east end girl
the toehold of truth
there is this person
This person thrives on negativity. On bubble bursting and undercutting other peoples' happiness. He will pointedly ignore your successes and joys, but will quickly zero in on and talk up your mistakes.
This person is dishonest, always exaggerating the dumbest things to make circumstances more dramatic. This person craves a big, shocked response from his audience and will manipulate the facts to get it.
This person lies. He lies to cover his poor behavior. He lies to elicit pity. He lies for personal gain.
This person is chronically self-absorbed but totally lacking in self-awareness. He has no interest in the lives of others but will buttonhole anyone he can with anecdotes and images from his own life. He hijacks every conversation to make it about himself.
This person gossips. He never heard a second or third-hand rumor he didn't instantly, compulsively share with everyone he could, without giving a thought to the fallout.
This person is lazy. He passes every possible task and responsibility he can onto others. Sometimes it's to cover for his ineptitude and lack of knowledge; sometimes he just can't be bothered. He puts in the absolute bare minimum of time and effort and care, and takes full advantage of how little oversight there is of this.
This person is jealous. He is envious of the resources, freedoms, successes, and talents of others, and finds ways to passively thwart them. He resents having to help anyone achieve anything that he won't get a piece of.
This person is a phony. He's the type that feigns a zen, highly evolved state of being but it's all fake. He's an anger addict and a control freak, and has irreparably damaged relationships because of it.
This toxic person has been a temporary fact of my life, until today. And tbh, I'm pretty proud of having survived my proximity to him with my dignity intact.
The rain feels so good and so right tonight.
per curiam
For months now I've been seeing a star get bigger and brighter and closer, until I finally realized it's not a star at all. It's a gavel coming down, fueled by finality so sure it's splitting the sky in half.
Every night the courtroom assembles on my ceiling. The jury troops in, exhausted by evidence that doesn't sway them as much as emotion, no matter how many times it is trotted out for their review. A judge in heavy black robes presides, a faceless ghost whose ruling will set no one free, anyway.
And you. You shuffle in, locked in chains whose weight and shame have somehow transferred to me.
And I. I lay pinned on my back, listening, learning nothing of use as you plead the fifth for the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth time.
We represent ourselves, or at least pretend to, two souls already jailed by our own devices. And every night I wait for you to object. And every night I watch your face for some sign of protest. But silence is the only argument you have to make, and I have no choice but to allow it.
a sweet sixteen
6 ways to shake off the last 4 years
1. Sit in the bathtub with the shower running above you. Think back to 2016, to the feelings of disbelief and dread that settled in the day after the election. Meditate (briefly) on every sickening thing you can think of, that Trump and his administration did. As the water hits your skin and drains away, let the toxicity of his presidency drain away, too. It's finally fucking over.
2. Cull some of your news-related follows on Twitter: the journalists, pundits, and wonks who've helped keep you sane. Stop taking in the exhausting 24-hour a day news cycle. The grownups are in charge again. You can relax.
3. Explore non-political interests on social media like science, the arts, or some other aspect of American culture that doesn't elicit twice-hourly commentary from Maggie Haberman.
4. Lighten your news podcast load. Give yourself permission to be blissfully ignorant, for a time, about current events. Switch the channel of your attention to literally anything else.
5. Dedicate yourself to a new personal project, perhaps in honor of the breathtaking scope of problems that the new administration must tackle. Biden and Co. have to fix an economy, eradicate a pandemic, and stave off a civil war. You can make a Chatbook.
6. Celebrate. Bake a cake. Get fucked up. Grab your tripod, speaker, and iPad, and trespass somewhere the city skyline makes a great backdrop for your own private dance party. Or, like, whatever works for you.
big love
There is a question that's been on my mind more and more lately, a consequence of the pandemic having led me down a path of introspection about what I want from life moving forward. It's a decision I have to make, that, in the scheme of things, is among the biggest and most important I'll ever make.
I'm talking of course about what kind of dog to get next.
I've known from the earliest days of having Chaucer that I was forever after going to want big dogs, and only big dogs. There's just nothing comparable for me. It isn't only about having something large enough to wrap my arms around, to feel the whole length of my body against when we snuggle - though that is a visceral comfort I miss every single day. Having a giant dog makes a sort of statement about you and your place in the world. I don't mean in some classist way, like Look at me, I can afford this expensive beast with the appetite of four regular-sized dogs.
Having a giant dog is a way of unapologetically taking up more space in the world - of taking up space for two. And if you raise your dog right, and your dog is right for you, it's also a way of creating a unique, endless source of energy. Big love, if you will. Big, inescapable, unavoidable, unmissable love. Love that goes with you everywhere you take your dog. Love that gets attention, and amazement, and smiles, and laughter. Love that rolls out a sort of red carpet of joy, everywhere you walk together. Love that creates an incredible feedback loop:
A stranger loves your giant dog.
You love the stranger for loving your giant dog.
Dog is happy. Stranger is happy. You're happy. It's suddenly a beautiful moment of interspecies connection, here on the sidewalk, on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday afternoon.
I know, of course, that this kind of delight has the potential to be created by every loving pet owner. All dogs get admired, get fussed over and pet by strangers. But when you've got a really big dog, it's never ending. Every walk, every visit, every interaction. There's no hiding your pup. There's no scooping him up into your arms, or scuttling him out of the way. He's there, he's a bear, get used to it.
In ten years of having Chaucer, I always acknowledged that not everyone is charmed by dogs, period, much less ones sized like horses. But when they are? When someone comes into your life that adores your massive beast as much as you? That. That is an incredibly powerful thing. In fact every single relationship I was in during my Chaucer years was hugely colored by their relationship with him.
The way to my heart was (and will be, again) through my dog's, and though this was an implicit rather than explicit corollary to a relationship with me, I'm sure all my boyfriends knew this. I'm sure they all sensed that they were being heavily graded on how much genuine affection, care, and patience they showed Chaucer. Truly, half the reason I stayed with one boyfriend as long as I did was because he was unbelievably good to Chaucer. And half the reason I got over another in < two weeks was how obviously lukewarm his affection had been for my best canine friend. I never forgot it.
Anyway, I'm going to get a Great Dane.
I've somewhat surprised myself with this conclusion. I'd pretty much ruled them out, due to life span. I was looking at a range of large and giant breeds, many of them rare, European, and probably incredibly difficult to get. I explored mixed breeds, too, and wow are there some absolutely gorgeous hybrid pups out there. I've weighed everything: temperament, health, lifespan, sociability, grooming requirements, climate requirements, living space requirements. I thought about another mastiff, but even a different variety (a Neopolitan, for instance) would be too close to Chaucer. And Chaucer is irreplaceable. Chaucer will stand alone for the rest of my life as the thing that saved my life. As the great love of my life. Out of respect to him, I don't want to even try to replicate that experience. So, something different. And at some future date I'll post about what cemented my choice for a Dane.
It's not going to happen anytime soon. There are things that need to be in place before I can do it. I have big plans for myself, for the next five years. And slowly, step by step, I'm working towards creating a life that once again has the resources - and the room for - big love.
because you didn't, I did
For today's lockdown activity, I wrote an alt-country song. The lyrics to one, anyway.
---
I'm staring at the white space bottom left of my last blue
But there's no three dots, no grey bubble transmission coming through
And the basket with your boxers doesn't have as much to say
As the snapshots that you strung above the pillows where we played
And the tie dye that you twisted stained a lot more than my shirt
Like checkered shoes, pacific eyes, like blackouts soft and blurred
I've been waiting for so long to hear the song I thought I earned
But it seems there's none forthcoming, so this is what I've learned
All the things you love
And all the things you hate
Stay bottled up until it's bottoms up
And then it's much too late
And you can buy more keyboards
And you can remix lies
But what's the point of keeping up
A songwriter's disguise?
You packed up all your baggies, took your Herschels and my heart
Found a forest cold and clean where you can make a brand new start
And someday maybe sunshine and my love will bring you back
Until then here's to finding and then writing a new track
Cuz all the things you love
And all the things you hate
Stay bottled up until it's bottoms up
And you can't think or see straight
And you can stitch new patches
On pants you've long outgrown
But you're much too good a tailor
To tear up what's been sewn
in which I prettify my life choices
Four years ago I couldn't have edited a spreadsheet if my life depended on it. Then I got a job involving a fair amount of accounting and tracking of inventory, and I had to at least learn the basics. Eventually I started making small, aesthetic changes to the Excel and Google sheets that my company had been using for years.
I got hooked on spreadsheets same way that learning a little bit of HTML led me to launching Rainy Day Templates (RIP). Colors and fonts and spacing, oh my. Over time I redid all of my store's SOPs, checklists, order guides, purchase journals, menu matrices, special request forms, etc to be easier to read and (imho) much better looking.
Anyway, all of this dovetailed with my growing interest in and efforts towards self-improvement, and I now have a small collection of spreadsheets for budgeting, time management, and habit and goal tracking. I find I'm much more likely to stick to a plan if I have a cool-looking sheet on which to stay accountable.
And I figured I'd start sharing my templates, in case anyone wants them? New year's resolutions and so forth.
So here's my super simple food journal template, with a monthly and a weekly tab to choose from, and locked days/dates and meals, to easily move the data around. Totally editable, so have at it, but it currently looks like this: