God, I’m tired. Can you tell? Yesterday I realized that scaling the south wall to get to the rose terrace was ruining my self-tan. Then I realized that there must be a better way to change elevations. Then I realized stairs.

Whenever I grow tired of my ennui, I go primitive and channel my forebears that didn’t have time to worry about their nonexistent eyebrows, which is a very REAL concern for me. Plus, DIY stone stairs sound fun. Cavemen used stone for everything, right? Actually, I think the proper term is troglodytes. Actually, they didn’t even live in caves and were smarter than 95% of modern human beings. Oh, and they didn’t roam with the dinosaurs. Turn off the Flintstones and go read a book.

Anyway, back to my predicament. Heaving heavy stones temporarily takes my mind off of the fact that my fellow 1 percenters have more Balenciagas than I do. Realizing that everyone is ahead is depressing. The solution is to channel your inner Inca and give a big middle finger to Capitalism. Otherwise known as building stone steps from scratch. For this project, Pepito and I lugged three thousand pounds of stone from a crumbling church just up the road. We beveled, we joggled, we hand hawked and we finally sat down. I’ll sleep well tonight, loves.

xx,  Madeline.