Category Archives: life

~real~ness

Oh, well, hello there. Guess it’s been a minute.

A couple of weeks ago Baraboo was in the news. You probably read about it or at least saw the photo on Twitter – there’s no reason for me to post it again here. Those stupid idiot kids made me so angry and as I was thinking about what I could possibly do to renounce it, I decided to pitch an article about it to a few news outlets. A couple passed, but I ended up placing it with Refinery29 and really couldn’t be happier with how that all went; the editors were super nice and helpful and gave good edits. It was funny because I was literally in the middle of taking an online course through Catapult about how to pitch when the Baraboo story broke, and so before the final meeting I was like “GUYS! I did it! It worked!” 

So I’m proud of that. It’s my most “prestigious” byline so far and, forgive the vulgar mention of writerly compensation, paid well. I also registered myself for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference in March, which makes me feel even more like a ~real~ writer. I haven’t been to a professional conference in a few years, and it’s sort of weird when you’re doing it all on your own instead of through an employer. It’s in Portland, which is quite convenient. I’m hoping to connect with some #Binders from Twitter (women and nonbinary writers group) and whoever else wants to be my friend. I don’t have enough writer friends.

My parents visited the weekend before Thanksgiving. Not embarrassed to say I’ve never been so happy to see them in my life. It was also my first time “hosting” them, for consecutive days, in my own home – I’d like to think I did an okay job at it. Mom taught me how to make pie – apple and pumpkin – and we feasted on roasted sweet potato salad, popovers, mashed potatoes, and elote corn pudding. V and I had a ball showing them our favorite places – Green Lake, Portage Bay Cafe (that one’s just my fave), Cupcake Royale, Lincoln Park, the lovely Metropolitan Market. Which is really just a super bougie grocery store that has in-fucking-credible fresh chocolate chip cookies.

About 3.5 months into Seattle life, I’ve found a therapist with whom I think I click well enough and who checks my arbitrary demographic boxes (within 20 years of my age, female). We’re going to talk a lot about my ~feelings~ regarding my career and where I’m at right now (am I a ~real~ writer? shouldn’t I have a full-time job? am I just lazy? is this all really just late-stage capitalism’s fault? what is all this guilt I feel?), and the infertility stuff, and my general anxiety/depression that is currently pretty well-managed by medication but is also made easier to bear when I have the ear of a person who has no stake in my life and can just point out the connecting threads that I don’t see on my own.

Speaking of psychiatric help, we’ve put Isis on a small dose of Prozac to hopefully make her stop gnawing off all her tummy and leg fur. It’s going to take awhile to start working, but for some reason it’s already had the effect of her no longer sleeping in our bed at night. I’m totally 100% fine with that. Really. Doesn’t make me the least bit sad or concerned. She’s fine, I’m fine, it’s all very very fine.

What I’m Reading:

  • Just finished “Children of Blood and Bone” by Tomi Adeyemi and thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s YA, so there’s that, and it’s also probably best categorized as fantasy, so it’s definitely not my usual cup of tea. Roxane Gay wrote a good review of it though, and her word is basically enough for me to try just about anything. I loved the world-building. It’s a common enough “kids on a dangerous quest” kind of format, with a lot of magic and some quirky/arguably unnecessary ancillary characters, but the protagonist and her motley crew are fully realized and fun to root for.
  • This article I wish I’d written on yoga as the new country club in American society. Centered on a white yoga instructor’s bastardization of “namaste” into a jokey pun, it’s the sort of cultural appropriation that seems really innocuous on the surface but has layers of white supremacy and upper-class entitlement underneath. Fave line: “the question should not be ‘How can I do what I want?’ but ‘Why do I think I have a right to what I want?'”

What I’m Watching:

  • We just got through “Homecoming” on Amazon Prime. It was good – and really nice to see Julia Roberts on the small screen, looking decidedly not glamorous – but I wouldn’t say great. Bobby Cannavale though…is really something.
  • Saw a bunch of movies over the Thanksgiving holiday week – Ralph Breaks the Internet, Widows, and Creed II. Don’t waste your time on Ralph (even though the previous movie was cute), Viola is straight-up incredible in Widows, and Creed II is pretty much scene-for-scene exactly what you expect it to be but is nonetheless enjoyable.

What I’m Buying:

  • New category, because I like shopping and I like talking about my purchases. The end of 2018 is upon us (FINALLY?! because, and I know I’m not at all the first to point this out, Black Panther came out this year and there was a whole goddamn Olympics that we’ve completely forgotten about) which means: new planner time. Planners are important to me. Whenever I bust mine out in front of someone when we’ve just made plans, they act so impressed, like I must really have my life together because I write shit down. Nah, friends. I don’t. But it helps. I bought this this li’l beauty (in blossom lilac) and I am super impatient for it to arrive. MochiThings is heaven for anyone who loves planners and notebooks and their accompanying accessories.

And tonight, as I move on to a 10-3 record in the Best Friends Forever fantasy football league, I will leave you with this thought…

Image result for winning fantasy football meme

October

I don’t have a lot of words today for the Kavanaugh confirmation. I expected it. I expected Susan Collins (R-Maine) to vote yes, despite her appearance of perhaps considering giving a shit, proving herself as feckless and disingenuous and craven as all the rest. When will people learn that “moderate” Republicans don’t exist in elected office anymore? I know plenty of them IRL, but in the halls of power, there is no such thing and there hasn’t been for some time now. I have no idea what happens next. Hopefully a gigantic #bluewave in November, but I do not want to get my hopes up for that. We thought 2016 was more or less in the bag, and it fucking wasn’t. I just need to see a message sent, I just need to see that there are SOME consequences for these people’s detestable and immoral and hypocritical actions.

This past week I’ve been happiest when distancing myself from Twitter and the news – big surprise. That is the most obvious recommendation in the world for those of us having a difficult time with the current state of affairs. Tune out when you need to. Tune back in when you’re able. People on Twitter are so often more articulate than I am about what I’m mad about, though.

Related to that…V and I watched an episode of the Netflix mini-documentary series Follow This yesterday about tech addiction. The show uses Buzzfeed reporters to go and investigate weird or troubling or ultra-random shit and my girl Scaachi Koul (oh yeah, we’re besties) is on some of them. Anyway, tech addiction. They profiled a center for tech addiction rehab that’s somewhere near Seattle, interestingly enough, and talked to (all) guys about how their 14-hour gaming days or constant smartphone usage messed up their lives in all kinds of ways – bad sleep, poor nutrition, suffering interpersonal relationships, plummeting self-esteem, etc. The rehab center isolates them from technology for I don’t remember exactly how long, but I want to say like 2 months before slowly reintroducing it back into their lives. It was fascinating and V and I had a good discussion about it afterwards, both of us agreeing (not for the first time) that we are somewhat addicted to our phones and at a very very bare minimum should stop looking at them first thing in the morning and then lying in bed for an hour scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. Hoping to break that shitty habit.

I miss my friends. I miss having people with whom I could make plans almost every weekend, even if those plans were just a movie night or a football game. I need to meet more people in Seattle, but it’s hard out here (and by here I mean everywhere) for an introvert. We were just so comfortable in Madison that I wonder if we were crazy to blow it all up and come here – but I don’t regret it, I think it was the right decision. Sometimes you don’t know you’re in a rut until you’re jarred out of it. Sometimes it’s good to surprise people who might’ve thought you were too scared to ever leave, especially if one of those people is yourself.

Snapchat and FaceTime have been my lifesavers. Being able to see and talk to my parents and my friends is huuuuge, I cannot overstate how much it’s helped.

One of my Hugo House classes has started, and there’s another single-day seminar that I’m going to on Monday that’s on the topic of writing about your obsessions. Its description said “leave your inhibitions at the door,” LOLOLOL. Me? Inhibited? In groups of strangers whom I want to impress? The devil you say. I’ll try to wing it. What am I obsessed with? Um…Korean skincare. Cats. Books. Feminism. My own baked goods. Those have kind of all…been done. I might need a more unique obsession. Ya girl is #basic.

giphy

What I’m Reading:

  • I just finished the sequel to “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before,” the book made into the overwhelmingly adorable Netflix movie. YOU GUYS IT WAS SO SO GOOD! If you liked the first book, you’ll like the second (“P.S. I Still Love You”) just as much. I’m sure it will eventually be made into a movie as well but I really need that to happen like RIGHT NOW and not 2-3 years from now. At a minimum I need to know who they’re going to cast as John Ambrose McClaren. But it will definitely be a young child I’ve never heard of because I’m 32 and had heard of *no one* in the first movie except, obviously, Aiden from Sex & The City.
  • I have so many other books checked out from the library but the one most immediately due is “Where The Line Bleeds“, Jesmyn Ward’s first book, and considering how much I loved “Sing, Unburied, Sing” and…literally everything else she’s written, I have a good feeling about this one.
  • I had pre-ordered Rebecca Traister’s “Good and Mad“, but honestly, it’s like TOO on the nose right now. I know my anger can and will be useful in the fights to come – which is basically the premise, along with how that’s gone for women historically – but right now I’m so angry that I don’t want to even think about my anger.

What I’m Watching:

  • More of the “Follow This” mini-docs. They’re 15-20 minutes each, which is a much easier sell to V than most regular-length documentaries I want to watch 🙂 There’s one about the opioid epidemic that focuses a lot on Vancouver’s “safe injection sites” (that Seattle is also considering) and I keep telling my dad to watch it because he is an addiction specialist and I want to know what he thinks but I don’t think he has yet. There’s less-heavy ones too, about ASMR and Amish romance novels (those are two distinct episodes, if that wasn’t clear). Buzzfeed gets a semi-deserved bad rap a lot of the time, but honestly, they also do some really interesting and solid journalism.
  • Looking forward to seeing The Hate U Give on Friday, I know it’s going to be amazing.

What I’m Eating:

  • My chocolate chip cookies, currently. I can’t help it that they are my masterpiece. Though I am also thinking about making either snickerdoodles or oatmeal Raisinets tomorrow.

What’s Annoying Me:

  • People’s Instagram stories that are just footage from the concert they are attending. The sound quality is always awful, they’re usually not in the greatest visual position, and it always startles the shit out of me when I’m not expecting the next story I’m watching to be LOUD INTENSE MUSIC AND/OR SCREAMING. I love you guys but please just enjoy the show and tell me about it later if you must.
  • We went to the International District today (aka Chinatown) and the veggie egg rolls we got at the Chinese restaurant were very clearly microwaved as they were cold in the middle. #firstworldwhitepeopleproblems
  • The Snapchat “discover” feed or whatever the fuck it’s really called. First and foremost on it is always the latest, most explicit Kardashian or Jenner selfie, and the rest of it is similar trash along with tacky clickbait and lingerie ads.
  • I think this is the longest post I’ve made and it’s about very little of importance, so that’s kind of annoying in and of itself. But let’s not end on that note…

What I’m Happy About:

  • I’ve found a competent lady to do my brows, an easy-to-book, not wildly overpriced nail salon that offers #roséallday, an adorable gift shop that has the coolest birthday cards (SO LONG, SHITTY DRUGSTORE/TARGET SELECTION), a “natural” beauty store/pharmacy, a bookstore, our favorite pizza place, a cupcake shop that has RED VELVET ICE CREAM by the PINT, a bar that does trivia nights, a Trader Joe’s, and more – all within 3 blocks of each other on Queen Anne Avenue, which is about a half mile from our apartment. Can you even believe that? This is, without any doubt, the best neighborhood I’ve ever lived in.
  • I really hardly have to go to Target anymore and it’s strangely liberating – I thought I would miss it, but I don’t!
  • My assignment for last week’s class at Hugo House got nice feedback.
  • We had a very sweet video chat with V’s mom tonight that was much-needed.
  • It is, at last, fall.

Image result for fall autumn memes

Kava-NAW, etc.

I am feeling discouraged today.

In a couple of months I will have been unemployed for a year. I suppose another way of saying that is that I have been a freelance writer for a year – and believe me, that’s what my resume says, and that’s how I try to think of it – but it has not been as fruitful as I’d like and that’s probably more my fault than any external factors. I never expected it to be easy and I never expected to make a ton of money, so at least I haven’t been surprised on those fronts. I’ve pitched some editors – maybe half a dozen – and gotten zero responses, which any writer can tell you is far worse than any rejection. A friend of a friend told me about Hugo House here in Seattle, and I’ve signed up for a couple of multi-week workshops, one of which starts tomorrow – I’m dreadfully intimidated but also just kind of dying to DO IT. I see so many women out there thriving in their writing careers and I cheer them on with every bit of my heart – I just want to get where they are, where I could casually say “here’s my latest for [x badass publication]…” instead of “OMG YOU GUYS SOMEONE ACTUALLY PUBLISHED ME THIS IS REAL THIS IS HAPPENING!!!” It will take time…I know. I feel impatient today.

And I also know that a year ago, I would’ve killed just to be published anywhere at all – so paying attention and respect to progress that has been made would probably be a better route to take, mentally.

I’ve been trying to find a therapist here but it seems like none of the lady shrinks in my network are accepting new patients and the one place that seemed promising isn’t returning my email.

We bought a new mattress and it’s delightful but naturally takes some getting used to especially since it is memory foam and we are not really accustomed to that. The firmness! My God, the firmness! My body feels good but also sore?? Or is it sore from Seattle’s hills and stairs?

Allegations against Brett Kavanaugh continue to pile up – today a third woman went public. How many will it take? How many women have to tell their stories? My Twitter feed is positively bursting at the seams with women sharing their sexual harassment and assault traumas…and it just. doesn’t. matter. If nothing else, this whole episode – hell, the last two years – have been extremely illuminating re: the number of people we have in our government who could not care less about sexual assault. They’re going to vote on Friday no matter what happens on Thursday. It’s all a foregone conclusion. What breaks my heart perhaps the most is the female GOP senators who could be putting a stop to all this and for whatever reason, aren’t. My expectations for white men in power are already subterranean so it’s pleasantly surprising when any one of them stands up for women or any marginalized group. But a woman should know. A woman should get it. If Susan Collins was my senator, I’d be picketing her office every day of the week and twice on Sunday until she agreed to vote against this piece of misogynist elitist garbage.

Then there’s all the civilian Republicans who, I guess, just have no problem with giving an alleged serial sexual assaulter a lifetime appointment on the highest court in the land. Your cousin. Your neighbor. Your boss. Your pastor. People in your life that you care about and respect, who aren’t showing any kind of care and respect toward women, because they are just going along with the party line. It’s really, really disappointing to see the lengths people will go to not believe women. Women who have EVERYTHING to lose by coming forward. We’re learning a lot about our friends and family members and community leaders by their responses to this stuff.

What I’m Reading:

  • “The Very Worst Missionary” by Jamie Wright, the story of a woman who became a Christian in her 20s as a young mom and decided to go be a missionary in Costa Rica and discovered that most mission work is bad/useless/counterproductive. Having lots of flashbacks to the weeklong “missions trip” my church youth group went on to Costa Rica in 2003. We…were not super helpful. Anyway, she’s funny and very sweary and unapologetic, my kind of girl.

What I’m Watching:

  • Still lots of Brooklyn 99. When I started it several weeks ago, I picked up in like season 3 or 4. So we watched all of that until it got current, and now we’re going back to the beginning to see what I missed. It’s so delightful.

What I’m Listening To:

  • Ella Mai, “Boo’d Up” and “10,000 Hours” and “A Thousand Times”. Also “Best Part” from H.E.R. (featuring Daniel Caesar). I had never heard of any of those people until about a week ago when I was hanging out at a coffee shop and letting YouTube play whatever it wanted after I picked a random Beyoncé song. “Best Part” is the song that plays in my mind when I envision a beautiful autumnal falling-in-love montage: walking through the leaves, drinking cider while wearing sweaters and scarves, cuddling by the fireplace, all the basic shit. Highly recommend.

What I’m Fuming About:

  • I believe we’ve covered that.

screaming

Chapter 1, Week 1

We’re here and it’s taken me a few days to gather my thoughts, I guess.

Moving day itself was a predictable shitshow, but all three of us survived the plane ride, despite Isis’s very clear displeasure. Actually “moving in” to our apartment wasn’t terribly difficult since all we had was a few suitcases (okay fine, 5) and an air mattress. All of our stuff is supposed to arrive (🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻) on Tuesday. At that point, I think it’ll start feeling a little more like home. A totally empty, echo-y living room doesn’t do much for the hygge vibes.

We’ve had a fun time exploring this week. We visited Discovery Park and Alki Beach and procured library cards and gone to two, yes two, movies (BlackKklansman and Crazy Rich Asians) and tomorrow night we’re going to go to a Seattle Storm game (WNBA) to satisfy my inner 10-year-old who so loved the fact that a women’s professional basketball league was finally being created. Who cares if the SuperSonics franchise moved to Oklahoma – we’ve got the Storm, baby.

(BlackKlansman was really really good but if we’re comparing Jordan Peele movies, I think Get Out is superior. Crazy Rich Asians was a lot of fun and it was refreshing to see a non-idiotic but also non-emo romcom in theaters again – God, it feels like it’s been forever – but I know from my Twitter feed that Awkwafina’s “blaccent” rubbed some people the wrong way. That’s really not my argument to have, though. And the whole character of Awkwafina’s brother, how his whole deal was just being really creepy towards Rachel, Constance Wu’s character? What the hell was that? Everything is at least a little problematic these days.)

Anyway. I really love Queen Anne. I’m glad we chose this spot.

The view on a hella hazy day

Today we largely got around downtown/Capitol Hill/QA without using Google maps 😎 which I think is quite the victory. Downtown is still pretty confusing in spots but it helps that the theater we have chosen as our own is right across the street from the hotel we stayed at on two different trips – so we’re pretty familiar with the area.

I’m a little homesick, but not terribly so yet. I say yet because I know at some point it’s going to hit me hard and I’m very much not looking forward to that. FaceTime and Snapchat have helped a lot, actually. I need to get more Snapchat-proficient. I’ve actually been wearing Wisconsin-themed clothes all week because that’s just what I packed, totally unintentionally. I’m still checking Madison.com every day. I’m not forgetting where home actually really is.

July is always weird

My home currently does not look like a place where two semi-sloppy people live and eat and sleep and play and bathe, but rather a place carefully and meticulously staged to remove any semblance of personality in order to entice the largest number of prospective buyers. Because that’s what we’re tryna do here. It’s been a weird week.

In my haste to get the house picture-perfect for listing photos, I misplaced my to-do list notebook. Couldn’t find it for two days, aka a goddamn eternity in to-do list time. Tonight, discovered I had (totally intentionally) put it in the microwave. Out of sight out of mind!!!!

Anyway – I am going to miss this house a lot. We looked at sooo many before finally getting an accepted offer on this one. So many other offers had fallen through or been rejected. But as always, things worked out like they were supposed to; this was the right house for us. It has its quirks and imperfections and scars, some of which we’ve grown to love and others we merely tolerate. We learned that owning a corner lot in a snowy state is double the work. We learned that outdoor maintenance is not, in fact, optional. We learned that some neighbors take their own lawns very very seriously and God help you if your lawn begins to threaten theirs with “weed creep”. And that those neighbors will report you to the city in a heartbeat if your arbor vitae branches begin to bend over the sidewalk under the municipally-mandated 7 foot clearance.

It’s been a trip.

One thing I will NOT miss about this house is how so many of the electrical outlets and light switch plates are not installed levelly. I swear at least two thirds of them are crooked AF, making hanging stuff in their vicinity quite a challenge because it will end up looking off even if it is perfectly level.

I’ve been wanting to write but lacking inspiration, hence this pretty dull post.

What I’m Reading:

  • “The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness” by Jill Filipovic. I’m not very far into it yet but the premise – that society should make the happiness of women an explicit goal – is an interesting one for which I’m very curious to see the case made. It sounds kind of preposterous when you put it like that…but I’m betting Filipovic will make s pretty convincing argument.
  • What I’m Watching:
      • So you know how much I love my husband? You really don’t know. Even I did not know exactly how much until recently. I apparently love him enough to watch, and enjoy, an anime (manga?) series that he really wanted me to try. My Hero Academia is goofy and it definitely feels like some things get lost in translation and some of the sexualization is just 🙄🙄🙄 buuuut, I’m entertained and am even starting to become a bit invested.
      I’m going to start Friday Night Lights soon, because lots of people recommend it and my girl Scaachi has a very convincing Twitter thread on it.

    What I’m fuming about:

    • Look, the list is a mile long like always, but I don’t feel like getting into the geopolitical muck today. I will limit my fumes to 1) the utterly Kafkaesque absurdity that is Indian travel bureaucracy, and 2) the fact that teleportation does not yet exist and my cat and I have to endure 4.5 hours of air travel when we move to Seattle and I’m SO WORRIED ABOUT HER YOU GUYS SHE’S KIND OF OLD AND WHAT ABOUT THE AIR PRESSURE AND IS SHE GOING TO PUKE EVERYWHERE AND/OR MEOW INCESSANTLY AND DEAR GOD WHAT IF SHE POOPS OR PEES? More critically WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO CALL HER WHILE TRAVELING BECAUSE IT SURE AS SHIT CAN’T BE HER REAL NAME.
  • One or both of us is going to need to be highly medicated for that trip.

    • Why are you reading this, go watch Nanette.

    We did apartment-hunting in Seattle over the weekend and it was fun, exhausting, surreal, weird. We had a rental car for the weekend and driving into the city from the airport, V mentioned that one reason it felt so odd is that we hardly ever drive ourselves around when we’re in a different city…if we’re visiting family, obviously they drive, and if we’re on vacation we Uber or take public transportation. Maneuvering our way to the hotel and then to a drugstore and then back to the hotel was…an adventure in and of itself. Their downtown has a lot of one-way streets, like Madison’s, but on a larger scale. I don’t think we’ll drive too much once we move unless we really have to. The apartments we looked at (10 in all) were all shiny and mostly new and amenity-filled and clearly very much catering to our particular demographic. I’m already feeling some guilt associated with being one of Those People in Seattle.

    Honestly, all I really want is for us to find a good apartment in a good area and for us and our kitty to make it there unscathed and adjust as smoothly as possible. And uh, a job would be nice too…or at least steadier freelance work. I’ve got to start hustling, that’s the only way freelancers make it. I’m still anxious about everything, but I am also starting to feel more like this is very much the right thing for us right now, and that it will be good. If it turns out not to be, it’s not undoable. I always like knowing I have an emergency exit plan, even if I won’t need it.

    seattle meme
    looking forward to figuring out what the Spokane part even means

    I had my last appointment with my psychiatrist yesterday, the same one I’ve been seeing for twelve years. TWELVE YEARS, man. I came to her when I was 20, fresh off a terrible breakup and not sleeping and feeling miserable. She helped me see that the breakup was actually quite a good thing. She guided me through many subsequent years of experimenting with different medications to treat my anxiety and depression. She was a constant in my life when I badly needed stability. She did talk therapy with me even though that’s not really what she normally does and normally she meets with younger adolescents but she kept me all these years anyway. Yesterday we talked about the upcoming move and about how I’ve changed since we first met. She said she could see that I’ve become a lot more calm and peaceful. Which I would partly attribute to medication, and partly to internal work I’ve done, and partly to the people around me who help me stay sane. But really…I wish every person in the world had access to this kind of care, and it bums me out that mental health still isn’t taken as seriously as it should be.

    If I ever do write a book, she’s going to be prominently named in my Acknowledgments.

    What I’m Reading:

    • I’m in the middle of “There There” by Tommy Orange, which has been getting praise every which way lately from people whose tastes I respect. I think I’m doing it wrong though – I like it so far, but I’m reading it on my Kindle, and that method of reading makes it difficult to go back and refresh one’s memory about who’s who and what happened when. In a story like this with intertwined characters, that is challenging. And I’ve been reading it in such small random intervals. For this book, I think a hard copy would have been a lot better.

    What I’m Watching:

    • Uh, duh: Nanette. You’ve heard about Nanette, right? OK so it’s a Netflix stand-up special from an Australian comedy named Hannah Gadsby. I love a good stand-up, and Hannah is definitely funny, but this is unlike any other stand-up I’ve ever seen. She mixes humor with some really fucking raw and powerful personal stories about growing up as a lesbian in a conservative region of Australia. It’s a sorely needed perspective and brilliantly put together. Her pain is so visceral and visible. You wonder how anyone could hate her for being “different”. Homophobia really is a mindfuck and LGBT folks themselves are not immune to internalizing it the way we all have; Hannah suffered from it very much,  “soaking in self-hate”. Anyway. I highly highly encourage you to watch it, all of it.

    nanette

    • I miss Queer Eye so much. I need constant new episodes. Following the guys on Instagram is fun and all but I need MORE.

    What I’m fuming about:

    • Oh, the usual. I haven’t read up very much yet on new SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh but from what I know, it’s pretty much as bad or worse as we feared it would be.
    • White people are on a hell of a roll lately being idiotic and racist. (I guess by “lately” I mean that lately a lot of it has been caught on video.) There was #PermitPatty, there was #BBQBecky, then #PoolPatrolPaul. Now today I learned of this dude who harassed a woman in a park for wearing a shirt with the Puerto Rican flag. (He was clearly not aware that Puerto Rico is part of the US.) There are cops *right there*, and the woman repeatedly asks them for assistance, only to be essentially ignored. The guy was almost certainly drunk and she had every reason to be fearful. One of the things he said was “you’re not gonna change us”. Which felt pretty chilling to me.

    idk about you, but i’m feeling 32

    It was my birthday a few days ago and I was lucky enough to celebrate with a whole lot of family and friends.

    I had so much fucking fun, you guys.

    I don’t understand people who dislike birthdays. They say it’s “depressing” because you’re “getting older” or whatever. Like…yes, but also…so??? Isn’t getting older vastly better than the alternative? Don’t you realize you are *lucky* to be getting older? My birthday is possibly the least depressing day of the year. Last night was certainly one of my best nights of the year thus far. Sure, we’re not 22 anymore, but there’s no stasis in this life. Onward, I say. Celebrate being alive and being loved whenever possible, and what better excuse than a birthday?

    My life is not exactly what I thought it would be at 32. I guess most obviously, I thought I’d be a mom by now. But it’s not time yet, apparently. And I love my life the way it is.

    Moving day (actual date TBD) draws nearer. The house will be going on the market soon; there’s already a sign in the yard. It’s very very surreal.

    What I’m reading:

    • I just finished “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” by Mark Manson. It wasn’t anything earth shattering, philosophy-wise, but worth it nonetheless as a reminder to organize life’s priorities appropriately.

    What I’m watching:

    • I’m almost done with season 2 of Queen Sugar. Kofi Siriboe is breaking my heart.
    • We saw Uncle Drew a couple nights ago and we two former basketball kids loved seeing Shaq, Reggie Miller, Nate Robinson, Lisa Leslie, et al play super geriatric. If only Michael could’ve been persuaded to participate.

    What I’m fuming about:

    • Jesus, where to begin. I was really freaked out, for lack of a better word, by Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement announcement. If anyone ever previously considered him to be a friend of progress and women’s rights and LGBT rights and just good things in general, surely they’ve now been disabused of that notion. I just can’t believe he would choose to retire NOW. I haven’t read much yet of the whisperings regarding his son and some Trump financial dealings, so maybe that was a factor, or maybe not, I don’t know. I only know that Roe v. Wade is in serious peril and if it is indeed overturned, women. Are. Going. To. Die. Because you don’t ever outlaw abortion; you only outlaw safe abortion. And Roe is far from the only matter affected. This is going to touch everything from the environment to immigration to education to foreign affairs to campaign finance to gerrymandering to…you get the picture. Really dark stuff.
    • The World Cup, here and there. Soccer is not really my jam normally and I still can’t pay attention to a full 90 minute match, but I can appreciate the drama and interesting storylines. If Russia wins though I may never watch again.

    Curveball…

    I have news.

    You know how I’ve been unemployed for like…kind of awhile now?

    A couple months ago I was feeling angry and bitter about it and I told V that maybe I would have better luck finding a job somewhere else; maybe Madison is too small, maybe my reputation has been maligned so much that nobody here will hire me. I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself exactly, just trying to look at the situation realistically. So V, being the supportive partner that he is, started looking elsewhere for a job of his own. Over the last two months he’s had a lot of semi-stressful interviews with a lot of different companies kind of all over the place. Then Amazon invited him for an in-person interview in Seattle a couple weeks ago; we went. They offered him a pretty sweet job and he took it and…we are moving to Seattle.

    seattle-state-map
    holy shit

    Still having trouble recognizing that as reality, even just typing it: we are moving.

    Anyone who knows me knows I love Madison and I love Wisconsin – like hello, what did I name my blog? It’s part of my identity. And I love my family and my friends almost to the point of pathology. So while this might’ve been a no-brainer opportunity for some people, it wasn’t for me. We have such roots here with my family and our friends. We have this lovely home. When we bought it two years ago, moving to another city was nowhere on our radar. We both had good jobs that we more or less enjoyed. But a lot has changed. I don’t have a job, or prospects of a job, and six months of that has worn pretty thin. Much as it pains me to say, a lady can only take so many walks.

    So as I’ve told everyone that I’ve discussed this with so far, I’m a huge mixed bag of emotions. Happy, excited, proud, scared, anxious, sad, apprehensive, curious. Honestly sometimes the negative emotions have been stomping their way to the forefront more often than I’d like. In that spirit of combating that, here’s a little list of things I am looking forward to:

    • not shoveling snow
    • not having a Cold War with my neighbor over our lawn
    • being able to go to Elliott Bay Book Company ANYTIME I WANT
      • sooo many awesome lady writers from Seattle: Ijeoma Oluo, Lindy West, Jill Filipovic, Carrie Brownstein! (I’m not going to link them all to Goodreads because I’m lazy but you should read all their shit)
    • better shopping in general
    • more racial diversity (which I know Seattle is not exactly known for, but it’s certainly more diverse than here…#perspective)
    • those gorgeous views

    Another time I’ll make a list of things I’m anxious about. Won’t that be fun! I can guarantee it will be highly detailed and really pathetic.

    The thing is, everyone else has already done this. My parents did this (Missouri and Michigan). My closest friends did this (all over the country and all over the damn world). Hell, my brother did this (Florida). It’s usually when people are in their 20s, I guess, that they venture out to wherever they fancy. I didn’t. I don’t know exactly why I didn’t. If you’d asked me when I was 16 what the next decade of my life would hold, I certainly wouldn’t have said “only leaving Wisconsin for vacations”. I mean at 16 I had no concept of things like tuition or literally anything and thought I was going to go east for college at Sarah Lawrence (because Julia Stiles wanted to go there so bad in 10 Things I Hate About You and she was everything to me). But what I’m trying to say is, I didn’t do it then, so if I don’t now…when will I? When I’m like…retired? Silly, everyone knows millennials don’t get to retire.

    It’ll be an absolutely bananas next couple of months. Definitely gonna lose my shit more than once. For sure. But I’m gonna make it.

    Growing

    Whew, shit has been busy.

    Last week I helped out at the Black Women’s Leadership Conference, hosted by the visionary Sabrina Madison.

    On Saturday I celebrated my beloved Christina’s graduation from her PhD program in Connecticut.

    IMG-4268

    These sisters are very, very special to me. In high school they let me into their family and I got the little sister I’d always wanted in Christina.  She is a brilliant, creative, extraordinarily kind, and sweet woman of whom I am just so proud. I’m sad that she’s moving back east soon, but such is the life of an academic, and I want her to thrive no matter where she happens to be.

    And again/still, I have some other cool things happening that I want to talk about but can’t yet (not a pregnancy).

    I did a bit of gardening today. As I explained on Facebook, “gardening” for me basically meant ripping up weeds and cleaning up a couple of piles of leaves that we neglected to rake last fall. There was one spot in particular where a lot of leaves had settled in for the winter and really made themselves at home. I cleaned that all up and now we have to reseed that part of the lawn.

    I don’t know a damn thing about plants. I mean I really really don’t. I ran into my old botany professor at Christina’s graduation party, and God bless that woman for giving me a C back then, because God knows I probably did not deserve it. I can’t identify anything. When my brother came to build the mudroom closet for us a couple weekends ago, my sister-in-law kindly walked around the house with V and me and told us what each plant we had was (and what was just weeds). She even helped us pick out some pretty perennials at Home Depot, almost none of which I can recall by name now. Violas? Yarrows? *shrug emoji* This isn’t going to be like, a huge new hobby of mine, but I am trying to put a little more time and effort into the yard this year.

    Now that the warmth appears to be here to stay, shit just keeps getting busier. This weekend V and I are finally going to visit Door County and hopefully take some pretty hikes and enjoy the scenery. Next weekend we will be celebrating the golden birthday of my beloved friends’ beloved daughter. The weekend after that we will be back up north, this time further, to have a big ol’ family gathering at my sister-in-law’s cabin. Then, following that, we are throwing a party for my parents’ 40th anniversary. Whew. It’s all good stuff, really fun stuff, but kind of exhausting when you think of it all at once.

    These past six months have been difficult at times, mentally more than anything, because I keep having to remind myself that being un(der)employed doesn’t inherently mean anything negative about me as a person. It’s all in my own head.

    Not really related to that, but also on the mental health subject – literally every day, I have to remind myself that I am a grown ass woman who can make her own valid choices without deference given to impressing, placating, or accommodating anyone else.

    What I’m reading:

    • Um, actually, nothing book-wise. I finished Asymmetry, and liked it but didn’t love it. On deck are Sunburn, by Laura Lippman and possibly a rereading of Virgin by Hanne Blank.
    • This NYT article would be very interesting for any fans of Arrested Development. Reading their reckoning of the allegations against Jeffrey Tambor is…illuminating. Jason Bateman really goes to bat for Tambor in a big way.

    What I’m fuming about:

    • The NFL’s shameful new national anthem policy. The league’s relationship with the military, explained well here; the owner of the Jets had an encouraging response (though why he didn’t vote against the policy, instead of abstaining, is a mystery); appropriately scorching take by The Root

    What I’m watching:

    • Deadpool, last night. If you liked the first one you are sure to enjoy the second. If you didn’t, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you to stay away. But I enjoyed it. I like my superheroes self-aware and sweary (but I also like Captain America, so…the opposite too)
    • I gave up on Westworld. #sorrynotsorry

    Always blogging at 10:30pm…

    I’m not always good at being grateful.

    I could blame American capitalism, I guess, at least in part, for always wanting *more*. Over the weekend my brother, as you may have seen on the ol’ Facebook, came over and constructed a bench/storage area for my previously terribly underperforming front closet. It’s something I’ve wanted since we bought the house two years ago. He did an amazing job. I bought him lunch and gave him all the Mountain Dew he could drink.

    closet makeover.png

    Then later that night, I was idly browsing one of my favorite apps, Realtor dot com. As V has applied for different jobs in different cities, I’ve used it to check out what the housing market is like in those places – whether we’d have to rent or could feasibly buy and what the neighborhoods are like, et cetera. I get very, very, very ahead of myself. So that evening I was looking around the city of Seattle, which is one that we’ve thought about a lot. Obviously Seattle real estate is just bananas, orders of magnitude out of anything V and I could afford. But I looked nonetheless.

    And I truly had to stop and sit myself down, like, MOLLY. What are you doing. You are a 31 year old underemployed recovering bureaucrat, to crib from the bio you give when you pitch your writing. You are not supposed to have a picturesque Seattle Craftsman bungalow with built-in storage for days and elegant fireplaces (plural) and a claw foot tub and a Viking range and gleaming, tasteful white everything and a view of the mountains. This is not a Nancy Meyers movie. You are not Meryl Streep. Chill the fuck out and take a giant step back and look around you and be thankful, for God’s sake.

    It’s very easy to achieve something or acquire something and immediately turn your focus to the next achievement or object of your desire. In some ways that’s not all bad, it’s good to strive, it’s good to have goals. Complacency is definitely not rewarded in this society. But I don’t think I take enough time to just appreciate what I already have achieved and/or acquired. My brother generously gave his time and skill to make a lovely improvement to the house that V and I already love, regardless of its imperfections. I have a home. I have family and friends who love me. I’m in a weird life space right now but I’m starting to embrace it. I’m writing (exciting things are happening that I can’t yet tell you about). I’m doing a small part to help improve outcomes for black women and girls in Wisconsin. I’m losing weight and feeling good in my body – no small feat for me. I’m meeting new people and learning new things every day, which is certainly more than I can say for any of my previous 9-to-5’s. Would it be nice to have more money? Yes. But I’m good for right now.

    What I’m reading:

    What I’m listening to:

    What I’m watching:

    • Westworld (despite not loving how dumb it makes me feel sometimes)
    • Silicon Valley
    • The Americans (holy shit)
    • Queen Sugar (one day I’m Team Charlie, then I’m Team Nova, but I am never ever Team Remy)

    What I’m eating:

    • More of those fudgy brownies I talked about before. Guys. There just are no words. I mean it. You’re not living right if you’re not eating these bad boys. (Tasty’s recipe) The recipe only makes a 9×9 pan (which I’ve done, but I’ve also used an 8×8 to increase the fudgy factor EVEN MORE) which means they will be gone like instantly, but fortunately they don’t require any bizarre ingredients and are easy to make literally any time you crave them.