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| Artist unknown |
Intergenerational friendships. I love being friends with my parent's friends and people my parents' age. I have managed true friendship only a few times, but I cherish it. I also love being friends with younger people, ranging from having beautiful little conversations with a five-year-old as we walk back from school together, to people who are just slightly outside of my own generation and who don't always get my cultural references but who indulge me nonetheless. One of the gifts of streaming culture is that all music is pop music and all TV is currently airing, so people will get your jokes. Turns out, we can all sing along to Kate Bush in the car together.
Thrifting. God, I love thrifting. I like to shop if it's a turbo-charged treasure hunt that brings out my inner scavenger. I love getting weird clothes, like the gold sequinned jacket or the vintage one-piece that was designed for working in refrigeration. I love getting normal clothes, just armloads of Joe Fresh and Reitmans and Old Navy that I can integrate into my existing wardrobe. I love getting slightly fancy stuff for cheap, like a $90 pair of running shorts for eight dollars. And I LOVE unearthing a treasure. I bought a duvet cover for $16, and they sell for $300 new and are on the beds in the White House. I found a cashmere sweater that retails for $465 and someone had washed badly, bringing it from a XXL to a M/L—it's the softest thing in the universe. A block print from an esteemed Zambian artist cost me $5.99. I feel like I'm getting away with something. It's a rush.
Neon yellow. It's my favourite.
Cats. The memes are true! Cats are great. They are goofy and serious. They communicate by blinking slowly and biting you. They watch the toilet flush like it's must-see TV. They sleep one thousand hours per day. They will hunt a random genera of thing—socks, pompoms, mice—and bring them to you while you sleep. They desperately want to be outside, even though that's silly. They also want to be in the refrigerator and the pantry and under your covers and in the basement rafters. Cats are great.
Midlife crises. Okay, not the kind where you have affairs and blow up your family. Also not the kind where you buy ridiculous shit to prove you're still cool. I'm talking about the kind where you, like, go back to school to become a fashion designer. Or you move to Costa Rica and start your organic cocoa farm. You take a dance class because you always wanted to and never had. You start exploring your kinks or open up your relationship. You give in to your creativity. I'm sorry, did I call this a crisis? I meant a blossoming.
Lackadaisical prepping. With the most recent American election, and COVID nearing its five-year anniversary (what are we doing to celebrate?!), it's clearer now that we can't rely on each other to "do the right thing." It turns out that, for some people, that means wearing an N95 at the grocery store without complaining, and for others, that means racistly driving a hot tub into downtown Ottawa and blaring your horn eleven hours a day. I feel compelled to do some lazy prepping for whatever social recalibration is coming. In my 20s, we used to sit around and talk about our apocalypse survival skills; now, as we hamster-ball our way through this slow-motion apocalypse, those are just our regular day-to-day skills. I admire my friend who can butcher a chicken and entertain small children for months; I myself can knit socks and grow more tomatoes than a human should consume in a lifetime. I have friends who mend clothes, fix bikes, are nurses, raise chickens. All good skills! This a direct counterpoint to too-intense preppers, who are obsessed with guns and stockpiling MREs and installing tripwires on their compounds. No thank you. I want to bunk in with the artists in the conflagration, thank yew.
Weird cookies. My sister generally hates the cookies I make, and I don't blame her. I often include ingredients that are traditionally non-cookie, such as chili powder or grapefruit peel. But a weird cookie is a pocket crossword: just enough of a challenge to be interesting, but not enough to ruin your day, and often delicious.
The UUs. I started going to the Universalist Unitarian meetings (services?) in my hometown about six months ago, and it's been wonderful. I was raised in the Christian tradition, but always felt weird about it—I don't believe in the divinity of Christ, and they really want you to. But the UUs don't care. Their literature actually says, "We believe Jesus was a baby born to human parents," which feels like a relief. They are mostly very earnest middle-aged white people, which is fine—me too, me too—and they have a strong social justice and spiritual bent. I feel comfortable in a sacred space for the first time in my life, and I really needed that.
Doing a shitty Couch to 5K. I've been working on the couch to 5K program, which is supposed to take nine weeks to complete, for over two months now. I have not progressed beyond week four. There are reasons for this—brutal fall allergies, terrible shoes, shin splints—but the reality is, I'm kind of lazy about it. I don't particularly enjoy running (although I do like swanning around after, looking at my step counter app, and feeling virtuous), but I wanted to get more fitness and running seemed like an easy way to do it. Anyway, I'm giving myself permission to suck at this, but to keep going, and that's been helpful. Maybe I will stay at week four forever! It literally does not matter, the running police will not come and put me in jail (I would be very easy to catch, I'm slow). Highly recommend this approach!
Extremely stupid crushes. I have a crush on a man I volunteer with, who is literally just a man-shaped human. Maybe he has great pheromones or I encountered him once while ovulating or his eyelashes are good, because I sweat this dude. I have no idea why. We literally never talk to each other. He is married. It's all so unnecessary. But I yearn! I have another crush on a man who works at a place I frequent, and I have overcorrected from being slightly too warm to slightly too chilly, because I literally don't know how to talk to anyone I want to kiss. I am terrible at having crushes! In high school, I would just stare at them during class, which, if you've ever been stared at, is SO obvious and off-putting. I never spoke to them. To this day, if I ever see them at No Frills, I literally hide! Why am I like this?! Anyway, now that I'm single again, I look forward to being an absolute disaster at early-stage dating. Everyone wish me luck!
