DIARY

Magic-Making

December 21, 2018

Epic shot by Kim Butan for Freezy Freakies

For the entirety of my adult life, the holiday season has more or less been spent in a weird dance of trying to recapture some tiny fragment of the magic I felt as a child, and mostly failing. I've come up with various traditions that I always think will help me get back some of that loopy joy - watching Elf with a Chinese food picnic on the living room floor; going full Christmas Explosion on our house; drinking hot chocolate whenever possible, et cetera - but...it's different. Of course it is.

When I was a kid, my parents always unplugged the tree at night to keep the place from burning down, but were apparently willing to risk an apartment fire on Christmas Eve, because every year I woke up before sunrise and ran out to the living room to find the tree aglow. Even when I was tiny, I always resisted the (overwhelming) desire to sprint into my parents' room and get them with the program for a few minutes, just so I could stand there in that perfect, sparkling quiet and feel...

DIARY

The Rides We Choose

December 17, 2018

I have this acquaintance who recently got divorced; let's call her "S." S and her husband were together for five years, and have a three-year-old daughter. They had their various problems, of course, as any marriage does, but one thing that always stood out to me about their situation was just how little S's husband seemed to participate in - or want to participate in - their life.

S made the plans. She made the friends. She picked the rugs, booked the vacations, shaped their days and months and future. Something else that always stood out to me: It didn't seem like S's husband particularly liked the things she planned for them; even as little as I knew him, her choices just seemed so clearly the opposite of what he would have chosen himself. Beer instead of champagne, et cetera.

It's not something I'm not sure she ever noticed herself; it was one of those parts of a marriage that you can only see when you're standing outside it.

DIARY

The Story

December 10, 2018

Kendrick and I fell in love on our third date. He'd stayed over at the house I shared with Francesca with a couple of bandmates after a show in Silverlake, and in the morning we put Lucy on her leash and walked over to the donut shop down the block to get breakfast for everyone. We held hands, and laughed at how weird Lucy is, and everything seemed very simple and clear.

Then he went off on tour, and eventually back to where he lived in New York, but in the six weeks that passed between when we met and when we got engaged, we talked constantly, of course - at odd hours, more often than not, because at that juncture in our lives neither of us was keeping a particularly normal schedule.

There was this one time when I called him super late at night (or super early in the morning, depending on how you look at it). I'd been out far too late at some club or another - these were my LA Party Girl days, when sleeping seemed optional. I should have gone straight to bed, obviously, but I felt anxious, almost panicked. Like at that moment I was the only person on the planet still awake. I wanted to talk to someone who made me happier than the people I'd just spent several hours having screamed non-conversations with over thumping club music, and so even though everything I'd learned about men told me not to - don't look needy! - I called him. He was asleep, of course - it was three hours later in New York - but he picked up the phone anyway.

DIARY

The Purgatory Problem

December 6, 2018

This is not me.

The other day, I tried an aerial dance class at a studio near my house. I've been doing things like this lately - signing up for classes (dance, pottery, crochet) just because they sound fun. Because I want to, and because sometimes the kids are with their dad, and so I can. It was only me and one other woman in the class, and the other student had been dancing for a year, so I was a little embarrassed at just how bad I was clearly going to be. The first time I tried to kick my legs up I failed - obviously - and felt all graceless and vaguely elephantine, but even as I flailed there on the ring with my limbs sticking out in every direction, the other student and the instructor were standing there cheering for me. Actually cheering.

You're doing SO GREAT! You've got this!

DIARY

The Get My Sh*t Together List

November 30, 2018

The mode I'm in right now can be most succinctly described as "Forgive Thyself." I haven't been to yoga in months. I'm sending my kids to school with Lunchables, leaving my bed unmade, forgetting to ingest anything but coffee until mid afternoon more often than a living human being reasonably should, and most certainly not drinking the physician-recommended amount of water.

I am getting through the day. One day at a time.

But, you know: this should probably change. Like, soon. And so I have decided that the Forgive Thyself Era may last until January 1st, at which point I will be changing All Of The Things. Here is a shortlist of plans that I have, which I am putting here so as to be held accountable.

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