the world is a piece of bread

I spent my birthday being introspective. Three decades felt like a good time to take stock of where I am and where I've been, and what I know. I started one of those "30 things I've learned at 30" list but quickly stopped because that felt like too much pressure! Everything I've learned seems too specific to my personality or whatever circumstances I was in to be doled out like advice. Instead, here are 30 thoughts. They  might  resemble opinions, or recommendations, or advice, but they are just thoughts.  Coca-Cola oreos are not good. In fact, all oreos that aren't just regular oreo flavor are not good.  I Saw the TV Glow  is good. (ty Isabel and Emma for the recommendation) Most reviews I saw said that the less you know about the movie before viewing it the better, and I agree. But I do have two things to say. 1) I haven't seen such a visceral movie in a long time. My skin sometimes felt jumpy and I often just could not stop looking at whatever was happe

Sometime around February or March of this year I stopped finishing poems, and sometime around May I stopped really trying to write them.  This was a creative drought. Feeling like I have nothing to say is familiar, but following a fall where I was writing almost daily, I found it frustrating all the same.  A couple weeks ago a happenstance that has happened many times before happened once again. It was a simple moment that roused me to revisit a poem I had started two years ago, in the fall of 2022. What has resulted is an entirely different poem, but the sentiment stayed the same.  Probably this is also not its final version, but I shared it was a friend and they offered a valuable (and perhaps unintentional) edit that, in my opinion, improved the poem vastly. So I am putting it here, mostly to allow this iteration of it a place to live all its own, but perhaps also to open it up to opinions. Which- if you have some- I encourage you to share.  - Cat  Making We’re makers.  Or maybe mod

Friends, I join you now, in the land of the living, having spent the last two weeks traversing grant hell. Eight deadlines parked themselves right beside each other in the span of four days. My brain was functioning, but only just barely. If you have the opportunity to cram all your work deadlines into one week... I would not recommend it.  BUT! Before grant hell, there was a hallowed and sacred event* for the development department...  SLIDERFEST 2024! ~que air horns and massive pyrotechnics ~   What's Sliderfest you may ask?  A work event, put on our calendars two weeks in advance, where everyone makes a bunch of tiny sandwiches- duh!  And yes there was decor.  The competition was fierce and also unexpected. Did we know going into this innocuous day of delicious dishes that we were about to enter into a cutthroat battle for a scratchy, felt, burger-shaped hat? No. Did that lessen our fighting spirit? No, I don't think so.  The contenders were as follows: Bagel Sliders from Je

  Hello blogosphere!  Sorry for the long absence. Much of my spring was taken up with moving and then a real uptick in work-related busyness. But in between those things, I did take many walks and I did  take many pictures and now  I have turned some of those pictures into a tiny zine.  Hope your spring was equally photo-worthy.  Happy Summer! 

 I go to the art museum to wander.  With fully charged headphones and many downloaded albums I am ready to step slowly between mostly empty rooms and pretend this moment is a movie.  But on this trip, I am routinely thwarted. Each staff member says "hello! how are you?" as soon as I enter a room. Like store attendants waiting to pounce. Who allowed this? What are you trying to sell me? I've already bought a ticket!  But I digress.  This does not stop me from my many hours of meandering.  A special Japanese printmaking exhibit still inhabits my mind.    The first thing I love about art museums is prints like this.  Titled Rain B, made in 1954, the colors and angles were interesting on their own but upon learning that it represents rain a small exclamation mark popped off in my head. That is was watching rain looks like!! The raindrops bounce and ping and everything is blue-y green-y geometic-y. Suddenly I feel deeply connected to Chizuko Yoshida (who was 29 or 30 when she

Hello friends!  The blogosphere has reeled me in. I am so charmed by everyone else entries and updates. Here is a decidedly tangential first entry.    I'm cutting up I-79 North, launching myself past roads I see 4-5 times a week, for work, onto roads I see 4-5 times a year, for holidays, or for when the weather reaches a particular type of niceness that makes me long for my childhood backyard and the farm across the street.  I'm moving from the mundane to the familiar.   Aforementioned backyard circa 2021 This is a day trip, a heretofore uncommon occurrence, to my dad's house. The 4 hours there and back used to feel insurmountable, but now that my work commute is 3 hours that amount of time seems... negligible. Funny how the impossible becomes inconsequential with practice. There is something to be said here about the human spirit. But, I am not going to be the one to say it.   After 2020, a year in which I did not see my hometown once, I started some traditions to mark my