minimizing the liquid

d is a year older and i got her one of those instagram astrology candles

 

a partial list of the substances of d's birthday weekend: candles, dahlias, dabs, milk tea, nigiri, plastic bricks, tear gas, mezcal, soap bubbles, joints, plum sauce, paletas, fireworks, popcorn chicken, chocolate cake

 

her birthday weekend being, through the great serendipity of leo season, the weekend of the new taylor album release, and us listening to that album in various contexts and feeling, though it's early in the many thousand times i will listen to it and though i have never understood why the national, to have fallen in love with how the album sounds in a way i never thought i would with a taylor album. i feel like i'll be listening, in particular, to the dream pop run of "mirrorball" / "seven" / "august" for the rest of forever.

 

lately my mind is overcooked spaghetti but i finally got over my runner's block by intentionally running as slow as i could while still feeling that i was running and it's working and i feel new in my body again (the journey not the destination!)

 

minimizing the liquid in my instant udon so that the noodles are the main event and i don't get broth bloat

 

the last dance, the most purely enjoyable thing i have consumed throughout quarantine, and which i recommend as someone who not only does not watch basketball but who was particularly traumatized by basketball at the middle tennessee high school to the point of coming into the locker room early and sobbing to the coach and begging for permission to run stairs rather than be forced to continue to suck at basketball (thankful he said yes) 

 

(also thankful that the show is on netflix now so you can't do the stupid thing i did at first, which was to blindly trust the sort order of the downloaded torrent folder and so watch episode 1, then the penultimate episode (9), which i thought was the second episode ("wow, i heard this was nonlinear and it really is"), then the final episode (10), which i thought was the third episode)

 

i may destroy you, every episode of which is a lesson in how the fuck whoa

 

attending an event where kh was with a group of friends we didn't know and she offered to introduce us to all of them but then said, with knowledge of my personality, "but also if you want i don't have to introduce you to any of them" and i chose that option and i'm happy with my choice

 

(though does remind me of this terrible moment in college where i had a crush on this girl v and she invited me over to a cookout at her house and it was the first time i had been at a party without any of my friends and i could not make conversation with the people there and after like fifteen minutes just took my case of beer from the fridge and went home)

 

even though i still have very low social energy and high social exhaustion and presumably will have those things forever i am so much better at making conversation with people than i was when i was younger

 

d asking if i had a shirt that would work for her outfit and having one but her not believing it would fit well and me reassuring her it would fit well and then it fit well (also, successfully convincing her not to wear a coat which would have been uncomfortable)

 

really having to pee outside downtown at night and my brain shifted into like the terminator HUD looking at different alleys and corners of parking lots and assessing them for pee-suitability and then kh mentioning that she thought there was a church where you could pee like a block over and waiting in line to use a church bathroom to pee and this woman coming in while i'm peeing at the urinal and starting to leave and then asking if i mind if she just uses the stall and both of us just so happy to be peeing indoors

 

the amazing commercial for urination product The Tinkle Belle Female Stand To Pee Device Accessory, which begins with slomo drone montages of situations (backcountry hikes, on a small boat, distance running, kayak trip, parking on the side of the road in a classic american car, rock climbing) where it's useful to pee standing up and then for this scene of a man and woman standing next to each other on a rocky overhang and peeing off it at the same time

 

watering the backyard, which is something i never thought i'd find myself spending time every morning doing but i have been repeatedly struck by the paradox of grass, which is that throughout the rainy winter everything is green and lush (which is great after the dull gray brown of indiana), but then in the summer, when you are trying to soak in as much outside as you can, it stops raining and the grass looks all chernobyl, and i know it's bad to water the grass, but our backyard is such an oasis lately that i have determined it's okay for a while (and also okay that our front yard is bleached and burned and i'm not watering that)

sitting on a blanket at the top of a hill in the shade on a sunny afternoon and looking down as other people's dogs run loose