Last weekend, Jozef and I sat on the porch together—the early afternoons finally cool enough to be outside. He held Marmalade’s leash; I held a lit joint. These are the sorts of days that bring me the most pleasure: days when our little family is together, when the sun is shining but the wind is blowing, when there is no agenda and nothing to stress over.

We chatted while I smoked. Already, I can’t remember what we were talking about. But we were chatting, and then Jo stopped. “Oh, look at that,” he murmured. An American goldfinch had landed on the common chicory that grows wild in the hellstrip in front of our house. We watched it flit between stems. It perched near one flower after another, each time carefully plucking them off with its beak and eating them.

One of our neighbors, an elderly retiree with too much time on his hands, had mowed the hellstrip once—he regularly mows many of the lawns on our block, usually without prior notice. Jo, always diplomatic as we navigate interacting with some of our older, more conservative neighbors, carefully thanked the man for mowing our patch of grass, then asked him not to do it again. The old man did some grumbling, but acquiesced, leaving the area in front of our house be. Now, the chicory grows tall: soft periwinkle flowers on long, sturdy stems.

I’d never seen a goldfinch that close before, had no idea they might eat chicory. I’m so grateful the little bird gifted us with his appearance.

Life has felt incredibly difficult for me in recent weeks; I’ve been struggling in a way I haven’t in some time. Whenever I spend time outside, though, free from my computer and phone (except for taking photos of plants and birds, of course), I am reminded of how much beauty there is in this world—even as some people seem so set upon destroying it. What a gift, to have a patch of earth to tend to, with grasses and flowers and ferns and vegetables growing, with bugs and birds visiting. May we all do what we can to care for this world.

xoxo, Emory

Emory

This month, I read Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton. I absolutely loved it. Dalton’s experience of forming a real, meaningful bond with a wild animal and caring for it—as you can tell by my introduction, I’m sure—has inspired so much gratitude and care in me. I’m going to find a hard copy so that I can read it again and again, and probably read it aloud to Jo, too. I truly can’t recommend this one enough.

Jozef

I’m still working my way through Tamara Lea Spira’s essay collection Queering Families: Reproductive Justice in Precarious Times. I typically read non-fiction with a theoretical bent piecemeal, choosing the chapters or sections that appeal to me and skimming or skipping the rest. However, this book is so well organized, deliberate in its argument, and clear in its framing, language, and aims, that I find myself reading it in order, absorbed in every chapter thoroughly. Spira refuses to simplify the extremely complicated and fraught issues of reproductive rights, child welfare, caregiving, and legal intervention in the creation of “families”—there is no handwaving or easy answers. Instead, she lays out the reasons that reproductive justice cannot and will not be found in the nuclear or even legal family system. She declares that this is a “fight for communal self-determination in response to reproductive injustice, eugenics, reproductive surveillance, disciplining, kidnapping, and other cruel practices that a queer politics of reproductive justice must oppose.” It requires every person, parenting or not, to develop a “larger commitment to building queer abolitionist, decolonial, and antiracist feminist futures that are rooted in collectivity and care.”1 I’m planning to lend it to everyone I can convince to read it once I finish the last 2/3 of the collection.

In the fiction realm, I’m listening to David Nicholls’s novel One Day on recommendation from my coworker. It’s a 16 hour long audiobook, and the narrator, Anna Bentinck, is incredible. We’ve taken a pause on Station Eleven because it has been too hot to be downstairs doing dishes for extended periods of time, but hopefully the heat will break soon and we’ll be able to finish that.

Emory

We’re back on our Love Island grind (UK, obvs). The current season just drew to a close, and honestly? I’m grateful. I get a lot of pleasure out of watching Love Island—I’ve said many times this past month that it’s my “state of the union on straight dating,” an almost anthropological way of viewing the series that illustrates and concretizes the discourse around cis-het relationships at particular moments in time. But this season has been a brutal watch. There are some men whom I’ve found to be very decent. And there are some men whose propensity for misogyny and manipulation is truly horrifying. The women who stand by those men—dismissing warnings from the other women as lies motivated by jealousy and hate—have been so difficult to watch. And there are, of course, some women I adore for their honesty and principles. Though many of them have made mistakes, I do think they’ve shown a commitment to growth as much as is possible under the circumstances of reality television. When Jo and I decide to watch a season of Love Island, we know we’re in it for the long haul, no matter how painful it is to witness. I love talking about reality TV with my husband, far more than I like the actual act of watching it, so I promise I’ve been enjoying it. But I can’t say I’m sad that this season is over.

Jozef

Fully agreeing with everything Emory said regarding this season of Love Island’s actual content, it was fucking brutal. I’m a relatively unseasoned reality TV watcher and an even-less-seasoned afficionado of straight culture, so I feel like I learn a lot from shows like Love Island and Love is Blind. Namely, this season I learned that many people believe there is a considerable difference between being “exclusive” and being “boyfriend and girlfriend,” with the main factor distinguishing the two being accountability and emotional intimacy only being a standard expectation of the latter. The way the men on the show used these milestones as excuses for their poor behavior was appalling. Their insistence that the “facts” (in quotation marks because half-truths and flat out gaslighting made up the majority of their communication) were more important than the impacts of their actions on the others in the villa made me feel so gross. If I heard a man say “I was just being true to myself and how I was feeling at the time” as an excuse for doing things that their partners expressly told them would be upsetting and then lying about it repeatedly one more time, I would’ve screamed. Thankfully, Shakira did it for me.

I celebrated my birthday this month by making dirt n’ worms pudding cups for my students and letting them watch Planet Earth and play Ecologies for a day. When it was too hot to play outside when I was a kid, closing all the blinds, running the AC, and watching Planet Earth was how my siblings and I passed the time, and I love it just as much now as I did then.

Emory

“The Subway” has arrived, after all this time. Thank you, Chappell!

And I’m obviously still listening to Virgin on repeat. Jo and I finally found the CD in stores, so now we listen to it in the car when we run errands together.

Jozef

I have honestly just been listening to Virgin. Seriously, it is the only thing I have been playing. Lorde has done it again.

Emory

So. Many. Crosswords. One of my favorite screen-free activities. Also, doodling in my sketchbook with crayons. I’m proud of my puffin drawing!

Jozef

I ran the sports club at the summer program I taught at and it was a blast. While the wildfire smoke cut short the time we got to spend outside, I played lots of soccer in the park with the kids over the last few weeks and even saw this adorable kitten at the park. The hardest part of the summer was telling the kids they couldn’t pet the kitty for legal reasons since I figured unplanned animal encounters probably wouldn’t be covered under the waivers their parents signed, but we were all enraptured by this little freak taking a dump while making eye contact with 15 middle schoolers.

Emory

Jo made “marry-me chickpeas” for dinner with a friend of ours (forgive me, it was technically August already), and it’s honestly probably my favorite chickpea dish I’ve ever had. Delish!

Actually in July, I’ve eaten a LOT of Ben & Jerry’s Half-Baked. Like I said, I’ve been having a really difficult time lately, and what we call “fancy ice cream” is one of the simple pleasures that helps me cope with a lot of the shit I’m dealt.

Jozef

For my birthday, we ordered in—chicken shawarma wrap and dolmas for me and chicken and rice bowl for Emory—but the real treat was having a truly insane amount and variety of baklava when Z came back for a visit a few days later. The local Arabic bakery sells it by the pound and it’s truly the perfect pastry. My favorite variety right now uses whole pistachios in a flaky pastry cup. Unreal.