write me well

Category: Weekly Blog

  • Home Things

    We’re not going to talk about how potentially far-distant home ownership is. Nope. This is, instead, a post about home things in the context of the house where we’re renting.

    Some background:

    I’m in Portland right now, writing this from the lobby of my hotel while on an evening break from attending my first ever APGA conference. (That’s APGA as in American Public Garden Association, not Advocates Professional Golf Association. There can be a lot of grass in both, but it’s an important distinction nonetheless.) Today is day two of conferencing, day three of Portlanding, and whoof, I am already exhausted.

    Traveling for work is one of those life tasks that seemed glamorous and fashionably professional when I was a kid. Thirteen year old Kathy, my favorite lens through which to measure my adult achievements in life, would not believe that I am seated on a creamy leather banquette, a fluted pint of beer next to my laptop, typing away with an array of brass lights and murals and cocktails for company. She’d probably think it was freaking sweet.

    Alas, thirteen year old Kathy is not thirty-three, and she doesn’t understand that your own bed is the best bed, and home is home. (And that conferences, educational and inspirational and well-meaning as they are, are by nature, conferences. And are thus deeply exhausting exercises in note-taking, coffee-consumption-regulating, and in 2022, N95 masking.)

    So last night, when one of the coolest people I work with (honestly, she is so cool) invited me to her local best friend’s birthday dinner at her home, I was quick to accept. Yesterday happened to be the first full day of summer weather that Portland has seen, so while I’m sure the evening would have been exceptional regardless, it was blessed with the extra magic that is a Summer Solstice full of golden, mid-seventies sunshine and sitting on the grass with olives and soft cheese and chilled white wine with a group of people that haven’t seen the sun for six months. In London this was always the best experience and I am happy to report that it was the same here in Portland.

    The entire evening gave me a really interesting combination of feelings that I haven’t fully processed yet. That’s part of why I’m sitting here, writing about it. First, I was surrounded by such clearly amazing people. One of the women I met had a very similar recent experience to me – she had been living in Brooklyn for 12 years, working in corporate retail, and got laid off in the pandemic. Between that, the sudden distance created by an inability to visit home and her nieces, and the realization that retail is some ruthless-hustle-based bullshit, she decided to move back home and change careers. She felt an even stronger version of the bittersweet longing for Brooklyn that I feel for London, given how long she had lived there. But she knew she made the right decision and she is in the right place now, and she was happy with her imperfect decision because really, all decisions are imperfect.

    The amazing woman whose home we visited, who has the fortune to call the longest day of the year her birthday, had not only the most impeccable taste in all things design, but shares with me some fairly random passions. A jeweller by trade, she specializes in English antique pieces, and has her own collection of enamel Victorian mourning rings (one of my favorite types of antique jewelry), which she pulled out and shared with me on the grass in the backyard while the sun set. She even, as one of her pieces of daily jewelry, wears a Tudor-era memento mori ring – something I have aspired to have of my own for years.

    And then there was her home. An early 1900’s craftsman, with its small porch, original hardwood floors, chartreuse kitchen cabinets, and Persian stairwell runner of salmons-and-oranges-and-browns, was an absolute dream. White brick fireplace. MCM built-ins but a lived in, cream linen sofa. Palette-knifed original artworks and lamps with stained glass shades handmade by her father. An oversized, oil pastel Picasso gallery print the sole work living above the fireplace. Cupboards full of vintage plates and hand-thrown ceramics. And above all, an open, easy grace reflected in her hosting and her own personal energy, that permeated every part of the place. As I told her when I thanked her for her hospitality before catching an Uber home, “Not to sound completely creepy, but I love everything about the home you’ve created. It is wonderful.”

    All of which is the background to the first sentence I wrote here. We’re not going to talk about home ownership and how distant that feels. We’re going to celebrate the progress in what my home is now, an imperfect place that I share with a human whose imperfections complement my own, which all works together to create a place that I would very much rather be than in a swank boutique hotel lobby. So while my intent with this post was actually to talk about the specific pieces of interior design progress I’ve made in our own (albeit rented) craftsman bungalow, it turns out the bit I really wanted to talk about was how it’s all come together to feel like a home worth missing.

  • Snapshots

    Long gone are the days I save every file in one place; RIP my 2003 Sony Vaio laptop named Konsuke, which held that distinction for almost a decade. Because of this (actually mostly because of the Cloud), my personal OneDrive has become this bizarre bastion of rando documents saved ignominiously as “Document8” or “Hills” or “Happy Sunday afternoon”. Many are blog posts that made it all the way to my blog. Many are little written blips, a few hundred words that I clearly never felt came full circle enough to post but now serve as very specific snapshots of moments I had since forgotten.

    I found three today that I think deserve to be dusted off and shared with the world. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. (The interjections I couldn’t help adding are in italics.)

    Titled “2020 / I’m not an adult, YOU ARE”, written on January 2, 2020

    Twenty-four hours into 2020 and I’m off to a roaring start. [HA] Yesterday, I watched a season and a half of Nashville and ran the dishwasher. Today, I started my day like a champ – with a cinnamon Danish and white coffee from Pret – and followed it like one too, with a burger for lunch, blistered padrón peppers for an evening snack, and popcorn and Terry’s chocolate orange slices for dinner.  

    I’ll be thirty-one in a month and if this manages to be the year I start eating like you’re, well, supposed to, I’ll be as shocked as the rest of you. I blame my professional upbringing in retail for these dietary habits, but honestly for the most part I’ve just got a small appetite, boundless energy, and zero patience for cooking. This’ll be me until somebody shows up and makes me do otherwise. We all have our categories: what we care about, what we really care about, and what we aggressively ignore because why prioritize responsible life habits and consistency? That’s some impossible nonsense.  

    I’ve used retail and its utter lack of consistency as an immaculate crutch, a spotless excuse to never have a routine or habit of any kind. The being at work part of my job is genuinely the only part that feels routine. The when of it varies, constantly. And the way I’ve handled it, from age twenty-two onwards, has done anything but.  

    Don’t misunderstand me – I do feel like I’ve changed in the past ten years. I have for SURE changed. But mostly at work. At home, outside of work, I’m the same girl that spent her days off at Peet’s, working on a novel, feeling fulfilled by the very act of sipping an iced coffee and typing on my laptop. I’ve spent many a moment being grateful for what I’ve come to realize is the ease of my satisfaction. I am almost always one day off, one stunning playlist, and a blank word document away from a good mood. It’s just something I was born with. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that this ease of happiness has some pretty fatal drawbacks. Well, not fatal. But not thrilling, either. For example, because it’s so easy for me to be happy on my own, when I’m not really accomplishing anything, it staves off any true will power to, y’know, accomplish ANYthing. And this is where the annual hoo-ha around resolutions rears its black and white, bullet-pointed face. 

    See, I’ve always been more of a May girl when it comes to the winds of change. Spring is my time when I feel the world is fresh and my spirit is lifted by the mere promise of potential…whatevers. It happens to me every May without fail. New Years? Eh. January is the least magical month out there. It’s a grim, Christmas-less winter month, filled with short days and shit weather. It carries its own sense of promise in my realm of retail, where there is genuinely nothing more satisfying than consolidating every remaining speck of holiday product onto three grimy shelves and gutting your gifting displays in favour of spring product. But then even the spring product feels like a lie. Because as clean and fresh and new as it is, you take two steps outside – in Sacramento or London – and you wonder why you’d even bother. Grim is a rather nice word for January. 

    So I’m envious of people that can engage with the concept of a fresh start this time of year. I’m always biding my time until May, looking down my nose at the stacks of other people’s goals around me, and think ha! What a farce. Because I know that May is when shit gets real. It’s when I decide that anything can happen and I, me, empowered and fiercely independent and badass, am the one that’s going to do it. creative [Not sure why the word creative is here, alone and uncapitalized, attached to no larger thought or sentence. Sounds about right, actually.]

    Unsurprisingly, the best part is that every year, when I get there and beautiful May arrives with its fluttery feels, glorious sunshine, and deeply moving vibes, literally nothing will have changed. I’ll get weepy and motivated and “COME AT ME, BRO” about my new fierce goals, when the truth is I’m useless at resolutions no matter how much my spirit thrums in protest, no matter the calendar month.  [Still and likely forever a true statement.] 

    Titled “Happy Sunday afternoon”, written on October 11, 2020

    Happy Sunday afternoon, where I, Kathy, go out of my way to plan a beautiful few hours of studying by the Tower of London, only to forget the stylus for my Surface, with which I highlight all the things.  [This made me laugh out loud and was what first tempted me to share these posts.]

    The year I moved back to California from Norwich was the year I became obsessed with the album Sigh No More. That was nearly ten years ago, but no matter how much time passes, those songs instantly transport me. For me, music has a nostalgic pull to rival scent.  

    I would put on that album when I started commuting to the World Market in Natomas, and it kept me company every shift until two months later, when on Christmas Eve, the car radio was stolen from my dad’s gold Ford F150, leaving my home-burned copy of Sigh No More stuck in the player for all time. But those two months were enough to sear it delightfully into my memory, triggering visions of the otherwise unremarkable drive down Madison towards 80, when I would wonder how long it would be until I was back in the UK. So when Winter Winds came on shuffle this morning, and its first line carried me through a cider-crisp fall day on my way to the Tower of London for a day of studying, it felt like a nine-year circle coming to a close.  

    I like to think I excel when it comes to finding the good in a bad situation. My natural rampant enthusiasm has run gleefully unchecked for most of my life. It’s not quite toxic in its positivity, but it does have a rather dangerous [This one fades off, the sentence incomplete, before ending with the following ominous statement three lines later.]

    It’s a very strange feeling, when you’ve actively identified as an extrovert your entire life, to realize you deeply enjoy spending time alone.  

    Titled “28March21”, written (unsurprisingly) on March 28, 2021

    For the last week I was in London, I spent my most anxious moments looking forward to one thing: the feeling, fresh from a scalding hot shower, of falling asleep in a hotel bed at the end of my eighteen-hour journey. Normally I’d just go straight to someone’s home upon arrival back in California, with the biggest concern being a potential flight delay or the fifteen-second panic when I put my passport in the wrong pocket of my coat. But this time around, there was far more to be worried about. COVID results. Flight cancellations. Shipping issues. So it was with an immense sense of relief that I went through the very bizarre process that is traveling internationally during a global pandemic with no issues at all, arriving safely in San Francisco to be picked up by my mom and deposited at a local hotel in Sacramento for quarantine. I took my scalding hot shower and slid into the sheets and was out within five minutes, blissfully fighting off jetlag for an impressive eight hours before waking up the next day at seven in the morning. It was a weird experience to herald in a weirdly not-weird period of my life – I doubt I will ever get to be on a London-to-San-Francisco flight with only 36 other passengers on board. I also doubt I’ll have to coordinate a similar large-scale international life move, but if ya girl has learned anything, it’s to never say never. [Facts.]

    It feels like the most natural thing in the world to be writing this in Sacramento, from the patio of my best friend of twenty years, despite the fact that as recently as two months ago I was entrenched in a UK-based job hunt. I’m almost a professional when it comes to convincing myself I’m sure of the future, even when it turns out I have no idea what I’m talking about. (Or sometimes I do know, and just don’t know it yet. Like when I write a post called “Roots” detailing all of the reasons I was conflicted and felt like I belonged in California, and then still managed to be shocked when I came to that conclusion out loud less than a month later.) But as difficult as a decision as it was, things continue to happen to validate it. Almost cramping my shoulders from hugging my sisters too hard. My niece telling me I’m annoying because I “keep leaving”, then me explaining that this time I was just going to a different house twenty minutes away. Drinking a bottle of wine and getting to have a conversation in person with my best friend. The taste of an excellent breakfast burrito. And above all, a lack of panic at suddenly up-ending my life for something I never thought I’d particularly envy: good, old-fashioned, stability and support.  

    So there you have it – a few moments in time, unintentionally bookmarked, now intentionally posted.

    In closing, I am very happy to report that I ended up being right all along.

    (I’ll let you decide about what.)

  • Nectar

    Be careful what you wish for, they say. I don’t think they mean it because when you finally get almost all of the things you’ve wished for, you don’t really know what to do with yourself, but that is very much my current 2022 experience. It’s the best kind of complaint to have.

    I’ve never been a prolific writer even when my life was its most exciting or full of motion. Even then, every three months was lucky. Writing for myself is a separate category, one that’s much better maintained (and never shared). I journaled steadily from halfway through my freshman year to my first quarter of college at UC Santa Barbara, and then on and off through about ten different notebooks up through today. I can picture at least three notebooks I have on the go right now, haunting me from various drawers and book bags spread throughout the house.

    But lately I haven’t felt the need to write, which is weird. I don’t like it. So in the same way you’re supposed to push through the unpleasant part of a workout (read: all of it) because it’s good for you, I’m going to push past this and write anyway.

    My job has been fantastic. I’m still very much in what is probably a honeymoon period, but I think most people that have worked career retail and manage to change directions probably have an extended honeymoon period once they land something new. Perhaps one that lasts years. I’m still in awe of so much about my daily life: the view when I pull off the freeway and turn towards the rolling base of the Santa Cruz Mountains, more often than not half-draped in a greying shawl of mist; walking past a name plate with my name on it and sitting down at a desk that is my desk; spending time reading academic papers and researching community partners; rolling onto a gravel parking lot and walking past greenhouses beneath shady, mid-stretch oak trees. Honestly, the only way this job could be better is if it was somewhere in England. Suffice it to say, my honeymoon period is going nowhere.

    I used to be pretty shoulder-shrug about living in San Jose, but I think I’ve officially become a fan. Aaron and I have tracked down a favorite taqueria, a favorite burger place, a favorite barbeque place – though what eluded us until very recently was a favorite Vietnamese place. Aaron loves pho and I love bún so finding one has been a mission. The last one we tried is the highest contender thus far, and I have developed a wild affection for their Thai iced tea. The cheapest gas in the area happens to be next door, and it’s right off 280, so I have on more than one occasion stopped by the restaurant after filling up just to get an iced tea to go. It’s not the healthiest of habits, but as I stated (and was seconded several times) on my Instagram, good Thai iced tea is the nectar of the gods. I’m not about to deny myself nectar of any kind these days.

    Nobody here will remember this, because I wrote it about two and a half blogs ago, but one of the other best things about living in San Jose is how close it is to Sacramento. It’s not right up in it, and it’s just far enough to give me space to live my own life and to have a bunch of other stuff going on (middle school me would probably be mystified by both my Bay Area affinity and 408 area code). I appreciated this on a level the first time I lived here, but now that I have a job that’s a little less involved (and takes that much less energy), I truly love that I can get to Sacramento and back in the same day. I even love that it takes two hours because it reminds me that I don’t mind those two hours in the car and that reminds me of how much I’m like my dad in that way. He never minded going for a drive. In many ways, I think driving was his happy place. Sure, the two hour delay on the day isn’t the best, but I have genuinely come to enjoy those two hours that I get to myself each way.

    I re-read something I wrote during my Peak England life – those precious, golden, pre-COVID days from 2018 to early 2020 that I did not appreciate nearly enough at the time – and was reminded of how much I love to love the things I love. And if I could wish anything for people, especially in these nonstop difficult times, it is to find things that you love to love. I waxed poetic about it at the time (I was having a Richard III moment), but the truth of my medieval-based passion remains. I don’t think that anyone can be truly healthy without having something to care about. And I think that’s part of where my lack of writing right now comes from. I care about a whole lot right now, but it’s not as introspective anymore. I definitely shared my life in England with people (so many amazing people), but I also did a lot of my solitary-ing that I did throughout a lot of my twenties. Now here I am, living a shared life, and I need to be intentional about making time to write. It doesn’t come as naturally as it did when it was my go-to day off activity. But I think it’s really important for me to start prioritizing again. Because I love how much I love writing.

    I think my nest-y vibes have overtaken that up to this point. (They stepped right up to the plate when I was clearly done sorting out my Roots feels – happy one-year anniversary to that unintentionally life-changing post, by the way!) Why be writing when I can be out at Goodwill or a consignment store or Antiques Colony or visiting Sacramento? Sure, the house is definitely not finished (stares off into the distance, hoping that if I concentrate hard enough, the sofa that I hate will spontaneously burst into flames and make room for a beautiful replacement sofa from Albany Park or West Elm or Sabai Design). And sure I love visiting with my family (love you guys even though I don’t think you read this). But these words that I’m typing? I love them too.

    So let’s make some room.

  • Nest-y

    I am not going to start this post talking about how I’m sitting in a coffee shop, because damned if a quick scroll through my last several posts didn’t show me that’s almost exclusively what I write about.

    If you follow me on Instagram or speak to me on even a sort-of regular basis, you’ll know about my fairly big news. I mentioned last time I wrote that there was some potentially really exciting stuff going on. Usually that’s almost a guarantee that said really exciting stuff will immediately implode and lead nowhere at all, but I’m here to tell you that THIS time, the opposite has happened.

    One week ago today was my last day as a retail manager.

    MIND. BLOWN.

    I promised myself in 2019, somewhere in-between ringing up customers and getting sale stickers stuck on my arm at the Anthropologie in Spitalfields, that it would be my last Christmas in retail. Christmas 2020 did see me in a shop (or it would have, if we’d been allowed to be open), but I wouldn’t quite call it retail, since my role at UAL helped me vastly expand my skillset and provided so many opportunities outside of working a salesfloor (and, COVID or no COVID, it was 9a-5p, Mon-Fri). I didn’t immediately think I’d be breaking my word when I joined back up with World Market last May, but when I took a store manager position in Santa Cruz in June, it did seem a bit like the death knell of that promise nearly two years past.

    Nothing extraordinarily bad happened while I was in Santa Cruz. It just served as a reminder of how nothing about retail had changed, but holy shit, I certainly had. I kept looking at my resume and how close I had been to achieving something different with my career. At the end of July, I decided enough was enough. I started applying elsewhere.

    By the end of August, I’d gotten nowhere. The holiday season was closing fast, and so one Sunday, out of respect for my district manager – who I’ve known for nearly a decade – I made myself a new promise. Christmas 2021 would be my last in the business and I needed to do the right thing and wait until the new year to pursue another job. And because life is life, roughly 24 hours after I made myself that promise, I heard back from a job application I’d sent out the week prior for easily the dreamiest and most ideal of any of the jobs I had applied for.

    When I wrote last, I was two interviews in and a week away from hearing that I got the job. I write this now having finished my first full week as an Experience & Program Coordinator at a historic house and garden. So it’s been a really nice seven days, even if I am still in disbelief half the time.

    Of all of the amazing things that have happened in those seven days, one of my favorites happened yesterday when I was walking to my car with my new manager. She was asking me how everything was going, and said she hoped it hadn’t been too overwhelming for a first week. I told her that at the risk of continuing to gush about this job (shockingly, I have already gushed quite a lot), I couldn’t be happier. I gave her an abbreviated version of how relieved I was to feel like I’ve finally found a role and career path I can settle into without having to constantly wonder what’s next, because I’m so unsure. She turned to me and said, “Yes! Roots. It’s so great when you finally get to start putting them down.”

    I thought immediately of what I wrote last January, a very wild nine months ago, about roots. The exhaustion of the what’s next and my inability to do anything but feed that vision. But I think, dare I say it, I’ve sorted out that rootless self.

    And now it’s time to get a little nest-y.

    I’ve started drinking more tea than coffee again, I’ve hung stuff on the walls, I’ve started to build a home with another person. Please stay tuned for more of the total craziness that is the fact that my life, for once, will not be so crazy anymore. I’m thirty-two, chill, and pretty fucking thrilled about it.

  • Ragrets

    During the pandemic when I worked from home, I sat at the dining table in my apartment (usually across from my roommate Luisa). When lockdown (somewhat) ended, it occurred to me that I could just as easily do the same for when I needed a place to write. It wasn’t the same thing as having an office or a writing room, but it could have worked. It was fairly spacious, the apartment had beautiful natural light and airy high ceilings. And plus, the coffee was way cheaper than any shop I’d yet discovered.

    But try as I might, I could not make it work.

    Ever since I’ve had the ability to throw my laptop in a bag and drive somewhere, I have become almost physically incapable of accomplishing any significant amount of writing within the confines of my own home. I am perpetually parked elsewhere, pretending I need the white noise of strangers around me to write when the reality is I always have my headphones in so I can’t even hear them. I guess, white noise or no, something about strangers and being in a public space holds me more accountable than my own self-discipline.

    I write this because I don’t quite have my own writing room yet, but I do find myself living in a space I plan on being for a while (ha!), which has enough space to at least have a designated writing table. Or, a table I can write at that’s not in the same room I’m usually hanging out in. And I find myself wondering if I’m actually going to use it at all. Today I’m forcing myself to because I’ve already spent enough of my day off throwing money at the local economy and it’s time to be indoors where I can’t do any further damage. In future, though? The jury is still out.

    Because I’ve been such a good little consumer lately (all thrifted, vintage, or marketplace’d), here are a few things I’ve bought lately and a few that I’ve passed on but still think about enough to potentially go back and get.

    I Made a Mistake: A 1960’s American Airlines stapler, which, as my sister pointed out, had likely stapled together thousands of paper boarding passes during its time at an American Airlines airport gate in Boston (or so we assume based on the hand-written tag). It still stapled remarkably well because old things are almost always better than new things, and when you did staple with it, the experience was a cool 10/10 on the Satisfying Things to Do with Your Hands scale. It was $35 and honestly I would rather have that stapler than the $35 I have because I did not buy it.

    No Ragrets: A Lane cedar chest from the 1960’s, complete with faux drawers and brass handles for said faux drawers. I spent twenty minutes going through a bag of mystery keys with the saleswoman before we realized it had a fake lock that you just pushed in like a button to open. The chest is in the living room, already housing all of my old notebooks and high school journals, as well as a stack of blankets and the fisherman’s sweater I got Aaron for his birthday even though we’re at least a month away from even vaguely fall-esque weather. (It was 95F/35C on the day I bought it. Ew.)

    I Made a Mistake: A vintage Heiwa Habataki Pachinko machine (Google it, please), which for the record, only one person on my Instagram poll thought I should not buy. It had superb colors (think salmon-y pinks, neon greens, creams, yellows, and metal details, since I bet you did not Google it), reminded me of Plinko from The Price is Right (and thus of my Grandma P), but served no real purpose. As our home is in no place to purchase $200 items that are purely for display (even if Aaron said he was pretty sure he’d be able to get it working again, yay for handy humans), I had to say no. I still think of it once a week.

    No Ragrets: A ceramic fruit bowl that was an impulse purchase when buying a set of jars for the tea and coffee stored on our kitchen countertop. It was sitting right at the cash register (what a funny way to describe a white Square unit and an iPad) and something about it said it needed to come home with me. Now it sits at the center of the kitchen table and is 90% responsible for reminding me to buy (and consume) fruit, since as nice as it looks on its own, it looks twice as nice when filled with apples.

    What else has been happening? Well. Some potentially REALLY exciting stuff. And some already exciting stuff. For example, I’ve taken on a digital volunteer project for an arts center. It’s been nice flexing my old not just a shop muscles and being back in Mail Chimp again because nothing brings my younger self quite as much joy as creating a newsletter. (Honestly. Starting around age 7, one of my favorite hobbies was creating materials for fake businesses that I would make up and then do nothing with because what are you going to do with a promotional brochure for the Electronic Master Club, Kathy? You are seven and that company does not exist.) So even though this is just a temporary project, it’s been great to have in the background, and there will hopefully be more to come. If nothing else, at least the Arts Center is real and can go on LinkedIn. Thanks for nothing, Electronic Master Club.

    And the potentially exciting stuff? You’ll have to wait. (Just like me. I would share if I could.)

    I suppose that’ll do for now, kitchen table. I’ll take these 980* words and call it a sweet victory.    

    *This was 831 on my first go. Credit is due to the Best of 2012 Spotify Playlist that got me here.