Thank you all so much for your EXCELLENT reading recommendations and reassurance that I am not alone in my weird birthday feelings. My library hold list is long and my heart is full. Thank you!
Reading
My favorite thing that I’ve read this week is this absolutely stunning piece of flash that my dear friend Jess Gilkison wrote that ran on HAD. It’s an absolute heart-punch of a piece.
The same day that I posted about needing book recommendations, two books became available from the library and I recommend them both.
First, Worry, by Alexandra Tanner. Worry is a dark comedy about two sisters, Jules and Poppy, who are young and living together in Brooklyn. Tanner does a good job of capturing a very specific kind of millennial angst: Jules, the main character, hates her job(s), stalks Mormon mommybloggers online in her own search for a matriarch and motherly approval with the absence of her own mother’s acceptance, and both loves and hates having Poppy living with her. I don’t have a sister, so I really enjoyed reading about the closeness between Poppy and Jules, including the way they are absolutely ruthless with one another in the way only family can be. Their relationship is layered and loving and eventually complicated by the addition of a dog named Amy Klobuchar. The book is so funny in a sardonic, dry way. It reminded me of Ottessa Moshfegh in some ways, albeit much lighter. My only complaint was that the ending was a bit too ambiguous for me.
I’m about 75% of the way through Green Dot, by Madeleine Gray, and I’m enjoying it immensely. On the surface, it’s a simple premise: a 20-something girl falls in love with her older, married, colleague and even though she reminds the reader multiple times that she knows it won’t end well, she continues. I haven’t reached the end yet, so I cannot say definitively how things pan out, but I’ve so far been impressed with the way that Gray writes Hera, the narrator, in a way that doesn’t villainize her or make her seem pathetic. Who among us hasn’t been in an ill-advised relationship that we knew was not going to work? If you are a fan of Chappell Roan’s song “Casual” this book carries the same ache in narrative form.
Writing
I have been working on the same short story for a long time now (like…a year and a half, maybe?) and I’ve dithered on the ending. It’s vacillated between being too boring to being too dramatic to being wrong for the characters. I’ve had a considerable amount of feedback on it, from the original workshop group I shared it with to friends to an editor I paid to help me refine it and finally, my MFA advisor this semester. Every revision has made it unrecognizable, and the story does not resemble its first form at all. While I am generally happy with the first 2/3, the final third has been bothering me for what feels like FOREVER, and I think I finally figured out the “right” ending this week. I haven’t written it yet, but it is marinating in my brain, and for lack of a better term, it feels like instead of just sitting there, it’s now simmering.
There are few things more satisfying to me than figuring out a “problem” in my writing. I am more and more convinced that the less I think about it, the easier it is for my brain to sort things out. Try easy, or whatever.
Ranting
This is silly and also perhaps TMI, but I’m taking a new medication and it is giving me dry mouth, which is so unpleasant. A student told me that I sound like I have “old man wet mouth” which…how dare he, but also he’s right. Never teach middle school if you can’t handle kids saying the most brutal things to you. I hate the physical sensation of dry mouth, and I already live in fear of being a Stinky Teacher and take extreme measures to make sure I smell good, don’t have coffee breath (and also never get close enough to a child’s face for them to know whether I do or do not), etc. but dry mouth makes me feel like my breath has the odor of microwaved garbage. I’m already (as another student put it) “passionate about hydration” (see next item) so my whistle has nearly always been wetted. I am also extremely committed to oral hygiene (I have wildly soft teeth and have spent many hours and so much money at the dentist that I now brush, floss, WaterPik, mouthwash, and tongue scrape as if it’s a full-time job), even at work; to the horror of several students, they’ve caught me brushing my teeth over my classroom sink. Now, I have to carry special lozenges and gum with me, and let me just say that getting old is for the birds.
Recommending
No brag, but I was an early adopter of the Stanley Quencher trend (I purchased TWO in early 2021). I was COMMITTED. I carried my 40 oz. of water EVERYWHERE. I loved it. I had only two complaints: it leaked and it was really hard to open sometimes.
Then, the TikTok girlies started talking about Owala water bottles and I gotta say that I am ALL IN. I have a variety of sizes (the 40 oz. Tumbler with handle…the 24 oz. Free Sip…a 40 oz. Free Sip that is sadly a bit too big for my child-sized hands…and the Smooth Sip coffee tumbler) and I love them all. They keep everything cold and icy for hours! The coffee stays hot forever! They’re easy to open! Even the ones with a straw do not leak!
I am obsessed. They do color drops, but they typically do backorders if you miss them, and there isn’t the same frenzy over them that seems to happen with Stanley. Personally, I love that the colors are really creative and mixed as well.
With summer coming, I highly recommend embracing your inner Gen Z girl and purchasing a vessel for hydration, and making it an Owala.
I am so glad you enjoyed Worry (and also yeah… the ending left me…. meh)!
Also, I now feel like I need to see what an Owala is because I am old and have no idea. And I love a water bottle.
Try the free sip twist! Smaller around and fits in the cup holder! Unfortunately, the largest size is 24oz. But I do love mine with my whole heart.