I am now posting my writing on Substack, and you can find me and subscribe to me at The Platypusary!
I am now posting my writing on Substack, and you can find me and subscribe to me at The Platypusary!
Our powder room used to have a high-up louvered window, which made Brian nervous. “It’s going to leak,” he said. He felt justified in his worry, this house has been cursed by leaks — we had to replace all three exterior doors because every time it rained we had genuine ponds-ful of water coming over the thresholds, and don’t get me started on the plumbing. Every single goddamn sink has leaked, plus our shower dripped a bulging hole into the family room ceiling below, and the other bathroom had, among other things, reversed hot and cold taps and hot water running into the toilet, which made the toilet nice and warm to sit on but also melted the wax seal around the toilet’s base and caused more pond-like leaks.
Whoever plumbed this house was a chimp.
Every once in awhile I take an online test that tells me I’m borderline autistic. Actually, my numbers put me in the overlap zone between autistic and anxious-but-masking-it-pretty-well.
I know I’ve said this before but it’s relevant at New Year’s: the odd years are growth years and the even years are catch-up years (according to my therapist), and if that’s the case (2023 = odd number) we’re heading into a growth year. I eagerly dread the push of growth (Jackson was born in an odd year; Jack died in an odd year), but the optimist in me knows you can’t grow stronger or build new muscle without getting sore, so really it’s a good kind of sore, maybe? Ugh, brace yourselves. We’re at the edge of this cliff and old man 2022 is putting his shoulder into our backs.
Well, let’s get caught up. Summer happened, though it’s kind of a blur. We got our stove replaced in May (*air horn*) and I got called for jury duty at the beginning of June, so let’s talk about that.
Whirlpool has a hotline where you can punch in your order number and hear the shipping status of whatever it is you’re waiting for. Lisa from Whirlpool had helpfully given me all the numbers, along with her promise that we’d have a new stove within three to four weeks. It’s been eleven weeks since she LIED to me . . .
At some point during February, I gave up.
It’s been two months now and our oven is still not fixed! And then this week my beloved toaster oven died (possibly of overuse) and all I could do to feel better was write a disappointed review on Amazon about it. Now Jackson is sick in bed with possibly-Covid, and this morning I drew the three of swords. Three swords in my heart, and two of them are oven-shaped.
When our brand-new oven died, for the second time, in early December, I was sadly facing down the very real prospect of a cookie-less Christmas. My preferred method for 95% of my cooking is to use actual heat because I think it’s universally agreed upon that you cannot microwave a batch of cookies. (I typically only use the microwave [which I can’t write anymore without thinking about Nigella Lawson] to heat water for my nightly cup of tea.) I even hesitate to warm a cookie in the microwave, though I’ve done it.
I am profoundly uninterested in seeing the new James Bond film, not just because I am done with that sort of retrograde masculinity but because I am pretty sure it doesn’t take into account the vast trauma of COVID-19 and our collective (by which I mean my personal) inability to process anything more emotionally complicated than a plate of beans right now.
On the one hand: tired of this shit.
On the other hand: fuck it.
Things are simultaneously great and terrible, somehow. We have moved to a new place, which is great. I no longer have to treat my room as an all-in-one work-from-home/reading lounge/therapist’s office/entertainment center/zen yoga shala/sleeping zone where I also eat my oatmeal every morning (in bed). I now have separate places for all those activities. And yet I still do everything in one place: the kitchen.
I follow a bunch of spiritual and mental-health accounts on social media, which is perfect if you want to learn self-care from memes. I honestly love how people are out there evolving and then they turn some life-changing event into a three-second animated GIF. You used to have to go stand outside a temple in the rain for two weeks if you wanted to prove your spiritual yearning, and then maybe they’d let inside to learn the secrets of some short-tempered master who kept you awake by hitting you with a stick. Now you can learn the same secrets while you’re scrolling on your phone on the toilet.