"put your gucci watch on, synchronize the time, and let's rock"
[Alt text: A boy golden retriever sitting and smiling. This is my aunt and uncle's dog who I took for a long walk over the weekend.]
Thanks for all the nice birthday wishes last week. I rounded out the celebrations with a trip to Baltimore to see the JoGo Project, a band that takes a jazz approach to go-go. Or a go-go approach to jazz. Not sure how to describe them, but I’d been watching them from afar for years. (Plus a friend plays bass with them.)
Go-go has a lot of call and response with the singer and audience. When the singer says, “hey LADIES” you say “YEAAHHHHH?” and that goes back and forth for a while, and then he says “you gonna do it for the fellas?” and you shout back “OH MY GOD.” (I was surprised at how that muscle memory kicked in immediately after so many years.) Even in a fancy club with tables and table service, people stand up and dance, because it’s almost impossible not to.
And that was the whitest, most awkward description of go-go music you’ll ever read. You’re welcome.
I wanted to see another friend’s (punk) band play the next night in DC, but when there are three bands, and doors are at 9, and your friend’s band is the headliner? Yeah, nope, lemme know when your next all-ages afternoon show is. I’ll be standing with the moms in the back, biting my tongue when the kids call me “ma’am.”
Instead I binged the new season of Bridgerton in two days. So good.
One good thing about being 50 is that, as of yesterday, I am eligible for booster shot #2. The nice people at SF General who administered all the previous shots failed to write down the date of my booster. Had it been four months? It wasn’t on my calendar, so I dug out my journal from Q4.
Yikes. I use the so-called “morning pages” as a stream-of-consciousness brain dump, in the hopes that I can somehow transfer all the anxiety from my head to the paper, and emerge clear-headed to start my day. I never re-read what I wrote because I think that’s what the kids call “cringe.” A few gems:
After gall bladder removal surgery: “I weighed myself, have GAINED 10 pounds?? What the fuck did you people leave in there?”
My grandmother has maybe 20% of her vision, on a good day. At some point in October, the caretakers messaged me that the earwigs had come back, so I needed to call the exterminator again. I wrote, “Earwigs are back. I told (grandma) and she said ‘I haven’t seen any.’ Neither has Stevie Wonder.”
I finally found the entry where I mentioned getting boosted and put the journal away. I guess the lesson here is, journals can be useful if you need to piece together events of the recent past?
Speaking of lessons! Last week I tried to come up with 50 things I know to be true at age 50, and I only got to 30-something. A few I forgot:
It takes anywhere from 5-60 minutes to do the thing you have been procrastinating for the last six months. The longer you put it off, the less time it takes to actually do the damn thing.
The to-do list will never, ever get shorter. If anything, the reverse is true. The trick is to triage that shit and make room for other, more important and more enjoyable things.
And if you are a woman of a certain age, and you suddenly hear from a man you have not thought about, or spoken to, in at least 25 years, there is a 10 percent chance he is working the program steps and making amends (which, awesome, bring it!) and a 90 percent chance his marriage is falling apart and he’s having a midlife crisis and thinking about the ones – plural! – who got away.
And here are your additions to the same list:
Consistency in anything > doing it perfectly. Over time, consistency builds progress, while perfectionism burns you out and may derail you entirely.
Have that piece of pie for breakfast.
My personal mantra is: I’m always ok, even when I’m not ok. (Normalize not being ok! That’s ok too.)
Look for the love and beauty and the good everywhere. Announce it. Tell someone when you see it or feel it. Anyone. Our ability to see it even when it’s obscured will grow stronger.
Spend good money on good shoes, good food, and a good bed. You spend 1/3 of your life with each.
The cheap flight isn’t always cheaper (especially if it causes you to miss sleep or time with loved ones).
Tell your friends you love them. Hug them. Spend time with them. They are your framily, too.
Wait until the pan is already hot to add the oil/fat, then wait until the oil/fat is hot to add what you’re cooking.
And let people help you. It’s inevitable anyways.
Links
Not a link, but: I finally decided to clean up my digital address book, deleting people who’d died, etc. And I discovered that there is a “merge contacts” function in Apple’s app, which thankyoubabyjesus is hugely helpful. The whole project took me like 15 minutes.
The latest season of Peaky Blinders is out in the UK, so my husband is on a press tour. This video was fun to watch. (YouTube)
The Oscars were three days ago and people are STILL writing about “the slap heard round the world” and #slapgate. Anything for those pageviews. I tried to imagine myself in a similar situation. It goes like this: I’m at an event. Someone on stage is making fun of my dog. They are being so mean that I overcome my fear of confrontation and stomp up onto that stage to smack them. Except once I’m right in their face, I swing – and I miss. Anyway, someone with too much free time made a Slap Chris Rock game. (Boing Boing)
Harlem toile wallpaper. (NYT)
Trombone in an empty swimming pool. (Twitter)
Clever miniature art. (My Modern Met)
A roundup of British insults, some of which are so bizarre I wouldn’t even realize I was being insulted. (Sad and Useless)
For next week
I spent the last 10 days reading a long novel about World War II. It was a good book, but given the war in Ukraine, the timing was bad and it was extra depressing. I’m in a reading rut, and need good fiction recommendations. Basically anything that’s not about war. What have you read recently that you loved, and why? I need to fill up my library queue. As always, you can reply to this email and anything I share will be anonymous.