Their mouths unhinge in unison with the lifting of their chins; above and all around, the lights dance. We stand for a moment in the cloud of cold they bring in with them – they never stay long enough to be rid of it, not completely. The roughness of their hands, the nothings exchanged, is Christmas.

It’s hard not to feel like I’m just jerking off into the internet when I write anything here – mostly because that’s exactly the essence of any social media platform, the stroking of the self, right? And that’s fine. Healthy even. My seventh-grade gym teacher told me it was, anyway.

I keep starting sentences that want to turn into pages, and I don’t have pages in me right now. What I do have in me is cereal, because I just ate breakfast. And what I’m about to have in me is the rest of the Christmas snacks in this office before they all get thrown out today. Because we won’t be here for a week, which I keep remembering and being thrilled about, because I haven’t had a vacation in two years. And over the next few days I’ll alternate between feelings of sexiness and grotesqueness, and feelings of deep emptiness and overwhelming love (mostly overwhelming love – I’m lucky), because it’s the end of another year and there are tiny lights in all the dark corners.

I don’t know how to say I think it’s okay that we love and are grateful for our cinnamon-pine-berry-scented living rooms when the buildings all around us are burning down and people live inside of them. I don’t know how to say anything at all without minimizing the tragedies we’re watching on the screens of the many devices through which we are now, somehow, more and less than ever connected to each other. It is not, excuse me, fucking okay. Things are not okay.

It’s also not okay to miss out on all the goodness we are fortunate enough to have surrounding us. It’s not okay to let ourselves become mired in all the shit. There’s hope, as long as we’re willing and able to be of service. We must learn from Artax.

So this is what I’m telling myself this year: Love and be grateful for whatever it is you have, even if it’s not a lot, even if it’s bullshit. If you have it to love, love it. And don’t be an asshole.

Merry Christmas.

sunday! the most glorious of days

I confess that "Oh, I wish I could stay!" means "Please for the love of Aslan stop drawing attention to the fact that I've been edging toward the door with my coat since I got here because you are prolonging the time before I can be at home where no one else is." Why this is a fact not universally understood by everyone, I do not know. 

I confess that the reason my stove is so dirty in the second picture (you know, the one of me spending Friday night pre-baking and freezing all the Christmas cookies I said and then immediately regretted saying I'd bake when I realized that baking, packing, and transporting Christmas/any cookies requires a modicum of planning? Also the ability to bake things that other people want to ingest?) is that I've been using it every single day this week to brown brussels sprouts in addition to frying eggs for my handsome roommate because the first thing I did after hanging the lights and garland was to test the selfie light OBVIOUSLY:

and the results of THAT little experiment sent me spiraling into the deepest grossest parts of my brain where the little voice that's mean to me lives. There's obviously nothing wrong with this picture, or the body that the picture is of. It's fine. I'm fine. I LOOK GOOD, EVERYONE COME SEE. 

But anyway, so, the dirty stove - I leave the pans on the stove usually, and when Diego wakes up for real later on he washes them before he leaves. What he does not do is wipe the stove off, and funny enough, it is the same thing I do not do when I come home at night. Because if you think I've even GLANCED at that thing after work since my mom bought us a microwave, you are mistaken. (Bless you, manufacturers of frozen black bean burgers. Bless you.) SO I ALSO CONFESS that sometimes a lot my stove has odd-colored rings around the burners for several days at a time. Doesn't THAT feel good to get off my chest. 

I confess that my arms and parts of my back where I didn't even know there were muscles are not. happy. with. me. We had our first real snow yesterday morning and I was out before everybody else for what I thought was Round 1 of shoveling. I win at neighboring. (I said that part out loud, real loud, as I typed it. For the benefit of anyone around here who didn't notice I was first.) Then it rained later and there didn't need to be any more rounds hooray! but man. Telling that to my arms is not making them feel any better. So lazy, these arms of mine. 

My boyfriend just now (from the bed where he still is) told me to decide where I want to go today to buy my new shoes. For his birthday dinner. At the obscenely expensive restaurant where we have a reservation WAY past my or anyone else at the neighboring senior center's bedtime. Also I dropped a disgusting amount of money on our train tickets home for Christmas this year, and felt good about that decision before I remembered about there not being a holiday hiatus on rent. It's actually, much like my sexy body, all fine. Everything is fine. I'm so fucking lucky, even. And I know this, and I walk around saying it soothingly to myself under my breath and being, I'm sure, very off-putting to everyone around me. But no amount of self-soothing lately is making me FEEL fine. It's hard, when I'm in this, to feel like it's ever going to be any other way. The same way I know that everything is actually fine, I know that feeling like this is temporary. But I don't believe what I know. So I'm just a big ball of anxiety right now, even though I am also happy about most things - I confess.

What I do believe with great certainty is that right now I am very hungry for banana pancakes and that I need to take a shower and perhaps apply some lipstick before entering the world. And banana pancakes, to my great disappointment, do not make themselves. 

linking up with becky, or i will when there is an up to link to, to whom i would like to sincerely apologize for not being able to figure out buttons today.

I do not like:

- Turkey (unless it’s covered in something else, like mayonnaise or chocolate sauce) (but not both of those things at once, don’t be vulgar)
- Stuffing
- Gravy
- Mashed potatoes
- Pumpkin pie

I DO like green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, and cheesecake. And crescent rolls. And all of the other shapes of rolls. Also cranberry sauce but it has to be the jellied kind and it has to keep the shape of the can that it came in once it’s dumped onto the plate. And it must, MUST make a little sucking sound as it plops out. Or I just won’t enjoy it. (I will though, probably. But so help me, if you put orange peels in it, I am telling you right now that blood is going to shoot out of my nostrils. And I will be aiming them at you. You and your orange peels.)

This year my mom came over and we got drunk on my living room floor while Diego cooked everything. Then we lit the Christmas tree. The only pumpkin was in cheesecake form and nobody even mentioned the word “stuffing.” Just kidding, I did. I said, “I’M SO GLAD WE AREN’T HAVING ANY STUFFING.” I said it through mouthfuls of pumpkin cheesecake. It was all very Norman Rockwell.

Seriously, it was as perfect a Thanksgiving as my Christmas tree is short and wide. (So, extremely. Extremely perfect.) But alas, there’s nothing like kicking off a season of consumption with a national salute to gluttony to throw all your food issues into stark relief. The amount of sugar and fat I put into my mouth hole yesterday could sustain a small town for a… half an hour. (I’m practicing not exaggerating. It’s the hardest thing I or anyone has ever had to do.) It was a lot. Definitely, definitely too much. And I knew that, but what I didn’t remember to know was that at a certain point my ability to reason becomes severely limited in regards to food. And what made me remember to know that was when Diego casually observed that I had eaten almost an entire plateful of cookies and I said well yeah I had to eat all of them before tomorrow so I wouldn’t eat them all week and he looked at me like I wasn’t making any sense because OF COURSE HE DID, THAT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE. But I know that there are a few of you who were right there with me up until you were jarred by my sudden and excessive use of capital letters.

Watch what you eat, but not too closely. Hold yourself accountable, but gently. Et cetera et cetera ugh. It’s never easy, not now and not in February and not in July. Well, sometimes it is. And it’s hard to tell if that’s a trick or if the other stuff is. So. I don’t know what my point is, was I supposed to bring one? Meh, well, if there WAS a point, I’d probably just eat it anyway. Better this way. Less calories.

I was going to leave on a lighthearted, we’re-all-in-this-together! note, but I went away for a long time and can’t remember what I was getting at. How about this: Let your heart be light! Friendship! Pillsbury!

Remember how I intended a bunch of stuff? If I check in now and then set December intentions, that means this last week of November can be like a free-for-all right? Right.

- Quit smoking. I’m doing so great. We are defining “great” as: Eating grilled cheese with a side of macaroni and cheese for lunch two days in a row. Death by cheese may be preferable to death by cigarettes, for many reasons, but I am now officially qualified to assure you that it is no less stinky. On the bright side, I’ve got plenty of ammo for when rude men take up too much space next to me on the bus. Plenty of ammo and zero shame. So. There’s that. Also I lost track of how long it’s been, so I’m just using concerts as mental time-markers. This method serves the dual purpose of letting people know how healthy and good of a person I am, and also giving me ample opportunity to continue discussing how much fun I had at Tegan and Sara a couple of weeks ago. I HAD SO MUCH FUN (not smoking). THERE WERE EMOTIONS EVERYWHERE (but no cigarette smoke). I WISH MY WHOLE LIFE WAS A TEGAN AND SARA CONCERT (and it will be such a long life barring bus accidents because I don’t smoke anymore). Etc. In December I intend to be more mindful of replacing cigarettes with cheese.
- Keep not eating meat. I’m the actual worst. I ate pepperoni pizza twice without the thought even occurring to me that pepperoni is meat. And while I’ve completely switched over to non-dairy milks, I have eaten more cheese in the past two weeks than I usually eat in a year. So nothing makes sense and everything is awful. Moving on. I'll do better next month. Or at least I intend to. 
- Journal. So anyway, we got our Christmas tree last night! Over a month before Christmas is the perfect time, I think. What also made it the perfect time was that we had just left the pharmacy where I’d been told that my insurance company won’t pay for my prescriptions anymore unless I sign up for some stupid mail-order thing that they sent me a letter about a week ago and that I neglected to read or care about. Don’t send me mail or leave me voice messages. Also don’t show up at my house unannounced, and don’t text me either. Also also I don’t read emails. Just leave me alone and pay for my drugs, everyone! GOD’S SAKE. So Diego, who is almost as good at intercepting my meltdowns as he is at causing them, steered us toward a Christmas tree stand and saved the night. And then I figured out my medicine later on, while I was high on the scent of pine trees, as everyone should be while coordinating with their healthcare providers.

I have work to do that requires paying attention now, and also I forgot what we were talking about. But hey, by the way, guess what! I haven't smoked for three shows, including TEGAN AND SARA WHERE I FELT ALL THE FEELINGS. Just in case I forget to mention it enough.

It’s taken almost ten months but I’ve finally nailed down my lunchtime salad delivery. It brings me an immeasurable amount of peace to know that even if everything else is stupid, I can click a button and twenty minutes later a lovely little man will bring me a Cobb salad topped with fried wontons and the exact perfect amount of dressing. If you’re thinking that fried wontons defeat the purpose of eating salad, my advice to you is to adjust your thinking. For peace’s sake.

The reason I am ordering lunch (again) today is not, unfortunately, that I have suddenly become very wealthy. It’s because I got so preoccupied ordering Thanksgiving-related groceries that I forgot that there are actually six other days in the week and that I might like to eat on one or more of those days, too. Also I hemmed and hawed over the stuff in my cart for too long so while I was dickering, French cut green beans went out of stock. So now I have to go to the real-life grocery store for non-holiday food to nourish myself with and for the holiday food that I couldn’t pay someone to bring to my house. (Please see: Have not suddenly become very wealthy.) I’m still Team Holidays though. Yesterday I watched a grown man belly laugh out loud, with his hand on his stomach and everything, while looking at the Christmas windows at Barney’s. There were also children laughing but one of the windows is of a South Park scene this year, and I strongly suspect that their laughing was in anticipation of some curse words. So they’re all on the naughty list and theirs is the laughter of Satan and definitely NOT Christmas-y. That’s what I told them, anyway, to get them to move out of the way so that my belly and I had room to stand in the window. (There weren’t any curse words, which was disappointing, but I'm holding out hope that the Macy's windows will be good for an expletive or two.)

In one, it’s halfway through the year and I haven’t done any of my science homework. 

In the other, I’m reunited with various colleagues from throughout the years for a new project. We’re at some sort of large, resort-like property. There’s a meeting on an enormous deck that has hundreds of round tables covered with umbrellas. Everyone is heading there, but for some reason I break off from the group because I desperately need to change my clothes before this meeting. I am then somehow in my grandparents’ foyer and there’s a giant pile of my clothes on the floor in between their guest bathroom and the stairs. Their stairs lead to the deck where everyone else is waiting for me, and more people begin climbing the stairs to join the meeting, but I can’t stop trying on dresses. When I finally try to climb the stairs to the deck, it’s like trying to climb a mountain that’s buried in Play-Doh. Everyone has broken off into pairs or small groups. I turn around and leave because I realize I left my phone and all of my notes downstairs.

The other night, I was putting on fake eyelashes when what I really wanted to do was go to bed. I’m telling you this not so you’ll feel sorry for me (“Poor sweet darling, forced to leave her cave after dark”), but so that you’ll understand I was under the influence of sleep deprivation and perhaps not judge me too harshly for what happened next. This is the thing that happened next: I thought the fake eyelashes were too much, so instead of TAKING THEM THE FUCK OFF I decided to TRIM THEM WHILE THEY WERE ATTACHED TO MY FACE. And while I was doing it I thought, “It sure would be stupid if I cut my own eyelashes, ha! ha! I’d look SO DUMB! ha! ha!”

It’s a good thing nobody notices my haircuts, because I gave one to my eyelids. Fuck. So that’s how I’m doing lately, in case you were going to ask. Fuck, is how.

Also, I have SO MANY ZITS. I’ve only been half-paying attention to them, because everything is terrible*** so why wouldn’t my skin also be? and my chin pretty predictably throws a tantrum every month or two so whatever who cares. But for the past, mm, week and a half? my skin has been OUT OF CONTROL. And one day I just noticed it all of a sudden, out of nowhere, like, you know, how I seem to notice most things lately. HI I’M TERRIBLE. DIDN’T YOU NOTICE? No, actually, I didn’t. OH WELL I AM. SORRY ABOUT IT.

And then I found out by accident that some people break out when they quit smoking. And I did that! So these zits are actually a good thing. BYE, TOXINS. BYE FOREVER. Now, I need a similar thing to make me feel better about these terrible bangs. And my stubby eyelashes. Isn’t there a song about this? “There is a season la la la, a time to be ugly, a time to get hot again, la”? If there’s not already I just wrote it. DON’T COPY ME JONAS BIEBER I KNOW YOU’RE READING THIS.



***Come on, guys. Everything’s not terrible. Or maybe a lot of things are but we can work on making them not as terrible. We really really can, and we really really need to. So let’s keep fighting the good fights and let’s start some new ones where there aren’t any but there should be. And also, let’s hug. Except if I don’t know you that well, then please don’t hug me, it’s not you, I have a thing? But we can stand close-ish to each other, in solidarity. Solidarity is important. Remember that.

because nobody voted for me so there's still too many days in the work week

It’s colder now. Sharp teeth on a gentle beast. We know winter is approaching but for now the only evidence is her sigh - soft, distant – and we are buoyed by the reminder of silver bells that hang in the back of her throat. For now it’s a relief to seek warmth, to crunch down sunny sidewalks instead of whimpering toward an illusory finish line in a dogged escape from swelter. For now we leave the windows open so we can smell the leaves, we watch the rain and hold warm drinks and light candles with names like vegetables and scents like dessert. 

Irises unfold, stardust surfaces. Soon enough the tiny lights will blink on, happy secrets in the dark.

I know how to knit exactly one stitch. I think it’s the knit stitch but I’m not sure. An old friend (old as in this happened a long time ago, not old as in she was alive for a long time, she wasn’t, well I mean long enough to learn how to knit and to teach it to me, but not long enough to be tired of it, of being alive I mean) taught it to me while we watched Audrey Hepburn DVDs in a Texas hotel room. Last night I thought, I think I’ll knit a blanket. And then I took the pokiest, local-est bus from work to Michael’s. And I walked a little, down some streets I used to walk on a lot but I haven’t in a long time. I used to live near here, near where I work now. And it seems somehow like that was even longer ago than I learned the knit stitch, but it wasn’t at all. It was less longer ago. Much less longer ago. It’s weird how time threads itself through the things in your brain. 

The air smelled so good. I carried my coat and smiled and remembered things. I even smiled about the things that didn’t make me want to smile while they were happening. I crossed the street to peek over the wall at Central Park, but it was pretty dark and uninteresting and peering over walls after dark is a good way to get yourself into trouble so any romantic notions I had about gazing moodily at dusky cityscapes etc were quickly abandoned, as are most of my romantic notions. Romantic notions are another good way to get yourself in trouble. 

I thought about home a lot. About what it is in our head and about the places that become it while we aren’t paying attention. About how you can just be running a yarn errand and the thought at the top of your head isn’t Life or Love or The Meaning Of It All or even The Meaning Of Part Of It, but just an idle one about stopping at the sports store because it’s right across the street from where you’re going and the boy you live with needs socks and what a fabulous woman you are to be so thoughtful about such things, and all of a sudden you realize that you know how to get places. You know where stuff is and how to find other stuff. More than that, you move through layers of memories and visions of Other Yous that you’ve been in these same places. Other people recognize you, and remember you, and you know who they are and can maybe even remember Other Thems. All of a sudden the streetlamp you’re standing under, holding your coat, is home. 

A loss of footing isn’t the worst thing. We remember what we have to hold onto when the ground disappears.

TRA LA LA LA LA, MY NAVEL-GAZING PERSONAL FABLE CONTINUES

One of the definitions of “intention,” according to Google, is “the healing process of a wound.” That is goddamn heart-warming. Like Google knit a tiny sweater for my heart.

Goals are for children wearing shirts with the name of the local watering hole written across the back of them. When I set goals (LOL WHEN LINDSAY WHEN DID YOU DO THAT) what I’m actually doing is making a list of things I think I SHOULD be.

- Skinny (duh)
- Good at stuff
- That’s it

It doesn’t work. Obviously. My socks leave little dents where they cut into my ankles, for one thing.

I almost never have a clear picture of HOW I want something to work out. And I don’t really, REALLY want things very often. Which is probably why goal-setting, which I think requires clarity and some kind of plan, isn’t something I personally find very useful. I’m not trying to carefully plot out the twenty-nine steps I need to take in order to reach some specific place I’m not even sure I’ll want to be in by the time I actually get there, PLUS, what if a tree falls on one of the steps. What if that happens. It happens, friends. Trees fall.

Anyway so “setting intentions” seems to be much more my speed, since it’s essentially what I do anyway. Want the thing, be open for the thing to happen, accept whatever actually happens. Right? I don’t know I skimmed exactly two articles on this and then took a nap on my lunch break and the Diet Coke hasn’t hit my bloodstream yet.

(Pretend there’s a pretty banner here that says “November Intentions,” made by someone who knows how to use an editor other than Microsoft Paint.)

- Quit smoking. I’m actually on Day 3 already. So what happened was, on Friday I went to happy hour at work for once AND THEN went home and got ready AND THEN stayed out all night dancing AND THEN got up early and made second breakfast. (First breakfast is always the egg sandwich lovingly prepared by the man at the corner store who side-eyes the eyeliner on my chin when I wander in at 6AM looking for puffy Cheetos.) So THEN because I am an elderly lady I went right back to sleep until it was dark outside. (I’d planned on dressing up for Halloween on Saturday night – that’s right, I’d planned on going out two nights in a row. HA! HA HA HA! HA!) I then spent the rest of the weekend watching horror movies and playing “How Many Versions of the Quesadilla Can I Think Of and Ingest?” A lot, is how many. A lot. So because I did not leave my apartment all day on Saturday and only for the briefest of moments on Sunday (to get my face waxed and play on some swings), I didn’t smoke because I don’t smoke indoors because I’m not a heathen and also because I wouldn’t get my security deposit back. So I thought, meh, maybe I’ll just quit. So that’s what I’m doing. It’s terrible, but not as terrible as smoking, I guess. Also I’ll probably be very wealthy now, so. That will be nice.
- Keep not eating meat. I’ve been doing so good! I ate chicken once, because Diego made tinga at work and brought home the leftovers and made me tiny baby bite-sized tostadas. BABY BITE-SIZED TOSTADAS. Kill me.  I just need to be better about remembering to take my iron (remember how I told you I was elderly), and at replacing whatever else is in meat that I’m not eating that I need to be eating in order to not feel light-headed when I stand up too fast.
- Journal. Now that I take naps at lunch instead of wandering around with a ham hock in one hand and a pack of Marlboro Reds in the other (DON’T CRY FOR ME, I’M ALREADY DEAD), I can maybe also work in some journaling time. This will be important, since not smoking seems to be increasing my life expectancy while DRASTICALLY shortening that of certain people who sit within a ten-foot radius of me.

That’s it. Aren’t you jealous that I’m going to become such a better person by the end of November? Because that’s my other intention, to make everyone jealous. BECAUSE OF HOW SKINNY I AM.

The only earth is inside me (violet streaks, a dense green).
A glass ball. A giant’s cupped hands. It’s impossible to tell, and unnecessary.
Afloat in the center my bones are budding.
The surface of this liquid silk might be a mirror, if there were anything for it to reflect -
in the dark there’s nothing to do but feel it.
I ask nobody where everyone went, and then you’re there as if summoned
and you’re smiling and your tongue is pushing the moon through your teeth.
I don’t ask you why you’ve kept it a secret, but I want to know why the water’s so warm.
You say, “It’s because of the stars.”
And for once you’re telling the truth,
and at once the tide rushes toward the baby moon you’re still grinning around,
and gaseous globes burn bright all around us
they’d fallen, they were under us all along.

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.