Ten.Five Hundred & Eighty-Two

1. “I was just going to watch tv.” Uh-huh, right. I send him back to his room, mainly because I know he’s tired and I want a little bit of quiet while I start breakfast.

2. Brown sugar. Brown sugar.

3. Ok. So we’re still doing this. I ask her to write down everything she needs so I can run to the store to pick it up. This seems simple enough.

4. In a way, I admire her persistence. Maybe, at the end of all of this, she will indeed absorb some skills. But next year…next year I know what to do.

5. Clenched.

6. My introversion is kicking in. I’m fighting the urge to complain about going to the neighbor’s house for the game. I don’t want to socialize. Plus this science fair project is due tomorrow. Plus I need to study for my certified exam. But I already made the caramel corn so there’s that.

7. Waiting for ice to melt.

8. The caramel corn gets devoured. I finally meet my immediate next door neighbors and find out that they also have a teenage daughter. 3 potential babysitters. Amazing.

9. Everyone is so nice. And that is great. And it makes me wonder whether or not we’d need to look anywhere for a permanent home.

10. Tired. Tired.

Ten.Five Hundred & Eighty-One

1. 7:06. I must have needed the extra sleep.

2. The slow arrival of morning light through the rain clouds. I think I still hear the gutters dripping.

3. I do my make-up but keep my robe on. I take my coffee back to bed.

4. She’s still wanting to do this project. I help her take pictures of her materials.

5. The way the sun is peaking through the clouds and touching the tips of the hills.

6. What shade of green is this? It’s almost electric. Almost too bright and fluorescent to be real.

7. Three familiar faces.

8. I am thinking of what I will do tomorrow: slow morning, another cup or two of coffee in bed, maybe I’ll finally write a newsletter, read a little bit, make more flashcards, Super Bowl party. Good thing we have younger kids to use as an excuse to leave a little early.

9. The manager repeats a compliment about me given to her by one of the guests today. If I were a fairer shade I would have been very red.

10. The tangelo is a little sour but very juicy. A little bit of moonlight is reflecting off the clouds and I can see the silhouette of the hills and mountains. It’s still an eerie drive in the dark even though I’m getting use to this road at night. Looking forward to lengthening of days when this commute will be filled with soft golden light.

Ten.Five Hundred & Eighty

1. That watch. 3:32 am. I gotta figure out how to turn it off.

2. How is it already February? Soon enough it will be March and then school will be out and then it will be Christmas again.

3. Rose-gold sunrise. A layer of popcorn clouds.

4. Tea instead of coffee.

5. Gladiolas. Pink and Purple. So tall. No mantles in this house on which to display them but I’ll make room for them somewhere.

6. Leftover chili in bed. Can’t seem to stay warm.

7. Anbaugebiete. Beirech. Einzellage.

8. Big fat drops on the windows.

9. Real estate alerts. Not that we’re doing anything any time soon, just trying to gather data. Making notes of what I like and what I don’t; where we might be able to find a decent lot size to accommodate my gardening plans and she-shed dreams.

10. I can still hear the rain dripping off of the gutters and onto the cement outside the door. Steady in its rhythm like a lullaby.

Ten.Five Hundred & Seventy-Nine

1. 3:32 am. Great. I doubt I’ll be able to get anything out of the next two hours.

2. I think to what he said: “You don’t have time for anything else.” It is true. And yet it is not. There is always time for the right thing.

3. Cleaning day.

4. I wonder whether or not I should put down the spray bottle and write instead. But the truth is that this kind of work, this regularly scheduled cleaning, is helpful to me. I get to sort out all of my feelings.

5. “When I’m on The New Yorker podcast, I’m going to read ‘To Reach Japan’ by Alice Munro. Deborah and I will talk about what it says about motherhood and womanhood and yes, it will be so good.”

6. I catch what I just said to myself: “When I’m on The New Yorker podcast…” What a lofty goal. But also, not entirely impossible.

7. We told him just last night how important it is to visualize himself being really great, hitting balls, catching balls. You gotta visualize yourself succeeding. Right.

8. “Smells clean.”

9. I put Tropic of Cancer in the bag designated for library returns. I gave it 6 chapters. It just didn’t do anything for me.

10. He missed all three pitches. How can you be perfect at something you’ve never done before?

Ten.Five Hundred & Seventy-Eight

1. Boiled eggs with beet horseradish and a few slices of bacon.

2. He’s eaten three bowls of cereal. Everyone was up and out here before me again. Gotta get rid of this cold.

3. Oh, no. Not another one that wants to do a science fair project. He’s dead set on the volcano. She is beginning to freak out about the fact that her spherification project is due in 5 days. How hands on am I supposed to be about this?

4. There are only two of them in the car and this makes for a quieter ride. Take away one, it’s always so different.

5. Why the tension?

6. It’s warmer outside on the patio, in the sun, than it is inside. I ought to bring a small table out here so that I can write with my back warmed by the mid-day light. Remember to look on Craigslist for something suitable.

7. I stop for crossword puzzles and sour gummy worms.

8. The sound of the ball hitting the glove. A good and hard swack. I wonder if he appreciates having a mother who will throw a ball around. He goes inside to change his shirt and pick off a lemon and an orangey orange. The smell of citrus on my fingertips.

9. I wish they hadn’t changed this PInot Noir so much. It used to be so elegant.

10. Edge.

Ten.Five Hundred & Seventy-Seven

1. Don’t want to get up.

2. Cinnamon Chex.

3. If only. If only everyone would do what I asked the first time I asked it.

4. Now all three of the magnolias are in bloom. Bright pink petals against the clear blue sky.

5. I think of my friends back in Chicago. I think of the cold. I think of how me moved at the very right time.

6. Flash cards and more flash cards. The good thing is that some of this I really do remember. 54 days.

7. Afternoon crash. A little bit of tightness in the throat.

8. More Alice Munro in the pick-up line. I don’t want to put it down. I wonder how many accidents occur because people are trying to read and drive at the same time?

9. When you’re trying to listen to the New Yorker Poetry podcast but people keep coming in to talk to me. Futile.

10. Can’t get warm enough. The irony of being someplace considerably warmer than where you left but also needing to be conscious of your energy usage which means keeping the house at such a low temperature that your hands and feet are constantly cold.

Ten.Five Hundred & Seventy-Six

1. Just a little more sleep.

2. I hear something. Dishes clanging, maybe? They’re up before me.

3. Chili for dinner today? Yes. I think these skies mean it’s a good day for chili.

4. Some quiet time for myself. More water. The last cup of coffee. A chat with her.

5. “Privilege is not the same thing as Autonomy.”

6. Craving freedom. Yes. Wanting time back for self-exploration. Yes. Remembering that I am safe to make my own choices. Yes.

7. “We’re going to India 4 U.”

8. The man doesn’t understand English well enough to take our order. He sets a pen and a small pad of purple paper down to have me write it out. Samosas, Tandoori Prawns, Naan, Chicken Buriyani, one bottle of Hahn Chardonnay.

9. The cornbread batter looks exceptional airy today. Hope it turns out well.

10. 54 days.

Ten.Five Hundred & Seventy-Five

1. Slowly, surely.

2. I make a mental inventory of what’s here and think about how it can be used in the upcoming week. This week’s list is shorter than usual but that’s a g good thing. I’m trying to get better about having an empty fridge and pantry before going to the store; use up as much as possible before stuffing it all full again.

3. They don’t open until 8.

4. There’s a poetry version of this? How did I not know?! Deborah Landau reads an Anne Sexton poem. Oh yes, I want to be a poetess.

5. I should have stopped myself and written down all of those ideas when they came to me. Now, everything seems to have lost its power.

6. I’m tired. A cold has been trying to push itself out for the past few weeks. it’s just lingering there in the background. Just enough to sap away the energy, just enough to make me a little more irritable than usual.

7. I recognize that I’m a difficult person to live with.

8. Hitchcock and nap.

9. Tomorrow, tomorrow. What about tomorrow?

10. Still craving samosas.

Ten.Five Hundred & Seventy-Four

1. I should go get something for breakfast. I can’t really skip the Friday grocery shopping chore.

2. I can see the orange beginning to seep through the clouds. This is going to be a colorful morning.

3. Not much time.

4. Where did all the fog come from?

5. So many birds. It’s hard not to feel they are friends carrying secret messages. Yes. They all mean something to me.

6. Everyone keeps asking me, “how’s it going? How do you like it?” They seem surprised at my answers. I don’t know why.

7. 56 days.

8. Fresh eyes see the gaps.

9. Those red lights. Even after all these night drives, seeing them when I come up over the hill gives me a bit of a fright.

10. Too tired to read.

Ten.Five Hundred & Seventy-Three

1. Here we go again.

2. I need to get back to making a solid breakfast.

3. I don’t know how he did it but he got him out of his room and making his lunch. Some days there is not enough coffee for this kind of stress.

4. I can’t get the smell of the salmon out of the fridge.

5. He tells us that we’re better off just getting a minivan. We laugh. It’s just the practical thing to do. But the aesthetic.

6. The cannelloni is al dente and the filling is creamy and light. The red sauce is bright and with just the right amount of acid to cut the creaminess of the cannelloni filling. Tiramisu to finish. One glass of Clelia Romano Colli di Lapio Fiano di Avellino , one bottle of Pinot Nero, one cup of coffee—black.

7. I turn my face up to the sun and lean against the parking meter while we wait for the dealership shuttle. No regrets, no regrets.

8. The three of us talk and realize that we’re on the same page. Let’s talk more about effort and potential, the need to not have it right, that we’re on his side.

9. Big windows.

10. So much to think about.

Ten.Five Hundred & Seventy-Two

1. The only way to become is to do.

2. Shivering after drinking a smoothie. Smoothies are for summer time but the kids are always asking for them.

3. More hours to myself.

4. I take my coffee and a the book to her bed because her room is getting the most sunlight right now which means it’s the warmest.

5. I accidentally read three stories instead of two because the writing is just that good. But I mustn’t fall into the trap of trying to get so inspired that I never sit down to write.

6. I live in California.

7. I could live here. There aren’t very many brown people though. But we need to be closer to the city and maybe we could get slightly better schools. This is always the hardest part: realizing that it’s not possible to get everything you want. There will always be a compromise of some kind.

8. I step out onto the front porch and put my face in the sun.

9. Homework.

10. “Maybe we’re not as great of parents as we thought.” “Everyone is just making it up as they go along. No one is a great parent. We’re all just doing our best.”

Ten.Five Hundred & Seventy-One

1. No dream that I can remember.

2. Sink full of dishes. I still don’t want to do them.

3. We do this almost everyday and still I look back to ask him a question when I get to the stoplight. I realize that this is a very tiny taste of an empty nest: looking and looking for those mouths of those voices and remembering that they are gone.

4. Coffee and this corner.

5. “To Reach Japan.” Greta is me and I am Greta and damn, this is such a beautiful story.

6. 100 rejections.

7. The sun feels good against the skin. We decide it might be best to not travel down this road. Hawk on the treetop.

8. “When everything, everything, everything you touch turns to gold, gold, gold, gold.”

9. But it’s really like a hazy dream and there’s no other way to describe it. My eyes swell up just a bit as I descend into the valley, lavender and pale orange skies behind a silhouette of mountains.

10. I read him a paragraph from “Tropic of Cancer.” No wonder it was banned.

Ten.Five Hundred & Seventy

1. I want the dream to continue. I can feel everything.

2. I added the cream before the butter. Silly accident. This has never happened to me before. I laugh to myself. I hope they turn out.

3. Sun, sun, sun.

4. I decide that I want to listen to David Sedaris read Miranda July’s “Roy Spivey” while I take a walk.

5. So much sun. Still a little brisk but I stick to the sidewalks without the shadows for maximum exposure.

6. I find the hoe and the seeds she sent me. I hope they take. It would sure be something to see the blank spaces in the garden bed fill up with poppies this spring.

7. I pick a lemon and two oranges. The scent of fresh citrus is my new favorite.

8. Insurance. Phone call after phone call after phone call. Adulting.

9. La petite mort.

10. What I miss about that year was that, for a very short period in my life, I felt very safe and very free. It’s not the youth I miss, it’s the freedom.

Ten.Five Hundred & Sixty-Nine

1. Clogged nose. I’m going to ignore the alarm and sleep in.

2. Just enough light for me to tell that the sun is going to be out today. Thank goodness.

3. Earthling Poems.

4. Cleaning on a sunny day is kind of the best feeling. Everything shines.

5. I make all of them vacuum their rooms on their own. I took that out of my cleaning routine and reclaim 15 minutes of my life back.

6. She’s on time.

7. Only an hour to get to SF. This would never be the case in Chicago. Traffic? What traffic?

8. Green hills. Sea gulls. Blue sky. The San Francisco skyline as we come over the bridge.

9. Hollow.

10. French onion soup. Wagyu beef cheek. Key Lime Pie. Puligney-Montrachet. Nebbiolo.

Ten.Five Hundred & Sixty-Eight

1. I didn’t write the newsletter. I decide not to let it bother me too much.

2. Words feel so distant. I think I’m allowed to still be floundering after such a transition. Yet, there is this desire to have everything need and tidy and predictable.

3. Gray morning and a cup of hot coffee. A little piece of quiet before I go to work.

4. “I was saved from despair countless times by the flowers and the trees I planted.” - Alice Walker

5. Reading these makes me want to write a bunch of love poems.

6. The hiss of the iron. Pillows of steam floating into the air.

7. I wave to the hawk standing guard on the post.

8. He’s explaining wine to her in their native language. Something eastern European but I can pick out little bits and pieces. I know just enough of a few other languages to be able to eavesdrop rather effectively.

9. I could write 100 books based on the people I meet here. This is kind of a thrilling idea.

10. He drags me out of bed and brings out the camera so that I can see the moon. She is a wonder for sure. I’m glad he’s forced my out. I had been completely content with the idea of missing it, but I would have regretted it.

Ten.Five Hundred & Sixty-Seven

1. What’s that glow?

2. Granola. Fruit. Coffee. Waiting patiently for sunrise.

3. New babysitter. She lives right across the street. Please let her be a good one. What time is it?

4. Coffee, sipped slowly, feet up on the coffee table. It’s still quiet right now.

5. Math club and honor society. She will probably be a keeper.

6. The sun is finally out and it feels a little like magic.

7. I try to listen to him teach her about France and grapes but I already know this stuff. I walk to the back bar with The Wine Bible and read that instead.

8. I eat my beet salad with goat cheese and pepitas in the car. No music. Windows down. The turbines are spinning. There are people out pruning the vines.

9. Everyone likes to hang out. I just want to get back home to have dinner with my family.

10. Energies.

Ten.Five HUndred & Sixty-Six

1. Wandering around in the dark. A metaphor for life sometimes.

2. He really doesn’t stop talking.

3. Parted clouds. The peak of Mount Diablo. The soft glow of morning light.

4. This coffee will be cold by the time I get back.

5. It feels good to see how much I still know. I ought to be more confident in my knowledge.

6. Ok.

7. “It’s just…I don’t have the words to describe how grateful I am for you.” Oh, my mama heart.

8. There it is. That tightness. The feeling of constriction. It’ll be okay.

9. I did say that this might be the year of more, didn’t I?

10. No one is excited about the beet salad. I’ll save it for work tomorrow.

Ten.Five Hundred & Sixty-Five

1. I don’t want to get up. Partly because I wanted to see how the dream finished.

2. No one seems to be able to wait for the bacon.

3. To coffee or not to coffee?

4. Farouche. Forasticus. Wild. Living Outside.

5. The trouble with seeing all the possibilities is deciding which ones to go after. Or, maybe instead of going after, it’s about being patient enough to allow the best ones to filter through.

6. I remind myself that everything will take some time. Trust in the timing of things.

7. I love a good book store but the layout and quantity of books in this one feels overwhelming. I leave with a book of poetry by Alice Walker.

8. Burger with aged cheddar and red onion. Cote de Brouilly Beaujolais. No dessert today.

9. One bowl chocolate cake. Maybe this is the end of the rain.

10. Beauty hunting.

Ten.Five Hundred & Sixty-Four

1. Feels like a day for a black turtleneck.

2. What are the stories I’m trying to tell?

3. Sightly better look on his face this morning.

4. The clouds are covering just the tip of Mt. Diablo. It feels so good to have a bit of clear sky before the rains return.

5. No v-neck undershirts. All the things for chicken tortilla soup.

6. I laugh while I stir the pot. Time just goes by so quickly when she and I are together. I suppose that is the power of depth.

7. “I want to be with those who want to tell the truth.”

8. Yes, yes. That’s right. Be unapologetic in your choices.

9. Wherever it is that we are, it’s gorgeous. Hills upon hills upon hills all around. Cows, olive trees, an alpaca. This place.

10. The loneliness is really setting in for him.

Ten.Five Hundred & Sixty-Three

1. Day 3 of no coffee.

2. Only 50 degrees and rain all day. But there is much to do.

3. The look on his face is better today than it was yesterday.

4. But hot tea is just not the same as coffee.

5. I go in to look for some more pants for him but all I walk out with is a small rusty bowl that I know I want to photograph those oranges in.

6. A whole house to myself. So quiet. So quiet. Corners of light.

7. What it will be is more freedom, right? I can feel the weight lifting off of me already with that one decision.

8. Meaning, it’s not that I don’t want to freelance. I want to do work that I want to do. But shifting away from calling myself a freelancer and choosing to assume the title of “artist” instead feels more spacious.

9. Deperu Holler Familia. Something like 80% Cannonau, which I’ve never had before. I think I like it.

10. I will figure it out when it’s time to figure it out.