my only complaint is how cold my butt gets in the winter.

So I was just reading xoJane instead of ordering checks and cleaning the bathroom, because the comment section there is EVERYTHING, THO. And I ended up on the personal website of one of the authors and when I realized that her blog is actually just a list of things she was grateful for I said "OH ICK" out loud. Like, real loud.

I don't know. I'd pose the "What sort of person does that make me" question to you, but 1) Don't actually care because 2) I think I would have a different reaction to a blog like that if the person writing it had to actually, you know, be intentional about finding things to be grateful for. I guess what I'm trying to say is that 21-year-olds whose parents are paying for their education who get paid to write, even if it's stupid shit for the internet, make me jealous and that's why I'm here in my pitiful corner typing this right now. (I bet when you google THEIR names the internet doesn't come up with nightmarishly edited blog posts for shitty nonprofits. NOT THAT I'M BITTER.)

In other news, (Diego sent me a text that began with "In other news" the other day. And I AWWWed and cuddled my phone a little. He also texted me that he was "inches" about his wallet that we couldn't find that morning and I had the same reaction. I guess what I'm trying to say is that he learned English in sixty seconds and I probably need to just suck it up and take Spanish I for the II time and that makes me jealous and that's why I'm here in these pitiful parentheses typing this right now. PS Diego don't get mad I said that, YOU ARE MY HEART. ERES MODELO?) I spent a long time looking at this at work today. I swear on my paycheck that my original search was work-related. And had nothing to do with office chairs.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go print out the official rules list for what I can bring in to EDC this weekend. I will not spend another minute arguing with a burly security lady about my chap stick and unopened pack of cigarettes as she roughly handles my girl parts (that will be covered by a light summer cardigan, unless my stomach flattens itself in the next five days in which case I will be wearing just two tastefully placed daisies) while fifteen people slide in around me carrying cartel-scale amounts of chemicals. I will not.

sorry sir, can't let you in with that face.

Yesterday I tried to make KonMari happen to my drawers but it got really boring so I just started rolling them up haphazardly. I didn't even attempt my underwear drawer because out of all the stupid things that cause me to be irrationally stressed out, my underwear drawer is not one of them. I may touch walls when I have an uncomfortable thought or type out secret messages on invisible keyboards on tabletops when I feel out of control, but I really don't give a shit if my socks are fraternizing with my bras. Because that would be crazy.

Also, when I went to put this drawer back into the dresser it got stuck on something and wouldn't open back up. At one point, I honestly believed that kicking the side of the dresser might help. It did not. Finally I ripped the back of it off and kicked it from behind, but the lesson I learned from the whole ordeal was: I do not "find joy" in my dresser drawers. 

I love walking by the NY public library, especially at night because who doesn't, but I feel like if I get too close sirens will go off and I will get arrested because I've owed them money since 2012. WHOOPS.

Sorry I look drunk in this picture; it's only because I'd been drinking. (As we were walking to the train, Diego said to me: "Your eyes look smaller," and also "Your hair is nice and puffy." He meant both of these things as compliments.) The confession here? I never once, as an employee of any establishment that served food, washed my anus before returning to work. I feel better now having admitted this. 

Now let's start this week off with clean consciences and, hopefully, clean everything-elses. 

i'm still trying to make my mind up, am i free or am i tied up

Last night I said to Diego, "We're almost thirty." And he said, "I know." And then we just considered the scariness of that in silence for a minute. And then we ordered Indian food and ate it in bed and fell asleep watching Parks and Rec at ten o'clock on a Friday because I had a terrible headache (possibly to do with staying late at work, more possibly to do with not enough caffeine) and - although he'd insist otherwise - we were both tired. Because of adulthood. Or something vaguely resembling adulthood. As my friends have birthdays now, the cake-and-ice-cream-related temper tantrums from yesteryears take on the form of what-am-I-doing-with-my-life crying jags. There are moments when I realize that I'm closer to thirty than I am to seventeen, which is the age I seem to think I am, and my first thought is literally: "NOPE. THAT'S NOT REAL."

The episode of P&R I happened to be watching was the one where April and Andy get freaked out about how boring they've become. (Which isn't actually what made me think about being old, we had the "we are ancient" conversation earlier in the evening, it's just a funny coincidence. "Isn't life something," I chuckle, leaning back in my rocker and smiling down at the knitting on my lap as the wind softly blows my white hair against my permanently furrowed brow.)

Everyone on the planet can relate to the feeling I'm describing, which is why I will refrain from continuing to describe it for seventeen lengthy paragraphs. You know what I'm talking about, I know that you do. It's not my impending death that worries me, and aging isn't on my mind either. It's more about All The Things I Have To Do That I Haven't Done Yet. The Things vary with everyone, but the feeling, I think, is universal.

My life is 100% different today than it was less than a year ago. I can think of at least three pretty major decisions I've made in that time, and I regret none of my choices. I chose correctly for myself every single time, BUT. The consequences of those choices present their own dilemmas on which I must act, which requires more decision-making, which means constantly adjusting to altered circumstances and coming up with solutions to eternal problems. And that, friends, is how life works - because I'm not sure anybody ever gets to "a point" in their lives at which they look around themselves and think, "I'M TOTALLY GOOD WITH ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING" and then it stays that way forever and they get a prize for winning life.

That got away from me for a minute. Back to April and Andy and their crock pot - that's what worries me most. (Not "being boring," exactly, because let's be honest. I'm not that exciting. I'm a homebody. My favorite activities are the solitary kind. If you interrupt me while I'm reading there is a very real moment where I actually have the urge to cut you. Most of the time, I get all the socialization I need just from going to work every day (granted, I've always had jobs that require a lot of interacting with people, and I live in a place where it is basically impossible to not be social on some level.) I can feel it physically when I've been "on" for too long: Everything starts to sound funny, it feels like whatever's around me is a movie I'm watching, and I zero in on just getting to a place where I'm by myself. Sometimes Diego wants to go to a party on a boat, and I have had to explain several times that I do not want to go to a party on a boat BECAUSE being part of a group of people I cannot escape for a set amount of hours is my nightmare.) What I am concerned about is falling into a routine that doesn't leave room for possibility. Not wanting to get into trouble all the time isn't the same as not wanting to get into trouble at all. I want to not be afraid of getting into trouble, I guess. I want to fully, consciously enjoy this season of my life. I want to be responsible and plan for the future too, but I don't want to be so consumed with worry about The Big Things that I miss out on everything that's awesome about where I am right now. (I also want to realize that there's really no Thing I HAVE to do; I want to be nicer to myself about the Things and the order in which I complete them. Or skip them. It's fine, is what I want to realize. It's really fine.)

The game I'm playing is called "every few paragraphs, choose a picture at random. It doesn't matter if the picture is recent or relevant or of good quality. You can tell this game is real because the name of it is so long." WE ARE HAVING FUN.

Something I'm hoping will help is to make a list of the smaller-scale stuff I want to get done. I think keeping track of these baby goals will ease some of the massive anxiety gathered in my center area. Maybe. Or I'll just get stressed about the list. Let's find out together.


Be a tourist.
Get to inbox zero.
Organize dresser drawers.
Make this list.
Find memory card.
Use that library box in the park.
Give up Diet Cokes.
Go on a girlfriend date.
Put up shelf in bathroom.
Use fake tan.

I was going to elaborate but I'm tired of this now. Also I have to go get something to annihilate this chin bump before our fancy date tonight. Also should probably wash some clothes. Also some body parts. Also have to pee.

I guess one problem might be olive oil on the keyboard.

Every single morning I bring my coffee outside so I can stare at the East River for six minutes. I always stand in the exact same place, next to the exact same tree. (In case you're a murderer and you're looking for me - hope that helps narrow down my whereabouts, friend!) Even when it's raining and I have to put my coffee down in order to hold an umbrella, this is one of the times of the day I like best. No one tells me to do it. No one's expecting me to be there. It's honestly the only time all day long that I am alone. And even then, I'm not truly alone - there's the odd dog walker, the odd taxi pulling up, the odd girl standing next to a tree in semi-darkness - you know. Sometimes during those six minutes I'll have a thought, and I'll think, I ought to write that thought down. But usually as soon as I get back inside the only thing I'm thinking about is what color eyeshadow I can rub on my eyelids (because SOMEONE'S boyfriend got her Naked 3, I mean really, how thoughtful, and how did he know, you would think she showed him a picture and specifically explained to his glazed-over face why these particular shades were so desirable to her and hinted aggressively or something, my gosh) before I start thinking about what I should make for breakfast (I've been defaulting to oatmeal, so you can also find me in the oatmeal aisle at the grocery store, murderer.) 

Last week, we ate seared tuna on a bed of greens with veggies and avocado and a homemade wasabi dipping sauce on the side - in bed, like adults. This is a metaphor for what my whole entire life is like. 

That dinner was actually, like… three weeks ago. This is an example of how distracted I am from and by everything.

i'm not going to make you stay

+ Occasionally when someone asks me why I like waking up so early, I'll say that it's because I like to beat everybody at something at least once a day. That is partly true. (Mostly it's because I hate being late and I also hate rushing, so unless I want to invite a total fucking meltdown into my life I need two and a half hours to ease into being a person.) Lately, I've been using that same logic to get myself to drink water as soon as I wake up. If I get the whole glass down, I feel like I won something. My prize is having to pee. I wish that "being hydrated" was motivation enough, but it really isn't.

+ I think I've been pretty transparent about how violently I vacillate between "being okay" and "being a fucking psycho" when it comes to my body and how I feel about it and how I take care of it. I'm proud of myself for eating better lately (and for me, "eating better" has a slightly more complicated meaning than just "more greens, less candy") but not proud at all of the damage I've done to my metabolism over the years, and even less proud of the shit I continue to do to it in spite of knowing way, way better. The past couple months have been ENORMOUSLY better for many reasons, mostly because I have the luxury of a regular sleep/meal schedule now. My boyfriend makes my lunches for me and 90% of the time we choose whole, fresh foods. At the same time, though, my activity level has plummeted - even though I walk to work - because I am no longer running up and down stairs/around in circles/on a proverbial hamster wheel twelve hours a day. That's huge, and its impact is extremely evident. Example: I spent Friday night at my mom's house so we could pack more of my stuff away because she thinks my bedroom there is like, part of her house or something. (I will be sixty years old and PISSED if I don't have a bedroom at my mother's house. Although I guess by then she'll be the one having a bedroom in my house. Whatever, I'm sure I'll have plenty of other things to be pissed about when I'm sixty. This is not a waste of parentheses.) ANYWAY one of the things she's using my room for now is for keeping a scale inside of, and I weighed myself for the first time in many many months. And I was NOT pleased. Luckily I'm in a place where it wasn't the end of the world, because like I said, I know I've been eating well. But then in a way, that makes me MORE frustrated because - I've been eating well! WHY, SCALE? Why. And the reason why is that my biology has whiplash and doesn't trust my brain. Moral of the story is that I brought home my sports bras and sneakers so I could put the huge park that some nice people built in my backyard to use. And the confession of the story is that I'm in a really weird in-between-y sort of place… with… that. ("Just like every blog you've ever 'written,' you mean?" said everybody.)

+ I peed on the floor at work. I wasn't overtired. I didn't have scotch for lunch. I just sat too far forward on the seat, and the next thing I knew there was pee on the floor.

+ I intentionally left "toilet" and "bathroom" out of that last confession so you would maybe imagine that I peed just, you know, on the floor in front of everybody.

+ There was a brief moment where I considered not cleaning it up - only one other girl works where I work, and where there's fifteen dudes and one bathroom there's bound to be some pee on the floor sometimes, right? But then I remembered about karma and also about hygiene and so I did clean it up.

If you're thinking that having a unisex bathroom in real life is anything like Ally McBeal, you're wrong. Dead wrong.

Thanks again to Becky for giving me a reason to blog, and for giving my boyfriend a reason to ask me what I'm doing on the computer for so long fifty times. 

I am watching Amber Portwood on Dr. Phil as I write these.

I have never thought about my nails more than I have in the past few weeks, and it's rubbing a little spot in my brain pretty raw. This is one of the only jobs I've ever had that doesn't at some point require handling some sort of soil, dead animal, or child-related substance (paste, poop, you know.) Plus my nail beds are on the deeper side so I can get away with keeping them short and still have something to polish when I feel like it. So this is the first time I've ever let them grow, and it is equal parts awesome and anxiety-provoking. They look so pretty IF I DO SAY SO MYSELF, but I had to figure out how to use a file because I'm not a damn Rockefeller and ten dollars a week (bonus baby confession: I overtip) for a manicure takes too much away from my Diet Coke and cigarettes fund. So the real confession here is that last night I legitimately almost cried over my fingernails. Luckily my boyfriend was there to talk me through it. By which I of course mean that he threatened to stop cooking dinner if I cried real tears over fingernails that there were ten of and that were not bleeding. 

My mom met me in the city on Saturday, and we spent the whole day taking selfies in Central Park. We briefly left the park to get lunch at Shake Shack because Shake Shack duh and also, I eat kale and beets all week so. This confession is sort of two parts. The first is that after I ate a milkshake and a cheeseburger and french fries with my mom, I met my boyfriend and his family for his dad's birthday dinner and ate ANOTHER burger for dinner. To be fair to myself, the burgers were made of different meats. And to be even more fair to myself, the Nutella-drenched belgian waffle I ate off a truck that same day had strawberries on it. So, nutrients. The second part of the confession is that whenever I go to Central Park I imagine myself into some fantastical scenario. Like, I'm traveling in time and have landed in Central Park. Or I'm filming a reality show. Or I'm in a Woody Allen movie. Or I'm a King. Or a celebrity trying to be under the radar. 

This picture isn't from this weekend, it's from like February, but look at the weird look on my face. In this picture, in my brain, I have just emerged from a wardrobe door into Central Park.

This picture IS from this weekend. It's my mom's butt. 

The last confession for this week is that I have been walking a couple of blocks out of my way on the way to work every morning in order to walk past a doughnut bakery. I'm not even that into doughnuts. I'm never like, "Oh man I could really go for a doughnut right now." Ever. But I literally followed the scent of doughnuts to this doughnut factory last week and now it's my routine. My daily doughnut sniffing. (The one where Jim leaves Michael at the gas station and Holly tracks him to the rooftop? Anyone?) 

Thank you to Becky for prompting me to blog, and therefore distracting me from obsessing over my nails. 

scissor me!

First let me address the cat, because otherwise you won't appreciate the depth/many layers of meaningful content that you've come to rely on finding when you do a Google search for "symptoms of DPD" and wind up here. You won't appreciate it because it's hard to appreciate things when you're busy thinking "It's so sad how she thinks she can paint cats but really she can't at all" or "That is revolting. Also offensive to cats everywhere."

I know it's a scary cat. And there was another creepy cat, and I paid a nice lady to paint them both on my fingers. Only, in my excitement re: Cats, I showed her several pictures in an effort to make it clear what I wanted. Because all of my efforts at clarity involve making things more complicated, re: Not Understanding What Clarity Is.  And that plus a slight language barrier plus I was paying more attention to the slightly snowy Asian-language soap opera on the TV equaled before I knew it, the nice lady had spent quite some time on those creepy cat eyes because that's what she thought I wanted. She was very unsure about the whole thing, I could tell. But I didn't want to make her do it over again, because meh, and so I gave the cats a day to get less creepy and when they didn't I put them to bed forever. That was two weeks ago, and my nails are even longer now because all of a sudden long nails are something I think I want, and I think I'm ready to try again.

I guess I'm not going to address much more than the cat after all.

It is nice to not be running on next to no sleep all the time, and it's even nicer to leave for work at a time that is not basically the middle of the night. The sleep factor alone has done so much to improve… like, everything. I've also been drinking more water (still not enough, but more than before, which was none, I was pretty much squeezing water OUT of my body, like a sponge that I was playing a rousing game of "HOW DRY CAN I MAKE THIS SPONGE BE?" with, how many more commas can I put in here, ,,,,,,) and eating a little cleaner, so those things are also contributing to my not being so completely wretched. I do not know how I did what I was doing for as long as I did it. I'm glad I did, but I'm glad I'm not doing it anymore.

I just realized that there were too many things I was putting on hold for the sake of getting other things done "first." And I thought, well, Future Lindsay might appreciate some of the things, but she'll be pretty pissed off if she misses out on EVERY SINGLE OTHER thing in the meantime. And then that bitch Future Lindsay will probably find some new thing she has to do "first" and that'll piss off Future FUTURE Lindsay. And it will never end. And it will be terrible.

As terrible as snow in April. (This picture was taken at the end of March, but I said "April" instead for dramatic effect, because New England/being a wuss.)

Yes, I want to fill a lot of hours with a lot of activities. But I also want to get dressed up and go out to dinner and not fall asleep in my plate. I want to go to happy hour sometimes, and not have to be tucked in at the bar because happy hour is actually my bedtime. I want Time Off, not Breathers Snatched. And I need to fill some hours with no activities.

My timeline for getting done the things I want to get did is MY timeline, and nobody is really measuring it except for me. And when I think about how consciously I've made decisions in order to preserve the relative freedoms I have, it seems FUCKING goddamn silly to not enjoy them. I have to admit that it's extremely difficult to put the brakes on so, uh, screechingly in areas where I've been steadily gaining so much momentum lately. And it's an adjustment to go from a workplace where I knew everything and was the most best at all of it to a place where I am new, and learning, and have room to grow. (There might have been some room to grow where I was before, but if there was I couldn't find it because I zZzzz.)

This seemed like a good place to put another picture. I'm thinking of doing a hair tutorial for how to make your hair look not like shit for work after 1743 failed hair tutorials. Anyway, so. Here's to not running yourself ragged for no good reason. Here's to remembering how important it is to listen to that little voice inside (be careful though, it might just be the creepy little cats on your nails - they have very similar voices.) Here's to knowing your own limits, and respecting yourself enough to honor them. Here's to measuring your life by your own yardstick (give everyone else their yardstick back, seriously.) Here's to framing your life however the hell you want to.

And here's to paying too much for drinks at clubs that won't even pony up for a real sign. Just kidding, do not cheers to that ever. Reverse cheers. Sreehc. But cheers to having the energy to go to them when your cute boyfriend wants to, even if you are only in it for the lollipops.

And speaking of, cheers to the life partners who are sometimes annoying but are most of the times busy making you elaborate dinners and lunches to take to work every day that make all your coworkers jealous but also make them fascinated at the seemingly endless supply of kale in your refrigerator. And other of the times they are just being cute and scratching your head until you go to sleep and writing you cute notes and having cute faces and toes. The life partners, not the coworkers. Sentence structure got a little weird there, thanks for sticking around.

Also, when did this turn into a toast? And why the transition from "here's" to "cheers"?

Anyway, I'd quit all the jobs and the schools and the cities in favor of wandering around for the rest of forever with you. Because even when I'm talking to somebody else, I'm still really talking to you.

MAYBE THERE COULD BE A PICTURE WITH BOTH OUR FACES IN IT IF YOU DIDN'T DELETE ALL OF THEM.