sconniemolly

The bad kind of nostalgia

I’m going to write about TV again! I’m on a roll. Someone pay me to write about TV please.

I’m getting caught up on Queen Sugar, now that season 5 is streaming on Hulu. Season 5 originally aired in the spring of this year, but of course we are cord-cutting millennials, so I had to wait for it to stream. I didn’t realize that they were going to…actually include the pandemic in their storytelling world. I don’t know if I’m ready for that.

I’m only through episode 2, which is set in mid-March 2020, right at the beginning of it all. Folks are aware of the coronavirus as something happening in other parts of the world, and even in Seattle, but they don’t think it will come for them – until everything starts shutting down and they realize that’s an absurd fantasy, because it’s a virus, and viruses like to travel. The ominous vibe is really unsettling! This was only a year and a half ago but it’s seared in my brain forever, as I’m sure it is for most of us: hearing about it, reading about it, initially thinking it was nothing to worry about, then slowly, every day, getting more scary information that indicated something unprecedented was about to happen. (I mean yes, pandemics certainly are precedented, but you know what I mean goddammit.)

We’d *just* brought Ashwin home from 30-odd days in the NICU. My mom had gone back to Wisconsin and V’s mom had *just* arrived to stay with us. I was so, so scared. My death anxiety cranked up to 11. I literally believed we were all going to die. The government’s advice kept changing – which is obviously natural, given how science works, as they learned more about COVID, but it just had the effect of terrifying everyone and making us Clorox our cereal boxes and leaving our Amazon packages outside for days on end to “decontaminate” or something.

We were vigilant. In those first few months, which were our last in Seattle, we didn’t go anywhere. I think the last place we went before the lockdown began was our favorite donut place in Queen Anne, Top Pot on West Galer by the library. After that, we took walks around the neighborhood but absolutely nothing else. And there was nowhere to go, anyway. Instacart was indispensable. We were three adults stuck in a 750 square foot apartment, watching Netflix and playing cards and cooking every meal and caring for a temperamental infant. We had no idea when it was going to end, when we could go back to normal.

What I’m saying is, there was just so much fear. Fear had never been such a dominating part of my life. Anxiety, sure, obviously, but this feeling of utter, unending terror was really unfamiliar. It was our constant companion in that apartment, every day and every night. And I’m not enjoying my favorite soap opera dredging all that back up.

***

The house hunt continues. We’ve gone to see 6 or 7 houses so far, all with their own merits and demerits, none that were clearly right for us. I’m questioning every single priority item that we told our realtor; maybe we *should* give in to the suburbs?? Is a split-level home *really* the worst?? Maybe we *do* need a new-ish house??? Who the hell knows.

What I’m Reading

What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, by Aubrey Gordon. Aubrey Gordon co-hosts one of my favorite podcasts, Maintenance Phase, which has challenged many of my long-held beliefs about weight loss and general health/wellness. I highly recommend it – the book and the podcast, but especially the podcast.

What I’m Watching

Besides Queen Sugar – Succession, of course. We rewatched season 2 last week in preparation for the season 3 premiere, which I’m very glad we did, and now we’re sinking our teeth into the Roy family’s foibles once again. God, if ever there was an illustration of what happens when you don’t give children an unconditionally loving and stable and grounded upbringing, it’s this show.

What I’m Fuming About

Oh, a lot. Today I’m angry about voter suppression laws that have made it harder to engage in democracy in large swathes of the country. I’m always angry about abortion law chicanery. And it’s always a good time to be pissed at anti-vaxxers, especially ones charged with protecting the public!!

Just a big wuss now, I guess

I started watching Maid on Netflix, because I loved the book a few years ago. I remembered it as an inspiring memoir of a single mom who worked incredibly hard at a really shitty job, so that she and her daughter could be okay. And that’s basically what it is. But I don’t know if it’s the really good acting or if I’m just a lot more sensitive than I used to be – and I have always been VERY SENSITIVE! – but I couldn’t really take it. I turned it off as the daughter was having a tantrum in the car because she lost her doll, and the mom had just been told she had to go back and finish a cleaning job because the client was unhappy with it, and she’s got like literally $2 to her name, and she hasn’t eaten all day, and she’s homeless, because her daughter’s father is a violent alcoholic. Like…that’s just so much shit. Just one of those things would be hard enough on its own.

Ever since Ashwin was born I’ve had a really hard time watching anything where children are endangered or in any kind of bad situation. It completely stresses me out, which is the opposite of what I’m looking for when I watch TV or movies. I never thought I’d be someone who didn’t want to watch something because it was “too violent” – like, that just makes me think of a very square little Victorian lady with delicate sensibilities.

I know that the plot of Maid is real life for a lot of people, because this country seems to believe that any kind of real safety net is socialism. I’ve read so many books to that effect, so much investigative journalism and muckraking about the innumerable ills of our world: racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, tax cheats, bad schools, an increasingly shitty environment, xenophobia, crumbling infrastructure.

But honestly? My daily life is pretty distant from most of that. My privileges have sheltered me. So to turn away from something like Maid, something that’s hard but very real, feels to me like I’m copping out. If other people have to live it, I should at a minimum be able to bear witness. That’s the literal least I can do. Lately though, I just can’t – not without going down a really dark rabbit hole in my psyche. I’m using my privilege to shield me from things I find simply too sad, because I have that luxury.

***

We’ve started house-hunting. Yes, I know how the market is. Yes, I am anxious about it. No, we’re not going to keep renting. We are somehow going to buy a home in the next few months, come hell or high water. We at least know some things from our first home-buying rodeo: namely, that corner houses are the worst November through March, kitchens are a big deal, and yard maintenance is an evil time suck best left to professionals.

What I’m Reading:

Most recently finished “The Heart’s Invisible Furies” by John Boyne. It’s basically the life story of a gay Irishman born in the 1940s or 1950s, when gay was absolutely 10000% not an okay thing to be or even speak of. It’s a beautiful story with a perfect happy ending.

Now I’ve started “You Got Anything Stronger?” by Gabrielle Union, because Gabrielle Union is one of those celebrities I’m weirdly fascinated by and I just like her.

What I’m Watching:

We finally finished Veep, which had THE BEST finale episode of any TV show I know. Now we’re catching up on Brooklyn Nine Nine (kind of dropping in quality as it ends) and Ted Lasso (brilliant, every week).

What I’m Listening To:

Random songs from mix CDs of decades past.

What I’m Looking Forward To:

More fall color. Actual fall weather.

Depression, but with memes!!

Something has changed in the last few weeks and I don’t really know what to think.

I’m…happy? But also VERY wary of happiness??

I’m eating well: tons of fruit, veggies, lean protein. I’m exercising, like, almost every fucking day whether it’s the circuit training I do at Orange Shoe or the walks I take with Ashwin. Sometimes I take two walks a day. I’m finally losing weight, little by little. I’m writing! I started a freelance writing course that I’m so far really loving and I published my first piece on Medium yesterday and as listicles go – true, they are kind of the dregs of the internet – I’m rather proud of it. I’m sleeping well. My skin is (mostly) clear. I have *energy*, which is the strangest feeling of all. (I still often nap when Ashwin naps, but not every day, and they aren’t depression naps!) I’m reading. I’m having fun with my son. I’m staying cleansed, exfoliated, and hydrated AF.

I don’t know if it’s superstition, cynicism, or your garden variety anxiety disorder, but when things are going this well, I feel very very nervous. Something is about to go terribly wrong. In therapy (I will never not want to make fun of myself after beginning a sentence like that) I’ve learned that anxiety is my lizard brain trying to protect me and keep me safe from danger. But there are really no predators to watch out for in the United States, circa 2021 (unless you count the unvaccinated! or the mass shooters! or the alligators! or the rapidly deteriorating planet!…) so my brain I guess has to come up with other threats to occupy itself. As it just did, without breaking a sweat.

*just gonna pretend this isn’t from LOTR*

Maybe part of it is just feeling weird about being 35 and approaching ~middle age~. I don’t want to get old. I mean, it’s always annoyed the shit out of me when people complain about aging – I always say “it’s better than the alternative!!” which is a glib way of saying “be happy you’re not dead”. I had a dream – nightmare, I guess – the other night that I was on a sinking ship and everyone was screaming and I was thinking “oh God this is really it oh my God I’m going to die this is actually going to happen what is going to happen what’s it going to feel like when will things just go black and how fucking terrifying is that”…and then I realized, as my head was underwater for a few seconds, that I hadn’t actually tried to swim. I brought my head up above water, breathed, and that’s when I woke up. Is there something profound there? Maybe. I don’t know.

I just don’t want to spend so much of my life worrying about death. That’s it. That’s probably the most intimate thing I’ve ever written here; I don’t like to talk about it OR write about it. But writing helps sometimes! So let’s give it a shot. Bow out now if you don’t want to hear about my history of death anxiety!!

When I was in elementary school, my parents went away for a weekend once and I stayed at my best friend’s house for a few days. We usually watched the TGIF lineup, but maybe it wasn’t Friday, because we watched Touched by an Angel instead. Remember that show? This episode’s premise was basically the storyline of that song “Last Kiss” by Pearl Jam – the song that made me a passionate hater of the band until I met V. (I’m still not, like, a fan but they’re okay. The song still isn’t.) It’s about some high school sweethearts who get into a car accident and the girl dies. Rock n roll!!! Anyway – I was traumatized by it. My parents spent so much time and energy sheltering me from “bad” TV and movies and music, and the thing that damaged me the most was this episode of Touched by a fucking Angel. I didn’t want to let my parents out of my sight for months. I wanted to go on every errand, every trip, because they wouldn’t get into an accident if I was there (so my thinking went).

Eventually I got over it – I guess just by becoming a teenager and all the self-absorption that comes along with that. And then for years and years I’d almost never think about death. It didn’t come up. I was lucky. In 2011-2012, we lost several family members in quick succession and while that was incredibly shitty and sad and depressing, it didn’t spur a return of my own specific death anxiety. Then in 2015, V and I started trying to conceive, and I gradually went off all of my depression and anxiety medications, which turned out to be a horrific mistake. I spent most of that summer crying. There were multiple days I left work early feigning illness after crying in the bathroom and then cried some more on the bus going home. Death was suddenly all I could think about. And I mean ALL. By the fall, I was back on the meds and slowly getting better. But it’s never completely gone away since then. I’m working on it in therapy.

Oof, that was a lot. And there’s oh so much more where that came from, but that’s for me and Dr. Sarah Byer to sort through. I guess I just wrote all this to…put it in perspective? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll write more about it some other time, or maybe I won’t. I don’t know if anyone relates or is at all interested.

Also: if you ever try to talk to me about any of this, I will change the subject to the Packers or my cat or something.

What I’m Reading:

I just finished Ace of Spades, which was described in reviews as “Get Out meets Gossip Girl”, which pretty much sold me, and that is accurate! It was good, entertaining, didn’t demand much from me.

What I’m Watching:

V and I have finished our Sex and the City rewatch but have yet to tackle the two movies. We’ve now begun a Veep rewatch. We binged the second season of Never Have I Ever in like two days, it was so so so good. Maitreyi Ramakrishnan FOREVER.

What I’m Listening to:

Still a lot of Olivia Rodrigo, but also a lot of random ’90s.

What I’m Looking Forward to:

Traveling to Detroit this week to visit family and show off this guy:

35

It is truly a delight to be writing this from a booth in Bassett Street Brunch Club, on my birthday, drinking a mimosa and waiting on my bacon and eggs and breakfast potatoes. Small pleasures! Thank God for vaccines!!!

I had planned on doing something out of the ordinary this morning – going kayaking, by myself. I’ve never gone kayaking period. But it seemed like fun? And not THAT hard? I ended up backing out at the last minute due to trepidation over the weather and irritation with myself for scheduling at 8:30 in the goddamn morning. I was full of ambition and the best intentions when I made the reservation. But I am 35, and it’s time to face facts: I am who I am, and I am not the sort of person who will get up early unless externally forced.

I do want to try kayaking, just to prove that I’m still capable of surprising myself and doing new things. When I was younger I used to quasi-fantasize about joining the military just to shock people. Obviously I’d never do it – I would hate absolutely everything about that experience, pacifist principles aside – but I loved the idea of upending people’s perceptions of me as coddled, or high maintenance, or wimpy, or whatever it might be. I am able to admit now that I am, to one degree or another, all those things. But I am tougher than I look. And at least you can’t say I’m not self-aware. LOL, somehow, a lack of self-awareness is worse to me than any of the other unflattering adjectives.

I downloaded an app called Peanut that is basically Tinder for moms looking for mom friends. Laugh if you want, God knows I did. I’m screening out anyone under 30 and anyone with more than 2 kids. I can’t handle that kind of stress even adjacently.

Still blonde, still blue-eyed, carrying about 50 more pounds than I’d like to be, but still trying valiantly to love myself every damn day. Trying to Mom, to Adult, to be some approximation of what 15-year-old Molly wanted to be at 35. It’s all a work in progress, all of it.

What I’m Reading:

Nerd alert: “The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket“. It’s interesting, okay?

What I’m Watching:

V and I are reliving the early 2000s by rewatching Sex and the City. Carrie is even worse now that I’m the actual age she was supposed to be in the show. Miranda is still the best. Big is still tremendously unappealing.

Also, of course, watching the Bucks and the Hawks battle it out and fervently hoping we can at last, AT LAST see Giannis in the Finals.

What I’m Listening to:

Look, I’m quite sure I’m not the only 30-something woman tooling around town in my SUV bellowing out Olivia Rodrigo these days and feeling sullen. God, it’s brutal out here indeed.

What I’m Looking Forward to:

I’M SEEING ALANIS MORISSETTE IN SEPTEMBER!!!!! Remember, I was thinking of going in June 2020 in Seattle before 2020 became what it became. Now the tour has been rescheduled and I’m going to the stop in Chicago and I am PUMPED. Dare I say, without Alanis there would be no Olivia Rodrigo. And then where would we all be?

SconnieMolly does, in fact, live

I’m thinking a lot about India lately, for obvious reasons. Here are a bunch of ways you can contribute to COVID relief there. Please consider it. And yeah, I can’t help but be slightly skeptical of whether or not my money will reach who it’s intended to reach, but I had to do something and I’m okay with that gamble.

Despite the baby- and pandemic-shaped challenges in my life, I’ve been getting kind of annoyed with myself for not making a better go of freelance writing. Even though writing itself generally comes easily to me, the rest of it doesn’t – the actual business of how to get those writing gigs. There has to be a lot of self-motivation and like any independent businessperson, no one’s telling you what you need to do and you have to figure it out as you go. Some people thrive on that! I guess I’m just better at being a follow-the-directions type of person. I can do whatever you tell me to do. Just don’t ask me to make the rules up myself. I’ll write the shit out of the article/essay/whatever it is. I’ve got a “voice”, I can do research, I will make it sing. Give me the topic and I’ll go nuts. It’s just getting the topic that I really struggle with. I’m working on not dismissing every idea I get as too dumb, too niche, or too small. Anyone who’s spent 10 minutes on the internet can attest to the fact that people can and will get paid to write just about any damn thing.

I feel incredibly, incredibly lucky to have thus far escaped the pandemic without losing any loved ones. As I wrote on Facebook recently, a year ago I genuinely believed we were all – or at least, like, 75% of us – were going to die. I mean that absolutely literally, I was fully expecting an apocalyptic situation. It’s not like any of us have lived through a pandemic before, so we had no template to know what to expect – all there was to do was listen to media reports of varying levels of hysteria and stew in your own existential dread. I’m not saying the threat was overblown – not at ALL – just that I’m unspeakably relieved to be in a place now, about 14 months after it all began, where I and virtually all of my loved ones are vaccinated and reasonably safe. And we made it here all in spite of the idiots along the way who refused to mask, refused to believe the science, refused to take this in any way seriously – mostly just to own the libs. These “pro-lifers”. Seriously – fuck them.

There’s a lot of debate now about how much we should be opening up and what safety measures are still necessary and what exactly is safe for vaccinated people to do. Whenever there is that much confusion, I basically just try to tune out the noise and listen to my dad. Dr. Dan is the king of rational, reasonable, and calm; I highly recommend him.

Ashwin is 15 months now. He loves “walking” with us holding his hands. Thankfully, gone are the days of the 25 minute naps – he now just goes down once a day and often for around 2 hours. This is fucking magical. Honestly, I usually use that time to sleep as well, which I feel slightly guilty about considering all of the other MoRe PrOdUcTiVe things I could be doing. Sleeping through the night is still a crapshoot, so we’re trying to train him to fall back asleep on his own when he wakes up at 2am, which often means letting him cry it out for 15 minutes until we relent and go in. Our poor neighbors.

What I’m Reading:

I’m a couple chapters into “American Spy” by Lauren Wilkinson, but most nights when I fall into bed all I want to do is play a few rounds of Tetris before passing out, so I’m not making a ton of progress.

What I’m Watching:

Prestige TV is about the only thing the pandemic has been good for, right? We recently binged and loved Ted Lasso. I want to watch Rutherford Falls but we don’t have Peacock. (Seriously ENOUGH with all the different streaming services, YOU’RE JUST RECREATING FUCKING CABLE) Right now we’re into Mare of Easttown, which is pretty grim, but also really really good and Kate Winslet is Kate Winslet.

What I’m Seething About:

Whatever it is Aaron Rodgers thinks he’s doing. I am extremely emotionally invested in Aaron Rodgers as a person and as a Packer so this has been a rather traumatic week for me!! Sports, such a nasty business.

Vaccine apartheid, which appears to be on its way out (if press releases are to be believed, lolololol) but which should never have happened in the first place, OBVIOUSLY, because Western lives aren’t worth more than any others!!

Keepin’ On

Ashwin was at Oma and Opa’s for the weekend, so V and I watched football and stuffed our faces and caught up on sleep. I didn’t even think I was capable of sleeping past 8 anymore, but I woke up at 10:23 on Sunday – absolutely sublime.

I am feeling a little melancholy remembering the Friendsgivingmases of years past that often took place the weekend before Christmas. What I wouldn’t give to hang out with all my friends at once! To drink festively and sing karaoke and play games and watch dumb movies. We really took it for granted, even though it was one of just a few times a year we would typically all be together. It was prioritized, and it was always, always fun and memorable and cozy. I miss it and I miss them. I miss brunch and traveling and not routinely having pandemic-related nightmares.

Last year at this time, I was pregnant and home for the holidays. It was such a sweet trip – people are just generally so kind and gentle with you when you’re carrying a baby. And for like 30 minutes after you have had the baby.

I don’t think I’ll be doing the Nagappala Book Awards for 2020 because I’ve only read 18 books. I didn’t really know how to set a reading goal for a year when I knew I’d be caring for a new baby. I still don’t. Even though Ashwin is almost a year old, sometimes things still feel very, very new. Sometimes I wake up with him at 5:00am or whatever it is, with the whole day stretching out before us and I just don’t know how I’m supposed to pass the time with him. I never spent significant amounts of time with babies before Ashwin. I feel like I’m supposed to be packing every minute of his day with “enrichment” of some kind. My therapist says (LOL sorry) it’s enough that I’m reading to him, talking to him, singing with him, and letting him play independently. And that’s basically our day, plus feeding and those awesome 25-minute naps he is so fond of. I’m always singing Wheels on the Bus or You Are My Sunshine or any one of the random songs I’ve completely made up over the last 10.5 months. Thank God V has noise-cancelling headphones or I’m sure we’d drive him crazy.

Before Ashwin was born, I was pretty sure I wasn’t cut out to be a stay-at-home mom. COVID kind of took that decision away from me, since it makes zero sense to put Ashwin in daycare where he could potentially be exposed just for me to work a job that isn’t strictly necessary for our financial survival. I’ve had to let go of some really cool opportunities that simply couldn’t fit in our current circumstances, and I am trying not to be resentful about that. This year – 2020 itself, and Ashwin’s first year of life – has just been nothing like I thought it would be. At least I’m far from alone in that.

What I’m reading:

Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson. So far significantly more dense than her first, The Warmth of Other Suns, which happens to be in my top 10 faves of all time…but it’s still incredibly compelling.

What I’m watching:

Our latest “wind down” show is…Frasier. Yes, Frasier, of the ’90s. I don’t know why we picked it, but it’s predictable and chuckle-funny and has a good amount of Seattle references, so I’m digging it.

What I’m seething about:

The fact that Congress is just now actually doing something about direct stimulus for Americans in need – and it’s a lousy $600 per person. You can’t pay rent ANYWHERE with 600 damn dollars. Folks who are struggling will be able to pay one or two outstanding bills and then be right back where they started. But Mitch McConnell and Co. won’t lose a wink of sleep.
Speaking of The Grotesque Turtle, McConnell has of course gotten the COVID vaccine already, because as you know, being a turtle is a very high-risk occupation and he obviously needs the shot before millions of health care workers get it. Obviously!

#Election2020 Day Three

The election drags on. I have a massive headache. Steve King, Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, and Jake Tapper have become new fixtures in our living room. Normally we never watch CNN – we don’t have cable – but I’ve been streaming it pretty much nonstop since election night. Election Night! What a quaint term! More like Election Week.

I’m afraid. I’m not afraid that Joe Biden will lose – I feel pretty confident that he is going to take Nevada and Arizona and maybe Georgia and maybe Pennsylvania too. I think he will have enough to get to 270 or better. I’m worried about what The Orange One is going to do once those states are called and the math says what it says. He’s obviously not going to go gracefully into the night. He has a packed Supreme Court in his back pocket and I don’t have any faith in their independence to uphold democracy. At that point, we’re really beyond fucked. Genuine banana republic status. Someone on Twitter posted a video of John McCain conceding to Obama in 2008 and it honestly feels like it took place on a different planet.

He’s just a mad man, a wannabe despot, a wanton destroyer of norms and civil society. But he’s not doing it alone. He has enablers in the Republican Party and in the White House and all over Washington, but the real root of his success is, of course, his rabid supporters. Supporters isn’t even the right word. Followers. These people aren’t supporters of a politician. They’re followers of a deranged but charismatic charlatan. These are people who criticized Obama supporters for supposedly embracing an adoring cult of personality around the 44th President. Like…look in the goddamn mirror. All I can guess is that the very things which repel me from him, attract others to him: the machismo, the arrogance, the obstinacy, the purposeful disregard for expertise in any arena, the chauvinism. These are, apparently, the ingredients to an absolutely irresistible leader for some people. The psychology is…really something.

Thank God the Packers are playing tonight. There is no better distraction, especially when we’re up 31-3.

***

What I’m Reading:

Theoretically, several books. I currently have open Fahrenheit 451 (time for a reread), HUMANS (the newest Humans of New York coffee table book), and Red at the Bone. Have I made meaningful progress in any of them in the last…two weeks? Nah.

What I’m Watching:

CNN.

What I’m Eating:

A new favorite brand of ice cream called Til the Cows Come Home, flavor “Please Sir, I want S’more”. It’s fucking i n c r e d i b l e. At a Hy-Vee near you.

What I’m Writing:

It feels like forever ago now, but I was published by Tone Madison on October 1, bitching about the Dane County GOP’s insulting and tone-deaf Abe Lincoln billboards. Yay for making a lil money, double yay for making a lil money WRITING.
Like the new (highly minimalist) layout? I’m trying for a more professional look. Hence the blog no longer being the homepage of this website. We’ll see. I’m going to keep playing with it.

Re-established

So we are “settled” now in Madison, by which I mean living in our own apartment with our own belongings.

Where we once had a view of beautiful Lake Union from our balcony in Seattle, we now have a view of…a car dealership and a drainage pond. It’s not exactly picturesque, but I cannot really complain because the apartment itself is fabulous and perfect for the three of us.

My mom comes down a couple days a week to help with Ashwin and it is difficult to put into words what that means to me. In practical terms, it means I can run errands or nap or do chores or just fucking breathe for a bit without consoling a screaming 7 month old. But it also means I’m really home now, and my baby and my parents are totally bonded and in love with each other, and they don’t have to make do with video chats and Facebook posts. And that is priceless.

Life definitely hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic normalcy, but for my own circumstances, things are a bit more normal than they were in March. I definitely limit my in-person shopping compared to the Before Times, and we don’t eat at restaurants indoors (very rarely outdoors either, almost always takeout or delivery). I’m starting to forget what the Before Times were like, though – we watch TV and I get anxious seeing people standing 12 inches apart and unmasked. Or they’re in a restaurant and it’s like oh my god i remember when i could do that. I still haven’t seen the majority of my extended family since being back in Wisconsin, which is a huge bummer because I’d love to have a big meet-the-baby party.

Something I saw on Twitter the other day…a photo of San Francisco, all orange from wildfire smoke, and people wearing masks and the comment of like, imagine having to explain to yourself from last year that no, the masks aren’t for the smoky air, they’re for something else entirely. 2020 just wants to be the shitshow to end all shitshows, I guess, and it is only September.

The Week's Best Memes, Ranked - Digg — *how is it even possible that this is my first MJ meme.*

Through a freelance writing course that I’m currently taking, I’ve started a practice of daily writing for 20 minutes – something I’ve always known that I should do, if I want to be a successful writer, but which I’ve never been able to actually do until now. I am not good at setting new habits. But I set an alarm for 9:00pm every night, after Ashwin has gone to bed and we’ve eaten dinner and watched our TV show. Some days I get to it before 9:00, if my mom is taking care of Ashwin, but most days it’s right around then. I hope eventually it will serve as a generator of article ideas, but right now it’s mostly brain vomit – which serves its own purpose, frankly.

***

What I’m reading:

“Redefining Realness” by Janet Mock. I will be totally candid and say that I have some learning to do about the “T” in LGBTQ. It’s not difficult for me to understand men being attracted to men or women being attracted to women or any combination thereof; I learned long ago (thanks, women’s studies!) that sexuality is a spectrum and very few of us are really all the way on one pole or the other. But because I’m cis, because I was born into a body that makes sense to me, and because the gender binary is so deeply rooted in our society’s paradigms, it takes a little more work and imagination for me to understand what it might be like to be transgender. I’ve read one other “trans memoir” before this but I’m enjoying Janet Mock’s, as she’s one of the most famous trans people in the world and has a really compelling story.
“The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett. Loved her first book but so far this one is even better. I have so little time/energy to read these days but when I do get to it, it’s a lovely treat.

What I’m watching:

“Search Party” on HBO Max. This show is good, y’all. It savagely satirizes millennials while being a suspenseful story that kind of starts out as a whodunit and…well, to say more would get spoiler-y, but you really should check it out if you have access to HBO Max.
House Hunters while feeding Ashwin, always. V and I love to hate these ridiculous couples and it’s a great background show.

What I’m seething about:

Climate change. Like…is there going to come a time when we begin to take this shit seriously or does a deep red state have to start burning in order for the evil man in the White House to take notice? There is so very much to be scared about in the event of his reelection, but climate change is very high up on that list for me. The smart scientists say we don’t have much time left and I am inclined to believe the overwhelming majority of professionals in any field of science in what they have to say. Crazy, right?
The fact that Russia is again going to fuck with our election, is in fact already fucking with it, and we are doing fuck-all about it
What these students said
Who needs Russia to fuck things up when you’ve got a state Supreme Court throwing the whole absentee ballot process into confusion?
How it has rained ALL WEEK and therefore I’ve been even more cooped up inside than usual and the one time I did venture out on a stroller walk with Ashwin, we (I) got soaked

Limbo

I’m writing this from my phone, because my laptop is with the goddamn movers, so excuse any bad formatting. I won’t bore you with an entire blog bitching and moaning about our second horrible experience with a professional moving company. Instead I’ll bore you with my body issues, doesn’t that sound better?!

I saw postpartum depression/anxiety coming. I knew I’d deal with it. I am dealing with it. It’s fine.

But I kind of didn’t anticipate how much I would hate my postpartum body. More specifically, my post-pumping body, because for as long as I continued pumping, my weight was actually *under* my pre-pregnancy weight and ohh, did I feel good and smug about that.

But I only lasted 3 months pumping, because I am not built to live my entire life in 3-hour segments around the clock. That shit was brutal, so stopping when I did was the right call and I have zero regrets. I knew the weight probably would not be as easy to keep off once I stopped. It’s not even really so much about the numbers as it is about the… distribution. I’ve gained a muffin top that would make Jenna Maroney jealous. (You may or may not get that reference but I can’t link to the song from the 30 Rock episode because YouTube doesn’t have it and if there’s another way, I’m too lazy to find it.)

Clothes just don’t fit, man! If it were as simple as going up a size, I could handle it, it’s not like that’s never happened before. But even up a size (or two) nothing LOOKS quite right. Because my body isn’t right. It’s expanded in all the wrong places. I don’t recognize it. I look in the mirror and all I can think is uggghhhh.

I know, I KNOW, that it is wildly unrealistic to expect my body to look the same as it did before I incubated and birthed a human. That’s an unfair, sexist expectation borne of our massively misogynistic culture and designed to keep me in a constant loop of dieting, self-hating, weighing, falling off the wagon, and dieting some more.

It’s not actually very fashionable to say you’re “on a diet” anymore, in fact it sounds super ’90s/Kirstie Alley for Jenny Craig to my ears, but the focus on “healthy lifestyles” and “wellness” that we have now is really no different. It all means the same thing: thin. We might act like it means something more holistic, more enlightened, less rigid, but 99.9% of the time it still comes down to how good you look in a swimsuit or yoga pants or whatever. Nobody likes a mom bod. And it’s so dumb because mom bods are fucking HEROIC. If there was any justice in this world mom bods would be celebrated as the most desirable and the most impressive and the most coveted of all bods. This badass woman on Instagram said it better than I can.

Looking at my Facebook memories recently, I noticed a post I made several years ago as Kate Middleton was about to have her first baby. I was warily anticipating the usual “Check out how she lost the baby weight!” tabloid stories (“just portion control and lots of water!!!” Another 30 Rock reference for you) and I said something like new moms have 16,000 other things to worry about besides weight, how about we cut them some slack. And here I am, a new mom, worrying about at least 16,000 other things…but totally unable to cut myself even the slightest slack. I’ve always been terrible at taking my own advice.

***

What I’m reading:
“Party of Two” by Jasmine Guillory. Honestly, it’s like a cool drink of water on a 100 degree day. I don’t read a lot of this genre – and what to call it? Romance? I mean, I guess, because we’re sure as shit over my dead body not calling it ~chick lit~. But it’s pretty substantive romance, and it’s exactly what I needed.

What I’m watching:
Very little, because I’m at my parents’, and I just don’t tend to watch much TV or movies there because I prefer the comfort of my own streaming service profiles + a good Chromecast. But V and I have watched the first 4 episodes of Indian Matchmaking, and lord…I don’t know if I hate Aparna or want to be her best friend. Vyasar is adorable and deserves the best partner that horoscopes and numerology and Sima aunty can find. Nadia as well. I am kind of loving seeing Indian culture get the reality TV treatment. But it exposes (and doesn’t comment on one way or the other) several of the uglier elements, like the hardcore colorism, insistence on brides being “flexible” (by which they basically mean submissive), and the insularity of certain communities/castes.

What I’m listening to:
Well, I have heard the first few songs on Taylor Swift’s new album “folklore” and I…don’t hate it, but people are talking about it like it’s Album of the Year or something which is just hilarious in a 2020 where Fetch The Bolt Cutters also exists.

What I am seething about:
As I said…the goddamn movers are late. Like really late. We still don’t know how late. And I’ve said it before and I will say it again, I AM A CANCER, and Cancers need their own homes and comfortable spaces! I am nothing if not a slave to hygge.

Goodbye, Pretty City

Oof, I do hate goodbyes, even to non-human entities.

We’ve packed about as much as we can. I’ve set up our mail forwarding. Tonight V is having delivery from our favorite Indian restaurant, Nirmal’s. (I’m not, because last time we ordered from them my kadhai paneer was TUMBA KARRA (that is Kannada for WAY TOO SPICY) and my blonde ass couldn’t take the heat.)

It’s been a strange two years here. Last summer I had the great opportunity to work at Minerva Strategies, where I was actually able to use my skills for positive, quasi-philanthropic ends. I really liked working with such driven, like-minded, badass women and I wish it could’ve lasted longer. I wish it wasn’t essentially the only professional experience I had here in Seattle. The beginning of my pregnancy overlapped with the end of my internship, and it didn’t seem like a logical time to find a new full-time job, so…I didn’t. I walked dogs and incubated a human and tried very hard to establish a sense of self-worth and purpose that wasn’t tied to my economic and professional productivity. (Did you know that that’s actually really fucking hard to do?)

I wasn’t terribly successful in making friends. We got to know a few people doing bar trivia, which was extremely fun until I got pregnant and could no longer drink, nor tolerate large noisy crowds. We hung out with those people outside of the bar a couple times, but as I worked on packing up our living room today, I realized that we never had anyone over. In the entire two years we lived here, we never had guests who weren’t preexisting friends or family. I’m embarrassed to admit that but it’s true.

Ultimately though, we did what we came here to do. V got invaluable work experience, I got to live somewhere other than south-central Wisconsin, and we successfully utilized our incredible insurance to conceive a baby through in vitro fertilization. THIS BABY:

So to me, it’s very much a success. And there is a lot here that I will miss. I’m starting to kind of accept that missing things/places/people is just a natural constant state in adulthood (I guess in childhood too for some people, but for me, not really until my twenties). While in Seattle, I miss the absolute hell out of my friends and family and my favorite Madison places. Once we are back in Madison, I know I’m going to miss the mountains, Pike Place, the different neighborhoods (Queen Anne most of all of course), the parks, Biscuit Bitch, Stuhlberg’s. But that won’t mean we made the wrong decision in moving back, just like how much I have missed my Wisconsin family and friends and things does not mean that moving to Seattle was the wrong decision. You just can’t be in two places at once, and so for me, when it’s time to ~SeTtLe DoWn~, I need to be where most of my people are. Where my village is.

Once we get settled, I hope I can start writing again. Or maybe writing and working. I don’t know yet how I will navigate the whole career+motherhood tangle…I’m sure it will take some time and, like everything, some trial and error. But I am happy that I’ll get to figure it out at home.

What I’m reading:

Just finished Such A Fun Age, which was just as good as the hype and whose Goodreads rating is a disgrace. Kiley Reid does great dialogue.
Now onto These Ghosts Are Family which is a multigenerational family drama partially set in Haiti – definitely gonna be good.

What I’m listening to:

“Sonic Boom“, still. It’s really good!

What I’m watching:

Just began “The Babysitters Club” on Netflix and like every elder millennial woman, am flush with adoration and glowing nostalgia for a simpler time.