Another pretty productive month for making stuff, despite a lot of weather (in LA, but how?). I chalked a square of my front walk, loosely inspired by a self-portrait by Mabel Alvarez (1891-1985). I worked on an ensemble for Amy Bauer’s Trashion Show in Long Beach in June, mostly using holey stained or otherwise undonatable t-shirts in various ways, assembled with sewing and crochet. More on that as it develops, but I can post an in-progress photo of one piece now. I started about 30 new articles for Wikipedia, focusing on folklorists, Francophone writers, educators, and Ukrainians, for various Wikipedia events.
Saving my pinned thread from Twitter, just in case. It was originally posted in 2017.
Losing patience with folks who romanticize life before mobile phones.
I was parent to a medically-fragile kid for about seven years before I got a cell phone.
When we could find a respite carer, I still stayed in the house–closed bedroom door, took a nap–couldn’t go out of earshot for long.
When he was in a program or therapy session without me, I stayed in the parking lot, just in case.
Getting a cell phone meant I could go for walks by myself. Sit in a cafe and read. Take a class!
Mobile tech lets me be away from my son without worrying that every passing ambulance is for him. Because it might be.
If your class or party or restaurant has a no-phones policy, I can’t go there. I can’t even imagine going there.
So miss me with stories about “wonderful” classroom ideas or lunchtime games that shame or exclude anyone who needs to be reachable.
If I could actually arrange to be unreachable for several hours at a stretch, I would probably spend that time sleeping.
The friends I value are the ones who accept that I might need to take a call, or suddenly be called away from lunch or a party.
And for the folks who say “oh, but, everyone needs a break sometimes,” I say this: if your worries vanish when you don’t have your phone, they’re not like my worries.
And for folks who say “well, I’m sure we could make an exception for you,” I’d rather you made your activity more inclusive, so I don’t have to ask (because I probably won’t, I ask too much already).
Jake was very pleased to enjoy mango sticky rice on the dining patio at Sweet Rice in Gardena, Mother’s Day weekend 2023
In autumn 2018, Jake and I had an “alphabetical lunch” series, where we went out to eat at 26 places, from Amandine to Zacatecas. Places had to have food Jake would eat (so, realistically, a breakfast/brunch/dessert menu), and be reasonably accessible and welcoming to us. We preferred non-chain places and didn’t lean too hard into the Beach Cities, because there are so many amazing options in Torrance, Gardena, Inglewood, El Segundo, etc.
In spring 2023, we did it again, but this time added a requirement: the places had to provide some form of outdoor dining. It might be some plastic chairs set up outside a boba shop, or a full patio set up. But since we’re still not doing indoor socializing, outdoor dining was key. (And honestly? We had no trouble finding 26 places, A-Z, to eat safely outdoors. It’s just not that hard, and it is often very pleasant. I recognize that in some other climates, it might be more difficult, but in Southern California, it’s extremely doable year-round.)
Here’s this year’s series, with links to our Instagram posts from each place. We started this series on April 11 and finished on May 27. We only did one repeat from our 2018 series (Oh My Burger, in Gardena; it’s that good).
It was a very good year for reading here! Forty-four books finished. I stop reading books without guilt; so you can also assume I also didn’t finish a dozen or so titles, and it probably wasn’t any fault of theirs. I have continued to enjoy audio books through Libby and cloudLibrary. Reading (by ear and by eye) has improved my daily early morning walk, and given me some mental space to roam beyond my house’s four walls.
Notes: Just because I read a book and listed it here doesn’t mean I liked it or would recommend it. By my count (corrections welcome), 28/44 books listed are by female or non-binary authors this year. 37/44 are novels (including science fiction, fantasy, historical), 1 is a short story collection, 6 are memoirs (broadly defined). Some are classified as YA, but that’s not something I always notice. If there’s a slight Japan focus in this year’s list, that’s not an accident; daughter moved to Japan over the summer, and I visited her there in November.
These are numbered in more-or-less chronological order (sometimes I read more than one book at a time), from January to December.
1. Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun 2. Sarah Pinsker, We Are Satellites 3. Kimi Eisele, The Lightest Object in the Universe 4. Ann Patchett, The Dutch House 5. Colson Whitehead, Nickel Boys 6. M. R. Carey, The Trials of Koli 7. Carrie Vaughn, Bannerless 8. Zoraida Cordova, The Inheritance of Orquidea Divina 9. Jennifer Bruder, Nomadland 10. Nell Scovell, Just the Funny Parts 11. Yoko Ogawa, The Memory Police 12. Graeme Macrae Burnet, His Bloody Project 13. Victor Lavalle, The Changeling 14. Paul La Farge, The Night Ocean 15. Claire Luchette, Agnes of Little Neon 16. Rivers Solomon, Sorrowland 17. Alexandra Kleeman, Something New Under the Sun 18. M. R. Carey, The Fall of Koli 19. Dawnie Walton, The Final Revival of Opal and Nev 20. Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking 21. Sandra Newman, The Heavens 22. Haruki Murakami, The Elephant Vanishes 23. Will Leitch, How Lucky 24. Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea 25. Erin Hope Day, If, Then 26. Josh Bazell, Beat the Reaper 27. John Gerard Fagan, Fish Town 28. Lauren Groff, Matrix 29. Lauren Beukes, Broken Monsters 30. Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park 31. Susan Orlean, The Library Book 32. Carol Birch, Jamrach’s Menagerie 33. Peng Shepherd, The Cartographers 34. Tana French, The Searcher 35. Matt Haig, How to Stop Time 36. Emma Donoghue, The Pull of the Stars 37. Tochi Onyebuchi, Riot Baby 38. Chuck Wendig, Wanderers 39. Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go In the Dark 40. Jhumpa Lahiri, Surroundings 41. Marieke Nijkamp, Before I Let Go 42. Tara Westover, Educated 43. Marilynne Robinson, Gilead 44. Michel Faber, D
It was a very good year for reading here! Fifty-two books finished. I stop reading books without guilt; so you can also assume I also didn’t finish a dozen or so titles, and it probably wasn’t any fault of theirs. I have continued to enjoy audio books through Libby and Cloud Library. Reading (by ear and by eye) has improved my daily early morning walk, and given me some mental space to roam beyond my house’s four walls. This year I read horror in October, and non-fiction in November, as a #bookstagram thing.
Notes: Just because I read a book and listed it here doesn’t mean I liked it or would recommend it. By my count (corrections welcome), 27/52 books listed are by female or non-binary authors this year. 42/52 are novels (including science fiction, fantasy, historical), 2 are short story collections, 4 are memoirs. Some might be classified as YA, but that’s not something I always notice.
These are numbered in more-or-less chronological order (sometimes I read more than one book at a time), from January to December.
1. Mikel Jollett, Hollywood Park 2. David Mitchell, Utopia Avenue 3. Marisha Pessl, Neverworld Wake 4. Emma Donoghue, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits 5. Esy Edugyan, Washington Black 6. John Darnielle, Universal Harvester 7. Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic 8. Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel 9. Max Barry, Lexicon 10. Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo 11. Max Porter, Lanny 12. Kira Jane Buxton, Hollow Kingdom 13. Adam O’Fallon Price, The Hotel Neversink 14. Dexter Palmer, Version Control 15. John Wyndham, Chocky 16. Carol Shields, Unless 17. Juliet Grames, The Seven or Eight Deaths of Silvia Fortuna 18. Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom 19. Sylvain Neuvel, The Test 20. Sarah Valentine, When I Was White 21. Bernardine Evaristo, Girl Woman Other 22. M. R. Carey, The Book of Koli 23. Jeff Vandermeer, Hummingbird Butterfly 24. Sadaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman 25. Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Plot 26. Kaitlyn Greenidge, Libertie 27. Brad Ricca, Mrs. Sherlock Holmes 28. Kirsty Logan, The Grace Keepers 29. Bob Proehl, A Hundred Thousand Worlds 30. Kate Atkinson, Transcription 31. Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James, The Man from the Train 32. N. K. Jemisin, The City We Became 33. Jesse Ball, The Divers Game 34. Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry 35. Theodora Goss, The Thorn and the Blossom 36. Nell Zink, Doxology 37. Josh Malerman, Unbury Carol 38. Jonathan Lethem, The Arrest 39. Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine 40. Emma Donoghue, Frog Music 41. C. J. Tudor, The Chalk Man 42. Josh Malerman, Black Mad Wheel 43. Alex North, The Shadows 44. Alexandra Fuller, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness 45. Terry Miles, Rabbits 46. Jill Ciment, Act of God 47. Mark Salzman, True Notebooks 48. Atul Gawande, Better 49. Alex Michalides, The Silent Patient 50. Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half 51. Robert Kolker, Hidden Valley Road 52. Julia Alvarez, Afterlife
This was actually done in two segments; I finished A through N before we got a big rainstorm, then it all washed away. I redid M and N, and continued to Z, finishing on January 31. Nell helped me with stitching the two segments together to make one seamless photograph. Here’s what the walk looked like during the rainstorms:
Books for the new year (except I already read one of them in 2020, whoops).
It was a very good year for reading here! Forty books finished. I’m a slow reader who likes long books. Also, I stop reading books without guilt, especially in this year when the mood didn’t always allow for hard reads; so assume I also didn’t finish a dozen or so titles, and it probably wasn’t any fault of theirs. I have continued to enjoy audio books through Libby and Cloud Library. Reading (by ear and by eye) has improved my daily early morning walk, and given me some mental space to roam beyond my house’s four walls.
BG=Book Group selection. (One of my book groups tried to keep meeting by zoom, but… I hate zoom meetings, so I wasn’t too engaged with selections this year.) Just because I read a book and listed it here doesn’t mean I liked it or would recommend it. By my count (corrections welcome), 35/40 books listed are by female or non-binary authors this year. 35 are novels (including science fiction, fantasy, historical), 3 are short story collections, 2 are memoirs. Some might be classed as YA, but that’s not something I always notice.
These are numbered in more-or-less chronological order (sometimes I read more than one book at a time), from January to December.
1. Leni Zumas, Red Clocks 2. Sarah Gailey, Magic for LiarsBG 3. Hannah Kent, The Good People 4. Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere 5. Yoko Ogawa, The Professor and the Housekeeper BG 6. Lauren Groff, Florida (short stories) 7. Liane Moriarty, What Alice ForgotBG 8. Rivers Solomon, The Deep 9. Laila Lalami, The Other Americans 10. Steph Cha, Your House Will Pay 11. Rebecca Makkai, The Hundred-Year House 12. Kat Howard, Roses and Rot 13. Edan Lepucki, Woman No. 17 14. Emma Donoghue, Astray(short stories) 15. Elizabeth McCracken, Bowlaway 16. Helene Wecker, The Golem and the Jinni 17. Amy Meyerson, The Bookshop of Yesterdays 18. Judy Heumann, Being Heumann BG(memoir) 19. Alexis M. Smith, Marrow Island 20. Tara Conklin, The House Girl 21. Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties(short stories) 22. Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January 23. Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs 24. Ayana Mathis, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie 25. Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers 26. C. A. Fletcher, A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World 27. Mira Jacob, The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing 28. Connie Willis, Doomsday Book 29. Ruth Hogan, The Keeper of Lost Things 30. Nicola Griffith, So Lucky 31. Alyssa Cole, When No One Is Watching 32. Mary Robinette Kowal, The Calculating Stars 33. Hilary Jordan, Mudbound 34. Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones and the Six 35. Alena Graedon, The World Exchange 36. John Marrs, The One 37. Kevin Brockmeier, The Brief History of the Dead 38. Peter Heller, The River 39. Aarti Namdev Shahani, Here We Are (memoir) 40. Matt Haig, The Midnight Library
In 2020, I made a lot of clothes for myself (and some for my kids, mostly PJ pants). Late in 2019, at Sewing Rebellion meetings at the North Redondo library, I started learning to use really basic, flexible patterns from 100 Acts of Sewing (#dressno1, #pantsno1, and #dressno3, if you’re curious). This was fortunate preparation for a year of minimal shopping and sewing as entertainment. I made three outfits (fifteen wearable items, sewn, crocheted, etc.) for the Fun-A-Day-LA show in Long Beach last January; that was also a useful push into making and wearing whatever entertained me with whatever was lurking around my house. So there are clothes here made from old yardage, felted sweaters, curtains, and bedsheets. And the scraps from most of these became masks, because… 2020. I’ve been really grateful to have some of these comfortable clothes (especially the pajama pants) in this year of enforced couch time.
Top row, left to right: a crocheted lacy scarf, bloomers made from bedsheets, flannel pajama pants; middle row, left, three outfits for Fun-A-Day LA show; middle right, four outfits made for #100actsofsewingjuly20 on Instagram; Bottom row, left to right: a yellow cotton tunic set with matching hat and mask; two pairs of pajama pants for son; a crocheted “backpack sweatervest” (turns round to fit over a backpack).
Three more chalk art projects on our front walk, from September, October, and November/December. There was rain right after Christmas, so we’ll be starting something new for the new year.
We’ve spent a lot of this past six months doing chalk art in front of our house, because there aren’t any chalk events this summer, and because it entertains the neighbors, and because it’s surprisingly therapeutic. Here are some of the chalk drawings we’ve done so far, since mid-March.
Pennamite 