Category Archives: Month in Review

I Am Become Electric Blanket, Destroyer of Cheese

Books, Creative non-fiction, For the love of a dog, Humor, Life and Other Existential Problems, Month in Review, Parenting, Writing, Year in Review

December 2024 Month In Review.

Hello. Hello again.

I was going to call this “Sick, Sick, Sick” and because wordplay! But nobody wants to end their year wading through thick puddles of my half-baked cleverness. So let’s just get on with it.

I am ready to ball December 2024 up like a fitted sheet and shove it in my linen closet. Because I’m not a heathen, I’ll toss a nice sachet in there so if I ever have to pull it out for guests, wrinkled and snarling (the month, not the guests, but maybe the guests also?) it will smell like lavender.

Electric blankets are more my thing, anyway. Wrap me up. Keep me warm. Make me the human equivalent of a Pop Tart.

So, do I need to wrap up the year?

No.

Will I though?

Also no.

But if you need closure, here’s 2024 in five syllables:

Howlers abounded

Moving on.

End of December. We rest. We winter (Katherine May knows what’s up). We stretch through this dead time between Christmas and New Year’s when no one knows what day it is and our diet is mainly appetizers.

The lead-up to this moment was, of course, chaos: finals, concerts, snow, mourning, trying to be in all the places we had to be, or maybe needed to be, and probably (definitely) didn’t want to be. Getting there prepared and on time on top of it all.

Which is to say: I’m tired.
Which is to say: I got very sick this month.

Because, in this urgency culture we glorify (seriously, stop doing that), guess who was so busy her flu vaccine fell through the cracks? STOP GUESSING, IT WAS ME. Enter: Influenza A. Cue misery and disruption. The flu invited a friend to crash the party. (Seriously, stop doing that).

New, terrifying eye floaters.

Google searches. Dreaded warning: CALL A DOCTOR OR GO TO THE ER. RETINAL DETACHMENT! OR MAYBE TINY COYOTES EATING YOUR EYE GOO LIKE PUDDING. ONE OF THOSE.

I called the eye doctor. He told me — using a lot more words than I needed after he told me he couldn’t help — to go directly to a retinal specialist, who tested me in part by shining bright lines into my dilated eyeballs. He then gave me another very wordy explanation for my ocular migraine.

The flu probably triggered the migraine.

Also triggered? My face eczema. Because clearly, what I needed during all this was to feel EVEN PRETTIER. Cue lotions, ointments, and salves. I felt like Neo emerging from the Matrix — only without Keanu Reeves or any cinematic allure whatsoever.

It passed.

(This isn’t the kind of story I want attached to my legacy, but we don’t always get to choose these things. To paraphrase someone wiser than me: I don’t want you to think I’m an idiot, but I keep giving you reasons to consider it.)

(Also, why are my eye doctors so verbose?)

Anyway, this now-healthy, slow, delicious time is a symphony of sugar and flour and fats and savory brown foods reminding us who we are when the world isn’t trying to set us on fire.

We turn NOW into NO and take the W.

Sorry. I just shoved you into a thick puddle of my half-baked cleverness. Grab my hand, I’ll get you out of there.

Wonderlands don’t need to cover acres. They don’t need castles or white rabbits or maps with riddles layered in mystery. They just need time to stop. Done. Wonderland achieved.

And while I’m here and not living in a panicky immediate, let’s take a second and talk 2025.

Goals:

  1. Let my inner weirdo become my outer weirdo.
  2. Find more wonderlands: Big cushions, warm chairs, fireplaces, and someone patting the seat next to them like, “Come. Sit. Stay a while.”
  3. Work the phrase “Everything went tits up” into more conversations.
  4. Be like my dog: Long walks, bursts of speed toward nothing, naps in the sun, and flappies (scientific term) to clear my head.
  5. Read more. Write more. Read better. Write better.
  6. I used to tell stories here. Real ones. Small ones. Messy, absurd ones. Somewhere along the way, I got stuck in broad magician-off-the-strip tellings. No more. Back to real ones with all tits-up moments.
  7. Schedule my damn flu shot. (No more tiny coyotes eating my eye goo.)
  8. Play. Please join in. And if you don’t feel like playing? That’s okay. There are lots of cozy seats ‘round these parts. Feel free to plop down and exhale. Save me a spot.

Here are some splashes of marvelous from December, 2024

  • Tylenol & Ibuprofen, my MVPs of December.
  • This makes me want to stomp around the living room like a goblin with excellent rhythm.
  • These things:
  • Conclave. Power struggles? Stanley Tucci in a Vatican drama? Twist ending? I say yes, yes, and yes again.
  • I am not timely nor do I care. Sometimes, you just need a high-functioning sociopath with a penchant for good deeds to remind you that bad guys can be outsmarted. Do your research!
  • Cross. If this doesn’t catapult Aldis Hodge, Samantha Walkes, and Isaiah Mustafa into super-DUPER-stardom, I will personally riot.
  • Once a year, we dress up fancy and go out for steak and gruyere scalloped potatoes, measuring time by how few leftovers we bring home. (This year, practically none.) We laughed, we ate, and we unraveled the mysteries of life — like why a bread basket feels like pure magic, whether the Bears will ever resemble even adulterated magic, and boring things like the stock market. The evening offered glimpses through the veil of time — tiny windows into the future and brilliant flashes of the past. I hope we do this forever. How lucky I am. 
  • “We’ll float between two worlds…until everyone we love is safe.”
  • Here’s some perfection for you. 
  • Grace Paley is an author I keep promising to revisit. Coming across this gem reminds me to get to it. Life is short. 
  • The Only Emperor is a grand poem if only because author David Shapiro speaks directly to me in the first line.
  • I appreciate the NYT giving me a head start on my “what do I read next” anxiety. These looked interesting. (Here’s a link for you to make your own list.)

Thank you for being here with me. I hope 2025 is the love story you need: warm, weird, and wonderfully uncatastrophic.

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

Books, Gratitude, Life and Other Existential Problems, Month in Review, Parenting, Recommendations, , , , , , , ,

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.

On Monsters — October 2024 Month In Review

Creative non-fiction, Humor, Ink Spatterings, Month in Review, ,

Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one before

In lieu of my regular month-in-review post, I’m resharing something I wrote in May of 2023. Monsters are on our minds these days. November shall be reviewed in my usual nonsense way.

In the heart of the Muppetverse, amidst a tapestry of vibrant characters and whimsical narratives, stands a beacon of childlike wonder and boundless optimism, a giant whose iconic blue exterior conceals a tale of profound transformation and existential introspection. Few in Hollywood have the talent and range to achieve a level of stardom where one name suffices:

Streep.

Pacino.

Grover.

And he’s cute, too.

We meet at a trendy bistro in Williamsburg, eager to delve into his illustrious career that spans from humble beginnings in local theater to soaring exploits as a beloved superhero. Grover’s polymath talents have propelled him into the ranks of America’s elite artists. However, the journey from his nurturing roots at PBS to the esteemed shores of HBO was far from effortless, strewn with challenges that made success anything but elementary.

As we settle in for an intimate conversation, I ask about the delicate balance between the broad humor of Sesame Street and his infamously meticulous approach to zaniness. Sipping his cucumber lime spritzer, Grover ponders the question. “It is always a quest to find the heart beneath the punchlines,“ Grover shares, an unexpected surge of static electricity passing between us when his hand brushes against mine. “Every joke I tell, every lamppost I fly into, I strive to capture a truth, a moment of connection that transcends the silliness and connects with the human condition.”

It is evident before we finish our burrata and heirloom tomato salads that, while Grover’s on-screen persona is a bundle of joy, his off-screen persona can be enigmatic. Grover’s career isn’t just a litany of roles; it’s a manifold reflection of his ability to become and play

I steer the conversation to Method Acting. “I believe in authenticity,” Grover says. “Whether I am donning the cape of Super Grover or showing viewers the exquisite agony of working as a waiter to a fussy customer, I strive to bring truth to every character. It is all about connecting with the audience, being loud and soft. Do you know the difference?” Before I answer, he cries. “LOUD!” It is transcendent, a performance matching the ethereal mastery of Tilda Swinton’s shape-shifting in “Orlando.”

Indeed, from taxi driver to flight attendant, Grover’s preparation is exhaustive. “I do the research,” he says, his head gently tilting from side to side — one of his charming idiosyncrasies. “I have driven the cab. I have worked in restaurants, and I have sold ears door-to-door. If I want the audience to believe it, I have to live it.” Grover believes that his career isn’t just a list of roles; it’s a chronicle of his metamorphoses.

But this transformational zeal, while laudable, is the stuff of gossip on set. Some costars find his relentless process admirable, others roll their googly eyes when he refuses to break character and wears his Super Grover cape around all day.

Gentle giant Big Bird groused, “Grover is… intense. Sometimes, too intense.”

Pathological hoarder Oscar the Grouch shared, “Grover always had this existential itch, questioning the very fabric of his felted existence. It made for some interesting trash can conversations. Now scram!”

Pigeon fanatic and confirmed bachelor Bert added, “Grover spent an entire week engrossed in the study of prepositions for ‘Over, Under, Around, and Through.‘ It’s a level of commitment to something really tedious that I respect.”

Then there were those rumors of a rift between Grover and Count von Count, suggesting that their divergent approaches to performance caused tension backstage. Lines were drawn as Muppets aligned themselves with either the chaotic charm of Grover or the methodical precision of the Count. Both Grover and the Count deny this (“No! No! No! That’s three nos!”) although they acknowledge there were heated discussions. Grover explains, “That is about the work, man. It is not personal. It is like the Dadaist feud between Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia. Ultimately, it is the children who benefit.”

As we discussed his background, it is clear he grapples with profound questions about the role of some unseen hand in shaping his identity. Over plates of Wagyu beef carpaccio, Grover regales me with tales of his early aspirations as an actor. “I attended the School of Muppet Dramatic Arts, a place where the alphabet was recited in iambic pentameter. I sipped from the chalice of the greats there.“ For his senior performance, Grover presented an original piece entitled “BLUE GOD,” showcasing his groundbreaking jazz kazoo skills.

That early work paid off. Grover’s Monsterpiece Theater performances have been lauded for their depth and breadth. There’s something hauntingly beautiful about him tackle a Shakespearean monologue, unblinking and unconcerned with emotional regulation.

Yet, as the shadows of middle age crept up, a yearning restlessness tugged. “I hit rock bottom in Season 19. I was unable to connect with the show or the characters. Maria and Luis got married. Elmo’s World took off. And where was I? Where was I going?” Grover struggled with a well-publicized problem with huffing fabric glue but traveled the world, got clean, and eventually found renewed purpose in his Global Grover segments.

What’s next? While he has no plans to leave Sesame Street, Grover gazes toward new horizons in brooding glory. “I am open to exploring opportunities to do prestige shows at HBO.” Grover then revealed, “I auditioned for the role of Roman on Succession. The control issues, the exploration of exotic fetishes — it would have been a good fit. I know what it is like to feel you are someone’s puppet. Like you are a version of yourself waiting to happen, but your story has not been written yet.“ He paused, allowing the profoundness of his words to sink in. “The Monster at the End of the Book? It is me. It is all of us.”