Don’t Expect Too Much Of Tapioca Pudding

Please do not let go of the hand of your buddy or you might get lost.

My 30 Days of Anything right now is reading (list at the end of this newsletter) (please buckle up: this newsletter contains parentheticals inside parentheticals, as well as links to some of my favorite childhood books along the way and also lots of legitimate angsty pain about the balcony with photo proof!)

The rules I set are 15 minutes of reading anything that is an actual book or at least not scrolling on Instagram. It’s not hard, in that there are approximately 187 books I’m really excited about in my To Be Read pile, but it’s really hard, in that it takes a lot of inertia to pick up and open a physical book (or raise my arm, shakily extend a boney finger to touch an app on my iPad *boop*) when my resting state is currently that of tapioca pudding. And it takes a lot of attention and non-foggy brain energy, which I may or may not have (I don’t have), to make sense of the little lines and squiggles that make up the English language. Words. Sentences, blast it. Abstract ideas!! Tapioca pudding has no index fingers nor thumbs, let alone brains (although of all the puddings, it might be the closest to resembling brains). It’s important not to expect too much of tapioca pudding.

I’ve got lots of time to (try to) think (too much) about pudding types while I’m recovering from a pneumonia+virus situation. No one really wants to read that tapioca pudding looks the most like the human brain out of all the puddings. Not even me, and I thought of it and then actually wrote it (sorry). But when one’s pneumon-affliction(s) have taken one back to the middle 1800s and all one can do is gently convalesce (cough cough) in front of the fireplace (in the photo above on the bottom left) (it’s electric and has a push-on heater option that auto-shuts-off after 90 minutes – courtesy of my partner’s partner, Erin, who gets me! and also got me a green velvet wingback chair that feels very decadent! where I can sit and wonder about tesseracts!) and wait for Jo March to bring a hot water bottle, some tea, and a shawl to keep one cozy (it’s actually Brandelyn, a heating pad, Throat Coat Tea, and fweaters= foot sweaters, right) one has to be content with what one’s brain (which resembles tapioca) can muster.

Before I launch into this next part of our story, friends, look at how gorgeous the balcony looks. I mean.

So now you’ll understand why, as I rested in my chair this last week, something terrible happened that has cut me to my core. The building came and cleaned out the balcony planter again and I had a front row seat (cough cough).

Some of you might remember my severely maudlin, emo-etic missive (actually a pathetic fallacy monologue assigning feelings to inanimate objects to move you to join me in tears) last time they stripped the planter of everything, even its dirt. If you missed it (probably better if you did), I compared the watering system, broken and left behind in the bottom, now devoid of its soil body, to the bones of a carcass, exposed, blanched, and “forlorn in the heat.” (I’m sorry I can’t link to that entry so you can read it in its entirety, but after four and a half hours of clicking down Instagram memory lane looking for it, I had to call it quits. I’ve been on IG a very long time and they have a terrible indexing system.)

One of the best things about this apartment is its giant balcony, which has been shrouded around the perimeter with long vines, (which are actually ground cover runners draping down from the balcony planter of the apartment above) since the day I moved in, in March, 2020. (They actually existed before I moved in, but in true Elizabeth Bennet (best portrayed by Keira Knightly because Matthew Macfadyen plays opposite her and EVERYONE KNOWS he is the one, true Mr. Darcy) style, I’m the protagonist of this story and time begins when I arrived?) These vines have been documented numerous times by me since then in photos that serve as love letters. I do love a beautiful setting.

Come, look at the vines with me, captive reader. First, look how adorable the vines look through the studio window. Look how they set off the skies while I’m working.

Look how the vine tendrils romantically frame the fiery sunset glow!

Look at these blue skies! Cute clouds! In every one, vines are a huge part of the beauty.

Where, now, am I going to hold coffee and demonstrate how high my hair got over night with the exact same, small smile on my face every morning?

Where will I stand wearing different mostly blue clothes, knowing the vines look spectacular behind me, again, with the same small smile?

Look how the hummingbird feeder looks with the vines! Look!

I haven’t even started on how the vines looked in shadow against the shades. Biting-my-knuckles sexy.

The filtered, dappled light coming through invited so much basking. I’m part wild animal and basking is in my nature. Bonus points for prism-rainbow-basking!! Behold.

Oh, basking? I’ll show you basking when you take is as seriously as you should!

I mean, look at how pleased as punch this mothereffer is to be basking in dappled vine light! This is the highest level of bask!

I have loved these vines so dearly, not just for the opportunity to bask and brood, or because of their tiny white flowers, or because the hummingbirds make their nests there every spring, but mostly because of their ability to make one feel like one is ensconced in a secret garden, deep in shade, surrounded by beauty, which is hard to do in an apartment building on the third floor in any busy downtown in America.

Brandelyn has gone to bat for me more than once to save our beloved vines when the gardeners come round to tidy every year. Two years ago, I looked up from my client on my iPad screen, to see her not exactly yelling, because she doesn’t yell, but speaking heatedly while gesturing passionately and motioning to her phone, offering to take it up with the higher-ups if, for god’s sake, they’d just! stop! chopping! The balcony got bangs that spring, but Brandelyn did manage to save 75% of our vines.

This past year, Bryan, the main handyperson, has been inundated with building water leaks, a couple of which have been in our very own apartment, and as fun as it is to have a pair of giant, extremely loud floor fans going for a week at a time to dry out the carpet every few months, when we learned it was the roots of our very own vines (nay, our upstairs neighborses!) that had grown into the water pipes to survive (because they turned off the water years ago! Forlorn, exposed, blanched carcass bones! Thirsty! Woe!) that were causing the leaks, we “agreed” to let them destroy our beautiful, secret garden in exchange for a coupla hundred bucks to put something pretty out there. I’m looking forward to enjoying the one quarter of a miniature lemon tree that will purchase.

The vine bangs, which I joked about, but secretly loved with all my heart, are really good and gone, and along with them, they just shaved off all the rest of it right as a heat wave hit the west coast. It is barren. Lo, look and behold.

I think both Brandelyn and I are trying to focus on what’s good about what’s left and figuring out where to put our resources for maximum enjoyment. She’s mentioned an umbrella and a chaise, for my delicate constitution in the heat of the afternoons, you see (cough cough). Possibly we’ll add a crimson rug, and yes, why not, tea and quilted slippers (end of chapter 15). But right now, it looks stark and naked (and I can see clearly into all the apartments across the way where people are starkly naked at all hours of the day).

If you’ve read this far, I’m sorry? Just kidding, what I mean is THANK YOU. And here is a list of all the books I’m currently reading in my 30 Days of Anything Challenge, along with links where you can find out more about them.

I’ll be back (when my brain is no longer tapioca pudding).

xLeoh

Ps. As a bonus, here is a photo of one of the three neighborhood crows walking awkwardly, talons gripping the glass retaining wall, grip-slide, grip-slide, surrounded by, yes, beautiful vines that no longer exist. (I never laughed at the crow. I laughed with him. Crow, don’t you know you can fly?)