Shoveling Down the Greens

Welp, friends. Florida is a bust, because...my tooth is busted! Another crack on another molar, meaning another visit to the dentist and doling out cash money for a deluxe crown that, unfortunately, is not as ostentatious as, say, a grill , but just as expensive.  Another sign from the universe to slow down and, as one soul sister said, stop running away.  I didn't think I was running away from my problems when I last posted. And I truly apologize to anyone I worried over my crisis. I try to speak candidly about mental health, because for so many years I didn't speak up and it snowballed into the inevitable solitude that anchors you to the bottom of the well. When I say I've had depression before, I'm talking about years ago. College. My parents' divorce. Very low times when I was drowning. This year has had moments of fighting against the current, but nothing in comparison. Especially when I can see the tide coming and know exactly how to swim back to safety--even ...

What's the thing that gets you up every day? For a lot of my friends it's kids. The joy and terror and daily mission of keeping the family alive. Most of my mom pals are ready to primal scream into a pillow  after the past year. I don't blame or envy them. And I would never deny them that.  And, yet, the grass is always a little bit greener. Isn't it. Because I can't find a thing to get up for these days. While I'm single and child-free and, mostly, happily so, the pandemic has shone a spotlight--often in the very early hours of the morning when I should be asleep but am on my seventh hour of Netflix--on the utter lack of purpose in my life. (Stop here if you're a parent or person in crisis or happily child-free human who doesn't want to listen to a healthy woman armed with choices and opportunity battle a mental blizzard. I don't blame you.)  Ironically, I'm not alone in my isolation. There have never been more single adults living in the United...

After living out of two fat suitcases for three weeks, I came home only to immediately begin the cull. Tiny toiletries. Beat-up sneakers you can fold in half. Scarfs and blankets the cats have burrowed into beyond repair because, in this home, we can't have nice things. (See: All glassware.) There's a Nor'easter on the horizon. Buckets of snow about to be dumped on us. And I'm trying my darndest to maintain my island momentum--in mind, in heart, in fantastically soft skin that is crying out for the Pacific to come back! To rescue me from the dry heat of this Boston apartment.  But, alas. 3,000 miles from my mint green sea we are. It feels so strange to be home. To look in the my pink bathroom mirror and see tanned me. Changed me. The me who crept to the edge of the Grand Canyon and devoured Din Tai Fung and star gazed from a Honolulu highway with the top down. To begin scheduling affairs and cooking and...life. How? In the valley, it was get up, eat something wholesome,...