If you don’t know why Greg had to apologize to me, read this first. Once you understand the Horrible, Horrible Things He Did, you can read his apology below. I thought this might be instructive for those of you who have wives and need to know how to apologize for the Ways You’ve Wronged Them. You’re welcome.
I woke up with a sick feeling in my gut. You know that foggy state of Near Awake when you viscerally remember Something’s Amiss but you don’t yet have the mental faculties to remember What Exactly Happened? It was That. I woke up sad and somehow lonely. I knew, at least, No One Had Died, so thank God for that. That Feeling is more Charcoal and Ash Grey, like sticky soot on the gut. No, this was different. I was just Hurt. Like the way your heart falls on top of your stomach when someone who loves you is thoughtless or cruel in a way that’s impossible to understand. ...
You know, sometimes I think we sort of have our crap together around here. Sometimes I think we’re Not That Weird. Or rather, if we’re weird, we’re weird like Everyone Else now. We have our quirks. We have our adorable dysfunctions. We try to love each other well, and we succeed and fail and succeed and fail, but we keep practicing. So I look around these days, and I figure we’re Normal. ...
Just popping in to say hello.
HELLO.
And to ask whether you’re hanging in there since it’s the HOLIDAYS and holidays are, traditionally speaking, traumatic and terrible. And occasionally magical. But mostly fraught with Big Feelings and also Expectations which Anne Lamott says are resentments waiting to happen.
ARE YOU HANGING IN THERE?
I am.
I’ve lowered my expectations which has helped IMMEASURABLY. ...
I’m about to take a stand on a CONTROVERSIAL ISSUE, friends. Because I, apparently, have no sense of self-preservation. That coupled with Big Opinions means we’re doing this.
We’re talking about the fact that it is the very dawn of November, but Christmas starts NOW, and why that’s actually a good thing and you should let us do it.
Confession: Holidays have, in the past, stressed me out. Which is not much of a confession since it’s most people’s experience. It’s like saying CONFESSION: I sneak Oreos when my children aren’t looking. Tell you something you don’t know, right? Holidays have, in the past, stressed me out. NO SURPRISE. Except, of course, there’s an expectation that holidays are JOYFUL, dammit. OUR CULTURE DEMANDS IT. And it especially demands that mothers Make It So. Culture demands we make it so, AND we’re overjoyed by it ourselves. We are, in other words, supposed to be the Opposite Of Stressed Out by the holidays — we’re supposed to be CELEBRATORY and SERENE — or we’re somehow doing it wrong. ...
Alrighty. I’ve learned two important things in the last two days, as follows:
1. I’ll never be able to pay a significant cash ransom should any of my people be kidnapped, so cross fingers that doesn’t happen.
and
2. I just turned I Have to Be Home in Time for the Democratic Debates years old.
Regarding Thing #1 — free tip from me to you — do NOT try to do bookkeeping in your head. Or, if you DO try to do bookkeeping in your head, be better at remembering expenses than I am. 🙄 Here’s the sitch… I paid a big farm bill via check. And I was pretty sure I had enough dollars in the farm checking account to cover it. So I didn’t double check. And then, in a shock to me and to zero other people because everyone else seems to understand my brain better than I do, there were NOT enough dollars in the account to cover it. That’s because I left the dollars in a different account. And did you know if you write a check without enough dollars in your account that the bank WILL NOT COVER IT just out of the goodness and generosity of their hearts? IT’S TRUE, friends. THEY WILL NOT. And then, because you don’t want to be more of an asshole to the People You Were Supposed to Pay than you’ve already been by writing a bad check, you will try to pull out All the Monies in cash so you can hand them a wad of bills like a drug deal instead of another check they may or may not want to trust. ...
Hello, lovelies!
Just a very quick update from me (even though I’m behind on telling you ALL THE THINGS, which I hope to fix soon) because TODAY was Phase One for NEW TEETH.
NEW TEETH.
All for ME!
Strictly speaking, having one’s face mauled by a dog in early childhood has its downsides. Reconstructive surgeries starting at age two. Plastic surgeries starting at seven. Oral surgery, braces more than once, and five fake teeth installed 30 years ago that have aged about as well as you’d expect. Those things were… less than pleasant. ...
