my life is a full house aces and kings
LET’S GO BACK TO OUR OLD FRIENDS THE BULLET POINTS, THEY HELP ME THINK (HMMMM WE’LL SEE ABOUT THAT)
- Once again I am sneaking in an entry when I do not entirely feel like it, just so there is a nicer-looking archives page. I am very strange like this. I think I often do things for the wrong reasons that turn out to be okay reasons (in an “ends justify the means” kind of way). This is partially related to my OCD issues, which manifest in me making insane lists and following elaborate and arcane number-based “rules” about how to Get Stuff Done. In reality Stuff really does Get Done and I look like I have it all together, but under the hood the show is being run by one hundred cartoon mice jumping up and down on some ancient steam-powered chain-reaction machine. (Completely picturing a Max Fleischer-style animation here and just arrived back to my document from YouTube rabbit hole of same. What did I miss?) There is a huge new project at work and during the project-birthing process one of my roles ended up being trying to convince people to do things a simpler way. Was it because I want to make it easier for me? Yes! But was it also because it was the best way? Also yes! I just have to remember to only mention Reason #2 in performance reviews.
- All this reminds me of the time I left my wallet at a bar and emailed the bar owner the next day asking if they had it (they did), and I wrote something like ack, I’m a huge loser, thank you. His reply email said What do you mean, “loser”? You won! You didn’t lose your wallet! Happy result, difficult process to achieve it, all a matter of perspective. There is some kind of lesson here but I am done with this self-help shit, goodbye.
- On Martin Luther King Day I went to the gym at zero dark thirty and when I got in the car everything was weird. The glove box was open and papers were all over the seat, and the center console storage bit was open too. I guess I figured that LT was scrabbling around for the manual or something and I did not go further than that because it was EARLY and I was thinking ahead to LEG DAY which is the greatest gym day of all. And I did not clean up the car when I got back either, because I am LAZY and was thinking ahead to BAGEL and SHOWER and NAP.
- Until LT went to use the car and texted from the garage, “What is all this crap everywhere?” Seems someone had broken in to our garage in the night, found nothing worth stealing, found the car unlocked (dumb, I know, never to happen again), sat in there for a while and also found nothing worth stealing, and left. Nothing is missing or vandalized but I do not want some gross criminal in my garage! Also it occurs to me this is one time when a Chicago-style detached garage, out there in your bungalow’s yard all separate from your house, is a great comfort.
- It is Aaron’s birthday tomorrow and he will be seventeen. He spends his time being pleasant to talk to, getting good grades, playing guitar, practicing driving (the required permit hours are a BITCH for city kids to accumulate), playing a complicated crime-themed MMORPG that I will never understand, and watching/snarking some terrible CW shows with me. (Does anyone who works on Batwoman have the slightest understanding of momentum, inertia, or other laws of physics? Is Riverdale an Exquisite Corpse-style exercise written by entirely new writers each time who are only allowed to see the previous episode and nothing else?)
- There’s a time when your kid is little that you have tiny moments of panic about a time when they won’t be little anymore. But truthfully, not-little is pretty great, and there is a nice long stretch of it. Seventeen is the time of tiny moments of panic that soon your kid won’t LIVE WITH YOU anymore. Let us not, as they say, “go there” as I am already in a fragile state.
- Fragile-state thing: Family separation at border-crossing detention facilities has been a story for a while now. It is a grim story and for-sure upsetting to anyone with a heart. But for me, it was upsetting at a slight remove, the way lots of upsetting news stories are—until I was driving home from the dentist and heard the ProPublica audio recorded at such a facility that opens with a child wailing “MOMMY” in the worst possible way. I was all alone but literally started crying, saying out loud “I can’t I can’t I can’t,” and nearly crashed the car trying to find the Pause button. Holy fucking shit, where do I donate. Never mind, I know where to donate, I know where to vote. Where do I RIOT.
- Hi everyone, I am a huge downer! Happy Friday night! I am heading to Hideout soon to listen to Samantha Irby throw down at Write Club. I will be the dork with a laptop backpack (because work projects know not of “weekends”), a cheap macrobrew, and lipstick in the Urban Decay color “Shame.” By the way I have some hard-won Lipstick Advice for the lipstick-wearers out there: Color Over Formula. Every time. I recently (and reluctantly) culled my lipstick stash and threw away tubes that just were not truly my color, even though they were from brands I love. Got to get real honest with yourself in Lipstick Land. Got to go deep, find the stillness, hear the inner voice.
—mimi smartypants is inside your heart spinning yeah.