What a year. 2018, you were something! I’ve never cried so much in my life, but even though things were often rough, there was still so much good, and so much to be grateful for. What all happened, you ask? Let’s recap!

In the health arena, I had a breast lump situation (it was fine), I learned I have uterine fibroids, I flirted with the gluten thing, and I had heart surgery. I mean. That is a list. The worst part about all of it was that the heart surgery did not totally correct the issue, and I spent a lot of time grieving that fact. I guess I’m over it, as much as I can be. Maybe I’ll be more over it when I’m done paying off my medical debt? (Oh, let me tell you how grateful I am for health insurance.) Oh, and also I am most definitely in perimenopause, which is a wild ride. 19-day cycle, 33-day cycle, 28-day cycle…every month a new situation! There is no way to predict what will happen, or why my emotions are insane! Am I crying because I am truly hurt and upset…or is it my uterus trying to kill me? WHO KNOWS. NOT ME. I DO NOT KNOW. I will tell you this: it’s keeping me on my toes. Edited to add: I posted this, then immediately discovered that I bled through my dress. Haha!

In the family arena, my grandmother died. She just got worn out and then didn’t get better, but I’m grateful that I was able to see her almost every day while she was in hospice, and feed her her hideous lunch (whoever heard of pureed bread???!?!), and translate what she was saying to the rest of the family. She never lost her mind, and everything that needed to be said got to be said. I’m grateful that she accepted me as I am, and told me so. I am also grateful that during the eulogy, a die-hard-Republican family friend somehow worked in a statement about how Trump was ruining the country, which was just an unexpected gift. She was a fine old lady, and I wish I could talk to her again.

In the work arena, I had a stagnant, no-cool-projects year. I just didn’t think up anything fun to do. I did publish a chapter in a book and a book review in a newspaper, so all was not lost, and I have started a research project that I hope will one day turn into a book. I’m grateful to have a job where I have the luxury of being able to do fun projects when I happen to think them up. And I have a few planned for next year, so I’m looking forward to that!

In the relationship arena, I tried and failed. And kept trying, and kept failing. Maybe this calibration will work? Nope. Ok, let’s adjust this setting…still nope. While I’m using the word “fail,” I don’t see any sense in calling something a failure where there was love involved. What a gift to be able to love and be loved, even if it didn’t work out in the end! I’m grateful for all of it: the wonderful parts, and the shitty parts, and the parts where things just were without being wonderful or shitty.

Oh, and I know you were nervous about it, but I met my Goodreads challenge! I reread The Optimist’s Daughter for a work project (see, I told you I was starting to think up fun things for next year) and really loved it this time around. I think it was just what I needed: Laurel is a great role model for how to accept things. And speaking of reading, my favorite book this year was The English Patient.

Whew! I’m looking forward to 2019.

I set a Goodreads goal of reading 50 books this year, and a few days ago I panicked when I realized I had only read 47. I enjoy setting an arbitrary goal that no one cares or knows about and then taking it very seriously, I guess. (Old schoolers: remember that time I posted every day for a YEAR?) I read Lucy Knisley’s Something New (#48! I liked it, but not as much as Relish) and then took to my shelves at home looking for a thin volume I could knock out.

I’ve always been a big reader, though for most of my childhood/preteendom I read a lot of teen garbage. All the Sweet Valley Highs. ALL OF THEM. I’d get a stack for Christmas and have finished a couple by the time we got to my grandparents’ house. I read and loved The Westing Game and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, but I really loved that teen garbage.

One of my favorites was called The Rise and Fall of a Teen-Age Wacko. (I could’ve sworn on my life it was Weirdo, not Wacko, but it’s Wacko). It must’ve been one of the books I kept at my dad’s house and really read over and over because at some point the spine broke and half the pages fell out. I bought a copy (with all the pages in it) from Thrift Books a couple of years ago and didn’t read it then, but it was perfect for my purposes this week.

What I remembered: a girl stays in Manhattan by herself with a babysitting job, which she announces to her parents like this: “I’ve a job”; she has a little sister who at one point says “I put my money in a safe place: I keep my coins in my mouth”; Woody Allen is involved; there is a part where her dad has a moped which I read as in “I moped around the house” but was actually “small lame motorcycle thing.” And that’s about it! So yesterday I read it. (#49!)

First, the cover is divine.

There was much I’d forgotten, obviously, but so much that was familiar. The narrator goes to Bloomingdale’s and buys an outfit that includes a “chocolate tee” and I remember being fascinated that a teenage girl would spend money on a brown shirt. Like, it’s a brown tshirt? Ok. But in context this time it seemed to make sense, perhaps because I am old enough now to enjoy a brown shirt. She takes her babysitting charge on truly fun-sounding New York adventures that I want to go on as well — the Morgan Library and auctions where you can buy a vintage dress for $40 and it fits you perfectly and you feel like Gene Tierney!

But the Woody Allen part was a much bigger deal that I remembered. I knew that she somehow fell down and was thus in a Woody Allen movie; I’d forgotten that after she falls down and accidentally gets into a Woody Allen movie, she reads that he scrapped the project and then decides to become obsessed with Woody Allen and like, stalk him around town in order to get into another Woody Allen movie. She goes to Elaine’s on a night he’s supposed to be there, she reads that he’s filming another movie and just walks down to a creepy dark park alone and some dudes on rollerskates with painted clown faces scoot out of the darkness towards her, and then a police car drives up and she runs towards it and the cop gets out and HE has a creepy painted clown face too, and it turns out someone is filming a horror movie and now she has messed up the shot. Then she goes home and her dad has come back into town and is worried about her and she has told a lot of lies and everyone is mad at her but then at the end everything is fine.

Anyway, let me end this by saying that unless you spent a lot of time rereading this book in your formative years, there is pretty much zero reason for you to seek out and read this book. Unless teen Woody Allen fan fiction featuring chocolate tees appeals to you, and you are trying very hard to meet an arbitrary reading goal, of course.

1. I flew too close to the sun. I flirted where I should not have flirted.

After two months of avoiding gluten, Thanksgiving came. I was mostly strong! And then my aunt said she made a peach pie. And I could not resist. And I ate of the pie, and awaited disaster. And then…no disaster came. There was nary a rumble from the gluten zone. The next day, I waited. Still nothing. So I did the sensible thing, which was to assume that perhaps eating gluten very occasionally would not disrupt my system, and to go back to not eating gluten at all.

THAT IS NOT WHAT I DID.

I ate a pizza. Yes. A whole pizza. (Half for lunch, half for dinner, but still.) Nothing happened! It was a Thanksgluten Day miracle!

Over the next few days, I ate a remarkable amount of gluten. A lot of it was also garbage, like a Filet-o-Fish. And a Big Mac. A pulled pork sandwich. REGULAR BROWNIES. Flour tortillas! Lasagna!

AND THEN.

Without going into too many details (#diarrheapartyUSA), let’s just say I am back on the gluten-free train.

2. On Saturday, Spike had a friend over. The kid was playing basketball with the world’s crustiest soccer ball we found in the yard while Spike came inside to change his shoes. Then I got a text from my neighbor: “Is there supposed to be a child peeing in your driveway???” Y’all, this kid just decided to pee in the driveway. Like, we got bathrooms, and a private yard, even, but peeing right here where another house is but a few yards away and has no window treatments — now that’s some fun. (I’m all for outside pee times. Spike even has a designated Pee Tree he is allowed to pee on because it is out of sight! Now I’m thinking of Rob Petrie for some reason.)

I went outside a little while later.

Me: Hey friends, I hear there may have been some peeing out here. Let’s use the actual toilet next time, ok?
Pee Friend: YEAH, SPIKE.
Spike: Mom, we didn’t pee!
Me: I didn’t say YOU peed, did I?
Pee friend: YEAH, SPIKE. DON’T PEE OUT HERE.
Spike: Mom, seriously!
Me (looking at Pee Friend): TOILET.

So, it turns out that gluten is in everything delicious. And not just delicious, but convenient. No wonder I had a stomachache every day for 45 years! I was a glutenophile! I’m surprised there was any gluten left for the rest of you jokers. I was eating it all.

While there is plenty of stuff out there that is also delicious, and I am eating that stuff, it is not convenient. No sandwich or burger or pizza or burrito wrapped in a delicious flour tortilla. WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO EAT FOR LUNCH? I am eating a lot of stupid salads. I previously only really ate salads in order to eat croutons. This small pleasure in life is now gone.

I thought I could just break down and eat some gluten occasionally and just roll with a stomachache, but what I didn’t know is that once it’s gone from your system, if you accidentally eat some, it’s so much worse. MUCH WORSE. I’ve accidentally eaten it a couple of times and the results were not ideal. So while I think abstractly about a cheeseburger from Rooster’s, I know that that cheeseburger wants to kill me.

There are lots of gluten-free versions of gluteny foods, and some are fine. The bread is not fine. NOT FINE. Granted, I have tried one brand, so maybe there is another brand out there that does not taste and feel like a dirty sponge, but I’m wary. It looked like bread, but so does this. Edited to add: this is my new favorite website! What the heck are people using this fake food for?!

Anyway, last night I tried a gluten-free hamburger bun. I sliced it in half to butter and toast it. I should’ve known something was amiss when the inside was kind of shimmery and translucent, like rice. I made it through half the hamburger before I gave up. I have never only eaten half a hamburger when presented with a whole hamburger in my life.

I’m sure I’ll get used to this, right? Humans are resilient and adaptable! Who knows, maybe I will start a trend when I break down and use two halves of a baked potato as a hamburger bun.

I know nothing about tarot cards, but I am a big fan of signs, even if I routinely misinterpret or purposefully ignore them. Jessica Dore’s Twitter account blends tarot with behavioral science and just general kindness towards all the terrible humans. If you’re a Twitter person and want to go “oh, shit” when you see your own awfulness in these posts every day, follow her. This is today’s:

Oh, and this one hurt:

As Mary Oliver would say, “You want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world / doesn’t need any more of that sound.”

Between the tarot and the Mary Oliver and the general existence on the planet, well, I am exhausted and grateful. (Also, Mary Oliver loves to go outside and see beauty everywhere, and yesterday I thought, ok, Mary, let’s do this, and so I went outside and saw…some bees eating (?) a dead lizard, so maybe I have a ways to go with the whole “going outside and seeing beauty everywhere” part.)

Whew, what a summer! I wish I meant that in a vacationy way, like whew, all of those trips to the French Riviera really wore my ass out! I mean it in more of a whew, what a pile of loss, strange events, sweetness, happiness, disappointments, all sprinkled with a shit ton of books. I suppose that mix would not be the worst way to spend one’s life.

Things I’ve Read:
The Idiot by Elif Batuman (duh, see below)
The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett (eh)
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley (pow! I got Paleyed)
Still Me by Jojo Moyes (I’m not saying anything bad about this because one time I said one of her books was boring on Twitter and she replied)
The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson (do you like cholera? what about poop? what about the history of sanitation? if your answers to any of those are yes, you’ll love this book)
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (beautiful)
So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell (devastating)
A Double Life by Flynn Berry (read in one day; this is/is not an endorsement)
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh (I gave up after the description of when she quits her job/Whoopi Goldberg’s lady parts)
Heather, the Totality by Matthew Weiner (why?)
At Home in the World by Joyce Maynard (perfect)
Lethal White by Robert Galbraith (pretty good!)
Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves (zzz)
Transcription by Kate Atkinson (good, but it’s no Life After Life)
French Exit by Patrick deWitt (I liked roughly 20% of this)

And I’m currently reading Penelope Fitzgerald’s Hidden Voices and Stuart Turton’s The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. NO I AM NOT TRYING TO ESCAPE REALITY OK MAYBE A LITTLE

Also, after a weeklong experiment in which I have avoided gluten, I am very sorry to report that my lifelong stomach issues are just…gone. Huh. Still trying to figure out how to reconcile my relationships with cheeseburgers and pizza, but I really do feel so much better that I think I’ll be fine. Plus, I can see being in a mood where a cheeseburger would absolutely be worth a little Terrible Bathroom Experience (TBE). #butts

Bye!

I’m in the middle of reading Elif Batuman’s The Idiot, which is at once hilarious and weird and confusing. Much of what is making me love it is a specificity about 90s college life, namely the kinds of posters it was important to have on one’s dorm walls (Ansel Adams, Klimt, Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue), the new concept of email, etc. Every few pages I get a pain in my chest because the narrator, Selin, has a crush on an older guy and they mainly communicate via email. THAT SOUNDS SO FAMILIAR. The first time they go to a bar, she gets drunk after one beer (THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED). When they go to a cafe she can’t read the menu (SERIOUSLY THIS HAPPENED TO ME). He attempts to flirt with her and she doesn’t understand and is unable to respond (HI). Here is a part that made me gasp:

“Is it so strange?” Ivan brushed against my ear with the back of his hand. I felt my body stiffen, I was filled with dread. And yet, I knew I wanted him to touch me — didn’t I? Wasn’t that my general policy? (280)

Obviously, this book is much bigger and important to the world at large than the eerie similarities to my own life, but it’s speaking to me in a very specific language.

Update on the emotional breakdown in my last post: still having it. I’m doing a lot of reading and lamenting.

“Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?”
–Mary Oliver, “I Worried”

Several years ago, I broke up with my boyfriend because we weren’t able to communicate effectively (i.e., at all), and though I loved him, I thought it was the right thing to do. I had limited, careful, rational thoughts about the situation. I was fine. I felt fine. I had everything neatly taken care of: the relationship wasn’t working for me, and so I remedied it! GREAT.

Then one day, I was at a bar in Natchez watching my coworkers do karaoke and also, some truly upsetting dance moves, and as I left, I fell off the curb, twisted my ankle, and landed in the street. And I started crying, as one does when they are physically hurt, but then…I didn’t stop crying. I cried for hours. I went to bed. I woke up and cried some more. For the next three weeks, every time I thought about falling down, or if I said the words, “I fell down,” I started crying again. At work, at a bar, at home, falling down = total meltdown.

Things can’t be a pattern until they happen again, but here we are again: I broke up with someone, I had limited, careful, rational thoughts about the situation, and then last week I dropped some chairs on my foot. And BAM: it was Natchez Falldown Ankle all over again. While I guess it’s good to know that I do have feelings in there somewhere, this isn’t an effective way to human. I need emotional Dran-o, or better yet, a daily feelings fiber pill. Metamucil for Feelings! (Feelamucil. Mirafeel. Feelalax? I’m still workshopping here.)

I like to talk about how rational I am, but being this way doesn’t benefit me. I just end up coming across as cold, remote, and distant. And then when I try to say I’m sorry, I was an asshole, it’s insincere, because why would anyone believe this cold and distant robot who has never displayed anything along these lines? After all, the Elliott Smith School of Bottling Up and Exploding is not an accredited institution.

I went for a walk yesterday and picked up an embarrassing self-help book in a Little Free Library. I am now in the Reading Self-Help Book stage of life. (“Someone is staring at you in Personal Growth.”) The name of the book isn’t important (because it is embarrassing), but I recognized myself in a way I hadn’t before. I don’t think of myself as someone who is afraid of commitment or intimacy, because I’ve been married twice! I’ve had a million boyfriends! But oh: I’ve been married twice. I’ve had a million boyfriends. Cue the sad trombone and the Natchez Falldown Ankle-level tears and the Oh God Realization.

Reading the DO YOU HAVE A FEAR OF INTIMACY? checklists both in the book and online has been like falling down in the street AND dropping chairs on my foot AND an old-fashioned punch in the stomach. It’s so clear! Why didn’t I realize this before? “Put off or repulsed by people who treat you with the love you deserve”? Ugh. Yes. “A desire to be close to another, only to pull away when the closeness is reciprocated”? As the internet would say, it me. “Feeling uneasy if another person starts depending on you for emotional support”? Yep. “Doubting you can be really close to anyone because little things always annoy you too much”? Big check. “Holding back your feelings in previous relationships”? Hello.

Well. Here we are. I’ve never felt so exposed (which is of course extra scary for MY KIND).

Not much else to do but head back to therapy, read some things, and try to be better. (I will also obsessively revisit every relationship and reread all my journals looking for clues.) You’d think an allegedly rational person like me would’ve figured this stuff out already, but I guess I was too busy thinking I was right all the time. Oh, universe! You got me good. If you need me, I’ll be over here watching this video of Dean Jones singing “Being Alive.”

A few days ago I was painting random children’s faces at work, as one does. I did not have a large repertoire, though I did practice some. I could do a caterpillar, butterfly eyebrows, a cupcake, a heart, a basketball. Most kids were fine with whatever. Some asked for clowns or a specific sports logo and they were out of luck. Other kids said, “I want Spider-Man,” and I’d say, “How about a caterpillar in Spider-Man colors???!?!” and for some reason they’d agree.

Then a kid came along who asked for a machine gun. A what?!

–I want a machine gun.

–Sorry, no machine guns.

–Oh, is that too hard?

–No, it’s a gun.

–What about a .22?

–No.

–A rifle?

–NO. NO GUNS.

–Why not?

–I don’t draw guns on children.

He was 8. His mom was right there. (He ended up getting a blue balloon on his cheek. He wanted his whole face painted blue but I said no.)

• I have been trying very, very hard not to complain about wearing a stupid EKG monitor for a month, and I have made it to Day 17 so here it is: it sucks. The sensor pad things are eating my skin. I have to wear pants so it can go into a pocket. I could wear a dress, but then I’d have to wear a FANNY PACK THING around my waist, and there would be an awkward lump. (I tried this one day. Awkward lump.) This afternoon we are having an outside work event, and it is four million degrees, and doing the setup I nearly died of sweat drowning. To add to my complaint, the EKG wires are ALSO all sweaty now. I am healthy and attractive.

• I’d like to introduce a new feature of this almost-defunct website called Notes from the Notes App on My Phone. This entry is from 2016:

Two biddies at cardiologist discussing everyone they know. Her nephew had open heart surgery and do you know why? Because he ate a hamburger every day!

A doctor at this clinic has a wife who can’t cook. Her grandson was their personal cook for awhile but they complained the pot roast with potatoes and carrots was too fatty.

They are going to count their blessings because their friend can’t bend over to put on her socks anymore.

Yesterday on a trip to the Delta I saw the following:

1. a casket truck pulling out of a donut shop
2. truly exceptional kudzu monsters
3. a sign with arrows pointing to the left that said

Midnight
Louise

which made me think this would be a great saloon madam name, should I find myself time traveling.

I just finished Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight, which I loved, and which I found unexpectedly heartbreaking, to the point that I, keeper of the black heart, actually cried a little. It has sentences like these:

“But she loved the name Marsh. It sounded as if he went on and on and was difficult to cross, to fully understand, that she would get her feet wet, that burrs and mud would attach themselves to her.”

and

“And then as she sweeps a cedar branch out of her way he recognizes the faint line of bones at her neck that brings his affection back to what he thought was no longer there.”

Can every book be this beautiful, please?

Speaking of: a coworker had All the Light We Cannot See on her desk, and I said, “That’s such a great book.” She said she’d just finished it. I asked if she cried at the end. She said no. When I just sat there looking at her, she said, “World War II: I mean, it wasn’t great for anyone.”

You believe in cards
And you believe in signs
But I’ll be leavin’ soon
I’m here tonight
–“Curtain Calls,” the Old 97s

Dead car battery: quickly catalog everything bad I’ve ever done in my life, which naturally led to this point of utter punishment

One person says something mean: immediately believe this is how every person feels about me 100% all the time forever

In one day, encounter not only an ex-husband but an ex-boyfriend on a dating app: DELETE APP AND DIE ALONE

So The Americans ended last night, and I uncharacteristically stayed up to watch it, and then I couldn’t go to sleep because I kept thinking about the following things:
1. Stan’s identity has been crushed.
2. But Stan gets to be a dad to Henry!
3. God, Henry. Not only the betrayal that Paige felt when she was told her parents were big old liars and spies, but also the abandonment. Good luck at school, Henry! You have no home.
4. Back to Stan: the actor who plays him is perfect, as is his tic, which, if manufactured, should win an Emmy.
5. Best Manufactured Neurological Disorder.
6. Is a tic a neurological disorder?
7. I could google it.
8. From everything I read on Twitter, it looks like everyone was rooting for Philip and Elizabeth to make it out. And I realized, in that scene in the parking garage (THE SCENE), that I did not want Elizabeth to make it out. Philip, yes. I have forgiven him for his murderous, stuffing bodies in a suitcase ways, since he went to EST and had a crisis and was still a dad and experienced SUCH JOY going country dancing. But Elizabeth. Nope. I was willing to sacrifice her to save Stan’s conscience.
9. Could they not have given us a glimpse of Martha anywhere in the season?
10. I’m satisfied with Renee’s smug smirk and perfect Russian curls being enough to wonder about. Stan will wonder…FOREVER.
11. Think about Stan waking up the next day.
12. Stan: The Man Who Loved Too Much
13. Elizabeth: Who Needs Her?
14. Philip: Maybe They Have Country Dancing in Russia
15. Paige: Does She Get Immunity or What?
16. Oleg: FREE OLEG
17. Claudia: Who Kez
18. Henry: A Story of Ping Pong Regret
19. Renee: Smug Smirks 4 Life
20. Kimmy: Who?
21: Martha: Keep Searching That Bleak Grocery Store for Your New Life, Friend
22: It was a good show.

1. I heard the Chad and Jeremy version of “If I Loved You” at the grocery store the other day.
2. It explains a lot about me that I naturally assumed the store was playing it just for me, because who else would care?
3. Or identify Chad and Jeremy?
4. Fun fact: the guy who played Will Cortlandt on “All My Children” is Chad’s son.
5. Why do I know this?
6. What year was I born?
7. I still love “All My Children” and think about the characters regularly.
8. And yesterday I found a Tad Martin birthday card that I have been saving to send to my college roommate for like, 15 years.
9. A long time ago, the Big Lots in Starkville closed, and everything was 90% off.
10. 90%! I bought everything.
11. Including a “on your 100th birthday” card.
12. Ann said, “Who are you going to send THAT to?”
13. I said, “You.”
14. I waited eleven years.
15. Then I sent it to her for her 40th birthday.
16. BAM!
17. But back to “If I Loved You”: Carousel is my favorite musical about a dead asshole carnival barker ghost.
18. The end.

Looking for a particular poem last night, I found a notebook I started in high school that’s full of poems, quotations, and later, when things get interesting, scraps of conversations. You can see my progression from “dimwit” to “person with some of a brain” by the choices of things I recorded (no one needs quotes from Gloria Vanderbilt, teenage Sally).

Some favorites:

“You’re so cute—I could puke!” 

This was yelled by a person whose friend I made out with/spurned roughly 8 hours previous. My boyfriend, with whom I reconciled immediately post-make out, and I were admittedly bebopping down the sidewalk holding hands and were likely fairly pukey. It’s one of the best things anyone has ever screamed at me on a public street.

“What if you decide not to go to your class but go to lunch instead? And what if you meet your lifelong mate at that lunch? And what if you had gone to class like you should have?” —-Dr. Edra Bogle

My world lit professor said this in 1992 and it deeply affected me. I’ve always gotten wigged out thinking of all the different versions of a life I could be living, and how tiny choices determine our fates, and then here’s old Dr. Bogle just confirming that I needed to skip class more often.

“I do not know how to let anything important happen to me.” —Rilke, in a letter to Clara, May 1910

For awhile I thought I could relate to this, which is why I wrote it down, but later it occurred to me that I’m responsible for pretty much everything important that’s ever happened to me. In books, people are just sitting around minding their own business when things happen to them, but this has never been the way things have rolled for me. (Outside of BAD things happening, of course. I interpret “important” to mean non-tragic.) I’m not saying I made the right choices or anything, but when it comes down to it I almost always have to start whatever it is: pulling a thread from a sweater that unweaves itself, sending an email, saying yes, opening the door.