add some swans
PENNY TILE / IS ON MY FLOORS / AND IN MY EYES / (OW)
Our bathroom remodel is done! Huzzah! I would show you pictures because I’m so proud of all my hard work and backbreaking labor my ability to browse Houzz.com, point at things I like, and write checks to contractors, but we still haven’t figured out a window treatment (our neighbors have done nothing wrong, and do not deserve to be shocked by our nudity). Right now there is a towel blocking the nudity view, and it does not make for a classy picture. But otherwise! It’s grand!
Most importantly, we are no longer a one-bathroom family. I know at least one person will write to me with a tale of how they grew up with 17 people sharing a toilet and yes, remodeling-related inconveniences are the first-worldiest of first-worldly problems, but it did kind of suck. There are only 2 other people sharing my house but one is an inconvenient pooper and the other likes to take 90-minute baths, so things got a little tense.
Also, I have a problem with sleeping through the night, and when I wake up I usually get up to pee, and it was such a production to go to the other bathroom, what with slippers and glasses and trying not to fall down the plastic-tarp-covered stairs. So the anxiety of anticipating the nighttime pee led to more wakefulness, and thus more need for nighttime pee, and oh I am such an old person.
ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL
Chicago’s stressful “selective” high school enrollment process is officially over, and to no one’s surprise N had a strong showing with a few offers from which to choose. They were all good schools, but I think the smart choice was made by opting for the school close to our house (literally a 5-minute walk) rather than the one with an hour-plus one-way public transit commute. It would not have been dangerous but it would have been tedious, and Chicago’s winters are dark and unkind, and N is a big fan of YouTube and playing hockey and messing around on guitar, and of course there’s homework and eating dinner and maybe popping back over to school for a play or a basketball game, all of which are much easier if school is close. So yay.
The only thing that worries me a bit is that the program is all AP and Honors and I glanced at the English stuff and saw mention of Beowulf, and man do I hate me some Beowulf. I won’t even be able to help with homework, I’ll just be ranting about how much Beowulf sucks. Someone tried to defend it to me once by saying it was the first manuscript discovered that is considered to be written in English, to which I say we should have just quietly shoved that vellum back into the hole in which we found it and waited for the SECOND manuscript considered to be written in English, because Beowulf is pretty terrible. It’s basically an action movie and not even a good one, and the only part I like is when they hang up Grendel’s arm in the mead hall. I don’t know why we didn’t think of that for the upstairs bathroom, a nice big monster arm as decoration or window covering.
YOU’RE GONNA WANT TO GET THIS SHIZZ ON YOUR KINDLE RIGHT QUICK
Some royal fishery action.
Or, if you’re more into periodicals: subscribe to Portable Restroom Operator. This is a publication I use a lot when I am trying to convince aspiring young editors that publishing is a VERY wide world, and you probably won’t end up doing something cinematic like reading the slush pile at HarperCollins, but there are scholarly journals and textbook publishers and yes, trade magazines like Portable Restroom Operator, and they all need editing. Oh, the places you’ll go! (Literally.)
HERE IS SOME NEWS
A working crab-powered computer could be possible, because large amounts of crabs swarm in predictable ways. I enjoyed the “Ethical Note” at the end: “Furthermore, on visual inspection, no crabs appeared to have been injured or adversely affected by the experiments.” I’ll give you “injured,” but I don’t know how you can tell that a crab hasn’t been “adversely affected.” Some of these crabs will never trust again!
A SAMPLING OF MY STITCH FIX REVIEWS
I receive a Stitch Fix box every few months and usually keep at least one thing. It saves me from the retail-world horrors and I am a sucker for anything that claims to be curated or that has a recommendations engine. I am a special snowflake.
When you do return something, there’s a bunch of checkbox reasons like “too big,” “poor quality,” “did not like style,” etc, but there’s also an open-text comment box. My goal is to make them regret giving me an open-text comment box.
This looks like a wrinkled old rag. And it made me look like a crazy hobo. Please always err on the side of “structured and tailored” rather than the side of “an unraveling sack, appropriate to wear when cleaning the garage.”
Juuuuust on the edge of too much cleavage, but I decided to be brave. YOU’RE WELCOME, WORLD!
What the hell am I going to wear with mint-green jeans? I am not entirely sure, but I’m keeping them anyway because they fit so well. Mint-green booty, coming through.
Kind of clingy, lumpy, and weird. LIKE YOUR MOM okay sorry I can’t resist a mom joke.
—mimi smartypants is not gonna/be yr mama.