BITCHES GOTTA EAT

i don't think i'm supposed to publicly admit that i like drake. right? i mean, i'm not sure who's buying the millions of records he's selling because no one i know will admit to their willingness to spend actual money on his music but i love him, like, unabashedly love him. he hits all of my major marks for non-garbagehuman consideration:
-sensitive
-funny
-handsome
-doesn't take himself too seriously
-sculpted facial hair
-maker of mid-tempo jams
-dances kind of weird
i know it's not cool to like him or whatever but you're just gonna have to work with me here. i hope he never stops making adult contemporary raps that are the perfect accompaniment for the kind of activities people of a certain age (37 and 1 month, for example) are into: performing at home "anti-aging" spa treatments; reassuring the directv online specialist who insisted that you communicate over text that, in fact, you have already tried going outside to clear nature's debris from your satellite dish; replaying your many shortcomings and failures while waiting for the occupants of the yukon idling in front of you with the don't tread on me sticker on the back windshield to finish ordering their many complicated drinks at the starbucks drive-thru. and also:

1 filling up your daily pill box.
recommended soundtrack: "passionfruit"
i'm not kidding i wasn't even paying attention to the first two tracks and then this came on and i was like HOLD ON BITCH WE'RE GOING HOME. goddamn, this is a smooth jam. i remember being a kid and rolling my eyes when my mom put betty wright on the record player and swaying in the middle of the living room, eyes closed, cigarette burning between her lips. i only wanted to listen to music that was fast and aggressive, shit that mirrored my internal pre-teen torment. but now that i'm dead i like songs that sound like a nap. okay fine i'll take some bass every now and then but i like jams that feel like putting a sweater on your ears. this is good early morning music, that fuzzy yellow time of day when you've just woken up but haven't yet remembered all the reasons you wish you hadn't. the kind of soothing record that makes the metamucil go down easy.

2 organizing snacks for game night.
recommended soundtrack: "portland"
cards, checkers, travis scott, tic-tac-toe, 20 questions, a looped recorder, trivia, charades, jenga, quavo. now that i live in a space big enough to hold two couches i enjoy having people over all the time. which is to say that i am uncomfortable outside of my crib and i'd rather slice the tip of my finger off making an instagram-ready charcuterie plate that might fool a normal person into thinking i care enough about them to buy imported salami than dig a pair of shoes that don't slip on out of the back of my closet and go somewhere loud. so instead i tell people to swing by the cottage and before they get here all the chipmunks and birds and dwarves and i throw portland on the hi-fi while we tidy up and make snacks. as soon as i heard that recorder on the track i lost my fucking mind. and i know, his fake patois bothers people, but i like to pretend that maybe he's me after i first heard "flex" and "murder she wrote" and spent all of eighth grade walking around my quaint little suburb pretending i was patra. also how could you hate a song where a dude says "toot" at the beginning what are you a monster.

3 zumba gold.
recommended track: "get it together"
i've dated more DJs than any sane person ever should and i know a goddamn deep house track when i hear one. i had to check my computer to make sure i hadn't accidentally slid a ron trent record into the rotation when this came on. i turned it up and was transported to the darkest, stickiest corner of smart bar on a hot night in 2005, the only person sitting on a folding chair in the middle of a disco, waiting for my boyfriend dj jazzhouse or whatever his professional name was to finish his set so i could drive him and his battered crate of everything but the girl remixes home. i have a shoebox full of mixtapes with titles like "beats 4 my sweets" scribbled on them featuring a bunch of miguel migs tracks and every conceivable remix of "golden." I KNOW A GOSPEL TRACK WITH A HOUSE BEAT WHEN I HEAR ONE.

4 "lovemaking."
recommended soundtrack: "nothings into somethings"
i love a slow cut. i especially love these tracks that sound all hazy and dreamy and listen, if this dude is gonna sing all the time that's fine by me. he has a good voice and, frankly, sung lyrics are just easier to understand than rapped ones. ugh except the lyrics to this one chap my ass because as much as i love relaxing and popping a top i just can't abide by the whole "girl why didn't you wait for me?" narrative, no matter how much i enjoy drake's upper register. because what was she waiting for, young man, for you to fuck people until your dick got tired and you came crawling back to her while she was busy going to college and thriving in other meaningful ways? i'm projecting here, but motherfuckers always wanna hit you with the WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU GOT A WIFE NOW when your last conversation three years ago was about how they wouldn't leave theirs. but anyway um just fuck your new boyfriend to this. *paints fingernails*

5 going to a restaurant in the mid-afternoon when it is not busy and sitting there for three hours.
recommended soundtrack: "sacrifices"
laugh if you want but two in the afternoon is the best time to go to a restaurant. first of all, it's nice to get a buzz on while the sun is still out. being drunk at night makes me feel like i'm about to die. but having a drink with the sun streaming through the brewery windows is exhilarating. no kids to fight with over the one intact connect four on the game shelf, no having to watch boozed-up singles sloppily paw at one another, no just leaving your credit card behind because the bar is too fucking crowded to close your tab and you have to pee and your uber is waiting out front. if you feel awkward doing this by yourself, i like to take a book that i can stare at until the words pleasantly start swimming before my eyes. but i also wear headphones so no one gets the wrong idea and thinks i want to make conversation. my preference for real life is always super-emotional jump off a building music (aimee mann, ry x, sharon van etten, beirut) or surf rock slash dream pop but i also love a downtempo stoner jam and this fits neatly between all the kid cudi and mac miller downloaded on my phone. i know it's cool to shiver in the doorway of the hot new restaurant that can't seat you for two hours, but it's also pretty awesome to watch the receptionist from your dentist's office down an entire beer flight by herself after the lunch rush on a wednesday. i'll save you a seat if you promise not to talk to me.

6 posting CAPS CAPS CAPS nonsensical comments on news articles you don't understand on the internet.
recommended soundtrack: "fake love"
i mean, fake news fake love what's the fucking difference.

7 cooking healthy recipes that use cauliflower instead of rice as if that could ever be an acceptable substitute.
recommended soundtrack: "madiba riddim"
i don't know exactly what it is about turning into a corpse that makes me consider shit like "pretending cauliflower is rice" but lol here we are. my favorite vaguely-mexican version:
1 large head shredded cauliflower
1/2 white onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp olive oil
4 tbsp tomato paste
1 jalapeño or serrano chile, diced
1 tsp salt

1 pulse cauliflower, onion, and garlic in a food processor using the s-blade until finely ground into pieces slightly larger than cooked rice. openly weep at the mere suggestion of a rice-shaped food, and to mourn the loss of your youth.
2 heat a large sauté pan or skillet over medium heat and stir in the tomato paste, chiles, and salt, then cook for a minute or so.
3 increase the heat to high then add the cauliflower, onion, and garlic. stop to wonder if whatever you were hoping to accomplish by eating this way is actually worth it.
4 cook for 6-8 minutes, stirring often, until the moisture is evaporated and the cauliflower is light and fluffy.

8 painting flower still lifes with the girls at one of those wine and painting mom classes.
recommended soundtrack: "blem"
"no one wants that painting of a generic night skyline, judy. but margaret thinks it'll be a fun way for you to get out of the house since you've kind of been in a funk since you and tim got divorced. she and kathy have been meaning to talk to you about how worried they are that you haven't come to silver sneakers cardiofit in weeks, so they thought getting a few of the book club regulars together for happy hour to sloppily write their names on ceramic bowls sounded like fun! you don't have to get dressed up, just put on that shift dress that you got at ann taylor. you know, the blue one you wore to the junior league luncheon last week. we're just going to drink a couple bottles of rosé and gossip about how phyllis can't keep her rose bushes looking nice even though roberta walked in on her feeling up the gardener. let's plan ladies' trip to jamaica this summer. we haven't traveled as a group since pat broke her ankle dancing on the bar in cancun three years ago, and now that tim and his boyfriend moved across town and opened their bed and breakfast maybe it's time for you to get your groove back? just like in that movie! i love the islands, the people are so lively and musical! anyway, we can probably get a good deal on one of those apple vacation packages if we book it soon! anyway, instead of listening to this blem song all day (is that what he's saying?) while crying as you scroll through tim's linkedin you can listen to some actual reggae music in the caribbean on a hot beach with a bottle of rum and maybe try to bang a sexy young porter at the resort. okay hon, i gotta go get through my tennis lesson while trying not to drool too much over bradley's abs. see you tonight, bring percocets!"
good morning, good afternoon, goodnight.

click here and buy this lovely thing i made.

birds are chirping, flowers are blooming, and sleeping with the windows open at night means i've got a 2 benadryl 1 zyrtec 3 blasts of flonase a day habit right now: HALLELUJAH, SPRING HAS SPRUNG. fuck winter for real. i used to love the cold but i'm sick of it being dark all the time and the wet chill in the air makes my joints ache and remember when we were young and thought we'd never be the type of people to consider moving to a sanitized bedroom community in new mexico to avoid leaving our brittle bones to chance skating across the grocery store parking lot on sheets of february ice? i do, too. but i get it now. winter is :( and i'm already :( enough on my own without adding cooking dinner in the pitch-dark to the mix, so thank goodness for this sun hanging around at least until survivor comes on to reignite my will to live.

a brief rundown of some good shit i've read recently that doesn't technically qualify for our club because it's not YA:
"startup" by doree shafrir: super fast and engrossing soapy novel about NYC tech people that was insanely compelling considering that you really should hate these people?
"all grown up" by jami attenberg: hilarious vignettes about a 39-year-old named andrea who is kind of terrible and fucks terrible people but seriously there are some of the best sentences i have ever read in this book, omg.
"marlena" by julie buntin: okay so i read this because it's one of those books that's on every single goddamn list and i hate being late on the zeitgeist, and it took me a little while to get into it. but i liked it, i think. i really wanted to like it. actually, i need someone else to read it and talk to me so i can decide if i did.
"the dry" by jane harper: i'm a sucker for mystery books but also deeply filled with shame about it because a lot of them aren't ~literary~ and smart people make fun of me for reading them. but this one is good and juicy and literary, but it's set in australia and i don't have a good mental grasp on australian accents so trying to hear it in my head drove me a little nuts. i just imagined the dude from the fosters commercial narrating it for me.

the rules
1 we are never going to meet in real life. that would require a bra and zippered pants and probably an expensive uber and no one is doing that. you don't have to worry about megan's dairy allergy or that vanessa doesn't like champagne. no cleaning the cat box or vacuuming the drapes or hiding the dirty laundry in the oven so your company doesn't realize what a huge slob you are. just you in your house glasses and gravy pants sobbing into your six pack of beer, the way rainbow rowell intended. getting together with people you don't live next door to is hella stressful. plus, a bunch of old bitches sitting around talking about fictional teenage romance is lame. OR IS IT THO.
2 we are never going to discuss this, ever. i mean seriously. i'm going to derive pleasure from knowing that people i might possibly enjoy spending time with if i ever could bring myself to meet new people and i are falling asleep and drooling on the same book we'll probably never finish. maybe we'll talk about it on twitter or something. but even thinking about organizing that is a daunting task and i'm already exhausted. mariyam suggested making a facebook group, but is that dumb? the internet is so hard sometimes. (ETA: there is a group! it's called bitches gotta read! and it is full of hilarious mostly-women people who aren't irritating! come find us!!) i also have a bunch of friends on goodreads but lesbihonest: i'm not, like, putting all these john grishams i read on there because i don't need you guys clowning me in public.
3 we are never going to shame each other about not reading the fucking book. this is the beauty of never having to meet or talk about it: i ain't gotta come up with "thoughtful questions" and you ain't gotta pretend to remember what happened at the end of chapter seven while a bunch of wine-drunk bitches you don't even like that much wait expectantly for your answer. i'll read the books for sure, but that's only in case i run into one of you at the co-op and you decide to ask how shocked i was by the twist no one saw coming at the end.

brief internet synopsis

Finley and Betty’s close friendship survived Fin’s ninth-grade move from their coastal Maine town to Manhattan. Calls, letters, and summer visits continued to bind them together, and in the fall of their senior year, they both applied to NYU, planning to reunite for good as roommates. Then Betty disappears. Her ex-boyfriend Calder admits to drowning her, but his confession is thrown out, and soon the entire town believes he was coerced and Betty has simply run away. Fin knows the truth, and she returns to Williston for one final summer, determined to get justice for her friend, even if it means putting her loved ones—and herself—at risk. But Williston is a town full of secrets, where a delicate framework holds everything together, and Fin is not the only one with an agenda. How much is she willing to damage to get her revenge and learn the truth about Betty’s disappearance, which is more complicated than she ever imagined—and infinitely more devastating?

i'm embarrassingly passionate about mysteries and thrillers so this one better be good. i should probably be more ashamed than to admit this but i've spent more money on those $5.99 pocket murder novels than is healthy and i 100% got a kindle just so i can hide how much totally predictable and unchallenging garbage i like to read on public transportation. and sure, i read lofty literary works that make me look like an interesting person who cares about smart things (i hope) but i'm also a person who once spent an entire weekend in a denver hotel reading james patterson books because the altitude made me sick and i didn't want to go outside. i contain multitudes.

click here! buy this thing i made!

dearly beloved: we are gathered here today to mourn the loss of that irritating girl you vaguely remember from the art class your mom made you take junior year of high school so your course list would look good to potential colleges. she earnestly shared a lot of FAKE NEWS and poorly designed inspirational infographics, and every time you posted about a tv show you liked she hastily chimed in with "i don't watch that show, but i heard--" oh yeah? you have a casual opinion on a television program i faithfully invested seven actual years of my life into? just shut the fuck up and scroll past. or maybe she's the first person to reply "sorry i don't use [frivolous consumer item you'd trust the internet to suggest]!" to your tweet "hey guys, which is the best [frivolous consumer item you'd trust the internet to suggest]?" maybe she posted the nutritional information for those unicorn frappuccinos trying to food shame people who knew they weren't buying health food in the first place? come on you snotty asshole, let people enjoy their purple calories! or maybe you just remembered that time in third grade she said your pound puppies shirt was ugly. YOU LOVED THAT POUND PUPPIES SHIRT. one time i blocked a dude because every day he would post the grossest looking actual food he was eating, two seconds after another who was always trying to sell me his mixtape in the year of our lord 2017 wow sir no fucking thank you! i could go on and on about her adding you to various lularoe legging groups or spamming your instagram with links for "free iphones!" but listen, you know who i'm talking about. and you shouldn't feel bad for even a second for blocking that hoe and throwing her a funeral in your heart.

every time someone's internet presence feels like a personal attack on my life i first try to have compassionate thoughts like "what if something terrible is happening in her life?" because even though we know it isn't there's still a very slim chance hell is real and i'd like to have a plausible defense of my actions on earth should there be some sort of way to argue my way out of damnation. but then i think, "well if she were actually suffering there's no way she'd be spamming me links to all these pyramid schemes" and my guilt evaporates just long enough for me to click that block button so i can move on with my day. i'm a patient person and hesitant to alienate anyone who might have fifteen dollars lying around to buy my books, but it dawned on me the other day that for me, the internet has to be a meticulously curated digital space in which your uncle's vaguely racist tweets have no place.

i hate fighting. i'm sensitive and no good at it and if the consequence of bickering online means i gotta spend the afternoon feeling bad because a kid i don't remember from high school called me a fatass kelly price over a reductress article please murder me. and if i get on your goddamn nerves: BLOCK ME FIRST. kill me with your powerful brain! there are too many places in real life where blocking is not a viable option to tolerate someone ruining your many secret lives online. you can't block the coworker who won't stop fucking talking while hovering nearby as you're just trying to put half and half in your breakroom coffee, but you can block that friend of a friend who says shit like "i'm not prejudiced, i don't care if a person is purple or green or blue." lol blue people SHUT THE FUCK UP. you can't delete the neighbor whose eyesore of a car is parked on his front lawn whose cat keeps shitting on your deck, but you can delete your cousin who earnestly believes that rap music is reverse racism and vehemently comments as much on every kendrick lamar video you share. no mute button for the woman at the grocery store who won't stop asking where the shampoo is even though you're pushing your own cart while wearing both sunglasses and a coat, but you know who you can mute? everyone you hate on the internet!

PROTECT YOURSELVES. YOU DON'T NEED THIS SHIT. and to prove i'm not the only piece of garbage scrolling through instagram unfollowing people whose gorgeously filtered lives make mine look like trash, i crowdsourced a bunch of actual experiences from my interface friends of their smallest, pettiest, aint-shittiest reasons for hitting a bitch with the mutombo block online:
-checked in at golden corral
-remembered that he told me i looked bad in the sixth grade
-blocked a guy who agreed with me because i didn't like his tone
-my grandmother has been sitting in my requests for three years. (which is a genius method of preemptive blocking that often comes in handy)
-tagged me in pajama christmas dinner picture even tho i said don't tag me in pajama christmas dinner picture
-any post starting with "89% of facebook users wont repost this" gets a HOTTTT block.
-blocked my ex-wife cos she found jesus.
-all their posts have no periods yet all their texts have periods? nah. blocked. way too positive, you love your life that much B, then get off facebook. blocked.
-unfriended and blocked every bitch trying to sell me ugly leggings or fat wraps or supplements.
-made a status saying we should "lead with love" and "try to find what unites us instead of divides."

-COMPLAINING ABOUT CAPS/ASKING "WHY ARE YOU YELLING."
-motherfuckers who bang on about how blessed they are. the more you gush about how great everything is, the more i hope you fall into an open sewer and die.
-i blocked someone who said they liked french toast more than waffles.
-blocked a relative for always posting pics of dead people in their caskets.
-talked shit about eddie vedder.
-for liking "sam's club" not "costco."

-IF I DUMPED YA, YA BLOCKED.

-overuse of "just sayin'."
-i don't like my friend's husband's haircut and their dog is honestly the ugliest thing on planet earth.
-blocked a local lady for creating a fb group dedicated to pictures of her child's lunches.

-one of those facebook game invites. no i don't want to play candy crush but i do want to crush your soul.

-BECAUSE I JUST GOT TIRED OF LOOKING AT HER FACE.

so yeah, even if people are relatively harmless it doesn't mean you have to, like, be assaulted by their terrible memes. you don't owe them shit! they're not your mom! and if they are, you are not obligated to deal with her either! if my mom was alive and on facebook, SHE WOULD BE BLOCKED. i can only imagine how hilarious her timeline would be: her profile picture?definitely a blurry photo-of-a-photo of her circa-1989 face; multiple daily shares of every "iyanla fix my life" clip posted on oprah's fan page; quotes from steve harvey's books, posted in earnest and definitely mentioning how "handsome" he is; blackamericaweb articles about celebrity news she heard about on the tom joyner morning show; and public posts in which she tags me asking how to dvr "the bodyguard" on BET or saying something like I Need @Samantha Irby To Go To Target And Get Some Tide Detergent It's Buy One Get One Half Off Until Tomorrow!! THANKS BABY!!!!!!!!! Love, Mom. how do you expect me to live my carefree, profanity-laced online life with that terrorism happening every day!? i would get one of those kid divorces in a heartbeat.

the most effective strategy i've found for dealing with most relationships that have successfully ground themselves to a halt is to continue living my life as if that other person has died. that way, i can honor the memory of what we had without stressing myself sick over whether or not she's taking someone new to my old favorite bar. and, rather than delicately scrolling through her feed on my phone trying not to accidentally like any of her life achievements while seething in anger over what we used to have, i can instead just not do anything BECAUSE THAT ASSHOLE IS DEAD. anyway sometimes you just gotta help people make their way to the graveyard of your life. especially since he already knows you unfollowed him because you never ever comment on his posts. and you should never ever ever feel bad about it. because even if their rotting corpse rolls the digital stone away and you just happen to run into that twitter zombie at the coffee shop then just signal to the barista that you're gonna need to take that americano to go and give that guy a nod that says "dude, sorry not sorry but i really hated all those buzzfeed tasty videos."

click here for a handy primer on living your best social media life.

boy do i hate these countertops. you know, like you can have all the fancy prep shit and vitamixes you want, but if you haven't torn out the cabinets and backsplashes you hate what is even the point of pretending you otherwise have good taste!? there are cupcakes being made in this house today but they aren't for me so who cares. i'm not even eating cake right now anyway, especially since i downloaded this app that you enter all your food into so you can see how many calories you eat and try to stay under the allotted number to get to the ~goal weight~ they've assigned to you. honestly i burn more calories scrolling the database in an effort to find shit like "purple flesh sweet potatoes" and "teff porridge" among all the dorito varietals than i do inputting how many minutes of senior zumba i've completed in a day. anyway it's too early in the season for beach backdrops (lol what even is a beach) so instead please enjoy this still life of these eggs laid by yard chickens down the street from where i still can't believe i actually live.

the rules
1 we are never going to meet in real life. that would require a bra and zippered pants and probably an expensive uber and no one is doing that. you don't have to worry about megan's dairy allergy or that vanessa doesn't like champagne. no cleaning the cat box or vacuuming the drapes or hiding the dirty laundry in the oven so your company doesn't realize what a huge slob you are. just you in your house glasses and gravy pants sobbing into your six pack of beer, the way rainbow rowell intended. getting together with people you don't live next door to is hella stressful. plus, a bunch of old bitches sitting around talking about fictional teenage romance is lame. OR IS IT THO.
2 we are never going to discuss this, ever. i mean seriously. i'm going to derive pleasure from knowing that people i might possibly enjoy spending time with if i ever could bring myself to meet new people and i are falling asleep and drooling on the same book we'll probably never finish. maybe we'll talk about it on twitter or something. but even thinking about organizing that is a daunting task and i'm already exhausted. mariyam suggested making a facebook group, but is that dumb? the internet is so hard sometimes. (ETA: there is a group! it's called bitches gotta read! and it is full of hilarious mostly-women people who aren't irritating! come find us!!) i also have a bunch of friends on goodreads but lesbihonest: i'm not, like, putting all these john grishams i read on there because i don't need you guys clowning me in public.
3 we are never going to shame each other about not reading the fucking book. this is the beauty of never having to meet or talk about it: i ain't gotta come up with "thoughtful questions" and you ain't gotta pretend to remember what happened at the end of chapter seven while a bunch of wine-drunk bitches you don't even like that much wait expectantly for your answer. i'll read the books for sure, but that's only in case i run into one of you at the co-op and you decide to ask how shocked i was by the twist no one saw coming at the end.

brief internet synopsis
In One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, Scaachi Koul deploys her razor-sharp humor to share all the fears, outrages, and mortifying moments of her life. She learned from an early age what made her miserable, and for Scaachi anything can be cause for despair. Whether it’s a shopping trip gone awry; enduring awkward conversations with her bikini waxer; overcoming her fear of flying while vacationing halfway around the world; dealing with Internet trolls, or navigating the fears and anxieties of her parents. Alongside these personal stories are pointed observations about life as a woman of color: where every aspect of her appearance is open for critique, derision, or outright scorn; where strict gender rules bind in both Western and Indian cultures, leaving little room for a woman not solely focused on marriage and children to have a career (and a life) for herself. With a sharp eye and biting wit, incomparable rising star and cultural observer Scaachi Koul offers a hilarious, scathing, and honest look at modern life.

i'm not going to pretend i'm not biased. i mean, my name may or may not be on the back of this book. and it definitely isn't YA, but we're going to have to make an exception every now and again especially since my book is coming out in a few weeks and i'm definitely picking it for book club even though i'm lowkey embarrassed about being shameless in this specific way. but what can i do homie I'M MY BIGGEST HYPE MAN. i don't have a street team! anyway the book is so funny and so good and scaachi might literally be the one reason i still have a twitter. seriously it's like ten million horrible opinions and then her.

here is a handy amazon link to pre-order the newest fruit of my loins.

please come see me. mannnn i'm taking this show on the road. i just finished packing a bag that is 70% chargers 20% underwear and 10% toiletries i'm not 100% sure the TSA won't throw away, so i'm already off to a pretty sam start? can't wait to spend $47 on magazines i definitely won't be able to dig out from under the seat in front of mine! i haven't even gotten to the airport yet and i'm wondering which of my carryon items i will inconveniently forget!! who has two thumbs and can't ever figure out how to make the tray table work without disturbing the rightfully irritated businessman sitting next to her? this guy!!! wow o wow this is gonna be a breeze!

may 30 word bookstore at housing works 7pm, NYC. gotta pump the brakes on this gross-ass self-promotion for just a second to say that i am always super excited to go to new york and take many gorgeously filtered photographs of mountainous street trash and battle rats in the street for a cab because i'm terrified of the subway. anyway i'm still in wide-eyed disbelief that this is actually happening? but somehow we convinced my hero crissle from the podcast the read (if you don't know you fucking need to) to (host? moderate? hang out with me for two hours talking about the real housewives in front of a confused audience!?) join me for the launch, which i'm doing in new york even though your pizza is gross and i still don't have any idea how many brooklyns there are. buy tickets here for $20, which includes both a copy of my book and exposure to whatever communicable disease i pick up at laguardia.

june 6 bookbug, kalamazoo MI. this is gonna be a dream because all i gotta do is crawl out of bed and lint roll the cat hair off my pajamas and BLAMMO i'm good to go. i imagine the event will be real loose and casual and filled with people i coerced into friendship after i moved here; i'll read an essay or two and sign some books probably? and mavis will be there, so you can ogle her impressive upper arm definition while asking her intrusive shit like "so what's sam really like?" which is hilarious because the answer is definitely "TERRIBLE." anyway, it isn't ticketed but here is the bookbug events page which includes a handy link to enter it into your google calendar, a thing which i honestly don't know how to do or use.

june 8 women & children first at wilson abbey 7pm, CHICAGO. "country road, take me home, to the place i belong..." if you ever wanted to cram yourself in a sweaty room with all my friends and exes this is your chance. mel and i are gonna spend half an hour arguing about how annoying i was as a teenager, i'm gonna read something gross and short, and we'll probably field questions? plus i'll write something graphic in your book if you feel like hanging around for that part. get tickets here, which will also include a copy of the book. while i'm in town i'm also doing a panel at printer's row called "wise and witty" (lol what wisdom) but it's at 1030 on saturday morning and are you really coming to the south loop that early on the weekend? if yes, admission is free and you can find out more about it here you nerd. please pick me up a buttermilk bar at stan's on your way down.

june 13 literati bookstore, 7pm ann arbor MI. i'm hitching my wagon to my pal scaachi koul's book train and we're going to tag-team a bunch of college kids and their earnest professors. i'm pretty sure that it's free but i'm not wearing my glasses right now so please read the event page here in case i'm wrong.

june 20 book people 7pm, AUSTIN. i remember being young and optimistic and thinking that one day i would move to austin and be a free spirit after reading about it in seventeen or wherever but FUCK THAT IT'S SO HOT. also, poverty robs you of your dreams. so now that i'm no longer a teen with hope in my heart i'm coming down for a couple days to pretend i live there and am actually cool enough to be seen in an austin bar. oh yeah and talk to a bunch of texans about my book. this chat is gonna be with my homegirl the bloggess herself, one jenny lawson, and even if you hate me you gotta suffer through my shtick to get to her so maybe i'll win you over? pretty sure this event is free too but there's more info here so read carefully. ps, please write down all the best air-conditioned taco spots and bring them with you i hate taking notes on my busted-ass iphone.

okay okay, i know: wtf are you gonna do if i'm not coming to your city!? first thing, understand that shaking my sweaty hand is definitely overrated so you aren't missing much. second, you might still have a chance bc i'm gonna swing through the west coast in september. so far i'm slated to come to SEATTLE, PORTLAND, and LOS ANGELES. and i know that's not enough, but despite the number of times someone has breathlessly rushed up to me squealing, "omg i looooooooved bad feminist!!1!1!" i am not roxane gay. i don't sell out auditoriums. I HAVE DONE READINGS SO SMALL THAT WE ALL WENT TO SUBWAY AFTERWARD AND THERE WAS STILL ROOM FOR A LOT MORE PEOPLE. and that was delicious but also kind of embarrassing? so if you want me to come to philly or atlanta or dc (or wherever you live) you and your moms gotta buy enough books to justify a hotel and a plane ticket. once we've got some dates and times nailed down i'll let y'all know, and after all this i am never leaving my house again!

omg just fucking buy it already:
indiebound
barnes and noble
amazon

pinnae are we for real off shea moisture forever? because i'm nearing the end of my bottle of african black soap shampoo ($9) and i need to know if i gotta switch to something else before i run all the way out. i mean i'm down for the revolution or whatever but not if it means my scalp is gonna be all dry and disgusting in the meantime. i can't just be mindlessly scratching at the side of my head all the time. when i'm feeling fancy i buy malin+goetz dandruff shampoo, but at $26 a bottle it doesn't do anything special like folding your laundry or scrubbing that sticky grey dust from under your oven, so i would only spring for that if you just got paid and are feeling reckless. and that is how i feel every single time i get paid. i forget every promise i made to myself to "put a little something aside" because wow have you ever tried the laura mercier gloss sticks!? THEY ARE VERY PRETTY AND GLOSSY AND SMOOTH. but i'm putting the designer cart before the drugstore brand horse. anyway, someone at head and shoulders got the heads up that black people have flaky scalps too and released a line for textured hair, which is super cheap and smells good and you can get it at the same time you're grabbing wonder woman from the redbox. i like the moisture care co-wash ($5), and it's easy to know which one is for us because there's a brown stripe and some coconuts on it as if the words "co-wash" and "textured" weren't obvious enough.

snout i'm wild boring when it comes to face washes because as soon as i cruised effortlessly into my late 30s my face was like "nah, bruh" every time i put something new on it. also it started getting all patchy and dry and i don't especially care about that but i'm a picker with nothing better to do than flake off large pieces of the dry skin on my nose while watching star trek: tng and that's fucking disgusting. the relatively-cheap routine that has worked for the last few months is: cleanse with dove bar soap ($2), tone with thayer's cucumber toner ($8), moisturize with first aid beauty ultra repair cream ($12) after a thin layer of regular-ass coconut oil (i buy louana at the health food spot because carla hall is on the jar and i love her, plus it's $14 for a 30oz jar and that is an incredible value bc you literally just touch the oil and the residue is enough to cover your whole face).

my eyebrows are wiiiiiiiiiiiiiild and it's just too much work to do anything with them so i stopped. threading hurts wax hurts tweezing hurts, oh my! so instead of ripping the hairs out of my face i just brush some soap and glory archery brow gel ($12) through them and convince myself that they look good. i used to use benefit brow zings ($32) until i lost the tiny brushes that came with the kit and threw a tantrum, but even though it looked decent it was more work than i ever wanted to do anyway. i think when this tube runs out (ie when i get bored and impatient) i'm gonna order the boy brow from glossier ($16) but also who cares because this is what oversized glasses are for!

i could write ad nauseam about lipsticks but i will try to contain myself so i don't bore you to death and limit my scope to just a few summer-specific beauties: 1 nars velvet matte lip pencilsare my all-time number one fave (today) and at $27 apiece they ain't cheap but they are like the most perfect formula. smooth and creamy but dry to the touch and longish-lasting. dragon girl is my main jam but i also wear the shit out of walkyrie and bahama, too. and i know that matte lips aren't a summer thing but these aren't chalky and gross and whatever rules are for suckers. 2 colourpop blotted liplipsticks are the moderately-priced dream of my life, because they're essentially the same texture and look of the nars except a little less dry and they cost $5 which means you could get five of them for the price of one of the nars and it wouldn't be a national emergency if you, like, left one in a cab or some shit. 3 idk what the fuck is up with maybelline ($7) but their color sensational lipsticks are so good now and i have a few of the loaded bolds and the creamy mattes and yes i looked like a dead body when i experimented with the ~greige~ shade but so what it felt really nice and the kid at the mcdonald's window could care less about ol' corpse lips in the mom car. 4 wet n' wild megaslicks balm stains ($3) are actually pretty good? but the caps cracked on the two i had and i tossed them out in a blind rage so i can't really tell you about the wear and whatnot. ps the nivea moisture lip care ($3) with the dark blue cap is the only lip balm you will ever need and that's real. *bangs gavel*

jowls face makeup is complicated for me because i hate the feel of liquid foundation and i don't really need it anyway so why go to all the trouble? and this isn't a humblebrag about my tight, youthfully glowing skin, i have pores you can wash your goddamn feet in, i just don't do enough things that warrant all the trouble that a proper makeup application requires. like i'm not blending a cream contour to go to the starbucks kiosk inside the grocery store. squeeze the beauty blender a few times under the faucet, apply and blend both up into the hairline and down onto the neck, highlight/conceal, set with powder: the high school senior shaking my iced green tea doesn't give a shit about all that. plus i came of age in the 90s, when your eyebrows were supposed to be thin enough to slice deli meats (i don't groom mine anymore whatsoever) and your skin was supposed to be powdered dry as the desert. and "creating a dewy canvas" is just not as easy as "leaving my face as shiny as it would be naturally" so that's just what i do. when i want to trick someone into believing i tried i'll use a little glossier perfecting skin tint ($26) or that old standby, and favorite of beyonce if the commercials are to be believed, l'oreal true match ($7). which are both JUST FINE, especially if you are a lazy person who doesn't have time for believeable full coverage. when i do get dressed up (lol what do those words even mean) i like to dab helplessly at my T-zone with a little make up forever pro finish powder ($37) in a vain attempt to look pulled together in case someone whips out a camera, but that shit is expensive so i mostly rely on milani pressed powder ($7) to keep me from blinding innocent passersby when my forehead catches the light from the sun on the rare occasion i am caught out of doors.

cheeks blush is the beating heart of my desire and thank u lord because you only need a little each time so the shit lasts foreverrrrrrrrrr. i prefer tubes of cream and bottles of liquid to powder blush because i'm trash and morally opposed to cleaning my brushes after every use, but i do keep one compact of nars taj mahal ($30) around because it is the silkiest burnt orange beauty you'll ever lay your eyes on and if i stretch it out for five years it's only $.0164 per day so it's actually kind of a steal. (oh the limits to which i will go to justify my ridiculous expenditures!) glossier cloud paint in haze and beam ($18/ea) is my shit and it spreads easily and dries perfectly and is basically everything you ever want in a cream blush, but don't sleep on sephora cheek gel in lotus, water lily, and plumeria ($7/ea) if you want something cheaper. i haven't done a thorough investigation but i do have a couple nyx cheek souffles ($6) sitting in the ulta.com cart i keep adding shit to and one day i'm gonna click that checkout button and as soon as i do i'll report back.

as cool as they look when you post selfies of yours on insta, i don't use sheet masks because i'm too busy reading the yelp reviews of people i used to be cool with to spend twenty minutes just sitting around hoping my blackheads are dissolving. and also because i feel like each zone of my face has its own climate and weather system. my nose and my chin have entirely different needs, and no need to risk overhydrating one while drying out the other and then spending three days trying to recover. but i love a good ritual, especially if it involves sitting very still in front of the television without talking for an hour, so every now and again i'll use this queen helene avocado & grapefruit masque ($3) that i found under the sink but if there's a difference in my skin no one told my eyeballs.

loin since i don't have to interact with many people who have to smell me i've been experimenting with natural deodorants. i tried: le stick natural deodorant in sandalwood ($5), which smells like the back of a fat dude's delicious neck; tarte clean queen vegan deodorant ($14); meow meow tweet deodorant stick in lemon eucalyptus ($22); tom's of maine long lasting deodorant in maine woodspice ($4); kiss my face natural active life deodorant stick in lavender ($5). then i just went into the bathroom and flushed fistfuls of dollar bills down the toilet while sweating my shirts sheer, bc SAME FUCKING THING. dove dry spray antiperspirant in sensitive ($7) is my jam bc it doesn't leave white marks and you can spray it on even if you already put on your shirt and/or bra.

rump i was watching judge mathis the other day and one of those "call the ____ law group if you got cervical cancer from talcum powder" and, like, WHAT. i know life is hell and happiness is a lie but does everything have to be deadly!? i was rolled in ammen's medicated powder ($8) every summer day of my childhood, and the thought of not being able to sprinkle a palmful of shower to shower ($5) on all my damp places because i need my cervix to stay healthy fills me with a legitimate panic. lush silky underwear ($10) is okay but it comes in a tiny bottle with the kind of top that makes it hard to be as liberal as i'd like with my dusting; pussy powder antimicrobial bajo dusting powder ($9) from firme arte, my new fave place for candles/oils/smudge wands and other witchy stuff, and it smells like a dream and comes in a tub you can dab a powder puff into if you're dainty like that. body glide ($7) is a pretty good chafe balm, gold bond friction defense ($6) is real good too, and naughty bits and pits anti-chafing balm ($2) is the jam, especially when it's too hot for bike shorts or footless tights or however you keep your tender meat from catching fire under your dress.

i enjoy having at minimum half a dozen bodywash bottles in various stages of use lining the tub to keep my showers spicy. i've spent 37 years in this rotting meatsuit so sometimes i gotta surprise her to shake things up. aveeno skin relief body wash ($7), kiehl's bath and shower liquid cleanser in coriander ($20), kiss my face bath and body wash in early to bed ($9) are in current rotation, but i just got some dove shower foam ($6) that is 100% a marketing gimmick but that's fine with me and also a bottle of plant apothecary bodywash in GET HAPPY ($20) that despite its price tag i ordered mostly because it's a lot cheaper than therapy.

hock body oils are still my thing and i know that you're not trying to be all greased up in the middle of july and risk sizzling like a kielbasa that's about to split open from the heat BUT i still use them anyway because i wear sleeves no matter what so who cares. i don't like feeling tight and dry all the time and what the fuck am i supposed to do, drink water? yeah right. neutrogena body oil ($8) is super light and smells very glamorous for a product you can buy at the grocery store. i'm also really into life-flo cocoa butter oil ($15) which is a teeny bit stickier but has a nice lemony scent and feels like it won't stain your clothes. but let's be real i only wear black and everything i own is like really nice pajamas so a couple conspicuous grease spots really aren't gonna be a problem.

i don't even really wear perfume that often because i can't wear it anymore without walking around with a runny nose and gross, boogery eyes all day. but i am a glutton for punishment, so i buy it anyway. my faves: kiehls muskessenceoil ($35/.5oz), jo malone french lime blossom ($65/30mL), le labo 33 ($180/1.7oz), but mostly i just wear those $2 rollerball oils you buy from african shops and/or the beauty supply. as magazines often suggest i like to layer my perfume for maximum effect, and usually a base layer of generic zyrtec ($13) followed by a double nasal spritz of the new flonase sensimist ($17) keeps my fragrance lasting from the office to the dancefloor!

dewclaw i don't get manicures anymore because 1 who are we kidding and 2 i live in the kind of place now where i have to do shit like "carry logs inside to burn in the wood stove" so LOL NOPE NOT PAYING FOR NAILS. also can we just be real and admit that unless you are living the kind of glamorous life of someone who never has to type on a keyboard or pump gas or open your own bottle of aldi wine then your nails are definitely gonna get fucked up? i keep my nails baby short because i hate looking at them when they're dirty and the sound of nails clicking against things fills me with existential dread, and the only polish i use now is sally hansen insta-dri ($4). okay okay, now hear me out: do they chip within days? yes. are the colors sometimes a little streaky? also yes, but that could easily be blamed on my poor application techniques. but you could literally put it on then play the guitar thirty seconds later. no base coat, no top coat, nothing. PUT THAT ON MY HEADSTONE.

i'm also trying to do shit like stay hydrated and take vitamins and find a sunscreen that doesn't make me look ashy but i probably won't? ALL THAT SHIT IS SO TIRING. and who is trying to think about topical magnesium absorption when other people on the bus are literally adhering to your actively sweating flesh!? i did just order two bottles of fancy potassium capsules though, and clicking the checkout button is half the battle so i'm feeling like i got a pretty good head start. but really, how can i possibly find time to drink a gallon of water when there's so much tv i gotta catch up on? i just finished the first two seasons of fargo and am only behind a couple episodes of the handmaid's tale and as soon as i write this i'm gonna exfoliate my heels and watch the last bachelorette because thank god that whaboom dude finally got cut. good luck out there in this revolting swelter, and remember: a travel-size bottle of cornstarch in your purse can really fucking come in handy.

hello hi, do you remember me it's been a minute. you look great. is that a new haircut? did you recently hem that pair of pants!? GAH i'm sorry i wish i had a good excuse for falling behind on this book club and on this dumb blog in general but let's just pretend it was intentional and i was giving everyone the summer off from butt jokes so i don't have to make something up and risk looking ridiculous. that said, sorry not sorry for this shameless plug but if you didn't read my book over the summer it's all good because we're gonna read it together this month. like homework, with more swearing. and don't worry, i use small words in my writing because my brain can't compute big ones but do not let that gross wet cat on the cover fool you: this isn't for children. just like my first book wasn't about farming, but since it had a chicken on the front of it a number of people registered complaints with their local librarians due to their confusion from the cover. did it never occur to you to flip the goddamn thing over before filling out your comment card, martha? people are trash cans.

i don't remember much about writing MEATY other than spending two months taking many breaks to try and decipher what justin bobby was saying on the hills as i watched it on a continuous loop and making a lot of toast. i didn't have cable or internet at the time, so i propped my phone against a stack of ten year old issues of jane magazine i purchased off ebay in a fit of nostalgia and burned up all my anytime minutes watching lauren conrad cry, and i don't regret a second of it. this one was a little different. i wrote half of it while annoying my long suffering boss james on my lunch breaks at the animal hospital and the other half deep in the michigan woods that felt like i was in a horror movie, especially because i had to sleep on a futon. i did all the edits, plus the shit i pitched late and turned in at the last second, in my new house with some bose noise-cancelling headphones because living with other people is terrible.

my "i swear i'm not looking at this ipad i'm just listening to it while i'm writing" watchlist and sources of diversionary entertainment:
-any old seasons of mtv's the challenge that prominently feature wes and/or CT
-the "source awards" episode of 30 rock, at least 200x
-every episode of black-ish
-reading other people's essays and getting discouraged because mine are garbage
-various NBA playoff games
-youtube videos of people drawing on winged eyeliner
-the movie arbitrage
-youtube clips of people winning huge prizes on various game shows
-ordering cardigans from forever 57
-making gin cocktails
-poring over best of book lists while reminding myself i should quit
-mailing cards to the three people in my address book
-the entire jeff daniels movie canon

the rules
1 we are never going to meet in real life. that would require a bra and zippered pants and probably an expensive uber and no one is doing that. you don't have to worry about megan's dairy allergy or that vanessa doesn't like champagne. no cleaning the cat box or vacuuming the drapes or hiding the dirty laundry in the oven so your company doesn't realize what a huge slob you are. just you in your house glasses and gravy pants sobbing into your six pack of beer, the way rainbow rowell intended. getting together with people you don't live next door to is hella stressful. plus, a bunch of old bitches sitting around talking about fictional teenage romance is lame. OR IS IT THO.
2 we are never going to discuss this, ever. i mean seriously. i'm going to derive pleasure from knowing that people i might possibly enjoy spending time with if i ever could bring myself to meet new people and i are falling asleep and drooling on the same book we'll probably never finish. maybe we'll talk about it on twitter or something. but even thinking about organizing that is a daunting task and i'm already exhausted. mariyam suggested making a facebook group, but is that dumb? the internet is so hard sometimes. (ETA: there is a group! it's called bitches gotta read! and it is full of hilarious mostly-women people who aren't irritating! come find us!!) i also have a bunch of friends on goodreads but lesbihonest: i'm not, like, putting all these john grishams i read on there because i don't need you guys clowning me in public.
3 we are never going to shame each other about not reading the fucking book. this is the beauty of never having to meet or talk about it: i ain't gotta come up with "thoughtful questions" and you ain't gotta pretend to remember what happened at the end of chapter seven while a bunch of wine-drunk bitches you don't even like that much wait expectantly for your answer. i'll read the books for sure, but that's only in case i run into one of you at the co-op and you decide to ask how shocked i was by the twist no one saw coming at the end.

brief synopsis from my diary: whenever the uninitiated ask me to, like, elevator pitch them my book the first thing i say is GROSS PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME. why do you want to watch me melt like an ice cream cone while trying to make "stories about my butt" sound both palatable and worth $15?! every time i have ever met a real person who has a book i usually promise to just buy it rather then feign interest in the explanation of the post-apocalyptic young adult alien romance they've spent five years writing, mostly because i hate to humiliate people when i have to witness what that reduces them to but also what if i ever see them again? i mean, i want to be able to say "wow! that book was so shocking!" and actually mean it or have an answer when their follow up question is "which part?"explaining a thing you wrote to a person who doesn't know you or really care is embarrassing. and if you tell them it's about your life or your stupid thoughts then while they are smiling politely and halfheartedly exclaiming how "interesting" that sounds they are definitely thinking "who the fuck wants to know what you fucking think?" and, okay, point taken. i used to try to sell myself but now i either just deadpan "it's funny" while holding eye contact for six beats too long until they slowly back away from me or, if they look like they read the new york times, i'll blurt "roxane gay likes it!" and register the light of recognition turning on behind their eyes then watch their face immediately contort in well-meaning liberal horror because all this time they were talking to me they thought i actually was roxane gay.

listen there are a lot of good books coming out this fall. and maybe you don't want anyone to see you reading a cat book on the bus. i feel you. but if you were thinking about not reading my dumb book here are some compelling reasons you should reconsider:

1 it's a new york times bestseller. yo, that surprised me as much as anyone, that a book about explosive diarrhea that explores virtually every romantic and financial mistake i've made as an actual adult who should be smarter than this would sell more than the ten copies. it's a miracle for real, and tangible proof that millions of people can't be wrong.
1a okay so millions of people can be wrong about a lot of shit. look at this wild ass election. and the prevalence of so many ~cold shoulder~ sweaters. also, "millions" is very generous and not at all accurate but just roll with it this stuff is so confusing.
2 roxane gay likes it!

CLICK HERE AND BUY THIS THING I MADE.

the first day of school is always bullshit. in theory, i always loved the dawning of a new school year because there was always a slim chance that over the summer my classmates would forget how poor and fat i was and i could reinvent myself as someone who owned cool clothes and deserved to get invited to parties. in reality my mom would leave the kmart back to school circular on my bed in august with a note that said something like "circle three things on sale" and then the day before school started my wildly impractical choices would be laid out on my bed when i returned home from wandering the neighborhood for hours pretending to be enjoying the fresh air adults are always telling you to get, and i'd realize that a snap crotch bodysuit and two pairs of rainbow-striped novelty socks maybe weren't the wisest choice to get me through until santa and his crew swept through the husky section at jcpenny en route to our crib december 24th. why has it never once occurred to me to yearn for sensible, practical shit.

you don't really get that kind of do over as an adult and i miss it. or, i guess, i miss the illusion that the possibility exists. i mean january 1 might be a contender if you got a month off before the new year rolled around to reinvent your music tastes or attempt to grow some semblance of a beard, but that's not really a thing once you age out of having to care about standardized tests and diploma requirements. i like the idea of resolutions, because in my mind i am the kind of person who can reshuffle the deck and approach my life in a new way but after many years of halfhearted trying i've just come to accept that i'm just gonna be the way i fucking am, and if i happen to accidentally drink a glass of alkaline water or glance inside an art gallery as i walk past it then fine but i'm not writing shit down anymore. no more buying a fresh notebook at the end of the year and pretending that i have intentions. it's embarrassing.

okay so here's what i did this summer:
1 i got sick in every city i went to on my book tour.and i know what you're thinking: "you can't just put any old street hotdog in your mouth, you fucking idiot."and yes that is true but i swear that i am too paranoid about ever having to take a shit on a plane to be careless about my diet on the road. i also don't want to have to pee a million times in a city whose quality public bathroom map isn't imprinted on my tiny brain so i didn't really drink enough either, which wasn't really a major problem in NYC but guess who should've figured out some sort of intravenous fluid contraption before going to motherfucking texas?! i was like a piece of boiled leather who had a fever for two days because i was thirsty. i spent nine days withering under the unrelenting sun while everyone's taco recommendations turned to dust inside my phone. also i had nervous diarrhea in the bathroom at the four seasons in beverly hills before a breakfast meeting (hollywood people love food meetings but i get real anxious eating in front of people) and a tv person with a fancy blowout that i recognized from us weekly whom i'd just seen exit an actual bentley offered me the name of her "b12 guy" when i came out of the stall and all i could think about was how more places need soundproof bathrooms so unsuspecting celebrities don't have to listen to regular people shit.

2 i bought a couch from your grandfather because i felt bad that he had to listen to young people's pop radio at value city furniture. on a whim, after being reasonably delighted watching baby driver even though i really wanted to take that young woman by the shoulders and firmly explain to her you don't wait for a man to get out of prison when you don't even know whether or not he has a quality insurance plan, mavis and i were cruising through the movie theater strip mall daydreaming of nail shops and bland frozen yogurt when i decided i needed a new couch. first of all, one of these days i need someone to explain to me why we have two living rooms but only one of them has a tv. i mean, i read as many books as the next dumb asshole but there is not a day that goes by that i don't plop down on the couch in the front room and think "what am i supposed to sit and look at?"okay anyway the "wine drinking room" slash "piano playing room" slash "wow i really wish this fucking room had a tv in it room" had one of those awful low couches that people who don't care about being comfortable at all times own to trick people into thinking they have watercress or some shit in the fridge, and I CAN'T LIVE LIKE THAT. i mean, i don't have an opinion one way or another about edible aquatic plants but i do know i don't want my fucking spine aligned every time i sit down to not watch tv. it was like the couch at your mean grandma's house, the one you had to sit real still on while being seen and not heard.

there was a value city furniture in the mall and i don't care what anyone says, if you grew up a certain way there are things that will stick with you no matter where you go or who you're with or how much you have. let's put it like this: if there had been a goddamn rent-a-center in that mall i would have at least gone in to take a look. i grew up with a knockoff la-z-boy so who am i to start acting saditty now? i wanted a couch, so i'm getting a couch from the kind of place that accepts coupons. anyway we go in and the overhead speakers are pumping out some unintelligible diet club track and this gaunt man in an oversized suit shuffles slowly over to us, a "tablet" with a broken screen tucked into his armpit, and i turned to mavis like "welp i guess we're just gonna have to buy everything in this fucking store!" he cupped his hand around his bristly ear and asked me to repeat my request to be shown to the cozy couch section before shouting "HAHA I CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING OVER THIS DANG MUSIC" and i knew right then that ron was gonna get the biggest commission of his life outta me and i was fine with it. and maybe it's a well-orchestrated scam but that hapless hangdog expression coupled with the fumbling of the tablet (he kept calling it a "tablet," so many times, and it took him approximately half an hour to use it to look up whether or not a chair we didn't even buy came in multiple colors because his hands were shaking and the keyboard was too small and oh nevermind me i'm just over here sobbing into these carpet swatches, FUCK) were so endearing that i was prepared to buy whatever soft and cuddly thing he wanted to hustle me even if he was really a kid dressed up in an ed asner costume. the couch we ended up with is the size of a canoe and feels like a teddy bear and is perfect in every way. maybe i can invite ron over to not watch tv with me on it.

3 i spent $1400 on our cat's urethra. i don't even like this tiny dude that much and i'm not sure he's even cured but if i never had to think about a cat penis ever again it would be too soon, ugh.

4 i wrote one episode of a potential television program. at the end of july i packed a backpack full of laptops and the kind of clothes that reasonably disguise me as the kind of breezy person who just floats through LA buying crystals and oils and dragged my ass to california to rewrite the pilot for this television program jessi klein and abbi jacobson and i are making out of my first book. everyone is always asking me "hey dude what's up with your show" and the short answer is BITCH I DON'T KNOW. but here's a longer one: we wrote one draft of a pilot, i dry-heaved into a plastic bag as quietly as possible during several conference calls with studio executives who get to decide what goes on tv (!!) as they dissected my actual dumb life, then i went to LA and sat in a conference room at the glitzy agency that reps the three of us and we broke a new story and i wrote half the script in my friend marina's basement while drinking a lot of expensive juice and shitting my brains out and then i came back home, a comfortable place where people order salads that already have the dressing on it and wear shoes they bought at the grocery store. and now i'm just waiting. i think people feel like i'm withholding some big hollywood secret from them but for real, in my brief experience you 1 make a thing and then you 2 send it to a person and then they 3 send it to another higher up person and then they 4 send it to more people and then 5 you just in your house for days/weeks/months waiting for someone to tell you if they're going to give you a million dollars to make a real thing people can watch out of some stupid idea you came up with in a dream. (or lived through, in my case.) and who cares it's fine it's just not sexy. people are hitting me up all "yo when can we all kick it in the valley with jon hamm" annnnnnd LOL NEVER HOE I CAN'T EVEN GET YOU A FREE HAM SANDWICH. what do you think is happening over here?! i gotta DM bitches on instagram just like you do!! i tried to have my agent send some signed books to janeane garofalo who i already fucking know to thank her and her people were like "UMM, WHY." i'm a fucking garbage can and i'm sorry but i cannot (yet) get you laid by any hot celebrities. this is probably a good place to stop and say that THE MOST FAMOUS PERSON I MET IRL THIS SUMMER WAS ART FUCKING GARFUNKEL. stop texting me about michael b jordan, you cruel-ass binch!

5 i got some new fake jobs! i have spent the majority of my life doing work that felt like work. y'all know, the kind of work that has a punch clock you stick a time card into every time you need to stop and take a deep breath. and that's cool, because if you need gas station groceries somebody has to be there to swipe the card; someone has to answer the phones at the doctor's office; someone has to wipe down the cafeteria tables. and i've always been perfectly happy being an hourly drone because 1 it's not on me and 2 no goddamn student loan. i haven't had a day job in over a year and that's a weird thing to say and also it's surprisingly boring. i miss going to a place every day and scowling at people, daring them to tell me good morning. there's a lot of netflix i haven't watched and while it would be cute to get up and get dressed just to watch riverdale it's not enough so now i've got some other creative shit in the mix. i'm writing book recommendations for marie claire magazine and you should get a subscription just to see how much wild shit they let me sneak into the list. my first issue was september 2017 and i think this technically means that nina garcia and i are coworkers so i can't wait to make "gravy pants" a trend this spring. also shondaland dot com is live and they're letting me write an advice column of all things? it's called ask aunt agony (i still can't believe they let me get away with this shit?) and it's pretty fucking funny and no i don't know shonda either i write my columns at the kitchen table there is literally no way for me to tell her who you think olivia should fuck this season i'm so sorry.

6 i went to a dealership and actually left with a new car. never in my 37+ years of life have i ever purchased a quality car from a reputable salesperson. i have owned many cars, but i bought them all from shady dudes with hidden lots who couldn't account for the previous life of the car i was paying $1700 (cash, always cash) for. sometimes i could guess things about the previous owners of my vehicles based on the various smells and stains lurking within, but it was never like "oh yes ma'am in 1989 the engine fell out of this escort on the highway and i replaced it with one from a fucking lawn mower." so i would drive these pieces of shit with windows that wouldn't go down (or roll back up) with balding tires (or worse: 4 donuts) that forced me to learn very early in life what a goddamn alternator does and how your car will die in the middle of a one-way street on a rainy sunday afternoon if yours is broken. anyway i went to the closest honda dealer to our house and walked in like i deserved to be there and i knew my credit was good enough to get a decent rate on a car loan and after making a lot of uncomfortable jokes while the finance guy waited for bank approval on a car i'd already programmed my phone numbers into during the test drive, dude came back with approximately 72 pieces of paper that needed to be initialed and signed plus a phlebotomist to take a pint of my blood just in case. i've never felt more like a capable adult human being. i have a car with air conditioning that actually gets cold and a warranty that will replace the whole thing if i crash while trying to do my eyebrows on the highway and a button i can press while driving and say "call carl" and his stupid voice will just come over the car speakers like magic. is this the upside of "getting your shit together," or whatever parental people are always telling us to do? growing up is the greatest. i mean, sure, i have to take 3 aleve every day and i have to stare at people's mouths when they talk to me but wow this bluetooth is worth it!

7 i learned to enjoy coffee. KIND OF. i still don't fucking care about it, and i'm not ever going to study where the beans come from or try to describe the difference between varietals, but i can now drink it without wanting to immediately die. so that's something.

this summer i went to:
-austin (blisteringly, brain-meltingly hot)
-new york (dirty, still)
-ann arbor (adorable)
-los angeles (you wouldn't think so, but it's my favorite)
-chicago (the place where all my friends live)

my favorite summertime activity is:
being fully dressed, including sleeves and socks and probably a hood, inside an air conditioned building.

my favorite summertime foods are:
CRUSHED ICE

some books i read this summer were:
1 red clocks by leni zumas
2 sing unburied sing by jesmyn ward
3 this will be my undoing by morgan jerkins
4 electric arches by eve ewing
5 the floating world by c morgan bapst
6 the talented ribkins by ladee hubbard
7 the misfortune of marion palm by emily culliton
8 her body and other parties by carmen machado
9 pachinko by min jin lee

i love the summertime because:
i do not.

here's my carefully-curated autumn spotify playlist if you're interested in listening to what i cry to while running errands. happy fall, y'all.

happy belated thanksgiving, i guess. you know what i'm thankful for? the dubious, ever-shifting number of days during which we have to fumble around wishing people various forms of holiday cheer while squirming on the inside because whatever people's plans are they are definitely more exciting than yours and all you wanted to do was run into target for some sale-priced cake mix and whoops that dude you hate from high school just happens to be contemplating frosting choices and you didn't bother to put on a decent bra because who can even tell you have a body under the pile of gas station rags you fashioned into a winter coat this year but he is clearly staring at where your nipples are grazing the drawstring holding your gravy pants up while pretending he doesn't notice the pillowcase creases in your cheek.
him:"hey sam! you look great! got any big plans for christmas this year?!"
me, a collection of random dead body parts frankensteined together with ultra-absorbent maxi pads and old cheese:"i was just planning to build a shrine to my dead cat and mail something under $15 to a stranger from my internet gift exchange. and you, person who never had an ugly phase and hasn't aged a day (specifically to spite me)?"
him:"wow! that sounds interesting! i somehow can afford to fly twenty of my closest friends to aspen even though we're the exact same age and you have just enough cash to pay for that one box of brownie mix i can't believe you got a cart to push around!"
end scene.

so i have this new gig writing book recommendations for marie claire (GET A DAMN SUBSCRIPTION ALREADY) which is fun and weird because i am not very good at brevity and summing up a whole ass book in 75 words that both accurately detail the plot while also explain why you should read it is really fucking hard. have you ever tried to convince someone to read your favorite book and ended up sounding like a total asshole? every month i'm like "i liked this book but how do i make other people like what i like without being irritating or boring them to death." i read little fires everywhere and i loved it so much and i wrote this passionate and funny recommendation that i thought perfectly encapsulated it and then i did a count and had to trim 212 words to 75 and all i ever wanted as a kid was super short assignments and now that i've got them i can't stop having diarrhea all over my keyboard. anyway all my beloved thrillers and YA novels are piling up because 1 i love tv and 2 no one is paying me to read them, but don't worry i'm getting my shit back together slowly but surely for this book club.

the rules
1 we are never going to meet in real life. that would require a bra and zippered pants and probably an expensive uber and no one is doing that. you don't have to worry about megan's dairy allergy or that vanessa doesn't like champagne. no cleaning the cat box or vacuuming the drapes or hiding the dirty laundry in the oven so your company doesn't realize what a huge slob you are. just you in your house glasses and gravy pants sobbing into your six pack of beer, the way rainbow rowell intended. getting together with people you don't live next door to is hella stressful. plus, a bunch of old bitches sitting around talking about fictional teenage romance is lame. OR IS IT THO.
2 we are never going to discuss this, ever. i mean seriously. i'm going to derive pleasure from knowing that people i might possibly enjoy spending time with if i ever could bring myself to meet new people and i are falling asleep and drooling on the same book we'll probably never finish. maybe we'll talk about it on twitter or something. but even thinking about organizing that is a daunting task and i'm already exhausted. mariyam suggested making a facebook group, but is that dumb? the internet is so hard sometimes. (ETA: there is a group! it's called bitches gotta read! and it is full of hilarious mostly-women people who aren't irritating! come find us!!) i also have a bunch of friends on goodreads but lesbihonest: i'm not, like, putting all these john grishams i read on there because i don't need you guys clowning me in public.
3 we are never going to shame each other about not reading the fucking book. this is the beauty of never having to meet or talk about it: i ain't gotta come up with "thoughtful questions" and you ain't gotta pretend to remember what happened at the end of chapter seven while a bunch of wine-drunk bitches you don't even like that much wait expectantly for your answer. i'll read the books for sure, but that's only in case i run into one of you at the co-op and you decide to ask how shocked i was by the twist no one saw coming at the end.

brief internet synopsis:
Perfect Mexican daughters do not go away to college. And they do not move out of their parents’ house after high school graduation. Perfect Mexican daughters never abandon their family. But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter. That was Olga’s role. Then a tragic accident on the busiest street in Chicago leaves Olga dead and Julia left behind to reassemble the shattered pieces of her family. And no one seems to acknowledge that Julia is broken, too. Instead, her mother seems to channel her grief into pointing out every possible way Julia has failed. But it’s not long before Julia discovers that Olga might not have been as perfect as everyone thought. With the help of her best friend Lorena, and her first kiss, first love, first everything boyfriend Connor, Julia is determined to find out. Was Olga really what she seemed? Or was there more to her sister’s story? And either way, how can Julia even attempt to live up to a seemingly impossible ideal?

i got an early copy of this book before it came out and i tore through it in a day. first of all, it's set in chicago but, more important than that, it features a character from evanston. i.e. the place where both lena waithe and i went to high school. the book is so funny and so great and i met erika a few weeks ago at the texas book festival and she is a total joy and let me awkwardly hug her even though it was 90 actual degrees outside and everyone was damp to the touch. since i'm playing catch up and haven't given you a list of shit to read in a minute, here are some books i've read in real life on my own dime from other people i got to press my sweaty flesh against in the oppressive austin heat:
made for love by alissa nutting, a genius.
the floating world by morgan bapst, a champion.
eat only when you're hungry by lindsay hunter, a sorceror. (and my homie from way back)
all grown up by jami attenberg, a virtuoso.
goodbye, vitamin by rachel khong, a wizard.
okay whew now my guilt is assuaged for dropping the ball, especially since i went to the trouble to hyperlink all of this shit which i never ever fucking do. these should keep you occupied, depending on your reading speed and/or your penchant for cheesy hallmark holiday movies, for at least a few weeks of hiding from all the people who bought you hanukkah socks or whatever other garbage you didn't ask for.

CLICK HERE AND GET YOUR STOCKING STUFFED.

art is boring! i do not understand surrealism, performance art makes me uncomfortable, and nuance is lost on me. what is a triptych? abstract art mostly doesn't make sense? when was the neoclassical period? are these things it might actually benefit my life to know!? probably not! i mean, ART is for pretentious assholes. but listen, i also used to call a quiche a kweesh so who the fuck even cares what i have to say about a painting.

when i was pretending to be a cool twentysomething in the city i used to lie to people i was interested in having sex with and say i was curious about art, but that's an easy thing to say that is nearly impossible to disprove. if you say you know about art and then someone asks you a serious question about it and all you can do in response is stammer, "um, duh, frida kahlo?" then THAT SUCKS. but if you claim to be "curious" the very definition of that shit is literally "idk but i might want to?" i mean i'm curious about a lot of things:
-lion cubs
-bolivia
-heart surgery
but that doesn't mean i could carry on an intelligent conversation about any of those subjects. (and if i'm being honest i don't care enough about any of them to do more than skim an article or two.) here's the thing: i don't know anything. okay that's not true, i know a handful of super specific things that i will likely never be tested on, plus if there ever was an impromptu general knowledge exam i could probably fake my way through at least 3/4 of it, but i don't really know anything i could ever speak confidently about to anyone else, especially if they are more than nine years old. people are always asking me to speak at things where audience members will have clipboards and recording devices hoping to use whatever i'm saying practically in their own lives and my response every time is ARE YOU KIDDING ME. listen, i would love to speak at your university's gastrointestinal conference, sir in my inbox, but i don't even know which one my pancreas is. call up someone who actually knows what bile does.

when the producer of this podcast "a piece of work" that was in development and emailed to ask if i would be interested in going to a museum in new york and looking at art with my pal abbi i was like "haha yeah right girl what is a podcast." every week i listen to the read while cleaning the bathroom but other than that i can't be bothered. and okay, i listened to serial the first time around and became heavily invested in adnan's fate and when i remember it exists i can sometimes find this american life on public radio in the car but seriously podcasts are overwhelming to me so i mostly just steer clear of them. 1 there are a lot of them, and i don't know how to decide which one to listen to, and even if i could narrow them all down to just a couple is it fair to start with the most recent or do i have to go all the way back to the beginning and if the shit's been on since 2013 how am i ever gonna catch up? that's a lot of pressure! 2 also how do you listen to a podcast while doing anything else, please tell me. i have to sit still and focus like i'm in a classroom, with absolutely zero distractions in my line of vision, otherwise ten minutes into it i have no idea what the fuck i just heard. i tried to listen to dirty john a few weeks ago during a road trip and i missed the directions because siri sort of sounds like debra and i wasn't paying attention and long story short i still have no idea how it ends. 3 i listened to a joel osteen podcast ONE LOUSY TIME and now every time i check my podcasts there are his crinkly eyes asking "are you living a life of peace?" and you know what i don't need that kind of inquisition, reverend.

i took an art history class the one semester i paid attention in my scattered college career twenty years agoand honestly the only thing i remember was that the dude who always just happened to find the seat in front of mine in the middle of a crowded fucking auditorium would fall into a deep, comfortable sleep as soon as the professor dimmed the lights and i marveled that a person could relax that much anywhere, let alone in an auditorium full of rowdy nineteen-year-olds. i'm pretty sure i got a good grade in the class and i could not tell you how, because i have retained precisely 0% of all of the information i learned from those endless slideshows. but i agreed to do it despite my raging impostor syndrome and i went to new york and met abbi at the MoMA PS1 in queens, mostly because i had no idea when in the history of earth my name would be listed in the same sentence with rupaul or questlove ever the fuck again and turning down this opportunity felt ridiculous even for me. after i climbed to the top of the fucking building (why nyc just why) abbi greeted me in some fashion clothes with fashion hair and fashion electric blue eyeliner and let me tell you what it's like to have exactly one super-famous friend: on the one hand you'll be wide-eyed and mystified by their doing some dumb regular-ass shit like "whoa girl, you use the same stupid fucking google i use?!??!!!?!" and then on the other you'll meet up with them on a random thursday afternoon and they're still in makeup from being shot for THE COVER OF A FUCKING MAGAZINE. i was trying to discreetly wring out my soaking wet foundation garments because no matter what new york is always hot and you always have to scale the face of a mountain to get wherever you're trying to go while this bitch breezed in looking like a spring day on some "oh hey, i'm a model today."lol just fucking murder me already.

first they showed us this piece of text art (is that even a thing) that i looked at and, for the life of me, was rendered speechless because it just looked like a bunch of messy words that i could have made with five minutes and an inkpad but that is such a ridiculous thing to think and i was embarrassed because WHAT IF THESE PEOPLE CAN READ MY MIND and they know that in my head i am downplaying what is surely an impressive artwork too great for my tiny little cat brain to understand?! i was staring at it waiting for something brilliant to come out of my mouth but all i could formulate was "how much did this dude get paid to make this?" and listen i know the answer is either "one million dollars" or "they paid him in soup" because art is a mystery but i honestly wanted to know. what if i am wasting my time stringing my own words together and hoping they are funny and make sense when the real money is in quoting someone else's words and making them look cool on a canvas?

see, don't take me anywhere nice! or show me anything good! i'm the guy who puts ketchup on the steak like "durrr what's the big deal?" and you should absolutely know better than to take me to a place with cloth napkins! abbi was super cool about it and said "dude this is the reaction we want" and rachel the producer was laughing in a way that was definitely with me and not at me but all i could imagine was hannibal burress having some secret knowledge of color theory and scale while i was embarrassing myself slack-jawed in front of these paintings like "WOW, PRETTY."

next we went into a special room to look at a light installation, and all of the words that follow this sentence have been lifted verbatim from MoMA's description of the piece because my brain is literally a cake that fell in: one of artist james turrell’s celebrated skyspaces, meeting is a site-specific installation that invites viewers to gaze upwards toward an unobstructed view of the sky. a key representative of the “light and space” movement centered in los angeles during the 1960s, james turrell creates works of art that consist primarily of light, exploring fundamental questions about the nature of human perception by rendering tangible the act of vision. SOUNDS FUCKING DOPE, RIGHT.so the deal is you have to view the installation at sunset, and the best way to view it is to lie down on the floor in this room and stare at this hole that has been cut into the ceiling while a series of colored lights manipulates what you think you're seeing. so we (me, abbi, the sound guy who was very nice despite having to contort into many uncomfortable-looking yoga positions to record two idiots lying on their backs on the floor) all got down on the floor (i'm pretty sure i haven't been on a floor since my early 20s before all this joint disease started ruining my life and it definitely was a three-step process) and into prime viewing position (my left boob immediately rolled into my armpit and have you ever been in a super serious situation, like a thing you really can't afford to mess up, and right in the middle of it you feel a fart coming and you have to shift all of your attention to your butthole? because yes you need to nail this job interview but there's no way to do that if you release rotten broccoli wind in to your potential new boss's cramped office?) then the lightshow started as the sun began its descent (one half of my brain froze, existing only to monitor the incremental movements of whatever was happening on my chest while also tracking the various cell phone cameras circling the room, and the other tried to make the word "magenta" sound natural while coming out of my mouth and wondering just how goddamn long it takes the sun to go all the way the fuck down) and granted i grew up poor and didn't leave the midwest until my friends moved out of state and their parents flew me out to see them but wow it was the most amazing thing i've ever seen. i don't even know what i said to describe the optical illusion i was looking at but i do know now that test driving a bra you bought off the internet in front of people you want to impress is a horrible fucking idea.

it was the most breathtakingly beautiful thing i have ever seen and i really did almost cry but also halfway through i was like "is my foot asleep?" and i couldn't stop thinking about what a terrible choice wearing a loose garbage bag dress had been. anyway if you like podcasts, or you are willing to suffer through some because you want to hear what i sound like lying on a carpet sounding like i'm buzzed on shrooms while dying internally of humiliation and trying to think of synonyms for the word "awesome" that sound convincingly like i'd say them, you can find all of the episodes of abbi's podcast "a piece of work" here. you'll like it even if you don't give a shit about art. at the very least, you can talk to someone you might want to have sex with about it.

click here and buy this thing i made!

my okcupid screen name was fartthrob. i can't remember exactly what i wrote in my ~extremely earnest~ profile, but i know that it was probably full of awkward attempts at humor while also apologizing in advance to anyone who dared to meet me in real life. my shit had paragraphs, okay? i was really trying to distill the best parts of myself into an appealing internet soundbite that was impressive yet also sincere. i never pledged allegiance to obscure bands i couldn't quote off the top of my head, never pretended to be really into coffee or sushi or anything that could be disproven within five minutes of making my acquaintance. there's always some wiseguy who'll show up at the restaurant like "oh hey aren't you really into albino caviar?" and then you gotta smile and choke that slimy shit down or admit that you're a lying asshole. i can't deal with that kind of pressure. honestly my headline should have been: LIKES MCDONALDS, ON MEDS.

two of my actual friends who live in totally different parts of the country have recently found themselves scrolling through tinder and/or okcupid, presumably looking for handsome and wildly successful strangers to save them from the doldrums of dating and transport them to their amazing new futures as women who use hashtags like #lovehim and #heputaringonit, and within the last few weeks both of these jerks texted me screenshots of profiles either featuring pictures of my book's cover or featuring quotes like "just started reading samantha irby's book" and LOLWAT. first of all, does that actually work?! living is a mistake! fuck i couldn't get fucking laid fucking being samantha irby so is my perimenopausal book that is 70% about shitting in the street really getting brian in new york city some unenthusiastic sex?!

first of all, i'm not humblebragging. i'm genuinely mystified! THAT BOOK IS ABOUT A HOUSECAT AND MY DEAD DAD WHAT THE FUCK. if i picked any of those essays and read it to you you'd put me in therapy, not offer to finger me! what have i been doing wrong?! i'm fucking salty. anyhow, gentlemen:thank you i guess. i (ahem, the multi-tentacled publishing conglomerate that allowed me to write at length about my asshole on a national stage) appreciate your sixteen dollars. writing a book is hard! i mean, not ~brain surgery~ hard? but harder than, say, crying alone in a dark room while listening to foreign fields, which is what i would much rather have spent a whole year doing rather than entertaining men with dogs as their profile picture with my pain. and i'm married to your mom's crafty sister, so it's not like i could run out and expose myself to a bunch of people's pheromones to celebrate my crowning achievement; the day my fucking book came out i had a sensible, nutritionally balanced meal at three in the afternoon and fell asleep with my clothes on and modern family reruns muted on the tv. i'm not a jealous person but i do hate a lot of things, and knowing that quoting me is more lucrative than actually being me? i hate that a lot!

so this is how your courtship gotta go if you use my stupid cat book to try to fuck people on the internet, because fuck you:

1 you gotta pay. no matter where you fall on the gender spectrum, if you pretend that you read what i write then you have to know that i want the inviter to foot the bill, not only because i have a deep and abiding respect for manners but also because nothing is more excruciating than that awkward moment the bill comes and everyone at the table does the herky-jerky wallet dance. and that bill can't be for a date that involves "chilling at my place" or "a coffee at that spot down the street from my job." i'm not so out of it and naive that i think you're on bumble to buy a stranger a five course meal but i also don't think you should get your salad tossed for the price of a latte.

2 you gotta have a sex playlist full of the saddest songs ever recorded. I DON'T BELIEVE IN ROMANTIC MUSIC. music is for weeping softly into a pilled sweater with holes in it that the cat barfed on that you haven't sufficiently cleaned, not for sex! but if you insist, let's bang to radiohead b-sides or some shit then lie next to each other and have nightmares. don't embarrass me by making me take my shirt off to whatever you think
how long does sex take? thirteen minutes? anyway, here's five songs that have made me cry in the last seven days to dry hump to:
"after slice" ivory waves
"silver soul" beach house
"death of a star" james tillman
"la lune" king krule
"live well" palace
i would not ~make love~ to these songs, i would read a little life by candlelight to these songs, but you do you.

3 you gotta have a three towels minimum and two-ply toilet paper. i'm not even sure how often i have had to use a towel in someone else's house but i want the fucking option, okay? i just want to know that if i suddenly get a nosebleed or accidentally find that spongy spot buried deep within my vaginal wall that i've read about dozens of times in cosmo that unlocks my secret squirting powers that i won't have to mop up the wreckage with a bunch of ketchup-sticky burger king napkins. those are for when company comes over. ugh and they even manufacture one-ply toilet paper for home use is beyond me, but if you are a human person who can find people six blocks away to fuck on your handy pocket computer, you can reach on past that scott's megaroll (it balls up in your ass hairs, come on fam!) and grab that cushy charmin extra strong.

4 you gotta have a stack of books somewhere. i don't even feel like this is that much of a stretch if the bait you used to lure some unsuspecting catfish was a picture of my goddamn book. but maybe you borrowed it for instagram purposes, which i understand believe me, but i hope you at least skimmed the first couple of pages. even if you didn't, grab some books it looks like you might convincingly sit down to read, and display them in clear view from the bed. don't be like me that time this dude i was IN LOVE WITH asked what i thought of the stranger, a copy of which i had casually tossed on the coffee table he would have to walk past after learning of its existence a mere two weeks prior on his black planet profile. it was the "excuse me, what?" heard round the world. learn from my mistakes, children. leave out a book you read junior year.

5 you gotta have a tv. i know i'm showing every single one of my 137 years here but listen: i hate watching shit on the goddamn computer. i do it sometimes, because of airport layovers and writing procrastination, but i don't like it. i think this might be a holdover fear from my impoverished youth, but i'm terrified of falling asleep with my computer on the bed and shorting the fucking keyboard out because i drooled on it or whatever. and this shit cost over a thousand motherfucking dollars, which is more than i paid for an actual car once and yes i was too embarrassed to valet it and once parked it six blocks away from the club so no one i was eventually gonna hit on would see me getting out of that raggedy shit but that is beside the point. THESE MACHINES ARE EXPENSIVE. also, it's literally impossible for two people to comfortably watch a laptop and both enjoy the show don't @ me.

apparently amanda swiped right on the most recent self-proclaimed fan of my work, and i told her that if they hang she has to facetime me during the sex so i can tell him whether or not i'm a big fan of his, too.

if you're in the market for romance and need some bait, get my old book:here
and you can pre-order my new-ish book:here for after you guys break up!

i'm going on tour, again. this time, to support the re-release of my first book, meaty. i cannot wait to lug my computer from state to state pretending i'm gonna get some work done and pack a bunch of back-breaking hardcover books that i'm definitely gonna bail on in favor of whatever john cena film is available on the plane. that's right i'm abandoning my many cats and inside pants to travel across the country with a knot of anxiety in my stomach as i anticipate stammering over words i actually wrote as people record my foibles on their phones and then tag me in the uploads so i can relive the humiliation ad infinitum. also it's a rough time for me to be away from home, as i just got caught up on the voice and i'm still trying to wrap my head around what the fuck the deal is with here and now plus billions is coming back this weekend! does the best western milwaukee offer showtime as part of their basic package!?

one of the things you should understand, as you scroll through this list and feel your blood boiling with rage as you realize that where you live isn't anywhere close to where i'm going, is that i don't make this schedule. no one calls me and says "hey sam, tell me in which direction to point the magic carpet!" i get an email with a list of dates and places and times and then i email back "okay looks good" without really registering what it says while wondering who i know that will buy me a beer in [your city here]. if the shit were up to me my tour would be 1 evanston, illinois and 2 the flying j truck stop between where i live and evanston, illinois. flying across the country to get flop sweat all over a bunch of people who will inevitably be disappointed that they've chosen to leave the house after 6pm on a weeknight is a petrifying idea, and figuring out how many unflattering cat sweaters to try and sneak past the TSA is even worse.

okay so here's the list. i'm pretty sure it's accurate. generally, they all start in the 7-730p range, except omaha which i noted below. some of these things are ticketed. some of these things are not. none of these things is my responsibility! don't text me! i have a list of the places i'm staying written on the back of a napkin that i stuck in my wallet and a bunch of printed-out emails of all my flights that have changed a dozen times, i don't know shit about the parking options at a bookstore in the middle of minneapolis! DO YOUR GOOGLES.

tuesday april 3
brookline booksmith
brookline, MA
link!

friday april 6
books are magic
in conversation with abbi jacobson
brooklyn, NY
link!

tuesday april 10
politics & prose
washington DC
link!

wednesday april 11
town hall
in conversation with lindy west
seattle, WA
link!

friday april 13
powell's burnside
portland, OR
link!

monday april 16
the booksmith
san francisco, CA
link!

tuesday april 17
book soup
los angeles, CA
link!

wednesday april 25
bookbug/this is a bookstore
kalamazoo, MI
link!

thursday may 3
women and children first (wilson abbey)
chicago, IL
link!

tuesday may 8
moon palace
minneapolis, MN
link!

wednesday may 9
brooklyn park library
minneapolis, MN
link!

thursday may 10
boswell book company
milwaukee, WI
link!

friday may 11
city opera house
traverse city, MI
link!

saturday may 19
the bookworm 1pm start time!!
in conversation with rainbow rowell
omaha, NE
link!

if you already bought meaty, first of all? i don't believe you! but, just in case you have and need to be convinced to get the update, allow me to enumerate the reasons you should buy this new version:
1 there's a hedgehog on it. i'm not sure how scowling baby animals became my brand but i'm into it. i apologize in advance to those of you whose small children try to select it for their bedtime story based on the cover alone.
2 it's full of CAPS CAPS CAPS and the word "motherfucker" is in it approximately 4000 times. i recorded the audiobook a month ago and i should get a fucking prize for surviving that humbling experience. my editor wanted to keep the book as close to its original form as possible. so i wrote some new stuff and added it to the mix but i didn't get to erase everything that now sounds stupid to my wizened 38-year-old ears. i flinched through the entire thing like "wow i can't believe i wrote that i don't even talk like that anymore."
3 bitch it's like the cost of a fancy latte come on now. far be it from me to count your money for you but listen there's a reason i only make paperbacks. hardcover books cost, what, thirty bucks? YEAH RIGHT, HOE. i mean i'll buy that shit but i'm definitely gonna resent you the whole time! but you don't even have to waste your hate energy on me because it's cheap, it tucks into a handbag, and it's only 280+ pages so it's not that huge of a commitment. and even those are mostly recipes and tons of curse words strung together. it'll fly by!

if i'm coming to your town and you happen to be free and don't mind keeping your pants on for an extra hour after you get done with work come check me out. please don't make me read about buttholes to an empty room. i promise that i am very charming and polite; i won't even break your balls after you make the 137th iteration of the "we're actually meeting in real life!!11!1!!!" joke of the evening.
ps, i've stopped wearing deodorant. see you soon!

hello, i got my uterus microwaved. anyone who has ever read a women's magazine while praying for death in a stalled grocery line can tell you that march is the perfect time for spring cleaning, and i decided that rather than trying to figure out how to "spark joy" or accidentally pass out from oven cleaner fumes i would instead check myself into the hospital and have my uterine walls scraped clean and then set on fire so that it might sit dormant and useless inside me, like my appendix or my soul. my period has been weird from the minute it showed up, rude and temperamental and inconsistent, same as every single boyfriend i had between 2004 and that 2-year period of celibacy during which i always made sure to thoroughly chew my food lest i choke on a discounted slab of salisbury steak i'd only partially defrosted for my evening meal. i'm not even gonna sugarcoat it: throughout much of the last decade i have been so preoccupied with whatever is going on with my back butt that i have only paid fleeting attention to what is going on with the front one. and fuck calling the doctor, whose prescription of TRY TO BE LESS STRESSED is not a real thing that i can actually be, okay?! i have long suffered the anxiety-ridden latenight google searches of the woman burdened with an irregular menstrual cycle:
"can i get pregnant?"
"am i actually pregnant?"
"where has my period been for the last three months?"
"can that flowers in the attic thing actually happen to me?"
"are white culottes a mistake?"
"do you need to have a period to stay alive?"

for the most part, my period has never really interfered with my daily activities, which is 100% the only reason i ever try to solve any of my problems. has it smelled weird? okay sure, but that's totally normal, at least according to my doctor the health and fitness page in cosmopolitan magazine. has it gone missing for months at a time? yes to that, too, but it's not like i ever really missed it. and it's just so easy to keep spending all my tampon money on manicures and not think about sending a search party into my cervix to see what the fuck is going on in there when month after month of fearlessly wearing light-colored pants just slips on by. if this gross collection of mucus and nitrogen wants me to acknowledge its existence, then it's gonna need to erupt like a geyser on an amtrak train. otherwise, SORRY BUT I HAVE SHOWS TO WATCH.

and then five months ago, after some months of semi-regularity i can only attribute to eating more vegetables and not talking to any men, the dam broke. i was dirtying up a fancy hotel in oppressively-hot austin just minding my business and trying not to spontaneously combust on a 90 degree day in "autumn,"when i woke up in a pool of my own sticky, clotting sloughed-off endometrial cells and vaginal secretions. when i first reluctantly pried my eyes open and registered the cold, soiled diaper feeling happening below the waistband of my stegosaurus pajama bottoms i thought, with a cheerfulness that is quite foreign to me, "wow my butt sweats a lot!"it was definitely not sweat. and i don't know what's on your list of nightmare situations that you pray never happen to you (number one on my list? ever witnessing any sort of crime), but please slide UNWITTINGLY DESTROYING A HOTEL BED to the top if it isn't there already.

i oozed out of bed, trying not to further damage any blindingly white property i will never be able to afford to replace, and calculated how best to remove my clothes without turning the room into something from the shining. and then, once they were off, how could i clean them? what was i supposed to do with the carnage that had occurred between the bleached sheets? does the intercontinental ever allow people to shame wash their own soiled bedding?! i texted amelia, the only adult in my phone who knows how to capably handle a sensitive etiquette situation, and she told me to pull everything off the bed and roll it into a tight ball (because this signifies to the staff that something horrible happened in there and under no circumstances should they hazard a glance) and put everything on the floor, then leave all the cash i had in my wallet on the bed and find someplace air conditioned to bleed all day so i wouldn't have to make awkward, apologetic small talk with the person tasked with sorting the blood-splattered towels of a person whose period tracker just reads ??? every month. is this what it's like to be drake? i wondered aloud to myself, picturing him singing softly as he neatly rolled sheets soaked in expensive champagne and various bodily fluids into a tight cylinder, kicking aside discarded louboutins and candy wrappers. no, he definitely has an assistant for that.

i never stopped bleeding! the next day, i bled on delta flight 1822 from austin to detroit. i bled all through friendsgiving dinner two weeks later, during which i sat in a diaper on a dark-colored towel and refused the cranberry sauce because it looked too much like my period. i bled in my reindeer pjs on christmas eve, hoping santa would leave me an industrial pack of depends under the tree. i bled through the new year. i was still bleeding on valentine's day.

i just spent the past two harried months squinting at flight information displays in DC and san francisco and omaha airports while lugging twenty pounds of leggings i tried not to spill anything on during my book tour, and i knew there was no way on earth i was going to be able to do that while also worrying that my personal red wedding could strike, in public, at any moment. so i called my new doctor, one i found who i knew wouldn't prescribe deep breathing and essential oils to not fix my out of whack hormones, and asked for a hysterectomy. which i thought would be easy, like ordering a pizza or getting an uber. i thought i had at least most of the necessary pieces of the hysterectomy jigsaw puzzle: an aversion to inexplicably bleeding like a wounded animal for weeks at a time, being old enough to remember watching gimme a break while sitting cross legged on an unironic shag carpet, a wife.

but did you know that 38 is still "young?"and that queers can have babies?! (jk jk every gay couple i know has, like, nine kids.) anyway my dude was like "lol yeah right we're leaving it in you don't have fibroids" even as i was actively bleeding through my underwear and pants, gooey red jelly seeping onto that noisy white crinkle paper they line the exam table with. but he did offer to do a hysteroscopy (a thin, lighted tube is inserted into the uterus so the doctor can read whatever ancient hieroglyphics have been written on its walls; i imagine there was some hastily written "daniel was here, bitch" graffiti on the closest wall of the cave); a D and C (dilation and curettage, where they scrape the uterine lining off with a soup spoon); and an endometrial ablation (i think there are multiple delicious options on the ablation menu, but pretty sure mine was burned off with a microwave wand, which will never not be cool to me). a veritable smorgasbord of gynecological delights.

i have not been penetrated that deeply in a very long time and it's a bummer that i had to sleep through it, although the fentanyl they pumped into my veins afterward was as good as any dick i've ever had. i'd never been under general anesthesia before, and the experience wasn't like grey's anatomy at all? there was no sabotage being plotted in any supply closets, no gunman busting in and taking us hostage even though i desperately need the kidney they're about to implant in me and if i don't get it i will die, no McDreamy gazing dreamily down at me while sensually telling me to count backwards from ten as i lust over each individual coarse bit of stubble in his smoldering five o'clock shadow. oh no, in outpatient operating room number three McTired barked "YOU'RE GONNA FEEL SOME HEAT" in my general direction then my brain caught fire for two seconds and i disappeared from earth, only to regain consciousness in a room full of very nice nurses who brought me cold drinks that i struggled not to throw up. and then they gave me a bag of disposable underwear to leak into and sent me home where i could whine to my heart's content, like the baby i would no longer be capable of giving birth to.

it's two months later and i feel as good as a person with untreated anxiety can allow herself to feel, which is to say that i am cautiously optimistic because i haven't seen aunt flo in a while but also battling the sinking feeling of dread that has formed in the pit of my stomach because i just used the term aunt flo. do people even say that anymore? am i even funny? is this totally dumb?! now that i don't have to think about accidentally staining my chair at olive garden i have so much more bandwidth to worry about other inconsequential shit! bring on the unflattering and seasonally inappropriate white pants!!1!!11!

i bought all this shit with my own money. money i probably should have invested in an IRA or a piece of property to leave behind for my cats, but my own personal money nonetheless. whenever i take these deep dives into my luxurious tastes inevitably some asshole dusts off her old gateway to fire off a missive to my inbox about overpriced lipsticks and why she would never spend $62 on face spray (aveda botanical toning mist, which i have hyperlinked for your convenience here) or whatever frivolous shit i'm obsessed with. and that's cool, bitch! you do whatever the fuck you want in your house but around here we salve the wounds of our impoverished childhoods with a balm from clé de peau. i have a lot of store brand chapsticks and sally hansen insta dry but if i wanna dump everything in barneys on my secured mastercard for people ~trying to rebuild their credit~ then that’s my fucking journey. this isn’t some orwellian guide for how you absolutely must live your life it’s just my black ass trying to get my goop on OOPS I MEAN MY BLOOP.

a note before i launch into this excavation of my extremely shameful personal indulgences: i don't typically post links because you can look the shit up or screenshot it for later or however you go about purchasing items the internet seduces you into purchasing, and also because none of this shit is sponsored so what the fuck do i care how/where you get it? the minute someone offers to sponsor this dumb blog you better believe i'm changing the name to BITCHES GOTTA LA MER but until then i don't have codes or affiliate links, i have an amex i got on a five hour layover at detroit metro airport that i sometimes buy tom ford soleil blanc with. so if you want to drive around behind the la labo truck waiting for something to fall off it that's cool. i'm not gonna lecture you about amazon, sometimes i want a drone to drop shit off at my door in two days, too! i love convenience!! i'll try to link indie shops where i can just to make sure you're looking at the right shit but otherwise who cares?! life is so hard, man. do whatcha can to feel good.

sun! so i spent the summer working in los angeles and the one thing i learned other than how to play it extremely cool when a bonafide celebrity walks into the restaurant you're actively sweating in (boris kodjoe ate lunch at a table near me and all of my organs liquified at the table oof what a mess) is that LA is a sweltering desert hellscape that will wreak havoc on your gorgeous midwestern skin. i was there for ten minutes before my face turned into a dried-out scrap of imitation leather, and rather than make friends or sightsee i spent the first weekend there at a sephora in pasadena letting the sunday riley rep on duty sell me a fantasy about glowing summer skin while rubbing expensive potions onto my face. i'm an easy mark for a salesperson because 1 i want to Listen Attentively while being a Very Good Girl and 2 i have extreme guilt about wasting people's time (remind me to tell you about the time i almost bought a beat-up kia i didn't actually want because i felt so ashamed for taking a test drive i had been manipulated into) so as he demonstrated the power of the wildly expensive good genes he was delicately swiping across my cheeks and soothingly describing the difference in my face using luna sleeping oil overnight would make i transferred the balance of my 401k into my checking account so i could buy all of it. what am i gonna do, research?! he had an accent! that's literally all the proof i need! i already had the UFO oil and the CEO moisturizer and you might just have to ask someone who's seen me but my skin looks amazing? i use osun face wash made by kissed by a bee (linked here so you don't buy the wrong shit) and occasionally i'll use a toner (the kiehl's cucumber one is my current jam) and i can't do ten skincare steps but i can do these. okay, i can do these once a day on most days. but never at night, unless i leave some philosophy purity wipes and a tube of first aid beauty ultra repair cream by the bed.

most of the soaps and shampoos i've been using lately are extremely boring and not worth telling you about because you could just close your eyes and grab something off the shelf at the grocery store and that's probably what i used this morning. i am definitely not a practical person, but it does nick little pieces off my soul every time i rinse an expensive soap down the drain. where is the fun in that?! i don't shave and i prefer to remain fully clothed no matter the season so it's just dove bars + head and shoulders in my shower. i'm in a "has hair" phase this summer because i didn't want to cheat on dre, my barber, while i was in LA, and my long-tormented scalp is as fussy and difficult as ever! this is my current regimen, which may or may not be in the rotation next week, as everyone knows the only point of dealing with natural hair is fucking around with all the new shit that comes out to put on it: 1 i clean my scalp every time i'm in the shower, and i know i'm not supposed to but my scalp is a horrorshow sorry! 2 then i spritz earth's nectar green olive and lavender scalp oil sporadically on my scalp and rub it in before 3 i finally put some sort of styling cream on it, either paul mitchell the conditioner or lush r&b, which smells like an all-white day party ie the entire cast of insecure.

moon! so during my neverending biblical period i got thrush from being wet all the time and my body turned into a literal ball of yeast and fire, and in a fit of desperation i sought every natural remedy i could get my hands on to keep from taking a fork to all of my damp itchy parts. nothing actually worked because nature is a scam, but i did effectively make the switch to natural deodorant with fairly decent results because the yeast in my armpits was particularly fussy about the real stuff. the first thing i had to come to terms with is "bitch you are just going to be sweaty." there's no escaping it. if you switch to natural deodorant and get out of bed and walk around know that you will do so with full swamp ass. it's just a thing you have to come to terms with. honestly, it's made me an early person who beats everyone else to the restaurant because i have to wring out whatever i'm wearing before they get there. "oh no i'm not naturally prompt, i got to this meeting twenty minutes early so i could sit on the toilet in the air conditioning with my dress off before you got here." and it's fine it's just...an adjustment. i had a "let's just get drinks!" situation right before i left town and the entire time i was literally gulping my beer to fend off heat stroke my boobs were sitting in my bralette like two recently-birthed puppies, just hot and slimy and smelling like dog food. the silver lining is that most of these natural deos come in scents that blend well with natural human musk, so it's not like when your body is clashing with "peony petals" or whatever the fuck conventional shit smells like. it's already, like, slightly funky? so when you start to turn sour around 4pm it all just kind of goes together. my go-to jams during these dog days of summer: aesop deodorant roll-on, which aminatou sow shamed me into buying; tom's long lasting deodorant in maine woodspice, which already is halfway to stinky so it won't depress you as much when the real you breaks through; and the greeench powder from lush which is surprisingly effective for some shit you are definitely gonna shake all over your outfit and shoes and probably accidentally ingest.

this is also a story about how i threw all my foundations in the garbage, too, because no matter how opulent or expensive your base is when you move through the world slick as a dolphin because you no longer wear antiperspirant every single thing you slather on your face will turn to paste. and what's to conceal when your face looks like a tacky impressionist painting that hasn't dried yet?! so the only things i am willing to tolerate on my moist i mean ~dewy~ face in the summertime are: 1 sunscreen, but lesbihonest i don't always remember because i'm never really outside and 2 liquid/cream blush, my absolute favorite holy grail desert island makeup product. sunscreens are too specific to reliably recommend to another person but i like the supergoop everyday one because it has an SPF of 50 (actually i don't care about that?) and it smells great (this is the real reason duh). glossier cloud paint is the absolute fucking best because you only need a tiny amount so that little tube is gonna last a minute, and you can just dab dab dab it on your cheeks and the upper bridge of your nose (LIFE HACK) and go from looking like a haggard corpse bride to a person who actually eats vegetables in a matter of seconds.

stars! i always like to trick myself into believing that i can be the kind of person who wears eye makeup but you know what? i can't! my eyes just get so gooey and sticky and i can't help but blindly poke my fingers into them and make mascara soup on my face. but that doesn't stop me from occasionally trying. i got the glossier lash slick because i am susceptible to their advertisements despite the fact that they make me feel like a withered old crone, and i'm sure it's fine but i sneezed within five minutes of putting it on and gave myself a slick black eye. i also always have a tube of clinique natural and glossy because i came of age in the 90s and clinique will forever hold a place in my black honey heart. i stopped doing any eyebrow maintenance years ago because it just felt like too much work, then thicc brows came back and i could pretend to be on trend rather than just lazy. so now i get the anastasia beverly hills brow definer and kind of color in the sparse parts then use the spoolie end to brush it but honestly i'm not sure how much it does or doesn't do because i have three different colors and it makes zero difference which one i use? i'm sure the problem is my application and not the product and who knows if i have chocolate brows or dark brown brows but it does pull whatever color they are together nicely. i have a few marc jacobs eyeliner pencils that are smooth and pigmented and beautiful but the last time i wore one this dude asked if i had an eye infection and that was the end of that.

i am a veritable connoisseur of lip products. and i have been on tour twice now and the question people ask most, after "do you still talk to fred?" (i do!), is "how come you're not wearing lipstick?!"the truth is: it's hot and i'm a gross child. next time i go read to an audience about my vagina it's gonna have to be deep into november, when i can dazzle you with my impressive collection of cat hair-covered sweaters and serve a flawless matte burgundy lip. before it was 90 fucking degrees outside every day i could get away with pat mcgrath elson lips or keep my stila beso intact but when it's the time of year that matte lips fight a losing battle with salty sweat and unquenchable thirst i resort to my new wave: burt's bees tinted lip balms. though i'm willing to remain parched and dehydrated through the winter months for the sake of beauty i just can't get away with it in the summertime, and i get grossed out by a sticky lip print on my glass (or worse, whatever reusable bottle type thing i'm pretending to care about using), so tinted balms are a way to have some color on my lips without leaving color all over everything i come into contact with. i'm also really trying to pretend to be a casual, easygoing person by dabbling in lip stains? but both the clarins water lip stain and the urban decay lo-fi lip mousse i've been trying just make me look like i applied a real lipstick incorrectly right before eating a whole pizza. and i'm not saying that would never happen, it just didn't happen today.

quasars! i have been a fragrance person all my life. from the first bottle of sand and sable i shoplifted from the walgreens on green bay road when i was in high school to this bottle of diptyque fleur de peau i just cracked open in a vain attempt to hurry autumn along i don't care if i gotta buy stock in zyrtec you will never catch me walking around without perfume dabbed on the sweaty grime behind my ears. my old summer faves are jo malone french lime blossomandannick goutal eau d'hadrien but i mostly want to smell like a dirty old hippie so i typically mix bad witch and poppet oils from whisper sisters (two dope witches in detroit that make scented oils you can purchase here) OR dark wave and lightning paw from olo in portland, a company my girl melanie hipped me to that makes the best stuff (okay fine, CLICK HERE). i also only wanna live/work in a space that smells good? which is a fucking cop out because i could sit inside a garbage can with my laptop and write jokes, but it gives me an excuse to pretend that i have depth slash enjoy working by candlelight. i really don't! i do my best writing at 230 in the afternoon!! anyway, i like to set a ~vibe~ with: ds and durga's tomb of the eagles (honestly idk, the description says it smells like "bones and the sea" but i would describe it as "nice flowers"); byredo's peyote poem (again, the website says "spicy ode to juniper berries" and i would say "pleasant trees" but that's why their copywriters make the big bucks i guess); and boy smells' kush (them: "green, bright, and a wisp of delicate floral," me: "not really like weed!").

pooping in the summertime can be the ninth circle of hell, especially if there's insufficient bathroom air conditioning and you're just sitting in a steamy closet with the smell of microwaved shit closing in around you. is there anything worse than sweating while painfully expelling all of that grilled sweet summer corn you enthusiastically consumed at the neighbor's barbecue? haha no! except maybe when those ribs you wolfed down come sliding through? i love a good nag champa incense cone from the beauty supply when i'm in the bathroom, especially because the slow burn gives me an excuse to sit in there for a long time while avoiding human interaction. but those aren't practical for everyday life, so i keep a bottle of aesop post poo drops around because they are fancy and smell great and look like a scientist made them. it comes in an amber bottle with a dropper and you just drip a little in the bowl and it smells like you gave birth to a lemon grove instead of a greasy ball of half-digested chipotle. i'm not an expert on many things but poop is high on the list of jeopardy categories i could do well in, so please listen to me when i tell you that idk what the fuck magic poo-pourri is made of but how did any of us shit in public before now?! i'm telling you, as a person with crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis who did a cross-country tour and shit in every airport from logan to lax, that i do not go ANYWHERE without a bottle of poo-pourri in my bag. i have extolled its virtues to the many TSA agents who dumped out my belongings before giving me a deep and thorough gynecological exam to make sure i wasn't hiding a mini gun in my labia. if you see me anywhere, at any time, there is a bottle of poo-pourri somewhere on my person. don't be shy. ask to use some.

ugh god we have another, what, six weeks until humidifier season? until then i'll be over here sitting directly in front of the window unit airing out my gross armpits, gazing longingly at all the turtlenecks hanging neatly in my closet jk jk shoved recklessly into a hamper. see you in a few months with my yearly rundown of which body oils are worth absolutely destroying your nicest fall outfits.

ummm, the short answer is yes it absolutely is. who the fuck do we know at the emmys?! HOW DO I GET THIS SHOW THE RECOGNITION IT DESERVES. okay so sunday night was the season finale of the juiciest show you probably aren't watching and look i know you're skeptical and i'm not a lawyer but please enjoy the ride as i lay out my extremely compelling case:

exhibit A: hot soulful lone wolf lurking sexily around a bookstore. is it a trope? it's a well-worn trope, right? the moody, sensitive young man who reads? sure it is. but i don't know, man: IT'S FUCKING EFFECTIVE, EVEN THOUGH I LITERALLY KNOW BETTER. don't get me wrong, nothing is worse than a man with too many opinions but a man with too many opinions about books is somewhat tolerable, because at least he's reading, so hopefully he's absorbed some facts.

exhibit B: i would give the entire contents of my bank account to someone who was interested in what i'm reading. you know what i like to read? i mean really like to read, the most? the embarrassing and oft-maligned bastard child of the literary universe: POPULAR FICTION. do i read other shit? oh, for sure. i've struggled through some of the best literary fiction! agonized over a lot of dense prose! fallen asleep on top of many ~important~ works! but you know what i buy with my own money? and move to the top of the pile when a new one comes out?! john grisham's books. fucking jodi picoult. i'm breathlessly waiting for some new gillian flynn. i have a stack of horror books as tall as i am on my desk. plus i read everything oprah and reese witherspoon tell me and your mom to read: murder stories, but gentle; uplifting women who admonish me to be bold and hold space without explaining what that actually how to actually do those things; shit about "the heartland." and, setting aside that this dude is a stalker who projected all sorts of manic pixie dreamgirl fantasies onto a literal walking bowl of oatmeal and that the number of david baldacci books i've read alone would make me fail his literacy test, it was almost sweet that as he harshly judged the reading habits of the very people keeping his dusty little bookstore alive he climbed down off his high horse for five fucking seconds to give the book his future victim chose to purchase his stamp of approval.

exhibit C: that oatmilk drinking benji deserved to die and it was very satisfying to watch when he did. the problem with my watching these kinds of shows where the lonely loser gets revenge on the beautiful, popular people that don't know he's alive is that i too easily identify with said loser and end up rooting for all the wrong shit. so many times during this show i've had to check myself like "wait, am i actually a sociopath?" because something bad has happened to a person who absolutely deserves it and my only response is to shrug it off like BYE BITCH. this is the kind of conflicting show where all the people you're supposed to care about are aggressively unlikable, so then you have no choice but to take the murderer's side. or maybe that's just me, because i'm a bad person!

exhibit D: uncle jesse! JOHN STAMOS LOOKING REAL GOOD, Y'ALL. he's totally unethical (he smokes a joint during his therapy sessions!) and has absolutely zero boundaries (he sleeps with his patients!) and i am certainly not a fan of his professional vest? but hot damn he looks good enough to dip into a bucket of greek yogurt.

exhibit E: beck is a human madewell ad and that is extremely my shit. sidebar: did you know that madewell has fat clothes?! i'm not even sure how i stumbled upon this information but once i did i immediately bought four of something called the kent cardigan made from cozy yarn because honestly 1i have no impulse control and2 i'm not trying to be anything but cozy this winter or ever. anyway, i read vulture's tv recaps because i'm a monster who can't just watch a show, i have to watch it and read someone's detailed analysis of the thing i just fucking watched, and jessica goldstein's are the best and when she called beck (the YOU in the YOU of it all, which i almost just referred to as the YOU-niverse but i respect the collective you more than that) a walking madewell outlet store (or something like that?) i screamed. she's like if avocado toast was a person, which would be a hacky fucking joke if the show didn't mention avocado toast multiple times. honestly you should just watch it for all the millennial stereotypes that i hope were satirically inserted by a writers room full of salty fifty-year-olds because if not that's kind of "hashtag depressing."

exhibit F: blythe is the best character on television and deserves her own spinoff immediately. okay so here's the one unintentionally funny part of this shit that i can't stop cackling about: DO WRITERS REALLY ACT LIKE THIS?! in case you couldn't tell by this hastily thrown-together blog, i am a writer. and i have lots of friends who are writers. and i have never talked about "pages" in my life, writing them or reading them or turning them in, and sure it probably sounds foreign to me because i'm a human toilet who writes about cats, but also the way they talk about writing is so funny and weird. i love it so fucking much. everyone is so pretentious and talking about writing colonies and throwing literary-themed parties. all my writer friends are hilarious morons (even the famous ones!) and they write in unmade beds in their underwear while shoveling refined sugar into their faces and crying, not in the sun-dappled corners of their picturesque apartments while sipping coconut milk cortados and tapping earnestly away at a vintage typewriter. anyway blythe is a fellow student in beck's MFA program and she is perfect. everything she says is lowkey mean and snotty and she takes herself so seriously it's comical and if she's not in season 2 lifetime can expect a sternly-worded letter typed on my finest artisanal stationery and sprinkled with crumbs from an organic meatball sub.

exhibit G: ridiculous plot twists! i'm aware i've already spoiled a lot of shit in this show for the uninitiated but let me break something to you: LIFE IS A FUCKING SPOILER ALERT. so much random shit happens from week to week and i know that might be a turnoff for you geniuses but if you shut off the part of your brain that wrote a dissertation on why breaking bad was such revolutionary television and just sink deep into the warm bath of these attractive idiots who don't password protect their electronic devices or hang curtains and have no idea when a stranger has been rooting through all the shit in their one-person apartment (listen i'm not the underwear police but if i was missing some I WOULD KNOW, holy shit!) even when homeboy is hiding in the goddamn shower while they brush their fucking teeth in the same bathroom, i promise you it's worth it. even though it's not the americans or whatever. don't people like fun anymore?!

exhibits H-Z: xoxo gossip girl dan humphrey was the love of my young-ish life. and i'm sure penn badgley has done other worthwhile things with his time (hey i watched that jeff buckley movie!) but here he's channeling that same sad creep energy and i am deeply deeply into it. is he scary? kind of! he stalks the most boring girl on earth and that is very unsettling to me! i deleted my facebook a few weeks ago but if i hadn't then i definitely would consider it after watching this dude piece together the internet life of a random woman who bought a book he respected while not wearing a bra and trying to fit himself into it. OR WOULD I. i don't know if the person swiping my credit card to pay for three different types of doritos i'm going to pair together like a fucking snack food sommelier along with whatever iris johansen paperback is on sale next to the register is secretly in love with me, but i'd probably be into it. i mean they're literally seeing me at my worst, isn't that what romance is actually all about? (it isn't, i know. it's illegal, i get it.) anyway gossip girl's cheekbones remain exquisite, and his voiceover is sexy, and we get to watch him do some PG-13 boning!

closing argument: I'M NOT WRONG. and prestige television is fine but listen, sometimes i don't wanna think that hard. i still don't know what the fuck westworld is about! i'm too dumb for mr. robot! is legion actually good? i don't think i really understand the strangerthings universes? sharpobjects was confusing to me, and i read the fucking book! anyway i'm here for whatever the opposite of these dense and convoluted shows are. well, at least until fargo and true detective and billions come back.

i am a teenage girl and i can admit that i'm a little spoiled. my mother delivers breakfast in bed to me daily. my dad eats a burger for dinner, but mom cooks a ribeye steak with a loaded baked potato for me. i don’t know how to cook, but to teach me responsibility this year my dad says i have to cook a complete thanksgiving dinner with no help! i'm freaking out. i have my phone, but do you have any helpful ideas?

do you ever sit back and wonder what your life could have been like if the people in it actually cared about you? do you ever get choked up thinking about how great you could have been, the potential you could have had, the heights to which you could have soared, if your parents were the kind of people who really and truly loved you? what kind of job would you have right now if your mom just, i don't know, vacuumed around your lounging body on saturday mornings instead of turning up the gospel station and handing you a mop? what astounding feats could you have achieved if only you hadn't been forced to make your own sandwiches and clip your own toenails? what would your GPA have been if you'd never had to race home after school to vacuum and pull the chicken out of the freezer before your mom got home, or exposed yourself to early-onset copd inhaling comet particles while scrubbing the bathtub on your hands and knees while the rest of your carefree friends? imagine the glass ceilings you could have shattered if you'd been waited on hand and foot instead of washing your own dishes and raking the goddamned yard? do you ever see a kid calling his mom a bitch in the middle of starbucks and think about how awful your childhood was because you never got to do that? cried bitter tears for all the times you never got to tell your dad to "shut up, god" while keeping all your teeth in your head? what if this was your life?! man, must be nice.

last year for thanksgiving, i made a special effort to get the entire family together for the traditional meal. all 13 of us met at my mother’s home and everyone was to bring a dish or two to share. one of my brothers has two college-age daughters. both are vegan, and he insisted that all the dishes we brought be vegan! i did it, but i resented it because i felt that two out of 13 people should not decide the menu. my brother and nieces are now asking what we’re doing this year for thanksgiving. frankly, I don’t want to go through that again. am i wrong in thinking everyone should not bend over backward for the vegan meal? i don’t mind some of the menu accommodating them, but i don’t think the whole dinner should be altered.

what i will never understand about people like this is this: if you're going to be an asshole, why not just go full asshole and say what you mean, scorch the earth completely, then go on about your life and do your own fucking thing? i was raised by wolves, so forgive me for not fully understanding the traditional american family value of passive aggression, but if you don't want to eat tofurkey or lentil loaf or whatever why not just be like "i'm sitting this one out, brian" and GO EAT YOUR FUCKING HAM. you're a bloodthirsty carnivore who wants to sink her teeth into a baby cow's thigh to give thanks for life's abundance and that's cool man but what isn't is pretending to be a sensitive person who cares about their family's needs then punishing all the normal people at the table with your resentful bullshit. everybody has that one jerkoff friend who gets mad about something dumb but doesn't leave the bar then just sits there poisoning the air around her as everyone tries to drink themselves to death in response, that whiny brat who doesn't want to talk to anyone due to some perceived slight and instead of getting up to go fuck herself she instead chooses to stay at the party and make everyone else uncomfortable. you know who that is in my circle? no one, because i killed that bitch and ate her. and everyone else lived happily ever after. because i'm not vegan but i'd be respectful if my niece was, and i would shut the fuck up and drink my oat milk and eat my boiled salad in peace before leaving the table to "run an errand" also known as "cry into a ten piece nuggets in the mcdonald's parking lot before going home to eat one square of bitter ass dark chocolate for dessert."

my mother-in-law tends to embrace every pitiful creature she comes into contact with. this thanksgiving she has invited my ex-boyfriend and his wife to her home to share in the festivities. i told her i don’t feel comfortable with the situation, because he sucks. they both told me i am “overreacting” and that he was a part of my past and i should have emotionally moved on. i feel the family i love has betrayed me. the idea of my ex being involved in what should be a comfortable family day has me afraid and uneasy. am i overreacting? or is my husband’s mother being unreasonable?

wait wait wait, WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT HERE. is your husband's mom for real? how does she know him? how did she find him? who told her his name? how did she know how to get a hold of him? why did he say yes? why did he even answer the phone? why doesn't he already have holiday plans? did his family die? is his wife's family dead? does he know your mother in law from a past life? was she his chemistry teacher? an intramural soccer coach? is your ex-boyfriend her other fucking son?!

i used to not fully understand what people meant when they talked about about hypothetical boundaries, because i would rather be buried alive than impose on anyone or piss someone off who won't immediately dismiss themselves from my life, but this is a textbook example of overstepping one's bounds. this is crossing the brightest red line and is also literally shocking? i have a mother-in-law, and i don't think she could even name any of my exes and i wrote two motherfucking books about them. what is this? who does this? do you live in a soap opera? what is this thing people have with making their holidays the most awkward and horrible time imaginable? even if everyone else is totally cool with it, and how could they be cool with it this is a fucking bananas situation, you mean to tell me no one is going to notice or be affected by the burning hatred radiating from your end of the table? i don't wanna eat my green bean casserole with someone glaring at me! all these people are gonna just pass the gravy and push dressing around on their plates while you are apoplectic at the kids' table? THIS IS THE MOST UNREASONABLE SHIT I'VE EVER HEARD. obviously these people are sadists hell bent on destroying you and rather than shredding the brussels sprouts this year maybe you should call a divorce lawyer because this is an untenable situation to say the least. otherwise, two words: cage match.

how do you politely tell your thanksgiving host that you have dietary restrictions?

a good host will ask when they extend the invitation. a good guest will understand that if that list contains more than a handful of things that maybe they should stay home with a bag of rice and a glass of tap water and not stress out a nice person who was just trying to invite your sad gassy ass to dinner. i have a dreaded irritable bowel disease that makes being a fun, carefree, spontaneous person an impossibility. thanksgiving is a particularly dreadful conundrum for myself and the similarly afflicted (my new band name) because not only does it involve copious amounts of irresistible hard to process foods meant to be consumed in front of a large number of people who don't understand why you keep declining the corn, but the meal often begins at 930 in the morning and continues through somewhere around january 21st. nothing stresses me out more than being held hostage all day in a place i'm not sure i can comfortably take a shit. and i don't mean "ugh the bathroom is small," i mean "ugh the bathroom is small and it's located smack in the middle of a high-traffic hallway between the kitchen and the dining room and the walls are thin and there's no lock on the door and this loud ass toddler won't stop telling anyone who will listen that it smells like poop." people always want you to show up at dawn for a meal they're going to serve at 5 in the evening, which they won't come out and tell you because they know that you'll show up at 4:58. and it might be okay to take a chance on the casserole if you thought you'd be back in the safety of your car by 6:30, but nooooooo they gotta pull out a deck of cards between the salad and the turkey, make you win an hourlong flag football game in the yard before coughing up the rolls, then insist upon a three mile hike between dinner and dessert. i'm not taking my intestinal scar tissue on a brisk walk while a bunch of collard greens tries to squeeze through it! so do what i do and be brutally honest. people who love you, or even just like you, don't want you to be in distress and/or destroy their bathrooms, and they really don't want to watch the football game next to you in the emergency room. just say listen _______ i can't just commit an entire day to you and the mashed potatoes you put cream cheese in. you either gotta do a broth course with an applesauce chaser or i gotta stay the fuck home.

we’ve had thanksgiving with the same family for 10+ years now, but we would really like to do it just with our nuclear family this year—and for the years to come. how do we break up with the other family?

you know the wild thing about this is that they probably fucking hate you, too. they're probably sitting home RIGHT NOW groaning over where to put your ungrateful asses in the seating chart this year and sighing at all your peanut and gluten sensitivities they have to consider while making the grocery list. no one ever wants to do anything, especially if it requires a lot of work, especially especially if it requires coordinating with a whole ass other family. my absolute favorite pastime is "the other person cancelled the plans." every time i schedule a thing i immediately wish i hadn't, then i anxiously wait for the other person to text me that their dog is sick or their complicated skincare routine is more important or they got locked out of their car or their mom needs them to install an air conditioner or they have strep throat or they got robbed or their boss literally chained them to the desk at work or they're afraid of melting in the rain or every restaurant in town is closed or they just got dumped or the challenge finale is on or they dropped their phone in the toilet or they have to go to the emergency dentist or they took their bra off and don't want to move now or there's a new lacroix flavor they have to try or there's a small wonder marathon on or the romaine lettuce recall is really bumming them out or they need to look at every post on their crush's instagram going back four years or their cat is sick or they fell off a ladder and have to go to the hospital or they just want to eat a bag of candy corn for dinner or they died literally any excuse is fine as long as i don't have to leave my fucking home. and we don't attempt to raincheck for at least four months.

so give that long-suffering family the only thing anyone truly wants: the gift of your absence. via text. because no one likes talking on the phone.

if i receive a bottle of wine as a gift from a dinner guest and it is not appropriate for the meal, must i serve it? or is it okay not to open it at all?

IMAGINE KNOWING THIS. i'm not even being snarky, i am genuinely mystified by the idea that a person can look at a bottle of wine and know that it isn't going to go with the food in the oven. more than that, i can't imagine eating a bite of food then spitting out the wine it was served with because they don't match. what is this skill, good breeding? did you learn this in finishing school? is this what rich people teach their kids instead of empathy and good manners?! the most sophisticated pairing in my life is lukewarm sprite and doritos, please laugh in my face if i ever turn my nose up at a white wine served with a meaty pasta. if i do turn down wine it'll be because i have the palate of a five year old who only drinks juice. also, this taps into my very deep anxieties about being an uncultured guest in a civilized person's home. i'm always in the discount aisle at the wine store like "will these people know i am stupid and poor?" and now i know THE ANSWER IS YES. so from the perspective of an idiot who brought a bottle of walgreens wine to a sommelier's house i would say to graciously accept it then immediately put it away, right next to that bottle of seagram's i brought last time.

i’m normally a thanksgiving orphan. so i need tips on visiting friends’ homes. what should i bring as a hostess gift? should i offer to make something? also, what do i do if family drama erupts at the table? what are some polite ways to not engage in awkward or controversial conversation?

hello from the equally bereaved! i've been crashing other people's thanksgiving dinners since high school, and man it's a good gig. first of all, you get to be the glamorous outsider who doesn't have any horrible history with any of the gross uncles and estranged children crammed awkwardly around the table. no one is going to bring up that one terrible thing you did in 1987, no one is going to ask why you're fat now or if your job still sucks or when your boyfriend is getting out of prison. they haven't heard about any of the drugs you used to take or remember the time you got stood up at the altar or that honestly you don't really know where syria is? you get to just breeze in wearing clothes they have no idea you've worn for the past three days still smelling like that one girl you promised you'd stop hooking up with a year ago. you'll provide a welcome distraction from all the shit they hate about each other, and you can lie about being allergic to whatever they're serving that you don't want to eat and no one can pull out your childhood medical records and bust you. you can regale a rapt, wide-eyed audience with fantastical stories they won't know aren't the least bit true, and you can steer any potential awkwardness whatever way you choose because guess what: they aren't your family so you never have to see them ever again. and if they fight? relish in it! other people's fights are like in-person tv! but don't you dare make anything, because it will be 1 better or 2 worse than the shit they cooked and you don't need either of those headaches. bring the host some flowers or something useful like a couple xanax. just make sure you don't bring shitty wine that doesn't go with the ham salad, you plebe.

this year i am anticipating a dinnertime discussion similar to that of thanksgiving a couple years ago (right after the last presidential election) and am already dreading it. differing political views back then led to a heated argument, and i can only imagine what might pop up this time around. how do i politely suggest that everyone please pass on the politics?

haha wow that's weird i'm starting every conversation i have for the rest of my life with "who did you vote for in 2016?" and depending on your answer you can get out of my fucking house or we can fucking fight and then you can get out of my fucking house.

how do you deal with hosting family members for thanksgiving who aren’t on speaking terms?

finally something i'm actually an expert in! the homeostasis of the cooper-irby sisterhood is "maybe i'll text you on your birthday" at best, so suffering through a holiday meal or retirement party or ribbon-cutting ceremony where one or all of us is pretending another is dead is par for the fucking course. it's not even awkward anymore. i haven't spoken to one of my sisters in two years and it's great. we didn't really even have a fight; she got mad at me, i blocked her from my phone, everything has been great ever since. for her too, i'm sure, but i'll never actually know because i don't talk to that bitch anymore! i'm a big believer in doing a thorough cost-benefit analysis of the relationships in your life, and if the ratio is off you gotta cut the dead weight loose. that is the realest self-care. anyway here's how it would go down if we accidentally found ourselves in the same room as a turkey on the fourth thursday of november: i would 1 turn and leave because i'd rather be home nursing a chicken pot pie in front of an svu marathon anyway or 2 talk to her, because even if i couldn't think of anything nice to say to that unrelenting asshole i could at least grumble "hi remember how we have the same mom?" and then plop some cranberry sauce on my plate and go back to not speaking to her. so let them do that.

what's the quintessential dish for your thanksgiving dinner?

i don't care about anything but the yams. i made a pan of macaroni and cheese and a homemade dressing (even though i would happily eat the kind from a box) and i risked my precious digits slicing onions on a mandolin that we breaded and fried because my wife won't put the perfectly acceptable ones from a can atop the green bean casserole, but who cares about any of that if there aren't any candied yams on the menu? we outsourced the turkey because nothing is more boring than cooking a disgusting dry bird, we could either have pie or not, and
here's how you make candied yams the right way, ie the way i made them last night:
1 buy four pounds of decently-sized, good looking sweet potatoes.
2 peel them (i use a paring knife because they have too many grooves and crevices for a peeler), then preheat the oven to 375.
3 chop off the ends and cut them into manageable chunks.
4 it might just be superstitious and unnecessary to rinse them under some hot water but do it anyway.
5 butter a 9 x 13 casserole dish and toss the potatoes in.
6 in a saucepan melt: 2/3 c brown sugar, 6 tbsp butter, 1 tsp ground 1/2 tsp cinnamon, a dash of salt, a dash of nutmeg, and a dash of ground ginger over medium heat. bring the mixture to a boil; stir until the butter is melted and sugar is dissolved.
7 stir in 1 tsp vanilla extract.
8 pour the butter mixture evenly over the potatoes, then cover with foil.
9 bake for 45 minutes, then remove the foil and stir, bake for another 30 minutes until bubbly and delicious.
marshmallow addendum:
if you like them, not everyone does, remove the pan from the oven and bump the temperature up to 450. cover the potatoes with mini marshmallows and bake until they reach that perfect combination of golden/melty, 3 to 5 minutes but you should hover nearby because it can go south real quick.

happy thanksgiving. gobble til you wobble! and don't take any shit off of anyone today, unless it's literal shit and you are helping to clean up a creamed spinach casualty. forever thankful for those of you who continue to read a fucking blog on al gore's internet in the year of our lord 2018.

happy holidays, dear one! hope this letter finds you well! your mother and i have been wondering why we haven't heard from you since the day you drove your prius clean through your neighbor's tomato plants (and what was, frankly, an overpriced backyard playset, if you ask me) and called us drunk at 3 o'clock in the afternoon demanding five thousand dollars to rectify the situation. i told you not to get that hippie car. if you'd been driving a vehicle that actually made noise that poor dog might've had a chance! and even though the only time you called before that was to chokesob in my ear something about a cell phone and a public toilet, i gladly cashed in my jc penney stock to send you the money. all i asked was for you to come over and listen to aunt brenda complain about her love life for a few hours while cleaning out the basement, and you changed your phone number! also i'm sorry about all those memes i shared, but i didn't hear about all that russia business until a few days ago and i think that blocking me off your facebook was incredibly premature. the cats are fine, your mom is bored with me and has taken up needlepoint as an alternative to talking to me so she currently spends most of her time putting their names on things that don't actually belong to them. why do i need a dishtowel with mister little jeans stitched on it?! i'm spending my free time flirting with ihop waitresses and taking jazzercise classes at the Y. anyway, sorry to hear you won't be spending christmas with us and your sister. she asked for something called a "vape pen" but no one at the stationery shop at the mall has ever heard of that! i admire her, she's always ahead of the curve. anyway, we'd be happy to buy you a coach class amtrak ticket to come here if you find yourself hungry for your mom's creamy jello mold! i suppose we'll hear from you next time you need money for sudafed or to hide a dead body. love always, your dad.

bah humbug, cuties! it's that time again! good luck dealing with your terrible families! behold, the 2018 survival guide for dealing with your kids being out of school and in your face for two whole weeks:

1 make some food.i like to do a christmas lunch because meals that happen at night mean you have to spend the entire fucking day either thinking about or preparing them and that is a good way to stress yourself into a panic attack and also hate your life. if the meal is on the table by 1230 then guess what? YOUR DAY IS OVER. oh i'm sorry, did you really think i was going to pause mingle all the way to get up and baste a turkey or whatever? did you honestly believe that a pumpkin pie is more important than watching the christmas contract in my mistletoe pajamas? that's why you do a lunch, because you're gonna get up in the morning anyway, so why not just make a casserole at noon then spend the rest of the day crying on the couch. this year i did a lasagna in homage to cate blanchett's character in notes on a scandal (that is a very very deep cut, and if you understand that reference i love you forever) and because you can just make it and plop it down like "have fun eating this for the next three days." this version has meat but i think i can figure out how to make it veg at the end.
gather:
9 lasagna noodles
1 lb ground mild italian sausage
3/4 lb ground beef
1 medium onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced (i do not do this, i scoop a few tablespoons from a jar)
2 28 oz cans crushed tomatoes
2 6 oz cans tomato paste
2/3 cup water
2 to 3 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons dried basil
3/4 teaspoon fennel seed
3/4 teaspoon salt, divided (this is not enough)
1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper (this either)
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 carton (15 ounces) ricotta cheese
4 cups shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
(a note: the original recipe called for fresh parsley, which i do not have and did not buy, because the bunches at the store are always way more than i will ever actually use and it just gets so wet and slimy and grosses me out so i skipped it. if you are not a lazy sack of shit it calls for 3 tablespoons of minced for the sauce and a quarter cup to mix with the cheese but seriously, this is one of those steps that makes an easy recipe an irritating one and why go through that? the wise men didn't care about parsley!!)

assemble:

-cook the noodles, a little less than the package says to. drain them and set aside.

-make the sauce. cook the meats (season it for baby jesus' sake) with the onion in a large dutch oven until there's only a little pink left, add the garlic and stir it while cooking for another minute. the recipe says to drain it and MAYBE YOU SHOULD but i most certainly DO THE FUCK NOT. i like to say it makes for a richer sauce and maybe that's true but i'm never flipping a cast iron pot over if i can fucking help it, so rich sauce or not i'm not doing that.

-add all of the tomato products, the water, and the basil/sugar/fennel. i forgot the water at first and it didn't seem to have a negative effect. salt and pepper it just because, then bring to a boil. reduce the heat to a simmer and taste it; adjust seasonings accordingly. (at this stage i added more fennel because i'm a fennel monster, and this is probably a good time to admit that i don't measure dry seasonings because i'm an excellent eyeballer. but if you don't cook a lot you should measure just in case, so you don't blame me when your food is gross.)

-let the sauce cook for 30 minutes, uncovered, stirring occasionally.

-mix the ricotta and egg in a bowl. this is where you'd add the other parsley if you're using it but here is my trick: grate a little fresh nutmeg (or tap some of that mccormick in) into the ricotta. trust me, it's good. i like to add nutmeg to a macaroni and cheese roux, too. shit's delicious.

-preheat your oven to 375°. spread 2 cups of sauce into an ungreased 13x9" baking dish. layer with three noodles and a third of the ricotta mixture, sprinkle with 1 cup mozzarella cheese and 2 tablespoons parmesan cheese. repeat the layers twice then top with remaining sauce and cheeses.

-bake, covered, for 25 minutes. then bake, uncovered, 25 minutes longer or until bubbly. let stand 15 minutes before serving, then retire to your cool, dark bedroom for the next three days. you fucking earned it.

vegetarian option? okay i'm just spitballing here so if it doesn't work don't hate me!!

-sauce: i would do everything the same except instead of cooking meat with the onion i would cut up some red and green bell peppers, a diced carrot or two, throw some sliced mushrooms in, and maybe a small chunked zucchini and cook those in a tablespoon or two of butter (salted and peppered) for like 5-8 minutes, then add the tomatoes etc. i would probably skip the fennel just in case it works less well with veggies than sausage.

-ricotta: wilt a few bunches of baby spinach in a large skillet (warm a little olive oil over medium heat, toss them in, sprinkle with garlic salt and cover it, cook under wilty) then gently fold into the egg/ricotta/nutmeg mix

-all the other directions are the same (noodle, sauce, cheese, repeat) but watch the cook time because i bet it's shorter. but i don't know because i'm literally just making this up. MAKE IT AND REPORT BACK.

2 read some books? so for over a year now i have been reading and recommending books for marie claire magazine, which is hilarious to me. i am an actual shitgoblin, so the idea that something i write is in a magazine with lithe beauties draped in expensive couture that i could barely cram a forearm into is a riot. it is the hardest job i have ever had. i mean, it's not heart surgery or whatever but please try to distill the plot of the last book you read into 75 cohesive words while also weaving in some blurb-y phrases that aren't the last five things you said about the books you read last month in a way that's not going to stress out the fact checker. IT'S DIFFICULT, OKAY. anyway, i have always been a reader, but now i gotta be a fucking super reader. which has turned me into that annoying person who starts every conversation with "you know what you should read...?" and i'm not being pushy or competitive, it's just that i am filled with this wealth of information and i only talk to like three people every day so as soon as i encounter a new adult person i just open my mouth and "have you read the golden state yet?" is the first thing that comes tumbling out. i don't even bother introducing myself anymore, i just shove whatever book i have in bag into the person's face and immediately turn and walk away. here are some things i've loved recently that you can read while refusing to go outside in the cold:

-"training school for negro girls" by camille acker (summary from the back: when you're black and female in america, society's rules were never meant to make you safe or free. camille acker's relatable yet unexpected characters break down the walls of respectability politics, showing that the only way for black women to be free is to be themselves. more here)

-"a guide for murdered children" by sarah sparrow (summary from the back: we’ve heard it said that there is no justice in this world. but what if there really was? what if the souls of murdered children were able to briefly return, inhabit adult bodies and wreak revenge on the monstrous killers who stole their lives? more here)

-"heartbreaker" by claudia dey (summary from the back: it’s 1985. pony darlene fontaine has lived all her fifteen years in “the territory,” a settlement founded decades ago by a charismatic cult leader. in this strange town run on a sinister economic resource, the women crimp their hair and wear shoulder pads, and the teenagers listen to nazareth and whitesnake on their walkmans. pony’s family lives in the bungalow at the farthest edge of town, where the territory borders the rest of the wider world—a place none of the townspeople have ever been. except for billie jean fontaine, pony’s mother. when billie jean arrived in the territory seventeen years prior—falling from the open door of a stolen car—the residents took her in and made her one of their own. she was the first outsider they had ever laid eyes on. pony adores and idolizes her mother, but like everyone else in the territory she is mystified by her. one night, billie jean grabs her truck keys, bolts barefoot into the cold october darkness—and vanishes. beautiful, beloved, and secretive, billie jean was the first person to be welcomed into the territory. now, with a frantic search under way for her missing mother, pony fears: will she be the first person to leave it too? more here)
-"all you can ever know" by nicole chung (summary from the back: nicole chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered oregon town. from childhood, she heard the story of her adoption as a comforting, prepackaged myth. she believed that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of giving her a better life, that forever feeling slightly out of place was her fate as a transracial adoptee. but as nicole grew up--facing prejudice her adoptive family couldn't see, finding her identity as an asian american and as a writer, becoming ever more curious about where she came from--she wondered if the story she'd been told was the whole truth. more here)
-"my body is a book of rules" by elissa washuta (summary from the back: as elissa washuta makes the transition from college kid to independent adult, she finds herself overwhelmed by the calamities piling up in her brain. when her mood-stabilizing medications aren’t threatening her life, they’re shoving her from depression to mania and back in the space of an hour. her crisis of american indian identity bleeds into other areas of self-doubt; mental illness, sexual trauma, ethnic identity, and independence become intertwined. sifting through the scraps of her past in seventeen formally inventive chapters, washuta aligns the strictures of her catholic school education with cosmopolitan’s mandates for womanhood, views memories through the distorting lens of law & order: special victims unit, and contrasts her bipolar highs and lows with those of britney spears and kurt cobain. built on the bones of fundamental identity questions as contorted by a distressed brain, my body is a book of rules pulls no punches in its self-deprecating and ferocious look at human fallibility. more here)

i don't get paid for these recs, i just read a lot and get real excited about good books. all the hyperlinks i added here (YOU'RE WELCOME) go to indiebound, because i spend a lot of time skulking around indie bookstores and no one ever kicks me out, but by all means get your books wherever you like to get your books. speaking of, have you read the golden state yet???

3 watch a bunch of shit on tv. soooooo, i watch basketball on christmas day. and i'm not trying to show off how butch i am, i just really enjoy basketball. here's the thing about why i watch sports: sports games take a loooooong fucking time. which means you have a built-in excuse to spend many uninterrupted hours in front of the television. i grew up in the 80s without cable television, which meant that on the weekends i was limited to: reruns of mr belvedere and small wonder on channel 32, whatever weirdo movies svengoolie was showing on channel 9, or the wide world of sports provided by the major networks. listen man, i grew up in a house with a plastic football phone and a framed photo of walter payton in the kitchen. i was never gonna play any sports, but i learned very early on how to watch them. anyway, here's some other stuff i've been watching when i should be working that you can watch if you can pry the remote away from your toddler:

-vanderpump rules (bravo)

-rupaul's drag race (vh1)

-killing eve (bbc)

-escape at dannemora (showtime)
-younger (hulu)
-the great british baking show (netflix)
-top chef (bravo)
-shut up and dribble (showtime)
-the circus (showtime)
-wanderlust (netflix)

4 buy some stuff you definitely don't need!! i am my own santa claus, and i never take a day off. i don't like to put a bunch of pressure on people to get me things i actually want, mostly because receiving gifts is very embarrassing! how do you know what to do with your face when someone as staring at you as they're forcing a thing you don't want and can't use into your life? i'm too old for gifts. everything i want is impractical or expensive or require's a written prescription. so if you insist on getting me something you're going to demand to watch me open, just get me a party size bag of doritos or a lip balm that doesn't smell. or nothing. just hug me and get me a glass of water. this year i bought myself, and have linked for your convenience:
-some gorgeous paper wreaths from grace d chin
-candles from rosmarino
-new glasses from warby parker
-"foods before dudes" tote bags from brinehound
-this incredibly soothing serum that smells like rich people from OLO
-a jumpsuit i am prepared to both live and die in from universal standard
-this bright and cheerful purple nail polish from china glaze
-the perfect hair pomade from oyin handmade
-shiny pretty things from mactaggart
-lavender-scented cbd cream
-something called "disco nap cheek gloss" from flesh
-this planner i absolutely will not use no matter how much i carry it around pretending will from bando

i hope that whatever your holidays look like, you at least get to spend it with people who don't get on your last fucking nerve while eating whatever makes you happy and watching whatever you want in the quietest room you can find. i have to write a book in the next week and a half, so i will spend most of my waking hours paralyzed by impostor syndrome with a diet coke IV connected to the largest vein in my body. merry merry, happy happy!

i am 39 and a half years old and i no longer have 100% control of my bladder. ten years ago i was at this club called the darkroom in chicago on $2 corona night, and even back then in my "youth" my party strategy was "get there by 9 so no one takes the good chairs." which is what i liked to tell my friends when they scoffed at the idea of arriving at a nightclub while it was still light out, but the truth is that if i sit too still between the hours of 7 and 830 pm i will clinically die until noon the next day so if i'm gonna go out i need to have a bra and shoes by 655 at the very latest or that shit's not fucking happening. okay anyway it was reggae night and i had been guzzling lukewarm waterbeers for four hours straight in a pair of unforgiving jeggings and when my kidneys started pulsing in time to the beat of "murder she wrote" it was already too late. i looked in the general direction of the single-stall bathroom, its line snaked halfway around the back of the club, and breathed a sigh of relief that i was wearing urine-absorbing socks and sensible, closed-toed shoes.

yes i pissed my pants at the club but that was VERY COOL back then because it made me seem fun and spontaneous and it was mychoice, not an involuntary consequence of my managing to avoid death lo these many years. i thought the spoils of reaching middle age relatively unscathed would be better than unrelenting anxiety and loss of control over my various nerves, joints, and limbs. i wouldn't have taken so many antibiotics if i knew i was just gonna grow up to fall the fuck apart the same year i finally nursed my credit score over the 700 line. what is the point of taking unsexy vitamins and paying my secured card on time if i'm gonna spend every evening examining stains on the clothes i wore all day while wondering aloud "what hole did that come out of?"

what misery it is, being a person and existing in a human body over which whose chemicals and hormones and cells you have very little control. with all of the evidence you've gathered for this experiment otherwise known as life on this dying ball of garbage, would you choose this again? you spend your whole youth waiting to be stable and confident, then as soon as you get close your nerves get bad and you spend the better part of most days covered in at least a tiny bit of your own waste. anyway, while you contemplate your mortality and endless human suffering, an exhaustive list of things i've peed on this year:

seat 3B on delta flight 2734 to lax i used to never have to pee on flights, due to a carefully calibrated combination of terror and forced dehydration, but now every time an airplane touches down with me on it a little pee squirts out to christen my arrival in a new location.

the recumbent elliptical machine at the ymca i had to buy special "moisture-wicking" compression leggings because it's nearly impossible for me to engage my core (WHAT) while also pushing pedals at a super high resistance for 45 minutes and trying to read the closed captioning on whatever episode of NCIS is playing. honestly i would just quit going rather than but it helps my shitty knees and you gotta see fourteen specialists to get so much as a tylenol these days and fuck that? so sometimes i leave the gym with a very "sweaty butt." anyway it could be worse i could emptying my entire bladder onto a squeaky wood floor to a pitbull song during zumba gold. although i bet they'd probably relate.

my pants as i approach literally any bathroom ever i understand the pavlovian response to seeing an outline of a toilet on a little plastic sign, but even if i could shield my eyes from it it's like the minute my tiny brain hears "bathroom?" my sphincter muscles relax whatever grip they had on my urethra and it's all downhill (downleg?) from there.

the gravel driveway outside the house we rented in la last summer lindy and i lived in this house at the very top of an inconvenient mountain in the hollywood hills last summer while making her show, and one night i drove our rented toyota camry up the steep and winding too-narrow path with a bunch of kombucha and alkaline water pooling in my bladder (FUCKING LOS ANGELES) and by the time i finally reached the garage i was just about to burst, then i slammed my hand in the car door because a dog i couldn't see in the dark barked at me and my response to the screaming pain was to cry, from my vagina.

my office chair i share a big, airy space that gets tons of natural light and is very peaceful with two people who can absolutely hear every echoed noise coming from inside the adjacent bathroom, so sometimes i try to hold it until they have a phone call or go to lunch and listen: holding it is no longer a real thing.

the floor right in front of my very own home toilet, while trying to extricate myself from a complicated jumpsuit i'm not even sure why i own a single article of clothing with buttons, let alone a fucking thing you gotta hike up to your cervix just to get it over your goddamned shoulders, but listen: i am not immune to trends. i, too, am vulnerable to the algorithm. and that's how i wound up shuffling from foot to foot as urine coursed discreetly down the pants that are also a shirt while unsuccessfully trying to dislocate my left arm to hasten the process of sitting down fully naked to try to squeeze everything out of my suffering bladder.

i cough, i pee
i sneeze, i pee
i laugh, i pee
i sit down, i pee
i stand up, i pee
i cry at a dog food commercial, i pee
i walk five steps, i pee
i step out of the shower too hard, i pee
i bend over to pick up the newspaper, i pee
i reach for a bottle on a high shelf, i pee
i frown at a news story on my timeline, i pee
i pull up to the pharmacy drive-thru window, i pee
i take a bite of something crunchy, i pee
i have to call customer service, i pee
i drop the remote, i pee
i google a meme i'm too old to understand, i pee

remember when you only peed yourself for sexy reasons, like drinking too many bottomless mimosas at brunch or during literally any kind of penetrative sex? now i can't look at a picture of a lake without leaking a little at the mere suggestion of a body of water, even one filled with e.coli and horrible bugs!

i watched that "naomi campbell cleans an entire airplane with a clorox wipe" video in its entirety at least twice, thinking is this before or after she dribbled a little bit in her travel pajamas after too many wines? because i've had to fashion a makeshift diaper out of the complimentary blanket they hand out on planes since i turned thirty-fucking-five. and that's even if i've managed to drink nothing but the swallow of water it takes to get an ativan down my throat during takeoff! how do the properly hydrated among you get through the goddamned day? are you just pissing in those thinx panties all the time? i've been following this hipster nutritionist on instagram (fuck you, an actual one is incredibly expensive and will actually hold me accountable which is a little too panic-inducing for my current frame of mind) and she was like YOU SHOULD DRINK THREE LITERS OF WATER EVERY DAY BEFORE NOON and first of all: who is awake before noon, let alone chugging water during that time? but also, just listening to her even say those words my bladder muscles reflexed so forcefully that you could hear the waves in the next goddamn room.

how do you stay hydrated without 1 it just drizzling out of you all the time without warning or 2 alienating everyone who loves you because you have to pull the car over every three miles to squat over the super big gulp you've designated as the urine catcher? (also, does it really help your skin look better or is that just some bullshit the suits over at BIG WATER are trying to sell us?) what was i so busy doing when i was kid instead of training my kegels before it was too late, memorizing soap opera storylines? committing petty larceny? now it's too late and i spend my whole day tinkling on trees in broad daylight while my lady hovers nearby with an inside-out bag stretched over her hand in case it turns into a poo. i'm gonna keep drinking it, and being damp 75% of the time, if for no other reason than the other nightmare thing that comes with the collapse of your decaying meat suit: all the fucking pills you gotta choke down to keep the fucking thing working. see you in the pharmacy aisle with the poise pads, boo!

here is my average tuesday morning:
830a wake up and think about going to walgreens.
840a try to convince myself that if i go to the gym for 40 minutes going to walgreens can be my reward.
845a debate wearing pajamas to the gym, realize these are the pajamas i wore to the gym yesterday so who cares.
850a plan what one item i am going to purchase at walgreens so i have a reason to go back tomorrow.
851a fruitlessly search for socks and shoes appropriate for moderate exercise in public surrounded by strangers.
853a remember sensible skechers are downstairs by the door where i kicked them off yesterday in an endorphin-fueled post-exercise wave of rage and disappointment.
854a consider going downstairs.
901a fuck working out and fuck walgreens, too.

i don't have anywhere important to go these days, so i don't really have a reason to have clear skin. i hated customer service for the many, many years i was doing it but at least the thought of arguing with some idiot as they stared in abject horror at my blackheads was motivation to occasionally use one of those congestion-clearing masks. the daikon farmer at the night market doesn't give a shit about my oxygenated pores, and neither does the lady sweating next to me in cardio hip hop groove oldies party or whatever it's called. does the guy at the starbucks drive thru who insists on putting one of those open whipped cream lids on my unsweetened iced teacare that i used a smoothing primer? how about the UPS woman, do you think she can tell the difference between the peachy nude lipstick i was wearing yesterday and the pinky nude i put on for no reason today!?

the answer is no. no one gives a shit about my hyperpigmentation or whether or not i'm using a brow pomade. and sure, maybe definitely no one cared about my liquid blush before? but at least i had half an hour on the train every morning to show off its perfect application to uninterested commuters who wished i would just die so they could take my fucking seat. i have a lot of time on my hands right now and sure i could be using it to read to old people or pack boxed lunches for veterans or some other useful thing, but until someone tells me where to go to do those things i am instead going to read excruciatingly detailed descriptions of beauty products on my computer then order them and pay for expedited shipping so that i can put them on my face in the vain hope that the bored teenager at the bagel shop will look up from his cream cheese long enough to ask, "wow, is that mac mineralize skinfinish!?"

head. i have written extensively and in disgusting detail about the raging monstrosity that is my scalp, and i recently tried a bunch of new shit because i don't go anywhere anyway so it doesn't really matter if i break out in a huge, nasty rash all down the sides of my face. first i tried lush superbalm. it's pretty easy to use on a shaved head, but i don't know if i'd have the patience otherwise. it's a paste that you smear on your gross parts, then you let it sit for 20 minutes before washing it out. i didn't love it, but a tiny tin cost $22 so i'll holler back in three years when i finish it. my barber sold me a bottle of kérastase bain exfoliant hydratant months ago but i just got around to using it and meh. on one of my daily trips to walgreens i gazed wistfully at all of the jewel-toned, tropical-scented bottles of shampoo for people who aren't total garbagemonsters to the unsexy shelves teeming with medical shampoo and got myself a bottle of nizoral, and that shit is a miracle.

shoulders. i'm 36 years old and my skin is changing. i always thought that "change your skin routine as you get older!" was a myth perpetrated by the beauty industry to get regular people to care about shit like "serums" and "night cream" but i am living proof that time turns your skin into an unpredictable asshole. in 1998 i could put anything on my face; now i get worried that if i get rained on i'm going to be an itchy, miserable mess for a week. i am the idiot who buys the overpriced new cleanser that is supposed to do a new fake thing for your face even though she still has a half-full bottle of an overpriced old cleanser that is currently pretending to do an old fake thing chilling on the edge of the sink. i am the gullible moron that commercials are made for, especially the ones with british-sounding voiceovers. (see: my many jaguars.) but i can't play the game anymore because my face stays on injured reserve, so i can't just go slopping creams on it on a whim. back when i was mainlining pizzas every day i could put all kinds of trash on my face but now that all i do is drink water, eat roasted quash, and listen to music i obsessed over in middle school i've switched from 137 assorted toners and lotions to one tube of first aid beauty cleanser and one tub of first aid beauty ultra repair cream because they are gentle and fragrance-free and don't make me break out in burning, welt-y hives.

i mostly bought these $80 sunday riley face oils because i was bored and my cool friend brenda likes them and i wanted the top of my super cool, modern dresser to look like it belongs to the kind of instagram girl who goes to brunch on weekdays and ferments her own beer. the bottles are gorgeous but the product smells like the healthy kind of salad and you have to be the kind of person who doesn't just throw herself in the general direction of the bed around two am if you want to use them properly; these shits are for people who are intentional, people who carefully wash their faces before dabbing on oil and then have the self-control to sit awake as they sink in so their pillowcases won't get ruined. i used these bad girls a couple of times and ruined an entire set of bedding before deciding that fussing with a glass bottle and a slippery dropper required more work and coordination than i was ever going to regularly achieve, plus i got a huge bottle of life-flo liquid cocoa butter at the health food store for $14 and it makes my face v soft and glowy but when people ask how it looks so good i lie and say it's due to "getting a good night's sleep." (wow o wow do i hate the liars who perpetuate this myth i could sleep for ten uninterrupted days and still wake up looking like someone took a cheese grater to my forehead.)

knees. i wish magazines wrote articles about, i don't know, unseemly beauty products. like, what is the most effective disposable razor for if you just have to take care of a couple chin whiskers that started popping up after you got off birth control a few years ago? or which is the best deodorant for unshaved armpits that are prone to dermatitis? if i wake up too late to both shower AND make it to where i need to be on time, which body powder can i sprinkle in my underpants so dogs don't follow me down the street all goddamn day!? this is why i couldn't work in advertising, because i'd want to write real life ad copy. (also why: i barely graduated high school.) for instance, my nars audacious lipstick ad would read: it was 32 real american dollars and sank into all my lip cracks in an unattractive way, thank goodness i bought it with a gift card. or for that too faced cocoa powder foundation picture above? idk if it works but it smells like dusting a swiss miss cocoa packet across my cheeks so i wiped it off after five minutes.

i am 36 years old and all of a sudden i am SO VERY SENSITIVE to everything beautiful and worth living for and it's bumming me out. i had to stop wearing perfume a few years ago, and it tore out what was left of my heart to pack up my jo malone french lime blossom and tom ford black orchid and give them to people whose sinuses don't catch fire the minute the perfume cap comes off. i haven't been able to wear mascara since i was 25 without risking my eyes tracking blackened sludge down my burning cheeks. i started using gel blushes and cheek stains because no matter how much benadryl i take at night coupled with zyrtec during the day i am itchy and sneezy and every other gross dwarf tasked with helping snow white get her man. other than some exceptionally good lipsticks i'm not having any fun at all. deodorant: dove unscented. body wash: aveeno fragrance free skin relief. body moisturizer: eucerin calming cream. HAVE YOU KILLED YOURSELF YET OR SHOULD I CONTINUE.

what. is even. the point. of trying to stay alive to see my 37th year if this is how i gotta do it!? no creamy clouds of scented foam to lather up with in the shower, no sumptuous lotions heavily-fragranced with some scientist's interpretation of "freesia fields" or "pomegranate passion," no dabbing a little cologne behind my ears to impress upon a roomful of strangers that i care about myself enough to buy designer perfume. is this what it feels like to be a man, the utilitarian scrubbing of parts before inserting one's body into clothes that have been put through a cycle of tide free & gentle and tumbled without dryer sheets before walking outside with no vaguely skin-colored spackling paste to cover your inflamed, textured cheeks and unlined runny allergy eyes!? BUT EVEN DUDES HAVE HAIR POMADES AND OLD SPICE NOW.

toes. so i'm trying to temper my addiction. first of all, shit is expensive. i had stockpiled a bunch of gift cards and coupon codes but the last place i had an in-person conversation was the quaint, adorable post office in which i tried to mail a package yet inadvertently ended up starring in a horror movie called "chatty small town postal worker," so what is even the point!? i guess i could get up in the morning and put lipstick on in the unlikely case i decide to ever open the door again when someone knocks on it after those two young mormons tricked me a couple weeks ago. i had no idea that this was even a real thing, young men in v-neck sweaters and black ties going from door to door asking people whether or not they feel connected to a higher power. i only opened the door because they waved at me through the window, and i was expecting to politely decline their offer of gallon-sized drums of novelty popcorn or let these adorable, clean-shaven teenagers use our phone to call their parents, not for the brown-haired one to ask whether or not i have a relationship with jesus.

i almost burst out laughing i was so caught off guard. with who now!? idc what anyone does or believes in but you gotta try and keep it up off my porch, brethren. when i tried to excuse myself elder brad launched into a passionate defense of faith in the modern world (LOL WHY) while the black dude stood there mute, smiling. "blink twice if he kidnapped you," i whispered to elder demetrius and he shook his head in the negative. mavis was bustling around in the bowels of the house behind me, and this same bitch who won't even let me enjoy a secret spotify playlist without asking a hundred times what's on it (ain't nobody gotta know how many post malone songs i've downloaded) all of a sudden has no goddamn interest in who i'm talking to at the door for seven real minutes!? THIS IS WHAT IT MEANS TO SHOW UP FOR YOUR PERSON, OKAY. i don't need you to pay my phone bill, i need you to fucking shout "omg the [something flammable yet not actually life-threatening] caught fire!"so i can shrug at these dudes and not feel guilty for slamming the door in their faces and run to throw an imaginary towel over hypothetical flames. i'm polite, though, so i patiently listened to them like i might actually be considering joining an organization that actually requires i KNOCK ON STRANGERS' DOORS ON A SATURDAY AFTERNOON IN MY GOOD CLOTHES before telling them that they were at a lesbian house where women kiss each other on the lips and have earnest conversations about new yorker articles.

i don't read that boring-ass shit but anyway tarte's tarteist creamy matte lip paints are the absolute best and maybe the reason that, even after my refusal to join their happiness love cult, they offered to help bring the firewood stacked next to the door into the house is because i was wearing one at the time. or maybe they wanted to murder me, idk.

practical uses for drake's new record.

bitches gotta read: a good idea.

block people and pretend they died.

bitches gotta read: one day we'll be dead and none of this will matter.

i'm going on tour.

summer beauty tips for the exhausted and situationally impoverished.

bitches gotta read: we are never meeting in real life.

how i spent my summer vacation.

bitches gotta read: i am not your perfect mexican daughter.

what the fuck is "art."

swipe left!

on the road again.

hot pocket.

summer beauty tips for the damp and profoundly irritated.

is lifetime's YOU the best and most romantic show that ever existed?

fakesgiving!

2018 holiday survival guide.

things i've accidentally peed on a little bit.

winter beauty tips for the salty and willfully shut-in.