I really want to tell you all the things going on in great detail but these fucking pain medications remove my brain. I’m nodding off or irritable as hell or sitting here staring at a wall. This appears to be my full range of options.

Lies. All hail Netflix.

It’s like somebody has taken a thick sheet of fog and just stuck it over the parts of brain that feel things and produce thoughts. See? Even my metaphors suck. In other news, been seriously wondering how the hell artists made music and wrote books on opiates. HOW. It must have taken so much more work, to push through the fog, to power through the misery. It almost breaks my heart more, and I’m taking only a tiny portion of what an addict takes. HOW THE FUCK.

Anyway, I can’t formulate complex thoughts but I can probably just list random shit that’s happening. So let’s do that.

1. For those of you who don’t follow me on social media, my back exploded (perhaps not the official term but it’s the one my surgeon used and it’s definitely what it felt like) into my spinal column, crushing the nerves running down my spine, resulting in a five-day hospital stay and emergency spinal surgery. I’m three weeks out now, and walking better, but still limp and my left leg is mostly numb and tingling, which is fun.
2. It’s not actually fun.
3. Because God is hilarious or things are just this way, we were in the final week of moving out of our house when I was admitted to the hospital. You know the hellish stage when you’re just gathering shit by the arm-full and throwing it into boxes thinking surely it will never end and there’s no hope ever anywhere? Yeah, Mac got to do that alone, while I was an hour away in the hospital.
4. So when I got out, we were living in my mother’s house. That was strange.
5. Also, I have to say, though I didn’t talk about it online really at all (another topic to discuss, probably), I had chronic back pain for about five years before this. It got worse every year and before the disc blew, I THOUGHT I was in the most pain I’d ever been in. And then it blew and I really understood what pain is. Anyway, a couple of weeks after the surgery, I got up and took a shower and got dressed and made my kids lunches then drove them to school and the pain I knew like air, the one I had to breathe through every day just to make it through my morning, the one that sometimes, randomly, brought me to sobs while my kids looked on and I felt like I just couldn’t to do it anymore, was gone. I put my socks on and my underwear on and bent down to help Arlo with his pants and it didn’t hurt. I sat in my car near the school parking lot and cried. Hope comes in the strangest ways, doesn’t it? That was the worst part of that pain: THERE WAS NO WAY OUT. And here I am, mostly out. There’s residual sciatica pain, but compared to how I lived before, gimme a fuckin break.
6. We are selling the best, warmest, most perfect and cozy home we’ve ever had. It feels surreal and sort of nuts to walk away from a home like that. We knew it was too small when we bought it five years ago, yet somehow leaving it never felt real. And it’s breaking our hearts. A few days ago I went back there alone, to say goodbye, and I cried and kissed its walls and said “thank you,” and I looked at the walls that held my family. I could still feel us there, laughing and crying and yelling. It was where Arlo was born. It was where George was a toddler and Ava and Rocket became teenagers. It was where we held each other after my grandmother was murdered. It was where our dog died, and we wept again. But that home? Fuck. I never passed a day there wishing I wasn’t there. I never walked in and thought, “Oh, this place again.” It will always, always be our family’s home, and I imagine it will be the place we all remember when thinking of the wild, young, growing days of our family. “Thank you,” indeed.
7. And yet, we look forward to what’s to come, and that’s getting so fucking real too. We have settled on living in Haarlem, which is about a fifteen-minute train ride from Amsterdam. We have the kids enrolled in schools there. IT IS SO FUCKING WEIRD THAT IT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING. Every now and then Mac and I look at each other and say, “Can you believe we’re really doing this?” It was a pipe-dream for so long. A fantasy. “Let’s move to Europe.”
8. And now it’s real, but the details aren’t. Sure, we know what city we’re going to live in, but we don’t know much of anything else. He and I are going over there April 29 – May 8 to hopefully find housing and check out the schools in person, but holy hell. WE JUST SHOW UP AND THEN WE FILL OUT OUR APPLICATION FOR A RESIDENCY PERMIT WTF.
9. That’s the process. Speaking of cool, weird shit, I’m doing two book events while we’re over there: One on May 3 in Amsterdam at the American Book Center and one on May 6 at the American Women’s Club in The Hague. Please, please come see Mac and me if you’re around.
10. We are planning on leaving America in early July, and until then, we’re staying with my mom. She’s an absolute saint and we all get along, I mean, as much as families “get along,” but seven people in a three-bedroom house is rather interesting.
11. The six-years of chronic pain culminating in a blown disc and subsequent surgery, the recovery, house-selling, transitional housing, move to the Netherlands, it’s all wild and weird and wonderful and what I’m learning – again, because sure as hell isn’t the first time – is that sometimes things have to blow up to be rebuilt. They just have to be fucking decimated before the new can rise. Someday when my head is clearer and I’ve had some space from it, I’ll write about all I’ve learned from this back injury, surgery, and recovery. I’ve spent my life powering through – just do it no matter what – and I’m pretty sure the lesson here for me is that I need to slow the hell down, listen to my body, accept help, take some fucking better care of my mind and body.
12. Oh, and Rocket spent three weeks in Paris, visiting also Edinburgh and southern France. He watched Notre Dame burn, and met his new baby cousin. What a strange world all this is, huh?

I am so, so grateful for all your kind words and supportive messages. You really are the goddamn best and I feel it.

Here we go.

heavily medicated waiting for surgery. the filter is fixing a lot, here

this shit blew my mind.

FIX IT, motherfuckers goddamnit

********

The paperback version of my book comes out May 7!

So fucking excited to see a physical copy at a lower price ($13.54 most places).

There’s an interview in the back that you may find funny (I fuckin hope). I interviewed myself. I’ll share an excerpt in the next couple days. Wheeee.

(And if you liked my book, please please maybe mention it again to your people, and/or review it on Amazon or Goodreads. Books like mine, that don’t get much media attention, survive fully on word-of-mouth. Thank you thank you thank you.

Well, I’m just going to say it: We’re moving to the Netherlands.

We are selling our house, getting rid of most of our stuff, and moving to the Netherlands this summer.

I’ve started this blog post about ten times and keep giving up because I know you’re going to ask me “Why?” and I really want to explain why, but it’s hard. We’ve been contemplating this for years and I don’t know how to wrap ten thousand hours of conversation up in a single blog post.

And no matter what I say, out loud or to myself, I am acutely aware of how lucky we are to do this, how we are nowhere near the people threatened by or suffering the most from what’s happening in our country right now, and our reasons for leaving sound a little like a blend of Eat Pray Love (puke) and some sort of DITCH THE CUBICLE FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS weekend workshop in Missouri.

Our reasons are small and material and vast and, dare I say it? Spiritual.

Fuck.

Fine.

We want to live. We want to do something. We want our kids to witness a reality that isn’t American.

Our lives aren’t working. No. They are just working. That’s it. We are surviving. Full stop.

We work and drive and pay and sleep and work and pay and drive and look to the future for relief. Someday. Someday it will get easier and better and we won’t feel like we are spending our ONE SINGLE FUCKING LIFE working and paying and driving in circles, all of it in circles, still living paycheck to paycheck, so we can turn 65 or 70 and maybe retire, hoping we make it that far, ten or twenty years before we die, thinking finally Oh good, now I get to do some shit.

When I say this, I think of how damn near all of us live this way. I feel the privilege of even contemplating a different life. My life as a writer. A house we can sell. No dependents we need to stay and take care of (as in, ailing parents). A family that I’m 99% sure would buy us plane tickets home if we were about to hit the streets of Amsterdam.

I don’t think a life lived in the crushing grind of late-stage capitalism is a wasted life, a life less lived.

What I think is that Mac and I are tired of being trapped in a life that works on the outside but costs us everything we’ve got on the inside.

We want to try something else, somewhere else.

We have always wanted to not live here for some portion of our lives, but when we had kids five minutes after we met, we gave up that dream. When we visited Spain and France in 2017, it re-planted itself in our foreheads and refused to leave. It spun around our brains but always fell dead against another thought: But we can’t do that. How would we do that? We have four kids. We aren’t trust-fund babies.

Eventually, we began to wonder who gets to decide what we can and can’t do with our lives, what’s “immature” and “irresponsible” versus “mature” and “reasonable.”

WHO GETS TO DEFINE WHAT MAKES SENSE IN OUR LIVES?  Who convinced us that this is life? And why and how did we buy so fully into it?

When you’re on your deathbeds, you’ll never regret going. But you may regret not going. Those were the words of my friend Lisa that did us in.

We’re going on a freelancer visa. Mac is going to make & sell custom steel and wood furniture (as in, starting a new business) and I’m going to continue writing and teaching.

I don’t think everyone can do this, wants to do this, or needs to do this for “fulfillment.” I don’t think we’re braver or more profound or harder workers than anybody who wants to do something like this but isn’t or can’t. I don’t think we are special and to be quite honest I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite as exposed as I do right now, telling you this, which is why I’ve waited so long.

Because I can’t control what others do with this narrative. Of course I can’t control what the internet does with any of my words, but normally, by the time my fingers hit the keyboard, I know what I think and I know what I want to say and I am prepared to stand in the truth as I see it, knowing, of course, that I could be wrong, but that’s another topic.

Normally, I have considered and thought through and feel comfortable standing by what I say.

But I don’t know shit about this. I don’t know if it’s the “right” decision.

It’s messy and I’m afraid.

And the truth is, if we fail, we’ll move back. What else can we do?

And so, here I am, telling you this, and inviting you to hang out with us on this fucking adventure. We are packing and selling our house now. This is the first place I’ve ever felt is a real, real home. That’s another post, but we’re saying goodbye to the happiest home we’ve ever had, the brightest, most comfortable place, even though there’s a triple bunk in one bedroom and Arlo’s dresser is in a hallway.

I don’t know how to leave my parents. I don’t know how to leave my friends. I don’t know how to say goodbye to the roar of the northern California ocean and the redwood trees and Lake Tahoe and the vineyards of Sonoma County. There’s so much here for us.

Mac has never lived outside of this county. Not country. COUNTY. We don’t speak Dutch (I know everyone there speaks English but still).

What if it all goes wrong? What if we just can’t do it?

But what if we didn’t try?

the trip that did us in

****

If you read my book, you’ll know this was a dream of mine since I lived in Spain in 2000.

Fuck it, here we go.

No matter how many times I attempt to bend my brain around it, I cannot for the life of me comprehend why those of us on the left feel compelled to vehemently attack each other over which candidate is the most perfect ever when what we’re fighting is a steaming pile of kleptocratic dog shit hellbent on deconstructing democracy.

Can dog shit deconstruct democracy?

Clearly, yes.

We are fighting against the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States but sure, let’s definitely bring up that one thing Dem candidate #267 (that’s how many there are, correct?) did in 1974 that was super un-woke and really pissed you off.

I don’t mean balanced analysis. I love that shit. I’m talking about the diehard shit-slinging based on…what? Something. Personal preference. Every one of our candidates is flawed, and every one is better than Trump.

Every single fucking one of them is better than that guy, so yay us we don’t have to hate anybody for liking a candidate we don’t like. We don’t have to freak out and attack each other.

This should be the most chill primary season ever.

We should just hang out and vote for whichever live body presents itself as the Dem candidate in the general. In the primaries, VOTE FOR WHOEVER THE FUCK YOU FUCKING WANT.

There is nowhere to go but up.

We are at the bottom. So, what are we fighting about again?

Here are my questions for a Dem candidate:

• Do they refer to NBC, CNN, The New York Times and all other media that dares critique the GOP as “the enemy of the people?”
• How do they feel about random pussy-grabbing?
• Speaking of which, do they believe it’s a “very dangerous time to be a man?”
• If they want to critique a political adversary, do they deconstruct that person’s ideas or make up catchy, often racist nicknames like “Crazy Bernie,” “Pocahontas,” “Lyin’ James?”
• Do they view people with opposing views as “adversaries,” or do they see conflict and debate as a cornerstone of a healthy democracy?
• If somebody suggested the government rip babies from their families, cage them, then traffic them into evangelical orphanages somehow connected to Betsy Devos, would they agree or disagree with this plan?
• Do they believe bears wandering onto campuses is a critical problem among schoolchildren or are they more concerned about, say, kids getting murdered in their classrooms?
• By “tax break for the middle class,” do they mean corporations will continue to pay zero taxes, the 1% will pay less, and the middle class will pay more?
• Who does this candidate rely on for intelligence: Rush Limbaugh or, um, United States intelligence agencies?
• In general are they cool with the rule of law?
• On the ever-pressing issue of healthcare, does this candidate believe people should have it or like nah just the rich people?
• Should students spend their entire lives paying off student loans at 7% interest because America can’t afford to provide free education but also Amazon can make $11 billion in profit and pay no taxes?
• HOW DO THEY FEEL ABOUT ALL CAPS TWEETS and the use of stunningly Random Capitalization?
• Authoritarian leaders around the world – e.g. Putin, Jong-Un, Orban – tyrants or mentors?
• Does this candidate refer to Mexican immigrants as “vermin?”
• How about inventing fake national crises?
• If pressed, can the candidate speak in full, coherent sentences?

Do I really need to go on? I feel like I don’t.

Why the fuck are we sitting here shredding people into oblivion for supporting Harris or Sanders or Booker or the goddamn fucking fire hydrant across the street?

The fire hydrant doesn’t grab pussies. It can’t even attempt to sell nuclear arms to Saudis.

Is it cool that my main question for a candidate is: “Are you an entirely trash human?”

Is it cool that the bar has been lowered so far that I’d settle for partially trash human?

No, of course it isn’t cool. Of course we should be enjoying some bullshit rhetoric from multiple candidates on both sides, weighing their arguments and forming decisions while watching staged inflammatory debates of nonsense.

But no, we’ve been robbed of that circus. Instead we are staring down the barrel of four more years with Racist Trash Clown and his Band of Criminals.

So again, I ask you: Who fucking cares.

Let’s be friends. And get the hell outta here together.

NOWHERE. TO. GO. BUT. UP.

****

In my book I am less political but probably equally “offensive.” High five.

I distinctly remember being a teenager and thinking my mother was the most ridiculous human in the world with her constant “worrying.”

“Call me when you get there,” she’d say. And then I would nearly fall over in shock at how “dramatic” she was.

Or when she would ask me to be home by midnight and I’d roll in at 1:30am and she’d tell me that she had stayed up, wondering if I was alive, and I would fly into just a touch of rage at her desire to “control me.”

I remember my eye roll. As if she didn’t trust me to live in the world. I have it handled, Mom.

That’s what my eye roll said. That’s what my yelling said.

Also it said: “I am an asshole.”

(I was terrible. My parents were saints. The end.)

It was the morning I stood in the doorway and told my daughter, Ava, who’s seventeen, to “be careful in the fog” that I knew I had become my mother.

It’s really poor visibility. Leave early so you don’t have to drive fast. Don’t tailgate. Don’t speed.

I wanted to tell her all these things. I wanted to low-key beg her to listen to me. I willed myself silent on the barrage of guidance I wanted to pummel her with. I allowed myself just one “It’s dangerous to drive in the fog. Please drive slowly.”

Oh, and: “Text me when you get there.” I did it. I went there. I went “text me when you get to school” because of a heavy blanket of fog.

I never understood my Mom because I didn’t know that the fog dropping onto the world drops on your baby, too, who got her driver’s license only six months ago. I didn’t know the fog is a blanket over her eyes, too, and you think about all the times you’ve driven in the fog, and how it’s her first time, and you think maybe let’s just wait until it clears, while also knowing this is ridiculous and you should really pull it together. 

I didn’t know that every New Year’s Eve is a million drunks waiting to plow into my baby while she cruises home listening to her favorite Beatles song.

I didn’t know that every screaming ambulance within earshot brings with it an instantaneous mental calculation of each child’s coordinates, that even though you know your daughter is nowhere near that ambulance, you wonder. Just for a second, you wonder. You calculate.

I didn’t know that the world becomes, against your will, against your intellect and better judgment, a landmine of threat, and even if you’re reasonable, a stone-hearted analytical type, the type of person who rarely cries, you get a little fucking weird.

You hold it inside to not freak your kid out. You allow yourself one “Drive safely,” and a kiss and “I love you,” followed with a “Have fun” because the last thing you’re going to fucking do is teach your kid that the world is a thing to be feared, to be tiptoed around, to be cautiously and barely lived.

But I’m a mother and you’re my baby and you’re new at this.

I watch you drive away. I watch you head out the door at 10pm to come back at midnight. You always respect your curfew. How did my parents survive me ignoring it, and before cell phones? 

I always wait for the sound of the front door – opened, shut, locked – the dog hopping off his bed to greet you, your face in my doorway with a smile, or a “Goodnight, Mama” from the hallway.

The sound I could never understand until I became my mother.

A rite of passage, I suppose, this learning to live in the in-between, a part of me running around loose and wild for the first time, in a world that terrifies and delights me.

I watch you drive away in the fog. I smile when you remember to text. I smile at the roll of our eyes.

We were babies.

*****

***

I am so tired of America demanding I not believe that which is front of my own eyes.

I’ve written about this before, about the gaslighting of America, but my god, it’s coming at us from the fucking left, too.

Let’s talk about those Covington boys. Let’s talk about the sneering video and then the counter interpretation and then the counter interpretation to the counter interpretation. Whatever.

I don’t want to recount the details in excruciating detail because it doesn’t matter. IT DOES NOT MATTER. Yes, I understand some Black Hebrew Israelites were slinging terrible slurs at the #MAGA teens.

And that’s wrong. Yes. Excellent. Thank you.

I also understand that this has no material effect on what happened there, other than to give Trumpers and white middle-of-the-roaders everything they need to frame those boys as victims and uphold the white patriarchy they embody.

We all saw that teenager’s sneer. We all know that grin, because it’s not new. Those assholes aren’t new. I know them. You know them. We all went to school with them. We encounter them daily still.

That is the shit-eating grin of white supremacy.

At this point you have to be downright delusional to argue that Trump supporters are anything other than:

1. Outright racists; or
2. Accepting of racists as long as it brings them something they want.

And the line between those two is thin as hell.

Okay, so we see a group of Trump-supporting youth sent to march for “life” (hahaha) or, in more accurate language, against women’s reproductive rights, and then we see them chanting and blocking and sneering at brown people, and moderates are like let us not jump to any conclusions.

Motherfucker the conclusion has already been jumped. IT JUMPED TO ITSELF. The conclusions were jumped at the appearance of the red #MAGA hats.

At this point, it is unequivocally true that wearing a Trump hat is screaming into the world: “I AM AT THE VERY LEAST COOL WITH RACISM.”

So get the hell out of here with “Let’s not jump to conclusions.” Those are tiny misogynistic racists acting like tiny misogynistic racists who will become big misogynistic racists just like their parents, Brett Kavanaugh.

Yes, both parents are Brett Kavanaugh.

The willingness of people to show up for these boys. To minimize their racism. Why? Because people were mean to the boys?

Is the entire context of this situation – namely, boys screaming I AM A BIGOT AND LOATHE WOMEN’S BODILY AUTONOMY – erased because they were called names?

Once again, we bring knives to a gun fight. We are so fucking quick to let them mostly off the hook. We are so quick to see them as victims and declare that we just shouldn’t “ruin their lives!”

These are Hitler youth and we’re worried about their futures.

We are staring into the face of fascism and saying “Let’s just hear out both sides.” We are staring at babies in cages demanding the officers have a chance to explain. We are Donald Trump saying surely there are some “very fine” Nazis. We are getting angry that Antifa broke ATM machines during a white nationalist rally. We are yelling at #BlackLivesMatter protesters for shutting down our freeways.

These boys did not happen in a vacuum. They cannot be separated from the social situation surrounding them.

And those hats, those boys, hold all of it. All of that context.

They are pussy-grabbing.

They are “Why is the term ‘white supremacist’ a bad thing?”

They are “brown people are dangerous.”

They are babies in cages.

They are “laziness is a trait in blacks.” – Trump, 1999

They are “shithole countries.”

They are remove access to birth control but also abortion but also you need to sleep with your husband at all times.

They are “that rapist has such a promising future ahead of him.”

They are the endless lies streaming out of Trump’s mouth.

They are the deconstruction of the free press. 

They are the government shutdown and government officials calling it a “free vacation.”

They are the trans military ban.

They are the shit-eating grins of white supremacy, and we saw it with our own fucking eyes, and instead of recognizing this, people are concerned about the boys’ feelings, with making sure we aren’t mean to them, that we get them every benefit of the doubt, that we protect their fragile little selves.

They made clear where they stand when they put those fucking hats on. Why are we so hesitant to make clear where WE stand?

They’re over there screaming “I hate brown people!” and moderates are like, “Oh, honey. Were those black people mean to you? I get it, sweet boy who looks like my son, you were overwhelmed. It was complicated.”

Oh, you were praying for your safety around those mean black men? TOTALLY GET IT NOW, JOSH.

You think the Trump-sycophant GOP is telling everyone not to jump to any conclusions about brown people? About women who say, “I have been raped?” (It’s a very dangerous time for men, you see.) You think they’re extending grace and decency to the children ripped out of their mothers’ arms at the border? Are they respecting Americans while they feed us endless lies to further their nationalistic, authoritarian agenda?

I’m not saying “They did it to us so let’s do it to them.” What I’m saying is that we need to stop playing nice while these motherfuckers are happy to let us die, to kill us, to decimate democracy, to remove my daughter’s rights over her own body.

Fuck the expectation that I allow these assholes a way out from themselves because some PR firm wrote an adorable letter stating his shit-eating grin was actually the face of a humbly praying, scared young man.

I am tired of not calling this what it is: Racists acting like racists, gleefully.

We will gaslight the hell out of people to protect white patriarchy. All we have to do is flip the narrative to turn the white man into the victim and boom! Miracles happen! Now #MAGA smirk guy is all over TV, adored across the land.

No more unearned “grace and courtesy.”

I have an idea: If you want grace and courtesy, stop supporting a neo-fascist who refers to human beings as “vermin.”

If you want grace and courtesy, speak out against what your party has become. Speak out against this racism.

Sure, not every Trump supporter is an overt white supremacist, but every overt white supremacist – KKK, neo-nazis, white nationalists, proud boys – is a Trump supporter.

Mere coincidence?

Nah, it’s because that is the party, the platform, Trump himself, and a person wearing that hat is loudly declaring they are just fine belonging to the party of Nazis.

I don’t care that they’re teenagers. They are the face of the next wave of everything disgusting about our country, and we’re over here worried about paving the way for them to succeed. Actions have consequences, and all these boys learned, as well as all the boys watching them on TV, is that they can be race-based bullies and not a goddamn thing will happen to them.

In fact, they will be coddled and celebrated.

Can we please for the love of god stop being so fucking “polite,” stop playing by the rules in the name of some faux wokeness we’ve invented for ourselves? Can we recognize the part of ourselves that defends white patriarchy? Can we face our own lingering investment in white supremacy and the benefits it affords us?

We need to fucking stand for something, just like they do.

All of this middle-of-the-road false equivalence delicate flower bullshit is partly what got us into this mess. The GOP is a flaming pile of dog shit, but they sure as hell own that pile, don’t they? They have built an entire platform on bigotry but goddamn that message is clear, ain’t it?

The Trump GOP stands for evil but by god it STANDS FOR IT.

Can we do that? Can we be absolutely unwavering in our fight against Trump and everything he stands for?

We aren’t being deep over here in the gray area. We aren’t being a “bigger person.”

Change comes through those willing to stand on the right side of history even if it makes them uncomfortable, and they do it every time.

They believe that which sneers before their very eyes.

****

Hey, hi. I wrote a book, and the paperback comes out May 7, with new content in the back. 

Check it out.