Slow down, you're doing fine

end of august thoughts

I’ve heard rumblings from my East Coast friends that there were a few days in the 70s last week, a harbinger that fall is coming. Time for pumpkin candles, knitting, rereading The Secret History.

Not so for me. I stood outside this morning and very domestically hung clothes on our backyard clothesline, listening to the whir of our and everyone else’s air conditioning. The beating hearts of the neighborhood’s oases of cold. Summer here reminds me of Dune a little bit — our air-conditioned home pods, car pods, store pods are the stillsuits that allow us to work and do what we need to do. The first electric bill came in at $283, a number which made me gasp but shortly thereafter feel grateful. I’d rather pay the money and not know what it’s like to live without it. And our clothes will probably be dry by the time my next meeting is over.

The view from my backyard/desert sky

I like the heat in the evenings, where 15-20 minutes outside feels like an atmospheric dry sauna. We don’t need citronella or bug spray to sit or walk outside in the evenings, because there’s no standing water to be had and therefore no mosquitoes. I was pretty quickly humbled by the evening walks, though. After months of being on bedrest, it turns out that my muscles aren’t so ready for them. My sciatica returned with a vengeance, shooting nerve pain down from my tailbone and into my calves. Pain is always the worst when it’s new pain, because the prospect of the unknown is the prospect that it might last forever and/or be life-threatening (it usually never is), so this wasn’t too bad, but humbling nonetheless. Back onto the couch I went, a pile of “shoulds” settling atop our weighted blanket. I should do Yoga with Adriene, I should wear Bala bands around the house to start re-building muscle and make the joint pain go away, I should go for walks even if the following two days are filled with more pain. Even if it comes at the cost of me being too tired to do the things I want to do, to make dinner, to do more than the bare minimum of cleaning, to sit at my sewing machine, it’s what I should do.

But then the other night I made dinner, something I haven’t really done for much of this year. By 4pm I am usually exhausted, adhered to the couch or bed for the rest of my waking hours. Standing up after 5pm is actually kind of a big deal for me, and a reassurance that relocating out of the altitude was the right move. I brushed off the shoulds, as my therapist is constantly reminding me to do. The baseline amount of strength I need right now is not enough to go on long walks or move slowly through a chaturanga, it’s just to be able to stand long enough to hang clothes on the clothesline or put dishes away. The other stuff will come with time.

So what do you do all day when you can only emerge from the house at nighttime and are still getting your strength back? The answer for me has been obsessing over the house. I check Marketplace constantly, and did score a whole new bedframe for $70 because of it. I’ve bought a few rugs from Paktraders on eBay — which, if you’re looking for a rug and you like more traditional styles, you should check it out!! Initially I felt very insecure about how bold the rug I chose for the living room was, because our landlord remodeled our house, vinyl laminate floors and all, to fit in with the very beige/gray/white aesthetic du jour. Makes a lot of sense as a landlord, but it made me feel like I was making a choice against the grain. After having lived with it for a bit, I do really love it.

After watching a bunch of Paige Wassel and driving all over Phoenix to pick up items from Marketplace, I’m a little home inspo-ed out. And fashion inspo-ed out, if I’m being honest. That’s good though — a curated space doesn’t come together all at once. I think the inspiration will strike soon once I give my brain a break from thinking about it. We are watching Mad Men (Caleb’s first watch, my second) and Don tells Peggy: “Just think about it. Deeply. Then forget it, and the idea will pop up in your face.” This goes for my writing too. In many European countries, August is not for working period, and I think there is maybe something about this part of the year that is more conducive to rotting (productive in its own right) than anything else. I’m thinking about work outfits that don’t suck (I have a few work trips coming up) and signature hair accessories as an underutilized form of self-expression. Oh, and I finished that wedding guest dress!

Took this before I hemmed the lining but I think it turned out pretty well!

The work of 11 months — a finished quilt top!

My subscriber count is creeping steadily towards 200, which is so exciting and also terrifying when I have lapses of inspiration like I do now. I want to try and keep up with newsletters 2x a week, an arbitrary goal I set for myself as a commitment to keep putting out writing for the sake of practicing writing and my confidence, and lately I have been thinking about whether or not that goal is still serving me or if I want to focus on putting out one more well-thought-out piece per week. We’ll see! Anyways, I thank you with all my heart for being here as always. See you in September :)