Hey just bathroom selfie-ing at The Smith
Last night I was packing up to fly back home (and was upgraded AGAIN on the way back, btw, which either means that I am a freaking genius capable of hacking the algorithm, on the receiving end of some bizarrely coincidental good karma, or Beyonce), when I realized that I haven't really explained what I was doing in New York.
A year ago today, when we marched in Los Angeles, the size of the crowd floored me: thousands and thousands more people than were expected showed up, and the march spilled out into what felt like the entire city. As exciting as it was, I remember thinking that it - meaning all that energy and rage - wouldn't last. We'd promise ourselves not to start feeling like this presidency was normal...but then, inevitably, "normal" would become exactly how it'd feel.
This year we decided to stay put and march in San Jose alongside our neighbors. I expected to see a few hundred people; maybe a thousand.
The march spilled out into what felt like the entire city. Nobody went anywhere, and they certainly didn't shrug their shoulders and go back to their couches. I think the part that really got me - beyond the man holding a sign saying that he was there for his granddaughters - was just how many kids there were. I am so excited to see what all those children marching alongside their parents, in strollers and on shoulders, hoisting signs that they'd clearly made themselves, will grow up to do one day. I'm pretty sure they're going to be the ones saving us.
If cats have nine lives, Lucy basically has nine cats. (Kendrick gave this joke a B. Whatever, I think it's funny.). To explain, allow me to briefly enumerate for you the situations in which my twelve-year-old, eight-pound teacup shih tzu has eluded death:
And now?
Now Lucy has cured herself of blindness.
Wearing cashmere sweatpants (thanks mom!) to maximize the chances that they will end up ruined.
My feet look weird because I blurred them so as not to frighten you.
For whatever reason, our annual Ohio trip is always a bit of a thing, and has been even more spectacularly drama-filled in the three years since Goldie was born.
I started being treated like an idiot in the seventh grade. I'd transferred out of a school where I was so nerdy and ostracized that a pair of "popular" twin boys took to leaving death threats on my parents' answering machine, and entered a school located all the way across town, where nobody had any idea who I was. I had a blank slate. Over the summer before I entered my new school, my bangs grew out, I shot up a couple of inches, the beginnings of breasts appeared, and I started to emerge from that tragic awkwardness that plagues middle-schoolers of the large-toothed sort.
Boys noticed. I noticed them noticing. I loved it.
I also spent a lot of time observing my new environment, and specifically the girls who seemed like they had a handle on it all; like they were important. I noticed that it wasn't cool to be smart, or to do well on tests, and so I started lying. I moaned over my grades when I was actually getting solid As; I asked for homework help that I didn't need; I giggled and pretended not to know what James was getting at when he and his friends came over to me in the cafeteria and he handed me a banana and told me they wanted to see me eat it.
I ate it.
