Hi Darling Ones, I always want to be the kind of writer who is constantly scribbling down ideas and sentences whenever they strike me. However, I also don’t want to be a pretentious asshole who stops conversations, calls attention to themselves, and then writes down whatever word barf occurred to them. Dilemmas, amiright? However, today when I heard the song “Alabama Pines” I decided to add it to my 14…
Hey Darling Ones, My mom came over Thursday for our traditional holiday kickoff. This is where we eat Chinese food from the Dragon and then spend the rest of the night shopping online where she points at the screen and I click add to cart. During dinner she told me how one of her Windmill customers had died either that day or earlier in the week. My mom is at…
Hi Darling Ones, I trust you all survived Thanksgiving relatively unscathed and are girding your loins for the holiday season. My Thanksgiving soup was wonderful, my monster cookies were ugly but delicious, and yet I fell into a puddle of sadness and now I’m drowning in a pit of despair I can’t climb out of There was a sadness triple-whammy that I wasn’t quick enough to dodge. #1. The obvious….
Hey Darling Ones, When it comes to holidays, Thanksgiving ranks pretty low on the list. The tops are Christmas, My Birthday, Rex Manning Day, and National Donut Day (which sometimes falls on my birthday). Thanksgiving is a dud for me. I haven’t eaten Thanksgiving Turkey in 25 years and I hate pie and football. This is not a holiday designed for me. What I usually like about Thanksgiving is how…
So Twitter has turned into a giant block party where ever single attendee is standing on a box holding a sign that says, “THE END IS NEAR.” Well, some of them have signs that say, “THE END IS HERE.” Really, they’ve been calling Twitter dead for the past two weeks. It’s starting to feel a little bit like the last few days of college where you’re convinced each time you…
Hi Darling Ones, I woke up at the crack of 10 a.m. this morning to a snowy Monday. It is, for the record, the eleventy-leventh grey day of November thus far. It feels like 10 a.m. all day because the light never changes until it’s dark at 4 p.m. The dying of the light has been particularly brutal this year for all the reasons you already know. I won’t enumerate…
Hey Darling Ones, Today I finished Blanket #29 (pictured above). It is lovely and I cannot wait to give it the recipient who is not expecting it. Whenever I finish a blanket I feel simultaneously proud of my accomplishment and a little shitty because past criticism always echoes in my head. Years ago at a Family Dinner, my nephew’s girlfriend complimented me on a blanket I made. Maybe she also…
So, Darling Ones, Back in like 2016 or so, my dad made it very clear that when he died he did not want a service of any kind. As his health grew increasingly dire over the past two or so years, he frequently reiterated this desire. When he died in September we honored his wishes and did nothing. As an angry hermit who is not a fan of hugging people…
Hi Darling Ones, When the Anger Stage of grief set in I didn’t expect it to be a free-floating sort of annoyance that plagues my every waking minute. The Anger Stage of grieving was supposed to involve fist-shaking at the clouds, “ohh, I’m angry these people* I loved died.” Mine is nothing like. I’m angry all the time about everything. I can’t remember what I pinned the anger to yesterday,…
Oh Darling Ones, Despite the positive upswing on Friday, my Uncle Danny died last night. He was my mom’s twin brother and only 71. He loved Minnesota sports, his son, Billy, and the song “Hotel California.” One Thanksgiving my siblings and I spent the entire evening trying to get his Android phone to play “Hotel California” whenever his phone rang. As iPhone users we failed in this mission because we…
