Fluid Pudding

It’s nearly 10pm and I’m flipping through a book that’s half English and half Arabic and I’m not really sure what to share with you, plus I’m not really sure what I’m reading. (I’m convinced that someday I’ll come across a different language that I recognize. It’s already in my brain, but I just haven’t hit that area yet. Clearly, Arabic is not the language I know. I have ancestors from Romania. Stay tuned.)

For lack of any other ideas this evening, please know that the following eight things are true:

1. I recently discovered that I keep my eyes closed when I brush my teeth.
2. I feel super embarrassed when I’m making a soda at the gas station and I have to wait for the foam to go down before I can top it off.
3. I’ve been thinking about the pros and cons of cult activity and thinking about what sort of cult I would join if I were to join one.
4. I average around 4 hours of sleep at night, and I’m afraid it’s because I spent so much time falling asleep in diners during my 20s. I’m so tired.
5. My alarm goes off at 5:40am on weekdays, and I try not to spend more than four songs in the shower.
6. Seeing drawings of animals dressed up like other animals makes me feel sick to my stomach.
7. My favorite sandwich is a bagel with apples, muenster cheese, and just a tiny bit of Dijon or champagne mustard. I feel like I’ve told you this before. It’s still true.
8.  This is what I wore today, and it’s probably what I’ll wear tomorrow, although I’ll switch out the underwear, the tank top, and the socks.

Good night.

I’ve been full of nervous energy this week which has resulted in the accomplishment of two things that have been on my list for months.

(About a year ago I started a List of Three that involved writing down three things that absolutely had to be done on that day. I no longer keep the list at three things, and I no longer require myself to complete everything on the list, but it’s still something I do each morning. My God, this paragraph is excruciating. “Every day I make a list of stuff I need to do and I bet you’ve never heard THAT idea before, right?!” I’m wasting your time.)

Anyway, our bathroom faucet has been drippy for over a year. In the middle of the night I can hear it dripping, which leads to me lying awake and singing songs in my head to the rhythm of the drips (mostly You Light Up My Life by Debby Boone).

(I have no idea why the word Rage appears on the screen near the 10-second mark, but it feels appropriate because of the drip, and by ‘drip’ I mean THE drip. I’m not calling Debby Boone a drip.)

Yesterday morning we had drips. Yesterday afternoon we did not.

This morning my bookshelf looked like this:

This afternoon it looked like this:

Tonight it looks like this:

Top shelf: A few of the books I love.
Second shelf: Books that inspire.
Third shelf: Books full of art.
Bottom shelf: All of my journals and sketch pads.

2025 is for Swedish Death Cleaning, and I’ll bring you along if you want.

*I was driving and I saw a hawk flying with a mouse in his beak, so I asked Siri to take a note.
Siri: What do you want it to say?
Me: Hawk. Flying. With. A. Mouse. In. His. Beak.
Siri: Okay. I have created your note. It is titled Hope Crying With A Mouth In His Feet.
Me: Even better.

Seven years ago I dressed like a different author for each day in November. On November 8, 2017, I was Vladimir Nabokov.

This is one of my favorite Nabokovisms: “Mind you, sometimes the angels smoke, hiding it with their sleeves, and when the archangel comes, they throw the cigarettes away: that’s when you get shooting stars.”

(If you’ve considered reading some Nabokov, you may want to do it soon—before his books potentially become more difficult to find.)

(Also, please listen to the hat.)

43 monkeys escaped from a research facility in South Carolina. They are all female, and they all weigh 6-7 pounds. They’re described as bold, extremely curious, and highly adaptable to coexisting with humans. The police are telling nearby residents to lock their doors and windows, but if I lived in South Carolina, my doors and windows would be wide open and I’d be standing in the front yard juggling apples—which, according to the specialists, is the monkeys’ favorite food. (You’ve probably stopped reading at this point so you can stare up and to the right and wonder if I can really juggle. Wonder no more, because: I can! The only problem with juggling is that I tend to toss objects a little too far in front of me, so I end up juggling and running at the same time. The only problem with running is that my legs tend to break when I do it. (The last time I ran, I suffered a stress fracture in my heel and three in my tibia. (“Oh, tibia stress fracture!” is almost as good as “I just ate Mediterranean food and now I falafel!”) So, juggling? Yes. But my bird bones will keep me from proving it to you.))

I love this so much: Fugitive monkeys. Long may they run.

This morning I met a friend for potatoes and toast, and it was exactly what I needed.

It is impossible to be unhappy after meeting a friend for potatoes and toast.
Try it.

I’ve spent the evening searching for joys to distract myself from the election. The following two screenshots from a few years back make me insanely happy, because I like to think that I have a neighbor who would like to speak to some chickens, and maybe to a dog who has seizures.

Another joy? The pasta salad I made for dinner.

National Fountain Pen Day was on November 1, and I scored a great deal on a Monteverde Ritma. It arrived today, and it’s beautifully simple and clean.

This is one of my very favorite photos. Harper and Meredith went to Lollapalooza separately, but met up on the final night for the Zeds Dead show. I love that they’re so close. May they never need urgent medical care that their doctors delay or deny due to fear of prosecution.

Today I bought some cleaning supplies, ate a bag of gas station pickles, drove 100 miles, and let myself into an empty apartment where I wiped down a toilet and some sinks (and a bathtub) before vacuuming and sweeping and wet-jetting the floors (and dusting baseboards). I then took Meredith and her very favorite person out for lunch before driving home in stupid heavy rain.

And I did all of this while dressed like Kurt Cobain.

Because I’ve been mostly absent from Fluid Pudding for the past couple of years, there are so many things I’ve neglected to share with you. None of these things are particularly significant or soul-stirring, so maybe it’s best to just squirt out a few photos and let you create connections in places where no connections exist. (The word squirt in the previous sentence didn’t really work. I was trying for some alliteration but then it got creepy. Let’s leave it in.)

Oh! Hey! What? WHAT?! Someone with a hypodermic sat in my car and injected red stuff into their leg and I let it happen because: Things Are Different Now.

(My favorite part of the Olympics was pretending the divers were naked when their names popped up. (I guess when you take a photo of the television screen, things get out of hand and hands get out of things.))

I didn’t buy these jeans.

But I bought this shirt.

And this shirt.

And this shirt.

And this shirt.

And this shirt.

And like I said: Things Are Different Now!

(Things really aren’t so different.)