Hi Darling Ones, I got the yellow headphones and as I suspected they have fixed all the things. I’m unendingly content and frequently experience bursts of unmitigated joy. My loneliness has vanished along with my self-doubt, shame, and guilt. My hair is shinier. My muscles are stronger. I sleep the gentle slumber of the righteous and the just. My food tastes better, my plants are greener, my orgasms more fulfilling, and men are forming a line to be my true…
The COVID Diaries: That One Time at Bible Camp
Dear Darling Ones, I went to Lutheran bible camp the summer I was fourteen or fifteen, which is exactly where you’d expect a Catholic girl to go to camp. This was the only time I ever went to camp, unless you count journalism camp or, I guess, marching band camp. Those last two things were just called camp but didn’t involve sleeping over anywhere. Bible camp was the real deal and we stayed in cabins up in Spooner, Wisconsin under…
The COVID Diaries: A Black Scribble in My Brain
Hey Darling Ones, It actively pisses me off that I love the song “Yellow*” by Coldplay. Just like “Creep” by Radiohead and “Crash Into Me” by the Dave Matthews Band. It would be much easier if I was apathetic to it like the rest of their music** and then could forever place them in the bucket labelled “shit I don’t care about.” Other things in that bucket: hobbits and all things hobbity (which some how encompasses dragons, Game of Thrones,…
The COVID Diaries: Everything I Touch Turns to Shit
Bleh, Darling Ones, I fell into a funk on Friday and I can’t seem to climb my way out of it. I don’t know if it’s 410 days of pandemic or the unending grey that is April in Minnesota or the weird mood swings that come with being a perimenopausal woman, but I am unhappy with notes of sad and lonely that provide a bitter finish to this full-bodied blaseness. When I fall into this kind of funk, I find…
The COVID Diaries: [Pronoun] Was So [Adj] Last Night
Dear Darling Ones, I won’t go on and on about the conversation I witnessed between Karen Russell and Elizabeth McCracken. You kind of had to be there to accurately understand the magic. However there are three things I wanted to get out here for posterity. First, at the start of the conversation Karen Russell said, “I was just thinking about the Mad Libs grammar of the heart.” I can’t even remember the context because I was so captivated by that…
The COVID Diaries: An Unimagined Temptation
Hi Darling Ones, Here’s a temptation I never imagined would be a thing: Earth Day sales. You know who is really into Earth Day sales? Plant stores. PLANT STORES! I am proud to admit that thus far today I have bought zero plants. I did buy two new planters for Roger & Lawrence, but those came to a grand total of $15 and anything under $20 doesn’t count as real buying of stuff according to me who makes the rules…