no one remembers all the faces
THE STUFF AND THE THINGS
Every day is the same. I had a long spell of being very conservative with money because we had/plan to have some big weird expenses like a new refrigerator (see below), the news that Aaron needs his wisdom teeth out next month (covered by insurance but of course not entirely), and presumably, eventually, we hope, a tuition bill and maybe even a bill for room and board, dare to dream, could it happen? Who knows? Vaccine? Who knows! Better treatments? Maybe! A lot of stupid delusional people were like “Trump will run America like a business” but forgot to mention that it would be a TRUMP business, full of grift and failure. I do not listen to that man talk but I was looking at a Twitter thread transcription of deranged rally remarks and someone said that his words had “Master Shake energy” and now I can’t unsee it. Right down to the little floppy hands! (Seriously read the Wiki WHO DOES THAT SOUND LIKE.)
Here’s the fridge story: the freezer door would not stay closed, and we tried all the internet-suggested tricks like cleaning the gasket, attempting to remagnetize the seal, etc, but finally after 10 days of melting popsicles Aaron came up with this.
It’s a “There I Fixed It” in the wild! The pluses:
- Kept the freezer door closed while we investigated replacement
- Made a loud SNICK sound of steel-on-steel when opening the fridge door, like one was drawing a sword. En guarde, mon réfrigérateur!
The minuses:
- Super annoying to have an extra step in both opening AND closing the refrigerator, especially when cooking (I started gathering in my arms everything I would need from the fridge for the whole damn recipe, just like a contestant on Chopped) (BEHIND!)
- Did not really work all that well unless one positioned it juuuust so. Still a lot of ice-covered freezer food.
A very honest guy from Abt said that for a 10-year-old fridge, it was doubtful if we could even get a replacement door, and if we could it would take a million years and cost a million dollars, and so we got an entirely new fridge even though that irks me in a Grandma way (nothing lasts anymore! Throwaway society! Humph!) So now we finally have a new fridge and it has no door handles at all! It is a monolith. It actually does have a better use of interior space than the old one although it has no butter garage, so the butter sticks just live on a shelf like everything else. WE USED TO HAVE A ROOF OVER OUR HEADS, moan the butter sticks. WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR ROOF. The shelf is fine, I tell them. You’re safe on the shelf. NOOOOO they whine oh butter. Have you considered meditation?
Anyway, spending lots of money suddenly makes you feel free to spend multiple small amounts of money, whether or not it is actually wise. I subscribed to have cold brew delivered in a box to my door, I bought new sneakers, new socks, and more “joggers” and sweatshirts since apparently that’s what I wear now, and a multipack of incense for Aaron (he paid me back). I did not ask a lot of questions about the incense. He is too straightedge to be a pothead but maybe he just wants to smell like one.
My Amazon wishlist kind of functions as a “want to read” list for me, since I usually get the books on it from the library. But if you do this too, I suggest every so often you sort the list Price: Low to High because Kindle versions will randomly be on sale for $2 and yeah, I’m not NOT going to buy a book I want to read for that price. Even though I have over 50 physical books out from the library and at least that many on my Kindle. Here are seven good (and not so good) recent reads:
| Exit West | Mohsin Hamid | Very good indeed |
| Wow, No Thank You. | Samantha Irby | THE IRB! |
| Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies | John Carreyou | Theranos is my favorite scam EVER and I will always read about it |
| In the Land of Men | Adrienne Miller | Publishing memoir but also a David Foster Wallace tell-all which gave me big feelings about whether that was fair (?) |
| Strung Out | Erin Khar | I have rarely had less sympathy for a drug memoir protagonist; she behaved very poorly and somehow heroin was the least of it. Also lots of name dropping. |
| Every Man A Menace | Patrick Hoffman | Hard-boiled boring |
| The Need | Helen Phillips | Weird and good! And weird! |
This is long and dumb and it’s No-Delete Thursday so it’s not going to get any less dumb. I am going to go for a walk and mail the latest letter to my prison pen pal. It contains exactly as much Nothing as this entry.
—mimi smartypants is a prehistoric raven formerly native to the Chatham Islands.