May 3rd: Adrian J Matias Bell
i’m thinking about clothes. now that the wedding is over, all the energy my partner and i spent on planning it has been freed up, and lately i’ve felt boundless. being interested in sewing again is a huge mental health green flag for me, since sewing projects are so complex. it means my mind is returning to me. i might go to stonemountain and daughter later to look at fabrics. i wonder if my friend S will be working and consider texting them. i decide to be more impulsive than that.
J and i make breakfast while planning dinner. we found some pumpkin spice pancake mix that we forgot about; pumpkin spice in early may is pleasantly discordant. we put in bananas and walnuts because why not. i make tempeh bacon. we have moka pot coffee. we have an unusual amount of milk in the house due to a clerical error (forgot we had it already), so J offers to make milk bread. several rounds of brainstorming and ideation ensue before we decide on turkey burgers for dinner tonight.
this is a big domestic labor day for me: laundry, cleaning the house, staining a piece of furniture, cooking. i'm socializing all day tomorrow, so i'm relieved to have this day to get all this done.
O gives me a ride to the farm. i come here whatever saturday mornings i can to do volunteer work. today is not one of the more inspiring days; we yank out a lot of grass from a patch of fennel, collard greens, california poppies, and salvia plants, and at the end it doesn't really look like we did much. the soil is dry and clings to the roots, which are themselves intractable, shallow, and seemingly infinite. O and i gossip the whole time: about our friends and their risky texts, about work, about what we're looking forward to. we want to go to LA soon, but it might not be possible till fall. i'm from socal, and they're from here in the East Bay. O regularly gets the thrill of showing me their hometown, and i want to return the favor.
the garden is blooming; the peas are already harvestable. i’m shocked because i spent the last two years living in British Columbia, where the peas weren’t ready until june at least; it’s too cold up there. we’re invited to eat a couple pea pods straight off the vine before we leave, and we do. they’re delicious: crunchy, fresh, and hydrating. the garden is making good progress, and the lead coordinator is relieved when we compliment it. the row O and i worked on a couple weeks ago, freeing it from an indistinguishable mess of weeds, now sits tidy and stocked with tomato transplants.
we see a sign at the end of a row that says CAULIFLOWER - AMAZING.
we meet a tiny caterpillar with a star in the middle of her back.
at home, J is making potato bread. we got a potato ricer and a stand mixer as wedding gifts, despite us aggressively telling people we didn’t want or need anything (we’ve been living together for five years). honestly, though, neither of us is upset about these additions to our kitchen, especially not J. i do more laundry. our cat Lila hops onto the washer to smell my hoodie. then she finds my gardening gloves and sniffs them intently for several minutes, her eyes wide. she keeps circling back for more furtive sniffing. we have indoor cats, so the smell of dirt is probably fascinating and exotic to her, like a rare perfume. i wonder what it awakens in her mind.
now i've got to go to the store. i swap into clothes i can wear to stain furniture later. i put my hoodie back on. it's from IJV and says "jews for palestinian liberation." the last time i wore it to the store, an employee loudly complimented it from about ten feet away, which was sweet but mortifying. for someone with some rather noticeable items in my wardrobe, i actually don’t really like attention like that.
ricotta (for tomorrow)
vitamin c (couldn't find it last time which is dumb because no way do they not have it)
unsalted butter
eggs - if possible
yogurt
sauerkraut
dry red beans
sausage
1lb ground turkey
cucumber
tomatoes small
red onion ? (may not need)
pickles
tahini
nooch
jarred red peppers?
some kind of herbs
nice cheese
hot sauce
berries
boy this is a lot of stuff. we're trying to stock up for the week. i'm bad at finding things in the store, so i'm feeling dread. i eat lunch first to compensate. leftover baked trout with half a bagel and cream cheese, capers, sauerkraut, hot sauce, some strawberries on the side. i elect to save the other bagel half for later.
Lenù, our other cat, crawls around me and purrs. she is very polite and doesn’t try to eat my fish.
i like eating again, another post-wedding green flag; the stress was making it so i hated and resented every meal i had to eat, even more so if i had to have ideas about what to eat. i still think it's annoying how often you have to decide that kind of thing, especially since i crave novelty. J and i have been compromising by meal prepping things like sauces and making meals with distinct components that can be reshuffled throughout the week. so far, it's working pretty well.
i want another coffee, not out of tiredness but joie de vivre. i'm 26 and many of my peers can no longer do two coffees a day. i will enjoy the privilege while i can, especially as someone whose tolerance for all other substances is pretty much on the floor.
two of the strawberries taste kind of musty, almost like formaldehyde. the rest are fine. this was the end of the box, and they held on for a long time. strawbs and watermelons smell alike.
J made croquembouche for the finale of their power broker book club the other day. they put on a suit and drove to the city to make caramel in their friend L's kitchen, which honestly rules. the deflated remainder is on the table in front of me, and i munch on a couple.
move the dough to the fridge at 3.30
i reckon the fabric store is out for today. i need to focus. S isn't working anyway, i realize, they'll probably be at book club with O. they're reading Love in a Fucked Up World by Dean Spade. i was invited to join, but said no because i didn’t want to overschedule myself. i was bummed, but it was the right decision.
J is going to a going away party for their friend, another S, who is going to penn for grad school. and i'm finally going to the damn store.
oh christ, the laundry is done again. OKAY... i do more laundry. finally the last for the week.
the grass has made my throat raw and my eyes itchy even though i took allergy meds.
when i look at everything blooming on my street, i think of Squirrel Flower, “Almost Pulled Away”:
how do people go
day to day
when everything is sparkling
i emerge from the store having found everything, but i'm actually tired now. eggs were $5.75 for 18, if that means anything to you in the future.
but this is not so good of a deal after all, because as soon as i get home, i drop the eggs and most of them crack.
so it was $5.75 for 7.
i make an iced matcha to satisfy my desire for more caffeine. i sort of want a nap, and the house sort of needs tidying. J and i both work remotely right now, and being home a lot is nice, though you're far more aware of the entropy of living. i decide to set up the staining process and see if i'd like a nap before i begin.
i listen to Rick Pearlstein’s Nixonland on audiobook because the astrology podcast i like (Chani Nicholas) doesn't update until tomorrow.
the wood conditioner stinks horribly, even with an n95 respirator and a window open with an air purifier and a fan running (i care about safety!). thankfully it's over quickly. i hope the wood stain is not so bad. i wait 30 minutes and do some more chores.
bagel again, with jarred pepper and capers. and knockoff takis with hummus.
the wood stain doesn't smell as bad. one coat is certainly enough, which is a relief; the topcoat, which i'll deal with tomorrow, is water-based, making it easier to clean and less frightening to dispose of. i don't think the stain looks great, but i don't think anyone else will notice. i hope no professional woodworkers come visit anytime soon.
J isn't home so i guess i'll clean the shower? fuck it. trying to get through all the spring cleaning tasks before we get too deep into spring....
cleaning the shower causes me to get quite wet. this is no great surprise.
i burn a block of piñon in the window.
it occurs to me that i cleaned the shower to avoid putting laundry away.
more spring cleaning.
i'm on instagram for my allotted five minutes a day and see that Transit Books in SF has had $40,000 in NEA funding revoked. i realize i haven't had anything to say about the news today, because i haven't read any. that's typical for a weekend. i usually catch up once or twice during the workweek. if i were really doing shabbat, i wouldn't even check my email (and why do i? like, what's in there on a saturday?). but i wouldn't play music either. i find that when something truly important happens, it's inescapable. and to make up for not reading the news as much, i just try to pay better attention to the world.
it’s night now. i love night. i can feel the shape of my thoughts changing, like shadows stretching along a wall.
J comes back late after several delays–the party started late, and then there was cake, and so on. we end up having dinner at about 9.30, much later than usual, but i don’t really care. they make the bread and coleslaw, and i make the turkey burger recipe from Joy of Cooking, which includes curry powder, green onions, and tiny cubes of butter (another genius move from the minds behind Joy of Cooking). we have the burgers with tomato, salad greens, cheddar, a leftover green sauce we’ve made (a ripoff of the green sauce from Cheese Board–if you know you know), and ketchup. they’re SO good. considering how much work it is, it’s almost annoying how delicious things turn out when you make them completely from scratch.
i don’t have much else to say. after we clean up, i take a shower in the dark, which i have been doing for years. (it’s not a weird health hack thing, i just don’t like overhead lights after it gets dark. however, i do think all the night showerers of the world should try this!) then i fold more laundry and go to bed.
this was truly not a significant day in any sense. i got to spend a lot of it physically interfacing with the world, and my world was small. there have been many days like this, and there will be many more.
Adrian Matias Bell is a queer and trans writer and musician on Ohlone land. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, where he edited PRISM international. His writing has appeared in Dialogist, Protean, Sonora Review, and elsewhere, with more forthcoming in Faultline and from Girl Dad Press. He also makes music as Nightjars. Find him online at ajmb.info.