| 🥙 Pita Pocket 20250731 |
hello, The Pita Pocket; hello, me. it has been a while, hasn't it? well, life gets in the way. i'm sitting on the couch waiting for my laundry to be done. it is 9:34 pm. i am listening to the sound of raven (soph's cat) lick and scratch herself. i am also listening to car blanket by they are gutting a body of water which i just put on a playlist called 'i smell like fish.' trying to capture the melancholic feel of the dog days of late summer. the title is not only a reference to my current job working with zebrafish, but more importanly and intentionally referring to my days in middle and high school spent fertilizing mr. reithmiller's roses. once every four weeks i had to use this fish based fertilizer which reeked.
anyway, i was talking to my grandmother on the phone the other day. she was asking me how i've been, and i found myself expressing gratitude for a whole host of things. a gratitude that i hadn't quite felt or realized i had been feeling before putting words to it. so in the spirit of this attitude of gratitude, i will be doing a good ol' thea-style gratitude journal right here on this page of The Pita Pocket. here are 5 things i'm grateful for since i last checked in here
i moved! in a new spot, in a new location which i love. my brother is right around the corner and the places i love to go out to i.e. dirty frank's, paulie gee's, linedancing, etc. are so close, so accessible, the cherry on top is my room which is the 3rd floor in this little rowhome so the ceiling is nice and slanted which i love. here is a really bad picture:
i am so grateful to live in a place like this, in a location like this. my roommate daniyal is moving in tomorrow, i am very excited. it'll be nice to have someone around after work. well, let's move onto our next thing of gratitude. thank you, my bedroom!
over the 4th of july weekend, henry, thea, and i visited elle in maryland. it was a lovely time. good to be all together again, good to spend time in one another's company. elle's parents are lovely hosts, truly the sweetest. we saw fireworks in frederick. thea's brother luke brought his dog chrome. he was a sweetie. i hadn't seen fireworks in person like that since i was a kid at g-mom and g-pop's.
you can hear henry say at the end of the video, 'like those were ass.' we were having a very intellectual discussion about which kind of fireworks are the best. thank you, fireworks!
i recently went up to my friend will's home for the 2nd biannual work party, where tons friends and family descend upon the farm to complete work projects during the day and party at night. i had an absolutely lovely time working and partying. i dug a nice long trench for an underground drainage pipe to connect to the barn's gutter. this way the area around the barn won't be muddy, the water will drain down into the field via our underground pipe. i swam, i love to swim. but i am most grateful for jazz. i helped coordinate/put together/play in a jazz band which performed for the work partygoers on the saturday night of the weekend festivities. dubbing ourselves 'Barn to Table: Elbow School' (shout out Ric for the name) we performed 3 diddies: manha de carnaval, moanin', and a classic 12 bar blues. i was properly hydrated with some ipa's from the preceding fancy dinner. it was truly a blast. the highlight was henry and i's 'sax battle' as we traded bars while soloing on the 12 bar blues. we are arguably better entertainers than musicians, which was okay for this occasion.
here is the only surviving photo of our performance. thank you jazz!
while at the work party, i reconnected with my friend jake and learned he goes to collage club every other thursday which his twin sister helped start. so, my friend gerry and i started tagging along. i am so grateful for it. grateful for the people, the art, the space, the time. it turns out i love to collage. but really i love gerry and jake. gerry has turned out to be a dear friend after i met him at a concert and invited him along to the work party that very same night. he is wise, kind, interesting, but most importantly just a good egg. one of the best. jake and gerry have added a lot to my post-college life in the city, it's a good feeling.
here is my most recent collage, check out my others here. thank you collage!
okay i need to come clean, i'm finishing this entry almost two weeks after i started it. don't tell anyone tho, just a little secrete between you and me. anyway, i can't remember the fifth thing i was grateful for at the time. i am writing this while waiting for a gel to run at work. i work with fish. i am grateful for my work, for my job. i have a very low stress, flexible job. the hours are great, my coworkers are lovely. mimi often tells me i had a soft landing after college with this job. it's true. i'm grateful that i'm doing a job i more or less enjoy that also lets me live my life outside of it. thank you, fish! with that, i'll say goodbye to you, dear reader. hope it won't be too long till i see you next.