The weather is so spectacular that I am moved to do something I haven’t done in years: Go for a jog. I can get very precious about my noon Cr*ssfit class. If I can’t go for some reason — if somebody is rude enough to schedule a meeting with me on top of my recurring calendar block in Outlook, or if I am actually just too busy at work to justify taking a 1.5 hour break (this is the worst case scenario) — I usually stamp my little feet and wail, as I crash through the floor, that I can’t have the one thing I want so I won’t be exercising today.
This day, though, I wrap up a call at 11:40 and instead of hauling ass upstairs to fish a sports bra out of the hamper so I can get dressed and drive to class, I look outside at the crystal clear blue sky and feel a friendly breeze waft in through an open window and think: What if leisurely jog then iced coffee??
I take my old 3 mile out-and-back route, trees exploding with color, some of them looking like living, fluttering gradients, deep red at the top, orange in the middle, electrifying greenish yellow at the bottom. I feel disappointed in myself for trying and failing to do a 365 project for the year, for telling myself I would bring my big camera out more often and really capture the details of life, and then feeling too self-conscious or lazy to do it most days. It is strange for me to beat myself up for not bringing a camera with me on a run, but I feel bad about it anyway, about letting the thunderclap of these trees hit me and then fade away without being captured, and I wonder for the thousandth time if getting a newer, smaller, cuter and very expensive camera wouldn’t maybe fix all my problems, which probably stem, as all problems do, from a lack of stuff.
My mind drifts to the idea of a cargo e-bike, the other object I have been considering spending thousands of dollars on (sort-of considering ever since Ryan got his years ago and started using it to do school drop offs; slightly more seriously considering ever since DC created a rebate program this summer that would reimburse us a good chunk of change on the purchase). The night before, we had navigated a thorny thicket of family transportation logistics: Ryan downtown all day for work, with his bike; me doing school pickup in the car, then driving to meet Ryan at Gordon’s soccer practice; the four of us then making our way to a community Halloween party on the campus of a nearby university; finally, the three of them back home and me out to a concert with a friend. “And you’re not biking home with the kids in the dark, obviously,” I’d heard myself say as we talked through how to get everyone where they were going, being a bummer again, our household’s Bike Safety Worrier, not the adult who breezily conveys the children in an environmentally friendly and fun manner to points near and far but the adult who has to stop herself from imagining one of our city’s many deranged and aggressive drivers wiping out her entire family on any given ride. I want to be wholesome and cool, like the other bike moms at school, like the one I keep running into at pickup and at the library and at the coffee shop but who I can’t bring myself to introduce myself to as she lifts her children on and off her beautiful, gleaming steed. I know that if I invested in my own bike (one with a lower center of gravity than Ryan’s, which I attempted to ride once for about 30 seconds before declaring it too tippy) and spent some time getting comfortable with it, I too could return to a happier, more car-free existence like we used to have before we moved to this neighborhood. But in my more sinister moments, my mind’s eye shows me the life-ruining effects of a moment’s confusion at the wrong intersection, and then I grumble to myself that everyone is being a fucking idiot and until the fucking city invests in more protected fucking bike lanes I will not be fucking cosplaying as a Carefree Parent in Amsterdam.
It bothers me that I’m like this, and that I’ve been like this for long enough that the halcyon family bike days are potentially almost over: The kids are only getting bigger and older, with bodies that may not fit (or consent to fit) on a cargo bike much longer and social lives and after-school and weekend activities that can increasingly only be accommodated via car transport.
I wrap up these shitty little thoughts just as I turn the last corner and stroll toward my reward: An iced oat milk latte with a wee pump of vanilla from our neighborhood coffee shop. Never in my entire adult life have I added sugar or non-dairy “milk” to my coffee, but last year I was turned on to Starbucks’ iced brown sugar oat milk shaken espresso “with just one pump of brown sugar please!!!!” and it’s all been downhill from there. Sometimes I try to return to my old, more serious drinks — unsweetened coffee or cold brew, just a dash of half and half — but it’s too late, I’m unserious now.
Recommendations
I cannot pretend to have anything new or smart to say about social media discourse and using it to express your opinions about and/or make yourself aware of the horrors of war; I can only say that when I re-installed Instagram on Saturday night because I wanted a hit of everyone’s Halloween Fun, I found myself instead tapping through story after story about Palestine and it occurred to me that by keeping myself from having and expressing and being weighed down by terrible feelings it has made it easier than usual for me to take the small actions that I can. The feelings do not enliven or ennoble me. I flipped through a post’s carousel earlier this month and unexpectedly saw a video of a dead baby in the arms of his father; I recommend protecting yourself from this experience, and forgiving yourself for doing so.
So here is another handy link to a tool for calling your Congresspeople about a ceasefire, which, honestly, I have started doing for the first time ever because even though DC’s rep is not quite a rep, I figure, why not? But for any other DC folks out there who haven’t signed this petition for the Council to call for a ceasefire, well, there’s another small thing.
Related to my ongoing efforts to get away from my phone so I can spend time doing more dignified things (shitposting on my blog), this paragraph from Casey Johnston’s newsletter about how to manage stray thoughts:
Have you tried leaving the windows open when the cleaners come to your house? I did, and she wiped down the windowsill grime! FUCK YES
I finished Don’t Call Me Home yesterday and I really, really, really appreciate the end, which was, to me, so unexpected and so unlike any other mass-marketed memoir, in that there wasn’t some brain-numbing series of paragraphs written seemingly by committee, the purpose being to Spell Everything Out For Me, The Idiot Reader, Who Expects Everything To Be Wrapped Up In A Satisfying Way.
The rest of the book was great too. I’d been meaning to read it all summer but finally got off my butt after listening to Auder’s extremely charming interview on Everything Is Fine a few weeks ago.I recommend listening to the greatest Halloween song of all time, Dead Man’s Party by Oingo Boingo, as many times as you can today. Maybe even watch the video and experience Yung Danny Elfman who, I have to be honest, makes me go hmmmmmm
Three thoughts:
Doooo iiiiit do the bike!!! One of us, etc
The shaken espresso also fucking got me it’s the only thing I ever order at Starbucks now, to the tune of $6 a drink or whatever it is but I love it and I won’t apologize
I am halfway through Don’t Call Me Home and it’s fucking great
Bikes!!!! So seductive and terrifying!