next slide in the presentation he was giving was a picture of a bagel. This particular quote I've… uh, quoted, is particularly wonderful because it was posted on a discussion board on the internet. He had time to think this sentence, type it out, maybe re-read it, decide it was a good and relevant addition to the conversation, and publish it. When I write my memoir, a chapter will be entitled: "Community College - Wherein I Spend Half the Time Being Blown Away by Unadulterated, Untapped Genius and the Other Half Pinching the Bridge of My Nose With My Eyes Closed and Cursing the State of Our Public Schools and Feeling Feelings for These People Whose Parents for Whatever Reason Did Not or Could Not Read to Them." 

I am blogging this blog for two reasons:

1) My screenwriting class (don't ask me, I don't know why this is happening) got cancelled but I can't leave because I have another class. The other class is math and please believe I'd like to leave. Please. Believe. So I am here, googling "filming street harassers" because 

2) I AM BEING STREET HARASSED on the regular by the same men. And I am at my wit's end. My. Wit's. End. This morning it was so bad, you guys. Like, the worst it's ever been. Luckily, I am not the sort to fall apart over these types of things, being aware that the fault is theirs and not mine, etcetera. I feel pissed off. That's fucking rude, jerks hanging out in front of a bar in the wee hours of the morning. Who raised you? And don't say wolves, because wolves have MANNERS.

For a full discourse on street harassment, please help yourself to the rest of the internet. There are plenty of women far more eloquent than I offering information on this practice of catcalling. (There are also plenty of women who will tell you to "be grateful for the attention," and I just… I feel sorry for those women, actually. Annoyed that they're contributing to the problem, but mostly I just feel deeply sorry if that's how they truly feel.) It was while clicking through these articles that I learned about a couple of women filming their harassers, which was an idea I had this morning when I was still pissed off. (I'm over the incident(s), now, after the fact, but not the principle. The principle being, I shouldn't have to brace myself to be violated on my fucking walk to work.) Now, under every other circumstance I ignore them, whoever "them" happens to be, and keep walking. It's not worth my energy (although, hey wait, sometimes it takes more energy to keep a straight face and keep walking than it does to react? how many people spend all their energy holding shit in only to explode their shit, or implode their shit, later on? thinking thoughts, it hurts it hurts!) and also, I don't want to escalate the situation and have it become A Situation. I think of it like ignoring a child's temper tantrum, even though in this case the child is a full grown asshole instead of a bundle of id. But this shit, this garbage shit that I am speaking of tonight, is happening to me in my neighborhood that I love on a regular basis on my walk to work. So no, it doesn't feel as random as it usually does. It feels fucking personal, even though I know it really isn't, and I feel violated. AND NOBODY MAKES ME FEEL FEELINGS I DON'T WANT TO FEEL, STRANGE MEN. 

So I thought, I should take their picture. Or film them. I'm not sure which. But when I do, I'm going to upload it to every video uploading platform I can. I'm going to post their faces on local websites and on the website of that fucking bar and on Craigslist and I don't know what good it will do but I don't think I can handle being passive anymore. Because to me, passivity = granting them permission to continue to treat me a certain way. 

Or I won't, and I'll just think about it, because just thinking about it and writing about it made me feel better. And the fact that other women have already done it makes me feel better. And also worse, because why are there so many women for whom this is a thing that happens?

I know who raised him.

stolen gold inside

I went to visit my mom last weekend and she gave me a stack of about fifteen papers stapled together. (My mother loved to organize things BEFORE she quit smoking a few weeks ago, and now that she's channeling all her newfound non-smoking energy into organizing things even more, I'm afraid someone is going to make a television show about her. It'd be like Hoarders, except instead of hoarding and never leaving her house she'd break into other people's houses and organize the crap out of them. So it'd be more like While You Were Out than Hoarders, I guess. Except it could also be While You Were In because my mom also likes to chat with people. Also before when I said she's channeling ALL her newfound energy into organizing, I wasn't telling the whole truth; she's also channeling a good amount of it into repeatedly telling me she's not going to turn into one of those reformed smokers who tries to get everyone around her to quit, and then proceeding to outline the chapters of the quit smoking book she's reading and, you know, trying to get me to quit.) Upon closer examination, the papers were an entire Buzzfeed article that she'd printed out, stapled, and held onto to give to me. It was an article about books. Don't worry, I asked her why she hated trees and didn't she know how to use bookmarks in her browser and I said, "Mom, I know that you know that I know that you work at a computer and you know how to make one go and you know that email is a thing, so why this stack of paper that is half an inch thick?" Honestly I don't remember what she said back to me but I do remember that I got a very dirty look. Which I think was unwarranted, as I was not the one waging a war on our forests. But I thought about it, and what I thought was, that this is a lady who loves print. And this lady taught me to love words on a page, and the fact is that this story is a gift. Someday when I have done something of note, and people ask me to make a speech to some other people, I can work this anecdote in and everybody in the room will laugh and laugh and I will say, "So yes, I will always champion print," or something, maybe something like, "Don't we all hate trees, anyway? They're so smug, really" or maybe just thank you, Mom.

I think that since June a lot of relatively major events have taken place, and I think that I am still processing them. 

They're not all bad, but they're not for the internet, and even in real life I'm finding things difficult to relate. 

For some reason, writing anything at all helps a little, even if it's just to chirp "This semester is going well so far," even if writing the things I'm writing makes me want to throw the computer at the wall because it doesn't mean anything in relation to anything real that is happening and that matters and even if every sentence sometimes seems to shrink my whole life into itself and make it something trite and small.

Even if I write out an entire post, and tell you all about school and work and funny things and obsess about trains some more, just to delete it and post this instead.

I left in the bit about my mom, though, because. Also the picture of the Bloody Mary at the park, so I could say "BM at the park." 

I was going to make it funnier, but I wore myself out today doing all my homework and cleaning all my belongings and then writing the post that was only born to get deleted, and in the manner of a 1950's homemaker I am going to pretty myself up for when the man gets home.

Just kidding, I know that you know that I know that I am going to take a shower, blow-dry only my bangs, and spend the rest of the time staring at Seamless menus until he comes home. Like a lady.

"It was, I mean, not what I expected.
But it was beautiful."
United States of Tara, because I stayed at home today coloring my hair and watching things I've already watched on Netflix because those things have Toni Collette in them and because I can't pay attention to new plot points AND making sure the color lands on my head and not on the white shower curtain, why did we pick a white shower curtain? Something about department store lighting + my brain chemistry = convincing myself to buy things like white anything (it's not just the shower curtain! towels ruined by two years of Ariel hair, shirts ruined by being alive, sheets ruined by being alive AND last weekend when I laid in bed and used Teddy Grahams to scoop chocolate frosting out of the container and into my mouth while D tried really hard to look at the movie we were watching instead of at me disapprovingly), as if I am the sort of person who can keep anything pristine. And I don't mean that in a bad way, just in a regular observational kind of way. I need to USE the things around me, and nothing gets through a life of service without a few dings. Like I used to tell my friend every time we did laundry together, as I watched her sort darks and lights and can't-dry-this-in-the-dryers and she watched me (in HORROR, might I add, which was a bit rich coming from the girl who made her bed exactly never since the day I met her and once continued participating in a conversation after having gone into the bathroom to vom, sharing her thoughts in between heaves while my other friend and I just stared at each other and silently willed her to shut the door! just shut. the. door) shove all my shit into one, MAYBE two washers if I had to do towels and was feeling generous with the laundry dollars: "If it can't handle a washing machine and a dryer, then it doesn't belong in my life." Have you ever watched UST? From the same episode, I also liked this -
"Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is ask for help."

Today I uploaded all of the pictures that I've taken since I got a new camera in January. There are like, 100. No, I do not think it's lazy writing to write things like, "There are like __." Because this is where I talk at the internet and that is how I talk. How I speak? It's how I make words. And speaking of my mother - she's, like, so cute:

So thank you, Past Lindsay, for only spending fifty dollars on an Amazon clearance camera. Present Lindsay admires your frugality and appreciates that you exercised such self-awareness when making this purchase; good job not giving up food for a month for the camera you thought you wanted for a minute, because as it turns out dust will collect on anything, no matter how much it cost.

There are mostly blurry pictures of me drinking different things, which makes it seems like I have 175% more of an active drinking life than I actually do:

I always get to A Thing and think, "Huh. I should've brought my camera." But then, everyone else has one or they have their phone and I realize that whatever The Thing is will be documented to death without me and so I then think, "MEH" and go on about my business. And anyone else's business I think might be interesting. And I don't have Facebook and I'm a shitty blogger so some people don't even get why I bother taking pictures because evidently the only point of them is to put them on the internet. WELL THERE IS ANOTHER POINT TO THEM, and that is to sit on my camera for however long I feel like.

I started to go through and organize them, but I got bored of that and started just randomly fucking around with the colors on random pictures? And I made it through when Diego's friend came to visit from Italy (we somehow wound up at Eataly, which I thought was weird but he didn't so whatever - also, I like that Diego looks like a zombie a little in that picture which is why I chose it if you were wondering) and when BFF got her MSW from Columbia, NBD (what is a VBD is that belt, she made it herself, thanks Ivy League) and then I had to stop because I couldn't. I have to just start over. If I'm even going to keep non sensing here. I feel like it right now. So let's see. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO YOU I KNOW.

This is me circa last night. In case you like to picture me while you read this. Or in case you're like my grandmother who is still bitter about never getting any of my school pictures from elementary school. I didn't wear makeup or a bra in any of those pictures, either. Also that is my yard, basically. Picture me being really pleased about it, and the fact that I can look at Manhattan whenever I want to but I don't have to wake up there anymore. I mean I still go there every day but I get to sleep in real life now.

My roots as proof that I neglect myself, too, not just my camera.

RIP Princess House. Y U M, sexy Mexican librarian.

Okay this is too unfocused even for me. rahh

Somewhere between 66th and 72nd a McDonald's pickle attached itself to my calf fat: REASON #239847838 why I don't change into a dress before leaving work more often. (The other reasons are all that I'm tired of people commenting on how different I look in clothes that aren't a chef jacket. Thank you, everyone, for letting me know just how unappealing you find me 40+ hours a week.) At the entrance of Trader Joe's, where I was when I realized that a pickle had in fact stuck itself to my leg and that wet thing I'd felt a few blocks back was not after all a big bug because I am IN MANHATTAN AND NOT LAKESIDE MAINE, LINDSAY, I stopped to flick it off and briefly wondered if the pickle had simply fallen off someone's burger and landed on my person or if I had been the victim of a sneaky pickle tosser hiding behind the fruit stand outside Paris Baguette next to a mountain of limp pickle slices. Only briefly though. Then I bought some flowers and candy bars and came home and ate too many of the candy bars and went to sleep next to Aziz Ansari until my real boyfriend came home.

I have a difficult time believing that you love me, because a lot of the time I'm not even trying. And my mother spent a significant amount of time drilling into my head that effort MATTERS. Like if after I washed the dishes, if one was dirty, I had to wash every single one of them all over again. Which meant I spent a lot of time standing on a chair in front of the kitchen sink (that's how you know kids are old enough to wash things, when they can reach them - yes that's correct, spouting violets now features free parenting tips) which meant I had scaly elbows sometimes from leaning on the wet counter which was not pleasant but what was pleasant was that if I was doing the dishes I got to play my CDs on my mom's big stereo in the kitchen which meant that I got to sing a lot of Backstreet Boys and Best of Sonny & Cher and Aqua (if my friend from the bus let me borrow it) and also practice all of my dance moves that the kitchen chair I was standing on would allow, which meant that what I actually learned was that the worse I was at doing dishes the longer I got to stand in the kitchen screaming about gypsies and tramps and the later I got to go to bed. I have to assume that at some point my mom caught on to the fact that I wasn't quite absorbing the intended lesson and made appropriate adjustments to my chore, because today I am a holy terror to live with and will absolutely THROW A FUCKING FIT if I find a dirty dish in the dish rack. So anyway, the point is, that if you notice me self-consciously rubbing my elbows when a Cher song plays, it's just because inside my head I'm suddenly ten years old again.

Wait, no. That isn't the point. 

It drives me up a fucking wall that you don't always feel like the center of my universe. Because you absolutely are the reason for all of the things. Every weird decision I've made, every freak-out, every last-minute NOPE JUST KIDDING PLANS I'M GOING TO DO THIS OTHER THING I JUST THOUGHT OF INSTEAD, every class I go to and every piece of overpriced grilled salmon I serve to an entitled Upper West Sider in hot pink gym shorts which she loads into her stroller that cost more than the security deposit on our apartment and is big enough to house a family but is only housing one child who is definitely old enough to be walking by himself and is insisting that he DOES NOT WANT AVOCADO IN HIS SUSHI TODAY, everything, all of it, is you. Not for you, exactly, and not because of you either, I wouldn't say, but in a way both of those things and in a better way, neither of them. Because all of it, every bit of it, led me to the place where you and I are together. And that, mi novio, is worth all of the things. 

The problem I'm having, I think, isn't so much that I'm not "affectionate" - I can practice that, I think my story about washing dishes proves that I like to practice things, and I think practicing affection is a combination of the dishwashing practice (important, practical life skill) and of the kitchen-chair-backstreet-boy-dance-move practice (fun, awesome - also, important, practical life skill) - it's more that I have this great big… thing, and I am too small of a…nother thing to properly, you know, thing it. Like I'm a great big stone wall, and what you are to me is a great big ocean, and the ocean is behind the wall. And I only have one teeny tiny little hole in me (GROSS) and the ocean can barely squeeze through it. So maybe you feel like there's only a few drops of water, or sometimes none at all, sometimes maybe the wall looks completely dry, but that's just a trick (because of the very small hole, making things difficult and tricky) and the truth is that there's a whole OCEAN back there and it's actually (get ready) the ocean is actually what's holding the wall up. And sometimes pushing the wall forward. And sometimes the ocean needs the wall to keep it together, because we're a team and we do things for each other.

Are we a team or are we a walled-in ocean? Also I forgot if you were the water or if the way I feel about you is the water. I'm very tired, and the light from the computer is hurting my eyes. I hope you bring me home a pork bun, because I really want one now, except maybe don't and after we go to the movies on Saturday we can go get those mini ones from Koreatown. 

Anyway I left you a present, you'll see it when you come home, and it's never enough but I want you to know that every day that I'm alive you don't ever have to wonder if anybody loves you.