Little Thing #175: The Display Window at Blue Sky Bridal

I thought this would be a quick little post. Ninety minutes later, I'm looking back and considering all these huge biases and limitations I'm actively undoing by admitting this little love. Wild.

Every time I go on a walk around Green Lake, a small stretch of water ringed with a beautiful 2.5-mile path not too far from my house, I make sure to walk by Blue Sky Bridal. It’s this little boutique that sells consignment and sample dresses, and I can see pretty much everything through the front window: four to five aisles of racks stuffed full with beautiful dresses, the tiny, curtained-off…

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Little Thing #174: Cooking Oatmeal on the Stove

In mid-2020, I spent a few months in an AirBnb near Virginia Beach with my now-ex. We bought steel-cut oats in our initial grocery shop, which meant I had to cook them on the stovetop for the next two-and-a-half months if I wanted morning oatmeal. It’s also a quieter form of cooking than the blaring beeps of the microwave, so I could make breakfast without waking him up. That time by the beach…

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Little Thing #173: The Big Box of 64 Crayons with the Crayon Sharpener in the Back

I always feel a need to apologize after a long break between posts. This writing practice has mostly been for myself, but I am reminded that these are in fact public writings when I see the little view counts and receive the occasional blog-related message from old friends (hey, Yuki!) and new ones (hello, Owen!). So this apology is twofold: once to myself, because this practice is life-giving…

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Little Thing #172: Walking Out

Please excuse the hiatus between posts. I’m receiving more words than I’m giving, these days. Most of this comes from these first weeks of graduate school, where I am reading pages and pages of perspectives about information, libraries, and ethics. The courses are fast-paced, and they are introducing me to more topics, questions, and research ideas than I can keep track of. I am saturated with…

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Little Thing #171: Chicken Earrings

It was one of the fastest decisions I have ever made. Tom and I were wandering around the Fremont Vintage Market, a basement store crammed full to the brim with antiques and vintage clothing. I could have spent hours peering into every nook and cranny, but the lack of air conditioning was a bit stifling on this particular August day. There were several cases so full of earrings that I could have…

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Little Thing #170: All the Shiny Details of a New Place

It’s been almost a month since I’ve arrived in Seattle, and today is the first of my writing Fridays! Since my classes are all on Mondays and Wednesdays, I’ve decided to give myself Fridays for writing through the end of the quarter (which also happens to be the end of the year). My hope is that this writing will be creative, personal projects. It may end up being applications for jobs and…

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Little Thing #169: The Cardinal on the Line (And Other Things I'll Miss)

Last week, I thought about the piece I wanted to write at least four times. All the moving prep (finishing my job, packing my life, hosting a “housecooling party,” shipping my life, throwing out/giving away so many things…) sort of swallowed my time, though. I have forgiven myself, and I hope you’ll forgive me for falling back off the habit for a week. 😊 It was going to be about the cardinal who…

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Little Thing #168: Selections from the Archive

It started with pages cut from American Girl and photos from my $100 digital camera, the first “big girl purchase” I’d ever made. I taped them (and retaped them) in different configurations on my closet door, creating a collage of ephemerae I began to collect from various corners of my ten-year-old life. Old photos, new ones, cutouts from magazines… This organized tangle of pictures and drawings…

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Little Thing #167: Living Inside a Slow-Moving Goodbye

There have been so many moments in the last two months when I wanted to sit down and write. But the busyness of those late-spring-early-summer months when the world is waking up and the number of plans increase with the temperature has overtaken me. Plus, I broke my pinky finger, which makes typing just difficult enough that I haven’t wanted to do it any more often than I have to for work (typing…

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Little Thing #166: Eating a Cake-Sized Brownie with Four Other People at Ten on a Saturday (Day 30)

“What are three words to describe your social life?” Between 2014 (my junior year of high school) and 2023 (my fourth year of full-time work), my social life has changed radically. I went from living with my siblings and having a close group of best friends, to struggling to balance my academic, athletic, social, and work responsibilities in college, to moving to an unfamiliar city where I…

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Little Thing #165: When Friends Fill in The Blanks (Day 29)

“Who can you make happier?” Here is another haiku, because I am tired after spending a lovely night talking to friends and didn’t have any answers I wanted to expand on: My little book asked, “Who can you make happier?” Tyler: “Anyone.”

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Little Thing #164: One-Way Conversations with Haley (Day 28)

“Who would you trade places with for just one day?” It’s been Haley pretty much every year. For those of you who don’t know Haley, she is my triplet sister. She passed away three weeks after we were born, and I’ve grown up with the story of her my entire life. She is in my prayers every night (I address them to her in a kind of letter). I visit the tree we planted in her honor in Atlanta as…

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Little Thing #163: Falling a Little More in Love Each Day (Day 27)

“What ‘type’ of person are you?” This is another stumper. What the heck does this mean? I answered “Type A” several times, but also reflexively mentioned that I don’t like this question or thinking about typing myself. But instead of winding my way through another rambling post about self-image, I’m going to focus on a different variety of answers. In a few more of my earlier answers, I said…

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Little Thing #163: The Jar of Quarters That Give Me Clean Laundry (Day 26)

“How much spare change do you have?” Very, very little. Though I do have many dollars in quarters because laundry in Boston = coin-operated industrial machines in basements. I’m going to be honest, I’m out of steam. Survivor was riveting, work has been nuts, and my brain is focused on things that aren’t even remotely related to spare change. I do very much need to do laundry, though. I should…

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Little Thing #162: Four Proms in Two Years (Day 25)

“Who do you need to call?” I’ve written “Ghostbusters!” nearly every year (including this year, though I think it’s because I’ve memorized this answer and delight in the tradition). Some things never change. But the fun thing about this answer is what I wrote the first two years of this journey: 2014 and 2015. April 25th hosted my very first prom and my very last one. I went to four proms…

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Little Thing #161: A Promising Weather Forecast (day 24)

Staying up late yet again, but at least I saw something beautiful and wrote something I'm proud of. :)

A note about the photo: this has nothing to do with my blog post. I just saw a dear friend perform her music live for the first time, and I wanted to brag on her a little. Find her on Spotify: her name is Casey Greenleaf, and I love everything she’s made. “Is life fair? Yes? No? Sometimes? Not today?” This question has stumped me every single year. I’ve asked all sorts of things in my answers.…

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Little Thing #160: Considering My Career Potential as a Cruise Director (Day 23)

“How would your parents describe you? (You can call them and ask.) This is one of my favorite questions in this book. I’m constantly describing myself: on this blog, during therapy, in conversations with friends, and through my own self-talk. How I am, how I should be, what’s holding me back, how I think everyone sees me… I think about this far more often than I care to admit. But how often do…

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