The Friday Dispatch: December 8, 2023
Coming to you LIVE from the Liberace Christmas Special (1953)
Liberace is from MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN?!
Sorry – hi! Hey, what’s up? As I write this, I’ve got the Liberace Christmas Show on in the background (free with Tubi!) and before singing White Christmas, he did a little segue where he talked about growing up in Wisconsin. Wisconsin! Wisconsin is where the Packers are from! You mean to tell me Liberace wasn’t “born” when a witch exploring a castle in Europe accidentally cursed a chandelier into sentience?? Dang! Also, in Googling facts about Wisconsin, I learned Houdini also grew up in Wisconsin (though he was not born there); choosing to believe that Wisconsin is magic. And now Santa Claus himself just showed up on the Liberace special, so yeah, magic confirmed!
Feeling Listless? Not For Long!
It’s the end of the year, and you know what that means: it’s listicle season, baby!
In the coming weeks, you’re going to get a BUNCH of lists from me in your inbox. This will be the bulk of my content through the end of 2023, and it will of course culminate with an annual tradition, my Ten Best Days of the Year list. If you’re a newer subscriber, and you’re not familiar with this series, you can read my 2022 Ten Best Days of the Year list here, and 2021, 2020 and 2019 on Medium.
I start thinking about my Ten Best Days in early December, but in all likelihood, you’ll see them at the very end of the month. But here are some exciting lists you can look forward to seeing in the meantime!
My 10 Favorite Substack Posts in 2023
Top 10 Things I Bought in 2023
Top 10 Things I’m Glad I Didn’t Buy in 2023
10 Poetry Prompts to Get You Through the Rest of 2023
10 Poems I’m Glad I Read in 2023
10 Best Things I Read Online in 2023
iPhone Users, What the Hell Is Happening
I am not an Inbox Zero person. I am a person who leaves her notification bubbles unattended and blaring for weeks at a time, and I am also a digital hoarder. That said, after many instances of clutter-induced device difficulties over the years, I do my best to monitor my phone storage. I delete duplicate photos, I clear out my videos and screenshots on a regular basis, I offload apps that I don’t use, and I have two big heavy terabytes of iCloud storage.
That said: does anyone know how to fix my iPhone? Because deleting 17,000 texts did not work.
Rewind! Context. Earlier in the week, I updated my phone, because the phone said I should. Who am I to argue! But weirdly, after I updated, my phone started glitching. Messages wouldn’t send, or wouldn’t come in, or would take several hours to load, or would send out of order, or would entirely disappear when I inevitably force-restarted my phone because it was bricked. I knew I wasn’t the only one having issues. A few other friends said they encountered problems post-update. I noticed that, when I updated my iOS, all my ringtones suddenly changed, but I didn’t think anything of it; one of my friends said he ran into the same thing but couldn’t change any of the ringtones back.
Then I got the “low storage” warning. I deleted a bunch of photos. I deleted, yes, 17,000 text messages, and cleared hundreds of high-volume photos/stickers/videos/voice memos from my text threads. When I went to bed, my phone was at 112 GB of storage used – not bad!
But when I woke up, it had ballooned to 127.6 GB of storage used up. Overnight. Since I have 128 GB of storage on my phone, that’s a very slim margin. I can’t seem to figure out the problem based on Googling – I can’t make more room despite deleting more and more content from my phone – I can’t download the NEW new update because I don’t have the room – and now I don’t have enough phone storage to back it up to my iCloud storage, so I’m reluctant to reset my phone, because I don’t trust the cloud.
Photo of me:
Anyway, if anyone has any advice that saves me from an Apple Store trip…I’ll take it.
What Should I Do Next Year?
Hey, while I’m asking for advice, let me officially say I am open to ideas for resolutions!
My friend Chloe posted a great article on her newsletter,
, about goal-setting for the year ahead. My typical method is to come up with monthly goals, which I couple with a mid-year and end-of-year goal. This approach has worked for me in the past, and I typically give the whole planning page a catchy title; previous entries have included Hattie’s Guide to Just Getting It Under Control and Hattie’s Guide to Having It All (For Real This Time).I’ve been trying to think of my ~*theme*~ for 2024. Chloe chooses a Word of the Year, while I tend toward a phrase, which always gives the impression that I am writing a self-help book for an audience of one. And I suppose, in a sense, I am.
Right now my main contenders are Hattie’s Guide to Making the Most Of It and Hattie’s Guide to Doing Enough But Not Too Much. Would love to hear what everyone else is focusing on in 2024, and if I may possibly steal your hopes/dreams/ideas for myself.
What I Did Not Buy This Week
Urban Outfitters served me an ad for Poop Drops, which I thought were fancy “wellness” laxatives, but are actually just Poo-Pourri. By the way! You should use poop-smell-reducer products BEFORE YOU excrete so the oils can float on the surface of the water, then wrap your emissions in a silky cocoon of aromatic fluid.
Anyway. I hate that these come in two colors: yellow and brown.The “Sky Dancer” jacket and skirt from My Violet, which are beautiful but which I would wear until they fell off my body in stinky rag form
Nail caps for Dottie! We’re going home to Missouri for the holidays. The first time we did this, I covered her nails with little purple soft caps to keep her from scratching at things. But by now, Dottie is used to getting her nails trimmed; in fact, she seems to enjoy it. So I am skipping the claw-caps this time. But a series of photos from Amy Lombard reminded me of the caps, and if I could decorate Dottie’s nails like this, well…we’d just have to match.
This website sells ridiculous/beautiful bejeweled lace collars and neck ruffles made of gold?! They’re all far beyond my budget but beautiful to look at.
Similarly, The Last Line has a lot of audacity in calling these porcelain plates their “everyday” dessert plate when they’re $225 for a set of four. But if you ever wondered what I would look like as a porcelain plate, now you know.
I’ve not yet purchased tickets to the zine exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum but, luckily, it runs til March, so I’m gonna do that!
I cannot justify spending $46 on a sweatshirt that says “Life is Butter Dream” and so I am going to just implement it into my lexicon forever.
Briefly considered buying enough supplies to make a gingerbread house on scale with the Met Cloisters gingerbread replica. Remembered my motor skills. Did not buy supplies to recreate the world’s greatest museums in stale stiff cookie.
And with that, I will see you all next week, with some top-10 lists to close out the year in style! Thanks for reading.