we flew out to arizona for my stepsister's wedding at the beginning of the month. she's the last member of my immediate family and stepfamily to marry, a detail most of us don't think about very much and a couple of us think about so intensely that i imagine one of those movie scenes where a bunch of buzz-cut, midcentury-ed-harris-y dudes in a control room applaud a wall of monitors and slap each other's backs and shake hands with cigarettes dangling out of their mouths, and also they are all simultaneously jane austen characters. the wedding was in sedona, a place joe and i lunched in with my in-laws maybe 15 years ago that i am old enough to consistently associate with axl rose and stevie nicks' fajita roundup. it was very scenic! we didn't see very much of it, as we drove up from phoenix midday on a friday and decamped in the early afternoon on a sunday, but i appreciate why people associate it with vortices and very much appreciate that it's home to the flagship location of the rock store i favor when we're meeting joe's family up in flagstaff. my stepfamily is...colorful, and i've spent a lot of time on the metaphorical and literal treadmill over the last year thinking about what i would or wouldn't say to the estranged member of it who crashed my grandmother's memorial service during the first trump administration (he served in that one and is serving in this one, and though he is too stupid to be effective at much of anything i resent quite energetically the way others have stooped for him); that time he and his wife approached me and, off guard, i chatted politely with them. joe feels very strongly that i should hold my tongue in person for the sake of the mutuals i esteem, and i feel that's how we slide into fascism and fantastize about picking pieces of his equine teeth out of my knuckles. one of my sisters and i talked about this at length and she was going to wear a rainbow pin to wedding events to telegraph, among other things, her disinterest in engaging; ultimately she did not, but her sons and i did. i couldn't tell you if someone told the garbage relative that i wasn't interested in interacting with him; i moved to the other side of a few rooms out there in arizona, and ultimately i'd decided that if i had to say anything to him i would just say no.
my father gave a speech the night of the rehearsal dinner, which was maybe a big deal or maybe not; we met the bride when i was in my twenties and she was barely a teen, so i think there was a lot more riding on how everyone else moved through that event than on how i did. i love her, and i'm glad for her that she's had someone other than her own terrible father to help her figure out how the world is put together; i'm proud of him for standing up for her in ways said terrible father couldn't or wouldn't. i think my empathic imagination is respectable, but i don't have any idea what it would be like to be her, not really. when she was in college she got a tattoo on her instep that says INHALE / EXHALE, but thanks to the dodgy script and, you know, this universe's dodgy script it appears to read INHALE WHALE. that's what i think it must feel like to be her; inhale whale. at a post-rehearsal reception she told me very sweetly that i was welcome to take molly with everyone at the afterparty the next day, and i leave it to you to decide whether or not that is something i did. speaking of choosing one's own adventures, the sister who pussied out of wearing a pin to wedding stuff (i kid, mostly, she is a kinder person than i am) got this bracing library book in which one of the decision-tree outcomes was getting enslaved by christopher columbus, a work that could be in some peril now that the administration is purging public collections. i am rooting for the woke choose-your-own-adventure book; hopefully someone sneaks it to the little girl whose horse-faced dad is dead to me, a towheaded little sprite who skipped down the aisle at the wedding with her anti-vax mother, who sported a slit-to-the thigh, sheer and boned layer cake of nude tulle like the onlyfans tooth fairy.
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
04.26.25 [on the F train]
we flew home from portugal via toronto this past sunday on the first flight that has ever given me occasion to resent canada (we were delayed for flimsy-sounding reasons that kept changing; we had to transfer from one toronto airport to another that was, inexplicably, just offshore in lake ontario; we were assured many times that our luggage would be checked through and transferred without our having to collect and haul it across town, an idea so lovely and hard to believe that we visited the first baggage claim anyway and found our suitcases circling the chute like orphaned ducklings). our two weeks abroad were unusual ones: i thought to look up local protests the night we arrived on the eve of the "hands off" actions april 5, and was delighted to discover democrats abroad were planning an action in the praça dos restauradores, which was a five-minute walk from our hotel. i found an art store with poster supplies, holed myself up in the bathroom as joe slept off his jet lag, and made a double-sided placard: THEY ARE JOKERS, NOT KINGS and MAKE AMERICA CONSTITUTIONAL AGAIN (NAZI DOGE FUCK OFF). duolingo had been doing its best to teach me some portuguese and i considered cutting my sign in the shape of an apple (MACA = maça), but i checked myself before i wrecked myself. about 700 people gathered at the plaza—i actually believe this figure, a few diligent souls moved through the crowd counting us head by head—and drew comparisons with portugal's carnation revolution 51 years ago, yelled earnest things about social security (many expat retirees on the scene), sang leonard cohen's "hallelujah," which i have accepted as something we're going to hear everywhere on all occasions for a little while longer. (i kind of hope his estate is litigious?) we spent the subsequent week engaging in light tourism, with my mom and stepdad joining in a few days later, then took a train up to porto and boarded a riverboat, where in retrospect we really shouldn't have killed an albatross. it seems someone ele boarded when they weren't at their best, for norovirus whipped around the decks over the next week like me at the local roller rink when i was nine. joe went down early saturday night, mom and doug joined him in the wee hours, and at least four waves of contagion rolled over us as we tried and failed to sail up to spain, thanks to once-in-a-decade heavy rains that confounded the douro river's locks. we were stuck in the same valley town for four days, and the invalids couldn't even open the drapes in their cabins, as we were parked between other stranded vessels. the sandwiching was so enthusiastic that we accessed the beleaguered valley town through a couple of other ships, so i'm beginning to think they got a few turns with saramago's revenge as well. as that happened i learned that my cousin's brain cancer had accelerated and he was likely to die before we could get home, before i could get there if i bolted and brought him portuguese norovirus, and so he did. i spent my days joining various hikes and bike rides by myself watching fog roll through terraced vineyards in the rain and imagining what it would be like to be 40 and give birth to my second daughter right before my husband died. in my mind's eye my cousin is a little boy with a san francisco giants tee shirt hanging past his knees and ears like pennants, and i don't know when i will think of him as someone who isn't going to write back. our last interaction was his laughing at my enthusiasm for enrique iglesias's "escape," which is an easier place to leave things with someone than where my sister had to try to steer things at his bedside for all of us. joe came to the deserted patio where i'd been assembling a huge puzzle all week to say that it was time to come back and pack, it wasn't fair for me to clang around when he was sleeping, and i caved, then tantrumed: i'd had a rough couple of days, all i wanted was to finish a fucking puzzle, if he wasn't going to offer any comfort why couldn't he just leave me alone. so that's how i sobbed over a thousand pieces of the mona lisa while the night crew played eurovision pop, her right shoulder fused together where my mom had spilled nonalcoholic prosecco on it a few days earlier. i wish you were here.
06.22.24 [on the F train]
we tootled down to philly earlier this month to see the rolling stones, a commute i'd happily make again given the postapocalyptic condition of metlife stadium, their closest venue to us. by the time i got through the ticketmaster queue the only affordable-ish seats were part of some VIP package that earned us two massive boxes of questionable swag (did i need a hackney diamonds sippy cup? a wireless phone charger? i brought one of the sets down to a now-PA-based friend we visited the night before the show and she got all excited when she mistook the branded playing cards for branded cigarettes, but no such luck). these tickets also earned us the right to enter a general-admission pit—not one beside the stage, a tertiary pit behind a seated section in the middle of the field—a couple of hours early, so by 5pm i was standing a few inches taller than the people in front of and behind me, thanks to some A/V cord cover platform, and wondering if i had to wait until it got dark to start eating the peanuts i'd bought upstairs and dropping the shells on the ground. i couldn't tell you whose idea this early-to-the-GA-pit idea was, but i can tell you that it turns everyone into a cop, because once people with cheaper tickets and different-colored wristbands started worming their way through the spaces we'd staked out before they were born, even the sweet retiree next to me who'd brought his adult daughter to the show and last seen the stones in 1972 (when he was a ninth grader and they shared a bill with stevie wonder and tina and ike turner) was ready to rip off interlopers' heads and shit in their neckholes. cocktails did not improve this vibe! i agreed to plan the trip and show because i didn't see david bowie or johnny cash before they died and was willing to insure myself against regret that i'd never seen the stones, and i stand by that investment, terrible GA seats aside (the power move in situations like that is to hold fast until the day of the show and buy seats through something like stubhub). sure, we spent most of our time watching mick and keef on the jumbotron rather than through the frankly rude hairstyles of the half-ogres standing in front of us, but standing on a field on a warm summer night and hearing the opening notes of the song bill gates paid millions to license for windows 95 felt like turning to see one of warhol's jackies wink at you. as pauline kael would say, i succumbed. i'd estimate 85% of our fellow concertgoers were wearing shirts from previous stones tours, and the vibe was not unlike what friends have described from, say, jimmy buffett shows; there was a strong old-people-prom undercurrent. "okay, everybody out," a record-store owner had barked at joe and assorted other shoppers earlier that afternoon, "i'm taking my dad to the stones show!"
the rest of the philly surgical-strike weekend was wonderful; the cafe that's been making us a beanful, oniony artichoke salad for 20 years made it for us again, and in trying to shop for quilting fabric i accidentally attended a lovely multimedia show about a cabaret artist who came out to her aunt as trans and was told she had a twin she'd eaten in the womb (so her museum experience began with me eating a pale, green-white chocolate fetus that tasted like frosting). she's my little rock and roll?
the rest of the philly surgical-strike weekend was wonderful; the cafe that's been making us a beanful, oniony artichoke salad for 20 years made it for us again, and in trying to shop for quilting fabric i accidentally attended a lovely multimedia show about a cabaret artist who came out to her aunt as trans and was told she had a twin she'd eaten in the womb (so her museum experience began with me eating a pale, green-white chocolate fetus that tasted like frosting). she's my little rock and roll?
05.11.24 [on the F train]
sprang! subway! no one is awake for a good reason! i couldn't fit a volunteer shift in last month and shouldn't really be starting with catchup now, i have a nasty week i should be pregaming, but the cats sense weakness and have been wedging my jet-lagged ass out of bed, so here we are. we did not see any of the solar-storm super-southern aurora borealis last night—even if it had been clear, light pollution is of course dreadful here—but i did see enough of it on social media to wish in the abstract that we were still in scandinavia. in practice i was in stockholm last friday, copenhagen the friday before that, and tulum the friday before that, so i'm pretty okay with never going anywhere ever again (except philadelphia next month for a rolling stones concert? i have no good excuse for that).
mexico was wonderful, the first press trip i've taken in a long time that made me feel like press trips are worth my time—which sounds silly, but since my main travel outlet switched over to all paranormal content a couple of years ago and i'm neither about to start ghost hunting nor especially interested in wooing new outlets, it's tricky to come up with ways to write about the things i'm invited to experience that don't make me feel like a shill. in truth i'm a writer who likes to travel rather than a travel writer, probably—one of the other americans on this trip was telling me about the industry conference i avoid every year and she and many of the writers i meet on these things seem to feel are indispensable, and it sounded like immersion therapy, or enhanced interrogation, or rush week at a southern school—matching with and speed-dating PR reps who then might or might not invite you to fly halfway around the world to spend two days at an all-inclusive resort devoted to steak, everclear, and show tunes, and while i get that this kind of full-body shudder is such niche privilege that i should just offer myself up as the first protein when the resource wars begin (you know they're coming soon, these lisa frank trapper keeper skies last night were no accident), wow, ritualizing what i do in a baldly networky way makes me want to walk into the sea. another beauty of the mexico trip is that for once i knew what (and that) i'd be writing about it before i accepted: a dear old friend from my magazine-staffer days asked if i would go and cook up a piece on solo travel for her new magazine, and that's very much the sort of thing i can get excited about doing. amusingly, though the trip was pitched to her/me as a gender-specific thing, other writers didn't arrive with that frame—and lo, there was a dude among us (two, counting the photographer/influencer who shot us all week). so technically a vagina travelogue it was not, though it functioned that way anyhow, a bit—beyond the collective appreciation of each other's sundresses and blouses that kicks off group meals on most temperate press trips, talk stayed reasonably clear of lady zones. despite my disdain for networking crap and industry gossip, i also picked up some interesting stuff about how other clients and markets work—like, if you're an australian writer it's hard to pitch a trip unless you're the only person in the country writing about it, and though US-based writers almost never feel obligated to promise coverage beforehand (and i can count on one hand the times i happen to have done it), it's standard practice in other places? i still haven't written about the cruise joe and i took last fall and the crazy bahamas trip that happened 16 hours after we got back from paris, and while i plan to get on that, i'm not especially excited about it. it feels significant that i haven't made much of an effort to fold these subjects into my pitches for the outlets i typically save for passion projects. am i quiet-quitting this phase of freelance writing, at least for now? mexico makes a compelling case for keeping an open mind—it was the perfect trip for me to take without joe, given the focus on swimming in caves and waking up before dawn to streak into the ocean. if i can position myself as my friend's startup's tropical goth crone, maybe i can wriggle out of the world of slideshows and bullet points and sing of iguanas in my own dialect. it has a certain something.
mexico was wonderful, the first press trip i've taken in a long time that made me feel like press trips are worth my time—which sounds silly, but since my main travel outlet switched over to all paranormal content a couple of years ago and i'm neither about to start ghost hunting nor especially interested in wooing new outlets, it's tricky to come up with ways to write about the things i'm invited to experience that don't make me feel like a shill. in truth i'm a writer who likes to travel rather than a travel writer, probably—one of the other americans on this trip was telling me about the industry conference i avoid every year and she and many of the writers i meet on these things seem to feel are indispensable, and it sounded like immersion therapy, or enhanced interrogation, or rush week at a southern school—matching with and speed-dating PR reps who then might or might not invite you to fly halfway around the world to spend two days at an all-inclusive resort devoted to steak, everclear, and show tunes, and while i get that this kind of full-body shudder is such niche privilege that i should just offer myself up as the first protein when the resource wars begin (you know they're coming soon, these lisa frank trapper keeper skies last night were no accident), wow, ritualizing what i do in a baldly networky way makes me want to walk into the sea. another beauty of the mexico trip is that for once i knew what (and that) i'd be writing about it before i accepted: a dear old friend from my magazine-staffer days asked if i would go and cook up a piece on solo travel for her new magazine, and that's very much the sort of thing i can get excited about doing. amusingly, though the trip was pitched to her/me as a gender-specific thing, other writers didn't arrive with that frame—and lo, there was a dude among us (two, counting the photographer/influencer who shot us all week). so technically a vagina travelogue it was not, though it functioned that way anyhow, a bit—beyond the collective appreciation of each other's sundresses and blouses that kicks off group meals on most temperate press trips, talk stayed reasonably clear of lady zones. despite my disdain for networking crap and industry gossip, i also picked up some interesting stuff about how other clients and markets work—like, if you're an australian writer it's hard to pitch a trip unless you're the only person in the country writing about it, and though US-based writers almost never feel obligated to promise coverage beforehand (and i can count on one hand the times i happen to have done it), it's standard practice in other places? i still haven't written about the cruise joe and i took last fall and the crazy bahamas trip that happened 16 hours after we got back from paris, and while i plan to get on that, i'm not especially excited about it. it feels significant that i haven't made much of an effort to fold these subjects into my pitches for the outlets i typically save for passion projects. am i quiet-quitting this phase of freelance writing, at least for now? mexico makes a compelling case for keeping an open mind—it was the perfect trip for me to take without joe, given the focus on swimming in caves and waking up before dawn to streak into the ocean. if i can position myself as my friend's startup's tropical goth crone, maybe i can wriggle out of the world of slideshows and bullet points and sing of iguanas in my own dialect. it has a certain something.
03.30.24 [on the J train]
there's an oak leaf pressed in this notebook from the owl funeral i attended last month—along with the zoo photo safari i'd taken just over a week earlier, one of the stranger trips i'd taken for an article, though there's a strong likelihood i'd have gone to the funeral anyway. i've now been writing and/or fretting over my latest Earnest Science Feature for nearly three months, though it feels more like thirty. i haven't begged joe to read any of this one except for the first version of the opening scene (one of my favorite will mcphail panels is the one where a woman asks a spider she's trapped under a glass to read something she's written), but given how much i've bitched and tossed around in bed about it, i'm sure he'll be as glad to see it out of our lives as he was, say, when i finished my orwell essay for the new york times. out, it will soon be out! until i get a big old tattoo of its subject in may, that is. (owl, not orwell.)
a man on this train is snoring the sort of snore that seems like it'd rouse the snorer, or jolt him a few inches in the air, at least, but he snores on, and i wish him well; it would be nice to be flat for a few more hours. i'm trying to get a few more bleary mornings volunteering in queens out of the way early this spring, as i'm going to mexico on assignment(!!) in a few weeks and joe and i are then meeting my folks in copenhagen, where i have decided i don't care if it's touristy to truck out toelsinore kronborg castle. we have planned little else beyond a few meals and a night at the opera and, oh, a shared airbnb i picked for when we migrate to stockholm. will my stepfather, aghast at the way i live when i'm not at a high-end hotel, decide he doesn't love me anymore? will joe out-snore this guy on the train, who sounds with every breath more and more like he's awake and trying to fool schoolchildren? will i join the danish swans and leave my terrestrial life behind once and for all? hard to say. i ended up not interviewing a colleague out in prospect park for the swan essay i sent off to the printer this week, as the thing was short enough that bringing in another voice was going to be kind of weird and she was being flaky enough about meeting that i didn't have the energy to keep chasing. i did send a draft of the piece to my friend R at the bird hospital—not because i needed to check facts, exactly, but because anyone who knew what i was talking about would know where i was talking about, and i wanted her blessing.
she called me from her long-overdue vacation and gave it, and told me Secret Owl Things about my other feature, and let me know, when i finally screwed up the courage to ask, that bird ben, the northern cardinal i've loved for a a decade, died last summer. i don't know how to write about that, and imagine i won't for a long time; knowing ben changed me in a way i might not understand until i'm very old, if i get to be very old. i do know that R's three-part benediction—you've done right by swans, i trust you enough to tell you confidential things about the owl, we can remember ben together—felt a bit like permission to take full height in this version of myself. i wonder sometimes if she knows how badly i wanted her to see this identity all those years i cleaned cages and wrestled geese, and i know that one of her great gifts is to speak to the people we want to be on our best days. i don't mean that i'm a few inches in the air like the snorer uptrain (who's still at it!), but i have had occasion to say yes, yes, that is what i meant.
a man on this train is snoring the sort of snore that seems like it'd rouse the snorer, or jolt him a few inches in the air, at least, but he snores on, and i wish him well; it would be nice to be flat for a few more hours. i'm trying to get a few more bleary mornings volunteering in queens out of the way early this spring, as i'm going to mexico on assignment(!!) in a few weeks and joe and i are then meeting my folks in copenhagen, where i have decided i don't care if it's touristy to truck out to
she called me from her long-overdue vacation and gave it, and told me Secret Owl Things about my other feature, and let me know, when i finally screwed up the courage to ask, that bird ben, the northern cardinal i've loved for a a decade, died last summer. i don't know how to write about that, and imagine i won't for a long time; knowing ben changed me in a way i might not understand until i'm very old, if i get to be very old. i do know that R's three-part benediction—you've done right by swans, i trust you enough to tell you confidential things about the owl, we can remember ben together—felt a bit like permission to take full height in this version of myself. i wonder sometimes if she knows how badly i wanted her to see this identity all those years i cleaned cages and wrestled geese, and i know that one of her great gifts is to speak to the people we want to be on our best days. i don't mean that i'm a few inches in the air like the snorer uptrain (who's still at it!), but i have had occasion to say yes, yes, that is what i meant.
11.25.23 [on the J train]
i finished the book i was reading, i finished the book i was reading! that's generally what happens if you keep at it and turn the pages when you should, but this book kept getting longer, as if a malevolent troop of gnomes was scaling my etagère each night to add new chapters. if i hadn't come to the end at last after three hours of reading yesterday i was seriously considering setting out sticky traps. i have been splashing around in horror and horror-adjacent novels since my mycological society's book club read mexican gothic (appropriate for a bunch of mushroom enthusiasts but kind of squelchily confusing in its own right–i would have gone for some lovecraftian uncertainty at the end, e.g. "what i beheld when i followed the tunnel of luminous fungi to the unholy altar overwhelmed my senses so completely that darkness swallowed me whole and i knew no more," but part of the author's whole deal was to poke holes in racist lovecraftian bullshit, so i soupfooted my way through the too-too climax like a realatively good sport). i then read leech, which the cool kids at pegasus books in oakland recommended as i was buying mexican gothic, and that i appreciated much more; turns out i was in the mood for mid-apocalyptic, bipedal parasitism, and the premise was both terribly clever and well-developed. i still don't really understand why the image of dogs' noses kept popping up, but we're all entitled to a mystifying metaphor every now and again, i hope. speaking of, the weird humor piece i finally finished this fall and sent off to the new yorker right before we left for canada was at long last rejected, and then mcsweeney's rejected it with dispiriting alacrity. i was so sure i had a weird gem on my hands! joe, who isn't in the habit of inflating my expectations about writing stuff, was so sure i had a weird gem on my hands! maybe i'll just post it here, and dance like three readers are watching.
our trip to paris was remarkably pleasant–i'd built in a bunch of toothsome stuff, as i mentioned, and figured it would be decent, but i feel like a couple of decades have really done a number on the city's ambient misanthropy, maybe i'm a better tourist now that i've lived in a big city for a long time? maybe all the extra-crotchety boomers that made my family's visit difficult and then ingored me as a solo flâneuse have buggered off to the suburbs? people were great about speaking french with me, and having a smartphone meant that i was able to be generically chatty rather than a supplicant most of the time. our airbnb appeared to be some dude's actual apartment as opposed to some LLC's investment, and the sneakers i had to buy when my chuck taylors fell apart on like our second day didn't give me new-shoe blisters, a no-shit travel miracle. we even found what genuinely seems to be an old isfahan rug at a flea market, and while its mysteriously low price probably means that its previous owner was murdered on it or that it's full at the very least of continental poltergeists, it seems so far that they're the less-is-more sort of phantasms that knocked around that novel the gnomes kept writing. we really needed an extremely big floor covering, so this tradeoff is okay with me.
our trip to paris was remarkably pleasant–i'd built in a bunch of toothsome stuff, as i mentioned, and figured it would be decent, but i feel like a couple of decades have really done a number on the city's ambient misanthropy, maybe i'm a better tourist now that i've lived in a big city for a long time? maybe all the extra-crotchety boomers that made my family's visit difficult and then ingored me as a solo flâneuse have buggered off to the suburbs? people were great about speaking french with me, and having a smartphone meant that i was able to be generically chatty rather than a supplicant most of the time. our airbnb appeared to be some dude's actual apartment as opposed to some LLC's investment, and the sneakers i had to buy when my chuck taylors fell apart on like our second day didn't give me new-shoe blisters, a no-shit travel miracle. we even found what genuinely seems to be an old isfahan rug at a flea market, and while its mysteriously low price probably means that its previous owner was murdered on it or that it's full at the very least of continental poltergeists, it seems so far that they're the less-is-more sort of phantasms that knocked around that novel the gnomes kept writing. we really needed an extremely big floor covering, so this tradeoff is okay with me.
10.28.23 [on the F train]
it wasn't painful to get up just after six this morning! it's not something i want to get in the habit of doing, mind, but i didn't feel like i'd been hurled through an interstellar hatch to the waking world, blinking and about to freeze solid in airless space, and that is something. speaking of airless space, i am batting .500 on landing interviews with moon- and mars-colonization experts for an upcoming essay and feeling pretty fancy about it. some outlets' names get me instant yeses, but this one is niche and much trickier; if i spent my days thinking about terraforming and organic architecture i like to think that i would find queries like mine enchanting, but i appreciate that when one is focused on keeping our sorry asses alive beyond the home planet we've trashed it's important to allocate resources practically. i haven't decided if i'll do a video or phone interview with my yes; it can be easier to refer to my notes when i'm not visible, but it can be easier to establish a rapport with my subject when i am. she seems like a cool lady, so maybe i'll go for video? it might sound a little silly to be proud of just gaining access, but this expert wanted to see my questions before making up her mind on if or how we'd be in touch (not as weird as it sounds when you're talking about a science- versus personality-driven exchange; clinicians and researchers often want to know that you have your shit together before they promise you their time, and that's fine and fair. i'm not trying to trick her into a juicy quote about what happened after she slept with justin timberlake).
we are leaving for paris at the end of next week, my first time back since the ignominious visit of '97 when i wept my way across the city and had the best fried potatoes of my life with a man who mistook me for a hooker. i thought joe would make some restaurant reservations and we'd otherwise kinda walk the earth, but i've booked quite a few afternoons and evenings: we'll be rolling out for a rothko exhibition, an opera, a bicycle-themed film festival, and a jazz show. i revisited grace jones's memoir to take note of where we're supposed to look for 1000-3000 piece ravensburger puzzles (the book's most delightful aside) and my memory had played tricks on me: she actually just name checks a department store and isn't specific about location. her sister suggestion for new york city puzzle purchasing, in turn, is "times square." where in time square is grace jones shopping for puzzles? this is the sort of thing that would dominate my signage, had i commercial space in midtown.
within something like 18 hours of getting back from paris i'l be flying off to the bahamas for my first proper press trip since the pandemic started. it's a citizen-science-themed visit, one that could dovetail nicely with all the notes i took when we cruised around canada last month. i keep thinking every invitation will be my last, since i turn most of them down and i don't publish much in the way of entry-level travel roundups like i did a few years ago. that's okay, really: since i'm now a vegetarian teetotaler, i'm even more ill-suited to wining and dining than i used to be. i for one welcome a future in which i'm occasionally asked to catch an expedition boat or, like, pick up beach garbage in the bahamas. joe didn't seem to have FOMO about not being invited to join me for the latter, and that was definitely so when i noted this will be the first time i visit a place name-checked in "kokomo." find someone who loves you as much as my husband hates "kokomo."
we are leaving for paris at the end of next week, my first time back since the ignominious visit of '97 when i wept my way across the city and had the best fried potatoes of my life with a man who mistook me for a hooker. i thought joe would make some restaurant reservations and we'd otherwise kinda walk the earth, but i've booked quite a few afternoons and evenings: we'll be rolling out for a rothko exhibition, an opera, a bicycle-themed film festival, and a jazz show. i revisited grace jones's memoir to take note of where we're supposed to look for 1000-3000 piece ravensburger puzzles (the book's most delightful aside) and my memory had played tricks on me: she actually just name checks a department store and isn't specific about location. her sister suggestion for new york city puzzle purchasing, in turn, is "times square." where in time square is grace jones shopping for puzzles? this is the sort of thing that would dominate my signage, had i commercial space in midtown.
within something like 18 hours of getting back from paris i'l be flying off to the bahamas for my first proper press trip since the pandemic started. it's a citizen-science-themed visit, one that could dovetail nicely with all the notes i took when we cruised around canada last month. i keep thinking every invitation will be my last, since i turn most of them down and i don't publish much in the way of entry-level travel roundups like i did a few years ago. that's okay, really: since i'm now a vegetarian teetotaler, i'm even more ill-suited to wining and dining than i used to be. i for one welcome a future in which i'm occasionally asked to catch an expedition boat or, like, pick up beach garbage in the bahamas. joe didn't seem to have FOMO about not being invited to join me for the latter, and that was definitely so when i noted this will be the first time i visit a place name-checked in "kokomo." find someone who loves you as much as my husband hates "kokomo."
07.08.23 [on the J train]
i'm still having the sort of seasonal trouble sleeping that doesn't afford me enough clarity to read as i have through every other wee hour of unexpected wakefulness in my life. i appear to be able to shop just fine, though, which isn't that unfortunate–i'm acquiring small-ticket stuff, pretty much–but it's weird. a few weeks ago i acquired a high-concept "sports bra" that addresses breasts like those layered ship's-sail-lookin' patio shades that don't shield much of anything (it would have been perfect for a pride parade, or a memphis group mermaid getup in coney island). earlier this week it was a set of tiny spring-mounted lips for kissing bugs without hurting them; last night / this morning it was a COME BACK SPACEMAN asteroid city tee. i have been thinking about asteroid city a lot since we saw it a few weeks ago–i think it's my favorite wes anderson movie, though one could argue that one's first has to be one's favorite (if one likes wes anderson movies as a general proposition, that is, and i respect that plenty don't) because it's just so surprising and delightful to go where he finds himself. i was going to say "to his dimension," but that could be the one scrawny cup of coffee in me talking. anyway, this one has a gorgeous melancholy-in-isolation that really got under my skin; there are plenty of explicitly sad things there, like tom hanks's characters interactions with his dead daughter's widower, but there are more delicate ones like the way the precocious children look at the sky, or the stop-motion alien looks at humans, or the way the humans look back at him. it felt even more elegiac to me than the french dispatch did, and that was all about my actual world! (i'm not the next william shawn or anything, but you know what i mean.)
one of my assigning editors just got swept up in the latest round of layoffs at her ever-more-merger-happy parent company, and i met her, a fellow media casualty, and one of her other regular freelancers for lunch this week. i'd known she'd be in new york and told her to ping me if she had a moment so i could buy her a drink, but i didn't see her middle-of-the-night text until the next morning, so i barely had time to worry about whether or not my human suit was on straight before i headed up to little spain. it was legitimately lovely to see her and meet the other two; since i don't network and haven't been on a press trip since before the pandemic, it's been a long time since i've interacted with people who've played our particular bullshit game of musical chairs. as someone who's been sitting on her own haunches more or less contentedly for nearly a decade now, i actually felt like i had a bit of zen to offer, though i think all of them would rather find another full-time salaried gig than, say, ping-pong between stressful underpaid highbrow vanity gigs and the bread-and-butter-offered-to-me stuff i've started calling, with an unfortunate case of nominative determinism, "problem sets." i talked way too much and suspect they all think i'm a blowhard, but maybe they had a good time also and i should just be more aggressive in my bedtime melatonin explorations?
i broke my own rule of not engaging famous people i encounter in person when i saw julio torres on the subway the other day. he debarked and switched trains at the same place i did, so i had a few minutes to contemplate the back of his head and think about greetings that wouldn't be an imposition. i settled on "we don't know each other, i just wanted to tell you i think you're brilliant and i'm forgetting her name because i'm nervous but your nugget is really elegant." he smiled and thank me and said he'd tell her, and i excused myself and dove into a westbound L train across the platform. it was okay!
it looks like i actually do have a press trip coming up at long last; i was invited to bring a guest (provided i covered their airfare) on a comparatively-small-boat expedition up around eastern canada. i told myself i wouldn't cruise again after the press trip joe and i took years ago–there's just no way to justify that environmental impact, and our personal guide in akureyri when we were in iceland a few months ago told us in no uncertain terms that big ships were smothering his country's ports–but i decided i think there are things for me to report on here, and that if cruising is to continue to happen, it's got to happen at this scale (that is, boats a fraction of the size of ye olde floating megaresorts, with sustainable features and meaningful partnerships with scientists and conservationists). we haven't officially booked yet, but it's in the water.
one of my assigning editors just got swept up in the latest round of layoffs at her ever-more-merger-happy parent company, and i met her, a fellow media casualty, and one of her other regular freelancers for lunch this week. i'd known she'd be in new york and told her to ping me if she had a moment so i could buy her a drink, but i didn't see her middle-of-the-night text until the next morning, so i barely had time to worry about whether or not my human suit was on straight before i headed up to little spain. it was legitimately lovely to see her and meet the other two; since i don't network and haven't been on a press trip since before the pandemic, it's been a long time since i've interacted with people who've played our particular bullshit game of musical chairs. as someone who's been sitting on her own haunches more or less contentedly for nearly a decade now, i actually felt like i had a bit of zen to offer, though i think all of them would rather find another full-time salaried gig than, say, ping-pong between stressful underpaid highbrow vanity gigs and the bread-and-butter-offered-to-me stuff i've started calling, with an unfortunate case of nominative determinism, "problem sets." i talked way too much and suspect they all think i'm a blowhard, but maybe they had a good time also and i should just be more aggressive in my bedtime melatonin explorations?
i broke my own rule of not engaging famous people i encounter in person when i saw julio torres on the subway the other day. he debarked and switched trains at the same place i did, so i had a few minutes to contemplate the back of his head and think about greetings that wouldn't be an imposition. i settled on "we don't know each other, i just wanted to tell you i think you're brilliant and i'm forgetting her name because i'm nervous but your nugget is really elegant." he smiled and thank me and said he'd tell her, and i excused myself and dove into a westbound L train across the platform. it was okay!
it looks like i actually do have a press trip coming up at long last; i was invited to bring a guest (provided i covered their airfare) on a comparatively-small-boat expedition up around eastern canada. i told myself i wouldn't cruise again after the press trip joe and i took years ago–there's just no way to justify that environmental impact, and our personal guide in akureyri when we were in iceland a few months ago told us in no uncertain terms that big ships were smothering his country's ports–but i decided i think there are things for me to report on here, and that if cruising is to continue to happen, it's got to happen at this scale (that is, boats a fraction of the size of ye olde floating megaresorts, with sustainable features and meaningful partnerships with scientists and conservationists). we haven't officially booked yet, but it's in the water.
01.20.21
four years ago i helped a woman at penn station get to her train, which was also my train. we were both going to washington for the inauguration; i told her i was going to protest. "oh," she said, looking me up and down. "are you going to hurt me?" i stayed with my dear friend jacob's family, and his elder daughter pulled out an impressive array of craft supplies to help us make our signs. on the morning of the march, when the streets were so crowded we didn't get anywhere near the main gathering area and its speakers, the biggest roar that rippled through the people around me was for john kerry as he strolled with us for a bit. i imagined that i would be in washington again today, no matter who topped the platform.
01.16.21
my grandmother died on monday, which was both unsurprising (as she was 99) and a bit unexpected (as she had developed COVID though she lived in a nursing home in los angeles that has been locked down for a long, long time). the first week or so after her positive test was a comparatively good one — she was sleepy and sniffly, the staff reported via my aunt via my mother — but her blood oxygen levels began to plunge, and you have probably heard about access to ventilators and oxygen in los angeles, to say nothing of hospital beds. a catholic priest came by to perform last rites on monday morning, my aunt arranged for someone to play "la vie en rose" (which she loved, loved, loved) in the afternoon, and she died in the early evening. she'll be buried in her mink (which she also loved), gloves, and a black beret. if our family had been interested in trying to have a funeral, we would have had to jostle for a slot in march.
i am sorely tempted to exaggerate the immediate emotional impact of grandma's passing to make other people feel shitty about their life choices. i have, or had, a travel-writer friend who seems constitutionally incapable of not skipping off to europe and mexico;* my feeds deliver me a much closer friend holding babies and making cameos with family in other cities; friends' friends flew down to disney world in the fall. in middle age i've gotten better at recognizing when i'm making an honest effort to effect change and when i'm inflicting pain as a hobbyist. is stitching away at my ongoing quilt in front of cable news for a couple of hours each evening a bit madame-defarge-in-a-tale-of-two-cities-adjacent? oh, maybe.
my mother doesn't want my sisters and me talking about her mother's death on social media, as it would increase the likelihood of my late uncle's terrible wife parachuting in to cultivate drama. (she's impressive, this wife: when my mom's dad died in the early aughts, she spent most of the funeral reception sidling up to my father in an attempt to starfuck her way to a relationship with his second wife.**) i don't think mentioning it in this context is problematic; we all have a fairly good idea of what we're doing here.
*i feel for writers who haven't been able to pivot to other beats as neatly as i did last year, and i know how lucky i am. said friend is so well-traveled that she could spend the next decade writing about trips she's already taken; she also top-edits guides. this is not about work.
**she actually slipped a wheedling letter and a packet of instant grits into his blazer's interior pocket.
i am sorely tempted to exaggerate the immediate emotional impact of grandma's passing to make other people feel shitty about their life choices. i have, or had, a travel-writer friend who seems constitutionally incapable of not skipping off to europe and mexico;* my feeds deliver me a much closer friend holding babies and making cameos with family in other cities; friends' friends flew down to disney world in the fall. in middle age i've gotten better at recognizing when i'm making an honest effort to effect change and when i'm inflicting pain as a hobbyist. is stitching away at my ongoing quilt in front of cable news for a couple of hours each evening a bit madame-defarge-in-a-tale-of-two-cities-adjacent? oh, maybe.
my mother doesn't want my sisters and me talking about her mother's death on social media, as it would increase the likelihood of my late uncle's terrible wife parachuting in to cultivate drama. (she's impressive, this wife: when my mom's dad died in the early aughts, she spent most of the funeral reception sidling up to my father in an attempt to starfuck her way to a relationship with his second wife.**) i don't think mentioning it in this context is problematic; we all have a fairly good idea of what we're doing here.
*i feel for writers who haven't been able to pivot to other beats as neatly as i did last year, and i know how lucky i am. said friend is so well-traveled that she could spend the next decade writing about trips she's already taken; she also top-edits guides. this is not about work.
**she actually slipped a wheedling letter and a packet of instant grits into his blazer's interior pocket.
09.04.20
i snuck a photo of a fabulous tagged van as i was scrambling to meet E in a hard-to-reach corner of brooklyn this afternoon, and joe snuck a photo of the moon caught in the williamsburg bridge as i butchered an avocado this evening; balance is satisfying. here they are in my phone, punctuating shots of the cats slinking into the hall to huff the elevator.
i would like to say that i blundered through the navy yard as gracefully as steve and matty intimidated the neighbors' welcome mat, but i've left manhattan just four times since the spring and am no longer accustomed to interiors in which i shouldn't be naked. E and i talked about traveling in the After Times - we met in tasmania in january - and lifted our mouth-drapes at each other re: how very few people would get how our work has changed. it was strange a year ago; now it's unimaginable, from where i'm sitting, though some of our mutual friends continue to happy-talk about meeting in, like, istanbul next year. she's planning to go for an MFA this fall, and i have saurian memories of the essays i pitched before i decided to bank coals and say yes to a season of simple carbs.
i confessed to E that i think i just read a dozen books by women, no breaks for dudes, for the first time since i was a tween. that wasn't especially intentional, but i do notice that my reading list is evolving: prior to this spring i grabbed anything that caught my eye, a not-insubstantial portion of my reads came from my used bookstore volunteer gig, hey, it's all easy and usually cheap. now literary social media is my weekly booster shot; i feel like a baby grad, an ickle neonate in a mortarboard. am i better?
i would like to say that i blundered through the navy yard as gracefully as steve and matty intimidated the neighbors' welcome mat, but i've left manhattan just four times since the spring and am no longer accustomed to interiors in which i shouldn't be naked. E and i talked about traveling in the After Times - we met in tasmania in january - and lifted our mouth-drapes at each other re: how very few people would get how our work has changed. it was strange a year ago; now it's unimaginable, from where i'm sitting, though some of our mutual friends continue to happy-talk about meeting in, like, istanbul next year. she's planning to go for an MFA this fall, and i have saurian memories of the essays i pitched before i decided to bank coals and say yes to a season of simple carbs.
i confessed to E that i think i just read a dozen books by women, no breaks for dudes, for the first time since i was a tween. that wasn't especially intentional, but i do notice that my reading list is evolving: prior to this spring i grabbed anything that caught my eye, a not-insubstantial portion of my reads came from my used bookstore volunteer gig, hey, it's all easy and usually cheap. now literary social media is my weekly booster shot; i feel like a baby grad, an ickle neonate in a mortarboard. am i better?
08.11.20
[i took over sending my and my friends' virtual-relay-race newsletter for the week (we're about a dozen pals pooling our miles to "run" from brooklyn to berkeley to raise money for feeding america).]
Hello from Manhattan, everyone! Lauren here, chiming in on the Lower East Side to report that the 194 miles we logged as a team this week have moved us westward to within 421 miles of our goal; with a bit of athletic tape, self-talk, and gumption, we could be in Berkeley in two weeks! With 86% of the journey behind us, we’re up to $3,483.15 in pledges raised, and I have personally performed (symbolic) Viking funerals for three pairs of no-show socks on the East River. I recently disappeared into an Internet-research vortex of what a Sock Afterlife might entail and, at least according to some theories of puppets and reincarnation posted on an Arabic Facebook page, it’s pretty complicated. My actual socks reached some sort of secret terminus on the wheel of time because upcycling them would have been biological warfare.
Our team cartographer reports that Google Maps has taken us off-road for the week, and that we’re camped out parallel to the 305 between Mt. Tobin and Mt. Moses, just past Battle Mountain, NV.
I have a soft spot — a lymph node, if you will — for Battle Mountain, which the Washington Post’s Gene Weingarten named the Armpit of America back in 2001. A year later, the people of Battle Mountain banded together
…to stage the inaugural Festival in the Pit, celebrating with the slogan "Only Inches From Your Heart." Word of the event spread around the country, eventually reaching the marketing department of Procter & Gamble Co.'s Old Spice deodorant brand.
Old Spice, not one to miss a golden opportunity themselves, approached Battle Mountain community leaders early this year about the brand becoming the corporate sponsor for this year's festival, held this past weekend.
Thus were born such unique events as a "deodorant toss," where contestants attempted to heave Old Spice deodorant through a target. Then, there was the "Sweat T-shirt Contest," taking a page out of MTV's spring break wet T-shirt contests except there were no bikini-clad young women, just men and children willing to be drenched with a water hose and to show off their "pits."
Bless.
We’ve pulled up our socks and gathered for a drink at the Owl Club Casino & Restaurant, a foodless bar and hotel when Weingarten visited in 2001 and a place that “would do well even in a big city” per Yelpers now. (“Cold eggs were delivered to everyone who ordered them.” “Clean strange bathrooms in the casino.”) I like the cut of the Owl Club’s jib; some sources say that it has been in operation for a century, while others claim it closed in 1999. Per Special Agent Dale Cooper: Don’t plan it, don’t wait for it, just let it happen.
Thank you for following along! Stay well, and every day, once a day, give yourself a present.
LMO
08.07.20
CONSUMED: SOME (MORE) HORROR
the rental. i got over the potential squickiness of staying at strangers' homes via airbnb a long time ago, which is helpful, as i've stayed at a shitload of airbnbs (most of which have been pretty good and a few of which have been spectacular: if americans are allowed into europe before the world ends, you should ask me about the rooftop terrace with a view of st. peter's basilica we scored for my 40th birthday, or the milanese jewel box to which we ended up retreating after the 2016 election). i even write about them for a living! well, i wrote about them for a living. anyway, this is dave franco's directorial debut, and the story of four earnest portland types who head to the coast for a weekend of the sort of disastrous interpersonal conflicts that crop up when you don't establish ground rules about drugs and hiking or acknowledge the fact that anyone who shares screen time with sheila vand (the star of a girl walks home alone at night, ana lily amarpour's exquisite iranian vampire western) will fall hopelessly in love with her. the excellent alison brie (franco's offscreen wife, of glow, who is also exquisite) is here too, but she's no match for vand's gravitational pull, and the non-murdery disasters in store for this quartet are pretty clear from the get-go. there is also a dog—dogs are big in horror right now—and if i found myself in this rental i would have absolutely survived, since i would have rejected the idea of breaking the no-dogs rule and jeopardizing my pristine user rating and refused to show up in the first place. these kids aren't so lucky, and nastiness ensues: it's even more harrowing than when i accidentally peed in our milanese host's bidet. like a number of reviewers, i think the rental would have been better without its final act, but you can't always get what you want. oh! dan stevens (of downton abbey, which i despise) is also in this, though he isn't anywhere near as entertaining as he is in eurovision song contest: the story of fire saga, which you should see immediately. i hope i get to sleep in another building someday, even if there's a hidden camera in the shower.
velvet buzzsaw. dan gilroy (nightcrawler) reunites rene russo and jake gyllenhaal and misses a golden opportunity to give the latter another terrible haircut; where nightcrawler satirized prurient local news, velvet buzzsaw goes after the los angeles art scene (and also ropes in john malkovich, toni collette, and daveed diggs; it's a crazy ensemble cast). an outsider artist dies and leaves instructions for his work to be destroyed; no one listens, so the work destroys everyone. i'm reminded a bit of bliss, another art-world slasher we saw at the tribeca film festival last year, but velvet buzzsaw is more fun; i'm no insider, but i've written a bit of curatorial copy in my time ("...meticulous scissorings, in turn, reveal her subjects’ poetic architecture: a gallery wall revealed in a cut is a caesura, not an absence"), and the silliness of the critical word salad here is entertaining. i feel pretty strongly that most if not all movies should probably end with john malkovich drawing with a stick, and i think that would have worked out rather nicely in the rental. did i ever tell you that my conceptual-artist brother-in-law's site-specific work in an old hospital is the reason kendall jenner painted her house baker-miller pink? true story.
the rental. i got over the potential squickiness of staying at strangers' homes via airbnb a long time ago, which is helpful, as i've stayed at a shitload of airbnbs (most of which have been pretty good and a few of which have been spectacular: if americans are allowed into europe before the world ends, you should ask me about the rooftop terrace with a view of st. peter's basilica we scored for my 40th birthday, or the milanese jewel box to which we ended up retreating after the 2016 election). i even write about them for a living! well, i wrote about them for a living. anyway, this is dave franco's directorial debut, and the story of four earnest portland types who head to the coast for a weekend of the sort of disastrous interpersonal conflicts that crop up when you don't establish ground rules about drugs and hiking or acknowledge the fact that anyone who shares screen time with sheila vand (the star of a girl walks home alone at night, ana lily amarpour's exquisite iranian vampire western) will fall hopelessly in love with her. the excellent alison brie (franco's offscreen wife, of glow, who is also exquisite) is here too, but she's no match for vand's gravitational pull, and the non-murdery disasters in store for this quartet are pretty clear from the get-go. there is also a dog—dogs are big in horror right now—and if i found myself in this rental i would have absolutely survived, since i would have rejected the idea of breaking the no-dogs rule and jeopardizing my pristine user rating and refused to show up in the first place. these kids aren't so lucky, and nastiness ensues: it's even more harrowing than when i accidentally peed in our milanese host's bidet. like a number of reviewers, i think the rental would have been better without its final act, but you can't always get what you want. oh! dan stevens (of downton abbey, which i despise) is also in this, though he isn't anywhere near as entertaining as he is in eurovision song contest: the story of fire saga, which you should see immediately. i hope i get to sleep in another building someday, even if there's a hidden camera in the shower.
velvet buzzsaw. dan gilroy (nightcrawler) reunites rene russo and jake gyllenhaal and misses a golden opportunity to give the latter another terrible haircut; where nightcrawler satirized prurient local news, velvet buzzsaw goes after the los angeles art scene (and also ropes in john malkovich, toni collette, and daveed diggs; it's a crazy ensemble cast). an outsider artist dies and leaves instructions for his work to be destroyed; no one listens, so the work destroys everyone. i'm reminded a bit of bliss, another art-world slasher we saw at the tribeca film festival last year, but velvet buzzsaw is more fun; i'm no insider, but i've written a bit of curatorial copy in my time ("...meticulous scissorings, in turn, reveal her subjects’ poetic architecture: a gallery wall revealed in a cut is a caesura, not an absence"), and the silliness of the critical word salad here is entertaining. i feel pretty strongly that most if not all movies should probably end with john malkovich drawing with a stick, and i think that would have worked out rather nicely in the rental. did i ever tell you that my conceptual-artist brother-in-law's site-specific work in an old hospital is the reason kendall jenner painted her house baker-miller pink? true story.
07.22.20
joe came back on monday after a week in oregon, where his father had a 'moderate to serious stroke' while on an RV trip with my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and nephew. though he is the evel knievel of the circulatory system (he had emergency open-heart surgery this past fall; i think maybe when the family made him sell his motorcycle a few years ago he just became his own motorcycle), joe the elder has more lives than several cats, and he seems to be recovering well. we are grateful that he was away from home when it happened, as home is rural arizona, medically questionable at the best of times and the tail end of a bosch triptych at the moment. we would like them to trade their RV for a beaver state rental house, but you try herding someone who has more lives than several cats. i was extremely upset about the idea of joe flying west and home—we got news that we had neither coronavirus nor coronavirus antibodies the day he left—but flying to see one's family and giving them advice they will ignore is our generation's love language in 2020. i have made my peace, such as it is, with this.
i spent monday of my week alone pulling my first professional all-nighter, a filthy evening that peaked when i snuck outside for a walk on the promenade at about nine and cratered for the first time a few hours later when i found that one of my huge rubber cockroaches had fallen out of the closet and into the hall and it made obscene gestures at me when i bent to pick it up. i skittered to the kitchen and grabbed a pint glass to capture it, and when i got back it was gone; i then made my peace with lifestyle-writing-induced hallucinations. i found it a few feet away 15 minutes later, caught it, and chucked it off the balcony, which feels ok, given the reports of the creepy AI guy we knew in college whose experiments determined that roaches can handle pressure that's more than 900 times their body weight. also all american cockroaches can fly, though they tend to do so in humid climates? we're well into the miso soup phase of summering in new york, so.
i spent monday of my week alone pulling my first professional all-nighter, a filthy evening that peaked when i snuck outside for a walk on the promenade at about nine and cratered for the first time a few hours later when i found that one of my huge rubber cockroaches had fallen out of the closet and into the hall and it made obscene gestures at me when i bent to pick it up. i skittered to the kitchen and grabbed a pint glass to capture it, and when i got back it was gone; i then made my peace with lifestyle-writing-induced hallucinations. i found it a few feet away 15 minutes later, caught it, and chucked it off the balcony, which feels ok, given the reports of the creepy AI guy we knew in college whose experiments determined that roaches can handle pressure that's more than 900 times their body weight. also all american cockroaches can fly, though they tend to do so in humid climates? we're well into the miso soup phase of summering in new york, so.
01.05.20
it occurred to me as i angry-treadmilled to the tv news this afternoon that while i haven't formally attempted a 101 in 1001 ("complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days") list for nearly five years, i've probably managed to take down a bunch of items from my last one anyway—and i totally did! way to go, haphazard me!
original start date: 10 june 2012
original end date: 08 march 2015
items completed: 023
items remaining: 078
...and since then,
additional items completed: 14
[004]: visit pittsburgh [see 09.28.15]
boy howdy do we love the 'burgh: since that first fall trip in 2015, the missus and i have driven back out three more times. while item 014 ("visit mari in atlanta") is now impossible, she and her family are now PA-based, and we've taken down the great race (my all-time favorite 10K, a crowded but delightfully citywide thing) with them three times. ask for "pittsburgh, you're my kind of town" in my best springsteen growl if we see each other in person; it's even better than the songs i invent for the cats.
[026]: go to the opera [completed october 2015]
baby's first opera was tannhäuser at the met, and while an old-school, nearly-four-hour (plus three intermissions, as i recall) take on early wagner might not seem like the most intuitive call, the friend* who facilitated our extremely good seats (he used to represent performers and is tight with the folks who film and simulcast the met's performances in HD) also talked us through the teutonic shenanigans. we went on to see an utterly stunning magic flute at the teatro dell'opera di roma (i cried like a baby and got a moth tattoo a few days later, which was technically coincidental but still), and we've been back to the met with the same opera-ringer pal for pelléas et mélisande (debussy's only opera). i have worn the same thrifted balenciaga tent dress to all three, and, weirdly, have yet to wear the black velvet opera coat i found at a vintage store on our first trip to pittsburgh? guess we have to hit some more operas.
[031]: get my name printed in the new york times [completed 09.01.19]
my first and twitter names turned up as part of patricia lockwood's "live nude dads read the sunday paper" project, but that assembled poem was online-only, and c'mon, it's much more satisfying to have debuted thus. that was a journey: i convinced myself a dozen different times over the course of several months that the piece wouldn't run, despite universally supportive communication from my editor and joe's exhortations to, like, breathe into a paper bag and go to bed already. i have now accepted that it can't be taken away and am working on new pitches! the travel section would seem like the most natural fit, but i can't write for it, as i've taken press trips (which are strictly forbidden for its contributors). i considered a modern love writeup about the series of late-night DMs i got last summer from a guy who turned me down when i asked him to senior prom and wanted me to know a couple of decades later that he was wrong to have done so, but that seemed...fraught. inspired by "my so-karen life,"** i was thinking about rites of passage...which now seems to be on hiatus. that said, i am unfazed (and am also going to get off my ass and aim at the new yorker this year).
[039]: spend the night on a boat [see 08.25.17].
i've now hit the atlantic for CRESLI's three-day great south channel trip three years in a row and am addicted to both cetaceanspotting and turning in with the thrum of an engine under my belly and stars and spray on my back. that trio of trips was pretty bare-bones: i brought a sleeping bag, a plush peep, and a pillowcase, and i dragged my lumpy vinyl cot mattress up to the top deck of our temporarily-mostly-repurposed fishing boat as often as i could (every night but one so far, i think?). i love whale watching, but i also love the formal restrictions of spending extended time on a small vessel in unpredictable conditions; i love pelagic birds, a deck heaving under my flip-flops, brushing my teeth and spitting over the stern. joe has yet to join me on any of those trips, but he flew out as my plus-one for a working trip on a small ocean liner in northern europe last fall: we flew to berlin and spent a few days revisiting falafel and oktoberfest, then took a coach to rostock and swooped out for a week of danish and norwegian port-hopping. the jump from a craft with 60 passengers to one with 900*** is not insignificant, despite the prevalence of NPR enthusiasts on both in these cases: the latter was unquestionably a luxury cruise (with on-board history and astronomy pros, balconies and cashmere blankets for all, shitting-you-not edvard munch originals [on loan from museums] on the walls...you get the idea). i had never been on A Cruise, and i am not sorry i tried one; the peoplewatching was top-hole, and i appreciated the opportunity to snack on destinations we might like to revisit. the sleep quality, ironically, ended up being comparable to what i've experienced on my CRESLI trips, albeit for reasons at the other end of the spectrum: at one point i acquired a wool blanket that pleased me so well that i was too excited to nap.**** we are unlikely to take another cruise, but i would consider recommending one on that particular line to, say, my parents, if they were intent on that particular sort of trip. tl;dr: more (hopefully small and/or eco-friendly) boats in the '20s.
[043]: spend a night in the hudson valley [completed 09.18]
when did we first go to the hudson valley? have we met? what is time? joe reminds me that we drove out to hudson for the afternoon when we spent a long weekend in narrowsburg in the fall of 2015, and that we didn't actually spend the night there until september 2018, when we shared an airbnb with friends for basilica soundscape (a weekend music festival) and were accosted by an extremely friendly tuxedo cat whose tag announced him to be BLACK BAT. we headed back again on a road trip last may and stayed at tiger house, a former hunting lodge that was a b&b at the time (i think it's now closed?). i am exceedingly fond of spotty dog (a bookstore/bar) and BLACK BAT, obviously. we did not solve a murder mystery at tiger house and should probably buy it so we can fix that.
[046]: swim with the coney island polar bear club [see 01.02.16].
it felt a bit like cheating to join the new year's day plunge in 2016, as coney island was positively balmy that morning compared to early januaries past and since, but look: i was pretty goddamn cold anyway (it wasn't the ocean itself, it was the interminable waiting to run into the ocean that killed me; i felt much better afterward, what with the adrenaline and the beer. one member of our foursome, previously unknown to me, is now a semi-regular Political Yelling at Bars Companion of mine; another was already an ice-bath devotee and has since gone to poland and iceland to celebrate wim "the iceman" hof's cold-therapy method. pro tips: bring someone who doesn't want to strip down and jump in the water with you but is willing to watch your clothes and towel and give you someplace to run when you're staggering back like an idiot, and wear thick socks.
[054]: go camping [completed 09.16]
i have yet to attempt a trip that doesn't involve running an all-night trail relay race at the same time, but the running shouldn't invalidate the camping, should it? on that first soggy weekend in new jersey for ragnar trail wawayanda lake, the terrain was so muddy that i'd crash in my diminutive leopard-print tent (you're a goddamn wonder, apartment tent) with my feet through the flap, exposed to the rain. with four ragnars now under my belt, i think i'm ready at last for regular camping, but i'm bringing The Grim Runner (my little angel of death with a custom pink sweatband) anyway.
[058]: visit the new york botanical garden [see 08.09.16]
guessing it won't surprise you that i found my trip to see the corpse flower in 2016 significantly more exciting than a trip to see the holiday train show. what can i say? i like fake corpses and real trains, thanks.
[078]: run a (public) 10K [completed 12.15?]
i've lost count of 10Ks, but i know that at least five have been on flat, scenic, PR-friendly roosevelt island (which should be an easy ride on the F train, but in 2020 even i can admit that there are no more easy rides on the F train; now i usually get there via the tramway and traumatize fellow passengers with my Run Funk, unavoidable in such a small space). i remind my septuagenarian friend and fellow bookstore volunteer A, a former UN official and longtime island resident, that i am both protecting and stalking him via these 10Ks, and he seems pleased.
[087]: visit the new york city tenement museum [completed...i have no idea, i pass it like every day and i think i'm trying to forget the visit to protect myself]
what's nastier than a doll-sized tram over the east river when you've just finished a 10K? the new york city tenement museum between march and october. i love my neighborhood and i love that earnest grad students introduce it to tourists, but i'm tired of sharing the sidewalk with all of them. get out of here, butter.
[090]: beat my new york times sunday crossword time (18 min)
i'm down to 11:35, which is not too shabby! that said, i hadn't read a thing about the american crossword puzzle tournament before registering and booking a hotel room for it and—get this—genuinely thought i could roll up and win. tell my family i loved them.
[096]: go to the hamptons
i think we've aged out of the sharing-a-group-house-for-the-weekend stage of engaging with the hamptons, and that's for the best, as the lunch, shopping, and gas-stationing stops i've made en route to montauk and back have been less than inspirational. montauk i like very much, though i'm conscious of being the sort of summer person who's helped make it too expensive for families to vacation there in recent years, and i'm not prepared to pay several hundred dollars a night for a long weekend in a fashionably-upcycled motel. i have made my peace with this.
[098]: figure out a wall treatment for the kitchen
i bought a bunch of black oil paint pens a few years ago and have been late-night doodling from the floor up ever since. it is immensely satisfying.
[099]: visit three new-to-me states
kinda hazy on this one, but i know kentucky, louisiana, mississippi, missouri, and north carolina are all in there. it's like we have a car now or something!
*kevin has the best ideas: he also organized our Black Tie Bar Crawl a few years ago, when we all dressed up within an inch of our lives and hit la grenouille and the four seasons (RIP). we would have kept crawling, but when we got to the four seasons's bar and asked for glasses of champagne, they just...kept coming, and we hadn't had dinner, so we fled to sakagura for ballast. fun fact: joe and i had dinner at the four seasons (dressed less formally, as it happens) after getting legally hitched (prior to our proper oxford wedding) in 2006.
**i enjoyed "my so-karen life" so much that i went to follow the writer, sarah miller, on twitter—and discovered that she's been following me for some time, which made me feel like a million bucks. a solid reminder that i should be following liberally.
***a 900-person cruise ship is considered a small cruise ship: the largest liners in the world accommodate more than 6,000 passengers.
****full disclosure: i bought that blanket for the cats (who appreciate it as much as i do and are much better at napping).
original start date: 10 june 2012
original end date: 08 march 2015
items completed: 023
items remaining: 078
...and since then,
additional items completed: 14
[004]: visit pittsburgh [see 09.28.15]
boy howdy do we love the 'burgh: since that first fall trip in 2015, the missus and i have driven back out three more times. while item 014 ("visit mari in atlanta") is now impossible, she and her family are now PA-based, and we've taken down the great race (my all-time favorite 10K, a crowded but delightfully citywide thing) with them three times. ask for "pittsburgh, you're my kind of town" in my best springsteen growl if we see each other in person; it's even better than the songs i invent for the cats.
[026]: go to the opera [completed october 2015]
baby's first opera was tannhäuser at the met, and while an old-school, nearly-four-hour (plus three intermissions, as i recall) take on early wagner might not seem like the most intuitive call, the friend* who facilitated our extremely good seats (he used to represent performers and is tight with the folks who film and simulcast the met's performances in HD) also talked us through the teutonic shenanigans. we went on to see an utterly stunning magic flute at the teatro dell'opera di roma (i cried like a baby and got a moth tattoo a few days later, which was technically coincidental but still), and we've been back to the met with the same opera-ringer pal for pelléas et mélisande (debussy's only opera). i have worn the same thrifted balenciaga tent dress to all three, and, weirdly, have yet to wear the black velvet opera coat i found at a vintage store on our first trip to pittsburgh? guess we have to hit some more operas.
[031]: get my name printed in the new york times [completed 09.01.19]
my first and twitter names turned up as part of patricia lockwood's "live nude dads read the sunday paper" project, but that assembled poem was online-only, and c'mon, it's much more satisfying to have debuted thus. that was a journey: i convinced myself a dozen different times over the course of several months that the piece wouldn't run, despite universally supportive communication from my editor and joe's exhortations to, like, breathe into a paper bag and go to bed already. i have now accepted that it can't be taken away and am working on new pitches! the travel section would seem like the most natural fit, but i can't write for it, as i've taken press trips (which are strictly forbidden for its contributors). i considered a modern love writeup about the series of late-night DMs i got last summer from a guy who turned me down when i asked him to senior prom and wanted me to know a couple of decades later that he was wrong to have done so, but that seemed...fraught. inspired by "my so-karen life,"** i was thinking about rites of passage...which now seems to be on hiatus. that said, i am unfazed (and am also going to get off my ass and aim at the new yorker this year).
[039]: spend the night on a boat [see 08.25.17].
i've now hit the atlantic for CRESLI's three-day great south channel trip three years in a row and am addicted to both cetaceanspotting and turning in with the thrum of an engine under my belly and stars and spray on my back. that trio of trips was pretty bare-bones: i brought a sleeping bag, a plush peep, and a pillowcase, and i dragged my lumpy vinyl cot mattress up to the top deck of our temporarily-mostly-repurposed fishing boat as often as i could (every night but one so far, i think?). i love whale watching, but i also love the formal restrictions of spending extended time on a small vessel in unpredictable conditions; i love pelagic birds, a deck heaving under my flip-flops, brushing my teeth and spitting over the stern. joe has yet to join me on any of those trips, but he flew out as my plus-one for a working trip on a small ocean liner in northern europe last fall: we flew to berlin and spent a few days revisiting falafel and oktoberfest, then took a coach to rostock and swooped out for a week of danish and norwegian port-hopping. the jump from a craft with 60 passengers to one with 900*** is not insignificant, despite the prevalence of NPR enthusiasts on both in these cases: the latter was unquestionably a luxury cruise (with on-board history and astronomy pros, balconies and cashmere blankets for all, shitting-you-not edvard munch originals [on loan from museums] on the walls...you get the idea). i had never been on A Cruise, and i am not sorry i tried one; the peoplewatching was top-hole, and i appreciated the opportunity to snack on destinations we might like to revisit. the sleep quality, ironically, ended up being comparable to what i've experienced on my CRESLI trips, albeit for reasons at the other end of the spectrum: at one point i acquired a wool blanket that pleased me so well that i was too excited to nap.**** we are unlikely to take another cruise, but i would consider recommending one on that particular line to, say, my parents, if they were intent on that particular sort of trip. tl;dr: more (hopefully small and/or eco-friendly) boats in the '20s.
[043]: spend a night in the hudson valley [completed 09.18]
when did we first go to the hudson valley? have we met? what is time? joe reminds me that we drove out to hudson for the afternoon when we spent a long weekend in narrowsburg in the fall of 2015, and that we didn't actually spend the night there until september 2018, when we shared an airbnb with friends for basilica soundscape (a weekend music festival) and were accosted by an extremely friendly tuxedo cat whose tag announced him to be BLACK BAT. we headed back again on a road trip last may and stayed at tiger house, a former hunting lodge that was a b&b at the time (i think it's now closed?). i am exceedingly fond of spotty dog (a bookstore/bar) and BLACK BAT, obviously. we did not solve a murder mystery at tiger house and should probably buy it so we can fix that.
[046]: swim with the coney island polar bear club [see 01.02.16].
it felt a bit like cheating to join the new year's day plunge in 2016, as coney island was positively balmy that morning compared to early januaries past and since, but look: i was pretty goddamn cold anyway (it wasn't the ocean itself, it was the interminable waiting to run into the ocean that killed me; i felt much better afterward, what with the adrenaline and the beer. one member of our foursome, previously unknown to me, is now a semi-regular Political Yelling at Bars Companion of mine; another was already an ice-bath devotee and has since gone to poland and iceland to celebrate wim "the iceman" hof's cold-therapy method. pro tips: bring someone who doesn't want to strip down and jump in the water with you but is willing to watch your clothes and towel and give you someplace to run when you're staggering back like an idiot, and wear thick socks.
[054]: go camping [completed 09.16]
i have yet to attempt a trip that doesn't involve running an all-night trail relay race at the same time, but the running shouldn't invalidate the camping, should it? on that first soggy weekend in new jersey for ragnar trail wawayanda lake, the terrain was so muddy that i'd crash in my diminutive leopard-print tent (you're a goddamn wonder, apartment tent) with my feet through the flap, exposed to the rain. with four ragnars now under my belt, i think i'm ready at last for regular camping, but i'm bringing The Grim Runner (my little angel of death with a custom pink sweatband) anyway.
[058]: visit the new york botanical garden [see 08.09.16]
guessing it won't surprise you that i found my trip to see the corpse flower in 2016 significantly more exciting than a trip to see the holiday train show. what can i say? i like fake corpses and real trains, thanks.
[078]: run a (public) 10K [completed 12.15?]
i've lost count of 10Ks, but i know that at least five have been on flat, scenic, PR-friendly roosevelt island (which should be an easy ride on the F train, but in 2020 even i can admit that there are no more easy rides on the F train; now i usually get there via the tramway and traumatize fellow passengers with my Run Funk, unavoidable in such a small space). i remind my septuagenarian friend and fellow bookstore volunteer A, a former UN official and longtime island resident, that i am both protecting and stalking him via these 10Ks, and he seems pleased.
[087]: visit the new york city tenement museum [completed...i have no idea, i pass it like every day and i think i'm trying to forget the visit to protect myself]
what's nastier than a doll-sized tram over the east river when you've just finished a 10K? the new york city tenement museum between march and october. i love my neighborhood and i love that earnest grad students introduce it to tourists, but i'm tired of sharing the sidewalk with all of them. get out of here, butter.
[090]: beat my new york times sunday crossword time (18 min)
i'm down to 11:35, which is not too shabby! that said, i hadn't read a thing about the american crossword puzzle tournament before registering and booking a hotel room for it and—get this—genuinely thought i could roll up and win. tell my family i loved them.
[096]: go to the hamptons
i think we've aged out of the sharing-a-group-house-for-the-weekend stage of engaging with the hamptons, and that's for the best, as the lunch, shopping, and gas-stationing stops i've made en route to montauk and back have been less than inspirational. montauk i like very much, though i'm conscious of being the sort of summer person who's helped make it too expensive for families to vacation there in recent years, and i'm not prepared to pay several hundred dollars a night for a long weekend in a fashionably-upcycled motel. i have made my peace with this.
[098]: figure out a wall treatment for the kitchen
i bought a bunch of black oil paint pens a few years ago and have been late-night doodling from the floor up ever since. it is immensely satisfying.
[099]: visit three new-to-me states
kinda hazy on this one, but i know kentucky, louisiana, mississippi, missouri, and north carolina are all in there. it's like we have a car now or something!
*kevin has the best ideas: he also organized our Black Tie Bar Crawl a few years ago, when we all dressed up within an inch of our lives and hit la grenouille and the four seasons (RIP). we would have kept crawling, but when we got to the four seasons's bar and asked for glasses of champagne, they just...kept coming, and we hadn't had dinner, so we fled to sakagura for ballast. fun fact: joe and i had dinner at the four seasons (dressed less formally, as it happens) after getting legally hitched (prior to our proper oxford wedding) in 2006.
**i enjoyed "my so-karen life" so much that i went to follow the writer, sarah miller, on twitter—and discovered that she's been following me for some time, which made me feel like a million bucks. a solid reminder that i should be following liberally.
***a 900-person cruise ship is considered a small cruise ship: the largest liners in the world accommodate more than 6,000 passengers.
****full disclosure: i bought that blanket for the cats (who appreciate it as much as i do and are much better at napping).
01.01.20
2020: THE YEAR IN REVIEW
i zapped some of the vegetable dumplings i had the foresight to bring home on new year's eve.
i thought about running six miles and ran four miles.
i ran, emptied, and loaded the dishwasher a couple of times.
i entered a crossword puzzle tournament and booked a hotel for the weekend (hotel gal: "you kick butt in that tournament!").
i ate some of the blood orange bread pudding we made and flambéd last night.
i trimmed our little cat's claws.
i zapped some of the vegetable dumplings i had the foresight to bring home on new year's eve.
i thought about running six miles and ran four miles.
i ran, emptied, and loaded the dishwasher a couple of times.
i entered a crossword puzzle tournament and booked a hotel for the weekend (hotel gal: "you kick butt in that tournament!").
i ate some of the blood orange bread pudding we made and flambéd last night.
i trimmed our little cat's claws.
12.20.19
we realized a few months ago, abruptly and pretty decisively, that it would be a good idea to leave new york city and move to portland (oregon). joe's work situation was horrifically stressful and seemed unlikely to improve; given his status as a tenured civil servant, transitioning to something outside of city work with analogous literal and figurative benefits would be difficult if not impossible; our parents (and sisters' children) are still young and fun and we would like to spend more time with them; the idea of new york money in oregon was inexpressibly sexy. i sat and thought about what our lives would look like if we stayed here for the next decade and felt that i would like to not know what would come next. i have a pretty good idea of what we would be if we persisted here.
i had a dream about psychoanalysis a couple of nights ago, or about the trappings of psychoanalysis. i was reviewing an insurer's bill for a terribly long group session, and it included both copays and little instances of self-awareness: at one point someone demonstrated admirable growth and got a twenty-five-cent credit, at another point someone else broke down and incurred an extra fee. there was an occasional incidental charge for slicing cake? (i don't have a non-dreamland group session, or any sort of session. i gave up on doctor omnibus a year ago when i cried in front of him for the first time—about loneliness over the holidays, in fact!—and he wouldn't look me in the eye.)
we spent a week in portland to see how it would feel, and while most locals were absolutely lovely i cracked a number of times because i missed pigeons (there are pigeons in portland, but it's not the same) and because new york is unquestionably my home. that said, we're going to save, and think, and approach portland again in—a year? joe's work situation has improved but is still dodgy. i still feel that if we don't exercise our DINK privilege and broaden our horizons we deserve to be recycled.
i have spent more than a decade telling myself that i am a better daughter/sister/partner because i am the best version of myself when i live in this city. while i know i wasn't wrong, i don't feel that i'm quite right.
i had a dream about psychoanalysis a couple of nights ago, or about the trappings of psychoanalysis. i was reviewing an insurer's bill for a terribly long group session, and it included both copays and little instances of self-awareness: at one point someone demonstrated admirable growth and got a twenty-five-cent credit, at another point someone else broke down and incurred an extra fee. there was an occasional incidental charge for slicing cake? (i don't have a non-dreamland group session, or any sort of session. i gave up on doctor omnibus a year ago when i cried in front of him for the first time—about loneliness over the holidays, in fact!—and he wouldn't look me in the eye.)
we spent a week in portland to see how it would feel, and while most locals were absolutely lovely i cracked a number of times because i missed pigeons (there are pigeons in portland, but it's not the same) and because new york is unquestionably my home. that said, we're going to save, and think, and approach portland again in—a year? joe's work situation has improved but is still dodgy. i still feel that if we don't exercise our DINK privilege and broaden our horizons we deserve to be recycled.
i have spent more than a decade telling myself that i am a better daughter/sister/partner because i am the best version of myself when i live in this city. while i know i wasn't wrong, i don't feel that i'm quite right.
12.17.19
the dirty dozen {excerpts from yelp reviews of crystal springs rhododendron garden*}
01 During our trip to Portland to see extended family, I set a goal of walking as much as I could.
02 I came across this online and realized it's not too far from our house. I thought it would be a nice excuse to get outside and do something on a decent weather day.
03 I will say there was one very big duck that I definitely got frightened of and I felt like the other ducks could probably feel my fear.***
04 Some poor fool was disappointed that there was no "foods." It's a fucking park, bring a picnic for yourself if you must have "foods" "because this is America ."
05 I went to the garden and the lady at the front desk had the audacity to yell at me and my Girl Scout troop. All we did was walk up to have a ceremony with my girls to celebrate growth in there life. and she screamed at us with a horrible tone.
06 Not a concern unless you have a bee allergy. It is a garden, so there are, naturally, bees around the area. Be aware of this if you are allergic to bees.
07 Turns out I spoiled an opportunity to get proposed to in the rain on the bridge by the lake. It's a perfect setting to be proposed to. The person that gets propose to here would be lucky.
08 Watch some birds do bird things. Sit by a pond or lake. Stare down a squirrel. All around good times.
09 If you're having a tough time deciding whether you want to procreate, there are usually enough well-behaved, cute kids here to push you over on the side of spending the quarter million dollars it will cost you over 18 years. And then you, too, can take your own cute, well-behaved kids here and hear them scream, "Look at the weird duck, Mommy!"
10 It's a garden. And like the many other gardens, foliage, parks, and recreational destinations in and around Portland, it's gorgeous, well maintained, and generally awesome. I love shit like this.
11 On the way out there was an enormous road sign that said "Inmate Work Crew Ahead" that wasn't there on the way in. Now, I'm sure they were all non-violent offenders but if I was a Mom with an infant in tow I think I would be a bit unnerved.
12 They have some hideous and rare type of goose here that has a red fleshy head similar to a turkey. Does anyone know what this hag bird is?****
*where we saw our first nutria!** we thought they were beavers and then that they were muskrats, but no, they were nutria.
**i pity the nutria, and the other invasive species portland rehabbers like the local audubon society won't help; it's not their fault they were brought here for their fur. we're an invasive species, too, and our fur is worthless.
***i'd totally forgotten joe is afraid of waterfowl until he startled away from a couple of canada geese. geese, no less! i'm a goose whisperer, he totally gets the family and friends discount!
****yeah, a muscovy duck, hater.
01 During our trip to Portland to see extended family, I set a goal of walking as much as I could.
02 I came across this online and realized it's not too far from our house. I thought it would be a nice excuse to get outside and do something on a decent weather day.
03 I will say there was one very big duck that I definitely got frightened of and I felt like the other ducks could probably feel my fear.***
04 Some poor fool was disappointed that there was no "foods." It's a fucking park, bring a picnic for yourself if you must have "foods" "because this is America ."
05 I went to the garden and the lady at the front desk had the audacity to yell at me and my Girl Scout troop. All we did was walk up to have a ceremony with my girls to celebrate growth in there life. and she screamed at us with a horrible tone.
06 Not a concern unless you have a bee allergy. It is a garden, so there are, naturally, bees around the area. Be aware of this if you are allergic to bees.
07 Turns out I spoiled an opportunity to get proposed to in the rain on the bridge by the lake. It's a perfect setting to be proposed to. The person that gets propose to here would be lucky.
08 Watch some birds do bird things. Sit by a pond or lake. Stare down a squirrel. All around good times.
09 If you're having a tough time deciding whether you want to procreate, there are usually enough well-behaved, cute kids here to push you over on the side of spending the quarter million dollars it will cost you over 18 years. And then you, too, can take your own cute, well-behaved kids here and hear them scream, "Look at the weird duck, Mommy!"
10 It's a garden. And like the many other gardens, foliage, parks, and recreational destinations in and around Portland, it's gorgeous, well maintained, and generally awesome. I love shit like this.
11 On the way out there was an enormous road sign that said "Inmate Work Crew Ahead" that wasn't there on the way in. Now, I'm sure they were all non-violent offenders but if I was a Mom with an infant in tow I think I would be a bit unnerved.
12 They have some hideous and rare type of goose here that has a red fleshy head similar to a turkey. Does anyone know what this hag bird is?****
*where we saw our first nutria!** we thought they were beavers and then that they were muskrats, but no, they were nutria.
**i pity the nutria, and the other invasive species portland rehabbers like the local audubon society won't help; it's not their fault they were brought here for their fur. we're an invasive species, too, and our fur is worthless.
***i'd totally forgotten joe is afraid of waterfowl until he startled away from a couple of canada geese. geese, no less! i'm a goose whisperer, he totally gets the family and friends discount!
****yeah, a muscovy duck, hater.
07.16.19
the dirty dozen {recurring dreams}
01 the kitten will die if someone doesn't do something
02 we have to leave new york city
03 y kant lauren type
04 time is running out in san francisco, but what about a burrito
05 accidental commitment to grad school
06 iceland
07 david bowie and i have the talk
08 this whole apartment must be painted and furnished
09 no traffic on the service road
10 pregnancy
11 swimming as shortcut
12 punching donald trump
01 the kitten will die if someone doesn't do something
02 we have to leave new york city
03 y kant lauren type
04 time is running out in san francisco, but what about a burrito
05 accidental commitment to grad school
06 iceland
07 david bowie and i have the talk
08 this whole apartment must be painted and furnished
09 no traffic on the service road
10 pregnancy
11 swimming as shortcut
12 punching donald trump
12.06.18
india has a transformation in mind for each of us. our dear traveling companion, A, underwent such gastrointestinal tribulation that she's back in the states with an ongoing inability to excrete in a manner of her choosing (overcorrection means that she now shits like a rabbit, poor thing). joe has either bronchitis or pneumonia—we're not quite sure, as the x-ray machine was down at the doctor's office—and is home with antibiotics, trying to shake the infamous grey air (a combination of car emissions, industrial pollution, and seasonal stubble burning after crops were harvested) we breathed for a week and change with antibiotics and recorded soccer matches. by comparison i got off easy: i've lost my talent for sleeping and become a reluctant lark. in delhi i clocked an average of three or four hours of rest at a stretch, and while i made up for some of that when we headed south to goa, the sunrise and i became and are still awkward new pals. there i greeted the day with squabbling parakeets and tentative monkeys; here the cats are sure it's already time for me to feed them. probably it is always time for me to feed them.
i should have been the one negotiating with bathrooms in a sari with henna-covered hands, since i have a childish fascination with tap water. our guide books made casual drinking sound like eating pomegranate seeds in the underworld, but listen, fancy hotels and restaurants quite literally had more to lose than i did if i went down with delhi belly: apocalyptic diarrhea is bad, but trip advisor is forever. if someone swears up and down that their water is filtered, by god, i'll believe them. I LOVE ICE.*
i probably should be with joe on the couch as well, since pneumonia is one of my lungs' favorite tricks (i had it twice while i worked for the ladymag). after a few hours on our delhi hotel's rooftop i felt an old, familiar knife in my chest, the one that settled there when i'd play soccer games in southern california in the bad old days of los angeles smog in the '80s.
no, sleep's the thing. i've had a lot of time for reading: i just started n.k. jemisin's dreamblood series, a weird cycle to slip into when one's ability to conk out is compromised.** this weekend i styled frantically for a couple of DIY stories i'm turning in this week; i run a few miles as the sun rises. i wandered into the bird hospital on my second day home, early for the first time in four years, to tire myself out with grunt work. i imagine all three of us will return to ourselves sooner or later? india should linger, i think, both psychically—a post for another sleepless morning—and physically. i held my hands just so as joe photographed them for my DIY shoot so that their fading henna, still visible two weeks after our friends' wedding, was out of sight. i wanted it to sneak in, really, but i am trying to work on my timing. stories needn't tumble over each other all at once.
*a guy sitting next to me on the flight from delhi down to goa rejected a bottle of water from our flight attendant because it was "too cold." i should have taken it.
**In the ancient city-state of Gujaareh, peace is the only law. Upon its rooftops and amongst the shadows of its cobbled streets wait the Gatherers – the keepers of this peace. Priests of the dream-goddess, their duty is to harvest the magic of the sleeping mind and use it to heal, soothe . . . and kill those judged corrupt.
i should have been the one negotiating with bathrooms in a sari with henna-covered hands, since i have a childish fascination with tap water. our guide books made casual drinking sound like eating pomegranate seeds in the underworld, but listen, fancy hotels and restaurants quite literally had more to lose than i did if i went down with delhi belly: apocalyptic diarrhea is bad, but trip advisor is forever. if someone swears up and down that their water is filtered, by god, i'll believe them. I LOVE ICE.*
i probably should be with joe on the couch as well, since pneumonia is one of my lungs' favorite tricks (i had it twice while i worked for the ladymag). after a few hours on our delhi hotel's rooftop i felt an old, familiar knife in my chest, the one that settled there when i'd play soccer games in southern california in the bad old days of los angeles smog in the '80s.
no, sleep's the thing. i've had a lot of time for reading: i just started n.k. jemisin's dreamblood series, a weird cycle to slip into when one's ability to conk out is compromised.** this weekend i styled frantically for a couple of DIY stories i'm turning in this week; i run a few miles as the sun rises. i wandered into the bird hospital on my second day home, early for the first time in four years, to tire myself out with grunt work. i imagine all three of us will return to ourselves sooner or later? india should linger, i think, both psychically—a post for another sleepless morning—and physically. i held my hands just so as joe photographed them for my DIY shoot so that their fading henna, still visible two weeks after our friends' wedding, was out of sight. i wanted it to sneak in, really, but i am trying to work on my timing. stories needn't tumble over each other all at once.
*a guy sitting next to me on the flight from delhi down to goa rejected a bottle of water from our flight attendant because it was "too cold." i should have taken it.
**In the ancient city-state of Gujaareh, peace is the only law. Upon its rooftops and amongst the shadows of its cobbled streets wait the Gatherers – the keepers of this peace. Priests of the dream-goddess, their duty is to harvest the magic of the sleeping mind and use it to heal, soothe . . . and kill those judged corrupt.
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