Yesterday while on a walk I noticed that the air was filled with white particles that were very large and fluffy. Like, filled with them. It looked like they were taking over the planet. There they were, just floating along in a purposeful way that is somehow threatening and not threatening at the same time. And I am embarrassed to admit this, but my first thought was, Oh my god, we are in the Upside Down. I started looking around to try to figure out if anything else looked different. Like maybe there were weird throbbing vines covering everything or Will Byers was running around.
And then I asked Addy what he thought the fluffy white things in the sky were, and he said, “pollen.” And then he asked, “why, what did you think they were?” and I avoided eye contact while whispering, “I thought they were signs of the Upside Down.” And then he just stared back at me with that look that indicates he’s questioning a lot of his life choices.
I’ve been avoiding writing on this blog for a while now. Several weeks ago (or maybe a month? Maybe two months? Maybe a year in dog time?), I decided it would be a great idea to switch my blog over from WordPress.com to WordPress.org. The opportunities! I thought. So I did it.
But it took me about four hours to realize I was doing perfectly fine over here at WordPress.com, so I switched back. And switching back and forth meant all of my followers disappeared (as well as many hours of my time).
So now I have zero. And I am genuinely so sad about it, because so many (or at least, so many to me) of you had subscribed to my ramblings and I was so appreciative. But now I will start all over and win each of you back, one at a time.
But in the meantime, please enjoy this picture of my dog. From now on, I will try to make my writing resemble this Roots bowl, and you will be so hungry for it that your face will look like this. (This comparison is weird, I’m sorry, but once I started there was no going back.)
So last night I spent an hour zooming with Judy Blume and Jenny Lawson, and it was a little bit mind blowing. Partially because I was star-struck, but mainly because Judy Blume’s purple glasses are the height of fashion and I couldn’t stop staring at them. They both look like people who would help you up from the sidewalk if you happened to faceplant near them.
The meeting was essentially a book tour for Jenny Lawson to talk about her new book Broken:In the Best Possible Way (she also wrote Let’s Pretend This Never Happened and Furiously Happy, both of which live on my bookshelf) while Judy Blume asked her questions about it. But really it was Jenny and Judy talking about starting their own bookstores, when they decided to grace the world with their humor, and how anxious they both are. When Judy is anxious, she eats half a cupcake (she said she was so anxious before the meeting that she ended up going back for a second half from the freezer). Jenny battled her pre-meeting anxiety by drinking a large cup of discount rum during the entire interview (pictured below).
A pair of true queens. I love them both. (Also shoutout to Muffy, the sign language interpreter, for being equally as impressive.)
Instead of doing the things I’m supposed to be doing (hours of grad school work, editing articles for a marketing company, cleaning the apartment, discovering something I can eat for breakfast that isn’t made of chocolate), I have been trying to come up with what kind of book to write.
Originally it was going to be a memoir. Then maybe a graphic novel. I briefly thought about a children’s book. Maybe poetry? A wordless picture book full of amazing illustrations? A book of conversations I’ve had with strangers? A book entirely written in tweets?
And I have come to the conclusion that it will have to be a mixture of all of those things. But you could write more than one book, Emily. You don’t have to create the book version of filling a cup with every soda that the soda machine offers until you’ve formed a gross brown liquid that seemed great in theory but actually makes you gag.
You’re right but you’re also wrong, because I want this book to be a reflection of my mind, which means it will include pages of humorous dialogue, beautiful prose, collaged pictures, rambling inner monologues about anxiety, old poetry, awkward pictures from my childhood, probably a lot of lists, and maybe even some fun puzzles because WHY NOT.
I told Addy that me starting a YouTube cooking channel could be my latest career, and his response was “it would be too boring.”
But then while making dinner I had to wear sunglasses while chopping the onions because I couldn’t find my ski goggles, and then I accidentally squirted garlic into my eye and crumpled to the ground while screaming, and after he strategically poured water on my face while I was still in the fetal position he said, “I take it back, I would definitely watch your cooking show.”
An appetite for avocados. This is a big deal, everyone. When avocados randomly became trendy, I thought they were disgusting. They are mushy green ovals that basically have a round rock in the middle and that barely have a taste. But people were offended that I didn’t like them, and I was embarrassed that I, a millennial, thought they were gross, so I forced myself to eat them anyway. Many months later, it worked. I actually like them. I can eat an entire avocado half plain with a spoon and not gag. Talk about self improvement.
A crocheting addiction. I am not exaggerating when I say I spent almost all of 2020 crocheting, pulling apart what I made, crocheting it again, pulling it apart again, and finally finishing it. The only reason this addiction came to fruition is because I was assigned six different articles for work on how to crochet things. So by the time I finished thoroughly researching and writing each one, I already knew how to crochet. Might as well try it for real, I thought. Two hats, a scarf, three sweaters, five bags, a large blanket, and too many Netflix shows later, I cannot seem to stop.
43 more books. Am I going to end up like Rory Gilmore, stacking books under my bed and in drawers because I don’t have space for them? Yes. Am I upset about it? Absolutely not.
Steadily increasing debt. The last time I checked, I have paid off -4% of my student loans. Negative four percent. So things are clearly going well on that front.
Dog mind-reading skills. I’ve spent so much time with my dog by now that we are basically the same being. He is really just another of my appendages. Every morning I wake up to find that sometime during the night he crawled up under my arms and fell asleep next to my face. If I go to the bathroom, he comes and lays on my feet. I can look at him and tell if he’s anxious about something or doesn’t like the music I’m listening to or wants to play with his squirrel toy but the scary vacuum is in the way.
Nightly dreams consisting of Harry Styles flirting with me. Honestly, I hope to never get rid of these. Keep them coming. The only downside is when I wake up and the realization hits that I did not, in fact, sit across from Harry at dinner last night while he gracefully ate spaghetti and complimented my taste in romantic comedies.
Maybe you are a superb planner and have had your holiday presents finished for weeks now, or maybe you’re panic-scrolling through Instagram trying to find the perfect gift to give someone that takes minimal effort and almost no money. DON’T WORRY FRIENDS, I’ve got your backup plan.
Step One: Dig your edition of Guess Who that you haven’t played in ten years out of your game closet. Ideally it’s in good condition and doesn’t contain cards that are stained or ripped in half. But no judgement.
Step Two: Take all of the face pictures out of the slots and count how many different people there are (I think there are 24 in the traditional version of the game).
Step Three: Spend a glorious amount of time scouring Facebook, Instagram, or your own photo albums for hilarious and/or awkward pictures of your gift recipient and their 23 closest pals (or I guess you could choose normal-looking photos, but that is less fun).
Step Four: Print out two copies of each picture and cover up each Guess Who face with your new, unique version (make sure the picture you print out is the right size). One for each game board slot, another to go in the card pile.
Step Five: Put the face pictures back in their slots. Take a picture of the board because it will look quite awesome.
Step Six: Wrap up the Guess Who game and feel very proud of yourself for coming up with such a cool gift in such a short amount of time.
You’re welcome.
Here is the Guess Who game I made in college – I tried to blur out all of the faces except for mine, my boyfriend, and his dog. Yes, you can put dogs in it too. It’s encouraged.
P.S. I know I said the pictures should be of your gift recipient and their friends or family members, but that’s a lie. Maybe you want to replace the Guess Who faces with 24 players of Survivor. Or 24 dinosaurs. Or a bunch of inanimate objects. Or all of the characters in Home Alone. The options are endless.
When I was in the third grade, I played a foot in our school play. Like, a literal foot. And I have a lot of questions about this.
Mainly, what was this play even about? What was the plot? Was it suspenseful or comedic? I genuinely can’t remember, and I hate myself for it. It was written by one of the (more eccentric) third grade teachers, but I wasn’t smart enough to save the script with my lines in it that I had to memorize. Yes, that’s right. I HAD LINES. As a FOOT. And not even just one line, but way too many. We spent weeks preparing for this play, and I can just imagine myself standing in front of the mirror at home practicing what could only have been very deep, reflective dialogue that I would later say in front of confused-looking parents as I wore a giant painted foam foot on top of my head.
Maybe you’re wondering which “characters” the other students played. Was it just a collection of feet children onstage? Were all of the other appendages present? And I really wish I could tell you. I know there was a hand and an ear, but that’s all I’ve got. Which brings me to another important question: did I try out for the role of “Foot”? Like, was this something I was striving for? Did I go home and tell my mother, “I hope I get to play the foot! What a dream that would be!” Or did my teacher just decide, “you know, I think Emily would make a perfect Foot” and that was that. I don’t know which is worse.
I blame my family for this lapse in foot memories. They must have known I’d want to remember this when I was older. Watch a video of myself speaking, all foot-like. Probably even reenact it at home. But no, all I have is one picture, taken next to the men’s restroom.
While I’m still not sure whether this was a net positive or negative for me, it did provide me with an Instagram caption I’m quite proud of.
I hope my children ask me how my third grade acting career went so I can tell them it started off on the wrong foot.
Last night I had a dream that I was starting grad school, and my first class was in this huge auditorium full of people. Except everyone around me had forgotten their masks, and I had forgotten my mask too, so all of the students were looking at each other and judging their seat neighbors for breathing too much in their direction while also feeling guilty about breaking the rules themselves. No one wanted to sit next to me which made me feel terrible, but I also didn’t want to sit next to anyone either, so hundreds of people were just staring at each other while feeling self conscious and panicked.
I can’t remember a specific time when I dreamed that I was in front of a bunch of people naked, but I can tell you this dream felt the same. That embarrassed, mildly mortifying dread. How could I have left the house without putting that on? Will I ever be allowed in public again?What would my mother think?
So basically I’ve decided that having a dream where you go out in public but forgot to put on a mask is the new having a dream where you forgot your clothes. Instead of your entire body being naked, it’s just your face. Which might be worse, because no one will get sick from seeing me dream-naked. (Hopefully.)
