i am grateful for…
1) the memory of this freewriting exercise my friend/teacher lollie had us do in maui: weather reports. literal and metaphorical weather reports. i love that: what’s the weather inside you? what’s the weather in their relationship? what’s the weather of your life right now? etc.
2) making progress on projects that i love
3) therapy
4) kitties! while we’re waiting for the elevator we can look out the window onto the yards below–it’s like living in gattaca, planted on a street with brooklyn brownstones. and there’s one house with a whole bunch of new black and white kittens. i love seeing them all sprawled out on the lawn, overheated and content. and frolicking with each other in the bushes, all adorable-like. if only every wait was so cute.
5) “orange is the new black: my year in women’s prison” by piper kerman. really enjoying this memoir, by a friend of friends.
6) finding mixed tapes in my mom’s basement! there was the “happy b-day mix” from my sixth-grade boyfriend sam; the “happy 18th” mix from kate, who also created the “leftover hippie shit” mix, which oddly mixes the grateful dead, led zeppelin, and bauhaus. also, there was this, made by my own hand: 
classic! (click the image to see what “sex” music meant to me in 9th grade. i especially love how i’ve noted the songs that are “not sexual just sentimental.”)
7) also finding among the mixes the alternate spellings i used for my name for a while, most often: vahliri. yeah, i was cool. bonus extra super cool: for a while i told strangers my name was fira.
8) swimming in potters cove in rhode island. the water is so good right now–not freezing like the atlantic, not balmy like a pool. but yummy and dark and wavy and delicious.
9) joann’s fabrics–one of the boons of visiting suburbia. so many prints and florals and ginghams and stripes and cottons and tulles and fleeces and lace. ah, cheap fabric heaven.
10) summatime!
