spring reads

Does this book list make it seem like I have a new hobby? I do. And I bet you can guess what it is. Further post on running TK. But for now, here's what I read during our tenure in Baltimore. We left on July 3rd and are going to hang out in Rochester for a couple months and mooch off Adam's parents for a little while. I never thought I'd spend 3.5 consecutive months in Baltimore after high school, but tbh I already kinda miss it. 

I listened to Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running as an audiobook hoping it would keep me motivated on early runs. I realized that I like running and that I also like running memoirs. The problem with reading the best running memoir first is there's nowhere to go but down.

I like Transit more than Outline because I started it already used to the lulling quality in which this series is written. I think this was my favorite of the three.

A book of essays on aging co-written by a supermodel which made it seem much less applicable to my own life. Though it was a fun way to spend an afternoon.

Third in the series, sad when it was over.

A running memoir I was drawn to because the author claimed that she, like me, hated running as a teen. What I didn't realize until starting was that she was a college athlete who hated it in comparison to other physical activities. In her first 5K she placed third and the magazine who was publishing a story about her training said they couldn't publish her time because it was too fast for their readers. Needless to say, we are not kindred spirits. 

Now here's a running memoir that felt more approachable. Someone who started as a walker and wasn't time-obsessed in her training. Someone who was so afraid of not keeping up that she chose the slowest starting time and started the race with the people in costumes. Heminsly was funny and real and definitely more my kind of runner. 

I love Curtis Sittenfeld and was so excited for this book to come out. It was slow going through all those early Hillary/Bill sex scenes. But once she breaks up with him, it picks up. I didn't like it as much as American Wife, Sittenfeld's fictionalization of Laura Bush's life. While I think AW is objectively a better book, I also had never given Laura Bush much thought before I read it whereas I love HRC so was a tougher audience for Rodham.

 I am and always have been deeply susceptible to advertising of any kind, even if it's just one guy's story in his memoir. While you will never see me attempting an ultramarathon, if I flirt with veganism in the coming year, it's because of this book.

I liked Eat and Run so decided to read North after which I liked even more because of the contribution from Scott Jurek's wife Jenny Jurek. Of the two she's the one I started following on Instagram after I finished reading it. 

This was the audiobook I downloaded after Murakami's thinking I would listen to it while running. But while it's a story of walking, Flâneuse was a bit too dense and academic to be a powerful running soundtrack. Instead, I listened to it meditatively before bed, on walks and while driving to pick up my grandmother for dinner. 

winter + early spring reads

Hello from my mother's basement in Baltimore where I've set up a little office to work on my screenplay and dick around on the internet below this photo of my siblings and me in the late 80's.

Adam, Gus and I have been down here for over a month. We started our quarantine in NYC on March 13th. One week of quarantining in a sublet with no walls was quite enough for us. We spent a weekend wired with stress wondering if we should rent a house in Woodstock or Connecticut, go to Adam's parent's in Rochester or come to Baltimore. Baltimore ended up making the most sense and we've been here since March 23rd. My sainted mother gave us her house and is quarantining with my grandmother.

Half of these books were read pre-Covid world. Or, more accurately, a world in which Covid was not yet affecting us personally. It feels like a million years ago, but here we go.

PRE-QUARANTINE

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

Oh, I really loved this one. We went on vacation with Adam's family to Jamaica in early January and I downloaded this on my Nook to read while we were there. I got what might have been strep throat on the second half of the trip and while everyone else was drinking Coladas around the pool I was reading this in bed between naps. Testament to the book that only fond memories remain. It's escapist in the best way and would be a good quarantine read, though it will almost definitely make you yearn for New York.

Uncanney Valley by Anna Weiner

A fun read about a former publishing assistant's experience in Silicon Valley. Since I am roughly the same age as the author and also have no tech skills it was a fun fantasy read of what life might have looked like had I taken my liberal arts education west in the late 2000's.

Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood

You can't tell by the cover or title but this book was so wry and absurd that while I was giggling to myself in bed while reading it, more than once I forced Adam to listen to me recite passages out loud so he could share in the glee. I should have known since Blackwood's The Last of the Duchess is another favorite of mine. I have no idea why it took me so long to pick this one up.

The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy

An autobiography of a writer, talking about writing, that doesn't glamorize a thing but is so well written that it makes everything seem enviable even the grocery bags that are too heavy to carry up a hill and especially the non-heated shed to work in.

Weather by Jenny Offill

The current it book for women in their 30's and 40's. I enjoyed it, of course, but not sure anything could live up to the hype of all those tweets.

QUARANTINE

Warlight by Michael Ondaatje

This was a book box Christmas gift. Something about book box books that I always notice is how rarely I gravitate towards male writers on my own. I started this in Brooklyn - it never caught my attention to the point where I was waiting for Gus's naps so I could pick it up again but I also never abandoned it. It feels tied in my memory to that last week in New York before leaving when everything was scary and off.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

I selfishly put this in Book Box for Adam because I wanted to read it too. It was my first Baltimore quarantine read. Colson Whitehead's books are all eminently readable page-turners (I read Underground Railroad in a single afternoon). There are moments of hope and levity throughout this novel but the violence is intense and it was a lot to take in during this uncertain time. The characters stayed with me long after I finished reading it and a few weeks later, The Nickel Boys won a well deserved Pulitzer.

Vernon Subutex 1 by Virginie Despentes

If you don't already subscribe to Molly Young's Read Like the Wind newsletter, it's wonderful. This was a recommendation from a few months back and it was just the wild romp I needed. Reading it on a sunny afternoon in my mom's backyard, it felt like the kind of book I would have torn through as a teenager. Even though my mom does not even live in the same house that she used to, I still had a sense of time travel to the point that it was strange to me it was my husband and child inside, not my mom and brother.

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

I saw this on a shelf in my mom's attic and took it down to read. I think I was initially drawn to it by how much I loved City of Girls. During this time of creative flux where my writing patterns, schedule and commitments feel turned upside down, it was calming to read what is essentially a self-help book for writers (and creatives in general). It was also fun to imagine what the process of writing City of Girls had been like for Gilbert since Big Magic was written prior.

Perfect Tunes by Emily Gould

This is the book I have been recommending to all of my friends. I didn't want to wait for the book to be delivered so I downloaded it onto my nook only to wake up and find a friend had gifted me the kindle version too! A combination of 2000's NYC nostalgia, artistry and motherhood it hit me in all the right spots.

Outline by Rachel Cusk

I bought this at McNally Jackson in Williamsburg on one of my final outings picking up Gus from preschool before quarantine. I'd known I would read this series for years but had been waiting for the right moment. When we got to Baltimore, I ordered other two, Transit and Kudos, before I'd even started Outline. I had the feeling that once I began I'd want to hop from one to the next. But then I started reading, got distracted and read Perfect Tunes instead. At first, I kept comparing Outline unfairly to The Cost of Living, but by the time I finished it only a day had passed before I was picking up Transit and wanting to dive back into Cusk's world.

Gus's birth story

Gus is sixteen months today and I am finally finishing his birth story!

On November 7, 2018 I was seven days past my due date. I had a looming writing deadline a mere five weeks from when my baby was supposed to be born which seems even more insane to me now than it did then. I'd been walking all over Brooklyn trying to "walk the baby out" because my mom told me that walking can induce you.

On November 5th (the date of the final post on this blog pre-baby) I walked in the rain from my apartment in North Bed Stuy to the Trader Joe's in downtown Brooklyn. On November 6th I walked two miles to Books Are Magic in Cobble Hill to buy The First Forty Days cookbook. I read it in one sitting but never made any of the complicated bone broths. I ordered a case from Brodo instead (since then this has become my go-to gift for new mamas).

On the 7th I drove to my writer's space in Gowanus. I was working on my script trying to get as much of a head start as possible before the baby was born. At lunchtime I walked up to Calexico and ordered a coke. I craved cold soda with extra ice throughout my pregnancy. I craved ice with anything really, a symptom of my pregnancy induced anemia. There was another incredibly pregnant women at the table next to me with her husband. I wanted to bond with her over the fact we were both (presumably) at the end of our third trimesters, but I said nothing because I rarely talk to people I don't know in restaurants. My husband thinks this is a rebellion against my father, who talks to everyone.

I ate a gringo taco and union salad - my typical Calexico order while pregnant. I was seated facing the window and saw my best friend from freshman year of high school (who does not live in New York) walk past the restaurant. I was too big to get up and run after her so I texted instead and asked if it was really her, if she was on 5th ave in Park Slope.  Later that afternoon I received a text back confirming it was her and that I was not seeing visions. She asked if I wanted to get together the next day and I said yes, if I wasn't in labor.

All week I'd been feeling pressure in my abdomen and thinking, "this is it" but also somehow knowing it wasn't really. It took me fourteen months of trying to get pregnant with Gus. Every one of those fourteen months, there would be a point where that exact same phrase would shine through my head regarding getting pregnant, "this is it". Usually I got my period shortly thereafter.

Throughout the week past my due date but before I went into labor I had a lot of Braxton Hicks contractions. They felt like little vibrating punches, like a teddy bear was beating me up from the inside. They were mildly uncomfortable but not painful. I kind of liked them. "This is it" I would think. Or, at least something is happening. I often felt them while driving home from the writer's space, usually while stopped at the light just past BAM.

On the night of the the 8th I went to bed as usual, still pregnant. I often woke up around 2 a.m. to pee those days but when I woke up in the middle of the night this time, it felt different. This really felt like IT. When I went downstairs to pee and saw a milky pink discharge, I was sure - something was really happening now.

Once I'd been awake long enough to discern the sensations were coming at regular intervals, I willed myself back to sleep. I knew that I had to retain my energy instead of giving into insomnia on the couch the way I usually did in my third trimester.

When Adam woke up around 6am, I told him that I thought something was happening and that I'd like him to stay home from work but not to tell his partners why he was staying home, in case it wasn't real. This was naïve hedging. I was eight days late. Adam's business partners are family. They weren't going to think he was staying home just for the hell of it.

That morning my contractions remained consistent but pleasant. Adam and I sat next to one another on our couch, did a little work, sent emails, watched House of Cards and my current favorite show, Tiny House Hunters.

I had a previously scheduled doctor's appointment at 4pm to discuss induction options. I called the office to see if I should still come in. They misunderstood what I was asking them on the phone and asked how far apart my contractions were. I said ten minutes. They said I didn't need to go to the hospital yet. I attempted to explain that's not what I meant, that I was more wondering if I needed to honor the induction appointment (silly, I know). I hung up still unsure if I should go in or not.

Around 2pm it was clear I was definitely in labor. I was still feeling good and not really in any pain but the contractions had been consistent since the middle of the previous night. I called the doctor's office again to see if I should honor my appointment. They said just come in, why not? Adam and I got in the car to drop Omar (our dog) off to Adam's cousin and partner, Dan, at their office. It was a cold, gray day and starting to rain.  After giving Omar to Dan, we considered our options. If we continued into the city we would sit in midtown traffic to then sit in our doctor's office where there was always an interminable wait. When we finally got in, they would presumably tell us what we already knew - that I was in labor.

So instead of driving over the Williamsburg bridge I told Adam what I really wanted to do was go eat something, knowing I'd need the strength for later on.

We called to cancel the appointment and drove to Fort Greene. We sat down at Mekong BK. I had it in my head that I really wanted pho for this meal. It was around 4 p.m. on a Friday, an odd time to be out at a restaurant. Besides us, there was only one other diner in the restaurant. The host, who we suspected was also the owner, sat us at a two top in the back. We'd been using an app to time contractions on Adam's phone all day.  We put the phone between us on the table with the app open and every 8-9 minutes I stopped to breathe through a contraction. From our behavior and the app, it was clear that the host / owner knew what was going on with us and was increasingly freaked out that I was going to have a baby in his restaurant. Adam and I shared shrimp rolls and each ordered a beef pho. I ordered a glass of red wine because I read somewhere that wine can relax you during labor but I only took two tiny sips because it was the last thing I felt like drinking. When we asked for the check the host / owner was visibly relieved and tried to usher us out  as fast as he possibly could. I've never been brought a check faster.

Back at home we settled in for the long night ahead of us. We even tried to watch more House of Cards but I was increasingly uninterested and focused on being in labor. I took multiple baths and listened to my hypo birthing meditations. Around 9 pm we called the Doula to let her know what was going on. She asked to hear me go through a contraction - at that point I was lying on my side in bed and still able to calmly breathe through the contractions, though they were getting more uncomfortable.  She said I sounded good and that she was going to take a nap and would plan to be there in a few hours. Thirty minutes after that call something changed. I was no longer able to calmly breathe or sit still through contractions. Now I wanted to be in constant motion. I started speed walking around our dining room table moaning through the 90 second durations of each one.

Baths still felt good and for some reason while I was trying to concentrate on the hypnobirthing meditations Ariana Grande's thank u, next was playing on repeat in my head. I think the video had just come out and I'd watched it the day before.

I had Adam call the Doula back. She asked to hear another contraction,  heard me moaning through the phone and said she was getting in a cab.

When the doula came over, if I wasn't in the bath, she tried to help me get comfortable on the yoga ball (which I never found that comfortable). We tried to listen to Rainbow Relaxation in bed - that was terrible. The only place that felt okay was the tub. I was finding my groove with rainbow relaxation until the horrible Yellow section. In Yellow the meditation leader made us preggos promise to only to eat the healthiest possible foods for our babies. Yellow always took me out of the meditation and made me feel judged and defensive because of my soda cravings during pregnancy. Also the fact that after over a decade of not stepping foot in a McDonald's this baby was constantly careening me towards sausage biscuits on my way to work in the morning.  Just as I suspected while pregnant, the color yellow made this mediation useless during labor and I berated myself for not editing it out the way I planned to.

Unfortunately, my doula shared some traits with the meditation leader from Rainbow Relaxation in that I felt a little judged by her. For example when I moaned through a contraction and asked  when I could go to the hospital she nodded, smiled and said "it's going to be awhile". I felt patronized. When my husband drained the tub to refill it with hot water so I wouldn't be cold she looked at him with horror and said, "you're really going to waste all that water?" In hindsight I see her point, that we should have just added more hot to the already full tub. But again, we felt judged.

I pulled rank over my doula and decided we would go to the hospital when I wanted and not when she told me I could, whose schedule was I trying to follow anyway? I peed on our way out the door and saw that I'd lost my mucus plug which looked like two slugs dancing in a pool of blood in my underwear. My doula asked if I was comfortable showing her, I did and she said, "that's normal but it's good we're going to the hospital now." I thought, "That's right! I know what's right for me!" which is what they'd been teaching me in hypnobirthing the whole time so even though I never got in that zen like state where I didn't feel pain, it wasn't a total loss.

I wanted an epidural the second we got to the hospital but first they had to examine me (six centimeters) and then they told me there were no rooms available in which to administer one. Triage is where I realized what kind of support I actually needed during labor because this is where I met Cassandra. Cassandra was an angel of a nurse. Minutes after knowing her, I grabbed for her and hugged her through a contraction. She held me like she'd known me my whole life. She taught me how to breathe through a contraction in a way that did more for me than months of listening to Rainbow Relaxation. When I peed myself because a contraction was so bad she reminded me in a way completely free of judgement that I was allowed to walk around and go to the bathroom whenever I wanted because I didn't have the epidural yet. And that if I wanted to just pee myself, that was okay too.

Three hours later and still no epidural, they examined me again (seven centimeters) and decided to make a sterile space in triage so that I could finally get the drugs. Adam wasn't allowed in so Cassandra held my hands instead. I had a contraction right before they put the needle in. She asked me to rate the pain on a scale of one to ten. I said eight thinking things could always be worse. And she said, "based on how hard you squeezed my hands, are you sure it wasn't a ten?" Cassandra made me feel like everything I was going through was okay, that it was okay to say things were hard or painful. That I didn't have to be tough. I loved her so much in the short time that I knew her (four hours?). I was devastated when her shift ended.

When Adam and my doula asked me about what I wanted before I was actually in labor I'd said that I wanted to be able to focus on meditation because I'd heard an anecdote I liked about a friend of a friend - when this woman got to the hospital she put on ear buds and a lavender face mask and didn't take either off until her baby was born. Reading that back, it seems like madness that I ever thought I wanted that to be my experience. Not because it's not lovely, but because it's not me. I like to be in control. I like to be the one who makes the decisions that affect me. Why did I think I'd want to be shut out from the most important experience of my life? Like when a physician's assistant with crazy eyes pulled out a crotchet needle and said she could break my water, I wanted to be the one to say, "no thank you" which I did.

I fell asleep seconds after getting the epidural around 6 am. I stirred when they moved me to a new room an hour later but by 9 am I was awake and in my private room. The long night had passed, and I was still pregnant.

I felt good - rested, rejuvenated, in love with my epidural. But the hours of being awake were catching up with Adam, who now had a migraine. Our doula went out to get advil and lunch for both of them. I ordered a clear plate and was reminded how delicious Lipton's black tea is. As a result of this clear plate, I drank Lipton's tea for the next three months.

The doctor came in to examine me again, in the three hours I'd been asleep, I'd only progressed another centimeter, I was now at eight. This was what I was afraid of re: the epidural. The doctor recommended Pitocin but I declined and this is where my doula really stepped up.

She positioned my body to help speed things along and gave me three meditations to try. Now that I was no longer in pain, my mind could relax and imagine a flower opening, a drop of color in a glass of water and one more that I forget. I stopped pressing the button for my epidural because I wanted to be able to feel what was happening while I was pushing. Sensation started coming back into my body, specifically into my lower back. My doula gave me a massage there and put some essential oils under my nose. The next time my doctor came into the room, she said it was time to start pushing.

"Wow! Those meditations really worked" said my doula, proud. They did I agreed, but not quite willing to let it go and my sense of humor back after my nap I added, "but you know what didn't work? Rainbow Relaxation."

Though I was now fully dilated, I didn't have the sensation they said I would feel in hypnobirthing, like having to poop. I asked my doctor if I could wait for that. She said I wouldn't feel it unless they turned off my epidural completely. Terrified, I agreed to start pushing.

At the beginning of this process, nothing was really happening. The thing I found most bizarre was that my doctor kept leaving the room and the PA would tell me when to push. I thought this was the main show, why did she keep leaving? After about a half an hour I was getting exhausted so they gave me oxygen to breathe between pushes. The PA would yell at me when she wanted me to push one time saying, "Get angry!" to which I replied, "I don't want to be angry!" She said, "What do you want?" And I said, "Positive reinforcement."

The next time my doctor came in, I asked if she would stay. The PA asked jokingly if I didn't like her. I said I liked her but I wanted my doctor. This was one of the few times in my life that I thankfully wasn't worried about hurting anyone's feelings.

After about an hour of pushing, I was spent, exhausted. I had the feeling I'd heard about where you realize no one else can get you out of this, that you have to do it for yourself. Suddenly the directions about where and how to push that the PA and my doctor had been giving me started to make sense. More than that, in my lower back especially, I felt the urge to push. It was the feeling I'd been waiting for. The lights in the room changed. The doctor got into a seat. She put on a mask, it was clear she wasn't leaving again. This is what I had thought would happen when she told me to start pushing. This is when everyone was really present. It was happening for real. THIS WAS IT.

During the next three pushes, I felt the most incredible amount of pain I've ever felt in my life. It's a cliche but true that it felt like my body was being split in half. I screamed out in pain to which my doctor said very calmly, "stop yelling." She wasn't being insensitive but if you are yelling, you're not breathing.

Those big three pushes were for the head after that the push for the shoulders was much easier. They just kind of slipped out like "floop". The placenta came out without my even realizing it. The baby was in front of the majority of my amniotic fluid. It flushed out after him, making a lake on the floor of the room. My doctor kept looking down and laughing, calling it a flood.

While pushing, I broke two blood vessels in my eyes. I didn't realize while it was happening and so after they put my baby on my chest I couldn't understand why my eyes hurt and I was having trouble seeing him. I held him and stroked his back and just said, "hi, hi, hi" over and over again while the doctor stitched me up.

I remember thinking immediately after he came out, "I am never doing that again." But now, sixteen months later, it's true what they say, I've forgotten the pain. Even the experience of laboring at home has a kind of hazy rose covered nostalgia over it.

Our first night with the baby in the recovery room (which is its own story) our doctor, Lily, came in to say goodbye at the end of her shift. She was in her street clothes now and wearing make-up, she looked great. We told her we were naming the baby Gus. She smiled and said, "I have never met a Gus who wasn't a really good guy." Neither have we.

1+ years of books

This photo was on my phone...no idea why I took it. 

Must have been very proud of myself for reading and drinking.

Oh god, the last time I listed the books I'd been reading was...September 2018 !! I guess that's what happens when you have a baby. But since I've been listing the books I've read on this blog for a decade it seems crazy to leave a whole year out. So, here we go - time to catch up --

Fall 2018

About Time by Penelope Mortimer
About Time Too by Penelope Mortimer
Raising Demons by Shirley Jackson
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Middlemarch by George Eliot

When Gus was late I told myself perhaps he was waiting for me to finish Middlemarch. So I spent that week finishing it and still he didn't come for another week. From the above it looks like in the final months of my pregnancy, pre-Middlemarch, I was reading women writers who had children and three of those four were autobiographies about just that. Seems about right.

Winter 2019

The Burning Girl by Claire Messud
She Wants It by Jill Solloway
Becoming by Michelle Obama
Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

These were the books I read during "the fourth trimester". I remember holding The Burning Girl in one hand while nursing Gus and needing everything in place before I started because I was not yet able to "walk and nurse" (actually I never figured that one out). Most of these were read cocooned up in our loft while Gus napped in the co-sleeper or on my chest. All of them exist in the hazy newborn life where everything seems a little fuzzy and sparkly and I was most likely wearing Adam's old zip up cashmere hoodie with nothing underneath except my sore nipples. That's true for all except for Becoming which was read all day on my birthday at the writer's space. I was away from such a small nugget for precious few hours to work on a script. But once I started Becoming, I couldn't stop and hey, it was my birthday. I wanted to spend it with Michelle.

Spring 2019

A Life's Work by Rachel Cusk
Memories of the Future by Siri Hustvedt
Popular by Maya Van Wagenen
Shit Is Real by Aisha Franz
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
And Now We Have Everything by Meghan O'Connell
Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen

I can tell some sort of change took place from the books above. Two things are immediately apparent to me from this list. One, with TATB2 turned in my play & my play, NYLON, closed - I was back in pitch mode because many of these books were read for work reasons. Two, when I was reading for pleasure - I wanted it to be about motherhood.

Summer 2019

Normal People by Sally Rooney
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh
From Scratch by Tembi Locke
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
I Like to Watch by Emily Nussbaum
Severance by Ling Ma

Ah, summer reading! Whether intentional to the season or not, I have no recollection, but damn, these books were FUN!  There is a good amount of devastation in these pages too but overall this list led to some incredibly enjoyable time spent laying on the couch in our sun soaked, plant filled Myrtle Ave. loft. There was no better way to lose an afternoon than reading in that living room. We moved at the end of September. The years at Myrtle are now a time stamp of my life and I will miss them.

Fall 2019

Circe by Madeline Miller
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Save Me the Plums by Ruth Reichl
This is Pleasure by Mary Gaitskill
Good Talk by Mira Jacob
The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy
Single State of Mind by Andi Dorfman

These are the books I read after we moved to our Gowanus sublet.  I loved reading The Dutch House on a warm Autumn weekend especially since as my friend Chiara said, it's a perfect Fall book and our new neighborhood is a very Autumnal. We're now in walking distance to Books Are Magic so many of these were picked up there. I am also once again enjoying my long neglected Nook which I love for hardcovers I want to read but not carry around and memoirs of former bachelorettes (it was for a project but you know...😜).

xo

best of 2019

All the best of 2019 lists are coming out now so what the hell, I'm making one too.

BOOKS

Technically Severance by Ling Ma was released in 2018, but the paperback came out in 2019 and that's when I read it. Plus, this is my list so I'm including it because it was the book I read this year that I could not stop thinking about for weeks after finishing.

runner up: The Dutch House by Ann Patchett bc just like Chiara promised on Instagram it was the perfect seasonal read on a crisp fall day

MOVIES

Adam and I rented The Last Black Man in San Francisco on a rare night where we didn't go to bed at nine thirty. When it was over, I stayed up even later to read articles about the creators - the ultimate seal of approval. 

runner up: Parasite bc I was so excited to see it we even got a babysitter to go to the theater!

THEATER

I have been waiting to see a production of Maria Irene Fornes' Fefu and her Friends since I fell in love with the play in college. Lileana Blain Cruz's production at TFANA did not disappoint. 

runner up: NYLON at Theaterlab bc it was a labor of love to self produce my own play with a three month old baby but it's also my favorite production of one of my plays yet.

TELEVISION

I'm so sad Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney's Catastrophe is over and the seasons go down so quickly that I can't believe season four came out in March and not two years ago. I've never seen a funnier or more accurate depiction of marriage and if there were a million seasons I would watch all of them.

runner up: Russian Doll bc it got us through sleep training Gus. As my friend Kara put it, "don't think of it as, 'I'm listening to my baby cry for an hour' think of it as, 'I just have to get through two episodes of Russian Doll..."

MUSIC

I listen to pop music while writing teen rom-coms and Charli XCX's Charli is an excellent go to album for this purpose.

runner up: Big Thief's Two Hands bc I also sometimes listen to indie rock while writing teen rom-coms but if I'm being honest more than anything I listen to music I liked as a teenager while writing teen rom-coms.

the hardest year of my life

My last post to this blog was one year and six days ago.

Four days after my last post, I went into labor.

Five days after my last post, I delivered Gus at 2:02 in the afternoon.

What a year it's been! The best of my life for sure. The cliche about the first year of being a parent goes, "the best year of my life and also the hardest."

But I don't think that's true. I think the year I graduated from college and moved to New York was actually a lot harder than this one. That's when I worked in an office as an assistant until 8 pm every day. I had to ask to go to the bathroom, took the subway to a bus to get home, lived in a railroad apartment with mice, ate stoned wheat thins with peanut butter for dinner and thought buying a salad for lunch was a splurge. Not to mention the fact that I'd just been dumped by my first serious love. There was good stuff too - nights of drunken revelry, crush highs, the belief that I looked amazing in the American Apparel lycra figure skating dress. I directed a one act in a short play festival, wrote the play that gave me my career and discovered coconut water. I lived in pre-Ikea Red Hook with my best friend Liana. We ate lobster rolls in coffee park and binged the Wire on our tiny couch back when binging a series meant watching it as quickly as Netflix could send you the next DVD. It was fun to live with my best friend even if our apartment was so small we referred to it as 'the doll's house". So there was fun, yes. But it was also fucking hard. And sad. And I spent many nights in the doll's house reading about Jean Rhys roaming the streets of Paris at night and considering dying her hair. Rhys was a lonely, depressed peri-menopausal woman and it says something about my head space that she was the writer I was obsessed with at this time, that she felt like a kindred spirit.

2019 had its challenges, taking care of a newborn is no joke, but 2019 will never be as hard as 2008! Not even close. And 2008 doesn't hold a candle to 2019 regarding the amount of joy my life. In 2008, I didn't have Adam, I didn't have my career and I didn't have GUS!

Adam and I both wrote Gus letters on his birthday yesterday. We tried to read each other's and couldn't stop crying.

Now that I'm through the first year of being a parent, I want to start writing this blog again. I like having it more as an archive for me more than anything. I've missed posting about the books I'm reading, recipes I'm making, etc... It seems appropriate to start with what happened after Gus. I am writing down his birth story and think I will end up posting it when I'm done. But I want to take my time with it. So in the meantime, here's a year of Gus in photos.

xx

November 

 December

 January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

"last" meals

Adam and I are on a food tour of some of the best restaurants in Brooklyn as we keep going out for "last meals" before the baby is born.

No wonder he doesn't want to come out - who wouldn't prefer an El Almacen steak to the six months of breast milk he has to look forward to...

10/21/18 Ramen (and Beef Curry) at Myrtle Diner

We went to Myrtle Diner the day we got home from Patrick and Carly's wedding. They just started serving ramen on the weekends and it was probably the best ramen I have ever had. But since everything MD does is the best, this was no surprise. They also sent us home with Japanese Beef Curry to eat for dinner and said, "eat this tonight, the baby will come tomorrow." He didn't but the curry was still divine.

10/25/18 Nachos and Burger at Bar Bolinas

This was still a week before our due date, but it was one of the first times we giddily asked each other, "Is this our last dinner...????" 

10/31/18 Everything on the menu at Roman's

Since we both predicted the baby would be early, I don't think either of us expected to be out on Halloween. Last weekend we took the coins that had been pooling in a watering can on our shelf for two years to coinstar and made $220! We decided to take our earnings to Roman's for a "let's go nuts" dinner to celebrate. This was the day before our due date so we really thought it might be our last hurrah.  Because Roman's is in Fort Greene (trick or treating Mecca) it was the perfect spot to see all the kids in costume! And as someone who is incapable of not celebrating on my way out the door I grabbed my short fur coat and drew on some eyeliner whiskers so I could meet Adam in costume as "Mama Bear". 

11/2/18 Fried Chicken and a Chicken Biscuit at Pies 'n Thighs

(sorry, no pic - too busy eatin')

Walking is supposed to help induce labor so I trekked the mile from our apartment to CHIPS to meet Adam for lunch at Pies 'N Thighs before an acupuncture appointment. So far, neither one did the trick. But it had been months since I'd had a chicken biscuit so -- still a win!

11/3/18 Skirt Steak and Truffle Fries at El Almacen

Another Saturday night we didn't expect to be just the two of us! Another date night! Another last meal. My anemia decided I wanted a steak and so Adam suggested we go to El Almacen. Ordinarily I would not put down a whole skirt steak here by myself. But I am proud to say - we both finished everything. 

11/4/18 Dutch Baby and Smoked Salmon Scramble at Diner

Marathon Day in NYC and still no babe! Ad and I were talking about places we should go that weren't necessarily "stroller friendly" and since Diner can be kind of a tight fit, we decided this was the spot. Also, it's about a mile from our apartment and I am still trying to walk the baby out. It was a gorgeous day and we walked along the marathon route early enough that we could cheer on the men's and women's front runners!

(as you can see all I wear these days are either my white or black overalls - this is what 10 months pregnant looks like)