I'm going to call you Funny Bottoms from now on.

Buying new cleaning products is something that is now fun for me. Yesterday I was comparing the ingredients of two different cleansers and I realized that I was having a good time. Similarly fun purchases were: A new bath mat (because I got hair dye all over the old one and left it there anyway for weeks) and a new can opener. I can specifically remember a time in my life where I'd tell anyone who asked and a lot of people who didn't ask how appealing I found the idea of a transient lifestyle. And now look at me. Next I'll be building a very sanitary white picket fence around Diego and ironing his jean shorts. 

All this talk about cleaning products reminds me that I should really start actually cleaning something. I got up early specifically to get chores done in the morning, but I've already gotten distracted by this and I really feel like getting distracted by the Gilmore Girls for a while too. 

Have you seen Infinity Polar Bear? I went a few weeks ago and I really recommend it to everyone. Whether or not you've had a mentally ill parent, it's an extremely well-made film and definitely worth the hour and a half. (Plus, hi, Mark Ruffalo. No one needs a reason to see you.) There were times when everyone in the audience was laughing, and I felt like I'd been punched in the gut. There were other times when I'd laugh out loud into an otherwise silent theater. If you had or have a mentally ill parent it will make you feel a lot of things, is what I am saying. There were so many similarities to my own childhood that I have to admit I left the theater feeling a little bit fragile, but it was good. Since seeing this movie, I've also been thinking more about a conversation I had with a professor last semester about some pieces he suggested I consider developing more. So there's a little personal project in the back of my mind, and while I have to say that even toying with the idea of catharsis is exhausting, it's also one of those things where you're like "Yep, that is a thing that will definitely be happening and I know it in a tingly cosmic sort of way."

(Confessionlette: I am secretly worried that Becky won't do Sunday Confessions this week and my writing this in advance will be like showing up to a party that everyone else decided not to go to.) 

today our hearts won first prize

According to the zillions of HR articles in my inbox that I mostly ignore but find helpful to have handy in case I need something on my computer screen that looks important, one of the leading causes of dissatisfaction at work is a vague job description. As in, people just straight up do not know what their responsibilities are. It can lead to unhappiness, to poor performance, to termination.

Today I was talking to someone and I said, "I just wish I knew what I was supposed to do." I was referring to a relationship, not to my job, but of course relationships are work.

If you're lucky, relationships are the best kind of work. They're challenging and rewarding, they satisfy you and force you to grow. There are all different kinds, and compensation varies. Some come with amazing benefits packages. With others you get to travel a lot and there's a pool table in the break room and company-sponsored happy hours. There are temporary jobs. There are the shitty jobs that you hold onto for maybe too long. And then there's that one incredible job you had on the shore the summer after senior year, the one that so dramatically altered your life trajectory that you cannot imagine your life without having had it.

For me, relationships are hard work that I am sometimes good at when I apply myself but that I am very exhausted by. In many ways and for many reasons. So many ways and reasons.

Maybe I'm thinking about relationships a lot because an old friend is coming to visit and this particular friend is one I'm not always sure why I keep. And at the same time, is one I'm not always sure why I treat so poorly. Maybe it's because my mom and I are choosing the tattoo we're both going to get, which brings up some things. Maybe it's because in less than two weeks I'm leaving for my two-year-anniversary-BONANZA mini vacation with Diego. (This weekend we have no plans except to sit next to a pool for a little bit and go hard on Breaking Bad. I am SO EXCITED for a weekend of nothing. Italics and capitals do not come close to emphasizing how strongly I feel.)

Well THIS post sure started as an outlet for some backed-up pictures and wound up being something else entirely, now didn't it? BYE, FELICIA.

te amo a la luna

Sometimes side braids fall out and sometimes people watch you jumping around the tiny beach from the street for a long time before you notice that they're there and sometimes you spend four dollars on iced coffee at a farmer's market only to accidentally caffeinate the trees with it five minutes later. Why is spellcheck telling me that "caffeinate" isn't a word? Anyway, the thing is to wear the dresses you like even if they showcase your cankles. Now, spellcheck, I KNOW "cankles" is a word. I've known since the day I missed the ankle boat. Do you think I could ever forget standing on the shore in the rain, watching the people laughing and celebrating the delicate skinny parts of their legs as the boat sailed away from me forever? Do you?

Anyway the thing I like about this next picture is that it looks like a selfie but it isn't:

My hand was just on Diego's knee! Ha ha! Tricks! The reason I bring it up is because I'm thinking of starting a thing where instead of posting actual selfies, people post pictures that just look like they've taken them of themselves when really someone else did. FYI, I just deleted six or seven sentences wherein I elaborated excessively on this idea before realizing that maybe the computer screen is doing something to my brain because I got home from work today and decided it'd be a good time to edit all of the pictures. I didn't get very far. So instead of pictures of the Fourth of July fireworks I looked at on the Wednesday before July 4th, you can have this picture from this past Saturday morning where I think Diego looks like he's on a safari because of the temple in the background and the approaching-the-lion's-den-seriousness:

Although maybe it's less seriousness in the face of lions than it is thirstiness in the face of hotness.

He just brought me chili, so you can thank him later for ending whatever this is.

This afternoon I saw this. Today might be the day someone put it there, or today might be the day I noticed it was there. In any case - this afternoon, I saw this.

a lump in my throat cause you're gonna sing the words wrong

A list of all the places you've ever sat to think
Or sat and then thought, without having set out to.

Keep a record of every crescent moon you've pressed
into your own skin,

the baby teeth, the earring not lost,

Pretend you are a child. Explain
things to yourself so that later,
you can use it, so that later,
you can remember.

In a squashy brown recliner
with my brother. With my friend
from across the street
I'm not supposed to cross by myself,
on our knees, with our faces out the window,
with our elbows pressed
on the ancient iron radiator
on each other's.

In crayon, the grassy smell of a June afternoon
what sun smells like,
sweat and blood and bark.

Describe something else as "an afternoon in June."

we'll stay forever this way

I can't stop buying $1.99 ebooks. Right now I'm reading one about the Titanic. The story itself is kind of forced, ditto with the writing, but it has its moments and obviously I've been crying through the whole thing because we all know what happens at the end. 

On Friday night we went to happy hour in the village, at this little tapas place we like that has cheap-o buckets of beer and tiny Spanish sandwiches and tables outside, AKA everything I want after work on a Friday. While Diego went to fetch our bucket, I looked at the TV for a while and to my elation I saw John Stamos selling, like, cologne or something. I don't know. Then one of the girls at the table next to mine said, "He's kind of cute for an old guy" and it took everything in me not to march up to her and say "That is UNCLE JESSE and you will HAVE SOME RESPECT." What happy hour really means to me, I guess, is a cocktail and back-to-back episodes of Full House.

I'm not always sure when to use "were" vs when to use "was." 

I stopped writing this to go see Jurassic World. I forgot it's Father's Day, so I wasn't prepared for the nine hundred people celebrating fatherly love by watching dinosaurs tear shit up. What I was prepared for was a two-hour long commercial since all I'd heard about this movie was that it was basically one big product placement with some dinosaurs stuck in every once in a while. I have to say, I didn't think it was that bad. YouTube beauty videos are absolutely a million times worse. Now turn off your computers and go enjoy a cold, refreshing Coke! 

Go read more secrets.

to gather flowers constantly and come each time you call

As soon as I started typing this, I turned to look out the big open garage door that's attached to my "office" and made direct eye contact with two men sitting on the sidewalk across the street.

Stop. Off to a terrible start already. First of all, how can a person make direct eye contact with two other people at the same time? They can't. (I think, isn't it, you can only actually look a person in one of their eyes at a time? Or if you're me, none of their eyes at a time because intimacy makes you feel like you can't breathe? I'm pretty sure that's how it goes.) Second: I am sitting almost in the BACK of my building, looking THROUGH a garage and ACROSS the street. I have to squint to see what time it is on the giant clock across the room, and I think I can see eyeballs forty yards away? Really? Because that's like saying I can gauge distance off the top of my head, as if I can throw out measurements like "forty yards" and be anywhere close to resembling something that possibly might be kind of accurate.

Blogging at work is hard because sometimes you take three hour breaks to, you know, work. And you forget what you were on about. (By "work" I of course mean balancing Quickbooks whilst wiping away the occasional Joan Baez-induced tear.)

It turns out that those two guys just like to eat lunch on the sidewalk, but it was still kind of alarming. It really looked like they were intently watching me, and that's not just my post-adolescent imaginary audience talking. My saying out loud to my coworkers, "Are those guys watching us?" surprisingly did not prompt any gentle accusations of paranoia but did lead to one of my coworkers demonstrating how folks in some Asian countries use the bathroom.

SUNDAY CONFESSIONS, THE WEDNESDAY EDITION:

On our way out a couple weekends ago, I picked up a bottle of nail polish remover for some stupid reason and realized it was leaking. Probably because of all the heavy objects I'd piled on top of the basket where I "organize" my nail polish accoutrements. Anyway, we were sort of in a rush because we were going to the Barcelona vs Juventus game and I wanted to get there eighteen hours early as usual so I could get a seat/a beer/a grilled cheese or two before it started. (If I HAVE to watch sports, it had better be soccer and it had better be in a softly lit room with access to beer and grilled cheese and a chair. Make note.) I performed a vague groping in the general area surrounding where the bottle had been lying to make sure none of my precious things had been soaked in acetone (my dirty sweatshirts and souvenir stuffed animals were safe, thanks for asking) and then dropped the bottle in the kitchen sink on our way out the door. Okay, NOW here's the confession part: That thing stayed there for the rest of the weekend. Two days. Days during which I cooked two breakfasts and washed several rounds of dishes, all while working around the bottle. The thought to do something with it did not cross my mind once. I just accepted it as part of the landscape of the sink. And now here's the other confession part: On Monday night, when Diego was cooking dinner, he dumped the rest of the nail polish remover out and threw away the bottle. When he stuck his head into our bedroom to tell me, I was a little bit annoyed for a second. Because how DARE he remove what was essentially a bottle of poison for which I had zero plans from an area in which we prepare food. The fucking nerve, right?

Speaking of Diego, we were laying in bed together on some night in the past few weeks and he plucked a couple of longish hairs from the area just under my belly button. At first I was like, "Hey, ahh, no" but then I thought, "Maybe if I lay here long enough he'll paint my toenails and shave my legs for me, too." CONFESSION: There were more than "a couple" hairs. Salon, shmalon.

Classical music in concert is boring. We went to Vivaldi's "Requiem" at Carnegie Hall a few Sunday nights ago and it was fun for about the first hour. We filled our pockets with the complimentary cough drops (acoustics, bro) and felt cultured and people watched. And then we learned how long ninety minutes can really feel, especially when songs are in Latin. We were also overstuffed with meat from one of those Brazilian places with the red and green blocks AND coming down from Electric Daisy Carnival the day before, so. I never thought I'd say a parking lot in New Jersey was more fun than Carnegie Hall, but here it is. I think Diego preferred Requiem to when we went to see The Glass Menagerie at Player's Theater, though, based on the fact that at the end of that performance he said "THAT'S IT?" All caps, because Hispanic. Don't worry, everyone heard him. (Although, to be fair, I always have thought the ending kind of sucks. I'll marry you, Laura.) This weekend we're going mini golfing if I have anything to do with it.

OH! I just reminded myself that this past weekend, I was at my mom's house watching the entire third season of Orange is the New Black. We realized it was a beautiful weekend, though, and decided that we should spend at least some of it outside instead of holed up with Pennsatucky. So we moved the TV out to the deck. Problem solved, plus it sort of counts as a confession. (Um, anyone else finished and ready to discuss? Personally I thought the second season was better but I did love all the backstory in this one. Also, raise your hand if you still care about Piper. No hands? THOUGHT SO. )

Sorry the pictures have nothing to do with anything, these are the only ones I have access to right now.

Also, sorry for all the references to "SEVENTEEN SUNDAYS AGO" and "A FORTNIGHT FROM THE SECOND TUESDAY IN NOVEMBER 1813." It's been a while. Becky, sorry for ruining your linkup. I hope we can get past this. Also, sorry about that one time in third grade I wrote that girl a note that said I'd be her "secret friend." It's been on my mind lately. I feel bad.