a green light for tiger salamanders
AND BABY, I’M THE WALKING DEAD
Despite how I got mad at gratitude in the last entry, spring has (kind of) sprung and while I like all the seasons, spring in particular turns me into a luxury-head, a sensualist, a maximalist sleepily smiling in an opium den—but the hyper-organized kind who wants to put all her beautiful, luscious best-of-everything stuff into labeled bins and baskets. (I have a feeling opium-den residents don’t do this part. Maybe mine was laced with meth?)
I have been seriously acquisitive lately. Why?
- I did legitimately have to buy a lot of gifts because a ton of my family has birthdays in March.
- It may also be a hangover from the remodeling? MAKE MY LIFE BEAUTIFUL vibes?
- It may be TikTok’s fault, because although I mostly stick to animals I have dipped a toe into “restocking,” “organizing,” and the somewhat-joyless-but-certainly-material-goods-filled lives of 20-something fit white professional Chicago girls.
- It may be the fact that spring tuition is paid, I got a small raise and a bonus, and although we owe SO MUCH FUCKING MONEY to the federal government we are able to pay it and will not be thrown in Tax Jail.
No matter what the reason, here is a way-too-long blathering about Stuff I Like. The last time I did something like this was on a pretty small scale but my invisible friends seemed to like it and I had a lot of nice conversations about stuff. So here’s more stuff about stuff! In a way more chaotic fashion because I’ve had caffeine. Some of the stuff I’ve listed you can purchase or consume, and some you cannot. Just go with it! Let’s go!
- I really like my current purse, I’ve had it for a long time and I want to have it forever. It’s by Fetch Bags and mine is the one in the header photo (but a different color). Definitely get waxed canvas: NOTHING can harm it. Front pockets, top zip (my non-negotiables), and I added a carabiner clip for keys.
- 90% of the time we make a vegetable, it’s roasted broccoli. But turning on the oven during spring/summer is kind of for dopes so make caramelized cabbage! Surprisingly delicious even if you think you don’t like cabbage or cooked cabbage. Cabbage is around sixty cents so you get to feel like a thrifty pioneer lady too.
- This hair repair stuff. Maybe my hair is wicked dry but this stuff is amazing and I don’t use it as a “treatment,” I use it after every shampoo. But why can I not get it in a big bottle? I have to buy these dumb little packs like a planet-destroying idiot (they do last me 2 or 3 washes though).
- This thing is too expensive but the wooden spoon hurts my hands when I cook ground turkey/pork/beef and this doesn’t. Consider if you are also a delicate meat-cooking flower.
- I use the Peloton app with the gym’s equipment and I highly recommend running or run/walk treadmill classes with Kirsten Ferguson for the music (all the very most embarrassing booty-booty-booty/drop it low girl hip hop). It puts me in a good mood and for the rest of the day I am mentally in a Foxy Brown video (minus the metal bra, which looks uncomfortable).
- Finding a better place to pee! We are becoming more adept at driving to Aaron’s college town and the obvious halfway place (a travel oasis) is horrid but there is a much nicer truck stop not too far away! Don’t settle! Don’t just pee where you’ve always peed! Pee different!
- Small-town antique stores.
- We are now the proud owners of a golden 5-lb bucket of hog brains (no hog brains are inside).
- I see a collection starting to happen: I also had to have this volume of The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires: Or, The Ghost of Lost Man’s Trail, published in 1910. The Automobile Girls are very daring young ladies who DRIVE CARS and who also solve mysteries? And maybe have erotic encounters with each other? I am not sure yet because the book, while in very good condition, is nearly unreadable due to all the laughing gaily (hmmmm????) and tossing of brown curls. I might want to complete the set though—there is one where these Automobile Girls drive their motor-car all the way to Chicago—and I will make a valiant effort to read that one.
- Using live transcription on Zoom. Not only does it help those of us with slight auditory processing problems (raises hand), but if you have to be the note-taker? You can zone out without fear and just make sure you hit that “save transcript” button at the end.
- The Tatcha Dewy Skin Cream if you’re a dried-up hag like me. Not cheap but the tub lasts a long time.
- The big blue IKEA bags. These are genius for moving a kid to college (assuming you’re driving). Way better than luggage or boxes.
- Encouraging any snorers in your life to get a sleep study and CPAP machine. The extra white noise is actually soothing to me and if it does get loud, I can put the blanket over his face! And he won’t die or get a headache! Because he has air! By default!
- Words
- Hola Papi (essays formatted as advice columns, pretty good, sort of what Havrilesky can be when she’s not getting lost in literary wankery)
- But You Seemed So Happy (divorce memoir [sort of], interesting as I suspect the author and I have very different definitions of marriage, would like to have a glass of wine with her)
- Detransition, Baby (messy in the best way, compulsively readable)
- Crying in H Mart (so good).
- Pictures: A very unhinged Joan Crawford vehicle* from 1965 and William Castle called I Saw What You Did. These teen girls are prank-calling people at random and say “I saw what you did” and of course they happen to call a guy who just got done murdering his girlfriend. Peril ensues, with a weirdly jaunty score and a “moral” at the end about not playing with the phone which was…not my takeaway? Anyway it was amazing** and you should keep an eye out for it.
*Joan Crawford is in it for only about 10 minutes, but she manages to call someone a “tramp” twice and (spoiler alert) die on camera in a super-duper Joan Crawford way. It takes literal minutes. LOVE IT.
**I mean, check out the taglines.
—mimi smartypants knows who you are and saw what you did.