Honey No. 24

Feat. a list of current faves, and an essay about friendship and untimely death

Hi everyone! I hope you’re having a beautiful weekend. As I write this, Jesse and I are en route back to the East Coast for a family friend’s wedding. I did my usual song and dance of procrastinating on packing until the absolute last second- only when I caught myself minutes into Reese Witherspoon’s teenage niece’s instagram video about Valentine’s Day gifts for your boyfriend (his & hers matching patterned bathing suits, for instance) did I say jesus christ, Olivia, and really hunker down with my packing cubes.

In a phenomenon that surely no one, not even scientists, could get to the bottom of, it’s much easier to write on an airplane aka somewhere where I do not have internet access aka can’t write for 3 minutes then encounter the slightest brain hurdle and take comfort in the numbing dopamine haven of social media for many minutes until I return to my google doc and begin from the beginning. If only I could emulate this at home by, say, turning off my internet while I work? If only.

Anyway, please enjoy! I love ya!

Bits and Bobs

• My mom texted me a link to this gorgeous pitcher the other day- look how many beautiful colors you can choose from! I can’t pick but if I had to it would be the white with blue rim or the red or the pigeon gray or the cream or the pale lilac or or or….! We’ve been having people over a fair amount now that we have the space to do so, and it would be so nice to have a beautiful pitcher to put out for our guests rather than a beautiful-in-so-far-as-it-filters-our-nasty-LA-water-for-us-but-doesn’t-have-much-in-the-way-of-looks water filter.

• As I have not stopped blathering about (and won’t!!!!!), Jesse and I are on a slow and steady mission to outfit and adorn our new-ish home. Some tasks require multiple steps and flowing funds- we have a beautiful ottoman-as-coffee-table that was in my house growing up that is now ripped, but the fabric is so gorgeous (and discontinued!) that we are overwhelmed at the prospect of choosing its successor, and then once we do pick a fabric (expensive!) we will need to actually get it reupholstered (very adult and I presume expensive as well??), so we are just living with the ever-ripping ottoman for the moment, ok!!- and other tasks are simply so small and plentiful that we typically don’t address them for long stretches of time and then do 7 of them in one burst of an afternoon. Last weekend we decided to address one of the more pressing elephants in the room: finding blinds for the small window in our room that is next to our closet (where we get dressed and undressed) that directly faces a balcony with approximately seven apartment units that can all see inside. If you’re wondering why finding the perfect pair of breezy checkered curtains for the dining room came before addressing this important security breach, nice to meet you, I’m Olivia. All this to say that Jesse and I 1. Found a lovely “classic cordless woven wood shade” on selectblinds.com, 2. Let it sit in the cart after we realized that we wanted it to be delivered when we were back in town, and 3. Received an email from them a few day later giving us $20 off to incentivize us to complete our purchase! I had heard about this hack for online shopping in general, but have never had the patience to try it until now, when I was forced. tl;dr let your cart sit!!

• I loved looking through T Magazine’s list of The 25 Photos That Defined The Modern Age. It’s amazing to consider the many pre-camera-phone moments that no one would have believed to be true unless a photographer had been present. It’s amazing how many moments in modern history people don’t believe to be true, even though we have first-hand video evidence of people on the ground! But I digress.

• Opening up Tiktok is a slippery slope, because I can often justify a binge by telling myself that I’m learning something! And the thing is- I often am! But sometimes access to every drop of information and opinion on the planet is a little overwhelming, if that makes any sense?!? I’ve been keeping it off my phone for the most part and just dipping in on my browser to laugh and learn from my endless supply of teachers, including but not limited to the beauty girlies. I’ve been trying to remember which things they’ve recommended for the next time I need a product (Haus Labs foundation is high on the list!), and just yesterday pulled the trigger on the liquid blush from Rare Beauty in the shade “Joy.” So far (day one) I’m liking it! A tiny dab goes a long way, but since my skin really gobbles up makeup I feel like I should also get a powder blush back in the rotation to layer for staying power. Thoughts??

• If you’re looking for a new astrology hole to throw yourself into, might I suggest investigating the writings of Alice Sparkly Kat?! I love getting their monthly horoscopes, and if you’re really in the mood for a deep dive, check out their archive of articles discussing all varieties of planetary placements! If you know your chart you can really get into it.

• Finally, I simply can’t stop singing Do You Know The Way to San Jose, if you’re looking for a new and excitingly random ear worm.

In Thanks to My Friend

Hannah Rehak is back with a touching ode to friendship and untimely loss. Content warning: eating disorders and death.

I’m in a hot pink bikini, my friends are out by the pool and our friend died last week. 

She died in her sleep. Heart failure at 31 after tirelessly fighting an eating disorder for two decades. She died in an L.A. apartment, curled in her bed, 2,000 miles from her family.

We had planned this vacation to Mexico, the four of us. Me, Brendan, Anna and Alex. We did the adult thing of coordinating a long weekend away using our hard-earned US dollars to live large on Isla Mujeres for four nights and five days. Partners were invited. Flights purchased. I ordered two swimsuits for the vacation, see-through pants and platform sandals. I planned to take a lot of photos and drink a lot of tequila.

But I didn't know our friend was going to die three days before our trip. 

Much like I didn’t know I would weep the moment I saw Brendan step out of the airport, his plane landing 30 minutes after mine. Or that my heart would thrum in anticipation until Alex appeared at the front door on our first night. Or that for the entire weekend any time Anna left a room I would follow her just to be sure she really was in the next room. 

Mary Elizabeth wasn’t invited on our trip to Mexico. There was a time it was the five of us, but it had been years since we would have thought to include her. Many parties left early, many moves from Chicago, many hospitalizations for an illness she couldn’t quite beat.

She was my best friend from the moment I was born, until she wasn’t. We lived half a block from one another. Our parents are dear friends. She entered the world small for her age, and I grew big for mine. As a kid, that made me even more certain that we were destined to walk through life side-by-side, aesthetically-compelling duo that we were.

My friend was opinionated, stubborn, angry — and also funny, thoughtful, intentional and protective. She was protective of me, of her three sisters, of the planet and her boundaries.

Our friendship, even at its strongest, was not built on mutual understanding. She was a mystery to me and I think I was a mystery to her. Our friendship, like many that begin between babies, was built on time shared. Time in the bath, on swing sets, at dinner tables, in clubhouses we made from a cluster of trees, the underside of a porch, the corner of a backyard. 

She was the first person I built a home with. We dusted dirt from outdoor living rooms for hours. Rearranged broken furniture scrapped from Chicago alleys, debated the best floor plan for a box, a broken mirror, curtains made out of old rags. Now, I’m in a rented house in Mexico where I’ve already rearranged the placement of two table lamps and two decorative baskets. I wish there was better lighting.

There’s a Mary Oliver poem that goes:

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

During her life, Mary Elizabeth gave me many gifts; keychains, magnets, books. Anna, Alex and Brendan. 

Anna who will take photos of me for an entire sunset as I try to twist and bend my body in a way that says I can cry and have a nice ass! Alex who will sit in silence for hours and then touch my shoulder before leaving the room so I know I can tell him anything. And sweet Brendan whose very presence makes the air around him move more gently.

Mary brought them into my life right around the time she started to leave it. And after nearly twenty years of friendship that began with her, here they still are, sitting so close I can smell the chlorine and sunscreen — and they’re trying to laugh. They’re trying to remember good things. How she loved to throw a party and tell people what to do. How competitive she could be with card games. How she committed to rituals and made room for earnestly casting spells even after the rest of us felt self-conscious about it.

How many of those rites protect us? How many rituals secured our stated “unbreakable bond?” I don’t know, but in her absence I feel tethered to her as we planned and promised.

Tonight, we will look at the stars and make up new constellations (a long-faced dog, a child flying through the sky, a teapot), and I will admire my friends’ ability to see what isn’t there, to give order to something as random as the universe. We will spend hours pointing out shapes, tracing and retracing them for one another until all of us can see the upside-down bat and the seahorse. When one of us yelps wait, wait I lost it, we will all laugh and begin again. Later, Anna and I will search for the perfect point in the universe to memorialize the trio we once were with Mary. She’ll point to a triangle and I’ll complain that two of the stars are so much brighter than the third, which doesn’t seem fair.

She’ll say Hannah, they’re equally bright, one is just further away. Anna will offer me a gift in the dark and I’ll think thank you, thank you, thank you, hoping Mary hears me across the distance. 

Thank you for reading! Your support means the world. I hope you get a chance to unplug today, and see where your thoughts may shyly wish to go.

xx Olivia