Hello and happy Monday! I am at home where there are exactly zero trains running next door to where I’m trying to sleep on the ground, which is an improvement over last week. And while Ryan would probably be happy to never camp again, we are going to camp again in a couple of weeks. This time we are going to a state park, which, in addition to NOT being in Indiana (sorry, not sorry, Indiana—it was definitely you and not us), it only costs $10 per night. And while there is no pool, there will also be no trailer park and this, my friends, is always a vast improvement. We will be taking a friend for Ryan. This friend is apparently a camping pro and while she will probably judge the shit out of me for everything I’m about to do wrong vis a vis camping, she will also be the reason Ryan gets in the car with me at all. #winning Hopefully she can light a fire.
One thing I left out of the story last week due to extreme irrelevance was when Scott texted me to tell me he loved the pool! Lacking anything to do on Father’s Day, he got in it and floated around and declared it awesome. This is great because the pool is a lot of work. It is, however, the perfect work for him—if there’s anything Scott likes it’s a fiddly project, and this thing is most assuredly that. He’s out there with his water testing strips, adjusting the chlorine, running the filter. He even bought a skimmer and a pool vacuum, which he plans to use tonight. The cheerfulness with which he has greeted the pool is quite the relief, as I’m almost 100% sure if I was in charge the pool would look like this:
Refreshing!
1.) Speaking of which, enjoy these hauntingpictures of abandoned pools!
I would particularly like to call out the University of Rochester for this genius fucking idea, wherein they filled an unused swimming pool with old desks and chairs and then just...walked away. This is both bafflingly lazy and some how also very American.
If you went here, you should request your money back. Or a free chair.
2.) And speaking of Scott, he told me he doesn’t read my blog because he’s not on Facebook much anymore. My first instinct was, Oh! I can write about you! But! I have always had a hard and fast rule about that, which is that you can have a blog or you can have a marriage, but you can’t have a blog about your marriage. But I will share with you that of the two of us, Scott is the more fastidious about his possessions and keeping things in their places.
Scott's closet vs. mine, which isn't all that bad for me, tbh. That's a pile of moldering work out clothes, approximately 600 purses that are empty of everything but old receipts and half full packs of mints.
When he used to travel, I’d always have to spend a few hours making our place Scott-ready again, having left all the cabinet doors open and the dishes in the sink while he was gone. Anyway, I came across this list that came across my desk of bad roommate behavior. I will admit to being guilty of doing a few of these things, including leaving my clothes laying around everywhere,abandoning water bottles in various levels of consumption around the house, and just last week he had to fix the tin foil. I sent him the list with a note that said, “I do some of these things!” I did not, however, apologize.
3.) And speaking of nothing (squirrel!) , I was getting ready to leave for work the other day. Scott had the news on and they were talking about this ADHD app, named Endeavor, which is approved by the FDA to as a digital device to improve attention function in children. If there’s anything I learned during quarantine with my kids, it’s that one of them needs a lot of help with her executive function skills. She’d get off a zoom all and I would be like, what do you need to do now? And she’d be all, I forgot, and that was 4th grade. I downloaded it, and will report back.
4.) This week I’m looking forward to watching HBO’s documentary “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” about late author Michelle MacNamara and her hunt for the identity of the Golden State Killer. Piece of Human Garbage Joseph James DeAngelo is apparently going to plead guilty TODAY (June 29) to 13 counts of being an all around shitty human being who terrorized the citizens of California during the 70s and 80s, admittedly a very scary time to be a Californian. Or to be a contestant on the Dating Game.
Also: hot choccy wine.
5.) The other thing I’m excited about is that Furious Spoon has a new virtual cooking class out, and I made reservations. For our add-on alcohol enhancer, this time I chose Mystery Beer Pong, which is like six beers, some solo cups and some ping pong balls! I don’t know how to play beer pong, but here is yet another chance during 2020 to try something new.
beer·pong: noun 1. a drinking game played at house parties where someone always says “I’m usually way better than this.”
Beer pong doesn't seem very sanitary, which is how you know I'm living through a pandemic. Or how you know I'm old.
Have a good week, people. And for Heaven's sake wear a mask!
So I told you that I bought a tent with the idea of taking Ryan camping. This was deep into my COVID furlough recreational spending spree, and camping seemed like the perfect combination of social distance and something—anything!—to do this summer.
You may not think I'd be the camping type, but the truth is that despite looking like an indoorsy gal, I actually love to camp. I love the sheer nothingness of it—staring at a body of water or staring into a fire. I don’t camp much, however, because neither Scott nor Kai are particularly into it. I, unlike Scott, have a very high tolerance for being dirty and sweaty, and unlike Kai I have a data plan so I don't require wifi. Ryan also has a high tolerance for being dirty. Probably too much so, to be honest, but she’s still very much a child so she gets a pass.
I made reservations at Lakeshore Camp Resort in Portage Indiana. It was 45 minutes away, for one, it had a pool, for another. We would do one night and test it out. We’d see how we did, see what we needed to refine and, if all went well, we would do it again, maybe with friends.
Looks nice, right?
:::
I know that there are nice parts in Indiana because I’ve been to a couple of them dropping Ryan off at summer camp. For what it's worth I also know that it’s possible to land at Midway Airport here in Chicago and decide on your cab ride to the Loop that Chicago is a shitty wasteland of 1-hour motels and 1-story windowless “doctor’s” offices. So I don’t want to judge a state too harshly based on one strip of highway. But man, I always forget how gross it feels to drive east along the lake. On one side you have huge gray factories, or whatever sort of enterprise has a tower with a flame burning perpetually at the top of it. On the other side you have endless power lines and billboards for sketchy accident lawyers. It always feels gray and harsh and dystopian, as though by just driving through you’re risking cancer. Or sterility. Or both. I assumed that we would leave that grimy industrial feel behind once we turned off the highway, but sadly, we did not.
Turning down the road to the camp from the highway, I passed trailer parks on both sides, a police impound yard, several business full of random machine parts and industrial bric a brac. Ryan expressed skepticism, but I told her to hold off judging until we got there.
I’d chosen the camp site because of its proximity to Chicago, which was probably my first mistake. But in addition to the advertised pool, the pictures on the Web site showed inflatable slides in the lake, which seemed to me enough to recommend it. I mean, it’s camping. I did not expect anything more than a plot of dirt and a fire pit. This, of course, is exactly what I got, but the setting was far from bucolic. This was a trailer park. An actual trailer park with trailers, not campers.
“I’m judging this place,” Ryan said.
“You haven’t even seen it yet,” I replied. Besides, I had a few tricks up my sleeve—fairy lights, a packet of magical chemicals that would make our campfire turn fun colors. A bag of Ruffles potato chips. We didn’t have to be the trailer park. We could just camp there for one night.
:::
The staff were very friendly. They sold me a cord of firewood that had apparently been inspected by the State of Indiana and a fire starter kit. They told me we would be at site 92. On the map it looked very near a railroad track:
We drove the posted 5 1/2 mph speed limit through the park to our site, a corner lot nestled between several permanent-looking camps. We set up our tent, blew up our pool-raft air mattresses, unrolled our sleeping bags, set up our picnic table and chairs in time for the sky to rumble, then open up and pour all over everything.
I will tell you that at that moment, I considered putting it all back in the car and going home, but since everything was wet and would need to dry anyway, and since Ryan still had hopes of going to the pool, I did what my dad would have done in that situation and cracked open a beer and sat in the car to wait out the storm.
When it stopped raining, Ryan and I walked over to the pool. There was also an arcade, which was in the process of closing but to which I promised Ryan we could return the next day. The lifeguards said they would open the pool back up at 6 pm if there was no further lightning, so we went back to the campsite to wait.
Our little corner lot was a hive of activity. Teens in golf carts blasting music came and went down the gravel road, kicking up plumes of dust despite the rain. Deep bass tracks, traditional Mexican trumpets, and, memorably, a radio commercial blasted at volume 11, all provided the soundtrack to the afternoon. And also:
:::
The pool was empty of guests when we got there. The lifeguard and Ryan chatted about their favorite swimming strokes, and Ryan got in the water to stretch her limbs for the first time since early March.
“Look at her go,” the lifeguard said, herself a competitive swimmer at the University of Indiana.
Ryan did canon balls and pencil dives, but as the pool began to fill up, she said she felt a little nervous.
“Honey,” I said, “chlorine kills viruses and bacteria. Plus there’s not that many people here.”
Still, she said she wanted to go back to the camp site. She’d been swimming for about 25 minutes.
I ruminated on that during our walk back, past the kids in their golf carts, past the cordoned off playground. About how all our our children will be agoraphobic for a long time, after having been told for all these long months that they can’t be out because people are not safe to be around.
We stopped at the lodge to get some water, and I looked out at the lake, thinking we might hit that up in the morning. There was no inflatable slide. Highway 94 was visible through the trees on the other side of the water, semi trucks whizzing by so close you could hear them.
We walked back to our campsite. The residents had all manor of set-ups: Tiny homes, campers on blocks, traditional trailers. Some of the little yards were full of decorations or flowers. Some looked like no one had been there in years. It was Sunday night, so presumably many of the owners had gone home after a weekend at the camp ground.
Back at our camp site, Ryan suggested we turn on the car and watch a movie, which we did until it was time to cook dinner. For this purpose, I had purchased a camp stove and some propane, which I successfully hooked up and used without a giant explosion:
I couldn't decide whether to boil them or saute them, so I did a little of both.
After dinner, we set about making a fire.
I had purchased a packet of fire-starting sticks for this purpose, and placed two of our three logs into the fire pit. The fire sticks burned merrily, but the logs stubbornly refused to do anything. I found a few sticks and tossed those into the pit. These also burned quickly, but then burned out.
“I think the fire needs more oxygen, not more fuel,” Ryan said.
Part of me was all, what do YOU know about it but Ryan is a Girl Scout and goes to Girl Scout overnight camp and had helped me set up the tent, so I decided she may have a point.
“What should I do?” I asked.
She shrugged. “The counselors at camp wave their clipboards at the fire,” she offered. “Do you have a clipboard?”
Obviously I did not. But I handed her a paper plate.
“Will this work?” I asked.
She waved the paper plate at the fire, causing a plume of smoke and not much else. Eventually we burned the plates. I snuck into a neighboring campsite that looked like no one had been there since 1986 and found some more dry twigs. For a few moments, we had what looked like a merry fire. Ryan successfully roasted several marshmallows and made a s’more. I stole more kindling from the place next door, but though the logs smoldered, they never caught fire. The State of Indiana’s firewood inspector will get a strongly worded letter of complaint.
:::
Giving up on the fire, we watched movies in the car. To get my buy-in, I made Ryan watch an episode of Scooby Doo, a show I’d been trying to get her to watch for years. (Mini review: “I mean, it’s fine.) Then we switched to Jurassic Park 2.
Around 10:30, We took flashlights and went to find the bathroom. Our feet crunched gravel as we walked through the quiet camp, flashlights playing on the rocks. I was telling her about the magical flashlights in the X-Files when we got to the bathroom. I reached for the handle and it was…locked.
Confused, I walked around to the back, where it said “Laundry” above the door. This was locked, as well. I knew there was another bathroom up the gravel road, so we trudged back up the gravel path. This one was locked, as well.
Ryan was glad, as she was concerned that there would be spiders in the bathrooms. And while I also don’t love a spidery campground bathroom, I also had to go to the bathroom. I dropped Ryan back at the car and locked her inside, then trudged back down the path to the ranger station. A few golf carts loaded with people swerved drunkenly around me and off into the night. The ranger station was closed.
I pulled out my phone to check the Web site to see if I’d missed something about the bathrooms being closed due to COVID, and indeed I saw a line that the campground would be open to “self-contained” units beginning in May. But certainly they would have told me if there would not be bathrooms available when I made a TENT camping reservation.
Right?
Ryan was watching for me to come back.
“I was getting a little worried,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “There are no bathrooms. Do you need to go?”
She said she didn’t. But I did, so I squatted behind the tent.
By this time it was 11:00 pm, quiet time, so we shut off the car and went to bed.
Ryan turned off the fairy lights and tried to go to sleep, while I read for a while on my iPhone.
“What are you reading?” She asked.
But I was reading a book about paranormal romance and didn’t want to get into it with her, so I turned my phone off and went to bed.
And that’s when a train came barreling past the camp ground, a loud, grinding, clanking mechanical whooshing sound that seemed to fill our tent, leaving little room for any other sensation.
Ryan and I both reached out in the darkness to link our hands together, and we stayed that way until long after the train passed.
I would like to say that it was the only train, but you know it wasn’t. They woke me up all night long, and in my twilight haze I began to name them old-timey names.
Ah, it’s 3:02 am. That’s the Screeching Hellcat out of New Haven right on time.
What’s that? Why it’s 4:44! Must be the Screaming Devil bound for Kansas City.
At some point, I woke to drops of water against the tent.
Once, I woke up sure something had rubbed against my toe through the tent canvas.
I also woke up every time I touched my face.
:::
The Shrieking Diablo between Columbus and Fairbanks woke us both around 7 am. I needed coffee. I needed to pee.
Ryan went back to watching movies in the car, and I tried to start some water boiling, but my lighter had died, probably as a result of being left out in the rain. I trudged to the ranger station, which wouldn't open until 9 am.
Stumbling back into the car, I slid against the cool leather seat. We would watch Jurassic Park for two hours until the ranger station opened, then we would eat breakfast. The little arcade near the pool would open at 11, the pool itself would open at 12. We could do this.
I tried to watch Jeff Goldblum and Julianne Moore catch a T-rex for a little while. Then I put the car in gear and did the only thing that made any sense:
Ryan wanted McDonald’s, and despite having big plans to make her pancakes, I caved without too much work on her part. I stopped at a gas station try to buy a lighter, and while I was there I used the bathroom.
Then we drove back to camp.
I asked the lady at the gate if there were any bathrooms open. She said that there were, just not the ones by my camp site. I have no idea why the woman who checked us in hadn’t mentioned that tiny little fact. I drove Ryan to one of the bathrooms, and scouted for spiders for her.
Really?
Then we went back to the camp site. I made myself breakfast out of sheer principle before I started breaking down our gear: Rolling sleeping bags, folding chairs, packing cooking equipment.
I took all of our trash to the ranger station, passing a family sitting outside of their trailer on the way. The mother and father were probably my age. A girl who looked to be about 13 sat with them. They all waved, the picture of a lovely family. They had this sticker on the back of their station wagon:
On the one hand, yet on the other...
At this point I really wanted to get out of here, but the WHOLE POINT was to fix summer for Ryan, so I made myself busy, taking all the poles out of the tent and laying it over the picnic table, planning to hang out and allow the tent to dry before folding it up and putting it into its stuff sack. But the clouds grew menacing and a few drops of water began to fall, so I opened the back of the minivan and just shoved the whole tent in, and abandoned the camp site.
It is impossible to drive 5 1/2 miles per hour, and also that’s a super annoying speed limit, so I drove at between 8 and 10 miles per hour back to the pool house. The arcade had garage doors that opened to the outside, so I didn’t feel that horrible letting her play, plus we had to wait for the pool to open at noon anyway.
At 11, there was no sign of movement inside, the doors were still firmly shut.
“Should we knock on the door?” Ryan asked.
“I don’t think there’s anyone in there,” I replied.
“But it’s 11:10,” she argued, as though that made any difference.
When at last the doors opened, Ryan rushed in. There were maybe 7 or 8 games inside, including a couple of crane games, a skee-ball and the like.
“We should play this,” she said excitedly, pointing to one of those water pistol race games.
I pointed to the sign: “Out of order.”
“We’ll do something else,” I said, looking around. Most of the games had out of order signs.
“We’re out of quarters,” the woman behind the counter informed me. “We should have more in about an hour.”
Ryan came up beside me.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“Can we just go home?” She asked.
:::
We walked back to the car.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stick around and swim?” I asked her.
“I just want to go home.”
I put my arm around her.
“I feel like crying,” I said, and squeezed her against me. And I really did. She’d been so excited for this whole trip and none of it went well. “I’ll find us a better place to camp next time.”
Before getting on the highway, I drove back through Starbucks for me, and through McDonald’s to get Ryan some ice cream.
“You know that these trips are supposed to be disasters, right?” I asked her.
“Ew, why?” She asked in return.
“Because that’s what makes them memorable. I remember a camping trip when I was like 14 or so that was SO miserable. We got to the campsite after dark and it was raining, and we had our giant Golden Retriever with us and everyone was wet and miserable.”
“The only thing I’ll remember is being disappointed,” Ryan said. But she didn’t say it like a sullen teen. She said it like every other kid this summer, where nothing is how you wish it would be.
No amount of bargaining with tents and promises and campfires with fancy colorful flames will make any of this okay or bring back forth grade or the summer when she was 10.
One thing we learned in quarantine is that time is relative, so who cares if I publish my Friday post on Monday? The only problem is that Mondays tend to not spark a ton of joy.
But that’s okay! I am here to provide you with the proper edutainment tools for procrastination and time waisting.
First, some updates.
I told you about the virtual ramen cooking class Furious Spoon a few weeks ago, and it happened yesterday. The class included a beautiful ingredients kit, plus I added some sake bombs to make it extra fun. The only downside, if you could even call it a downside, is that we had to figure out how to do Instagram Live, as both of us are old and therefor unable to properly ‘Gram. We had to google it. But! We persevered and made some delicious ramen. Fun fact: I bought this for Scott for Father’s Day thinking that Father’s Day was yesterday. It is not, you guys. Father’s Day is next week. So I still need a gift.
I also told you about this tent I was into. I almost bought it and then didn’t know if I wanted to spend $589 on a tent. It's not like I'm going to Burning Man. So I bought this one instead and feel very confident in my decision. Ryan and I are going to try it out next week by spending one night at this campground in Indiana. What could go wrong?
Oh, and remember the inflatable hot tub? Yeah, we didn’t do that. But we did buy this above ground pool! Oh, this is a boondoggle, you guys. You see, it’s not just the pool. It has a filter and a pump, you have to put chlorine in it and test the water and do something called “shocking” it once a week. It’s a whole thing. Luckily, Scott is being much more supportive of this crazy endeavor than I thought he would be, and has been watching YouTube videos about how to shock one’s pool. We need to go to the pool supply store for chemicals, and will be attempting to put this whole thing together this week. I’ll keep you posted.
And now to the business at hand. In no particular order, here is your linkage:
1.) Scott mentioned the other day that he wanted to try cooking octopus. I gave him a rather unenthusiastic “Hmmm,” assuming that the plan wouldn’t go anywhere. But when he brought it up again, I had to say something. “I don’t want to eat octopus ever again,” I said. “They have souls.” Scott was like, what are you even talking about. I came across this fact when I linked to a review of a book about eels, and once I’d read it and I couldn't unread it. I also maybe want a pet octopus. If anyone wants to point out that pigs might also have souls, I would like to put my fingers in my hears and sing a hearty “La la la,” because bacon.
2.) If you are a kid right now, things pretty much suck. Ryan’s overnight camp was canceled. We decided not to put her in day camp. I’m almost certain that Kai hasn’t been outside in weeks, and even then it was to get his hair cut and then go back inside. I’ve been looking at virtual camps for both kids, and found this. You can buy the tinker kit and the class is free with it. I thought it looked cool, but Kai was unimpressed because he’s not sure it’s for, and I quote, “teens.” I thought we’d try it out anyway, at least for one day, because as God as my witness he’s not spending the summer laying in bed watching YouTube.
We all know that’s a lie.
3.) Years ago, like before kids, Scott and I had Cops Happy Hour on Saturday nights, in which we would have drinks and watch the show Cops. We would have fun predicting who would go to jail (hint: it’s always the guy with his shirt off) and making fun of the cops’ hair cuts and shitty sunglasses and feeling vaguely sorry for the cameramen who were always out of breath after a chase. We tried a few years ago to do another Cops Happy Hour and it was just so hard to watch. In the wake of Eric Garner and Michael Brown and Laquan McDonald it simply wasn’t funny or enjoyable in any way. Turns out I’m not the only one who felt that way. Good riddance to a bad narrative.
4.) Dave Chappelle dropped a special on YouTube last Friday called 8:46, in reference to the length of time Derek Chauvin had his knee on George Floyd’s neck. We watched it over the weekend. I was reminded about the time Dave Chappelle was on Saturday Night Live telling us uncomfortable truths in the wake of the 2016 election. For dessert, we enjoyed Charlie Murphytalking about Rick James, which never gets old.
5.) Did you know that foxes are domesticating themselves in England? They’re making themselves cuter in ways that appeal to humans, which isn’t working for American raccoons. Or is it? But hey, let’s see whatcha got, English foxes. There are a lot of ladies my age who would probably be into it.
Find someone who robs the rich to feed the poor, and then looks at you like this.
So some things happened over the last two weeks. I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting and feeling a lot of feelings, and you probably have, as well. It feels like sea change. I find myself wanting the protests to continue so that we don’t just…go back to the status quo. We can’t.
I'm not here to insert myself in the narrative. This post is not to show black folks how "woke" I am (though, welcome if you're here! Apologies in advance for all I'm about to get wrong.). Neither is it for the folks who have already done the work (please correct me when necessary--I'm listening.). I am far from any kind of expert and I don't need attention or congratulating. This post is about doing better. Being better. Helping. This is about the the work that needs to be done. Maybe you have some work to do, too. (You do.) There will be criticism from people who correctly point out that George Zimmerman was acquitted 7 years ago, where have you been? And those who question the value of sharing lists of reading. All I can say to that is that we must all start where we are.
So here we go.
0.5) I’m doing a lot of listening. I've shared this link before, but it bears repeating.
1.) On Monday, I relistened to a podcast called 1619. That year (401 years ago) a pirate ship sailed into Port Comfort with 20-30 human beings in the cargo hold. The captain needed food and supplies for his ship, so he sold stolen human beings ripped from their land and families to the people in Port Comfort. We learn all about enslaved workers and slavers in elementary school. We all agree that it’s horrifying. Every year some idiot does a pretend slave auction in her class and makes headlines, but we otherwise don’t have many opportunities to sit with and feel in a visceral way what it could possibly be like to be an enslaved worker, how this country was built entirely on the backs of enslaved workers, how white people took everything from black people including their culture, because we couldn’t come up with anything good on our own. You can take a deeper dive into the1619 Project here.
2.) In case you’re new here, this space started out as a mommy blog about my son, who is an autistic person. So I want to submit this letter to a parenting advice columnist (and her response) that I found very powerful. The parents suspect their child looted a pair of shoes, and they want to know how to punish him. Both the parents and the columnist are black. Her response is incredible, and a complete right turn from what I expected. I have chills even now just thinking about it. She is right and she is on fire. This illustrates the difference between parenting while white and parenting while black. Or even just being white or black. A couple letters down from the parents is a woman who wondered if she was karening. Turns out, she was.
3.) Speaking of, here is a piece about the long history of white women using the police to win power struggles with black men.
4.) At the Women’s March in 2018, I remember someone wore a sweatshirt that said, “Fuck your racist grandma.” I interpreted that to mean that we shouldn’t tiptoe around family racism or hide who we are or who we love because your grandma who lives in rural Missouri* or wherever doesn’t like black people. I was reminded of that sweatshirt this week when my daughter’s teacher recently posted an open letter to her cousin on Facebook, calling him out for his racist rhetoric on social media. It was so brave and so powerful. I think we easily become afraid to call people out because it’s messy work. Or we’re afraid. But, you know what? Fuck your racist cousin, you know? This is a resource for allies and witnesses to combat online harassment. It’s written for journalists but can apply to anyone. This is a guide to calling out your racist uncle at Thanksgiving.
5.) I don’t love just straight up lists of resources, because they are easy to share on social media and be like, “Look at me, I’m an activist” and then just go back to scrolling cat memes, but if you like lists of resources, these are two powerful ones. Here is the Black Lives Matter Syllabus and here’s Barack Obama’s Anguish and Action.
The mother of one of my daughter’s classmates posted a video of her son, who is black, reacting to the protests. “White people could use their power to help people,” he observes in the video. This child is sweet and funny. He and my daughter played together on the playground all the time (back when we did such things) and have been in touch during the remote learning. He is not a threat to anyone. He is, however, in grave danger from a society that treats him differently than it does my daughter.
We’re here now, and we have to use our power for good.
Let's get after it. -PDM
*Sorry Missouri. It's just that you had to google the recipe for a gin and tonic and I will never let you live that down.
Well. How are we doing? As of right this second I am an anxious ball of existential dread listening to the helicopters hover nearby. I am actively considering stress baking, which I haven’t done once during all of quarantine. I've frantically checking social media for updates and reading takedowns and thinkpieces. I signed up for an online meditation class this morning and bailed on it because I was too wound up, which is like, the opposite of what you're supposed to do.
When it finally got to be too much, I started writing, which is always a good idea (unless you occupy the White House and are rage tweeting from the toilet). I was saving a lot of these links for Friday, but it's possible you need them now. While we (I, me, white people) may not bury our heads in the sand, one thing I've learned during all of this (meaning 2016 to present) that when the depression/anxiety loop starts to play in your head, it's a really good idea to step away from the internet and do something unrelated.
So. Here is something completely different.
1.) Aside from Tiger King, I didn’t really watch a new series during shelter-in-place. Instead I put on an old one and rewatched from the beginning. I was slow to catch on to Mad Men when it originally aired. I don’t remember why. But once I caught on and caught up, I was so hooked. Re-bingeing it now was the television equivalent of putting on pants with an elastic waist and cracking open a bottle of wine at 3 pm. In the best way. The costumes, the hair, the one liners, the matinee idol-ness of Don Draper with his hat and the comb marks in his hair. Remember when he fixed the Campbells' sink? Then, as now, I digested a lot of the show with the help of the writers at Vulture.com, who ran plucky episode recaps that eventually evolved into a dense meditations on themes of death, identity and change.
It’s been five years since the series ended, which is hard to believe because it feels way longer than that. Then again, remember a few weeks ago when you might feel inclined to hug a stranger? EONS AGO. But show completely holds up. It’s still gorgeous. AND! My friends at Vulture tied all the relevant reading into a neat little box-set-style package with all the episode recaps and included some extra credit reading. (I believe that it's disappearing from Netflix soon, but this being 2020, you can probably buy a box set for Prime delivery some time in August.)
Also, I need to replace my Sterling Cooper Price mug, which is completely faded from going in the dishwasher and which I’ve used every day for five years. Not bad for ten bucks.
Also:
2.) I’m not, like a “royal watcher,” except that they keep turning up in my Facebook feed like bad pennies. So I sort of have opinions about them. I find Will and Kate to be incredibly boring and deeply stodgy. Harry and Meghan are much more exciting, but I also find their choices perplexing. L.A.? Really? However, I did get suckered into clicking this link to pictures of the jewelry that Kate and Meghan inherited from Princess Diana. May we all have an aquamarine divorce celebration ring and a go-to tiara.
Somehow in all of this I landed on the Town & Country website (?) and managed to find this loving tribute to caftans and how to wear them in our current circumstances. I don’t know why this hasn’t occurred to us before.
Do not do this. It will not work out. Just go get a tattoo by someone who gives tattoos for a living that is not also a carnie (I speak these words from experience, though they were probably more carnie-adjacent than actual carnies, it's not a great tattoo. At least there are no typos.).
4.) This guy found some mice in his back yard and built them a village that looks like Hobbiton. I’m 100% sure that he is a serial killer, but the mice seem to be enjoying themselves. At least until be builds them a murder dungeon.
5.) Okay, you guys. I'm going to say a thing and you are going to freak out, but hear me out: paranormal women's romance fiction. OMG! My tastes in books are weirdly specific. In the summer I like non-fiction. Last summer I did a deep dive into Bonnie and Clyde and the Dust Bowl. In the winter, I like to read heavier material with complicated protagonists and dark outcomes. But back when the pandemic started, I would start to read a book and my eyes would lose focus and I'd find myself rereading the same paragraph over and over. So I did what I did after my Dad died, and that was to reread all my Nancy Drew books. In the current climate I need to point out that Nancy, or should I say Carolyn Keene, is incredibly problematic. So I'm not really recommending those books so much as letting you know my current level of sophistication. Which brings me to....paranormal romance.
A couple of years ago, a friend gave me a book from a series she'd been enjoying about the adventures of a paranormal private investigator. I ate it all up. The protagonist is funny and supportive of other women, and her boyfriend is...well, not for the faint of heart. In case you're not clear, this book is full of paranormal sex. And solving crimes and Mexican food, but, well. You know. The series falls apart slightly under the weight of its own mythology, but creating a fictional world is hard. Just ask CS Lewis. Everyone's a critic.
Last week, I texted my friend that I was interested to see what she was reading. "I only read stories about like, hot fairy sex, so maybe you don't want my recommendation." But I was like, hello that's why you're my go-to right now.
My sister also recommended the Shadow and Bone series when I told her about my convo with my friend. Seems like the right idea.
Anyway, my friend gave me a list of ideas. I'm starting here. And if you're interested in more, lmk.
All right you guys. Thank you to the marchers, supporters, sweepers, to those who lifted their voices, to those who donated, to those who are actively trying to change. Keep going. Now is not the time to be silently not racist. Now is the time to be LOUDLY ANTI-RACIST. And it's okay to walk away from the computer or phone. You need to regroup so you still have strength to fight.
