The Slow-Cooked Sentence

Things I want to stop doing: make dinner, lose weight, fill up a gas tank, get in shape, love social-media posts, dread climate change, wonder what Trump’s tweeting, wake at 3 a.m. to discover the car missing, worry at 3 a.m. where my 20-year-old is, learn Dutch, stay in touch, send holiday cards, buy groceries, think for my kids who’ve decided to outsource that part of their brains, repair a leaky garage, suspect one son and his girlfriend of making out in the basement, discover them spooning, grind coffee, wipe counters, suspect second son and his girlfriend of making out behind the closed bedroom door, open the bedroom door, ask that the door remain open, share a bathroom with five others, remind my 11-year-old to change his underwear, budget, kegels, floss, remind my 11-year-old to wear deodorant, drink more water, ignore someone at a street corner asking for cash, marvel at the obsolete nature of cash, think someone should build an app for panhandlers, feel shame for the ungenerous act and capitalistic thought, open the bedroom door, listen on repeat to Bad Lip Reading’s “Seagulls! (Stop It Now),” listen to trumpet practice, listen to “Seagulls! (Stop It Now)” for the trumpet, wish I could think for Trump when he’s awake and tweeting at 3 a.m., open the bedroom door.

Don’t tell me that life’s a path of self-discovery. Don’t tell me I could’ve take Frost’s less-traveled road as I sit in traffic created because the city closed a main arterial street three weeks before opening its replacement. Don’t tell me that we’re all on a journey toward self-improvement, self-actualization, self-awareness. I ain’t in’trested.

What I want to do is wear a yellow vest. Not to demonstrate in France (though I raise my fist for economic justice, and admire the practicality and safety features of the protesters’ emblematic attire). No, I want to wear a yellow vest in order to join the six jumping in and out of a work van parked in the middle of the street. Because, here at Northwest Third and 80th, we’ve all paused to let them eat pizza in the intersection.

• Seattle braces for traffic hell with closure of elevated highway.
• “Seagulls! (Stop It Now)” by Bad Lip Reading.
• Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.”
• Yellow Vests movement.