Category: Life and Other Existential Problems

November 2024 Month in Review: Cool Like a Sweathog, Sweat Like a Coolhog

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Oh, November. You spicy dirtbag what with your chaotic offerings. Pumpkin pie (yes!) My birthday (fine), and *checks hearing* skeet season. Indefatigable skeet season. Because nothing says “charming small town in late autumn” like ten-hour PEW PEW symphonies punctuated by leaf blowers every weekend. Best noise friends forever!

Apologies for griping about this again. I’m tired. And not in the fun “I ran a marathon” kind of way, but in the “I live inside a t-shirt cannon” kind of way. 

I’d love to be cool about it. You know, like a Sweathog. They’re still cool, right? Or they once were? Sort of?

Bless their hearts.

Also, just so we’re clear: If I ever so much as hint at interest in running a marathon, call Liam Neeson. Clearly I’ve been taken.

Speaking of taking, my twins are out here taking tests — driver education, PSATs, SATs, a whole alphabet soup of Ts? It’s familiar and not so much. They don’t even have to fill in the circles completely and make their marks dark. What madness is that?

Life is lifing, people, and I’m bracing for the impact of seismic changes as they head out in a few years while also wondering what I did to make my back hurt this time. (Sneezing, probably.) Anyway, the twins and their younger sibling are excellent, hilarious humans who, for reasons unknown to science or the Divine, recently played tic-tac-toe using a photo of Bernie Moreno as the board. I don’t get it. I don’t want to get it. But I love them for it. Probably. Unless Urban Dictionary comes in hot with a definition so cursed it makes me question not just my potentially unholy parenting choices but also which cosmic joke stuck these tic-tac-toe anarchists with me as a mother.

Let’s awkwardly transition here to a more serious note: my mother-in-law passed away this month after illness and a hospice stay that felt both too short and impossibly long. Our rhythms are altered forever. Daily life feels like we’re walking through a house where someone rearranged all the furniture while we were sleeping.

Grief is a strange beast. It’s mercenary and acquisitive. It’s sneaky and insistent. Right now, everything feels very takey. I usually live in the givey camp, so there is clash. At some point, these two modes will need to mesh better (for me, for you, for all of us). But for now, we stand here, holding the pieces, hoping they’ll eventually fit together.

I know I’m not alone in this. Your pieces may look different and might fit together in another way, but we’re all arms-full of pieces.

We’ll figure it out.

This time of year always makes me crave community — real, soft-edged community. Now more than ever, because, honestly, it feels like half of us are allergic to the concept.

For now, I focus on a few good people, naps, moody weather, and curling my fingerless-gloved hands around a mug of something steaming. All the soft, cushiony, slightly drafty things. To be a hygge gourmand, if you will. Or if you won’t. Either way.

Maybe it’s just time to reread Wintering.

For now, the holidays charge at us like an over-sugared, under-napped toddler with a glitter cannon, my writing continues with something like enjoyment, and the world remains a noisy, beautiful dumpster fire of delight and despair.

But we’re here, right? We’re doing the damn thing, even if we have no idea what the damn thing is. I think it involves Hūsker Dū, but don’t quote me on that.

Or maybe Hüsker Dü?

As Brian Eno (probably) said: “You’re most alive when you’re not quite sure what’s going on.” If that’s true, then congratulations to me: I am the most alive human in the history of aliveness.

Pass the soup.

Here are some splashes of marvelous from November, 2024:

  • Watch the following at your own risk. I’m not sure what it is, exactly, but it has big car-crashes-into-a-random-iceberg-floating-down-Main-Street energy. And this ditty is constructing a weird little flute-shaped nest in my brain. Rent free.
  • This quote by Louise Glück hit me like a piano falling from the sky — sudden, sharp, and oddly satisfying. Except that satisfying part. More like a not-entirely unpleasant metaphysical headache in the key of F#. Anyway, it’s less frustrating than the movie Interstellar.
  • Kiese Laymon’s Letter from Home over at The Bitter Southerner is one hell of a nearly-perfect personal essay.
  • Read this article about Pulp Fiction turning 30: a retrospective so cool it wears sunglasses indoors. I recommend pairing it with a Royale with Cheese (not included).
  • Technically this was an October delight. I attended a reading featuring many of the authors from the anthology 3rd and Oak. Then I got the book. You should, too. And if you ever get the chance to see these authors reunite, drop everything and go. Also, a PSA: if Carrie Hayes is moderating anything — I don’t care if it’s a PTA meeting or a seminar on municipal parking regulations — ATTEND. Trust me.
  • Erika Meitner’s poem over at The New Yorker. Read it. Absorb it. Embody it. Punch a clock in its smug little face. Not this clock, though. It’s cute.
Available at kawaii-heaven.com. I have no affiliation.
  • Every so often, my teenagers willingly hang out with us, and when they do, we play Jackbox. And let me tell you, I laugh to tears every single time we play. The games are varied enough that everyone gets a moment to shine. Real self-care is enjoying your weird, wonderful family.

So, howdy, December! May yours be full of good essays, weirdly compelling nonsense, and laughter so uncontrollable it could be classified as a cardio workout.

And feel free to call Liam Neeson for me anyway. He seems like he’d be fun to talk with.

Whatever You Call It — September 2024

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A Word Before My Shenanigans: While September brought its share of inconveniences for me, it brought devastation to entire communities. Both the community of Springfield, Ohio and those affected by Hurricane Helene faced unimaginable struggles. If you can support your fellow humans in need, I’ll list some places to donate in the comment section.

First, a formal apology for the excessive cuteness about to unfold. I know we’re all pulling ourselves out of the Septempurgatory like it was some sort of bar brawl. Honestly, I’m still finding to-do list shrapnel in my hair.

Septemperament feels like an identity crisis. It’s lumped into fall, and yet we’re standing here, sweating through our half-baked autumn dreams, waiting for the air to chill and pretending we’re not as swampy as an armpit. We can’t settle into the fiscal-year groove until October, yet Halloween candy is already out. Sure, maybe a sugar high is the only thing fending off the looming Septemburnout, but is it also contributing to our sweating? MAYBE. But fun-sized candy does help pass the time during the month’s IMPORTANT AND URGENT MEETINGS. Miss one of those and you activate Septemergency mode.

For a solid 75% of the month, my household was a Septempetri dish. The whole family was sick, overlap-style. And then it was me. Fortunately, just bad head colds, no Septemblarping.

There were new school year events, new responsibilities, and new car troubles, by which I mean Septempanic-inducing check engine lights popping on. Then off. Then on again. We even went to an event that required thematic costumes. My costume highlighted the bags under my eyes. I should have gone as a nice set of Samsonite luggage, possibly with a charming primate ready to toss me around to test my durability.

Emails started rolling in with all those “easy” one-pot meal recipes like it’s cuffing season for dinner plans. The Septemptation is real, though. If I could just toss all my responsibilities into a one-and-done situation — meals, laundry, driving, that would be the Septembest thing ever.

We watched the latest Ghostbusters film. I won’t go so far as to say it was Septerrible, but I didn’t look up from my book once, and I’m a big Paul Rudd fan.

Which is all to say, Septembrawl was a slap-fight with the calendar, the clock, and most of humanity. At any moment, it felt like I’d trip a wire and set off a Septimebomb if I didn’t run faster, farther, or with more finesse.

(That is all metaphorical. I don’t run.)

The busyness swallowed the month, and I haven’t even started on my Reedsy work, which doesn’t feel great. Once this newsletter is out in the ether (hello, Ether-friend!), that’s the next tab I’ll be clicking. Unless, of course, some turn-of-the-century cough starts going around the house again, because obviously.

Anyway, Septemblur has been brought to you (and me) by ibuprofen and my trusty day planner, which I now hope to fill in with ink rather than pencil.

And with that, we Septumble into glorious October — not a moment too soon.

Here are some splashes of marvelous from August, 2024

I got to attend this Printer’s Row Lit Fest and chat with the most marvelous Deborah L. King (whose books you really just have to read. I won’t argue with you about this). Learn more about her work here.

Have a poetry-hug.

We had milkshakes at Homer’s Ice Cream one night just because. And on another night, we went to Steak ‘n Shake. These are not the same, but each is satisfying in different ways.

Aaaand I’m realizing this blog is mostly an ice cream fandom account.

Apparently, referring to chores as “side quests” is a thing now. (See here and here.) I tried it. I still don’t do chores, but now I’ve got the added stress of imperiling entire worlds because I haven’t tackled the stuck-on gunk in the refrigerator crisper drawer.

Thoughts on creativity and friendship.

I love a good electric blanket, especially because I like to sleep with the windows open. Do not talk to me about how logical that is.

Do you love washi tape? You should, if you like fun and tape and loving fun and tape.

Cereal was something I tired of in college (after eating it three times a day for most of my freshman year), but boy, these are fun.

Ravelry is always a joy, prompting me to curl up on the couch — if only to scroll, if not to create. Do you knit or crochet?

This is all kinds of brilliant. Like, on a Frankenberry level, but for writing.

That’s it for now. May your cookies be dunkworthy and your milk cold and well-tolerated.

Twice Submerged

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The first time the basement flooded, the twins were babies and sleeping unpredictably. The second time the basement flooded, the twins were toddlers and doing everything unpredictably. The first flood felt like a natural disaster; the second, a betrayal.

Before the first flood, the basement was mine, a chamber crowded with paused ambitions and ghost versions of myself. Then came the water, the local infrastructure unable to keep its promise. The base transformed into a mausoleum of academic endeavors, professional files, suspended projects, mementos of a me I barely remembered — proof of a time before my job title was “Mama.”

Movers sent by the utility company kept a reverential silence as they engaged in a liturgical removal of my ruined things, including a waterlogged notebook filled with the minutiae of early parenting — eating, diapers, naps — entered and never referenced again. They lowered their eyes as I peeled the boys’ first ultrasound image from the ruins of a sodden cardboard box.

There was shame in the mess and the loss, in the casual way I’d let things slip. I’d intended to archive everything, a task perpetually deferred. Sleep-deprived months had messed with my memory, threatening to make me my own unreliable narrator. I needed to cache my life. But I was tired, and the basement’s separation from the daily hubbub allowed me to postpone the task.

The first flood washed away the luxury of later.

New carpet, new drywall, a serious dehumidifier, and the basement soon once again all my somedays and speculations. Scribbles, fleeting notes, seedlings of ideas jotted down and shelved for when the twin-induced chaos settled.

Then a frozen pipe burst, unleashing a second deluge vindictive in timing and intensity. Water pooled in the ceiling and came out through the light fixtures onto my notebooks and shelves.

This time, there was no help. I faced the wreckage alone, sorting and tossing debris. With every wet, heavy shift of weight, the floor let out a slow, desperate squelch, causing the boys to giggle uncontrollably.

The twins, now toddlers and agents of chaos in their own right, tried to help. I’m sure I made a “two-by-two” joke to my husband as we lugged things and monitored the boys. They swept through the first floor in their own tide of arms and legs and wild purpose.

We relocated my work-and-dream space to something far from the basement, smack-dab in the middle of the rough-and-tumble of daily life. I have since been constantly accessible, perpetually distracted, and witness to all goings-on.

But at least it’s a dry chaos.