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… Keep reading "Good morning!"
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… Keep reading "Without Expectation"
For how much exploring I’ve done in California, so little of it has been south of Monterey. I’ve visited some of the “heavy hitters,” if you will – Joshua Tree, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Sequoia National Forest – but my tendency is to drive north of the Bay especially for… Keep reading "Morro Bay"
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… Keep reading "Pots & Pans & Parts of Me"
I spent yesterday morning painting. I was trying to paint an image of where I wish I were – in the springtime-green mountains of Colorado – instead of here, inside, sweating, as smoke swirls around us. I spent yesterday evening reading Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. It has… Keep reading "Away From Me"
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… Keep reading "Candy Corn Contemplations"
Last Thursday morning I went for a bike ride. The best kind of bike ride, in my opinion: one on which I take more pictures than I ride miles. It was the first day that week the smoke had cleared enough to get outside and I can’t remember ever breathing… Keep reading "Respite in the Redwoods"
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… Keep reading "Lavender"
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… Keep reading "TV & Poetry"
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… Keep reading "Fires, coffee, books (the usual)"
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… Keep reading "It’s 6am and I’m Bored!"
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… Keep reading "A Year of Gratitude"