because talking about food never gets boring at all, or: what i learned from the woman who only eats potatoes

One day last week I came home to find this at my door:

I used all the air in my lungs to hiss “THE DEVIL WAS HERE” and then fell over. Then I got up and ate a bagel at 10PM – which turned out to be the top of a slippery, chubby slope that I did not see the bottom of until yesterday. Approximately yesterday.

Ignoring the candy bowl behind me SO HARD. 

Almost entirely by virtue of the fact that cereal is my preferred choice of meal, I don’t generally eat a lot of meat. Over the past few years, for some reason, I started to sometimes get super grossed out while eating it. Plus, twice after eating some sort of beef I had stomach cramps that lasted for days and were so bad that I couldn’t make myself eat anything. (Peppermint pills helped a little bit, if you too are feeling crampy and sad! Also if you drop them into a pot of boiling water you can pretend you’re at a spa before you rip blackheads out of your face with a two-dollar mask from Korea. I don’t actually know if either of those things are good ideas, actually. But I’m not dead. So.)

Anyway since I already don’t eat much meat, I’ve recently been thinking, why not eat no meat at all? So that’s what I’ve been doing over the past few days, and I’m thinking about eventually working my way up to full-on plant-based. The fact that I decided to start this now, after a week of eating all of everything (though I did manage to eat a cuisine from almost all of the continents, and also supported local businesses, so I’m basically a hero), speaks loudly to the fact that my relationship with food and what it does to my body still isn’t exactly a well-oiled machine. So I have to take eensy weensy baby steps in order to have plenty of time and opportunity for check-ins with myself. “Self,” I will say, “You are making decisions in the interest of being kind to us, right? And not in the interest of starving off your fluffy parts? They’re some of your most fun parts, remember that.”

"Heavily filtered photo" is my preferred choice of diet.

THIS week it’s been 80 degrees every day so naturally I wore my new sweater to work and then came home and cooked “healthy vegetarian fall things” that I got off Pinterest. Sweet potato crock pot chili? My lazy, grotesque-looking version of eggplant lasagna? Using all of the hot appliances my baby kitchen has to offer? Check check check. That was two nights ago, and the chili is aging BEAUTIFULLY. Like an angel. Like a Chilean angel. For those of you who are wondering, the secret ingredient is to set your alarm for 1:30AM so you can get up and turn off the crock pot you intelligently turned on at 8PM AND THEN when you hear that alarm, wake up just enough to swipe at your boyfriend’s head until he gets up and turns it off. He probably has to pee, anyway. You’re doing everyone so many favors.

Well, okay! This post has both maintained the historical ratio of FOOD STUFF to OTHER STUFF posts on this blog, AND saved my face from use-tax-and-Quickbooks-related fingernail gashes. When should I monetize this baby? Yesterday right?

some disjointed thoughts about catcalling, though I don't think that phrasing is very cat-centric

Over the summer I was leaving a corner store when a very young man almost ran into me on his bike. He stopped short, and we looked at each other for a very brief moment while my heart worked its way back down my esophagus and he (probably) assessed my in-one-piece-ness and whether or not I was going to yell at him. As he biked away, he called out his apology (which I believed and believe was sincere since I generally operate under the assumption that people do not leave their homes in the morning with the intention of mowing me over on the sidewalk) and then: “That’s a great dress!” It was a great dress. Is. I did a good job picking it.

Same street, further down. There is a woman I see sometimes as I surface from the train at 116th. She is, in a word, magnificent. She looks like someone painted her. I don’t know a way to keep describing what she looks like without being reductive, but the thing that most people would probably notice first is the expanse of her hips – it is a great expanse. The first time I saw her, something audible tried to get between my teeth.

“You could fall empires,” I wanted to whisper.
“The tides, they search for you.”

But I didn’t, because I’m not a fucking asshole. So I understand the impulse, when faced with the female form, to voice awe. I also understand, though, that I do not have the right to insert myself into her day by commenting on her physicality. I do not assume that her presence in front of me is a question I need to answer. She does not need or want my validation, and she is certainly not asking for approval by walking by me. She doesn’t have to smile because I think she’d look prettier if she did. She doesn’t have to acknowledge me at all. She doesn’t owe me one single thing. Nothing.

I also understand - it is not about awe.
You feel powerless, inadequate. I understand. But you're wrong.

The only thing worth saying out loud about what's in this picture is how much stuff is on the floor.
We are slow-at-furniture-buying humans. Okay?

Same street, still. Outside the cute bakery. I’m listening to voicemail (who leaves voicemail? I hate it so much) and weaving through the slower-moving of humans on the street when I hear someone call me a “big-legged white girl” and loudly wonder what my name is. He stops on the sidewalk and turns to watch me walk away, which I know because I gave him this look:

And then kept walking, phone still attached to my head.

My thoughts are that, they are that “I like your dress” is not “I want to ___ all your ___, *****!” I think of the grays in between, the insidiousness, the overtness, the anger. It’s easier for me to hear about having my “___ ____” than it is to have the word “big” applied to any part of my body, because the former I can easily identify as violence and the latter directs my analysis to myself. There are compliments (which actually belong in a place nowhere near or touching this conversation), and there is aggression, and there is the inability to differentiate between the two, and there is violence and assertion of power and there are many many well-written articles that are written about male gaze and rape culture that articulate the thousand years of oppressions that have led us to today.

This, obviously, is not one of them. But it's what I'm thinking about while I should be answering emails. So, do me a favor and pretend you emailed me and this whole thing was me answering you.

I think when you are truly stuck, 

when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, 

you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were standing in, 

and jump, and pray. 

It is the momentum of last resort. 

RENATA ADLER, SPEEDBOAT

I went to sleep half-listening to the debate last night, less because I’m a responsibly engaged adult citizen and more because Diego was watching it next to me and I had no choice. Honest to God I’m building a wall in our bed, and he’s paying for it. Make bedtime great again. Other terrible, half-hearted joke. My heart is too heavy, and my brain still hasn’t wrapped itself around the fact that this whole situation is something it needs to take seriously.

Not to make light of something that is actually horrifying, but this whole election reminds me of that one friend we all have who can’t tell when the joke’s over and ruins it for everybody. Except that instead of everybody rolling their eyes or changing the subject or saying SHUT UP DEREK, some people think Derek should drive us all home. Even though Derek is clearly hammered.


I got to fall asleep between clean sheets in a home that no one is bombing. I am trying not to take things for granted.

Pictured:
- Date night, we’re gross (but you get to see the Beverly Marsh sink, sooo)
- The candles I’m burning to make room for a new batch that should arrive tomorrow by the grace of UPS (there was a sale! I had a coupon! I am le weak!)
- Tom Wolfe keeping me company while I washed my socks on Saturday morning
- American Horror Story Coven, because it’s Halloween (I know I’m late to every show but I had to nope out of the first episode of the second season like eight times before I remembered that it’s okay to skip things if they’re terrible – NO IT STILL FEELS WEIRD PLEASE ASSURE ME THAT I’M NOT MISSING SUBTLE PLOT POINTS BECAUSE I DIDN’T WATCH THE SECOND SEASON GAH.) I like it embarrassingly a lot. It’s like when I first read Harry Potter and wished so hard that Hogwarts was real, except that now I just wish I could pull off that one witch’s red hair. Also though I’d like to live in the woods by myself and listen to Stevie Nicks all day so I guess I’d take her hair, too. Ugh. Witches. Living the life.
- The outfit I picked out but wore only to the bodegs because it was raining and pizza delivery is an option and lately I am very into cancelling plans if I didn’t buy tickets for them because we have some busy weekends coming up and then it will be The Holidays and so I will take any opportunity I can to be the bottom of a blanket pile, thanks very much.

There were three, I think. Perhaps a fourth escapes me. 

A hallway built through them, like a needle stuck straight through. 

The giant’s hands at work. 

Yes, maybe. I don’t know.

It ran right through. It made bridges between them, and under the bridges and along the sides were empty lots that filled up by mid-morning. More would come, the lots spilled over, the excess a slow circle back into itself.

The piercing was the common thing. The structures stood without regard to the other. Other than the piercing, and the movement.

I’ve been where you are. I can tell you some things.

Like,

On a certain floor on a certain day, separate yourself from the current. The door under the north staircase opens into a concrete courtyard, suspended below one parking lot and above another, concrete steps in a double helix through the center. Sit down on a step. Light a cigarette. The step will be cold.

There’s a photograph on each step. Her hair, when she appears, isn’t quite the same.

It’s close enough. Until it isn’t.

Don’t stay outside too long.

I CONFESS: it's tuesday

I’ve been listening to Christmas music since the end of August. Part of me is afraid I’m going to burn out by the time Christmas actually gets here, but the other part of me just wants to start lighting the Christmas candles I’ve been hoarding since last year. And the pro-Christmas part of me is bigger because it eats more cookies, so guess who wins. Also, if I were the sort of person who could use the word “juxtaposition” without sounding dumb, I would tell you that I’m quite enjoying the juxtaposition of my morning commute from Queens to Harlem against the tune of “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” (see: Children laughing, people pushing each other over to get a spot on the first M60 that comes even though everybody knows another one is thirty seconds away, children laughing some more and grinding potato chips into the floor with the toes of their light-up sneakers).

Don’t worry though, I’m not trying to skip fall. I sat near some hay bales outside Gansevoort Market the other day:

Now all I want to do is go to an orchard and pick things and drink cider, even though I know it’ll either be too cold or too hot for my liking and then I’ll complain about how heavy the pumpkin is and how it got dirt on my coat. It’ll still be fun though. I’m so fun!

The gym I “go” to was merged with one of its sister locations two blocks away. So now that it’s not directly across the street from my bus stop, which I need not point out is the greatest burden to ever be endured by mankind, I am feeling extra smug and accomplished about actually going. I confess, though, that I still wouldn’t have known the stupid gym had moved if Diego hadn’t gotten out of work early last night and picked me up so we could go together. (Monster. Actual monster.) Because if we hadn’t gone together I wouldn’t have gone at all. As it was, all I did was run a half-hearted mile and then walk on a .00001 incline while watching thirty minutes’ worth of Amberlynn Reid’s Youtube videos. (SUCH A COMPELLING CHARACTER.) See, the issue I have with working out is that once you start you do not immediately fit into size-two bikini bottoms. Which is enough of an issue for me that I don’t want to bother with it at all. Me and my pajamajeans are doing just fine without you, abs. Wherever you are. 

I can’t remember how many days it’s been since I washed my hair. 

I wrote most of this at work today. It’s amazing how much less time everything takes when someone isn’t making a series of increasingly-uncomfortable-to-listen-to personal phone calls at the desk behind you, or forcing you to mentally construct a detailed plan to launch yourself into the sun because they won’t stop tapping their desk and sighing or typing aggressively loudly (the reason their fingers are free for all this noise-making is because they are making the personal phone calls on a hands-free device, so don’t worry, at least they don’t look as douche-y as they’re acting. Don’t. Worry.)

c u r r e n t l y

Wanting to tell you that if you think my eyebrows are bad in the above selfie that I have shared apropos of nothing, you should see them now. I took that picture two weeks ago and have groomed them zero times. They're getting to a point where I sort of admire their audacity. That they're at a point where they can accurately be described as audacious and that I spent a full minute in the bathroom mirror at work today in actual awe of the way so many hairs grow a centimeter away from any spaces where it would be helpful for them to grow - that, friends, speaks to something. It does. I've just lost track of what since I started to tell you about it. 

Reading the piles and piles of forty-eight cent books I've accumulated from The Strand since Diego started working near there. Or trying to. I keep just re-reading books I've already read, like, I visited my mom recently:

and grabbed a Chuck Palahniuk I forgot I had there off the shelf and read it again. (Speaking of whom, she keeps saying things like, "Maybe one weekend we'll drive some boxes of your stuff to your apartment!" which I feel like is rude because I don't see what's wrong with my plan of just taking one book home every time I visit for the next forty years. It's cool though. I thought you loved seeing me, Mom, but it's cool. Message received.) Or I'm carefully sifting through the duct-taped pages of Margaret Atwoods that have somehow survived a decade's worth of beatings via the inside of a series of tote bags. Or I'm being salty that I let a friend borrow my copy of Down and Out in Paris and London a few years ago and haven't gotten it back yet because I REALLY WANT TO READ IT FOR THE TENTH TIME. THE TENTH TIME IS THE BEST TIME EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT.

Anyway, so, Reading something by Alice Hoffman that I forgot the name of because it's all the way in the other room. Illumination Night! So far a lady has jumped out of a window. But something about Alice Hoffman stories make me feel all autumn-y inside so I feel like I'll probably finish this one tonight provided I ever finish telling you about all of the things that are current.

Watching myself type this, obviously. But Alice Hoffman reminded me of Practical Magic (which is on Netflix now!!) which reminded me of the last movie I watched which was Face Off which is my favorite movie of all time since I watched it on Sunday night.  I saw it when it came out on VHS, but most of the time if a movie like that was on I was watching it with my brother and my mom's BFF's two sons. Which meant that what I was really doing was reading a book and/or writing in my diary with gel pen about the wretchedness of being surrounded by boys, while in front of the television three or more male children hopped around excitedly shouting "THIS IS MY FAVORITE PART! READY? READY? WATCH! THIS IS THE BEST PART!" So on Sunday when Adult Lindsay watched Face Off, she realized that it has everything she's ever wanted in a Lifetime movie PLUS Nicholas Cage's facial expressions.

Planning to count how many times I've said "which" since I started this. Seems like a lot of times. Whiches, witches, Halloween! Costumes! Planning costumes. I'm so good at this. I accidentally already picked mine while trying to get ready a few weeks ago:

If I can get Diego to be Rizzo I'm going as Sandy. You're the one that I love most, plastic shiny pants I bought online for reasons I cannot recall or comprehend. 

Anticipating:

And, like, I don't know, carving jack-o-lanterns and picking apples and stuff. But mostly the five-dollar box of commercials and tiny shampoos. 

“Our grand tapestry depicts the handwritten poem ‘Le Temps a Laissé Son Manteau,’ expertly printed on canvas.”

“Borrowing the intricate rococo flourish from an antique mirror, this grand pinboard elegantly frames a rotating display of photos, notes and treasured mementos.”

Who are these infants who have treasured mementos to display on thousand dollar pinboards whilst I, an adult lady, is scouring Amazon for the best deal on chalk so I can write YOU’RE OUT OF COFFEE JERKS on the square of chalkboard paint the tenants before us put there (and by “put” I mean “spun around in a circle with their eyes closed while holding a wet paintbrush, stumbling toward whatever wall they happened to be facing, and then moving the paintbrush-wielding arm in a rough approximation of a rectangle”)?  A “distressed canvas play tent” for three hundred dollars? THAT IS A TEEPEE. And for three hundred dollars I hope it comes with a bedtime story about how all the real teepees were burned down. Or ruined with scalp blood. Or however history went, I don’t know, I just feel like little Harlow or Max or whoever ought to know that there used to be zero dollar teepees to play in before SOMEBODY rubbed smallpox on everything.

I was waiting in line to give the nice admissions people at the MoNH laughably, laughably less than the suggested admission the other day when the mom standing behind me with her child spotted an outlet in a far corner. The speed and force at which she sent that kid toward that corner was such that I honestly, honestly thought that she could see the Virgin Mother floating above it. It was truly as though we were twelve weeks into an Odysseyen trek toward a tree bed and that outlet was a sexy, sexy siren. And then when the outlet didn't work - my brothers and sisters, I kid thee not when I tell you: There was actual anguish on the mother's face. Real, unadulterated anguish. Anyway it's moments like that I try to keep in mind when it feels like everyone has more money than me for distressed toy boxes full of iPads for each of their five kids' separate bedrooms in the apartments that they are somehow owners of while I live in near-constant fear that my converted-from-a-boarding-house one-bedroom over the bridge will be taken away from me because why would I be allowed to stay somewhere I love so much?

("Oh, that Lindsay. She really flew too close to the sun with her middling admin job and those windows that don't fit any of the standard-sized curtains sold in the tri-state area. She should have known it was all too good to be true when the desk people at Urgent Care were shocked into whispered conversations by how high her copay was. It was only a matter of time before the universe said it was just kidding and set everything on fire and exposed how terrible everything actually was supposed to be. She was 100% right to be so constantly worried.")

Someday soon I ought to actually read one of those emails from the cringe-y rotund woman at work about 401Ks, and perhaps funnel some of my amazon-cat-art-and-cigarette money into one. Someday less soon I would like to make a tiny Mexican-Lindsay hybrid. I'll keep it away from outlets as a general rule, I think, at least for a while, but I might distress a dresser drawer or two. For now though, what I want is to sit by this open window and watch the people walk by and listen to Nick Drake for as many hours as I want to, because nobody needs me to wipe their butt just yet.