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March 15 - March 30, 2018
existing restraining orders,
life gets a hell of a lot shorter without health insurance or a steady income.
vegans who aren’t self-righteous—I
I hold hope it will one day be fodder for a rather amazing pop-up picture book.
“CHOKE SAFE!”
Vin Diesel’s extensive theatrical canon
“Que facciamo, House?”
“Non lo so.”
conoscente di una notte—literally,
Una piccola passeggiata.
who stared at Kati and me with looks usually reserved for three-legged kittens or children who’d cut their own hair.
When we’d finished, Silvio asked us if we wanted to hike back. Kati emitted a low guttural growl and I pushed her knife out of reach.
sometimes it’s best not to know what you are up against; if you are acutely aware of the challenges involved, you’d never do a damn thing. Being clueless is weirdly empowering. You can’t worry about the things that you don’t yet know you should be worried about. You end up doing wonderful things that you never would have had you been the least bit informed.
I looked over at him across the table and silently promised not to kiss him. I kept this resolution for the better part of three hours. In hindsight, I have to admire my restraint.
If someone bears a striking resemblance to a young Harrison Ford or we’re talking about cake, all bets—along with my pants—are off.)
But the real manner in which love works is much subtler. It does fix things. Or maybe, more accurately, it makes you fix things. You start to realize that if
try to love yourself a bit more.
My friends said that they were going to be sick, and I graciously handed out vomit bags.
That’s the thing about favorite people and favorite places—at one point in your life, they are all uncharted territory. There’s no alchemy that transforms them into the loves of your life. Usually, you just need time to figure it out. They earn your love. And if you are very, very lucky, you might earn theirs.
You start weaving a story together and you wake up one day to find that it comprises huge sections of your
life. That without that person, something would be missing.
He had his chance.
My mother’s purses defy the laws of logic and space-time.
Today, had the same thing happened, we’d be carted off to some island where the only rule is “No
one escapes alive.”
“obvious zombie breeding ground”
The point is, sometimes you have no idea in what direction you’re headed, but you keep going anyway. Sometimes, miraculously, you end up in the right place. Sometimes it takes you fifteen years to get there, but you make it. And if you don’t? You hop in a cab. If you are lucky, you return with a good story. I used to be petrified of getting lost. I thought it was a sign that I’d failed. I never realized it might be one of my greatest accomplishments.
Sometimes a partner seems perfect and then you find out they think Titanic was a good movie.
It turns out, sometimes you just have to accept people for who they are. Trust me, it’s certainly less exhausting.
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius and His Really Fucking Boring Clock by Dava Sobel.
I considered leaving Rand a goodbye note, decided that was too melodramatic, and instead ate an entire package of cookies the conference organizers had left for him in our hotel room.
If you demand more of it than that, you will invariably be disappointed.
“You just have to accept it for what it is,” I said. If you do that, you’ll never be disappointed.
If I married someone like me, our tombstone (after years of nervous, panicked marriage) would read: “DID YOU REMEMBER TO PAY THE ELECTRIC BILL?”
fighting with my mother is roughly as effective as screaming at the ocean to be less watery,
I am fairly certain AF handles all ticketing information through an elaborate system of Post-It notes,
She seemed to hold some measure of seniority, presumably achieved by drinking the sacrificial blood of kittens.
If enough people start believing that you know what you are talking about, you might start believing it, too.
I told him that every time he used a regular bar of soap, a baby seal died.
Sometimes, you just need to accept that you aren’t perfect—that you screw up, that you can be petty, that you can be vengeful and small, ideally in a country where your fingerprints aren’t on record.
felt fairly confident that I could order us dinner without accidentally propositioning the waiter for sex.
I was totally ready to express regret should I happen to have a one-night stand with a Spaniard.
what people probably said when Franco rose to power.
any given time in Europe, you can be confident that the exchange rate with the dollar hovers between “Oh, dear god” and “I HAVE TO MORTGAGE MY UTERUS.”
But that’s the problem with your own life:
you are way too close to it to see it clearly.
What matters is that you find the right person with whom to spend your time on this earth. Someone who will take care of you when you are sick. Who will love you and the extra hole in your head. Who will drive for hours while you sleep in the passenger seat. Someone who will show you how immense the universe is and still make you feel that you are the brightest thing in the sky. That’s why I don’t have a bucket list. Because I can’t imagine asking the universe for more than that.
The path out of darkness looks different for everyone. It may be paved with religion, or meditation, or therapy, or antidepressants, or (god help us all) regular exercise.
“I’m the other woman.”
“Come back for me in three days,”
