I spent much of Q2 alternating between staring up at the sky and down at the pile of unworn shorts in my dresser drawer, wondering where the sun was.
In April, I biked through the flower fields of The Netherlands with my husband to celebrate our five-year marriage anniversary. It was a near-perfect trip: miles and miles of protected bike lanes and blooming flowers and bucolic Dutch country views in the wet, early spring. Except, you know, a little cold. My toes became pierced and prickly-numb two hours into our first ride and… never returned to warm again.
I arrived home and promptly began turning over my closet, moving shorts and sundresses to high visibility spots, shoving my sweaters into “storage” (a dry cleaning bag that sits on my floor for 6 months at a time), and waited.
And waited and waited, wearing the two sweatshirts I hadn’t pre-emptively put away for the season, marveling the whole time that I was still thinking about the weather. That this internal conversation - Late June! Sixty-seven degrees! The audacity! - the bewilderment at an unusually wet winter, unusually cloudy spring, unusually hot summer… is now a universal experience for people of my cohort, a hallmark of adulthood in a changing climate. That we will all watch the weather get worse together for the rest of our lives.
On the only sunny weekend in June, my brother got married. At the end of the party, he jumped in the pool holding his new husband’s hand, and we all cheered and collected the first mosquito bites of the season around our ankles. For a fleeting moment, it was summer. I had a new brother-in-law! Who could think about light jackets at a time like this? Then, the following Monday, back to the two sweatshirts.
Other things happened.
I started going into the office and re-encountered my habits of lugging 3 bags and 2 beverages everywhere I go and showing up at professional obligations with my hair still wet, shivering (but on time!), which felt like returning home to an old friend.
I flew to New York for a solo trip and burst into tears outside the Joffrey Ballet School, where I had been to a summer intensive program and lived with my grandmother in an extended-stay Marriott when I was fourteen. There is still a Citarella market downstairs, where I used to buy Noah mango daily on my lunch break. I trudged up the three steep flights of brown rubber-tread stairs, flooded with sensory memories of Mema, her intentional march-walk, her impeccable posture, her low-heeled, sensible shoes and all-tailored-the-same-way slacks. I could practically see her in front of me.
Then I just… went back down, because adults can’t actually walk into a dance studio and watch young children take ballet class, and anyway New York is a wonderful place to cry on the street.
I gave up on Superstore halfway through Season 5 (because a will-they-won’t-they story is always funnier than a now-they’re-together story) and moved on to Tom and Greg with the rest of the Internet.
Here’s what else of note I consumed in Q2, mostly food, in vaguely chronological order:
Gluten-free High Tea at The Ritz Carlton in London. Nothing like hot tea and gf scones to prepare a girl to lose circulation in her toes for the remainder of her European vacation.
The overwhelming smell of flowers in bloom across the Dutch countryside. Like face planting into a bouquet. Worth wearing the same outfit for 5 days straight!
Daisy Jones and The Six, which a friend aptly described as “a more aesthetically pleasing and high budget CW show.” I didn’t love it, but I also couldn’t look away, and had “we could make a good thing bad” stuck in my head for weeks???
The tomato tart from Sweet Enough, which is a perfect recipe. 10/10.
Dozens of beaded bracelets that I made and unceremoniously gifted, straight-from-the-wrist, to various friends throughout May and June.
Hours and hours of Andrew Huberman podcasts for this essay, then zero podcasts. Maybe ever again?
My first street-cart hot dog (extra peppers and onions!) in years, in a tie-dye sweatshirt at midnight outside of The Forum after a Dead & Company show in May. 100% worth the subsequent allergic reaction to the 100% wheat flour bun.
Approximately 35 boxes of Harry’s Berries strawberries from the farmer’s market.
Drew Barrymore Is Figuring It Out Live, which I loved so much that I changed my phone background to this pic. Drew crying in a closet full of journal pages is exactly the gray-spring-not-summer-yet energy I didn’t know I needed.
“You are mushy. It’s annoying. You should share this with the world.” ❤️ 😌
Vampire Weekend’s Father of The Bride: one of six albums I found while cleaning out the CD changer before I traded in my 2008 Prius after 11 years and 170,000 miles together. 😭
This Nick Kroll bit about the voice of his inner bully that I think about at least once a day (when I rub my chest and tell my reflection: “Let’s start the day, Jake.”)
Pageboy by Elliot Page. I couldn’t put it down, and not just because of the sex scenes with Kate Mara. Elliot Page’s writing is experience-near and raw; to read it is to bear witness to a beautiful story of a man untangling the knots inside and sorting himself out. You can feel his exhale on the page, the palpable relief of a man who is finally able to exist in his body after a lifetime spent fraying at the seams. “Can I be a boy?” he asked his mother at six years old. May this book bring us one step closer to a future where the answer to that question, from all parents, is a simple, unequivocal “yes.”
Quietly Hostile, by Samantha Irby, which was a nice follow-up to Pageboy, considering both books are about the excruciating nature of having a body/being perceived. I love Sam Irby’s newsletters, especially the “things I have been reading/watching/listening to instead of doing my work” dispatches, the most detailed recommendations I’ve ever read. “okay so technically i’m not reading this because i fucking wrote it and i’m a normal person who is humiliated by everything i’ve ever done, not a freak who is proud of myself,” she wrote in her last newsletter, recommending her own Shelf Life interview. The book’s tone is similarly self-effacing, but Irby doubles down on her commitment to writing about the grossest human experiences she can get away with putting in writing (sitting on the toilet with a trash can between her legs, trying to file off her own gel manicure 😂 ). Couldn’t be me! It is worth naming that I did gag in public on the New York subway while listening to this book, which felt like the appropriate reaction a series of essays about how embarrassing it is to have a body.
An inspirational array of grilled summer vegetables at Le Great Outdoor in Bergamot Station — an absolute must-try for anyone who has ever grilled a vegetable or has plans to do so in the future!
About 85% of The Artist’s Way, which has generated (so far): 1 large box of cut up (hoarded) paper materials “for potential collages,” 2.5 notebooks full of handwritten journal pages, 3 new choreographed routines from my beginner’s hip hop class, and myriad bouquets of “just because” flowers, all over my home.
Thanks for reading! Will be back in your inbox in a few weeks with something that isn’t just a list of stuff I liked.