Honey No. 40

Feat. how I wrecked my bed (and my butt), and a beautiful career pivot

There is sometimes a dynamic when it comes to Projects in our House where Jesse is Patient and I am, um, Not. These are not our *roles* and this is not set in *stone,* but I would say that in our typical project patterning he is slower to act but meticulous once he starts, and I am eager to get a move on but am prone to hasty mistakes. Usually, this means that we make a great team: I can initiate a change and he can see that it’s done correctly….

but Jesse is in New York for the week.

After I dropped him off at the airport, I had a moment of wondering what I would do with myself. I’m a very independent person- I love my alone time! I crave it!- but transitioning from the rhythm of cohabitation to independence is always a funny comedown. The same thing would always happen when I came home from tour: after however many days of buzzing around a new city with seven other people I was certain I never wanted to be alone again, until I inevitably crashed on my floor and remembered my Self.

Maybe a solo week will be nice, I thought. Maybe I’ll even get to work on a *project.*

I figured that if I was going to get into anything productive, I might as well start by cleaning house from top to bottom- a clean slate to begin from, etc etc. So I vacuumed, I scrubbed, I watered all the plants. I changed the air purifier filters, cleaned the dryer vent, and scrubbed the tub with Bon Ami (the best, imo). I stripped the bed, washed the sheets, put the pillows in the sun to…purify them? I’m not sure, but it felt right. I shook out the quilt! Flipped the mattress! And then I noticed that our mattress pad was….gnarly.

Up until now, I had never given it much thought- a mattress pad was one of those useful amenities that my so-thoughtful mother had tucked into my life at some point, but that I didn’t quite have the awareness to realize I needed to maintain. It occurred to me, with humbling profundity, that my mom was never going to call me and remind me to replace or even wash this mattress pad. In fact, she has likely never thought about it once. And why would she! I am taking control of my life, I thought, walking the [age withheld] pad out to the trash. I am an independent adult who is capable of maintaining a home, even the parts that no one remembers. I am so strong, I smiled, wiping my dirty car with the mattress pad for good measure before tossing it in the bin. I am so GOOD!

After a few frenzied hours of starting a project in each room of the house and then semi-cycling my way through them on repeat, I noticed that I was hungry and the sun was down and it was perhaps time to admit defeat. I took a mustard bath in my clean tub, put on my line-dried pajamas, and snuggled into my cozy clean bed. But one thing was missing: my comfort?! Why the FRICK was the bed rock hard?

Through some combination of removing the seemingly-for-nothing scanty mattress pad and now lying on the part of the mattress once reserved for my feet, my bed was no longer a safe space. It was a Firm Space, that was for sure, a space pocked with dimples that I had previously been protected from by my mother’s love- a thin squish of cotton that she had probably given me when I moved out on my own, oh jesus. One day of Jesse being gone and I had somehow gone and wrecked the bed. He never has to know, I thought, tucking half of the comforter underneath me for padding, then folding the other side on top of me for warmth, like a cannoli who’s also a genius. I’ll just order a new one in the morning and then put it in the Splitwise under a codename like “Trader Joes” or “Gas.”

But a part of my policy, er, compulsion, is that I always tell Jesse the truth, even after I spend a day reminding myself that some thoughts can be private (in your dreams, Nielsen). I called him this morning and, in a string of other catchups, told him of my error: in my haste to be Good, I did something a little Bad. In my rush to make a change, I didn’t stop and think about how it could be done correctly, ie making sure I had a new way to sleep comfortably before I tossed the old one with great flair. But while Jesse is very diligent about his own work, he’s never terribly nitpicky about mine. We laughed about my at-this-point-predictable error and I told him that our new mattress pad, that we will be cleaning regularly, should get here on Monday.

And if it doesn’t, god help him. There’s not room in this cannoli for two.

Alison Lynch is a writer, manager at all-time fave Honey Hi, and SO much more (see below!).

I’ve had, roughly, one million jobs. In high school, I was a stagehand for children’s theater, and then a camp counselor, and then a T.A., and then an assistant in my dentist’s office, cleaning tools alone all day in a bleak little closet. In college and beyond, I worked at Banana Republic, and then for a theater festival, and then as a babysitter, and then in obituary customer service, and then in a couple media support jobs I’d describe as “mostly emails,” and then in a Vietnamese restaurant, and then as auction event staff, and then in a TV writing room, and then as a dispatcher for cannabis delivery, and now currently I am a cafe manager and a freelance writer. I’m probably forgetting a scattered few over the years, a regrettable side effect of the weed job.

2014. A woman at work.

Those were the gigs that put money in my bank account and food on my table. They’re how I paid for, for example, car insurance and tickets to see Hanson live as an adult more than once.

The employment journey isn’t the main search though. It’s actually a side effect of the central search, the one that’s occupied me from a young age. In Kindergarten I asked to take ballet lessons, and that was the first link in a chain that connected to musical theater, and then college theater, and then improv, and yes, I know these are just all different kinds of theater, but they felt like significant evolution at the time, shut up!!

Now I write, still comedy and screenplays, and also fiction and underbaked poetry and, for money, any freelance gig I can get my hands on. I’ve written murder podcasts and a children’s bedtime story about gay penguins. The portfolio is diverse.

In short, I’ve been out here, trying things.

I struggle sometimes to talk about my life with any cohesion. The elevator pitch eludes me. Because I live in Los Angeles, I’m required to offer this explanation: I’m a Gemini. I’m sorry to say it like that because if you don’t care about astrology, I’ve lost you, and if you do care about astrology, there’s a more-than-likely chance you don’t like Geminis. But the shorthand is useful. It’s not that I’m easily distracted, I like a bunch of stuff because I’m supposed to be this way!! 

So it should come as no surprise that I’ve become a florist.

When I started at the cafe a few years ago, freshly vaccinated and ready for life outside my apartment, I didn’t have much flower experience. The produce buyer would come back from the farmer’s market a couple times a week with whatever was in season, crates of vegetables for the kitchen and a couple bundles of flowers for the front. Sometimes I was the person who ended up arranging. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I liked how calm and simple it felt, how calm and simple I felt. Quickly, I started asking to do them. I liked looking at the flowers, handling them, the satisfying snap of the scissors on the stems. I liked making them look exactly how I wanted, and I was surprised at the pride I took in crafting something whose main function was just to brighten up the room. 

2021. Really thought I popped off with this one.

So I just kept going, with no plan. I started buying flowers for myself at the market and messing around at home. I watched floral reality shows for tips. I learned names like statice and amaranthus. I got better. I brought bouquets to dinner parties. Friends and strangers encouraged me. I posted pictures on Instagram. I made things as favors and gifts. One day at the cafe one of the regulars called, hoping to get the name of our florist for a bouquet for his wife, and I said, I’ll do it.

Part of what’s kept me going are the things I’ve learned about my creativity, and the ember of confidence that gave me. I could start an arrangement without knowing where I was going because I trusted my taste to guide me. I tried offbeat things, just to see. The only criteria was, do I find this interesting. Hopefully it would turn out beautiful too, but that wasn’t the rewarding part, flowers are already beautiful. Interesting was the guide. If I wasn’t interested yet, I wasn’t finished.

2024

My brilliant producer-and-ceramicist friend Britta Rowings said “what if there was a sneaker drop but for flowers,” and I said, let’s do it. (And we are doing that. This very week in fact, just noting that here, no reason.)

I am on the ride now. I’ve turned pro, mentally, and it’s exciting and terrifying and filled with possibilities. I’ve already found that the skills from all my odd jobs—customer service, problem solving, even cleaning tools in a friggin closet—are coalescing into a rat-king of entrepreneurialism.

There’s still so much to be done and I don’t quite know where I’m headed, but the flowers showed me how to trust my gut. They will tell me where to go.

This essay is timed oh-so-conveniently with the very first bouquet presale for Bloom Drop, opening online this Tuesday. If you live in LA, find more details @bloomdropla on Instagram. And wherever you live, if you’re interested, please follow along, it would mean the world xo

Have a wonderful week my friends! A reminder to clean out your water pitchers as there was *algae* growing in ours and I did make myself *ill*! Can’t go into details because I just found out some experiences can actually be private (see above). Ok fine it made my ass explode!! Be careful! Love ya!

xx Olivia