yolo and tears

July 15: After the screening to Beauty and the Beast in Union Square, Nick and I met up with Angi, Matt, and Jeremy. We wound up at a 24-hour diner that served mediocre malted shakes and floats. We spent most of that night trying to figure out what exactly malt is.

July 16: I remember the first time I heard my mother cuss. I was sitting on the stairs and she walked through the hallway, carrying two arm’s worth of binders and paperwork. She dropped them and yelled shit as she stared at the mess. Her eyes moved upward, and she saw me sitting nearby.
“Shoot,” she said. “I mean shoot.”
I looked at her for a moment and tried my best to reassure her. “Mom, I’m 23 now. It’s okay.”

July 17: The highlight of my day was when I heard a toddler yell “YOLO!” and then immediately burst into tears.

July 18: Ryan texted me, asking for help to invent names for a fake roller derby team for a short he was working on. Little did he know how prepared I was for this conversation.
1 Charlotte Brawn-te
2 Zelda Fists-gerald
3 Dorothy Puncher
4 Sylvia Wrath
5 Hurting-ya' Woolf
6 J.K. Brawling
7 Pain Austen
8 Ayn Ram
9 Scary Shelly
10 Edith Gore-ton
11 Harriet Bruiser Stowe
12 Toni Where-ya-goin'-son
13 Harmer Lee
14 Louisa May Blood-clot
15 Maya Hit-down-low
16 Malice Walker
17 ZZ Pack-a-punch
18 Em-melee Dickinson
19 Agatha Crush-die
20 Flannery O'Cutter
Team: The Pulverize Prize Winners

July 19: The lawns at Dolores Park are being aerated. Addie spent our entire visit eating clumps of dirt and grass.

July 20: The angry bus drivers were making George nervous with their eternal honking and clattering down the road. He seems convinced that that farther up onto my chest he climbs, the better I can protect him from danger.

July 21: Two cops stood over a guy sitting on the curb with his hands behind his back. To one side of them was a bike locked to a bike rack. A pair of bright blue cable cutters dangled from the bike’s cable. A third cop was taking notes while talking to a Michael Jackson impersonator.

July 22: I am obsessed with other people’s obsessions. I love to see what people do in their spare time, especially when it is unexpected or strangely specific. The more money, time, and effort they put into these hobbies or events, the more I am interested in what draws them to it. What makes a person spend thousands of dollars buying customized wetsuits and surfboards so that they can surf with their dogs? Why do people use their free time to practice eating as many hot dogs as they can in ten minutes? Who would work two jobs so that they can open a Bigfoot museum in the middle of the woods that is only open on weekends? These questions always make me wonder what I am missing and remind me that there is still magic in the world.

July 23: The tour guide had just finished the demonstration of the machinery that slams shut the heavy jail cell bar doors when the power went out. It was almost exactly nine o’clock, so we thought it was on purpose until a guard glanced around, pulled a flashlight off his belt and muttered, “That’s not supposed to happen.”



much love,
hedgie