Seasons Change and So Have I
Prospect Park 1/13 and 4/12
Posts
Tackle the *excuse my language* Out of Love
Just in time for Love Day: "Love is a feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard. It can be as light as the hug we give a friend or heavy as the sacrifices we make for our children. It can be romantic, platonic, familial, fleeting, everlasting, conditional, unconditional, imbued with sorrow, stoked by sex, sullied by abuse, amplified by kindness, twisted by betrayal, deepened by time, darkened by difficulty, leavened by generousity, nourished by humor, and "loaded with promises and commitments" that we may or may not want or keep. The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of love." -- Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed
My Cancer-Free Valentine.
Today was the first time that a man (the kind not related) said to me, "I love you." It happened this afternoon, at work, over the phone. At 86-years-old, he just found out he doesn't have cancer. Maybe he'll be my cancer-free Valentine.
My thoughts on Tiny Beautiful Things
MR sent me this book, and it came at the perfect time: in the dead of a leaf-less, below-zero, sharp, cold winter. It's a compilation of essays from an advice column (Dear Sugar), and the stories warm me up on days that are cold. They're not your average "Dear Abby" kind of letters; Sugar tells it like it is, and her responses to readers are often entangled with her own effed up life experiences. The pages are so saturated in empathy, you could almost wring them out. It's wonderful, and even better than that, it's really real. One of my favorite chapters, entitled: "Write Like a Motherfucker" starts out with a letter that says, "Right now, I'm a pathetic and confused young woman of twenty-six, a writer who can't write. I've sat here, at my desk, for hours, mentally immobile[...]" She then goes on to give several more eerily relatable details about her mutual love for and fear of writing and then asks, "How does a woman ge...
Let's hangout!
Sometimes it's hard living so far away from the girls who met me as an awkward college freshman and still agreed to be my friends! We've gone through a lot together: initiations and graduations, weddings and funerals, breakups and babies. Even though we live all over the place (Nebraska, Alaska, South Dakota, and New York) Google+ Hangout let's us get together every now and then to catch up. This week technology let us meet SG's new baby boy Brooks! Sometimes I hate the distance, but I love that I still get to have these friends in my life in spite of it. If only there was an app for far-away-baby-holding...
My Issue with Nomenclature
I'm really bad at remembering proper nouns. Like all proper nouns. You know when people say, "I'm really bad at remembering people's names" Well, that's almost everyone. Everyone is bad at remembering names of the people they have just met, but I'm bad at remembering names of books, restaurants, song titles, artists, writers, movie titles, and specific types of cheeses, and also the names of people that I have just met. I can recognize books and restaurants and song and movies, but I'm almost completely incapable of remembering exactly what they are called. This makes me look like such a flake and also very unobservant. "What book are you reading, Amanda?' "Oh, I can't remember what it's called or who wrote it or any of the names of the main characters, but it's really amazing! You should read it." "What are some of your favorite Brooklyn restaurants, Amanda?" "Oh there's that one where I had aw...
