Studio Update 30

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Hello my friends—

Studio Update 30– wow. Perfect for someone who this week got a little closer to 30. Me.

It has been a while. I know. It has been an exhausting set of weeks, where I have worked long hours on weekdays and find myself with no energy to think or even repeat my own name. My weekends have been sunny days of bliss that I try to hoard to myself, meaning I try to touch technology (and sit) as little as possible.

The nights have been cool and bright. The moon has been an intruder in my bedroom these last nights. I love it when it peeks through the blinds. Isn’t it magical that no matter where you are in the world— you see the same moon as someone else on the opposite end? We all live under the same sun and sleep under the same moon. The nights have also been quiet, other than my weird neighbors upstairs, who by some miracle of God and the heavy footsteps have revealed they haven’t murdered each other.

My little girl singing neighbor was prancing in the pathetic strip people call a yard here, in her bright red dress. Singing of course. I sort of felt bad for her. It’s a literal dirt strip. I believe every child should climb a tree. No updates on that potential bunker. (I will be climbing a tree soon to find out what is happening down there…)

It was my birthday week! I had an amazing quarantine birthday filled with calls from family and friends and an EPIC and DELICIOUS indoor picnic complete with bright ginormous flowers from my boyfriend. He is the best. It was so lovely. Mexican food and his company— both my favorites.

I won’t bore you with a list of all I have learned in my almost-30 years. Instead, I figured I would make a list of the things I don’t understand or know. This may be more fun and less cliché.

The things I (still) don’t understand or know:

1. Why certain letters are silent in certain words. Why include them at all?

2. How the internet works.

3. Is there a headband that doesn’t give headaches? (I have yet to find one)

4. How to preserve dried flowers. (Gonna interrogate the woman at the farmers market)

5. Why the tomatoes at the supermarket don’t taste like the ones on the farm.

6. Where do all the socks go?

7. How certain women wear heels all day.

8. Why certain movies and TV shows are so popular.

9. The people who don’t like Taco Bell.

10. One-sided “friendships”.

11. How Richard Gere looked so good in the 80s.

12. People who don’t like corduroy.

13. Why Blockbuster doesn’t exist anymore (it could totally still be a thing).

14. What has happened to journalism.

15. What neighbors do to be so loud.

16. People who like to spend time with coworkers at the beach or drinking. No.

17. Fake brick wallpaper (hated it since I was 11 and will always hate it. Tacky.)

18. How people earn the income required to buy property in NYC. You basically had to get here decades ago or earn in the same bracket as Beyoncé.

19. People who do not wash their dishes.

20. People who lie.

21. Why my bladder never fully developed (Though not medically proven, I swear its growth was stunted).

22. Why people choose suffering instead of discipline when it comes to health.

23. Why it takes so long to wash and dry my hair.

24. People who have never laid down, full body, across a bench. It’s an amazing view of the sky.

25. People who finish terrible books or movies (is it the peer pressure or extended hope?).

26. How people pay thousands for a purse. Bizarre.

27. Why eyeliner fades sometimes and other times, it smudges (it’s the difference between looking sick and looking like a drug addict).

28. How humanity survived without eye drops in the past.

29. The power Pine Sol has to transport me to my childhood.

Here we are. Almost 30. Excited. Happy. Satisfied. And always looking forward because the best is yet to come.