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.