State of the Union
Sunday August 14th, 2016
AC (Year of our Lord, the Air Conditioner)

After venturing out this morning to eat eggs Benedict (hold most of the Benedict) and procure dead sea creatures from the locals, I am able to report that today, friends, is slightly less revolting than yesterday. The internet is back on at Casa de la Floja, which is excellent news for everyone because not having it for one day drove us to DIY a projector for our iPhones. (Pictured: One roll of masking tape. Here's a tutorial on how to enjoy the luxury of the internet on a screen bigger than your hand even when it's 1000 degrees out: Don't have Time Warner.) We actually DI well enough to get through about fourteen minutes of Armageddon, which I for one will be carefully noting down in my Notebook of Feats. There's some room left on the page where I wrote down how we made it the 1/4 of a block to the laundromat without shriveling. We (Diego) had a list of fun musical/boozey dancey things we'd planned on doing yesterday but though our (Diego's) spirits were willing, our (my) flesh was unwilling to be burned to death.

It's been approximately two months since we moved in to our new apartment, and what we lack in kitchen tables we've been making up for in scented candles and impromptu anniversary bus trips. Somehow, most of the photos I took of that particular weekend came out looking like this:

I can neither explain nor understand, so I'll just glean from whatever photos Diego has when I eventually begin work on the scrapbook that exists only in my mind.

What else. I guess I thought, when I initially set out on this reporting of the state of things, that I could briefly discuss a few different areas of le life and in that way sort of ease back into writing here more frequently. What a stupid thought, you're thinking. Or not thinking, because you're not reading this, because why would you? I wouldn't. I wouldn't be caught dead.

The way to do anything is just to do the thing. So that's what I'll do. Also, if that's what I decide it means that I can be done with this for now (I don't know if you could tell, but I grew weary of this almost immediately. Sorry if you could, I did my best to hide it) and go back to watching The Office for the thirtieth time while my handsome boyfriend sings to himself in the kitchen (where he belongs.) (Also he's barefoot.) (#feminism)

(He's cooking in there. He's not just, like, standing in there singing quietly. I don't think.)

I’ve dipped the ends in tea, she grinned. In tea.

They don’t belong there but it doesn’t matter.

do you remember sleeping here because i don’t

Go early (there’s a man on the corner selling glass bottles shaped like seashells, like hips spread for childbearing, you’ll want to stop there for a minute but try not to look at his hands) so you can get a seat (jewel tones lined up on the alchemist’s counter, don’t say ‘glinting’ because that’s too easy find another way to describe the wanderings of light) should your legs fail you.

Sadly, she continues, this is not a madness that allows for the sinking of bones

or teeth, for that matter.

where the land dipped so steeply that the grass grew in loops, purple half-circles in search of light
splinters spread on the lawn in an exquisite accident

Lace curtains and leaves, or your spread fingers. I never did see your face.

Except that some years feel like they don’t belong in my brainholes. These are someone else’s years, I think. They are a slightly different color, the others around them notice something alien and shift restlessly, like horses, like when you hand a new mother an infant that isn’t hers and say “It is. It is yours. You did this.”

You know that feeling you get when you're trying to get ten things done at one time but the one time isn't as big as it needs to be and you can't fit the ten things into it and while you're trying to figure out how to trick physics and wishing you'd paid attention that other one time before when your dad explained string theory to you because you really feel like it'd somehow be useful right about now because string theory is probably definitely something you are capable of manipulating even though you're finding it challenging to get did these ten things you actually do understand, and then the phone rings and as soon as you pick it up somebody walks into the room and starts talking to your face like you aren't holding a phone to it and the ten things are still saying HEY DID YOU FORGET ABOUT ME? BECAUSE, DON'T! 

And the whole time there's a quiet part of your brain trying to remember what it is you were really doing?

Because, me too. 

On the left, Elphaba had a baby with Legolas. On the right, I saw the whole thing and my hair fell off.

LINDSAY. THIS WEEK. FOR REAL:

- Write something every day.

- Don't eat like an asshole. Water is not just for washing your hair.

- WASH YOUR HAIR.

- Go to the gym. Planet Fitness is doing just fine without your monthly donations.

- Call/text/smoke signal back all of the people. You're the worst person anyone's ever met. Knock it off.

- Practice farting on command so that the next time you're walking down 116th and a man says, "MM, no makeup on and you're still beautiful" even though you have a full face of makeup on and then when you don't say anything because you are puzzled and also because you can't be bothered to teach manners to every last human you encounter he says "YOU'RE WELCOME," you can fart super, super loud. Seriously. Practice. Because next week we learn explosive diarrhea on command. 

- Stop writing fart things on your blog. 

- Make lists of things you are happy about three times a day, every day, because someone in a book told you it was a smart way to trick your brain into being less wretched and stop it from projecting your wahh stuff onto everyone around you (except for the men shouting at you on the street, because if you've been paying attention, you'll know that we'll be projecting bodily functions at them) and maybe turn down the "High Alert, Everything Is A Threat!" part of it. This is an important thing, Lindsay, so please - if you don't do any of the other things, at least do this one. Or else you'll end up like these people:

These are comments on a button that you push that causes a man to arrive at your door with the thing that you've run out of. A MAGIC BUTTON. The second comment is the reward you get for reading the whole first comment without pressing a "BLOW EVERYBODY UP BECAUSE NOTHING MEANS ANYTHING" button. 

- Okay, how about, for every ten posts you write you can write one with farts in it.

- Remove the bags of clothes that you spring-cleaned today from your living space. That's it. That should be an easy one, okay? An entire week to take two bags of clothes down one street. Even you can handle that one. 

Okay Monday. Oh. Kay.

TWO SECONDS LATER EDIT (I FORGOT ONE THING):

Right at this moment there is a middle-aged woman of indeterminate (to me) Hispanic descent banging on the door of the apartment next door. There's a kid with her, and they've been at it for a good fifteen minutes. By "been at it" I mean the banging. Oh. That clarification made it worse. You're gross. This is your fault. Anyway I'm not sure whether to Google translate, "OBVIOUSLY NO ONE IS HOME BYE" and go read it to them or to be a kind person and offer to help if that's what they need. The problem is that I suspect that "helping" might mean babysitting the kid until whoever is obviously not home shows up and I have no way of knowing when that might be and I'm pretty sure the kid is the same one I caught peeking in the window a few months ago. I'm trying to stay away from dark thoughts about dead neighbors on the other side of my wall but it's really, really difficult.

The other thing that's been difficult for the last couple of months has been Every thing. Or, not difficult, but just. Meh. Like, I was going to do a face mask earlier and I thought: "Ugh, though. I have to put it on. And then I have to take it off." So I didn't do a face mask, I played a knockoff Pokemon game for three hours instead. And that's pretty much been the theme of Being Lindsay lately, and it sucks. Sometimes I just suck. 

But I did get the laundry done, and also I colored my hair. So I guess that's been the theme of Being Lindsay lately, long periods of demotivation sprinkled with some good things. Like, for example, my new job is pretty great. I like it. And I finally bought and built a shelf, so now the enormous pile of life debris that used to live in the corner is... um, on a shelf. So that's good. But I feel like tiny little baby steps such as finally getting rid of the two bags of clothes I decided to donate weeks ago shouldn't be the main things I'm accomplishing. I feel like those things should be a given. And then the Real things I have to do have somehow all lumped themselves together into one giant thing that I can't bring myself to touch. 

I'm so annoyed at how it sounds to try and articulate my blah, because I'm so lucky. Every time I walk down the street with bags of groceries I feel incredibly privileged, you know? I have the means to nourish myself. And actually, just as I wrote that I decided that will be my mantra as I attempt to break apart the giant scary lump and deal with things one at a time: I have the means to nourish myself. 

In other news, the weird weather graced us with another beautiful weekend and we thoroughly enjoyed it while suppressing nervous thoughts about sweaty polar bears. After work on Friday I did some aimless wandering around several retail establishments, none of which made any money off of me. When Diego got out of work we ate falafel at a place that was new to me and then went and saw "Room," which was excellent and I highly recommend. It did take me twenty minutes to place the actress who played Jack's mom (the daughter from United States of Tara) because I can almost never remember actresses or which bands sing what songs and am generally uncool about most things, so it's possible that the plot took some wild turn while I was distracted but otherwise the filmmakers followed the book and it was really, really well done. On Saturday we went to the park, and got legitimately hot while we were there. We looked at the new sculptures, I pretended to try to interpret them, and then we looked at the water for a long time. THEN we went for sangria and tapas at an adorable tiny Spanish place by the train whose one bad review on Yelp said "Worst Mexican food I ever ate."

Guys, sorry, I'm just nervously typing because the people are still out there banging. I think I heard my landlord's voice, though, and Diego's on his way home. So don't worry, there are actual adults involved just in case something is going on that requires such people. You know, people who don't consider having clean clothes and hair that is a different color than it was when she woke up to be a fully productive day because if she thinks about the Actual Things she has to do she thinks she might throw up.

Monday Confession because I didn't write Sunday Confessions yesterday: On Saturday we had brunch with a friend of Diego's that I've never met before and I said, quote, even though I don't need to write "quote" because you'll already know that it's something I said because 1) I just wrote "I said," and 2) You are not blind (I don't think) and will be able to clearly see the quotation marks I'm going to put around the thing that I said - here, I have to interrupt myself interrupting myself to say that I went all the way back to the beginning of this sentence and read it all the way back to that last part where I said, "to put around the thing that I said," and I realized that you might be confused and think that all of this is what I said. It isn't. I got carried away because I really just wanted you to know that the thing I'm about to tell you I said is exactly what I said, word for word. I suppose I could delete all of this and just use the word "verbatim" instead. But that isn't very much fun. 

This is what I said (and also, just to remind you in case you forgot because it's been a while since we started, this is the confession part of this Monday Confession): "I'm not HUNGOVER. I'm just sick because I drank too much yesterday." Which I'm sure a very many people have said in like, a funny joking sort of way? You know? But I said it as like, a real argument. And I said it in the voice of a petulant child. An irritated, hungover child. 

Hm. That sort of makes it sound like I was an unhappy camper at brunch, and I wasn't. It was quite nice, I had eggs on a biscuit. I'll show you a picture sometime. 

Today I started my new job and everybody is very nice. Also, I got to read a lot of interesting things and I'm going to share one of my favorite ones here because while I'd really like to write down some of the more poem-y things inside my head I just don't have the brainergy (brain energy) at this very moment in time. Or for the last long bunch of moments in time, yes, I know, it's on my list of things to Be Better About. Also I have to make grilled cheese sandwiches in a few minutes because when you let me pick dinner I pick grilled cheese EVERY TIME. Almost every time. Sometimes I pick pierogies. SPELLCHECK, LEARN POLISH. You're a disappointment to your father. 

Anyway here is the thing (photos link back to their sources): 

Google "The Deep Dark, Garrett and Brown" and read about it because I'm out of those things that you use to describe other things with.