Happy belated blogoversary to me...

My "blogoversary" (yes, I insist on calling it that!) passed and I didn't even celebrate. I've been fooling around at Gogolgirl for over a year now. I think it's time to go public. The blog could use a few more comments.

Besides, I have to admit: I'm pretty lonely out here on the West Coast. Last night, before falling asleep, I kept picturing the view from our apartment in New York, the dirty courtyard with its line of garbage bins framed by the cracked white paint of the window sill. The noise of the neighborhood kids outside. Dusk. Haze. The overripe smell of summertime Queens.

I felt as if my heart might break.

(But don't worry about me too much, dear reader. I'm mostly fixated on training my lazy self to get up early enough to read for an hour and a half before work. Every night I have the best of intentions and every morning... well, let's just say the warm pillows and blankets always, always win.)

I haven't written about my bread factory job either. I will.

In the meantime, I continue to devour literature in some crazy/futile attempt to figure out myself, my life:

Excerpts from Rivka Galchen's new book Atmospheric Disturbances are published at Nextbook. I'm hooked. Her style is reminiscent of Murakami and Ishiguro: funny, lucid, haunting.

Minna Proctor's essay about her divorce, her mother's death, and the birth of her child simply floored me.