Things I've been meaning to tell you 2.14.2024

Look who's back, back again...

1. Items of note from last weekend: It is amazing how much lighter and happier I feel after a few hours spent with a BFF. Thanks to Laura for driving down to visit for lunch...where I sat directly across a man I filed against in small claims court for fucking insane window shenanigans. A man who told me he was dying the last time I spoke to him. Surprise! He survived. LOL. And thanks to MFD for driving down to get the dogs and fill up my tires so I could run around doing some work shit Sunday. I finally went to a coffee shop I've been meaning to go to - Jessie's of Linwood - and got a smashing red velvet muffin. I saw Buddakan with her skirt on for the Lunar New Year. Your woman was invited to a lacrosse tailgate by literal children. Despite having a face that discourages interaction, I continue to be invited to interact. The tie dye flower my brother got me was still alive in the fridge in Philly weeks later. These buffalo chicken sliders from Bluff City Grub were super easy and delicious. Shittah finally made it onto the corner ladder shelf. 

2. Okay what the hell. Who has seen this? This is fucking insane.

3. Shore side tables I picked up at a thrift store in November are in progress. The middle shelf is for books, I swoon over these tables. I've found three over the past year. Both of these use All in One paint in Thistle as a base coat. The sherbert orange one is that mixed withModern Masters Metallic paint in burnt orange and the other is Modern Masters Metallic paint in teal.I leaned into mixing with the orange to soften the color up and not so much with the teal, because that metallic was the color I wanted. 

4. I do not like or celebrate Valentine's Day, but I love love in all of its forms. If you need to hear any of these from someone today and haven't: I love you. You being out here alive and kicking matters in this world. You complete you. You can buy yourself flowers. Along with picking up a divine dessert, giving someone who deserves it the middle finger is a cheap way to treat yo'self.

5. Related, from my soapbox: There is no reward in this life for putting every living thing before yourself or turning yourself inside out for someone else, whether that person is a love interest, child, friend, parent, sibling, whoever. Take care of you, then everyone else. Many women in particular need to read this to understand it, not read to gloss over the words. There is no award for putting yourself last. There is no award for depleting yourself to where you are a puddle on the couch. There is no award for setting yourself on fire to keep someone else warm. This applies to romantic love, children, family, friends, etc etc. Take care of you, then everyone else. 

6. Slowly but surely making changes in Philly. I have too many belongings for someone who is rarely there, so every time I go home, I pare down. I've gotten rid of a decent amount of stuff over the past few months but am literally just scratching the surface. We've got a new roomate in Philly - Jared, who is basically family to us, moved in last month, so I cleared out a bunch of shit in the bedroom he's in and while I was at it I went through the closet in my office where old luggage and Halloween costumes go to die. The shit pit room in the basement is allegedly being turned into usable space, cleared out by MFD. Step one of that was putting Shittah's bathroom behind closed doors. This room has always been the recipient of shit people unload from cars and forget about, or where we put things we need to figure out what to do with. For a minute it was a bedroom for my mother in law, then an office for me, and I want that office back but we're in negotiations over that right now.

7. A few weeks ago Laura called me the Menopause Captain and I humbly accept this title. We can speak about perimenopause and menopause openly and not sotto vocce like they're taboo topics. Periods too. Get comfortable being uncomfortable if you talk about these things in a whisper behind a hand because they impact the daily operating lives of over half of the global population and this shit is uncomfortable and maddening enough without having to put a cherry on the top of a shit sundae to ease others around you.

8. What I also struggle with every day and appreciate the words of Zoe Lister-Jones on: the idea that we cannot hold space for both peoples. We can. Actually, fuck can. We must. 

9. I don't want to hear about more mass shootings because I don't want there to be any more fucking mass shootings. Nothing more American than a mass shooting on the day of the Super Bowl parade, coinciding with the anniversary of two previous mass shootings that did not rock the country enough for any tangible action to be taken. It's a goddamn fucking disgrace. 

10. The beach recently. Lots of heavy skies, which I don't mind. Not a lot of sea glass, but I found four pieces yesterday. That's how it goes. Just me and Ben down here from Monday night to tomorrow night.

We leave for vacation Sunday. I am absolutely unprepared to do so, and am trying to get right with it. I'll probably do like I did when we were in Europe, and do an IG feed post a day and a reel. That was a good way for me to remember our trip myself. If you want to follow along, you can find me on Instagram here. MFD is here and hopefully he doesn't lose his phone like he did the second he stepped off the plane in Switzerland this summer.  

Things I've been meaning to tell you 2.7.2024

For years I was blogging four to five times a week, then three, then committing to still documenting weekends and monthly reads, then a substack post here and there, then stopping even the weekends and monthly reads the weekend after Thanksgiving…and I stopped with no regrets. I didn't want to sit at my computer any longer than necessary. I didn't feel like I had the capacity for it. Since then it’s been like having all the things I shared regularly for so long bottling up in my brain causing a traffic jam. I never thought not putting a blog out would add to my mental load instead of subtract from it, but that's what happened. I am a creature of habit and continued adding any little unimportant thought that flew through to a mental list until my brain felt like the scene in a movie where a pillow bursts and the asshole down feathers that are a PITA to clean up are everywhere.

I'm going to try for a weekly round up, which I will start immediately with no expectations and achieve with varying degrees of success. Let us begin.

1. I’m so glad Tracy Chapman is getting all her flowers for Fast Car. Now let’s do Talkin’ Bout a Revolution.

2. Then let’s actually have a revolution where the needs of actual every day people are met over the need to return profits to shareholders or fund the military industrial complex, which America does without care for how it impacts and erases actual every day people, scorches the earth, and does lasting damage to our shared humanity. Too many of us do not realize our entire lives are attributable to the luck of being born where we were born. Related: let's Make America Go Back to When Congress Produced Things Aside From Sound Bytes Again. Do nothing motherfuckers owned by corporate and/or foreign interests, the lot of them

3. White women powers, activate! Form of: the same shield around Black and Brown women - celebrity or not - we use to surround Taylor Swift. This isn’t a dig on TS, it’s a reminder to us white ladies that white supremacy AND patriarchy are not the shark, they are the water we swim in. And a lot of the time, us white ladies are the lifeguards who focus so hard on some swimmers that we’re just letting non-white women drown. Plenty of Black women have more to say on this than me, and plenty of white women are slamming the door on it because they are sick of the beating Taylor Swift has taken because the NFL shows her on the screen which, ladies, I’m with you. Two things can be true at once. If you read shit like this and get defensive, stop and discuss with yourself. I immediately stop and ask why I’m getting defensive. And as a rule and lifelong commitment to my authentic self, I am ruthlessly honest with my answers. It is okay to change your thought process or to have a realization that sparks a change in how you see the world at any time. If you find yourself stuck, you might be dead.

4. Some of you right now: Back on her bullshit, why did I start reading this

5. I spent two hours on a combo of live chat and phone chat with the bastard Xfinity this morning to lower our shore internet only cost from $160 to $102. How the shit they justify Internet Only at $160 when it was $85 in 2020 is one of the world's greediest mysteries. The cost of utilities in general is absolutely insane globally. Also why isn't Internet fucking free. 

6. Free deodorizer for dog beds, blankets, etc: sunshine. The same thing that kept the Ingalls family from smelling like old crotches through most of the winter. Have you ever read The Long Winter as an adult? If not, recommend.

7. I'm thrilled with how  table originally purchased for $20 from ReStore turned out in Philly - this is Modern Masters Metallic Paint in Amethyst over All in One Paint in Thistle. My niece critiqued it while it was in progress, prompting an additional coat I was not going to do but she was correct. I still need to add a lacquer top coat. More metallic painting shit coming this weekend at the shore. Who knows how that will turn out, because I'll be damned if I'm letting the rest of the thistle go to waste so it will be the base for the two smaller tables I'm doing at the shore as well. Different metallic paints are going on top of that but they are not in the same color family so the end results will be a surprise to both you and me. 

8. Items of note from last weekend: Mr. Rooney's first $$$ emergency vet visit. Face time with a good friend is always comforting and fantastic. Bruce is back on his coffee bullshit. A two hour walk on a windless Sunday in February feels like an amazing dream.

9. Have I mentioned I'm putting my feet in the water every day I'm at the shore, winter included? The water's not bad, really. I need to ground myself in all seasons, and also I'm a pisces what do we expect

10. Woman who is always saying, "I rarely watch movies," has recently watched movies.

I'm coming back next week, I swear.