I’m finally home after a lot of traveling in April. V and I returned Friday afternoon from a weeklong road trip in Canada/Montana. Did you know they don’t stamp your passport when you drive across the Canadian border? What a ripoff. The views sort of made up for it though.
I think the longest “road trip” we had previously taken together was our drives to Detroit from Madison, which is a respectable 7-8 hour journey, but different from this obviously. We did well! We ate like absolute crap – sodas and candy galore – which we are now paying for, but I have no regrets. We snowshoed! We walked across frozen Lake Louise and saw a lady carrying a cat who seemed perfectly happy to be there! He ate an elk burger! We both tried the float tank experience (me in Vancouver and he in Missoula)! I bought the most gorgeous DVF-style wrap dress at a vintage shop in Missoula, which I only allowed myself to buy because I will soon have somewhere to wear it!
Yes, friends, the time has come – after almost a year and a half of funemployment/dog-walking/freelance writing, I’m headed back to full-time work. Next week I will start at a Seattle communications agency that works with nonprofits. It’s actually a temporary position, for the summer, but could extend past that if things go well…and I really hope they do. It’s a new direction for me but one where I’ll be able to write, and that’s kind of my #1 criteria in a job these days. I’m still going to freelance on the side when inspiration strikes – I have a couple of ideas currently in the works that I of course can’t share anything about yet, lest they be jinxed.
And speaking of writing…I’m grieving the passing of Rachel Held Evans today. Like most authors, Rachel wasn’t properly “famous” in a Hollywood kind of way; pretty much the only people who know her name are those who engage in online religious debate. She was, honestly, kind of a role model for me in a faith that has felt less and less welcoming over the years. She believed in a lot of the things I believed in and still held on, still showed up, in her own way and true to her own principles. She wasn’t afraid to debate the conservative old guard and she really knew her shit. Some conservative institutions dismissed and denigrated her as exactly the sort of weak-kneed, liberal, “cafeteria” Christian that they love to rage against and point to as evidence of modern faith’s decline. But they couldn’t have been more wrong. If you look at Twitter today, there are countless tributes from people grieving her loss – people who were pushed out of the church or marginalized by it or abused in it or who otherwise did not think they had a place in it – because Rachel showed them that maybe, just maybe the church’s many, many fuck-ups weren’t God’s and it could be possible to separate the two.
All that I had in common with her aside – we blonde millennial #exvangelical feminists – she was just a great writer and an inspiration in that regard, too.
It’s so cruel. She was only 37 and she had two little kids and a husband…why her, why now?
I’ve been asking the same questions of God about one of my very best friends, who will soon be undergoing radiation and chemotherapy in the aftermath of getting a brain tumor removed. She’s 32, and fucking brilliant and ambitious and kind and inclusive and multidimensional and complicated and beautiful and as long as I’ve known her – almost 20 years – I’ve known that she would do incredible things. She already has. I’m really angry at God for putting this shit in her path. I know she will fight through it, because she is a badass with a wide and deep network of support, but she shouldn’t fucking have to in the first place.
So if you are a person who prays, please pray for my friend, who is really my sister.
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What I’m Reading:
- I think I took four books on vacation with me and returned with…eight? That’s normal, right? Shakespeare & Co. in Missoula is an absolute dream. I came home with this t-shirt, featuring the lovely John Waters quote, to add to my bookstore apparel collection. I also bought there, and am currently in the middle of, How to Break Up With Your Phone. Because God knows I need to and you do too.
- We visited a few bookstores in Vancouver as well, which we would have done regardless but it was Independent Bookstore Day last Saturday so it was even more obligatory. Vancouver has some messy (McLeod’s) and neat (Indigo) ones.
What I’m Watching:
- At the recommendation of my SIL Nat, we started Made In Heaven on Amazon today and are already HOOKED. Gimme all that desi drama!
What I’m Eating:
- Starting tomorrow, after we devour the RASPBERRY RACINE KRINGLE that the Trader Joe’s gods have bestowed upon us (!!!!!), we’re getting back on the healthy wagon. I need to fit into that cute wrap dress.
Sconnie Molly 