RICCCCCKKKKAAAAAWWWWWWWKKKKKKKKKK!
Hello my favorite people.
I'm sending this from a desk at an office, at a job that may last for 10 weeks (fingers crossed) or may end tomorrow. We just don't know! I won't go into the details of the what and why, except to say I'm on a tv show that's in a bit of a tenuous situation at the moment, given the maybe-going-into-bankruptcy? maybe-getting-sold? status of one of the producing companies.
I like being a freelancer. I like not knowing where I'll be, say, eight months from now, and I relish not committing to anything more than two weeks in advance (much as this frustrates my mom when she's trying to plan for, say, Thanksgiving). I love the feeling of WHO KNOWS? I COULD BE ANYWHERE! even though there's an 80% chance at any given moment that I'm holed up in our tiny house "writing." But this day-to-day uncertainty is a little extra.
I'm trying to be Zen about it. I'm enjoying putting on real clothes in the morning (it's a nice change of pace from which sweatpants?) and taking the scenic route through Griffith Park and hanging out with real live co-workers. I'd gotten rusty, spending so much time alone with Ricky. We tend to communicate through clicks and grunts and birdcalls and goofy nicknames that I sometimes forget not to use on the outside.
RICCCCCKKKKAAAAAWWWWWWWKKKKKKKKKK!
Depending on the inflection, that's a distress signal, or a hello! or a "hey will you help me with the groceries?"
*****
This month on Netflix: The period episode of Big Mouth, titled "Everybody Bleeds," is genius. Season 1, Episode 2, just watch it. I won't spoiler you, but I will say that Michael Stipe makes an appearance as a gender non-binary tampon and Maya Rudolph slays as the Hormone Monstress. (Unrelated, except that it's RED, she also had my favorite look at the Oscars. Go Maya.)
This month in tacos: I took a quickie trip to San Francisco to rendezvous with my dad, and seized the opportunity to sample some tacos. SF is not, in fact, a taco town. It's a burrito town. But. I had a quite good suadero (tender beef) taco from Taqueria Vallarta. And at the swankier, hipster-ier Nopalito, I loved the Quesadilla Roja con Chicharrón (crispy pork belly). The tortilla was homemade and the cheese was fresh and melty and the whole shebang was generally pretty excellent. Their Bloody Maria is also nice, and they bring roasted chickpeas to your table!!! We gobbled them up and asked for seconds.
This month in print: I loved Elizabeth Strout's Anything Is Possible, a novel made up of interlinked short stories; each chapter follows a different character from a small, fictionalized midwestern town. The thing about Strout, she writes such good sentences. I'm jealous of her sentences. I pulled out a stack of index cards at some point and started copying them down. "Her mother poked a forkful of meatloaf into her mouth." Is that not a perfect sentence? Say it out loud. Her mother poked a forkful of meatloaf into her mouth. It's so good. The Vanishing Princess, a collection of short stories by Jenny Diski, was hit or miss for me. I didn't love the reimagining of the Rapunzel and Rumpledstiltskin stories, just not my taste, I dunno. But purely by accident, I happened to read "Bath Time," her story about one woman's lifelong quest for the perfect bath, while 👏 in 👏 the 👏 bath, which gave me a kind of out of body and yet entirely in my body and also inhabiting the story while reading the story experience I highly recommend.
xoxo,
Laramie
I'm sending this from a desk at an office, at a job that may last for 10 weeks (fingers crossed) or may end tomorrow. We just don't know! I won't go into the details of the what and why, except to say I'm on a tv show that's in a bit of a tenuous situation at the moment, given the maybe-going-into-bankruptcy? maybe-getting-sold? status of one of the producing companies.
I like being a freelancer. I like not knowing where I'll be, say, eight months from now, and I relish not committing to anything more than two weeks in advance (much as this frustrates my mom when she's trying to plan for, say, Thanksgiving). I love the feeling of WHO KNOWS? I COULD BE ANYWHERE! even though there's an 80% chance at any given moment that I'm holed up in our tiny house "writing." But this day-to-day uncertainty is a little extra.
I'm trying to be Zen about it. I'm enjoying putting on real clothes in the morning (it's a nice change of pace from which sweatpants?) and taking the scenic route through Griffith Park and hanging out with real live co-workers. I'd gotten rusty, spending so much time alone with Ricky. We tend to communicate through clicks and grunts and birdcalls and goofy nicknames that I sometimes forget not to use on the outside.
RICCCCCKKKKAAAAAWWWWWWWKKKKKKKKKK!
Depending on the inflection, that's a distress signal, or a hello! or a "hey will you help me with the groceries?"
*****
This month on Netflix: The period episode of Big Mouth, titled "Everybody Bleeds," is genius. Season 1, Episode 2, just watch it. I won't spoiler you, but I will say that Michael Stipe makes an appearance as a gender non-binary tampon and Maya Rudolph slays as the Hormone Monstress. (Unrelated, except that it's RED, she also had my favorite look at the Oscars. Go Maya.)
This month in tacos: I took a quickie trip to San Francisco to rendezvous with my dad, and seized the opportunity to sample some tacos. SF is not, in fact, a taco town. It's a burrito town. But. I had a quite good suadero (tender beef) taco from Taqueria Vallarta. And at the swankier, hipster-ier Nopalito, I loved the Quesadilla Roja con Chicharrón (crispy pork belly). The tortilla was homemade and the cheese was fresh and melty and the whole shebang was generally pretty excellent. Their Bloody Maria is also nice, and they bring roasted chickpeas to your table!!! We gobbled them up and asked for seconds.
This month in print: I loved Elizabeth Strout's Anything Is Possible, a novel made up of interlinked short stories; each chapter follows a different character from a small, fictionalized midwestern town. The thing about Strout, she writes such good sentences. I'm jealous of her sentences. I pulled out a stack of index cards at some point and started copying them down. "Her mother poked a forkful of meatloaf into her mouth." Is that not a perfect sentence? Say it out loud. Her mother poked a forkful of meatloaf into her mouth. It's so good. The Vanishing Princess, a collection of short stories by Jenny Diski, was hit or miss for me. I didn't love the reimagining of the Rapunzel and Rumpledstiltskin stories, just not my taste, I dunno. But purely by accident, I happened to read "Bath Time," her story about one woman's lifelong quest for the perfect bath, while 👏 in 👏 the 👏 bath, which gave me a kind of out of body and yet entirely in my body and also inhabiting the story while reading the story experience I highly recommend.
xoxo,
Laramie
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