Category: Random
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Good morning!
It’s a great morning to: wake up obscenely early (4:30am) because you needed to pee and then once you were awake your mind started racing so you just got up instead of lying anxiously in bed drink coffee and watch videos from Bruce’s 1975 Hammersmith Odeon show and cry of emotion before 5am! For reference:…
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Without Expectation
The morning air is cold and dry. Beneath the trees, on the trails covered with cracked and faded-brown leaves, it smells like winter. There is no one else around and I imagine myself on a mountain. I am trying on this Monday morning to approach the week “without expectation.” I say these words to myself…
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Pots & Pans & Parts of Me
I woke up this morning, brushed my teeth, and did the dishes. All I do is the dishes. I need more hobbies. And less dishes. And better strategies for coping with my anxiety and need for control. Thomas made toaster waffles for breakfast instead of his usual oatmeal so that was exciting. He still ate…
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Candy Corn Contemplations
It’s a Sunday Sunday. Meaning: I left the house only once, which was to go to Target for toilet bowl cleaner, and ended up buying a big bag of candy corn that I finished on the walk home. I told myself I’d cook the tofu and kale I bought earlier this week (in a fleeting…
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Lavender
It’s 5:18am but I get up anyway because it’s easier to start my day tired than it is to toss and turn in bed with only anxious thoughts as company. (No, wait, Thomas is also here…but he’s fast asleep and has been working so hard the last thing I want to do is wake him…)…
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TV & Poetry
I like to think of me and Thomas’ brain cell count as a zero sum game: if he’s gaining brain cells, I have to be losing them at the same rate. For example: it’s 8pm on a Saturday evening and he is doing readings for his policy classes. Therefore, in order to balance out his…
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Fires, coffee, books (the usual)
I woke this morning to a red “Unhealthy” warning on my AirNow phone app. Instead of waking up, rolling over to grab my phone, and checking my work email, my mornings now consist of waking up, rolling over to grab my phone, and checking the air quality maps. What an inspiring way to start the…
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It’s 6am and I’m Bored!
Last week I accidentally unmuted myself during a work call while funneling the remains of a family-size bag of popcorn into my mouth. A few seconds later: “Hey, Maddy, could you mute yourself?” F*ck. Such is my life these days. This week, however, my work laptop decided to stop functioning entirely so I’ve been trying…
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A Year of Gratitude
One year ago today I got in an awful bike accident. I remember lying contorted on the ground in the most pain I’d felt in my life, being lifted onto a stretcher and into the back of an ambulance, then opening my eyes in an emergency room bed thinking that if I wasn’t dead I…
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Fires in the Time of Coronavirus
Some things that happened today, Monday, August 24: — I walked to the grocery store in full incognito mode. I hate wearing shades because they make me feel like an asshole but the smoky air left me no choice. Also, am I the only one who feels like shades create a barrier between them and…
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Having My Cake…and Being Stressed Out, Too?
I feel sad, angry, and helpless about so much: fires blazing across Northern California, coronavirus raging on, friends who are going through tough times, ongoing fights for black lives… I sit at my kitchen table each day and try to focus on work but it feels increasingly trivial. I take meetings in between reading articles…
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Poor Planning & Pedialyte
The weather this past week has been crazy and scary (commence fire season; I woke up this morning to the smell of smoke) but also incredible. I’ve gone to sleep every night sweating on top of my bed sheets (why have I never purchased a fan?!) and got pummeled by hail at Mt. Tam on…
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Accidental Ode to San Francisco
I love the elm trees on Folsom Street, and the way their leaves turn a fluorescent green as they capture the early morning light. The other day I hiked up Bernal Heights with a friend and, until she pointed them out, I had never thought to look at those trees from above: One of my…
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Book Review-ish: So Many Olympic Exertions
Last weekend I finished Anelise Chen’s So Many Olympics Exertions. I picked it up after discovering it on Goodreads (which, to be honest, I am finding more of time-suck than Twitter these days, though the content is certainly more wholesome). I’m too lazy to summarize a book that is better summarized by someone else anyway,…
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Fashion Friday
Hello, loyal readers, and happy Friday. Hopefully it’s the start of a long weekend for most of you. My meetings are winding down and I’m wrapping up some loose ends at work before heading straight for the unopened bottle of rosé in my fridge (related: some recommended reading from the SF Chronicle). I’ve done a…