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.