Essays written from or about my corner of the world.
Twice a week, I babysit for an Israeli family. My job is to pick up their six-year-old son and take him home from school and play with him for two hours. This kid loves lavender. He grabs fistfuls from the bushes on the Queen Anne sidewalks and puts it in my face, then in his pocket.…
"Do one thing every day that scares you"? Eleanor Roosevelt didn't say that. It was probably Mary Schmich, a Chicago Tribune columnist who wrote it in a 1997 essay. Whoever it was, the point stands. Last week I noted four times I did something that scared me. None of them, I had done before. Some…
When you eat alone, and the restaurant is empty, you can type on your laptop and eat a whole pizza. And drink a beer too. I drink the Umbrella IPA, which I read on the wrinkled tap list is redolent of “gooseberry and bright fruit... balanced by a pale malt character.” After it's gone, I’ll…
December 25 The longest week is December 25-31. Christmas is Christmas, and then it's the bottom of the year's exhale until the door of the new year opens. Everyone is digesting their food. It's when you finish up things that are nearly done, theoretically. I know a funny name for this week, but it's inappropriate…
Continue reading ➞ Five Days of the Longest Week of the Year in Retrospect
Today is my 27th birthday. My mom just called to tell me that 27 years ago, she didn’t know if I was a boy or a girl, and I was six days late. I shuddered and said "sorry" but she said it was okay. Last year, I made these resolutions for my 26th year: Go…
It was my fault. Unfortunately, unlit road and dark stop sign and invisible intersection notwithstanding, it was entirely my fault. I bought an americano, proofread my essay about Poo Poo Point, and drove out of La Conner (where I always half-expect to bump into the writer Tom Robbins) for ten minutes, if that. No alcohol…
I finished working at 11, so I put some cheese, an apple, and a day-old pistachio-blackberry croissant in the passenger seat and drove to Issaquah to hike to Poo Poo Point, a knoll on the side of Tiger Mountain. The Washington Trails Association is adamant that Poo Poo Point is named for the train whistles…
Geographically speaking, I have caved in on myself. They say life does that in fall and winter. It caves in and shrivels up and burrows underground. It slows and hunches and reflects. I don’t like winter, so I think about all the places I went when it was warm. Most of the year, I've not…
It was 2006. I was a pasty, pubescent giantess in the throes of what I was working up the badassery to call my goth phase, and Ashley was petite, tan, popular, and sporty. I knew her as the cool girl who took my sophomore-level English and biology as a freshman, and as someone who would…
How do you write about the suburbs? Right now I’m staying in Puyallup, in the big house I grew up in. It’s got new carpets and my room is painted and we have different dogs than when I was a teen, but it’s the same house. Everything is familiar, so what is there? My days…
Just like that. Just like that. Just like that I’m wearing a turtleneck, soaking my feet in hot water scented with spicy healing oils, listening to rich orchestral music, on my second massive American mug of tea, burning a candle, the lights low in the house full of things that are mine. There are root…
I wanted to eat the yam in my cupboard for lunch, so for breakfast I walked down the road to a bustling coffee shop across the street from Starbucks. I selected a bagel and a twelve ounce drip and I tried to apply for a job, but the internet was down. So I seized the…
Chelsea the Writer 