Shoveling Down the Greens

Almost a year ago, I met a girl. My mom set us up. (They work together at the library.) One night in the kitchen, Mom gave me her phone number and said, “Abby is just the nicest.” Thus began one of the sweetest friendships I’ve formed in my 30s. You know how they say you can count your true friends on one hand? I’m the lucky bitch who needs two—plus a foot. I’ve got an incredible, widespread quilt of girlfriends, and Abby has seamlessly stitched her way into my heart. Usually the first person to greet me when I wake up. Often the last person I chat with before bed. Definitely someone who would notice if I choked on a Beyond Burger and died in the apartment. We’ve celebrated her pregnancy and, soon, the birth of her second child. She’s directed me to some of the yummiest vegan food in Boston. She makes me scream laugh and spit out my dinner, think twice about politics and social “norms”, and blink real hard at certain shirtless social media posts. With her, I can be my silliest, most

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,

I have been dipped in Hawaii like a Dairy Queen cone and I never want to crack the sugar shell. From my sea-green toenails, to my skin that’s been baked to a sand-colored crisp, to my darkening hair that’s been waved and salt-cured like a piece of driftwood...I feel like Wednesday Adams, painted into the wallpaper; if I close my eyes I could blend into my surroundings and never come home. But, to home I must go. To save and reflect and continue onward. I’ve been playing around with the idea of staying here. As Joy says, it’s not expensive—it’s expansive. I agree, but I also paid my bills today and vacation Hawaii has sapped my non-expansive savings. Also, I don’t think vacation Hawaii and remote work Hawaii will be one in the same. However, this was a beautiful reset. The much-needed better half of my first solo trek. And, as Liz says, a step in my ongoing migration. I realized the other day that what I love so much about Hawaii beyond the ocean are the mountains she’s built on.

Liz and I once stood in line next to Joshua Jackson at LAX and his naked feet next to my naked feet was the celebrity highlight of my life—until this morning. That peak Pacey moment was nothing compared to the starlet I met today. For there, poking his beautiful yellow face out of the water, mouth open in what I like to think was a smile, not once, not twice, but three times for some big gulps of air before going back on his merry way, was a sea turtle. His black eyes were looking up—while I was looking at him, not five feet away. My heart exploded. I mean, how much can a girl take? Waking up to rainbows not only on the horizon, but reflected in the water. Walking into bath-warm water for an hour-long wade in a jade green sea that matches my toes. Floating next to a Pomeranian on a boogie board, for crying out loud. I didn’t think the day could get any better, but as I drove to Haleiwa, IZ on the radio, top down, my resting heart rate just above coma, I felt the peace that ofte