setting fire to bridges
THINGS I CANNOT REMEMBER
The rules of card games. In college I remember a semester-long euchre craze with my friend group. We’d play in the SMOKING LOUNGE (holy shit why was there a smoking lounge, what were SLACs thinking in the 90s) every day after dinner for a few hours, until people drifted away for studying or goofing off or taking drugs and sitting on fire escapes looking out at the Lonely Midwestern Night and writing really bad poems in Moleskine notebooks.
Literally every single time I sat down to play euchre, a full 24 hours (at the very most) after I had last played euchre, I would say wait, remind me how to play? Some very patient person would say maybe ten words about the rules and SNAP I would remember and okay okay, deal me in. But why? Why can I not retain any game information? It is the same with other games too, which is maybe why the only game I like is Scrabble, which has everything you need to know literally printed on the tiles and the board.
The name of any Mexican restaurant or taqueria. I can describe its location and set-up (the one on Montrose, between Damen and Western, with the good al pastor?) but names completely elude me and I do not know why. Dear Tacos: Sorry I never remember who makes you. I came to you rather late in life (blame my former vegetarian-ness) but I love you now. Kisses.
Cardinal directions’ relationships to each other. If I am, say, walking east and want to go north. I have to imagine a map of the United States and think, “Dum dee dum I am walking to Virginia. I would like instead to go to Canada! I shall make a left.”
A LONG WAY TO GO
While I am not a Taylor Swift fan by any means, the teen and I enjoyed the recent Netflix documentary about her. I don’t know if I would necessarily recommend it as a film but it is only 80 minutes or so and you can knit or walk on the treadmill or look at Twitter at the same time without missing anything crucial. I am a sucker for any behind-the-scenes stuff so I liked seeing the weird ways mainstream pop songs come together, and I found Tay-Tay’s Great Seriousness at taking the very tiniest of tiny baby steps toward White Lady Feminism 101 to be simultaneously ludicrous and adorable. She is like 30 years old god damn! I know Taylor Swift did not have the benefit of growing up with the good zines or taking Intro to Women’s Studies at college, but it must really be true that fame stunts your intellectual/emotional growth. Because how are you just now learning these things?
Also, until I watched the doc I had never actually seen footage of the “I’ma let you finish” Kanye thing and it made me sad. What a jackass.
CITY KID
We (or rather I, LT had nothing to do with it really) signed up for a compost service. Everyone who lives in an area with land and space is laughing right now, I know. A compost service? Not just a pile or a bin out back? Listen, my “out back” is a patio with a fire pit, flowers, some furniture, and a 2 x 8 dirt box where I sporadically grow herbs. My “out back” is full of skunks and racoons and criminals who make a mess of your unlocked car (I don’t know if the last group would mess around in the compost bin, but you can never be too careful.) Compost service is cheap and nice and a young beflannel’d hippie (I assume, I have not actually met my compost bucket retrieval person) arrives on a bike (zero emissions!) and swaps the bucket, full for empty, every other week. In the meantime all I have to do is set up a container for cooking scraps and Aaron’s endless apple cores, tote those scraps down to the waiting basement bucket daily, and enjoy my much better-smelling and less-voluminous kitchen garbage. I talk a lot when I cook and tell the vegetables what is happening to them, and now I have more to talk about! Potato guess what! You are going in the soup! BUT MIMI WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO MY SKIN don’t worry your skin is going in the compost bucket it will be great! You will be so useful. Yaaaaaaay says potato. Dignified decomposition I love it. Great things await, potato.
—mimi smartypants is doing the uptown lowdown.