theyellowdoorpaperie; unexpectedvoyage:
Morocco
Shamlet
Dear C,
I’ll be at camp on June 1 so I’m writing this letter early and queueing it up in case I don’t get a chance to talk to you on the day of.
Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
chris and malissa tack 140-square-foot home near seattle
I need this in my life.
NEED. i need it with all my heart.
Paige Romero
I had coffee today with one of my best and oldest friends who I’ve known since we were 5. We were talking about graduation and job plans and the future and he was explaining his thought process for accepting his future position at a company in Dallas.
“It’s so far away. You won’t be making very much. It’s not going to do anything for your resume.” (his mother)
“If Madelyne can go to Spain for a year, I can move six hours away from home.”
And then he thought, What Would Madelyne Do? The answer: Be happy. Madelyne would be happy. So he took the job.
the ultimate sign of sexiness
I saw the man I could have married today.
I had to a get my car inspected and had a couple of lights lit up on my dashboard that would’ve insured it wouldn’t have passed. My dad knows how a guy who called a guy who said he could take care of it. I picked up my dad’s friend and he drove with me over to the garage where he got it all set up.
The mechanic who came inside to tell me my car was ready was exactly my type. Tall, gangly limbs, curly hair, smelling of sweat and grease with dirt under his fingernails. They say that every girl marries her father and I imagined this is what my mother felt almost thirty years ago.
I didn’t get his number and he didn’t ask my name. We’re not having a spring wedding and I’m not picking out china patterns. I met the man I could’ve married if my life had gone differently.
If I was going to spend the summer at home, I might’ve gone back to purchase the tires he suggested I replace. If I was going to stay in town a couple more weeks, I might’ve been a bit more bold and introduced myself.
But I’m not. I made the decision to embrace the fact that I have nothing holding me back and I’ve thrown myself at my future: a summer in the hill country, a year in Spain, trips to Greece and Morocco and France and Turkey and Ireland in between. As much as I want to be my mother thirty years ago, seeing a dirty mechanic and falling in love, I can’t be because I’m moving forward.
It’s weird when you see these parallel paths, the You that you could’ve been if you’d gone left instead of right. I’m fine with the direction I chose because I know that, while Left might’ve been an adventure, Right will be an equally great one.
But it just makes it so damn hard when dirt is so damn sexy.
The brand new Chacos and I are leaving the Backyard Oasis for the always delightful hill country (with a detour to CStat) #theresnoplacelikehome #hastalabyebye
MY MOM JUST GOT OUT HER BIRTH CERTIFICATE AND FOUND OUT SHES BEEN SPELLING HER NAME WRONG FOR 49 YEARS
Okay this is actually my life except it was sixteen instead of forty-nine.
Daddy cried when he saw my tattoo, said he loved me anyway
Me, with trees #hippieprobs
Is that you Adulthood? It’s me, Madelyne.
It’s making me uncomfortable how together my life seems to be. Earlier this year, I didn’t have enough money to buy groceries and now I’m skimping and saving and will continue to do so for a very long time but at least I can buy my own groceries and make a go at this whole non-traditional employment route.
So I’ve got plans, I’ve got savings, I’ve even got sports bras! (This last is a very impressive feat considering buying sports bras for me means research and strategizing and saving and underwire and cross straps and three rows of hooks and a rocket launcher and buzz phrases like ‘high impact’ and ‘ultimate breathability’) And all of that togetherness makes me very uncomfortable.
I’m coming into this phase of my life where I am grateful. You know when you’re a kid and some family friend gives you a weird, throw-away gift (last minute, no thought put into it at all, more for them than for you?) and you have to pretend to be grateful? I always felt so awful when I got those gifts, not because of the gift but because of the lie.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve told so many lies I think I do it sometimes just to keep myself in practice, but their vulnerability in giving you something thus expressing their emotion for you made me feel uncomfortable for betraying it.
I graduated exactly one week ago. I was overwhelmed with the things my family and friends did for me. I was happy just to have them there and then there were cakes and cards and presents and money and I am grateful. And being grateful makes me grateful because I realize that I’m growing up.
When I was a kid, I wanted too much. I wanted what I didn’t have. I wanted a dog and a pool and a two story house and the kind of lives that my private school classmates had (I also still wanted all the things I already had like four siblings and a loud family). I wanted straight hair and I wanted to look like my sisters and I wanted to not want so many things because when you can’t want that many things and you can never hope to actually get half of them.
It gave me this desperate, ragged-at-the-edges, Never Enough feeling I couldn’t shake or fill. But now, for some reason like age or adulthood or gravity, I feel simply and completely and inexplicably Enough.
Adventure Time with Mick and Mad @mblev #hillcountryheaven #belated #hamiltonpool
Mmm denim #adventuretimewithmickandmad #belated #hillcountryheaven #hippieprobs #hamiltonpool
partybarackisinthehousetonight:
im going to open a literature-themed coffee/dessert shop called “Lord of the Pies” and some of the flavor names will be:
- the grape gatsby
- lime & punishment
- the adventures of blackberry finn
- the crepes of wrath
- the catcher in the pie
- war and quiche
- around the world in eighty buffets
- 20,000 leagues under the tea
- the call of the wildberry
OPEN IT AND I WILL COME.
