Zoe Nebraska Feldman
Monday, September 30th
12:00 AM - 1:30 AM
Watched season 1 thanksgiving episode of Succession. I started a rewatch a few days ago. One of my favorite things to notice about this show is the way that Kieran McCulkin never just… sits. He’s always crouching or bouncing or leaning or scrunching up his legs on the chair. Maybe it’s a little queer-coded, maybe it’s just what his body wanted to do, but it’s such a beautiful physical representation of how insufferable and immature his character is. I eat that shit up. Then I ate a bowl of vanilla ice cream with Old Bay - just try it. It’s sweet, it’s salty, cold, creamy, crabby and it reminds me of The Charmery ice cream store in Baltimore - where I’m from. Be warned, the last little soupy bit is weird.
Went upstairs to start getting ready for bed. Went back downstairs to get water after the double realization that I hadn’t had nearly enough water during the day and also hadn’t peed since earlier Sunday morning.
Layed on top of my covers, demolishing the increasingly strange ice cream nonsense and looked through other AYIP entries to get inspiration for tomorrow which was then today. My cat, Nugget hopped on the bed. He always makes a high-pitched yet grumbly “harumph” when he lands on anything.
Woke myself up to write this down, brush teeth and wash my face. My skin feels cruddy since I’ve been wearing a lot more makeup than usual over the last 4 weeks.
Back to bed, pjs, under covers and under the pile of clean clothes I put through earlier. Nugget makes biscuits and curls up on top of the pile. I read a little more of a fluffy book my friend Tasha lent me: “how to date men when you hate men.” It’s… okay. The other book I’m reading right now is The Body Keeps The Score. But that one’s not so much bedtime material. There is a theme, though, I guess.
6:45 AM
With a grand total of 4.5 hours of sleep, I stopped my alarm going off. My alarm is bird sounds that slowly increase in volume. It’s been my alarm for the last 4 years because it’s fairly gentle and it’s difficult for me to be mad at birds.
I scrolled. It was kind of a day off, kind of not. For the past month and half, I’ve been working on a play at the Lantern Theater. Mondays are our day off, but that’s when I try to re-engage with my other jobs and also catch up on laundry and sleep.
8:10 AM
Gathered myself out of the house to walk 30 minutes to Tin Can in Port Richmond where I left my car on Saturday night. I planned to stop on the way to grab a coffee and I brought my headphones to “read” more of The Body Keeps the Score. After maybe 3 trips up and down the stairs to get my shit together, I found an additional $20 bill in my pants pocket and remember finding it in a puddle on Saturday night at 4 am (so, Sunday).
8:12 AM
I walk past Monkey Club and see my car parked right outside.
8:15 AM
I stop at Fiore and get an oat cortado, a pistachio cornetti and a peach & almond cornetti for my friend Lilly who I plan to meet outside of Pig Iron Studios at 9:15 (so that we’ll actually get there at 9:30). We take a weekly acro conditioning class at 10:00 AM to strengthen our cores and eventually maybe get a little closer to doing a handstand. A handstand would be an amazing party trick. I’d be unstoppable.
I headed back to the house and took a half-shower (no hair, just body).
9:15 AM
Left the house to walk over to Pig Iron.
Around 9:35, I met Lilly on the steps and we gabbed about what’s weighing on our little hearts. We decided to not go inside and just take a walk.
Heading back to my house to pick up a ring light tripod so Lilly could film her first(!) self-tape later in the day, we passed some guys unloading maybe 25 dishwashers and other appliances into one of the new developments. I yelled “APPLIANCE DAY WOOOO” at them and then asked if I could have one. They said yes. I didn’t go back to claim.
We also passed a tree that’s twisted in a way that reminds me of a cover of a Brothers Grimm anthology, a small blue scrunchy thing that becomes a sensory toy for 30 seconds, and the rooster that lives around the corner from me.
Lilly and I stopped at Forin for a coffee.
10:30 AM
Lilly and I spent an hour putzing around the living room/kitchen. There’s a Trivial Pursuit from 1981 that my roommate Rich has been trying to get rid of. We read a couple questions and my favorite was: “What year did the lights go out?” The answer: 1965. What happened? No idea. I refuse to google it and ruin the joke.
11:15 AM
I drive Lilly back to her car, but stop to take this picture first.
I love my neighbors’ mummy. The mummy has made a daily appearance on my close friends story. Over the past week or so, I’ve grown quite fond of it… It’s very… expressive.
12:00 PM
I drove back to my house and logged on to work remotely. 2 hours late. I’m a project manager for a small CGI company but right now we have a break in the action. I do some market research and brainstorming and wonder if anyone actually finds meaningful connections through LinkedIn.
3:00 PM
I “logged on” to my other remote job - producing with a company that sticks more with traditional commercial photography & video. We checked in about a potential job for January, my upcoming move to Brooklyn, general wellbeing, and an ongoing Notion project that I’ve been neglecting over the past… 2 months.
6:00 PM - 9:30 PM
I procrastinated taking a real shower until 6:45 PM and then I walked 2 blocks to go rehearse for a live reading of The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963) with Theatre Contra. Plugging here that the reading is at TMom’s at 7 PM on Tuesday, October 8th. I left feeling a little lightheaded from laughter, 1 white claw and 1 can of something dogfish head, and lucky to be connected to people who enjoy sitting together doing bits about birds in transatlantic accents.
9:30 PM
I walked out with my friend Adam and try to peer pressure him into a game of pool at Monkey Club. Adam’s one of the best people I know but his tragic flaw is he literally never comes out. My roommate Rich comes to MC instead. I absolutely sucked but Rich wound up playing really well. Underdog.
We headed back home after 3 games around 10 pm. I opened the window before going to bed.
Zoe’s middle name is legally Nebraska. Zoe loves Philly for the bike lane by the Delaware, running into people, and the clown renaissance. @zopointoh
