croissantbae

[croissantbae]

I feel I will eternally be on the quest for the perfect hat that provides full sun coverage

[croissantbae]

“It’s fiction! Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives!”

The Covenant of Water

[croissantbae]

“He loved you, she says. He didn’t know the first thing about me, Sylvia. We were allergic to each other. Never had a real conversation in our lives. Foods the tissue up and puts it in his pocket. Oh, you take conversation too seriously, she says. Life isn’t just talking, you know. He looks at her while she replaces her hand on his arm. Thats a cryptic remark, what does that mean. She’s laughing. Prettier then. But what does she mean: life isn’t just talking?”

“But a persons outward appearance does not define the boundaries of their inner feelings, Ivan knows. Plain, unappealing people are by no means exempt from the experience of strong passions.”

“She feels his tongue move between her lips. Drawing away slightly he murmurs: sorry about my braces. I hate them so much. She tells him not to apologize then he kisses her again. It is, of course, a desperately embarrassing situation - a situation, which seems to render her entire life meaningless… pressed against her his body is thin, intense and shivering. And what if life is just a collection of essentially unrelated experiences? Why does one thing have to follow meaningfully from another?

-intermezzo by sally rooney

[croissantbae]

And that’s when he wondered about god, and whether there was a personal god who cared about every living thing on earth or a much more generalized god who had created the universe, and he thought: it doesn’t matter, it is the same. He understood that this would not make sense to people, and so he did not even tell Margaret about it. But this understanding came to him with great clarity one day. And he remembered it.

- Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

[croissantbae]

“May you not go around the world looking to fill what you fear you lack with the flesh of another human being. That’s part of what this story is for.”

—

“Five minutes before the class, I checked my face in my rearview mirror. Why do some straight women need to be beautiful in front of other women? If men were wiped from the planet, how long would that need linger? At what point would we just focus on becoming strong?”

—

“There is so much power in the way we obsess. If we could only harness it. If we would only redirect it.” [thinking of a few people for this quote.]

“We both laughed. There is no better invitation in the world than women laughing.”

“It’s funny to think how many corporate dollars are spent so that one man can fuck one woman.”

“I wished she would do or say something that wasn’t perfect so I wouldn’t have to kill her.”

Animal by Lisa taddeo

[croissantbae]

“The sunlight was white and Beverly Hills, whereas in Topanga, it was orange and gaseous. I was learning that Los Angeles is made up of distinct countries that are merely men apart. Not even countries but ecosystems. The homeless be differently from town to town.”

“There was a time when I wanted to have a lot of money. I wanted the best of everything because I come to realize that expensive things were truly made better, lasted longer, and helped you live longer. Expensive cleaning products did not cause cancer. Chanel nail color lasted at least four days longer than the kind they used in regular salons.

All of that was still true, but now I thought of life differently. But I wanted most in that moment – and what I felt might be the last year of my life – was to be poor, with a child. To go through the drive-through at a fast food restaurant and order two items from the secret menu plus a Coca-Cola to share. Sit in the Dodge, both of us in the front seats. Pretending to eat delicately, like we were at a queens tea party instead of in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant. The yellow splash of light from the sign would illuminate the crud in the cupholders. In the morning, we would eat milk and biscuits, the kind you can get for free in the breakfast. Rooms of travel lodges.”

Note from me: this passage shows the narrator hasn’t spent much time with kids. She also makes me feel like what the mom of Eleanor oliphant might have been like.

[croissantbae]

“But I had come to Los Angeles for a reason. I’d stayed in New York for too long when I should have tried to find Alice. New York is a lie, I will tell you. Each city is its own line, but New York is a whopper. I don’t expect you to listen about that. everyone needs to learn it in their own time.”

Animal by Lisa Taddeo

[croissantbae]

5/19/24

There are so many memories slipping through my fingers bc I’m not writing them down.

Tonight we all shared a blanket. At one point Dani fell asleep. Naya got up to get water and checked how much blanket Dani had. She said she has so much more and started pulling. And I said Naya no she doesn’t. Don’t make it a thing. Go to sleep. She pauses but then obediently does. When she falls asleep I get up to pee and I look over at Dani and she has SO MUCH BLANKET. I felt immediately so bad for Naya.

[croissantbae]

I never understood why my mom would say oh we couldn’t clean. Or the house is so messy when I know she has been cleaning all day and night for whatever the occasion is. But now that I’m an adult I get it. You clean clean clean but no matter what the house never actually gets clean.

[croissantbae]

5.1.24

There has been a shift in my perspective towards my hometown. It was part of our housing search but something about the idea of moving back to [ ] was so off-putting to me. To go back to where I grew up. People would ask me did you not like growing up there/ and i said no i loved it. lol. which is true. But going back felt like I was not growing, not changing. My kids would grow up in my likeness, which seemed weird. I wanted us all to experience something new, something different. So we searched around this place and that. But as time has gone on, now I'm like fiercely / patiently waiting to move back to [ ] lol. It seems dumb to fight it. Our kids go to school there. We go to the library there. We go to the mall. We're literally there 5 out of 7 days a week. It seems like a great place to raise kids.

Jason said that he'll be in a panicked rush to get the kids to school so that drive is unpleasant, but when he comes back, he'll listen to his music and just have a moment of loving life, being like wow this is my life. And I had one of those today. I dropped off the kids pretty late, but on my way back home I turned on Zico, I'm Still Here, and had a lovely time, just thinking how great life is.

Everything about Dani and Naya is cute to me. They're just endlessly cute. I've said this before but the curves in their face (forehead, cheeks) are so cute. The way they say things. The thoughts they have. The things they cry about. Even the things they complain about. There are some things though, that worry me. I worry constantly that we're spoiling them (and there's a quote saying raise your children and you can spoil your grandchildren. spoil your children and you'll raise your grandchildren).

[croissantbae]

4.13.24

I interviewed students today for scholarships and every time I do it, its always so good. Everyone was commenting on how it felt like there were an exceptional number of great scholars at the interviews this year (despite the fact that the # of stellar essays we read seemed low). During so many interviews I felt like crying but I had to hold back my tears. And someone said that they actually cried during theirs (because the student was crying. her mom was there with her and she was crying about how much this meant to her, to her mom. just hearing that made me want to cry too).

Every time I get to know these kids the more I'm determined to raise a shit ton more money next year. I think we actually raised quite a bit this year compared to other years but next year I want it to be even more. We were trying to award $20k scholarships and two people advocated for their students and that meant two of the lower scored students were at risk of losing their $20k scholarship and it made me sad thinking about how there's just not enough to go around for all of these kids in need.

[croissantbae]

“I thought you were taking the pill.”

I was embarrassed.

Yes, but then I decided not to.

Why?

The years are passing.

And the book you’re supposed to write

I’ll see you later.

You’d better.

I’ll do what I can

You have to do the maximum.

[croissantbae]

"I had fled, in fact. Only to discover, in the decades to come, that I had been wrong, that it was a chain with larger and larger links: the neighborhood was connected to the city, the city to Italy, Italy to Europe, Europe to the whole planet. And this is how I see it today: it's not the neighborhood that's sick, its not Naples, its the entire earth, its the universe, or universes."

[croissantbae]

4.11.24

I took dani to go pee before sleeping. 30 mins later she comes back out and says she has to go pee again.

me: dani are you serious? are you just making it up? are you lying?

dani: (in a whisper) yes

[croissantbae]

4.10.24

Oh my goodness. What a FORCE. ELENA FERRANTE!!!!!! The ending!!!!!!!!! Of book 2. I need the next book asap. Like I may go to Paik’s house tomorrow to get it lol.

[croissantbae]

March 7, 2024

I hate discovering how fragile my body is. I slept wrong and now a random muscle in my back hurts exceedingly so. I’m afraid to sneeze because every time I do it pinches this muscle and I feel like I’m being stabbed a little bit in the back. my head hurts, and if I lie down the wrong way, on the wrong side of my body, it exacerbates the pain. what is this? I’m only 36 years old.

[croissantbae]

1. Reading my brilliant friend really makes me want to visit Italy.

“That year it seemed to me that I expanded like pizza dough. I became fuller in the chest, the thighs, the rear.” 😂

2. I really don’t want our kids to get bigger. I do and I don’t. They’re so perfect and innocent right now. Jason said he heard a girl (looked like she was 10?) ask another boy, do you think I have a crush? And then before he could even respond she said I do have a crush. Ugh