Hi and happy Friday! Phew. We did it, gang. We made it to 2:15 PM EST on a Friday, which means it is time to phone it in for the rest of the day. I hope you finish all your work early and take a secret nap during your three o’clock slump.
Quick request! I’m about to break 100 subscribers on here. *clown emoji* *cake emoji* *balloon emoji* *another clown emoji* Yay! Would you, perhaps, be able to find it in your heart to forward this email to a friend who might like it? According to my Substack stats, most of my new subscriptions come from those forwarded emails, and I’d like to hit triple digits by the end of March. Also, a big thank you to my friend Henry Barajas, who has also driven several subscribers my way with his newsletter, Latinx Press. If you’re counting the days until Ted Lasso returns (next week!), fill that time with Gil Thorp. Henry took over writing Gil Thorp late last year and is doing a stellar job.
For your convenience, a bright-yellow button to forward my newsletter:
All The Pretty My Little Ponies
My poor Twitter followers1 have been subjected to a relentless barrage of ponies. I started following a Twitter account that just shares photos of My Little Pony toys. I have (or had) a lot of them. Every time I see a pony I know, it feels like seeing a picture of a friend I haven’t talked to in ages. And I have to retweet it. There are have been many surprises, and I’ve learned the names of hand-me-down or garage sale ponies who did not arrive in my life with a formal introduction. Look! This girl’s name is Tipsy Tulip!
It would be very cool and suave of me to say I started collecting ponies when I was very little and then stopped. But I did not do that. Even into high school, I grew my enormous pony collection (the ponies were small; my collection was not). There are some still at my parents’ house. There are several in my room, on my horse shelf. And thanks to this Twitter account, I get all the thrills of finding my old ponies/buying new ones with none of the clutter or expense.
What A Nut
Last week, I went to Trader Joe’s. I try not to do this.
Compared to the grocery stores in my neighborhood, Trader Joe’s is not a particularly affordable or accessible source of the food I eat. The produce, proteins, and dairy are underwhelming. But you know what they’ve got? Snacks. Whenever I go to Trader Joe’s, I spend $15 on actual food and $35 on snacks, which I know, in my heart, is no way to live. However.
Trader Joe’s is the nut capital of the world! I knew better than to wander into the nut section, but I was looking for whole, unseasoned pecans, in the hopes I could make my own bulk version of these valdosta pecans I got from the deli a few weeks ago. Instead, I walked away with a gigantic bag of sweet ‘n’ spicy pecans, and an even more enormous bag of coffee-caramel almonds. I finished the almonds over the course of three days, and these pecans will not last me through the night. Unfortunately, when I go back to Trader Joe’s to buy more of these infernal nuts, I will also be buying another vat of garlic dip. It’s a tub of garlic goo. That’s it. It costs three or four dollars and I could eat a whole bag of baby carrots plus 1/4 container of garlic dip every day.
On another nut note: the pistachio latte at Starbucks is good! I guess it’s a seasonal offering (happy…pistachio season…to those who observe?) and I couldn’t remember trying it before. I have a strange compulsion to order pistachio-flavored things any time I see them, because of a specific Spongebob Squarepants clip. A little fish-child gets pistachio ice cream and then hates it. This video makes me incredibly sad: I am sad for the child (who didn’t get what he wanted), the fish-dad (who is trying his best), and the ice cream (which does not get eaten by the child and probably feels rejected). Let me emphasize that none of these people are people, or real.
Okay, that’s it for my musings. Onto the lists!
Highly (Or At Least Mediumly) Recommended
Confession: I wrote weeks ago that I was starting to read Babel. Then I stopped. Now I started again and I finally have the brain space, and I’m 75 percent done! My biggest problem with novels2 is once I pop, I can’t stop. Babel is close to 600 pages long, so I am skirting a lot of my responsibilities for the sake of 80-page reading sessions. It's a great book, so I'm not mad, but I am also late for things.
Per my parents’ recommendation, I am watching The Guest Book, which is available on Hulu. It’s a cute anthology series with a great cast. I’ve only seen the first two episodes, but Mary Lynn Rajskub, Stockard Channing, Danny Pudi, Laura Bell Bundy, and Kellie Martin have all made appearances.
In an effort to spend less time scrolling the “Tales from Retail” and “Wedding Shaming” boards on Reddit, I have been shaming myself into logging off through the “No Surf” subreddit. As an experiment, I’m now using Google Keep for poetry drafts (as opposed to scattered notes app/Google Doc/texts/email drafts). And I downloaded One Day as a supplement to my paper journals, because I like the varied prompts.
While I watch The Guest Book (and New Girl and Under the Skin3), I’m working on this floral embroidery kit. Dottie has not tried to eat my thread, but she chewed several holes in the instruction booklet.
Things I Did Not Buy This Week
I did not buy anything from the Black Milk Clothing x Sailor Moon collection because it isn’t out yet. But will I? …possibly! Sorry you tune into this newsletter just to hear me say “I want something with Sailor Moon on it” each week.
I did not place a gigantic online Avon order, but…should I? In my endless quest to find a fragrance that is Right For Me, I was browsing the online Avon store. Maybe I should hold out and get my hands on a catalog next time I visit Missouri.
I did not buy these high-heeled roller skates but if I get an unexpected financial windfall, I’m going to do it, because if I’m making horrible decisions they might as well be fun ones:
I Made You A Playlist
I’ve been exposed to GREAT music from all angles lately! Here’s a bunch of songs I liked this week. I’d heard a few of them before, but didn’t get the chance to like them on Spotify, and others are new covers of songs I already loved. I hope you enjoy!
Thanks for reading. Thanks for listening! See you on Monday.
I always pity them, my beloved, beleaguered Twitter followers, but especially now
There is a faction of the writing community that argues most novels should be under 200 pages. I think they’re kinda right, if only because long sprawling novels don’t work with my lifestyle (aka “having a job” and “being responsible”)
A rewatch for me and a film staunchly in the pantheon of “movies that leave my brain purring like a cat”