wherein i tell you about the last three books i read because math gives me a headache and i want to go home and i also am still recovering from an emotional hangover mehrr

You probably can’t tell, but I stuck these tile stickers to the floor myself. Yeah, really! That’s why it looks so professional. Want me to come do yours? 

“Hillbilly Elegy” by J.D. Vance

Mm, okay. Didn’t actually finish this one. OFF TO A GREAT START. Fun fact, I only realized that this book was A Thing when I stopped reading it to google a picture of the face of the man who was boring me to death. The only reason I bought it is because I thought it was going to be a memoir a la “The Glass Castle” and it is not. It is not so hard. Supposedly what it is is this great explanation about why poor people in the middle of the country voted Trump, and like, first of all, I don’t need an explanation about why ANYONE voted Trump because I’ve had a uterus for almost thirty years now and I have to go outside with it, like, ALL the time. So, okay, my point is not WOE IS ME AND MY VAGINA because you’ve never seen a happier pair of clams than me and my vagina (lol vagina jokes). My point is that if I had known that this book was going to basically be this guy yarning on about “personal responsibility” and how people on welfare shouldn’t buy cell phones while making NARY A PEEP about the shit the richest people in the world buy (WARS), then I would have spent my $12.95 or however much it was on yarn instead. (More yarn, I mean. I was feeling spendy that day.) Next.

“The Practice House” by Laura McNeal

This one I chose because I thought it was going to be about polygamists. (Note to self: Read book descriptions more carefully, and maybe disable Amazon one-click.) However, even though it turned out to only have monogamous Mormons and even though THEY were only in it for like twenty pages – I enjoyed this one a lot. There’s a dusty schoolhouse. There’s betrayal. There’s smooching. Eventually there’s a dirty old man, and juuust enough consumption (nothing worse than too much consumption in a story, am I right?) to make it a satisfying read. 

This is definitely one of those books where the characters are the story, if you know what I mean, so if you need a plot where there are A Lot of Things that Happen then you probably won’t love this. BUT. If you like depression-era stories about family dynamics and the complexities of how humans make choices and relate to each other and if you don’t mind a little dust and sadness, then – recommend some books to me, cause me too. 

“Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley

A lot of people read this one in high school, right? Well, I didn’t. Was way, way too busy pretending to read The Iliad and The Inferno. Also plotting elaborate ruses to skip Spanish and math. And gym. Anyway this book was suggested to me by Amazon and since I do everything Amazon tells me to (this post sponsored by Amazon), I bought it. Also because I think it was 99c, and also because, as we’re all well aware, old age has found me morbidly preoccupied with the fate of our poor sweet doomed planet. If you’ve read Orwell’s ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ WHICH YOU SHOULD, the main gist of it is basically like that except it’s set in the future and instead of managing the masses by exhausting them with long hours at shitty jobs, they use literal happy pills. “They” being the invisible others in relative control. And, oh yeah, nobody has moms or dads because everyone gestates in a tube and is conditioned to be happy as a clam (I feel like no one says that anymore, I’m bringing it back) serving whatever function they were cooked up in their little tube to perform. It was fine, whatever. 

Next up: “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome” by Joy DeGruy, as soon as I finish reading the copy of “Shrill” by Lindy West that my mom sent me. And then one about a family of hoarders. Yes, ANOTHER one.

Oprah tried to tell me. She did.
She said, "Lindsay. The universe is going to try, like, one more time. And then it's going to start screaming its cosmic head off and things are going to get uglier than your forearms after a 'play' session with Griffon." (Or something like that, Oprah says a lot of things.)

The rails, you guys - the rails. I went so far off of them that I couldn't tell what they were anymore. Just bones in my peripherals, that's all anything was. Last night I was driving a motorbike way too fast around some beautiful gardens, and then I went right off the edge into deep blue water. Then there were some broken pairs of glasses and a funeral parade of Scientologists dressed in Victorian clothing and also I didn't get wet in the water somehow. Or maybe that was the night before last. I don't know. What I do know is that right now, it's a little hot here by the window, but it's nice to watch the neighborhood do its Sunday things and know that Griffon is laying behind me with his feet straight up in the air digesting his first breakfast and that later I'll make tofu scramble and banana pancakes and go for a walk with a person who loves me even though sometimes I self-destruct for weeks in a row.

And I'm more than ever grateful to be a part of a universe that isn't afraid to raise its voice. I don't want to be either, anymore. My truth is just as valid as anyone else's - and if I violate some social rules, well then. I'll have interesting things to say to my journal.

You know who else talks to me is Allen Ginsberg:

"Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don't care who's listening." 

Adrift in a dream world, I came upon the carefully curated concept of a human person.

For a long time I allowed myself the diversion.

The siren song of illusion drew me toward its center by the pit of my stomach –

the closer I got, the brighter-lit specific neural pathways became

and I liked it because it was like finding new rooms in the house you’ve always lived in

and thought you knew every corner of.

It took years to separate life from the myth I’d written;

I dream sometimes now that I smoke cigarettes again

poison I quit in waking life –

it's the same feeling. 

30 before 30, brought to you by an impending birthday and morning traffic on the bridge

1. Get through the Tolkien books
2. Ditto some Russian novels, why is it so hard they have everything I like
3. Finish my Bachelor’s (maybe, if I feel like it)
4. Earn Griffon’s love
5. Learn how to knit more than one kind of stitch (stitch more than one kind of knit? Tie different kinds of knots with needles)
6. Learn how to use my sewing machine for more than making dresses shorter (although IMO if that’s all it did, still totally worth the space it takes up)
7. Take a vacation by myself
8. Go one month without spending money on anything besides groceries and bills
9. Complete Tarot meditations/exercises for every card in the deck
10. (I’m embarrassed to even write this one because SERIOUSLY LINDSAY COME ON) Learn Spanish
11. Fill a journal
12. Scrape together a respectable savings account
13. Cook my way through Thug Kitchen, which my mom bought us for Christmas two years ago. Oh did I tell you guys we’re in-it-to-win-it-well-mostly-anyway vegans now? And not like before when I was accidentally vegan because dinner was Swedish fish on the train home from class at 11PM and breakfast and lunch were nothing because I was poor. Man, and I was too tired to appreciate how skinny I was. Just goes to show. It just. Goes. To show.
14. Run 2 miles without stopping (or dry heaving, or crying)
15. When people say they’re “taking a break from technology” I assume that along with staying off of their phones they’re also not using wheels or ovens. So I’d like to be more specific, because I like my toilet and don’t feel like using it is impeding my connection to the universe. Although, I mean, I guess I’d technically be closer to the earth without it. Anyway I’d like to take a break from phones/computers/the internet for a whole day.
16. Let go. Allow. Observe. Appreciate phenomena. Actively practice compassion.
17. Stop farting on the bus
18. Find my shade of red lipstick and figure out how to wear it without looking like a kindergartener
19. Find a semi-regular volunteer gig (remember when I was young and tried harder, me neither really)
20. DIY the crap out of one piece of furniture
21. Get really good at uncorking wine bottles (I suck SO BAD – last night I broke an opener and didn’t even realize what had happened until - as I was digging at the cork with tweezers and a butter knife - I unearthed the screw that had broken off inside the cork.)
22. Write ten personal essays. Like, really write them.
23. Go balls-out at a fancy schmancy spa
24. Finish one cross-stitch project
25. Go a week without makeup
26. Go a day without looking in the mirror
27. Go to one of those BYOB art classes
28. Actually learn Quickbooks for real
29. Develop a workout routine that I’ll actually stick to for real
30. Plan something sweet for Diego because usually I’m a troll

The average cost of childcare in NYC, as told to me by Google, is close enough to a third of what I make in a year to make me choke on the eight-dollar green juice – I am bloated within an inch of my life, guyz - that I’ll never be able to ever splurge on ever again EVER if I commit to continuing the family line. I also just looked at what the premium and out of pocket maximum would be for one year of niño health coverage and now all I can picture is Diego and I and Baby Lineberry-Martinez shivering in the snowy London streets like a trio of matchstick girls. I don’t know how we got to London. We probably had to go there because we ran out of banks to rob in the States trying to pay for Griffon’s cat food, because the cat always comes first. Right? Surely a baby wouldn’t change that.

But I mean. There are a lot of rich people driving up these “averages,” right? There are always packs of children wreaking havoc on my street, how much could it possibly cost to get my kid into one of those? Can I just leave it outside and hope it’s accepted? Like a baby wolf? Note to self, research wolves.

Plus also, more and more lately I’ve been fantasizing about my little dream house in the forest. Diego would work and I would stay home and homeschool our brood and wear big sweaters and wool socks and use coupons and have a deep-freezer. And on weekends we would go on family outings in the city that will be conveniently located just a short drive away. But not so short that anybody bothers me in my little dream house. Or comes into my forest. Unless it’s because I asked them to deliver something to me. But then, it’s get in and get out, buddy.

There’s also my dream of changing my name and picking a new city and getting a job as a sassy waitress with a secret. I’m really into that dream, too.

Anyway I’m not sure I actually ever want to deal with buying a house (in a forest or otherwise), but I do want to make sure I’m investing my nickels in a smart way. And the more I look at “What can I afford to funnel into a such-and-such account?” the less sure I am that having a baby is something I really want to do. And by “do” I mean “pay for,” but I also mean other things too. I’m still working toward having a fluffy cushion of money between The Crushing Weight of Apprehension and the rest of my brain. But once I have the savings account I want (someday) (if I can stop blowing my paycheck on booze and shows and fancy food) (LOL okay), I just know I’ll find something else to fixate on. And I don’t think it’s fair for that to be another human. Plus what if I don’t even like that human? What if I give up wine and sushi for six months and it still comes out crappy? What are the actual odds that my kid will grow up and change MY diapers when I’m old? I’ll tell you something, that kid might not take care of me, but returns on a healthy portfolio sure will. (I don’t know if that makes sense. LMK, Suze.) 

I don’t know why I’m even bothering to give this so much thought. Whatever happens is going to be exactly how everything else I’ve ever done has happened – by accident. So whatever. I’m planning on re-enrolling in classes this spring, though, so I’ll probably get pregnant tomorrow. Right in time to not be able to drink at any Christmas parties. Amazing.

"Sometimes I think you don't like me very much, she said. 

Like? he said. Is that all you want to be? Liked? Wouldn't you rather be passionately and voraciously desired? 

Yes, she said, but not every night." 

M. ATWOOD, BODILY HARM

Monday
Everyone’s mad at me. Everyone in the world.
I have no friends.

Well I don't like anybody anyway.

But why doesn’t anybody like me, though?

Tuesday
Why are you crunching so loudly, aggravating human five feet away from me?
Why do anything if you’re not going to do it to obscene excess? That’s your motto!
What are you even eating that could possibly make that much noise? Bones? Are you eating bones?

Wednesday
I’m going to crawl out of my skin. It’s too hot with my sweater on but if I take it off I’m freezing, because Heat Miser and Mr. Freeze can’t keep their crypt-keeping claws off the thermostat.

Aw. But Mr. Freeze just apologized for that dickhead comment he made last week. I’m so grateful for all the lovely humans.

Thursday
I’m making coffee and thinking about a documentary I had to watch twenty minutes of in some dumb you-have-to-take-this-to-graduate class a few years ago, because why, what do YOU think about while you’re making coffee? A woman was interviewed about her time working at some sort of insurance agency phone bank thing, and her job was to interview the shit out of people who called so that she could deny them coverage, or some such terrible thing, and she would go home every day after work and cry and feel like shit. So then while I’m ripping open Splenda packets (I know I know, look, I tried to switch over to monk fruit sweetener but Whole Foods charges me six bucks a bag and it tastes like earwax, so)  I start grieving for humanity, and then I start thinking about how woefully ignorant and/or otherwise unaware so many people are and how sad THAT is, and how little I actually know about anything, and I’m not coherent enough to generate tears so I just lay down on top of the blanket next to a still-sleeping Diego and stare wide-eyed over his head into the darkness as I spoon him for dear life.

Later on I'm greeted in the bathroom mirror by Thing 1 and Thing 2, nestled sweetly together on my chin.

Friday
Inhaled a cheese-covered bagel with cream cheese over my keyboard just now and one hundred thousand percent feel it was the absolute best decision I could have possibly made for my body. Plan of attack for today is to finish the pot of flavored coffee I just brewed myself, switch to whiskey around noon, and google hysterectomies.

Later on, fueled now by both hormones AND Jack Daniels, I feel guilty and wretched and traitorous for writing a blog post that may be interpreted as hostile toward menstruation, so I buy a bunch of women’s studies books on Amazon and promise myself that tomorrow when I’m not drunk anymore I’ll sit quietly with all my new candles and embrace my cycle and commune with the moon.

Audible over ocean sounds, made out in dark or too-bright light.
Muted panic.

I haven’t written anything yet, not since I’ve been here, not ever.
You’re waiting in my softest parts to be made into something else.
Release me, you say. I’m trying.

I'll try.