WHILE THE CATS ARE AWAY

Artist's Date #32: three days by myself

a marshy sunset under a bridge on the way back from Sonoma on Sunday

While O + A were in San Diego I did exactly one domestic task, unless you count making myself scrambled eggs with blue cheese. The cheese was leftover from making Sohla El-Waylly's celery salad from her cookbook, Start Here, which I would say was my favorite cookbook except for the fact that it’s really my only. The salad was amazing, like all of her recipes and I ate the whole thing out of the bowl by myself, which she also recommends. When I whisked the blue cheese into the eggs on Monday I noticed that it was the first thing I had done in the kitchen for three days. Then I did the one domestic task I mentioned above which was to take out the trash. 

I’m glad that I took out the garbage. But if the other members of my apartment weren’t due back the next day, I probably wouldn’t have. It was very very fast transition from martyred mother mode to manic sloth mode which is my preferred and natural state. Here’s what else I did when I had three days to myself in no particular order:

1) Spent an hour talking on the phone to a friend uninterrupted from the couch in my living room. My friends and I talk a lot: sometimes it’s from my in the closet where I put a cozy chair in the back and I have two doors of privacy between someone who knocks. Other times it’s in person while holding a coffee cup and wearing yoga pants and walking somewhere as green as possible in between pick-up and drop off. Other times it’s while I’m driving up to school and have 25 minutes for at least half a conversation. But a full conversation is one hour and I can’t really fully listen unless I’m on this couch that I’m writing from now. It’s pink or lavender or lilac — ok, let’s just call it purple — and I bought it during the pandemic with money from the government. It’s become such a metaphor, for claiming something that I don’t feel I deserve, that my friend Nancy, who I mostly talk to from either under the covers or in the spare bathroom, will often counsel me to “pink couch-it,” when I hit a wall with what to do next.

2) Took an unplanned trip to Sonoma to meet a person I’d only talked to on the phone, only to spend the rest of the day with her in her new house, which I only casually knew she had bought. This sounds dramatic but it how it went down was natural: we texted, trying to make a date to get together in the future, which for two busy people is harder than it seems, before landing on TODAY as a good. 

On the drive up there I straight-up gasped at the exact color combination of yellow rolling fields, blue sky and white cloud that came up on my left side as I left San Francisco behind. The memory of being young in Vermont on a hill with dry grass hit me smack on the face and I covered my mouth as the feeling of being completely satisfied while being completely alone rose up in me like something so old I’d thought I’d forgotten. 

We met at a roadside diner she recommended which in Sonoma means eating an amazing chicken sandwich and the best mayo-less coleslaw I’d ever tasted. There was also the color jade, which, painted on the walls, gives one the feeling of nostalgia for a kitchen you never lived with and light from the windows shone in through a big green glass vase on a shelf. The curtains had horse and cowboys riding them and the fabric was cotton and rough and bunched together. I had a coffee late in the day and she did not which explains my extra-chattiness only a little.

We said goodbye only to realize that there was a whole other reason for me to have come to visit. I spent the next hour in her studio, looking at all her work-in-progresses for a show she’s been getting ready to present, in her new city, where she’s moved only recently, after many years in LA. Let’s categorize this as “getting to know someone new” which I almost never have time to do anymore and want to do again badly. 

3) Ate out or ordered in three other times at random times of the day: just WHEN I WAS HUNGRY, eating, WHATEVER I WAS IN THE MOOD TO EAT, without spending a million dollars because I was also trying to feed a child a real meal at a restaurant. One of these meals was a lobster ravioli which was decadent and delicious and hit the spot. Another was a meal I ate on my couch as if my couch were my office and reading books were my job. It came so fast that I almost thought I had made it in a parallel universe, where chicken and radishes and lightly dressed greens came from my fridge that was clean and organized and well-stocked. 

4) Drove too fast on the freeway while listening to loud music and then missed my exit. This happened almost immediately once I was left alone. It had been two hours since I said goodbye to Olive, while sitting on the purple couch and her standing in front of me so we saw each other eye to eye. “Call everyday,” she said, as if I were the one leaving. I am so intense, I thought, as I drove too fast past the reservoir on the right, lying serene under a mess of green mountains. I can not slow down, I thought. A car in the lane in front of me during a merge was driving at a normal speed and I almost didn’t notice. When I did I became grateful for noticing and made one of those empty promises to a half-present sky.