Hour Eight Posture
September eleventh. There is a particular quality of tired that only arrives around the eighth hour of a nine-hour shift, and it has nothing to do with drama. It's not acute. It's…
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457 entries in Everyday.
The Hour That Time Forgot
September tenth. Simone said it on a Thursday two weeks ago and I have been turning it over since: 'the hour that time forgot.' She meant the break room at 2pm specifically, and s…
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The Shadow Test
September ninth. Simone got a new phone. I know this because she spent the last twenty minutes of our post-climb wind-down not talking about the climb but about what the camera do…
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The Pigeon Did Not Read the Room
September eighth. A pigeon landed on the kitchen windowsill at around twenty past seven this morning and stayed for what I later timed, in retrospect, as roughly four minutes. I k…
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The Corner Table Hour
September seventh. There is a specific kind of tired that only Tuesday evenings produce, and it is not the yoga tired or the walking tired or even the bouldering tired. It is the…
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Three Weeks Out
September sixth. I registered for a class. That sentence looks smaller on the page than it felt in the kitchen this morning, which is probably the right proportion for what it act…
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The Egg, the Alarm, and the Step Stool
September fourth. One egg. One pan. One smoke alarm that has apparently been waiting years for exactly this moment. It was not a complicated breakfast. I have made eggs hundreds o…
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The Cat Had Somewhere to Be (He Just Chose Here)
September fourth. We were in the middle of the standard post-climb wind-down, the part where you stand in the hallway and let your hands stop being hands again, when Simone said,…
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The Number Was Right There
September third. I looked at the budget sheet. I have a budget sheet now, actual handwritten columns, two sides, the system I worked out back in 2011 and have updated exactly twic…
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The Finale Got Me
September second. I had one plan for tonight: watch the last two episodes of a show I have been taking very seriously and very slowly, because the first season earned it and I did…
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The Fourth Link
September second. It started with a single sentence in the book I've been reading, a throwaway clause about how Venetian endpapers were made, and by eleven-thirty I had four brows…
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The Part After the Shift
September first. The shift report was three pages, which felt like a lot for a Tuesday, and the coffee from the break room was that particular brand of bad that you stop remarking…
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Simone Crossed First
August thirty-first. Simone crossed first. I was half a stride behind her, which I will let stand as the accurate record of what happened this morning. Twelve weeks ago we signed…
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The Fluorescent Mirror
August twenty-eighth. There is a specific kind of tired that is not dramatic, it is just the tired of a Thursday, or a Thursday that felt like a Monday, and you are standing in fr…
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The Night Simone Registered First
August seventeenth. Simone told me the night before. That is the part I keep returning to. I had been writing a draft-folder sentence about the framing shop for months, standing o…
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Gerald Gets the Frame
July fifteenth. The framing shop printmaking night is still in the draft folder. It has been there since May. I am at peace with this. What I am not at peace with is the fact that…
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The Machine Had Other Plans
June twenty-third. The vending machine dispensed the wrong thing. I want to state that plainly before I explain anything else, because the sequence of events only makes sense if y…
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The Jar Had a Point
June first. The jar was not going to open. I want to be clear about this: I tried the twist, I tried the hot water on the lid, I tried the rubber grip pad that lives in the second…
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The Fluorescent Hours
May twenty-first. There is a particular quality to a Sunday afternoon in a laundromat, the light, first of all, which is the color of mild institutional defeat, and then the chair…
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What the Onion Skins Left
April twenty-ninth. The fabric is on the kitchen table right now, still slightly wrinkled from being wrung out, and it is the specific pale gold of old paper or dried grass and I…
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The Bird Had Somewhere to Be
April seventh. I set the timer on a shelf by reflex, the way you do when something is too quiet and specific to let go without a record. The pigeon was just sitting there on the l…
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The Block That Comes Back
March twenty-seventh. The Saturday market is back on the block past the hardware store, and I found out the way I find out every year, by walking past it accidentally and then sto…
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What the Sky Was Doing
March sixteenth. The weather did the thing where it is technically spring on the calendar and fully unconvinced about it in practice. Not raining, not not-raining. Just grey in th…
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The Dollar and the Stare
March fifth. The vending machine in the break room took Simone's dollar on Tuesday and gave her absolutely nothing in return. Not a jam. Not an error message. Just silence and the…
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The Ten Minutes That Had to Count
February twenty-second, but I'm filing this from memory, or near enough. There was a stretch that winter where I was carrying the textbook to work in my bag, not because I planned…
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The Call She Already Finished
February eleventh. Simone finished the call before I even sat down. I caught the end of it, not the words, just the particular tone that means family, the one where your voice get…
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The Jar She Didn't Read First
January twenty-fourth, technically, but I'm writing it today because it took me a week to figure out what I was writing about. The farmers market runs through winter here, which m…
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The Party That Earned Its Own Paragraph
January twentieth. There are evenings that do not need a record and evenings that insist on one. This was the second kind. Somebody's birthday, the kind of milestone that felt gen…
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The Days That Don't Belong to Either
December twenty-ninth. These three days have always felt like a corridor, not Christmas anymore, not the new year yet, just the hallway between them. I've been in this kitchen sin…
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The Year Landing All at Once
November twenty-sixth. I got up at six-fifteen because my body had apparently decided we were done sleeping, which, fine. The apartment was dark in the specific way it only gets i…
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The Seven O'Clock Rink
November fifteenth. Simone said 'the ice rink opens at seven' and I said yes before she finished the sentence. That was the whole decision. We were still in our work clothes, I ha…
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The Transfer Completed Successfully
November fourth. The phone told me the migration was complete and I just sat there. Both phones on the table. The new one lit up and bright. The old one doing whatever old phones…
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The Book I Did Not Plan to Love
October twenty-fourth. I picked it up because the cover had a mushroom on it and it was three dollars at the community center book swap, which is not a principled reason to choose…
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What the Mug Said Without the Sugar
October second. The experiment started because I ran out of oat milk on a Tuesday and instead of going out I just, didn't. Poured the coffee into the mug, stood at the counter, an…
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The Part Where No One Checked the Time
September twenty-first. I've been meaning to write about Simone's birthday for a week now, which means the lag is working exactly as advertised. Here is what I remember in order:…
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Eleven Minutes for Two Earrings
August thirtieth. I want to be clear that I had a plan this morning. The plan was: get up, make coffee, get dressed without incident, leave the apartment in a normal amount of tim…
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The Receipt Was Right the First Time
August nineteenth. I checked it twice because I didn't believe it the first time. That's the honest start of this. I went to the grocery store yesterday with a number in my head,…
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The Cilantro People Were Right About Everything
August eighth. Thursday afternoon at the laundromat, which is not where I expected to learn something, but that is the nature of Thursdays. I was waiting for the second rinse cycl…
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The Jar Had Opinions
July twenty-eighth. Three weeks ago I started a sourdough starter. I want to be precise about the sequence: I did not decide to bake sourdough bread and then research how starters…
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The Back Room Had a Chair in It
July seventeenth. There was a bookshop. I had walked past it a few times in the fall when I was doing the east-side route, the kind of place where you can only see a sliver throug…
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The Honey Has Already Been Decided
July sixth. I want to tell you about the farmers market, not the one by the rec center, which I have walked past approximately one hundred times, but the Saturday one in the east-…
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The Walk Home Was the Interesting Part
June twenty-fifth. There was a date. I went on it. It was, by any reasonable measure, a perfectly fine evening, good restaurant, easy conversation, no uncomfortable silences or mo…
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The Pigeon Had an Agenda
June fourteenth. There was a pigeon on the fire escape this morning and I watched it for a long time. Not because it did anything. It did almost nothing, a slow quarter-turn, one…
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The Quarter Situation
June third. It was Simone's dryer. That is the important context. Her building's shared unit finally gave up sometime mid-week, and by Saturday she had a bag of laundry and a plan…
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The Measuring Standard I Didn't Know I Had
May twenty-third. There was a date. I am going to name that plainly because I spent the first two drafts of this tiptoeing around it, which is its own kind of information. A datin…
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Ten Seconds of Just Standing There
May twelfth. Mother's Day. I am writing this having already cleaned the kitchen floor, which I want noted for the record. This morning I was making toast. Nothing ambitious, bread…
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The Part I Didn't Hear
May first. Thursday. I left work about twenty minutes later than I meant to and got to the bus stop just in time to sit down next to an argument that was already in progress. I do…
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The Tea Went Cold Twice
April twentieth. Easter. I had a plan for this morning, which is always where the trouble starts. The plan was: a real breakfast. Not the usual coffee-and-whatever, but an actual…
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The Tuesday I Went Somewhere Else Instead
March twenty-ninth. There is something I did not write about when it happened, which means it belongs here now, in the lag. It was a Tuesday, not a climbing Tuesday, which is the…
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The Shift Where Nothing Happened (Which Was the Thing)
March eighteenth. I worked an afternoon shift today, one of the mid-week ones where you go in knowing the rhythm before you arrive, the same sequence of tasks, the same check-ins,…
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What Two Weeks Off Costs You
January eleventh. The Tuesday sessions resumed this week, which I knew they would, and which I had been quietly dreading in a way I kept not-naming until I was standing at the bas…
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The Last Tuesday of the Year
December thirty-first. The Tuesday sessions end the same way they always do, gear returned or shouldered, the same ten seconds of standing near the exit while you decide if you fo…
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I Looked Up Whether Defying Gravity Is Possible and Lost Two Hours
December twentieth. The plan was simple: finish the movie, be in bed by ten. The movie in question was Wicked, which I had already seen and was rewatching because it is December a…
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The Call Ran Long
December ninth. The apartment goes quiet in a specific way this month. Not the usual quiet, the building settles, Gerald does nothing, the windowsill holds its arrangement the sam…
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The Corner Booth, After Hours
November twenty-eighth. Simone turned thirty-six this year, and when I asked what she wanted to do she said a good dinner, which meant exactly what it sounds like: a real restaura…
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The Gouda Argument Was Not My Business
November seventeenth. I went for the honey. That was the whole plan, stop at the Sunday market two blocks over from the usual route, find whoever was selling the dark buckwheat va…
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The Note Was Not That Funny
November sixth. By the end of the shift we were both running on the particular kind of tired where everything costs slightly more than you have, the kind where you measure out you…
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The Machine Ate the Quarters
October twenty-sixth. I put off doing laundry for exactly one week too many, which I know because I had to make decisions this morning about which combination of things still qual…
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The Conversation I Wasn't Supposed to Hear
October fourth. I was not planning to stay. The original plan was to pick up a coffee and walk home, the October air has that quality lately where walking feels like the right ans…
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Gerald Did Not Ask for a Roommate
September twenty-third. The starter is on the windowsill. I want to be clear that this was a practical decision, the counter is cold, the windowsill gets the morning light, it nee…
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The Pasta Water Thing
September twelfth. I registered for this class the same way I do most things, a tab opened, closed, reopened, and then one Wednesday evening when I was too tired to talk myself ou…
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The Call Ran Long
August tenth. I had not planned to be on the phone for an hour and forty minutes. I picked up expecting twenty, maybe thirty, the catch-up version, the are-you-okay version, and t…
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The Math Was Not Flattering
July thirtieth. It started because of a sandwich. Simone and I had fallen into this comfortable break-room habit, split something, split the cost, nobody thinks too hard about it.…
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The Morning Had No Agenda
July nineteenth. The light came in the way it only does in the second half of summer, not tentative anymore, just settled into its angle, like it has decided where it belongs and…
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The Notes Page Was Optimistic
July eighth. The break room has a south-facing window that does this thing in the middle of the day where the light lands exactly on the table surface and makes everything look mo…
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We Had a System
June twenty-seventh. The plan was solid. I want to be clear about that. We had a notebook. We had coffee. Simone had divided the material into sections with the kind of brisk effi…
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The Diagram Did Not Help My Case
June fifth. There is a paperback currently living in my bag that I picked up on a whim three weeks ago, one of those popular nonfiction books that promises to answer a question yo…
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The Coffee Was Still Hot When I Sat Down
May fourteenth. I have now been at this kitchen table long enough that the coffee has gone cold twice. I reheated it the first time. The second time I just accepted it as a condit…
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The Lanyard Was Still On
May third. The shift ended and I sat in the break room for a few extra minutes because the light through the frosted window was doing something I didn't want to interrupt. A warm…
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The Rain Was Doing Something, So We Let It
April twenty-second. The rain couldn't make up its mind, which meant neither could we. We'd meant to do something else, or not meant to, exactly, but there had been a loose plan i…
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The Cat Knew What It Was Doing
April eleventh. We were talking about something I have already forgotten. That's how it goes, you're mid-sentence, the afternoon is warm enough that you've taken your jacket off,…
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The Errand Had Other Plans
March thirty-first. The list had four things on it. I know because I counted them before we left, partly to feel organized and partly because Simone had that look, the one that me…
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The Laundry Was Right There
March twentieth. The plan was straightforward: end of the Wednesday yoga class, walk to the bus, go home, do the laundry that had been sitting in the hamper since Sunday. Simone a…
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The Laugh Did Not Ask Permission
March ninth. The yoga class ran a few minutes long, which meant I was already behind on being tired when Simone said the thing. I don't even know how to describe what she said. It…
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The Country Stack and Other Decisions I Made Without Asking Follow-Up Questions
February twenty-seventh. The bus ride was forty minutes and I had a window seat and the town was quiet in the specific way small towns are quiet on a winter Saturday, not empty, j…
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Soup on the Floor, Usher on the Screen
February sixteenth. The soup was already open, already warming, and I had fully intended to eat it at the table like a person. Then the halftime show started and I sat down on the…
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The Bookcase Had Other Plans
February fifth. The text came in Thursday evening: 'Saturday free? I need another set of arms.' I said yes before I read the second part, which was 'bookcase, second floor, no ele…
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The Bike Did Not Care About My Feelings
January twenty-fifth. The class was forty-five minutes. I know this because I counted. Not the rotations, not the intervals, just the minutes, in the way you count minutes when yo…
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He Had No Agenda
January fourteenth. A pigeon landed on my windowsill this morning and did not leave for eleven minutes. I know it was eleven because I was watching the clock on the stove, not bec…
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The Spreadsheet Was Real
January third. The gym is still closed, which means Tuesday had to go somewhere else, and it went to the café two blocks from the community center, the one with the corner table t…
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The Trailhead Simone Named
November twentieth. The plan had been no plan. Simone had named the trailhead three weeks ago, at the end of a Tuesday session, the way she always names things, as a footnote she…
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What My Arms Remember
October twenty-ninth. There is chalk under my fingernails that I will not fully excavate until tomorrow, and I am fine with that. Three years ago I walked into the gym two neighbo…
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A Bone Folder Is a Real Object That Exists
October eighteenth. The class was two hours on a Wednesday, which means I shifted yoga to next week and told myself I would not feel guilty about that, and I mostly didn't. Bookbi…
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The Verdict Was Split
October seventh. Here is what happened: a thing went sideways at the end of a shift, and by the time we were in the break room, Simone had already formed an opinion about whose ca…
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I Watched It Happen
September fifteenth. The sink was full because I'd been soaking a pot, which I knew, and I leaned over to grab my dish soap, which I also knew, and my phone slid out of the chest…
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The Forty Minutes Before
August thirteenth. I have been calling it nothing for about six weeks now. The time before I leave for Tuesday sessions, before Wednesday yoga, before any of it starts, I kept wri…
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Neither of Us Were Right About the Cold Brew
August second. The cold brew was Simone's idea, which I want noted for the record before I explain what went wrong. It started at the end of Tuesday's session, she mentioned she'd…
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We Sent It
July twenty-second. Eight weeks ago we both looked at the same section of wall and made the same face, the one that means 'that is not for me yet.' Today we topped it. I should cl…
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Two Blocks Was Enough
July eleventh. The heat advisory was already posted before either of us checked our phones, which means we made the decision to go out anyway with full information and no good exc…
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The Bus Went One More Stop Than We Needed
June nineteenth. The idea started the way most of ours do: Simone said something at the end of a Tuesday session, something like, there's a lake an hour out if you're willing to a…
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The Mug Got Cold
June eighth. There's a mug on the table that I forgot to drink. That's the whole summary, really. I made tea at seven, sat down, and apparently spent the next forty minutes doing…
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The Axe Goes Where It Wants
May twenty-eighth. The signup was a tab I left open for eleven days, which is apparently my tell. Not the Carol box, not pottery registration, a beginner axe-throwing session at t…
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The Honey Jar Takes Longer Than You Think
May sixth. We went for strawberries and left with strawberries, a bunch of green onions neither of us had a plan for, and, yes, two different jars of honey because the third look…
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The Wrong Textbook, The Right Company
April twenty-fifth. The recertification module had a deadline and Simone had flashcards. I had a textbook that turned out to be the wrong edition, not wrong enough to be useless,…
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Two Words and a Wood Floor
March twenty-third. The text arrived at 5:47 p.m. on a Tuesday. I remember the time because I had just gotten home, had one boot off, and was already mentally composing an evening…
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The Trail Didn't Care That We Were Tired
March first. We were both already tired when we got on the bus. That should have been the signal. Instead it was just the starting condition, and we went anyway, and the trail did…
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The Sparkling Water Was Free
February eighteenth. The bouldering gym did a thing for Valentine's weekend. A mixer, the sign said, and I want to be clear that neither Simone nor I read the word 'mixer' before…
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The Pen Was Already Out
February seventh. There was a sign-up sheet on the counter. Hand-lettered, slightly crooked, the kind that gets made on a Tuesday when someone has good intentions and a marker. I…
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The Collar Investigation
January sixteenth. There is a particular kind of moment that happens in a locker area before a Tuesday session. Not a big moment. The kind where someone is inspecting something ve…
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The Three-Day Sentence
January fifth. The Tuesday session ended the way they always end, shoes swapped, chalk dusted off hands, a few minutes on the bench where neither of us is quite ready to reenter t…
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Thirty-Seven Seconds
December twenty-fifth. Christmas morning. I had been up for maybe forty minutes, had made coffee, had stood at the window for a while looking at the street in that particular wint…
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Two Hours and a Collapsed Bowl
December third. I want to tell you that I had a plan. I did not have a plan. Three Tuesdays ago I walked past the community center board on my way out of the climbing gym and ther…
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The Tuesday I Didn't Talk Myself Out Of It
November twenty-second. I want to tell you about a Tuesday three weeks ago that I almost didn't have. I'd been walking past the community center board since September and I'd seen…
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The Ninety-Day Summary
October ninth. I did not intend to open the spending tab. I was looking for the loyalty points screen, there's a reward tier thing I've been vaguely tracking, and I pressed the wr…
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Fourteen Minutes
August twenty-sixth. My grandmother called at seven-fifteen, which is when she always calls, because she has called at seven-fifteen on Friday evenings for as long as I can rememb…
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Nothing Has to Happen Next
August fifteenth. The cord has been sitting on the counter since I tied it off last month. I haven't moved it. I'm not sure what I'm waiting for, maybe just to see what it looks l…
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The Honey Jar Situation
August fourth. The market has been running every Saturday since late May and I keep meaning to go earlier and keep arriving around nine-thirty when the good tomatoes are already h…
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The Fourth Row
July twenty-fourth. There was no particular reason to pick it up today except that it was Sunday and the light was doing that specific late-afternoon thing it does in July, the wa…
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Simone Was Right (She Usually Is)
July second. The argument started somewhere around four in the afternoon and did not technically end, because Simone left for a prior thing and I stayed on my side of the table wi…
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The White Linen Situation
June twenty-first. I want to state for the record that I was aware of the risk. White linen in summer is essentially optimism in fabric form, and I wore it anyway. Simone came by…
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The Book Was Innocent
June tenth. The book had nothing to do with it. I want to be clear about that. I picked it up because Simone had mentioned it three weeks ago in passing, one of those offhand end-…
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One Small Bookshelf, Allegedly
May thirtieth. The text said 'light, it's basically just shelves.' I want to be clear that this is not what a bookshelf is. A bookshelf is wood. Wood has weight. This particular b…
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Just a Thursday, Actually
May nineteenth. The grade came back on a Thursday afternoon, which is not how I had written it in my head. I had, apparently, imagined something more cinematic. A moment of arrivi…
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The Light Did Something This Morning
April sixteenth. The light was doing something specific by ten o'clock, and I kept stopping what I was doing to look at it. Not dramatic, not the golden-hour kind of thing I've be…
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Still on the Floor
April fifth. The call ended and I stayed on the floor. It started the way it always does, I was going to be quick, just checking in, Easter's coming and I wanted to hear her voice…
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The Same Paragraph, Four Times
March twenty-fifth. There is a system on this table. I need you to know that. The highlighters are color-coded. There is a specific section for things I've finished and a specific…
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Fifteen Minutes I Didn't Count
March fourteenth. I found a photo on my phone that I'd forgotten I'd taken, or rather, forgotten the timer had taken, which is a distinction that matters because I wasn't trying t…
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A Very Specific Sunday-Night Decision
February twentieth. The thing about deciding to go to a midnight premiere on a Sunday is that you make the decision sometime on Friday, feel good about it on Saturday, and then ar…
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The Dough Did What It Wanted
February ninth. The pasta machine has been sitting in the back of a cabinet since I bought it at a kitchen estate sale last fall, one of those things I paid twelve dollars for bec…
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The Floor After the Call
January seventh. The call was somewhere between an hour and an hour and fifteen, I stopped checking partway through, which is usually how I know it's a good one. When I hung up I…
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The Reenactment
December twenty-seventh. The call was supposed to be quick. A check-in. Thirty minutes, maybe. Two hours later I was standing in my kitchen doing a voice I did not know I still re…
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Four Hours of Strategic Follow-Up
December sixteenth. It started with a paper coffee cup and the phrase 'there's someone I've been talking to,' said with the specific casualness of a person who knows what they are…
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After the Call
November thirteenth. The call was an hour and twenty minutes, which I know because my phone told me when I hung up. I sat down on the kitchen floor somewhere around minute forty a…
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The Pigeon Had Somewhere to Be (It Was Here)
November second. He arrived at 8:14 in the morning. I know because I looked at my phone to confirm that this was, in fact, happening. He was a completely standard city pigeon, gre…
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Eleven Minutes on the Fire Escape
October twenty-second. The cat appeared between the second and third sip of my coffee. That is the most precise accounting I can give. One moment the fire escape outside the break…
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The Receipt Was Itemized
October eleventh. What happened was: we bought groceries together last Saturday because it made sense logistically, and then it did not make sense financially, and then we sat dow…
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Whose Dough Is That
September thirtieth. Here is something I did not know about myself until last Saturday: I have no instinct for pasta dough. None. I can cook, the standing order, the undocumented…
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Knocked From the Inside
September nineteenth. What I was doing was walking past. That was the whole plan, past the framing shop on the way back from the dry cleaner two blocks over, a Sunday errand loop…
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The Long Table
September eighth. Simone's birthday was last week and we did what we always do, which is find a table and refuse to leave it. I had booked the reservation for seven and by the tim…
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The Bag Had a Barcode
August sixth. Here is what happened. We were at the grocery store, the one four blocks from work, the one Simone likes because the produce section is actually cold, and we had may…
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L for Listening
July twenty-sixth. I want to state for the record that I have owned my AirPods for several months and have used them without incident. I want that on the table before I tell you w…
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The Fifteen-Minute Rule
July fifteenth. The cold brew situation started because the coffee shop two blocks over raised their prices again and I did the math and then I did not go back. That is the whole…
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Just Me and the Ledge
July fourth. I did not have a plan. That is the honest version of how I ended up on a rooftop at nine in the evening with a can of sparkling water and a view I would have missed i…
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Twenty Minutes
May twenty-first. I am thirty-two years old and I drove a car alone today for the first time for longer than it takes to pull out of a parking space and immediately panic back in.…
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Three Reads
May tenth. The letter came in a stack of nothing, a utility notice, a circular I didn't ask for, and then this. I almost put it on the counter to deal with later the way I do with…
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The Instruction Sheet Is Now Face-Down
April seventh. At some point in the last hour, Simone and I stopped consulting the diagram and started just agreeing that what we'd made looked intentional. That is where we are w…
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The Part Where the Habit Blinked
March sixteenth. The sub's name is something I still don't know. I heard it at the beginning of class and then it was gone, which is fair, because I spend most of the first five m…
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The Egg Incident (A Reconstruction)
March fifth. I want to be clear that I know how to make eggs. I have been making eggs for years. The eggs and I have an understanding. What I did not account for was Simone standi…
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The Unclipping Problem
February twenty-second. The spin class was Simone's idea the same way most things that turn out to be good ideas are Simone's ideas, she mentioned it once at the end of a Tuesday…
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The Tuesday That Didn't Feel Like One
January twentieth. It was a Tuesday. That is the part I keep coming back to. Not a Friday with its built-in permission, not a Saturday with nowhere to be the next morning. A Tuesd…
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The Part Where You Ask a Stranger How to Unclip
January seventh. That is when I clipped into a spin bike for the first time and had to immediately ask the person next to me, a woman I had never met, who had clearly done this ma…
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The Thing the Stranger Said
December twenty-ninth. It was Simone's idea to get coffee, which is how I know it was the right call, she has a reliable instinct for when sitting still somewhere that isn't our r…
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The Part You Don't Plan For
December eighteenth. The paper hats were Simone's idea. She found them at the bottom of a kitchen drawer, the kind of find that shouldn't be surprising and somehow always is, and…
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Every Target, No Exceptions
December seventh. I keep returning to a specific order of events: the body moves, then the mind notices, then, much later, you write about it. The aerial silks class I dropped int…
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The Part Before You Think About It
November fourth. There is a flyer I favorite walked past six times on the corkboard outside the climbing gym, I know this because I remember noticing that it had one of those tabs…
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What I Drew Instead
October thirteenth. The sketchbook was under a pile of mail and a folded canvas bag and one of those community center brochures I keep meaning to recycle, and Simone found it the…
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Two Wrong Guesses, One Market
October second. We each had a number in our heads. That is the part I keep coming back to. Not the same number, different numbers, arrived at independently, using completely diffe…
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The Earring Was Always Going to Be a Whole Thing
September twenty-first. I want to be clear that I was not the one who made us late. Simone texted around ten to say she was coming by to grab something small, I assumed she meant…
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The Timer Was Already Set
September tenth. I want to establish, before anything else, that we had a plan. The plan involved sitting in the living room and watching something neither of us had seen. That wa…
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The Axe Was Not the Problem
August thirtieth. The problem, Simone said, is that people overthink it. You just throw. It's basically darts. She said this with the full confidence of someone who had also never…
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The Bread Was Not the Problem
August eighth. I want to say upfront that I know how to use a knife. I have been using knives for my entire adult life, and I have even, since sometime around 2018, been making br…
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The Jury Summons Was Always Going to Be in There
July twenty-eighth. There was a pile. I want to be honest about the pile before anything else, it had been on the kitchen table for approximately three weeks, migrating occasional…
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The Ratio Was Always Going to Be Negotiated
July seventeenth. The thing about cold brew is that it requires a level of optimism I am not sure I consistently possess. You make a decision in the morning that won't pay off unt…
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The List Did Not Survive the First Stall
July sixth. There was a list. I want to establish that before anything else. Not a long list, four things, written in my notes app on Saturday evening with the kind of confidence…
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The Shift Ended Eventually
June twenty-fifth. Nine hours. That is how long the shift was, and I want that number on the page before anything else because it explains everything that comes after. Simone and…
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The Keys Were Visible Through the Window the Entire Time
June fourteenth. I want to begin by saying that I could see them. The keys. Sitting in the cupholder on the driver's side, very clearly, through the window, in the exact spot I al…
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The Tahini Did Not Make It
June third. The chickpeas were already in the blender. That is the part that makes it worse. Simone had come over on a Wednesday, her yoga slot had been cancelled, my climbing ses…
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The Keyboard Was Right There The Whole Time
May twenty-third. I want to be very clear that I have been using a touchscreen keyboard since approximately 2012. I am not new to this. I have sent thousands of texts. I have writ…
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The Pigeon Had Plans
May first. The pigeon arrived before I did, which seems important to establish. I had walked over to Simone's in the afternoon, no particular reason, just that kind of first-of-Ma…
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The Forty-Minute Drive Was the Right Call
April ninth. It is a Thursday, and everything outside is the particular quiet that April 2020 has decided to be, and I spent some time this morning going through photos from exact…
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The Oven Mitt Was Fine
March twenty-ninth. Sunday. I want to be clear that I have been cooking with some regularity for long enough to have what I privately think of as a standing order, a practice, a h…
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The Birthday Crown Placement Was Intentional
March seventh. Simone turned thirty-one last month, Valentine's Day, which she will tell you is a curse and a gift depending on whether the restaurant has prix-fixe menus, but we…
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The Shape of the Absence
February twenty-fifth. Tuesday night. I came home from climbing, made tea I didn't finish, and sat at the kitchen table for longer than was strictly necessary. Not sad, exactly. T…
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The Wrong Night for a Reservation
February fourteenth. Simone's birthday. Also, as Simone will tell you, and did tell me, approximately four times between Tuesday's session and last night, Valentine's Day is the s…
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The Glue Situation
February third. The brochure said 'bookbinding' and my brain said 'quiet, handmade, satisfying' and both of those things were true. What the brochure did not say, because brochure…
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The Pigeon Held Its Ground
January twenty-third. We were forty minutes into our coffees and the pigeon had not moved once. It had been there when we sat down, a perfectly average city pigeon on the exterior…
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The Good Errand
January twelfth. I had been moving three bags of things toward the door of my apartment since sometime in November. You know how that goes. They were sitting in the hallway doing…
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The Loaf Report
December twenty-first. I have flour in a place I cannot explain, and there is a lopsided round of bread sitting on my kitchen counter that I made with my own two hands, and I keep…
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The Week After Thanksgiving
November twenty-ninth. The week after Thanksgiving is its own strange weather. Everything feels slightly deflated, the big meal behind you, December not quite arrived yet, the cit…
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The Group Chat Incident of October 2019
October twenty-seventh. I was trying to text a perfectly reasonable message about whether the climbing gym would be crowded on Tuesday, and my phone, my phone, which I trust, whic…
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Close Enough
October fifth. The sweater was already on before I decided the sweater was the answer. That's how Tuesday went. I've been thinking about the Carol postcard, it's been on the count…
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Earned Tired
September twenty-fourth. There's a specific kind of tired that starts in your forearms and works outward until it reaches your opinions, your plans, and eventually your ability to…
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The Ceiling After the Credits
September thirteenth. I had a plan for this evening. The plan was: one episode, then read, then sleep at a reasonable hour like a person who has things to attend to tomorrow. The…
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The Tomato Situation
Labor Day weekend. We had a plan, which was to go to the farmers market, buy honey, and leave before either of us spent more than we'd budgeted. The plan lasted about seven minute…
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The Autocorrect Situation
August twenty-second. Simone got a new phone last week. I know this because she has mentioned it approximately zero times, which is how Simone announces things, they appear, compl…
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The Television Ambush
July thirty-first. I had no particular plans for this evening and I was very committed to that fact. I made tea. I sat down. I had a vague sense that I should find something to wa…
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The Pipe, the Passes, and the Two Hours We Stayed Anyway
July twentieth. The thing about the climbing gym is that it's already a little unhinged to be there on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of July when it's ninety degrees outside…
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The Solo Table
June twenty-eighth. I've walked past the stairs to that rooftop bar at least a dozen times. Always on the way to something else, always with a vague note in the back of my mind th…
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The Number I Wrote Down
June seventeenth. There's a grocery receipt on my kitchen floor right now that is approximately eleven inches long. I know this because I measured it against my forearm out of som…
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The Skimming Debate
May twenty-sixth. The soup was Simone's idea, technically. She mentioned it at the end of Tuesday's session, something about a chicken stock she'd made that week, the bones from a…
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The Tea Went Cold Twice
May fifteenth. Mother's Day. I didn't plan to write anything today. I made tea at eight-something and sat down at the kitchen table with a vague intention to do something producti…
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One Jar of Honey
May fourth. The farmers market two blocks over sets up on the first Saturday of the month and I have been meaning to go since February, which tells you something about how I handl…
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Gerald Has Opinions
April twelfth. I moved Gerald about three inches to the left this morning, just to wipe down the shelf, nothing dramatic, and when I set him back I set him in the wrong spot by ab…
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Seven Minutes With the Menu
March twenty-first. The restaurant has about nine seats at the counter and I was the only one who came alone, which I did not fully think through until I sat down and realized the…
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The Chair Situation
March tenth. The laundromat on a Sunday morning is a very specific exercise in letting go of expectations, and the main expectation I let go of was that I would find a chair. Simo…
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The Elevator Was Out
February twenty-seventh. My neighbor knocked on my door at six-forty Wednesday evening with the expression of a person who has just done math they didn't want to do. The elevator…
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The Night We Almost Didn't Go
February ninth. We had not actually planned this. Simone texted at six-fifteen saying she was nearby after running an errand and did I want to get one drink somewhere, and I had b…
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The Almost Portion of the Evening
February fifth. We were supposed to leave at seven. It was seven thirty-eight when we actually got out the door, which is about right for any evening that starts with Simone stand…
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The Rest Day Verdict
January third. We were only stopping in because the Tuesday session had run over and we were both a little cold and a little unwilling to split up yet. That is the honest reason w…
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The Feedback Portion
December twenty-third. The last session before the holiday break, and neither of us had to stay for the feedback portion. The class was technically over. The instructor had alread…
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The Clementine Afternoon
December twelfth. Simone showed up with a bag of clementines she'd grabbed from the corner market on the way over, no particular reason, just that they were two dollars and it fel…
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The Kitchen Floor
December first. I called Carol after dinner and somehow ended up sitting on the kitchen floor, back against the lower cabinets, wool socks on the tile. I'm not sure when I slid do…
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The Apple Morning
October eighteenth. The market runs along four blocks on Saturday mornings, and I've walked it enough times that I have habits inside it, which stall I hit first, which one I skip…
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The Afternoon We Volunteered Our Backs
September twenty-sixth. It started as a quick favor, Simone's neighbor needed help moving a bookshelf and a few boxes, nothing major, maybe an hour. I had the afternoon free and S…
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The Study Session That Wasn't
September fourth. Simone arrived with her course packet, two highlighters, and the confident energy of a person who had made a plan. I had cleared the kitchen table, which felt li…
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The Lid Was Right There
August twenty-fourth. The tomato soup was Simone's idea, which I am not saying to assign blame, I am saying it because she brought the tomatoes, she found the recipe on her phone,…
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The Detour I Almost Didn't Take
August thirteenth. There was a moment around four in the afternoon where I could have kept walking. The nursery has been on that block for at least as long as I've lived within wa…
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The Good Kind of Nothing
August second. We didn't plan it so much as agree to it, Simone texted the night before, some variation of 'do you have Tuesday,' and I said yes before I'd checked. An hour on the…
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The Video We Couldn't Get Past
June eighth. We were supposed to be cooking. There was a mixing bowl on the counter. Simone had brought olive oil again, the good kind, the small bottle, and I had actual ingredie…
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The Olive Oil Was Hers, the Confidence Was Mine
May twenty-eighth. Simone showed up with a small bottle of good olive oil, not the grocery store kind, the kind from the Saturday market stand where the person behind the table wi…
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The Woman Who Didn't Notice the Rain
May seventeenth. There was a woman on a bench across the path from us who was on a phone call so committed, so load-bearing, that when the first drops came she did not move. Not a…
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The Oat Milk Was Gone and We Took It Personally
May sixth. Here is what happened at the end of the shift: the coffee cart was out of oat milk. That's it. That's the whole incident. Simone looked at the cart, looked at me, and s…
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The Dress That Only Comes Out When It Earns It
April twenty-fifth. There is a dress in the back of my closet that I do not wear casually. Not because it's precious, exactly, but because I made a rule about it at some point wit…
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The Argument That Was None of Our Business
April fourteenth. There were two people at the bus shelter across from the coffee cart, and they were arguing. Not the low-hissing kind of argument you look away from, the private…
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The Call and the Staying
March twenty-third. My aunt called during break and I picked up without thinking, which is not always what I do when I see her name. It was fine, she was calling to say nothing ur…
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The Hot Dog Question
March twelfth. Here is what happened: we were minding our own business. Simone and I had gone to the coffee shop on Sunday the way we sometimes do when neither of us has anything…
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The Silk Was Not Impressed With Me
March first. There was a flyer on the community center corkboard for a beginner aerial silks workshop, one Saturday afternoon, no experience required, the kind of thing you photog…
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The Air Changed Yesterday
March first. I was on my way back from the corner, I'd gone out for nothing urgent, just to move, the way you do after a February that sat on you, and somewhere between the mailbo…
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The Night I Almost Texted a Fake Excuse
February seventh. There was a point, standing in the locker room at the end of my shift last Wednesday, where I had a fake excuse fully drafted in my head. Something about being t…
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The Fourth Drawing Is the Whole Thing
January twenty-seventh. I finished it Tuesday evening and then I just sat there. The sketchbook open on the table, the drawing done, and nothing particular to do next. I wasn't re…
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Forty Minutes of Pigeon Diplomacy
November eleventh. There was a pigeon on the fire escape this morning and I did not move for forty minutes. I noticed it when I got up to refill my coffee, just there, on the ledg…
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The Floor Was Right There
October thirty-first. I got home at eight-fifteen, set my bag down next to the door, walked into the kitchen, and lay down on the floor. Not on the couch. The floor. There was no…
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The Candle Knew What It Was
October twentieth. The community center runs one-off workshops in the fall, I saw the flyer taped to the board by the yoga studio door, half-covered by a notice about parking, and…
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The Honey Vendor Has No Concept of Time (Neither Do We)
October ninth. The market runs Saturdays until the end of the month, and I have walked past the sign for it approximately six consecutive weeks without going. This was the week Si…
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The Salt Road and Other Detours
September twenty-eighth. It started with a library book. I had checked it out three weeks ago with good intentions, a general history of medieval trade, the kind of thing I pick u…
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The Sauce Situation
September seventeenth. I want to start by saying that the recipe had four steps. Four. I counted them specifically before I began, because I am a person who has learned, slowly, t…
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The Shelf That Required Two People (Technically)
September sixth. The context: our neighbor on the fourth floor asked if anyone could help her move a bookshelf up from the lobby, where the delivery guy had left it because, and I…
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Three Flights
August fifteenth. The bookshelf is up. I want that noted first, before anything else: the bookshelf is now standing against the wall on the third floor, exactly where Simone said…
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The Lanyard Goes in the Bag
July twenty-fourth. The shift ended at eight and I stood in the break room for about forty-five seconds doing the specific nothing that happens right after a long day, lanyard sti…
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Two Inches of Shade
June twenty-first. The summer solstice, which means the longest day of the year, which in this city means the longest stretch of concrete baking under a sun that has apparently de…
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The Algorithm Was Right
June tenth. Simone handed me her phone and said, just look at this, and the thing is she already knew the conversation was over. It was a Saturday afternoon. We'd gone for coffee…
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The Good Dryer
May thirtieth. There is one dryer in our neighborhood laundromat that costs an extra quarter and nobody can explain why. The drum sounds fine. The heat seems equivalent. There is…
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The Window Was Already Open
May nineteenth. At some point around seven I woke up and the apartment smelled different. Not bad-different, not something-is-wrong-different, just the specific smell of air that…
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What the Forward Fold Knows
April sixteenth. The thing about Tuesday yoga when you went bouldering Saturday is that your body has a very specific and detailed memory that your ego would prefer to keep quiet.…
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The One-Drink Agreement
March twenty-fifth. The original plan was one drink. I want the record to show that I genuinely believed us when we made that agreement, standing outside the community center afte…
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The Ending We Did Not Ask For
March third. We were both already tired before Simone texted. It was a Friday, end of a week that had not been particularly long but had felt it, and she said she had the night fr…
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Two Numbers on the Counter
February twentieth. At some point around eight-thirty I lined both phones up on the kitchen counter, the old one and the new one, and just looked at them for a minute before I tou…
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Lemonade, Midnight, No Regrets
February ninth. At some point in the evening, I genuinely cannot tell you what time, Simone and I stopped talking about anything practical and started talking about Beyoncé. I wan…
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The Long Way Around a Short Answer
January twenty-ninth. It started as a yes or no question. Simone had texted about the Wednesday community center schedule, something about whether the spring session overlapped wi…
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The Cake Was Worth It
January eighteenth. I want to be transparent about the state I was in last night: I had gotten approximately four hours of sleep, I was wearing jeans that required a decision, and…
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The Starter Situation
January seventh. Simone arrived with a mason jar. I want to be clear that we had a plan. The outdoor bouldering morning was on the calendar, the specific Saturday Simone named alo…
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The Week That Doesn't Count
December twenty-seventh. This is the week that doesn't count. The Christmas things are still out but they've lost their charge. The new year hasn't started. Work is skeleton-crew…
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The Four-Tier Problem
December sixteenth. Someone at work ordered a four-tier chocolate cake for a table of twelve people, and I want it on record that I did not question this. Not once. I sat down, I…
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Flashcards vs. a Highlighter
December fifth. Simone said she had 'a couple of things to review.' I want to be precise about that. Not a study session, not a crunch, a couple of things. I brought one highlight…
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The Pleating Problem
November twenty-fourth. Simone said 'low-key.' I want that on record. She used those exact words, low-key, just dumplings, nothing fussy, and I said yes because I had the day befo…
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The Thing I Keep Not Writing Down
November second. There is a sentence in my notebook that I have written and crossed out three times tonight, and I am starting to think the crossing-out is the actual subject. I a…
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The Booth Next to Ours
October eleventh. We weren't planning to stay long. The climbing session had run a little over, Simone had found a hold she kept losing and then finding again, which meant we both…
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First Day of the New Thing, Sort Of
September thirtieth. I want to state clearly that I had printed the schedule. I had printed it, put it on the kitchen table, poured the cold brew, and then, in a sequence of event…
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I Knew Nothing, It Turns Out
September nineteenth. I would like to state, for the record, that I walked into that room with a reasonable level of confidence. Not arrogance. Just the quiet, untested assumption…
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The Straw Thing
September eighth. I cannot fully explain what happened. That is partly because it involved a paper straw and a very specific Simone facial expression and the combination of the tw…
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The Salt Thing
August seventeenth. It started with a recipe. I was looking up something completely reasonable, how long to brine chicken, maybe, or whether I was salting pasta water correctly, a…
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The Productivity Defense
July twenty-sixth. Here is my case: we had the notebooks out. Simone had highlighters, plural, organized by some system I did not ask about. I had coffee and a legal pad with thre…
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The Call That Ran Long
July fifteenth. The holiday was two days ago but the quiet it left behind is still in the apartment. I called home on the fourth, not in a planned way, more in a I-have-forty-minu…
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The Neighbor Stayed Three Hours
July fourth. Someone's neighbor showed up with a six-pack and ended up taking most of the good photos, which I think is the correct way for a holiday party to go. I don't have a l…
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The Plant Had It Coming
June twenty-third. I want to be on record: I was minding my own business. I had the notebook out. I had the good corner table, the one with the window at an angle so you get the a…
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Seven Things, None of Them the Thing
June twelfth. I went to the store for one item. I will not tell you what it was because the specificity of it would make this too embarrassing, but it was a single, ordinary, comp…
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The Cracker Debrief
June first. Here is what happened: I hung up from a family call at eight forty-five, stood in my kitchen for approximately thirty seconds, and then texted Simone something that wa…
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The Pause Button as Coping Mechanism
May twenty-first. I want to be honest about what I did last night. I sat on the floor, not the couch, the floor, for reasons that felt structural at the time, and watched the Game…
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Eight Feet Felt Like Something
April eighteenth. The notice said Saturday morning, low wall, all levels welcome. I had been looking at it for three weeks, or rather, Simone had pointed at it three weeks ago at…
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The Hydrangea Situation
April seventh. We went for the succulents. I want to be clear about that. There was a sign outside the community center on Tuesday that said SPRING PLANT SALE, SATURDAY 9AM, and S…
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The Link She Sent
March twenty-seventh. It started, as these things tend to, with Simone sending me a single link at the end of a Tuesday session with the message 'just one thing' and a period. Tha…
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The Bread Machine Situation
March sixteenth. The yard sales started early this year, or maybe I just noticed them earlier because Simone texted me at eight forty-five on Saturday morning to say she had spott…
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The Green Ink Problem
February twenty-third. There were three things in the mailbox: a power bill, a furniture store circular I did not ask for, and a letter addressed to someone named M. Okafor. I do…
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The Book That Kept Us There
February twelfth. I picked up the book three weeks ago at the library, not because I had a strong feeling about it, just because it was on the display table near the door and I wa…
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The Cumin Situation
February first. The cabinet above the stove has been overloaded since approximately October, and I have known this the entire time. I have reached into it carefully, redistributed…
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The Honey Jar Argument
January twenty-first. The farmers market runs year-round, which sounds admirable until you are standing under a half-open canopy at eight-forty in the morning in January and the t…
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We Signed Up for Level Two
January tenth. The registration email said 'intermediate session' and I sent it to Simone anyway with no message, just the link, and she replied four minutes later with 'ok.' That…
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The Discover Weekly Explanation
December eighth. The thing about Simone getting a new phone is that she does not get a new phone quietly. There is a period, I would estimate it at somewhere between forty minutes…
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The Cranberry Sauce Situation
November twenty-seventh. For the record, cranberry sauce has four ingredients. Four. Cranberries, sugar, water, orange zest if you're feeling ambitious, which I was not. I had thr…
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The Shoe Was Already Dead When We Got There
November sixteenth. Simone's sneaker gave up the moment we sat down to stretch. Not during the climb, not on the walk over, during the stretch. The sole peeled back from the toe l…
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The Chalk Comes Off Eventually
October fourteenth. I put my card in at nine-seventeen on a Tuesday three weeks ago, and I have been quietly dreading this evening ever since in the specific way you dread somethi…
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The Mug Was Hot When I Made It
October third. The notes have been on the table since six. It is now, I just checked, almost nine-thirty, and I have made real, measurable progress on approximately one and a half…
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The Part Where I Registered and Then Immediately Panicked About Something Else
September twenty-second. The card details went in at nine-seventeen p.m. on a Tuesday. I know this because my laptop was also open to forty-three pages of notes I was supposed to…
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One Block Over
September eleventh. The shift ended at the exact moment where staying in the building felt physically impossible, so Simone said 'coffee' and I said 'yes' before she finished the…
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The Laundry Has Been Clean for Three Hours
August thirty-first. The plan was to do laundry, fold it while it was still warm, and be finished by noon. It is now almost four o'clock and the basket is sitting in the middle of…
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Six Feet, More or Less
August twentieth. The thing Simone said was: 'It's one session. It's not a commitment. It's just a thing we could do.' That was two weeks after she mentioned it in passing at the…
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The Week Two Things Hit at Once
July seventh. The phone bill and the pottery class fee landed in the same week. Not the same day, which would have been too obvious, but close enough that I looked at my notebook…
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The Number on the Paper
June twenty-sixth. The pottery class kiln results are still sitting in a box at the community center, waiting to be picked up, and I have been thinking about money. Not in a crisi…
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The Axe and the Aftermath
June fifteenth. The thing about agreeing to axe throwing is that you don't really reckon with what you've agreed to until you are standing in a converted warehouse holding a small…
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After the Clay
May twenty-fourth. The walk home from pottery takes about twelve minutes if I go the regular way, and I almost never go the regular way anymore. Wednesday evenings have developed…
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The Third Trip Up
May thirteenth. I want to be clear that I volunteered for this. Nobody drafted me. Simone mentioned, at the end of a shift sometime last week, that she was moving Saturday and her…
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Three Hours Standing, Zero Complaints
May second. The pottery instructor said something last week about how clay remembers pressure even after you think you've smoothed it out, and I've been turning that over all week…
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The Bookshelf Stayed Downstairs
April twenty-first. Easter weekend, and I spent part of it in a hallway arguing with a bookshelf. It started the way these things always do: someone sent a message that said 'hey,…
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Week Two, No Bowl, Full Attendance
April tenth. The thing nobody tells you about pottery is that the second class is somehow harder to walk into than the first, because by the second class you know what's coming. T…
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What the Wheel Knows
March thirtieth. The instructor made it look like breathing, hands steady, clay rising, and then she lifted her hands and the thing was a bowl. An actual bowl. Then she said, your…
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We Filled Out the Form
March nineteenth. The thing is, we had been standing at that counter for probably four minutes before either of us actually picked up the pen. The brochure was right there. The cl…
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The Wednesday Theory
February twenty-fifth. The thing about going out on a Wednesday is that you have to make a decision, and the decision is: do I actually want to do this, or do I want to be the kin…
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Two Stops East, Four Hundred Geese
January twelfth. Here is what happened: Simone asked me last week, in the casual way she asks things that turn out to matter, whether I ever just got on a bus without knowing exac…
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The Light on the First
January first. Not early, not late, just that middle part of the morning where it's technically daytime but nothing has been asked of you yet. The light outside was doing somethin…
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Four Gifts and No Tape
December twenty-first. The plan was to get this done in an hour. That was two hours ago, and I am currently sitting at my kitchen table with one piece of tape stuck to my thumb an…
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The Day After, and a Very Serious Chicken
November twenty-ninth. The list was my idea. I wrote it on the back of a receipt, which should have been the first sign, and by the third line it said 'chicken (or something)' and…
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The Longest Three Weeks of Absolutely Nothing
November eighteenth. I have been telling myself I wasn't thinking about it. This is a thing I am apparently capable of doing for an impressive stretch of time, about three weeks,…
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There Is No Sheriff Here
October twenty-seventh. What happened was: I walked past the bulletin board at the rec center on Thursday and there was a flyer for a Halloween costume contest and I read it, look…
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Forty Varieties
October sixteenth. The expired coupon booklet was for a Saturday market, which I never went to, but it turns out there's also a Thursday evening version three blocks further east…
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The Cardigan in Question
October fifth. There's a specific kind of Sunday morning that starts with opening the closet and immediately closing it again. Not because there's nothing to wear, there's somethi…
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Everything Moved and I Did Not Ask
September twenty-fourth. The phone updated itself overnight. I know this is how it works, I clicked something, agreed to something, probably at eleven-thirty when I was tired enou…
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The Air Changed Overnight
September thirteenth. At some point between Wednesday and Thursday, fall arrived. Not officially, officially it's still ten days away, but the air didn't check the calendar. I wok…
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The Cups Went Cold
September second. It's Labor Day, which means Simone texted at nine asking if I had anything going on, and I said no, which was true, and twenty minutes later she was at the door…
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The Pigeon Was Not Sorry
August twenty-second. The bird did not announce itself. There was no warning, no shadow, no rustle, just a sudden, extremely solid impact against the back of my skull, and then a…
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The Strap Was Not Latched
July twentieth. The connector was not latched. I know this now with the kind of certainty you only get after a stranger puts their hand briefly in the air in front of you at an in…
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The Second Bag Was Mine
June twenty-eighth. I want to be clear that I almost didn't go. Simone texted at five-forty-seven on a Thursday, just the address, then 'outdoor movie starts at eight, bring a lay…
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The Grass Was Wet and I Stayed Anyway
June sixth. The show started at seven-thirty and I got there at seven and stood at the edge of the lawn for a few minutes trying to figure out where to put myself, which is a thin…
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Gerald Gets a Neighbor
May twenty-sixth. The succulent was three dollars and ninety-nine cents at the hardware store on the corner, which also sells birdseed and replacement drawer pulls and, apparently…
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The Salt Shakers Were Very Clean After That
May fourth. Simone asked me on Thursday if I was seeing anyone. Not in a pointed way, we'd been doing side-work between the lunch and dinner rush, the restaurant empty in that spe…
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The Eggs Were Fine, Actually
April twenty-third. The note card is still on the counter. I keep not moving it, which is its own kind of decision. Gerald is trailing a new vine toward the window and the collaps…
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Pivot. No, the Other Way. No,
April twelfth. The couch was not that big. That is the thing I keep coming back to. By any reasonable standard, it was a normal-sized couch. A loveseat, technically. And yet someh…
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It Pivots, We Were Told
April first. For the record, I am writing this with arms that feel like overcooked pasta, and that is a completely honest description of my current physical state. Simone texted m…
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I Signed Up and Then I Showed Up
March tenth. Last Saturday was the final session. I keep starting sentences about it and stopping, not because I don't have anything to say but because everything I have to say so…
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After the Call
February sixteenth. Simone called her dad from the break room. I know because I was already there when she walked in, and she said, quietly, already dialing, "I'm just going to ca…
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The Bag Is in the Bagging Area
February fifth. The self-checkout machine at the grocery store does not believe I am a real person. I don't mean that philosophically. I mean that I placed the reusable bag in the…
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The Pause Before the Mascara
December twenty-third. Simone came over before the shift because it made more sense than her going home first, and we ended up in the bathroom at the same time the way you do when…
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Longer Than We Meant To
December twelfth. We both had the day off at the same time, which happens less often than you'd think, and Simone texted at some point the night before to say she'd heard there wa…
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The Whale Was Just the Beginning
December first. It started with a whale. Specifically, a humpback whale that had been singing the same song for decades with no response, I read one sentence about it in a book I…
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Just Me and the Vacuum of Space
October twenty-ninth. I bought one ticket. Middle of the row, a little left of center, the way my dad always insisted was the correct seat. I went by myself on a Tuesday night to…
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The Part Where Nobody Goes Home Yet
October seventh. We both had the same kind of day, not bad, exactly, just the kind where you spend seven hours doing something that required your whole body and your whole face an…
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The Playlist I Built and iTunes Ate
September twenty-sixth. I spent the better part of tonight in a standoff with iTunes. Not a dramatic one, just the low-grade, persistent kind, where you keep clicking the same thi…
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The Number I Wrote Down in July
September fifteenth. I did the thing I wrote down that I wanted to do, not the big thing, just the small one. I tracked the grocery spending for the month. Not obsessively, not wi…
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The Rigatoni Question
August twenty-fourth. There is a letter on my kitchen counter. It's been there for a little while now, Carol's, the fourth one, the one with the thing about my mother inside it th…
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The Lip Liner I'd Given Up On
August second. I have been looking for a specific lip liner since June. I thought it fell behind the radiator. I thought I left it at work. I had, at some point in July, quietly a…
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All the Quarters We Had
July eleventh. My building's laundry machine decided last Saturday was a good time to stop working mid-cycle, which is how I ended up at the laundromat on a ninety-degree afternoo…
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The Man Who Ordered Black Coffee and Wanted Nothing Else
June nineteenth. There was a man at the café this afternoon, the one on the corner I end up at when I don't have a plan, who ordered black coffee, sat down by the window, and did…
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The Ring Mark on the Table
June eighth. We said coffee. Not lunch, not plans, just coffee, which is a word that is supposed to mean forty minutes and then back to your Saturday. Simone found a table by the…
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The Three Seconds Before You Know What Your Face Is Doing
May seventeenth. Somebody said "we have an announcement" and I did that thing where your stomach does a full rotation before your brain has caught up. The table went quiet for may…
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We Actually Finished
April third. Here is what I remember most clearly about crossing that finish line: I was not ready to be done. Not in the way where you feel strong, in the way where your brain ha…
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One Drink, They Said
March twenty-third. The original number was one. One drink, quick, after the shift, Simone said it like a plan with an exit built in, and I agreed the same way. That was a Saturda…
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We Said Two Hours
March first. The original plan, and I want to be precise about this, was two hours. Simone suggested the library because the café gets loud after seven, and I agreed because I had…
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The Yes I Didn't Think About
February eighteenth. Here is the exact sequence of events: Simone mentioned it during a lull, somewhere between the dinner rush thinning out and the point where we start consolida…
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Basically Darts, She Said
February seventh. Here is what Simone told me: axe throwing is basically darts. You just hold it, aim, let go. Low-key. Chill. A thing normal people do on a Thursday evening when…
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The Thing I Agreed To Before I Saw It
January sixteenth. My neighbor knocked at around two in the afternoon and asked if I had twenty minutes. I said yes, because it was Wednesday and I had nowhere to be, and because…
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The Wall Had Notes
January fifth. I signed up for a beginner bouldering session at the climbing gym on Tuesday and did not tell anyone because I knew exactly what would happen if I did: someone woul…
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The Radiator's Terms
December fourteenth. It is forty-one degrees outside and approximately fifty-nine degrees in this apartment, which means the radiator has once again decided that warmth is a sugge…
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The Mirror Gives No Notes
December third. There are exactly twelve minutes between when Simone and I both arrive and when the floor actually opens, and we have somehow filled all twelve of them, every shif…
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Thanksgiving and the Toast Situation
November twenty-second. I want to be clear that I was not attempting anything ambitious. No pie, no biscuits from scratch, no elaborate casserole with three components. I was maki…
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Thinner Is Not a Feature, Simone
October thirty-first. Simone came in with the white box. I clocked it immediately, the iPhone 5 box, sitting on the break room table like a small ceremony waiting to happen. She h…
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The Sentence That Wasn't Mine
October twentieth. There was a couple in the corner booth. I say couple because that seemed right, the body language, the specific way one of them kept looking at the table instea…
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The Pigeon Who Had Opinions
October ninth. There was a pigeon on the break room windowsill for most of our lunch break today. Not flying past, not briefly pausing, sitting. Settled. Looking in at us with the…
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What My Legs Remembered
September twenty-eighth. I went for a run this morning. That sentence should not feel as strange to type as it does. It wasn't dramatic. I woke up at 6:20, couldn't go back to sle…
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One of Us Made a Bowl
September seventeenth. I want to be accurate about what happened. Simone suggested the pottery drop-in at the community center, the same one that does the Wednesday yoga I've been…
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The Yellow Kayak
August fourth. There was a sign. I want to be clear about this, there was an actual sign at the park entrance that said KAYAK RENTALS and had a little arrow, and normally I would…
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Batman Came Up and We Were There for Forty-Five Minutes
July twenty-fourth. I do not remember who brought up the movie first. I think it was Simone, because she said something during sidework about how she had her ticket already and I…
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The Radish Problem
July second. I have a bunch of radishes on my counter and no plan. That is the entire summary of my Saturday morning, and also the logical conclusion of visiting a farmers market…
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Gerald Witnessed Everything and He Will Not Be Testifying
June twenty-first. The smoke detector went off at 6:47 PM and then again at 7:03 PM, which means I had sixteen minutes between alarms during which I apparently learned nothing. He…
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Midnight and a Parking Lot and Aliens, Probably
June tenth. I bought a ticket to the midnight premiere of Prometheus on a Tuesday and told no one until after I'd already done it, which is maybe the purest form of a decision I k…
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Table Seven, Again
May thirtieth. The thing about waitressing is that you can be quite good at it for an entire shift and then, in the final forty minutes, undo a meaningful portion of that goodwill…
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The Cheese Incident, Documented
May nineteenth. The coffee shop by the bus stop was about half full when I got there around two o'clock, and I had picked my usual corner table and was doing nothing particular, n…
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Tuesday Is Not Wednesday and My Arms Know It
May eighth. Wednesday's class was full, I checked the community center schedule Monday night and there it was, that little grayed-out button that might as well say 'sorry, you wai…
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Third Viewing, No Notes
April twenty-seventh. The movie doesn't even open until May fourth and I have already watched the trailer, the full three-minute one, not a TV spot, three times this week. Not in…
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The Tree Did Not Ask Permission
April sixteenth. The cherry tree outside my window bloomed overnight without any warning, which feels on-brand for a tree. I noticed it this morning when I went to check if it was…
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One Footnote and Then Four Hours
April fifth. It started with the letterpress flyer. The photo has been sitting in my camera roll for two weeks, the flyer from the community center board, the one about the intro…
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May the Odds (and the AMC Parking Situation) Be Ever in Your Favor
March twenty-fifth. I want it on the record that I stood outside the theater for two hours last night and I would do it again. The Hunger Games midnight premiere. I went alone, wh…
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The Wrung-Out Feeling
March fourteenth. I keep trying to describe what the yoga class does and coming up short, which is annoying because I write things for a living, loosely, in the sense that I write…
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The Photo I Haven't Done Anything With
March third. There is a photo in my camera roll from three weeks ago that I have not done anything with. It is a flyer. It is for a letterpress workshop in April, one Saturday, co…
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Man, I Feel Like a Tuesday
February twenty-first. There is a karaoke bar three blocks from my apartment that I have walked past at least forty times without going in. I know this because I have thought abou…
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Rosewood, More or Less
February tenth. I was standing in the CVS last Tuesday for maybe twelve minutes longer than I needed to be, in front of the lipstick display, doing the thing where you hold two co…
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The Foot Goes Where, Exactly
January nineteenth. I went to a yoga class this morning. This is relevant because I have never been to a yoga class before in my life, and I went alone, which means there was no o…
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Forty-Eight Quarters
January eighth. The laundromat on the corner takes exact change only, which I knew, and somehow still managed to show up forty cents short. I've been doing laundry at this place s…
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The Week That Isn't Really a Week
December 28th. There is a specific quality to the days between Christmas and New Year's that I cannot find the right word for. Not sad, exactly. Not lonely, exactly. Just, thin. L…
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The Wall Was My Best Friend
December. The rink smelled like cold air and bad hot chocolate and something faintly metallic, which I now know is just what ice smells like up close. I went alone, which is eithe…
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Four Cans of Chickpeas
I went to the grocery store this morning without a list. I want to be very clear that I knew I was doing this. I stood in the kitchen, thought 'I'll remember,' and left. This is n…
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The Last Quarter Mile
I want to be honest about the last quarter mile. I nearly walked it. Not because my legs gave out, they didn't, technically, but because there was a moment where the math of finis…
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I Had a Whole Script
I'm not going to name the person. That's not what this is about. What this is about is the specific, humbling experience of having a conversation go completely differently than ev…
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The Honey Was Worth It (Mostly)
There is a farmers market two neighborhoods over that runs through October, and I had been meaning to go for three Saturdays in a row. Today I actually went. I want to be very cle…
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The Keys Were Right There
Wednesday. I locked my keys in the car. I want to be clear that I saw them the moment I shut the door, that little silver gleam through the window, keys dangling from the ignition…
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Hot Coffee, Wrong Destination
There are injuries that come with a story, you were doing something interesting, or at least something worth explaining. And then there is what happened to me this morning, which…
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The Coat Was Right There
Thirty minutes. I want to be precise about that. Not five minutes, not a quick confused moment at the door, thirty minutes of standing in the hallway, sitting on the bottom step,…
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The Fire Escape, Three Times
I took the sketchbook outside today. That's the news. That's genuinely the whole update, and I am choosing to count it. It's been sitting on the kitchen table since June, face-up…
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Low Heat, Apparently
Eggs. I have been making scrambled eggs since I was maybe fourteen. I have made them fast, over high heat, pushed around the pan aggressively until they were done, or what I thoug…
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The Boiling Water Revelation
I signed up for the workshop on impulse. The flyer was taped to the community center bulletin board, the same board where I once found a flyer for the pottery class, and the words…
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Twelve Hours and Worth It
It started because I was tired of spending three dollars on iced coffee every time I ran past the coffee shop on my route. Not resentful-tired, just the kind of tired where you do…
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Forty Minutes with a Pigeon
There was a pigeon on my windowsill this morning and I want to be clear that I did nothing, nothing, for the better part of an hour because of him. He showed up around eight-fifte…
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Every Word, Apparently
The thing nobody tells you about waiting two hours in a line that wraps around the side of a brick building is that by the time the doors open, you are already in a great mood. Yo…
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Eleven Minutes I'm Not Getting Back
Here is what happened this morning: I opened my closet at approximately seven forty-five, stood there, and conducted what I can only describe as a formal review. The gray blouse w…
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Miles, Mood, and What the Notebook Knows
Three point two miles. Legs heavy. Mood: complicated. That's what I wrote in the log last Tuesday. I'd only started keeping it a few weeks ago, just a small spiral notebook I grab…
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The Part Where I Buy Three Pastas
Errand day. I made a list. The list had seven things on it, including one that just said 'produce, figure it out,' which is a sign of either confidence or delusion and I'm honestl…
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Ninety Minutes and a Cold Pot
My mom called at like six-fifteen, which is peak dinner-assembly hour in this apartment if I'm being honest with myself about my ambitions as a cook. I had been doing something wi…
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What My Brain Does When the Semester Is Over
The grades are in. The final was turned in weeks ago. By any reasonable measure, my brain is off the clock. And yet. Here I am at half past midnight on the second-to-last night of…
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The Going-Away Dinner That Got Away From Us
It started as a low-key thing. That's the important context. Nadia said she didn't want a big deal, just dinner, just the people she actually talks to every week, nothing dramatic…
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Soup, Basically from Scratch
Thursday morning, mid-October, and I woke up cold in a way that felt like a decision had already been made for me. Not a run decision. A soup decision. I had half a bag of carrots…
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The Umbrella Had No Business
Third of October and the wind has opinions. I was standing at the crosswalk on the corner near the community center, the one with the busted signal that takes forever, and the guy…
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The Night I Stopped Negotiating With Myself
It started the way these things usually do, with me standing in front of the closet at 8pm telling myself it was probably too late to leave, the venue was probably too loud, I pro…
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Twenty-Seven Exposures of Mostly Gerald
I found a disposable camera in the back of a drawer last Tuesday. Yellow Kodak, the kind that costs about eight dollars at a drugstore, still had exposures left on it. I have no m…
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The Rice Was Both Things at Once
August, and I have been sitting in this apartment trying to figure out what to do with myself. Not in a bad way, just in the way where summer gets very quiet and you start eyeing…
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The Thursday I Didn't Talk Myself Out Of
There's a version of that night where I don't go. I had already changed back into my pajama shorts. I was like forty percent committed to watching something on TV and calling it a…
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Four Tries and a Very Sad Cup
It's the middle of July and I've been trying to talk myself out of driving somewhere every time I want iced coffee. The gas, the five dollars, the ten-minute round trip that alway…
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The Bread I Did Not Buy
I got dressed on Wednesday like I had somewhere to be. I did not have somewhere to be. I had a grocery list with four things on it, one of which was bread, and I spent twenty minu…
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The Bird Did That
There's this pigeon that has started showing up on the windowsill outside my kitchen, and today it did something so aggressively stupid that I had to stop writing mid-sentence and…
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The Heat Came Back and I Just Let It
The window has been open since about seven. I didn't plan that, I just woke up, walked to the kitchen, and realized the air coming in felt different. Not the cold-different of Mar…
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The Coin Count
Twenty-three dollars and some change. That's what was in my wallet on Thursday and I had to make it work until the end of the month. Not in a dramatic way, nobody's calling it a c…
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The Text Was Fine. I Was Not Fine.
It was 11:47pm and I was still awake. Not studying. Not doing anything productive. Just lying there in my sweatshirt running through a two-sentence text message like it was a fina…
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The Call and the Floor
Easter Sunday and I called home at two in the afternoon. I don't know why I always think these calls will feel easy. They never feel bad, exactly, nobody said anything wrong, noth…
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The Mirror Does Too Much
There's this thing that happens when I'm getting ready where I think I'm just doing mascara and then fifteen minutes pass and I've apparently been standing at the mirror solving p…
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The Trees Were the Plan
Marcus's birthday. I woke up and the apartment felt too quiet in that specific way it gets when you don't have anywhere to be, and I thought: I'm going to drive somewhere with tre…
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The Cold Is Just Standing There
There is a specific kind of February morning where the light comes in grey and flat and the window fogs at the bottom and you stand there with your coffee for too long just lookin…
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The Starter and I Are Both Works in Progress
February fourteenth and I spent the morning covered in flour. Not on purpose, that's just how sourdough works, apparently. I'd been reading about it for weeks, the way you do when…
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The Kettle Corn Was Worth It
Nine in the morning and it was twenty-eight degrees. I know because I checked my phone before I left and stood in the kitchen for a full minute deciding whether I actually wanted…
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The Lake Was Frozen and I Drove There Anyway
Tuesday. I got in the car at eight-fifteen with a full tank of gas and no actual plan, which is either freedom or a character flaw, and I drove an hour and twenty minutes to a lak…
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What I Did Instead of Making Resolutions
January first. I woke up with no plan, no resolution written in a cute journal, nothing. I had a bag of bread flour I bought impulsively two weeks ago because I watched someone on…
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The Longest Night (Literally, It's the Solstice)
It started with the book. I've been reading Mary Renault's The King Must Die, picked it up from the used bin at the bookstore weeks ago, finally cracked it last Tuesday, and there…
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The Sock That Outlasted October
December tenth and I finally did the laundry. Not the catch-up load, the real one. The one where you move things that have been sitting in the basket long enough to need refolding…
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The Woman at the Pay Phone
The coffee shop clears out fast after eight-thirty. By nine, maybe nine-fifteen, it's down to a few people on laptops and a couple of older men who seem to come here the way other…
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Two Documents Walk Into a Living Room
Here's something that happened this week that I can't stop thinking about. I came home from creative writing class with a paragraph I'd written during an in-class prompt, 'write w…
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The Candle You Actually Remember
Twenty-one arrived on a Sunday. I had half-expected it to feel like something with volume, like the number itself would make noise when it landed. It didn't. It was just me in a r…
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The Waterfall Was Real, The Snacks Were Insufficient
Labor Day weekend and I had exactly one plan, which was to not sit in my apartment for three days straight. A few weeks ago I grabbed a paper map of the state parks within an hour…
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The Lopsided Bowl Situation
There is a thing on my counter right now that I made with my own two hands. I am going to call it a bowl. The woman who taught the class called it a "good first attempt," which I…
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The Part Where You Already Know What Happens
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out three weeks ago and I have seen it once in the theater, which means I have been thinking about it every day since and doing nothing…
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Nine PM and Counting
There is a specific kind of tired that closing shift produces and it is completely unlike any other kind. It is not the tired you get from running or from sitting through a long c…
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Forty Minutes in Any Direction
I didn't plan it. That's the part that made it work, I think. It was Thursday morning, post-July Fourth lull, the kind of week where everything feels slightly unscheduled, and I l…
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Four Stars, One Broken Skip Button
The skip button on my iPod Shuffle stopped working reliably sometime around March and I have done absolutely nothing about it. This is relevant because tonight I got three songs i…
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Something That Actually Required a Pot
There's a point where cereal for dinner stops being a quirky choice and starts being a life pattern. I hit that point sometime last week. Not a dramatic realization, just a quiet…
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The Kind of Rabbit Hole You Don't Mind Falling Into
It started with one chapter. It was supposed to be one chapter, I had every intention of being asleep by eleven. And then somewhere around page sixty I looked up and my room was c…
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The Parking Lot Part
Eight hours on the register and by the end my brain was running on a very specific frequency, the one where you can scan a barcode without looking and say 'did you find everything…
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Twenty Candles and One Ruined Sleeve
The punch got me within ten minutes. Not a big spill, just enough, the kind where you dab at it with a paper napkin and then spend the rest of the night with your arm angled sligh…
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The Night I Made a Sad Volcano
I didn't tell anyone I was going. That's the part I keep coming back to. It started because I walked past the studio on my way home from work last week, the one on the corner near…
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Did You Find Everything Okay
Four hours. That's all it was. Four hours on the register and I came home and stood in front of the open fridge for so long that the little light inside it started to feel like co…
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The Sentence That Wasn't Mine
There's a table near the back of the coffee shop I always aim for when it's free, the one with the slightly wobbly leg that nobody else wants. I had my notebook out, my second cof…
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Forty Minutes There, Two Hours of Dark, Forty Minutes Back
The previews hadn't even started and I was already glad I came. That's the thing about a midnight screening, the decision to go is half the experience. You have to actually choose…
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One Bunch of Tulips for No Reason
It was the kind of cold where your ears go numb before you've made it half a block, and I went to the farmers market anyway. Not because I needed anything. There was nothing on a…
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The Pigeon Who Moved In Without Asking
It started at around two in the afternoon. I was sitting on my bed, laptop open, fully intending to finally look at that Journalism listing again, very productive Tuesday planned,…
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The Midnight Plan I Made at 9pm
There are decisions you make carefully and decisions you make because you're already in your coat. Last night was the second kind. I'd seen the Twilight re-run listed at the dolla…
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Happy Gotcha Day, You Demanding Little Dog
December 23rd. Two years ago today, Biscuit came home. I didn't plan anything elaborate. Honestly, I almost let the date pass without marking it, it's Christmas Eve-eve, everyone'…
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The Trail Was Half Ice and I Went Anyway
December decided to be actual winter this week, which I apparently took as a personal invitation. I drove out to Millbrook State Park on Friday morning with no particular plan, I…
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The Great Pasta Experiment (Results: Inconclusive)
I don't know what came over me. It was a Sunday afternoon in December, the sky was that flat gray color that makes you want to do something with your hands, and I had exactly one…
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The Part Where I Got a Little Lost
Nobody told me there would be a fork about forty minutes in with no signage and two trails that look exactly the same. I picked the left one. I was wrong. I figured this out appro…
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The Raccoon Situation
There is a very specific kind of hubris that comes over a person when they decide, on a slow Sunday morning with nowhere to be, that today is the day they will finally figure out…
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The One Circled Thing
The instructor handed back the first assignment at the end of class today. No fanfare, just a stack of pages face-down on the edge of the desk and a wave toward it, help yourselve…
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3.1 Miles and Change
My legs are currently not speaking to me. I've acknowledged the situation, offered them a reasonable amount of ibuprofen and a couch, and we're in negotiations. This morning was t…
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A Tuesday That Asked Nothing of Me
It's just past eight and I have nowhere to be. That sentence felt strange to type. Not bad-strange, just unfamiliar. The last few weeks have been a steady accumulation of things t…
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The Pasta Experiment (A Crime Scene, Technically)
There is flour in places flour has no business being. I found some on the cabinet door above the stove. I don't know how. I wasn't even near that cabinet. I've been in a strange m…
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What the Clay Decided
I want to be clear about something upfront: I went in thinking I'd be at least decent at this. That is not what happened. It started because I saw a flyer at the rec center, the s…
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The Bird That Stayed
There's a sparrow that has apparently decided my windowsill is interesting. This morning I was sitting on the floor with my coffee going cold beside me, I'd been meaning to open t…
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The Cardinal Didn't Know It Was Doing Me a Favor
There was a cardinal on the fence this morning. I don't know how long he'd been there before I noticed him, I was just sitting on my bed doing nothing, which is something I'm stil…
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The Paragraph That Beat Me
It is June. It is summer. I am inside. There's a textbook open on my desk that I've been technically looking at for about two hours. In that time I have: highlighted three sentenc…
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Five Dollars and I Lost My Mind a Little
The jacket has been on the back of that chair since approximately March. I don't know why I picked it up today, I think I was going to move it to the closet and finally be a perso…
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The List Did Something I Didn't Ask It To
I wasn't trying to make two columns. I opened the notebook because I couldn't sleep past seven and I thought, fine, I'll just write some things down. Be productive. Cross somethin…
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A Wednesday, Technically
It started because someone used the phrase 'just come for an hour' and I have never once in my life successfully treated that as a binding agreement. By eleven I was picking songs…
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The Part Where I Pretended I Was Fine in the Parking Lot
There was a moment last night, standing in someone's backyard with a red plastic cup and café lights going warm above me, where I looked at Sophie across the folding table and tho…
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Everything I Made Is Technically a Bowl
The brochure at the rec center said 'beginner-friendly' and I want everyone to know that is a very generous use of the word friendly. I signed up mostly on a whim, it was pinned t…
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The Succulent Will Survive (Probably)
Easter weekend. No class, no running club, no agenda. Sophie from next door has this succulent she's been nursing back from the dead since February, she overwatered it, which, sam…
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Lauren Conrad Did Not Have to Do Me Like That
Thursday nights have a specific energy right now and that energy is: lie horizontal on the couch and let The Hills make decisions for me. I don't even fully understand why I keep…
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Certified Mail and Other Things Nobody Explains
The post office is not complicated. I know this. I have been inside a post office before. But there is a difference between going to the post office with someone who knows what th…
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I Did the Midnight Showing and I Regret Nothing (Mostly)
Two hours and three minutes. That's how long 10,000 BC is. I know this because I kept track in the dark on my watch, not because I was bored, but because around the 90-minute mark…
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I Don't Know (Said Out Loud, In Front of Everyone)
The professor called on me today. Second week of class, and I genuinely did not know the answer. Not in a 'I blanked' way, in a 'I have no framework for this yet' way. And instead…
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Forty Minutes and a Frozen Lake
There was nothing on my agenda for Saturday. That's not me being poetic, I literally checked my notebook and the only thing written was 'laundry?' with a question mark, which tell…
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The Silk Road Did Not Ask for My Time and Yet Here We Are
It started with a single sentence in a library book I've been meaning to finish since December. One of those offhand mentions, a place name, a route, a casual reference to merchan…
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Six Degrees and Counting
The thermometer on the back of the front door said six degrees this morning. Not six degrees with wind chill, just six degrees, baseline, before the wind even got involved. I stoo…
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December 26th and My Legs Are Filing a Complaint
The tree is still up. There are approximately fourteen containers of leftover Christmas food in the fridge. And I was in the rec center parking lot at 8 a.m. because apparently th…
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3.1 Miles and a Lot of Feelings About It
Finished my first 5K this morning. That sentence looks extremely normal typed out and I keep rereading it like it's going to change. I got there early, obviously, because apparent…
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Thanksgiving Eve, and I Only Dropped One Thing
The butter is on the counter. The flour is everywhere. I have a saucepan that needs stirring every four minutes and I keep forgetting about it until it starts making a noise it sh…
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The Part Where I Didn't Leave Early
Here's what I didn't know about open mic nights: they are not background music. I found this out approximately forty-five seconds after I sat down, when a man in a corduroy jacket…
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Four Loads and a Very Good Reason to Go to Bed Early
My neighbor's washing machine died on Friday. She mentioned it in passing, the way people mention things when they're not actually asking for help, and I said 'I can help you haul…
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The Part Where I Actually Went
It was 7:45 and I was already in my pajama pants. That's the honest version. I had the TV on, some rerun, I wasn't really watching, and my neighbor texted asking if I was coming t…
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Found Money and the Specific Joy of It
There is a jacket hanging on the back of my door that I haven't touched since sometime in March, maybe February. I pulled it down this morning because it's actually cold now, like…
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Seven Words and a Very Long Walk to My Car
I have been thinking about something completely unimportant for approximately four hours and I am tired. Not bad-tired. Just the specific tired that happens when your brain gets h…
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I Made Food Today. Real Food. Allegedly.
The smoke detector went off twice. I want to put that at the top so we're all on the same page before I tell you I'm calling this a success. I've been running almost every morning…
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I Hit Submit and Then Sat Very Still for Ten Minutes
It was past nine when I did it. I wasn't planning to do it tonight, I was planning to look at the page again, maybe read the course description one more time, maybe screenshot it…
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The Cat That Wasn't Mine
There was a grey cat under my window this morning. Not my cat, I don't have a cat, just a cat, sitting in the dirt beneath the backyard bush like it owned the entire square foot o…
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The Machine Always Wins on a Holiday Weekend
July third is a weird shift day. Everyone who comes in is already halfway somewhere else in their head, they order their drinks distracted, they tip in a hurry, and by ten in the…
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The Art of Sitting in the Yard and Calling It a Plan
There is a lawn chair in my backyard that has been there since I was probably twelve. It's the kind of plastic patio chair that leaves a grid pattern on the back of your legs and…
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The Night I Bought One Ticket
Here's the thing about going to a concert alone: everyone I mentioned it to made a face. Not a mean face, more like the face you make when someone tells you they're going to eat a…
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Two Cups and a Lesson in Not Walking Away from the Toaster
It's barely past eight and I have already made one fundamental error this morning. I walked away from the toaster. I know. I know. In my defense, the coffee maker beeped and I got…
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Five Hundred Miles and One Very Stolen Afternoon
I found it on the shelf in the hallway, spine cracked, pages a little soft at the corners the way paperbacks get when they've been read more than once. I didn't even mean to pick…
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The Manuscript That Ate My Evening
It started because I was bored and a little restless and someone on a forum mentioned the Voynich Manuscript in passing like it was nothing. Like it was a normal thing to drop int…
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The Bowl That Should Not Exist (And Why I'm Keeping It)
There's a clay bowl sitting on my passenger seat right now. It is lumpy. One side is noticeably taller than the other. There is a small crack along the rim that the instructor ass…
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Two Weeks Out and I've Already Reorganized My Highlighters Twice
It's 9:47am and I have been sitting at this desk for forty-five minutes. In that time I have: made tea, let it go cold, opened three textbooks, closed two of them, and arranged my…
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The Windows Have Been Closed Since November
April 6th. 4-something in the afternoon. I opened my bedroom window this morning mostly on instinct, the kind of thing you do before you're fully awake, and then I walked back ove…
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Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner (And Nobody Can Make Me Feel Guilty About This)
It is 10:47 PM on a Monday. I have watched Dirty Dancing before, I think four times, maybe five, and tonight I sat down to watch it again and felt zero shame about it. There's som…
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Just Me, a Canyon, and a Gas Station Hot Chocolate
Tuesday. Woke up at 6:30, packed a bag, and drove myself to Starved Rock. No plan beyond 'go somewhere with actual nature.' Spring break has been sitting quietly in the apartment…
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