Happy 4th of July, fellow Americans. And by happy, I mean confused, extremely anxious, and constantly craving processed cheese, melted between pieces of butter-slathered white bread.

Let’s level with each other. Things are rough. Our basic freedom is at stake, racism is running rampant and at the wheel is a man who punctuates Tweets based on grammatical rules unknown to any but him.

So on this bittersweet day, I’d like to use my "pen" to assign grades to some of the Most American Things.

Privatized healthcare: F In a nutshell: healthcare in America is not considered a basic human right. See also: TV commercials for prescription drugs.

Baseball: A- I’ve only been to three baseball games in my life. We sat up in the stands, paid minimal attention to the game, drank beer and shouted a bunch. I couldn’t speak more highly of the experience. Only points docked are for it being a sport.

The Electoral College: C- I see what they tried to do but it’s as problematic as most America colleges.

PB&J: A+ I love this combination more than I love most people in my life.

Guns: F Have you ever been hit with a paintball? That shit hurts. Just ask our British exchange student in 7th grade who, in his excitement over shooting a paintball gun accidentally shot himself point blank in the finger. You really can ask him- in the moment, he was completely disarmed, however he managed to survive the experience. Real guns with real bullets are extremely unnecessary. I’d say we’re overthinking this one, but I don’t think that’s ever been America’s problem.

NASCAR: B AKA Drivin’ In Circles. Incomprehensible to me, and yet also kind of benign? I’ll allow it, but it loses points for being an unofficial conservative convention.

Bald eagles: A+ So cool. They look bald, but they just have white feathers on their heads. Classic American misdirection.

The Kardashians: One gold star The most alliterative of all reality TV families, the horse-haired Kardashians have woven their extensions into the very fabric of our society. One of them even ended police brutality armed only with a pout and a can of Pepsi.

LaCroix: A Don’t let the French name fool ya. LaCroix is from Wisconsin, and is officially pronounced incorrectly (it actually IS La-croy.) The bubbly liquid inside the cans is delicious, but beyond this, LaCroix symbolizes so much of what America is all about. It has it all. Noisy packaging design. Periods of popularity interspersed with valleys of obsoleteness, spanning decades (see also: Britney Spears). Zero calories. AND you can buy it in bulk without leaving your perfect, butt-shaped crater in the couch. God bless.

The American Dream: Incomplete Or as I like to call it, ThAD. Appropriately named after a mediocre white guy who built something out of *nothing* except for his determination and his family's overwhelming wealth.

Litigation: C+ One of biggest things I noticed living in Thailand for a year was how people just sort of made decisions based on common sense. There were very few warning labels and written agreements, and if something were to go down, the first attempt at remedy was not via legal action. I spent the entire year making mental notes of what wouldn’t fly in the US- like fruit sold directly from someone’s bare hand, or riding side-saddle on a motorcycle. While I generally think we are much too quick to slap each other with lawsuits, or blame others for our mistakes based on technicalities, I do think our insistence on getting signed permission slips before transporting groups of schoolchildren is fair enough.

Xenophobia: F Not to be confused with Xenaphobia, the fear of Warrior Princesses, or Xerophobia, the fear of duplicates, this is racist, pathetic, and as American as apple pie.

Apple pie: B- Overrated.

Britney Spears: A From her humble beginnings, sitting in an extremely uncomfortable position on the cover of “…Baby One More Time” to her current wildly popular (if bizarre) Instagram presence, we have kept one eyeball on Britney for the better part of twenty years and I for one have yet to be disappointed.

Freedom of speech: A+ See also: all of the above.

The last couple of days I've sporadically had a pain in my stomach, or slightly lower, right above my hip bones. It's not really a knot, it's more of a cramp that sets in quickly, without any warning. One second I'll be standing on the subway platform and all of the sudden I'll be doubled over in pain. And then a second later, it's gone again.  The train comes and I get on and thank whoever is or isn't up there for yet another day where I didn't cry on the subway. It's happened before, of course. I sit there and just kind of leak from the eyes and stare at the floor waiting for it to pass. I'm never 100% sure whether or not I want someone to ask if I'm OK.

Now that I don't actually bleed every month (thanks IUD) the cramps are way more mysterious. They used to be so severe that I would need to pop ibuprofen near constantly for 48 hours every month. Now they come and go so quickly, and on such a weird schedule, that by the time I realize I'm in horrible pain and go to do something about it, the pain is usually gone.

I talk a good game about how I don't have regrets- and, at least on paper, I really don't. There's nothing I can do about the past, and on a scale of Martin Shkreli to Michelle Obama I feel like I fall somewhere in the respectable middle. But lately, I feel like I'm being visited by ghosts, in the form of tiny, micro-flashbacks that I can't seem to shake.

It's amazing how those very specific feelings will show up when you feel like things are good. Hurt and embarrassment and failure and sadness, tied to extremely specific moments. Wanting something so badly and not being to get it. Someone else wanting something from me and me not being able to give it. I'll be standing on the subway platform and suddenly I'll feel it. I stop thinking for one second and a memory appears to take up that space.

I'm taking so many steps to try to be the best version of myself I possibly can, but I'm having a hard time moving forward. I feel complicated and imperfect and no matter how many apps I download, a step by step plan for dealing with that feeling doesn't exist. If I'm being real, I don't really forgive myself for the objectively crappy decisions I made that hurt other people in my almost 30 years. They're few, but significant. I'm not sure I forgive the people who broke my heart one way or another. I definitely don't actively harbor ill will towards anyone but I've got a lot of brilliantly casual, if cold, lines prepped for if I ever see some of these people again. I feel like a lot of things are still where I left them, whether it was 10 days or 10 years ago. It's difficult for me to move in any direction when I feel like I'm just packed full of ceramic shards. If I move too quickly or too much I'll puncture a lung.

If you made it to the end of this one, here's a recipe for coconut lime popsicles. I have no idea if they're any good and the tab has been open for at least a month now so if you could find out for me that would be great.

Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig starred in a Lifetime movie, and it's called "A Deadly Adoption."

"What a hilarious premise for a hilarious comedy!" you're probably thinking, trusting deeply the comedic masterminds behind Anchorman and Bridesmaids. "Maybe he'll have Nick Kroll play Will's long lost brother, or something."

Oh no. You don't understand. They made a Lifetime movie. Like an actual Lifetime movie on Lifetime funded by Lifetime. Aside from the presence of Will Ferrell (with a REMARKABLE dyed beard situation) and Kristen Wiig, this movie would be indistinguishable from a serious* Lifetime film.

Turns out, their mere presence in this context is enough to make one of the funniest movies I've seen in a while.

SPOILERS AHEAD: DO NOT CONTINUE READING IF YOU IMMEDIATELY OPENED A NEW TAB TO FIND THIS MOVIE ONLINE LIKE I DID (just do a classic watch+online+free Google search and you'll have your pick of Russian websites from which to stream)

I would normally do my commentary on a piece of media in a plot recap from start to finish, and I'm going to try. But here's the thing about batshit crazy movies: time gets a little whoozy. At one point, we even noticed that Will Ferrell's character Robert's computer clearly shows "11:24AM" at the top of the screen when it was "night" outside. It also had the name "Emily Miller" displayed at the top, which is not a character and in all likelihood is a crew member.

So let's just get the ball rolling and see what comes out of my head/heart.

The movie starts with Robert (Ferrell), who is a big-time author, lounging in his backyard with some extras. His wife, Kristen Wiig (I don't remember her character's name.) is super preggers with what is their second child. One thing leads to another and the deck collapses under Kristen. She hits her head and falls into the water.

We then see her in the hospital. She's alive, but it's as we suspected. She lost the baby.

Then some things happen and time jumps forward and suddenly Kristen Wiig is running a stand at a farmer's market that has a big sign that says "100% Organic" or something. She's happy! She jokes around with her insultingly one-dimensional Gay Friend. She's tryna keep things light.

Meanwhile Robert is doing a lot of brooding. You see, their first child has diabetic ketoacidosis and he is TERRIFIED that she's going to die. Ever since the dock collapsed, he's afraid of what's around the corner. At one point, he actually yells "YOU KNOW THE DANGERS OF DIABETIC KETOACIDOSIS!" at Kristen in an impressive show of (over)acting skillz.

Kristen Wiig is trying to make the best of things. However, when one day an Adoption Lady shows up with a candidate for a birth mother, you can tell that she's cautiously thrilled. Robert has rejected every single person they interviewed so far. But the difference with this one is that she's read one of his books and is INSANELY hot, if somewhat dead in the eyes.

She claims that she's been living in a town called Idaho Falls (yup) and now is living in a shelter. From my seat on the couch, I called bullshit. She's got a full face of makeup, and (we will soon learn) a wardrobe full of very current, well-fitting maternity dresses.

Robert and Kristen, of course, take her in immediately and plan to adopt her baby.

Once she moves in, there are a couple of scenes where they try to insinuate sexual tension between the birth mother, Bridgette, and Robert. It felt uncomfortable, like when your friend in middle school thought someone else's super old dad was hot. There's a great moment in the closet where they just kind of turn in place looking for something in a room that barely fits both of them and I have never been less turned on in my life.

She starts kickin it with their existing kid, a little girl who was named "Sully" for her parents' love of both Monsters, Inc. and airplane crashes. Sully's recitative delivery of her lines actually played well with the stilted hot-girl murmurs escaping from Bridgette's face. #acting.

Despite being 7 and probably old enough to know that doing this is weird, Sully walks in on her in the bathroom one day and sees that, GASP, Bridgette isn't really pregnant and is just wearing a big ole fake baby bump. They agree to make it their little secret.

Ok so then some more things happen, and the viewer starts to get a picture of Bridgette being super shady behind Robert and Kristen's backs. A guy shows up to find her who has Tattoos and Shaggy Hair and is clearly Bad News. He was ALSO hot, in a Jackson-esque sort of way (Joshua)

OH I forgot ok so Robert has been sober for six months, because before that, when he was on his last book tour, apparently things got out of hand every night. This was new for me because I always assumed book tours were a little less The Clash and a little more sweatervest. But Robert went hard. Too hard. Now he's on the wagon... but not without his temptations.

Now we've reached the point where Bridgette disappears and take Robert and Kristen's kid with her. Robert is beside himself, yelling at a very cool and collected local police officer who says things like "Sir, we're getting to the bottom of this." while sitting on Robert's couch drinking Robert's coffee and not doing a goddamn thing besides delivering his lines with gravitas.

Then there's some cutting back and forth between Robert and Kristen, and Sully and Bridgette (and Pacey). Ostensibly they're trying to blackmail the parents, which makes sense because Robert and Mrs. Robert are rich. The otherwise unsatisfying exposition at the beginning of the film did make that point clear.

Confoundingly, Bonnie and Clyde and Sully don't go very far away. Bridgette actually says the line "They'll never look for us on the other side of the lake." I mean to be fair, the sheriff is still on the couch.

Robert and Kristen are continuing to freak. Because you see, Sully needs her insulin. Which to be fair is a legit scary thing so I'll allow it.

Yada yada yada, Joshua Jackson ends up shooting Kristen's friend who goes looking for Sully and follows them to their hideout cabin. Our first casualty. You start to figure out that HER plan was to steal Sully forever and I guess kill Kristen Wiig so she could be with Robert, you know, as a family. But I'm not sure why she had to steal Sully to make that happen. Maybe to keep up the pretense for Pacey? Meh. Surprise: aspects of the plot don't really add up.

TURNS OUT: Six months earlier, Robert had gone on a bender after an urban Barnes and Noble appearance, which is basically a stadium show, and blacked out. Suddenly, while freaking out about his present-day kidnapped daughter, he remembers flashes of what happened. Turns out, he had slept with Bridgette, real name Joanie, out on the road and she had turned out to be insane. It all adds up! Kinda!

Joanie goes to rent a boat from a grizzled old man to return to the other side of the lake and kill Kristen and hook up with Robert.

Joanie pops up in the garage and gets into an altercation with Kristen. There's an amazing part of the scene where Joanie kind of lamely pokes Kristen's face with a gun for a WHILE while she delivers a monologue. They tussle, she chokes Kristen until she passes out. Then she puts Kristen back in the car, in the garage, and turns it on, leaving her to asphyxiate. Point Joanie.

Then she goes inside to confront Robert, who is inexplicably wearing a hoodie. So she shoots him. Not because of the hoodie, though it was really bad, but because Robert doesn't want to run away with her. After he gets shot, she assumes he's dead then runs back to the cabin to grab Sully and make a run for it (after also shooting Pacey. She's really big on the gun.)

Robert, lying face down after being shot, lifts his head. There is the funniest sound design I've ever heard for the blood dropping from his wounded arm. It's like someone peeing on a tin roof.  He finds Kristen in the garage and revives her, by yelling BREATHE at her.

Empowered, HE now gets in a boat and speeds across the lake, face stoic and chest puffed like Washington crossing the Delaware. He lands on the other side, crawls up the embankment, and stands in the middle of the bridge over the lake, waiting for Joanie and Sully in a car to drive directly at him. I don't know how he knew to be there. Movie magic.

Finally, Sully and Crazy get out of the car for a final standoff with Robert. Quick thinkers, Sully and Robert jump into the water to avoid being shot. And right when you think Joanie is going to pick them off, the viewer hears one final gunshot as Kristen Wiig shoots Joanie in the back.

Then, as the end credits rolled, we sat in silence, trying to wrap our brains what we had just watched.

I give it a solid 9/10, in what is admittedly stark contrast to Rotten Tomatoes' 20%, but I stand by it. I'm mostly docking the full point because I felt that using the word Adoption in the title was misleading. There was barely anything about adoption. They don't even inquire about Bridgette's medical history.

Luckily, they over-delivered on the "Deadly".

I have a fascination with what people wanted to be when they grew up. The question has a bad rap, as a throwaway, to fill awkward silences on blind dates, but I love asking and being asked. I want to hear about how you wanted to be a firefighter when you were a kid, and if I’m feeling generous, I’ll assure you that yes, the fact that you’re now your office building’s floor marshal counts. I mean, you EARNED that gig (by being out the day they chose.)

My first AOL screen name was Mo4Prez. Mo, because it was my nickname, short for Maureen, my real first name. “4Prez” because I had decided that I would be the first woman president of the United States. This was during the years that Clinton and Lewinsky were smashing but before we all knew about it. This job had everything I could ever want: it wasn’t located in Oreland, Pennsylvania, I wouldn't really have a boss (you know, besides the American people) and it looked great on a resume. I could picture myself, normally clad in leggings and sporting baby bangs, in a drab pantsuit, with a sensible haircut. When I hit age 10, that picture lost it’s anti-glam sheen as I realized how... administrative this job would inevitably be. I decided instead, that I wanted to be a famous novelist. Why not? I could do anything.

When I was a kid, our parents were all about telling their kids to follow their dreams, whatever they were. Maybe this was a knee-jerk rebellion against their own parents, who had sent them to Catholic school with nuns who beat them with Bibles, systematically scoffed at their dreams and threatened to make them take over the family business. If these stories are true, they were expected to pick something reliable, call tops “blouses” and retire after 40 years at the same company. It makes sense, then, that our parents wanted us to do something we love because then we could be Guaranteed Happy. In the early 2000s, it was rare that you heard of a set of parents ordering their child to return home to Peoria after Ohio State undergrad to run the family mortuary.

When I graduated from college, I set out on a path surrounded by incredibly creative people: musicians, primarily, but also visual artists, and writers. Sound was my future because I loved doing it. Simple as that. I was excited that I was able to listen to my parents and follow my heart.

For the first couple of years out of music school, I wanted to make sound my job. I interned at one audio post-production house, then another, while I took on my own projects that consisted mostly of sound edits for film school juniors and bored wealthy men in their fifties.

In order to pay my bills, I was a live-in nanny for a family with a terminally ill mother and a daughter who had been adopted after a multi-year custody battle. I willingly inserted myself into a situation that was fraught with emotion, disappointment, and anger. I lived in the attic and dreaded going downstairs to watch the wild child of a daughter and sustained daily bites from their cat, who suffered from Crohn’s disease.

I also worked a retail job where my job title was “stylist” even though my primary job purpose was to sign the citizens of Seattle up for store credit cards. Incidentally, I was the best at it at my store. As an addendum to the required sales pitch of “If you open a card with us, you’ll save an additional 15% off your purchase today” I would add “And if you’re worried about interest, as soon as we’re finished with this transaction you can go ahead and pay your account balance with your debit card and never use the store card ever again if you don’t want to. Here, you can borrow my scissors.” The highest card openers would both keep their job, and regularly get free clothing, which is how I managed to avoid being naked for probably a full calendar year. 

I was miserable, but it allowed me to have something resembling a sound career, and that was the goal. And if it wasn’t still the goal, I couldn’t tell, because I was too busy working side jobs trying to afford to reach it.

For me, and for some of my friends, the directive to follow our passion kind of backfired. A large number of people in my life starting out doing what made them happy as a career. But they did it for so many more hours, and in a hyper-competitive environment where their creative work was constantly critiqued, that it made them miserable. I remember coming home from work and just not knowing what to do with myself. The last thing I wanted to do was to play around with audio files or write music. I had been doing that all day for a client who didn’t know what they wanted but kept repeating random adjectives at me angrily until they had finally grown tired, long after the studio staff had gone home.

It’s obviously not impossible to make your passion a career successfully. I know it isn’t, because Lady Gaga exists. But sometimes I feel like it’s maybe just as brave to.. not.

Also:

• One of the creative producers we’re working with thinks that the “stakes” in a story is spelled “steaks.” Told the creative lead that I would give him $20 to reply all to his latest email to the full team with just “Mmm…. steaks.” He’s thinking about it.
• I fucked up cutting my bangs a couple of months ago and I’m afraid to go to my hairstylist because I know I’m gonna get a very mild lecture that lasts about 10 seconds. Having disproportionate anxiety about it.
• How do you go about finding an old factory to live in? My heart is telling me that’s where I should live if I’m going to have a shot at being the best version of myself. My initial research, though, has told me that I may as well empty my meager savings account into a metal garbage can now and set it on fire. It'll be quicker and I won’t have to navigate zoning laws.

Tonight I had to join a 9PM call with one of our LA creative teams. I live in a world where EOD means nothing without a time zone attached to it… New York, LA, Tel Aviv...occasionally a fake-out far away city like Atlanta trying to trick me.

It was a creative call, an update from a writers room currently in progress, which meant my role in the call was “extra set of ears." But generally I’m happy to be easygoing about a 9PM call just to reiterate that I’m Really Involved. From my perspective, taking one evening call makes up for being kind of late for about three days. It shouldn't matter because it’s “ok to be late” (I don’t believe you) and "no really it’s fine we’re actually a super cool start up who cares about you" (there’s no way that’s just cool) and you get so confused and your head hurts so you just say fuck it and show up late a fourth day, smelling like nice dry shampoo, clutching an iced latte like the Olsen Twin: The Later Years that you are.

During the call I did some planks and then I did some downward dogs for a while and then I became horrified with how much hair is on my bedroom floor, so I got up and swept it. It was easier to focus while I was moving around. Sometimes I think making my body be all normal all day is exhausting, I feel like I’m constantly wanting to suddenly just lie down on the floor while I'm talking to a colleague, or sit cross-legged on my office chair. It's so hard for me to smile through an entire conversation with no breaks, especially if it's particularly joyous one. My natural expression is mild concern. My face hurts. It's not like I'm always about to burst into an unprofessionally choreographed dance, but I am so conscious of my body. In fourth grade, someone told me to "sit up straight, hon" and I have thought about it every day of my life since then. “My back feels straight. But am I looking down too much? I should be better about making eye contact. Lean back. Wait, whoa, what if I overcorrect and my whole body starts bending in the entirely opposite direction? Is that as hilarious as I feel like it is? Is that my legacy?” etc.

We ended the call with my boss saying, “Ok I really have to go- I’m at Trader Joe’s and my wife is gonna be pissed if I don’t get what we needed before it closes so I’m gonna lose you in a second, it’s super time sensitive I need to buy 5 frozen pizzas but I need them to all be called a different word for pizza (he didn't say that last part) I’m going down the-e esca- -es- cala- tor… -ow...

And with that... he was gone. 

I'm starting to plan a 30th birthday trip to New Orleans, which means it's a reasonable amount of time between now and turning 30, which means my brain has gone into hyperdrive with plans and priorities.

I went for a run in Central Park the other day with a friend who recently moved to an apartment a block from the park. Coming back after the run to a totally empty apartment that was decorated exactly the way she wanted made me suddenly jealous of her living alone.

I feel like growing up I always had a picture of me living in Manhattan in a super tiny but meticulously decorated shoebox... in a neighborhood that's not inconvenient but also isn't necessarily the coolest, of-the-moment hood. Even in my dreams I wasn't ever picturing a huge, modern apartment. Just something that was mine, and, to be honest, something in Manhattan.

It was the 20th anniversary of the premiere of Sex and the City the other day. I didn't watch it in real time, it was just before my time, but I did spend the entire year I lived in Thailand watching a bootlegged DVD of all six seasons I bought in Burma so I could listen to English and feel slightly closer to home. I've always known just how unrealistic Carrie's lifestyle was, but if you dial it down about 1000%, that's maybe a little bit of what I'm going for.

Of course, there's also a lot about the show that's problematic bordering on totally insane, and once you peel it all away you're not left with all that much. Which makes me wonder- is it even really possible for a normal girl to be glamorous in the Big Apple? And if you think about it, isn't writing about Carrie in her own voice just the absolute worst?

I've lived in Brooklyn since I moved to NYC, a solid 45 minute commute to my job near Union Square. I love it, especially my current pad which was an insanely good find with two uber respectful, busy, lowkey roommates. I feel silly even thinking about a new place because this place is so great and I'm not going to leave any time soon.

I've been making a lot of financial spreadsheets, which is how I deal with change in my life- you know, aging, new resolutions, a conscious shift in my style strategy... playing the game where I balance austerity measures (like making the Sophie's choice that is Netflix vs Hulu) ambition (how much money will I make in a year? in 5?) and out of the box strategies (how much do you get for selling your eggs again? what's the going rate for a quippy young freelance notary public? did I write off subway drumming prematurely?) Even when the actual numbers are less than inspiring I still get a sort of comfort from at least knowing where I stand.

Speaking of austerity, I took the long journey today down to Sunset Park. In one of the huge warehouse buildings in Grand Army Terminal, there's a nonprofit that operates called Fabscrap. They pick up industrial fabric pieces that would otherwise be trashed and recycle it. You can sign up for three hour volunteer blocks where you sort fabric for them, and then get 5 lbs of free fabric in return. I left with 6.8 lbs of fabric and a heightened ability to tell the difference between cotton blends and 100% cotton. Heightened from the no ability I started with.

And as the breeze drifted through my curtains, I could smell summer- and I thought, maybe being in Brooklyn isn't a consession after all (cut to the theme song but with the end credits #reuse #recycle #SATC)

I'm writing this from our backyard, which now has a bright mint green table and a wooden chaise lounge that I assembled with my own hands (and some freakishly tiny tools, included). It's about 70 degrees, the sun is setting and I am three Lacroixes deep. I am just housing seltzer these days. It's been over six months since I've had alcohol, my skin is glowing, I don't have any new embarrassing stories, and I am SO much less fun.

I just spent two hours deciding on a fabric for my new sewing project... landed on this peach (eh, pink) chambray that I will hopefully make into a casually chic jacket. And hopefully, like all of my sewing projects so far, I will wear to the office and ask everyone if they like it, then when they grudgingly tell me that they do, I'll tell them I made it, and their eyes will pop out of their heads (they won't) and they'll grudgingly give me the praise that gets me through every day. I love a genuine compliment but I will totally take a coerced one too.

My latest project was a kimono that I ended up really liking. I'm taking a LOT of time to finish these projects, I want to learn how to do it properly, with nice hems and errrything. If I'm going to learn, I want to REALLY learn, but it's making me really strain to gather all of the patience I have. Did you know that sewing requires a ton of ironing? Ugh.

I finally met our neighbor behind us. I was out back wiping down the aforementioned table and I heard a super friendly "hello!" from across the fence. I glanced over and he was on the stairs in his yard (they live on the second floor, but I guess they own the backyard so there is a expertly executed system of partitions and stairs that makes that work) smiling and waving. We both walked over to the fence that was dividing us, at which point we both realized that neither of us were tall enough to see OVER the fence (perspective really shifts things) so we had a chat between the slats.

His name is either Merg or Merv. Or Merk? It definitely sounded like Merg but I am not confident at all. He was extremely nice, and after introducing himself (it has to be Merg...) he passed a plastic bag with two little gray mini donuts in it to me over the fence. He told us to fill a bucket with water and put one of these donuts in it. Mosquitos are drawn to stagnant water, which I knew, and would lay their eggs in the water, which I did not know, and apparently the little circular gift would stop the eggs from hatching. So yeah, they weren't donuts.

He was giving them to all of the neighbors to see if we could minimize the mosquito infestation for the summer.

I have never felt more neighborhoody since leaving East Oreland, Pennsylvania. I assured him that we would do so immediately, then took the baggie inside and forgot about them until this moment. And now I'm adding it as a task in the task management app that I use. I am so so so close to being the hottest mess, I really do rely on technology quite heavily these days to exist. It's objectively devastating.

Last night, I went to see My Fair Lady at Lincoln Center. A friend of mine had won tickets to this whole package deal and was hoping to fly in from California to go, but ended up not being able to make it SO the tickets were generously gifted to me. In addition to the show, it included a swanky dinner at the restaurant next door to the theater and a "talk" by a "Broadway expert."

Luckily, I brought someone who's eyes are always oiled up and ready to roll, because we found ourselves in the midst of a group of people who were all clearly v old and v rich. The Broadway expert was a woman who, while very talented I'm sure, waxed drone-like as she tried to present the themes and core conflicts of the show. The talk was punctuated by her asking the audience if they wanted to hear her sing a bit of one of the songs and then confidently launching into it without waiting for much of a response. That was probably for the best as the only response I could hear was one elderly man who croaked out something that maybe sounded a bit like "yes" but it could have been a burp.

Then we ate THE BEST FOOD I've had in a long time. It was incredible. The setting was so insanely wrong, I made my friend wear a tie, it was a weird cultural experiment for us but absolutely worth any discomfort because this food was next level. It would have been delicious regardless, but that umami note that comes with food being free really took it over the top.

As we left the restaurant to head to the theater, we tried to get our coats from the coat check. An older man who was part of this whole thing told us "oh, you can just keep them here and come back for the cocktail hour afterwards!" at which I point I requested that he return our coats now "just in case we can't make it back."

We did not make it back.

The show itself was fantastic. I mean listen, it's an extremely sexist show and I'm not sure what the final message is supposed to be, but I do love a lot of the music and the cast was on point. And at the end of the day, it was actually fun getting to put on an outfit I rarely wear and do something I normally wouldn't do.

I enjoyed it so much that next weekend I think I will put on some elbow length satin gloves and perform an autopsy.

Does anyone else keep screenshots of nice things their boss says to them in a Google Drive folder for when they're feeling shitty about themselves? Also just any compliments they've ever received in writing? And then a list of qualities they like about themselves in a note in their phone?

Also, when I'm feeling bored and restless I remind myself that I don't have a UTI and I just sit there feeling normal and I feel just so grateful.

(Now that I have an IUD, I have to take like three full seconds before I say UTI, IUD or IED in a conversation because I need to confirm in my head which one is the one I mean)(it's almost never IED, but not never)

Do you think that the last thing Ben Affleck thinks about before he falls asleep at night is his back tattoo? There's no way that isn't persistently tormenting him.

Oh wait SO I had a party a couple of weeks ago to celebrate the arrest of the Golden State Killer, the serial murderer/rapist who had eluded police for 40 years.

For those of us who are true crime oriented, this was a HUGE development. For me personally, it gave me the chance to tell the story of the GSK to multiple people who weren't familiar. This was an opportunity, much like Fyre Festival, to stretch my storytelling muscles with a story that basically tells itself.

There's so much to say, but the most emotional part of the arrest for me is the closure for Michelle McNamara. Michelle was an incredible investigative journalist who spent her entire career searching for this guy and she died, suddenly, two years ago, before he was caught. Her book, finished with the help of her colleagues, was published posthumously, about two months ago. 

In a section of the book, she spoke directly to the man who raped over 40 people and killed 12:

"This is how it ends for you. 'You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark,' you threatened a victim once. Open the door. Show us your face. Walk into the light."

Shivers.

Guys. GUYS. I'm sorry. I have been neglecting you. I read an article recently about how procrastinators are actually perfectionists who care about doing good work who are terrified of disappointing people so they have a hard time starting things and if I actually felt bad about being a procrastinator that article would have made me feel so much better!

I just want everything to be perfect. For you.

Last week I went to a talk at the DUMBO location of The Wing. The Wing, for those who aren't in the know, is the impeccably designed "women's coworking space and social club." It was started in 2016 by Audrey Gelman, who I want to hate so badly but just can't. She is an exceptionally privileged woman who has actually done some very cool things (like have a guest role on Girls!)(she did, but that's not the cool thing)(but also she's friends with Lena Dunham)(and that's cool depending on whether or not we're all liking Lena Dunham that day.)

She's been heavily involved in progressive politics in her 20s, now (she's 30ish) she's founded The Wing, which by all accounts has been super successful in the two years it's been in existence.

Basically it's a midcentury modern clubhouse for the ladies and I hate that I want to be a member SO badly. I'm so drawn to the perfectly coordinated furniture and the bookshelves full of books, all written by women, hundreds of them, organized by color. Honestly, if I joined, it would be to have a place to write that isn't my apartment. And then maybe I would procrastinate less? The monthly price tag exists in this weird place on the expense spectrum, right between "I can reasonably justify this" (i.e. a good haircut, buying a hardcover book) and "this is actually getting a little ridiculous" (i.e. an Equinox membership, juice fast deliveries, the costs that come with trying to give your dog a decent existence in NYC.)

The talk was given by two female staff writers from the obituary section of the NY Times. It was an accident that we were there, my friend misread the schedule and we were expecting a completely different talk entitled "First Jobs" but we rolled with it. Frankly we didn't have a choice, we were sitting in the front row, but I'm glad I stayed.

One of the women had just started about a year ago, the other one had been on obits for something like 14 years. They were talking about how the Times decides who gets a fancy, big featured obituary and who doesn't. They have this incredible project called "Overlooked" where they acknowledge the fact that the obituaries have been dominated by white men since 1851 and present freshly written obituaries for a bunch of women who were overlooked.

Speaking of kicking the bucket- I was listening to a podcast the other day, one of my favs called "The Hound Tall Discussion Series", where they have a panel of comics interview an expert on a subject in a live show at UCB in LA. This one was about death, and the expert was a mortician. She talked about how, instead of cremation, the best use of your dead shell of a body is actually what's called a natural burial. Basically you eschew the trappings of traditional burial (embalming, casket, etc) and let your body decompose naturally in a hole. Not sure if this is a legally binding document, but that sounds really good to me (re: cheap, less fuss) so I think I'll go with that please.

I remember about ten total conversations I've ever had in any sort of detail. The biggest piece of the pie chart is "times when I embarrassed myself." The rest are times that did not seem particularly consequential at the time, and as I grew older, I realized that they were indeed inconsequential. My brain has a system of sorting things (and throwing memories away) that I clearly have no control over.

I very clearly remember one walk home from school with a girl I knew. We were friends in the way you often were with childhood friends- we lived in the same neighborhood and were roughly the same age, so our parents told us we were friends.

We were walking home one day, and apparently her mother had done something that she was not happy about (what could it possibly have been? she wouldn't buy her butterfly hair clips? she wouldn't let her go to the movies with the 'boyfriend' she was too scared to talk to in person? she wasn't allowed to use the computer for the four hours it would take to load a single webpage?) She did a sort of hair flip, which my brain may have added retroactively for affect, and declared dramatically- "Mo." (I was still using this androgynous, Stooge-y nickname for my given first name at this point) "You have to promise me something." I guess I nodded or thrust out my pinky or something because she was satisfied enough to continue, "If I ever. EVER. end up like my mother, just kill me."

For whatever reason I remember, vividly, this conditional request for me to ultimately bump someone off, that I solemnly swore to undertake should it become necessary. Not once did either of think I would find myself needing to go through with it.

I rarely go back to church anymore. I grew up going every single Sunday. We would have Sunday School in the AM before the service, and our family was Extremely Involved. I was expected to make an appearance every week with no exceptions. Naturally, I loved it (I did not.) but it was important to my mom and so we went.

When I'm back in Philadelphia now, as an adult, I'll go every once in a while. My beliefs haven't really changed since teenagerhood (it's sort of an agnostic flavor of cynicism laced with a stubborn refusal to declare myself an atheist because fuck if I know why we're here) but most of the people I knew from the community have grown up and moved on, and there is a new batch of families at the services, most of whom I don't recognize.

When I do go, however, there is one group of church personnel that never seems to change, and that is the church choir. Every Sunday, a very slightly different combination of the same people shuffle up to the altar and sing their hearts out along to a flamboyant backing track with a confusing concentration of African percussion. And every time I've come home and gone to a service, I have seen my friend shuffle right alongside her mom, turn to the congregation and proceed to look and sing EXACTLY like her mother.

If we go by sight, the level of similarity is unnerving. She sports the same bangs as her mother, her adult facial features are an exact replica. They even wear the same choir robe (although to be fair, so does everyone in the choir.)

So the question becomes- at what point do I have an obligation to murder her? I feel at the moment that I don't have enough information. Just because they look identical, doesn't mean she's become her mother. And further- maybe she's exactly like her mom, but she's happy. I could ask her I guess but, we stopped being friends in the way that you often did with your childhood friends- you no longer live in the same neighborhood and while you remain roughly the same age, there aren't two sets of parents actively facilitating playdates for you.

I do wonder why my brain holds on to certain things and lets other things go. My memory is notoriously bad. I can't tell you the general plot of books that I loved reading. I don't remember that quote from a TV show (unless it's The Office, when I can, but only because I've seen it more times than a healthy human should.) I remember pieces of the birthday parties I had as a kid, but mostly because of the photo evidence I've seen since.

Sometimes I wonder if this is why I have such a hard time breaking out of behavioral patterns that aren't helping me. While I remember the vague feeling of the consequences, I don't remember each and every fact of my past experiences, which leaves me open to doing some of the same things over and over and expecting different results. Is that actually insane or just extremely human (is there a difference?) And while we're asking the tough questions, how is it that Gael Garcia Bernal is as hot as he is?

I'm a star sleeper, no thanks to my genes. My dad in particular has always had sleep issues. He wakes up every morning at 4ish, goes downstairs and starts reading (always a sizeable historical tome... biography of Truman, stories about spies in World War II, "If I Did It" by OJ Simpson)(yeah ok I'm kidding about the last one, that's more my speed.) He'll read a few pages, then fall asleep, only to wake up fifteen minutes later and start the cycle again. He's been to doctors, participated in sleep studies, tried home remedies, all to no avail.

Over the years, to be honest, Dad's early wakeup really came in handy for us. I remember times in high school realizing that the outfit I wanted to wear the next day was unacceptably dirty at 11PM. I would pop it into the washing machine, and ask Dad to stick it in the dryer when he woke up, giving it plenty of time to dry, thus ensuring my ever important sartorial choices.

Ugh remember washing machines?

I also had a habit in high school (and, who am I kidding, middle school)(and fuck, probably elementary school) where I would be so tired by the end of the day that I would go to bed at 9, and have my dad wake me up at 5:30AM to finish my homework before school. When I was tired, I needed to sleep. Pulling an all-nighter was never an option because I physically couldn't do it. On the two or three times in my life that I tried, I would fall asleep on my work at 3AM and wake up with ink all over my face and pages of completely incomprehensible scrawls scattered around me, which was extra bizarre because it was 2004 and I was using a computer.

All of this to say- I didn't sleep too well last night. I had BOTH of my recurring stress dreams, my radiator sounded like a tiny, angry person was trying to escape from it all night, and at 6:53 (my body really knows my 7AM alarm) I was already wide awake, reading a long form article about Hope Hicks and the general clusterfuck that is our government. By 7:15, I was watching dance videos on Instagram wistfully, wishing I had stuck with my dance lessons and not quit at age 8. At 7:45 I rolled out of bed, made some coffee, and opened my laptop.

P.S. The other day, a friend who I hadn't seen in a while asked me what I had been up to. When I told her I'd been trying to write more, she said "That's right!" she said. "I need to check out your blog. I was told that it's sad."

1) Yessss someone was talking about my blog (no bad press?)
2) Sad? Hmm...

When I sit down to write something that I know more than one and probably less than twenty people will almost definitely read, my goal, of course, isn't to be depressing. But I also don't stop myself from writing about how hard things are, or how I went through an experience that was painful, or sad. This isn't a preachy lifestyle blog with some cutesy pun for a name (I mean I did come up with a TON of pun-based names but ended up nixing them all)(you're welcome.)

Anyway. I do appreciate you coming with me when I do touch on things that are less than glittery. And because you made it to the end of this post, I'd like you have this song from the recording artist Tiffany Trump and this article about Ben Affleck's back tattoo. Well, more about how everyone making fun of Ben Affleck's back tattoo. Because we do have fun here.

“'Lifestyle' is really only one part of all of this, you know?” our founder Gwyneth Paltrow has been known to posit, gesturing widely with her arm on the days when she can summon the strength to lift it. “It’s important that you also do everything you can do to honor and beautify your deathstyle.”

1) The Products

Invigorated by Gwyneth’s new and delightfully morbid focus on our certain mortality, Goop now offers a line of artisanal nooses, as well as bespoke burying smocks. Made from fairly sourced materials and blessed by someone who is not religious but spiritual, these items are priced starting at everything you’d have left should you kick it today.

2) The Look

Our beauty editor Rachel Kirkpatrick offers the following: “No one really thinks enough about the makeup you’re buried with. You’re buried ‘in'? Anyway, an open casket is your last chance to make others feel less than.” She suggests a combination of high density pigmented concealer to cover any unsightly evidence of your demise and a sheer highlighter to showcase your sunken cheekbones and emphasize that fleeting, recently-alive glow.

3) The Method

And for those looking for guidance as to the best method, we have you covered. We asked our Goop readers for their favorite ways to die and if we were capable of feeling genuine enthusiasm we would be so excited to share them with you.

The number one way to go? Dying of happiness, in one's beauty sleep (happiness, incidentally, is also available for purchase on our Goop online marketplace.) Runners up include experimental skin injections, conscious uncoupling with modern medicine, and self-inflicted blunt trauma due to having caved in the face of a grocery store scone.

According to Paltrow, "Goop feels that it's important for our community to know that death is just another beautiful opportunity to do something incorrectly."

If you know me at all, you probably know that I've never had a serious relationship. While it's not necessarily something I lead with (at 29), it's also become a weird, persistent part of my brand. We don't have to get into the reasons now, but just know that it's an area of my life that I've never prioritized, until very recently.

I just got home from the two month relationship I was in ending. This exceeds my longest actual relationship by 2 months minus 3 days (I had a short relationship with a boy in 5th grade) (We were both in 5th grade.)

I sat across from the two-monther as he stared into his tea. I knew something was up, the last few times we had seen each other, he was distracted. But then we'd say goodbye, and we'd kiss, and I would go home feeling mildly reassured and a little bit crush-nauseous and trusting that if something was wrong, he would talk to me about it.

When a guy you're dating start a conversation with "I've had this thing in the back of my mind," you don't waste a second. You immediately start replaying every single thing you said or did over the last two months to find the moment where, precisely, it went wrong. So I was little bit distracted when he continued with "I am getting to a point where I'm starting to really have feelings for you. But I also know that it's really important to me to end up with someone who's Jewish. I don't know if I can keep going with us knowing that." I was genuinely surprised. I was losing this guy because of something that I actually had absolutely no control over. As someone who finds a fucked up comfort in blaming myself for everything, I felt a little dizzy and a little sad-nauseous.

I found myself for the first time in this weird space- let's just call it "The Relationship Ending Even Though The Two People Still Really Like Each Other Zone." It was kind of foggy and bright at the same time and I kept bursting into tears for like 4 seconds and then getting my shit together and looking masterfully nonplussed only to immediately fall apart again. I even said out loud (kill me) "I'm just getting emotional." Rose. Everyone outside of your apartment knows what emotions are. Some of these people even express them regularly. You don't need to tell someone while you start to cry that you are "having emotions." 

When I came out the other side of The REETTTPSLEO Zone, my project manager side made an unscheduled appearance to try to come up with quick solutions to solve this unfortunate problem. Other than a very alarming 20 millisecond period of considering converting to Judaism (TO BE FAIR my brain was breaking at the moment) I had nothing. So I stalled for time. I managed to draw this relatively simple conversation ("You're not a Jew and I need you to be" "Welp, goodbye.") out for a full thirty minutes. If I hadn't seen the latest Bachelor episode I would think that I had just had the most agonizingly long breakup ever to occur, ever. I said I liked him, he said he liked me, he said he was sorry, I said it was ok (it wasn't, but even as I'm being dumped I'm still trying to come across as the cool, chill girl.) Then we repeated those sentiments again, then again. We really had it down by the seventh time through.

When we finally ran out of air, I faced one of the weirdest moment's in human life- the very last moment that you're dating someone.

You aren't eased back into singlehood. You have one last moment of "actually, I am seeing someone Mom" and then just like that, it's gone. And you can't just keep holding this person's hand anymore. You have to give him back the hand so you can have yours available to wipe the eye makeup off your face if you cry on the subway (if you need to. It's not mandatory.)

So three hours have passed now. And it will take me more than three hours to get over this guy. But my brain is booting back up again and I'm thinking about this relationship's purpose, and how it was maybe a little bit exactly what it should have been:

1) I dated someone for two whole months without freaking out early and running, getting tired of it/him/myself, or finding something horrible out about him accidentally on purpose when I stalked him on the internet.

2) Rose. Buddy. You haven't cried in front of another human being in like 3 years. The fact that you cried sucks and we will definitely obsess over this happening later but for today, let's be proud. Feelings are good and you shouldn't be afraid to have them and share them (I have this written in dry erase marker on my bathroom mirror)(I don't, but fuck, maybe I should.)

3) He was so cute but SO short so our kids wouldn't've have a chance.

I'm glad that this person was in my life. He said he didn't wish it had never happened and I said the same and I meant it. It doesn't mean I'm not sad about it- I'm sad, and angry, and hungry (that one might be unrelated.) But it's not impossible for me to imagine that one day I'll feel that this was only ever supposed to be a first step in the right, new direction.

Before I left (which I did, eventually, throwing my tea away without drinking any of it), he said "please don't delete me from your life." I'm pretty sure I will never see him again on purpose but I don't think I'd be able to completely delete him from life, even if I wanted to.

PS Motherfucker had a British accent. Damn.

Oh hi guys.

I'm feeling a bit meh today and also I was also meh on Tuesday and probably will be tomorrow so I can't come up with any quippy narrative string to connect anything I may have to say but here. we. are. and here. are. some. of. my. unfiltered. thoughts. Ooh maybe that's the string! This blog post's theme is "No edits"

How is it that I've never made cake in a mug?

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend just got really dark and I am tapping out. That is not at all what I wanted from this show. I'm not sure what I wanted from this show but this definitely isn't it.

Sometimes when I'm sad I go to Whole Foods and buy fish and eat, like, a lot of it. I usually don't even make any other foods, I just eat a big chunk of salmon.

What if Phish the band exists just to break into hippies' email accounts and steal their credit card numbers? I mean it would kind of be a little bit their own fault right?

Last weekend I ran to the Atlantic Terminal Target to went to get curtain rods. I left with 8 pairs of underwear, a frozen pizza, and eye makeup remover.

While I was there, I saw a velour jumpshit. I meant to type velour jumpsuit just now but my brain changed it to jumpshit and I kinda like it. Anyway I saw one and I my heart totally sank. I was on board with the 90s coming back until that moment.

Speaking of which- could I rock a pair of Doc Martens?

My therapist, who is technically a psychoanalyst, has me lying down during our sessions now. She says that it's usually easier to get through blockages in the way we communicate because her patients don't have to make eye contact. So now I don't have to work on my aversion to eye contact (score) BUT I do have to deal with serious eye irritation when the very soluble eye makeup that I forgot not to wear on Mondays comes pouring into my eyeballs when/if (let's be real, when) I start crying. I cry a lot in therapy because I'm incapable of crying literally any other time.

AND FINALLY- Heather Locklear's newest mug shot is bonkers.

Seyfried out.

Hi guys! It's Valentine's Day! I know this because this guy I'm hanging out with texted me "Happy Valentine's Day" and I ate a bunch of chocolate that I bought for myself #traditions

This marks the very first Draft blog post written on actual loose leaf paper. It's not even housed in a binder, these are true leaves of loose paper. It feels weird but three sentences in I'm already feeling my muscle memory come to my rescue. I know that I have years worth of handwritten journals packed away in boxes. They're crazy reads, mostly because of an acute lack of editing. Writing in a journal with a pen means a) you're pretty much stuck with what you've got down and b) it's fine because the intended audience is a whopping one person- and you know that she (you)(me) will cut you some serious slack.

Typing into a browser, for a larger group, is a completely different concept. As meandering as this all seems, it's usually not the first draft that I write that ends up live on the internet. Even now, I'm already looking forward to typing this up and doing a couple of passes to punch up the language before I make it available for your beautiful, blue light damaged eyes.

The other day my sister tagged me in a Time Out New York post, part of their series called "The Undateables" where they "take two undateable New Yorkers and put our matchmaking skills to the test." 

It was cringeworthy, and I was overcome with a wave of relief that I had never had a date quite as bad as the one described in the column (when she asked him what his favorite film was, he just answered "porn") Along with the relief, however, came some clearly repressed memories of my experience with the NY Post's "Meet Market" column.

For those of you unfamiliar, the NY Post is like a newspaper, but worse. It's what you would want to have handy if, say, you're rabbit sitting for the daughter of your company's VP Creative and the cage is freshly cleaned and the bunny's got that gleam in her eye that comes right before a good pee. So naturally, when someone from the Post reached out to me on OkCupid in 2012 (Jesus Christ, I've been on these dating sites for eons) and invited me to participate in their blind date column, I responded with an enthusiastic "You guys would pay for it, right?"

They brought me into their offices to ask me a few questions about myself and take an only mildly unflattering picture of me. They explained how it would work- every week, the person in the hot seat is presented with three options of people to go out with. They would take whoever they picked out on a date, which would be planned (and paid for!) by the Post. The person they chose would have no info about, or picture of, the one who had picked them. A couple of weeks later, I received an email informing me that I had been chosen. I imagine Harry Potter felt similarly when he found out how special he was.

So this is how I found myself at a bowling alley near Union Square, waiting for someone I didn't know a single thing about.

Now, listen. I know what you're thinking. "Rose, that's great! I'm sure the NY Post, a publication known for its integrity and attention to detail, probably used an advanced algorithm to present the chooser with choosees who offer different but equally legitimate complementary personalities in order to create lasting romantic bonds!" I know! You really would think that! Unfortunately, this particular match was less than perfect, or, you know good, at all.

It being 5 years ago, I don't remember most of the date. I do remember that he was very nice. I also remember that he struggled to come up with his top 5 albums. Expanding it to "5 albums you like" didn't see to help, then in a desperate attempt - "ok, 5 albums you've listened to in your life".  He mumbled something about Lupe Fiasco and then I proceeded to kick his ass at bowling. Poor guy. If you are a living, breathing human person you should be able to beat me at bowling.

We never made it to my favorite get-to-know-you question, which of course is "What famous person would you definitely sleep with but then be embarrassed about it later?" (for the record, my answers: Seth MacFarlane and present-day Haley Joel Osment)(embarrassed, remember.)

The next day we were sent questionnaires to fill out about the date. I did my best to be gracious and nice. And succinct. And when the column came out, I was pleased to find that it was extremely boring. I never saw the guy again, and not a single person I knew actually ever stumbled across the article on their own.

And now, as a Valentine's Day gift, I'm sharing the original NY Post columns with you- the one where I was pitted against two other woman, AND the recap of our magical date. 

Love you all. Happy Valentine's Day xxoo

You know you've been hit hard with the crazy stick when you're walking down the street on the way to work and it suddenly occurs to you that you maybe kind of like someone and you burst into tears because you literally don't know how to handle a feeling.

There is no two word phrase that bums me out more than "active recovery."

Last weekend, I was interviewed for a blog that was created by a Berklee economics professor (surprise! Berklee has classes that aren't called Techno/Rave Ensemble or Ear Training 4 or The History of Britney Spears). The blog is appropriately called otherberkleealumni.com and it's a huge archive of interviews with Berklee grads who are successfully working in fields that are not music. And if you take the term "successfully" a little bit stretchily, that's me.

He asked me a lot of questions, all of which were good, and I just found myself talking and talking. I don't even know what I said. At one point he asked me about what I wished I had gotten more of at Berklee and I think I said something about a higher level of academic discourse, at which point I violently recoiled at my own douchiness. And I definitely said something about how we should all "be kind to ourselves" when trying to navigate our careers after Berklee. I think I was using the word "kind" because I saw Meghan Markle use it when talking about His Royal Gingerness and it stuck in the back of my brain. Man that girl really did it, didn't she. She's beautiful and smart and bagged a royal and there's literally nothing that I can shit on her for. As far as I'm concerned, she and Amal Clooney are untouchable.

I grew up drinking skim milk.

My grandma moved in with us in the early 2000s. She had been living in an apartment about a mile away for a while then. Her mental health was deteriorating, slowly at first, and then faster, and it became clear that she needed full time eyes on her. We would go over to her apartment, and it was always kind of dark and cluttered... never dirty, but full of random things. She liked the idea of crafting but wasn't really adept at making things with her hands, so the crafting detritus would just end up in piles.

I remember she used to drink 2% milk in her tea. After she moved in, we would always have a small container of it next to the gallon jugs of skim milk that we needed to replace almost every single day. I remember thinking of 2% as the fat content that I would drink when I was older and had reached a point where I could do anything.

I also remember her afternoon Old Fashioneds. She would make them, strong, and park herself in front of Oprah, mere inches from the screen. I remember so distinctly the smell of her cheap Canadian whiskey.

I remember my mom drinking a Coke every single day when I was growing up. Most of the time I would miss it, she would drink it during lunch while I was at school. But on weekends, there it was. Every day.

Every morning, my dad always brought my mom her first cup of coffee in bed. I always just thought of it as the thing Mom needed to find the physical strength to get out of bed and chase her millions of kids around every morning. Now I also see it as a gesture from my dad. He was (is) so quietly supportive and consistent. I started drinking coffee early.

I remember packing a can of seltzer with my "lunches" in middle school. I always used to pack my own lunches. Looking back, I know my dad would have done it, but even then I resented needing any help, so I wearily did all of these small things myself.

I would sit at lunch with a granola bar and a seltzer, miserable, sure that the content of this lunch was going to be the key to being skinnier. But all it ever did was make me sad and hungry and feed into my rampant body issues. Years later (...YEARS) I would look back and realize how backward it all was. Food wasn't fuel to me then, food was a weapon and a dirty trick and I was riddled with guilt and shame over it. It honestly never occurred to me that I could find a way to coexist peacefully with food.

That seltzer in particular would sit there, mocking me. I HATED it. It was like soda, but not sweet; like water, but it burned my nose when I drank it. Now, I have a La Croix habit that may be the sole fiscal reason our company has yet to go public.

I think maybe I linger on these things in my memory because they're such tangible physical markers. If I can smell whiskey, I can remember my grandmother. If I see a can of Coke, I can hear my mom, typing furiously at her computer with two fingers while I was home sick. If I can hold a can of seltzer, I can reflect on how hard I fought to accept my body the way it is. If I have a cup of coffee, I think about my dad and his quiet contributions to our lives. And when I put 2% milk in it, I can actually feel that I'm older, and can do anything.

Sometimes I wonder how many fucks I actually have to give. I would imagine there's not a magical number of fucks, but I find myself saying things like "I couldn't give any fewer fucks" in, I don't know, like, a super important work meeting, and that implies that we have a set amount of fucks that we can parcel out over a day.

I would say that I give fewer fucks than most but I will never reach the level, say, of someone on the subway bringing a portable speaker with them and treating us all to their taste in music. That is an epic level of freedom from societal norms.

Do you think those people used up a ton of fucks or just didn't have that many to begin with?

I do give a very sincere, general fuck about my family and friends but if you break it down into sub-fucks, it starts getting complicated. Like, for example:

-My mother's happiness: fucks given, absolutely.
-When my mom does that thing where she starts a phone call with "It's so great about Brian" and I think "Who is Brian and what is great and OF COURSE I don't know what you're talking about when I'm given no context": Nope. It's over. You might as well just continue on as if you never mentioned Brian. The fucks, only moments before prepped and ready to go, have disappeared into thin air. Brian is dead to me, and I don't care about his engagement/successful face transplant/Hamilton tickets.

Anyway in conclusion I'm pretty sure I earn extra fucks if you guys sign up for Blue Apron with my referral code so DM me.

There's an amazing episode of 30 Rock where Liz Lemon gets smashed on a plane and thinks she's sitting next to Oprah. When she shows up at work, she's full of wonder over her Oprah encounter and enthusiastically shares a list of Oprah's favorite things (sweater capes, saltwater taffy and Chinese checkers.)

We've reached the end of 2017, kiddos. And, look, I know that I'm nowhere near as cool as Oprah. But I do have Favorite Things the way her majesty does. So I'd like to present you with Rose's Favorite Things, 2017 edition.

1) The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: Where to even start. I have been a Gilmore Girls fan since the very beginning. The characters were vivid and loveable, the stakes relatively low, and the dialogue came at warp speed (something I aspire to to this day.) So I was nervous when I pressed play on the pilot of MMM, Amy Sherman Palladino's new show. Would this be another Bunheads (Amy SP's last show)? Inoffensive, but also watered down and meh? I crossed my fingers and prayed to the God of Amazon Prime that things would be different.

8 hours later, I emerged from a MMM haze, having watched every episode without getting up once. I didn't even need to go to the bathroom, or eat. Such is the magic of MMM. Amy SP's dialogue is BACK, along with beautiful production design and incredible performances by Rachel Brosnahan and ALEX BORSTEIN. Alex Borstein, who was previously in the running for the role of Sookie in GG and was relegated to a small part in the GG pilot playing a bitchy harpist. The voice of family guy's Lois. The human behind the problematic at best Ms Swan. Beloved by all, or at least, by most.

For those who aren't familiar, MMM is about a housewife who lives on the Upper West Side in the late 1950s. She's sharp, and funny, and seemingly has the perfect life. Until her life falls apart (as life is wont to do) and she turns to standup comedy to deal.

Watch it. Just... watch it.

Available on Amazon Prime Video

2) Old people with iPads: I just love them. It's all index fingers and frustration.

3) Activated charcoal: How could I not love something that both whitens your teeth AND may save you from dying after a drug overdose or a poisoning? What CAN'T this chalky black powder do? It took a little bit of practice to use this regularly without coating my bathroom in a thin layer of dust, but it's worth it. Though I don't suggest using it instead of normal toothpaste, adding it as a first step has done wonders for my teeth. And the fact that I keep using it is a real testament to its powers because I am normally extremely bored by dentalcare and it's has been a struggle to even make myself just floss 'n brush every single day of my life so far.

My pick: It doesn't seem to have a brand name, which is kinda shady, huh. Amazon 100% Natural Teeth Whitening Powder.

4) Sweetgreen's Curry Cauliflower bowl: There is nothing more enticing to a boring, one-dimensional girl than a Sweetgreen salad. Fresh ingredients, a cool logo, convenience and a price just north of reasonable. What more could you want?!

I do try to keep myself in a strict, make-my-lunches-at-home-on-Sundays rhythm but when I stray, it's usually for Sweetgreen. With just a few taps (#applife) I can order this bowl full of quinoa and chickpeas and goddamn magical fairydust, and with just a few more, I can choose a convenient pickup time AND request that the raisins be taken out. Because ew.

Plus, I get a free bowl on my birthday. So it practically pays for itself.

Sweetgreen Curry Cauliflower Bowl, picture courtesy of Sweetgreen
http://www.sweetgreen.com/

5) Fyre Festival: The Fyre Festival debacle happened in May of this year. It was all my May needed. Fyre Festival is, of course, the biggest disaster of a luxury music festival, conceived by a spoiled man child, presumably while he was in some designer-drug addled state. Billy McFarland had previously started other super shady, decidedly not profitable, unnecessary ventures so when the festival did collapse in on itself, it actually made a lot of sense. But the level on which the festival failed was something of legend.  It was funded with fake money and literally no real plan. When guests arrived on the "private Caribbean island" there were not enough bathrooms, or food. There was trash all over. Many of the artists weren't paid and, thus, did not show up. And once everyone figured out what was happening, the rush to get on a plane off the island caused widespread panic. I know that my morbid obsession with Fyre Festival does not really reflect well on me. And I have to live with that every day. But there is something about the privileged white man hubris resulting in such epic failure feels like the teeniest bit of vindication in an otherwise difficult year for anyone who has to work for anything. If, like me, you can't look away from this particular car crash, you can read about the infuriatingly vague and obnoxious investor deck here.

The only thing that is decidedly not funny is the fate of those who made the mistake of signing on to work for the festival- the vast majority of whom were incredibly smart/qualified and given ZERO time or resources to do their jobs. You can listen to the founder tell his employees that they aren't getting paid. I'll just go ahead and say it: fuck this guy (FWIW, he's been arrested since.)

6) Save The Dates (interactive web series): Full disclosure: this is a show that uses our (Eko's) platform for interactive video. But here's the thing- I am obsessed with this show. And I'm not at all contractually obligated to tell you this. In fact, my coworkers tease me about how funny I find this. But it's brilliant. You follow Chelsea on a blind date, with one of four guys. You make choices for the guys she's dating and it's so weird and so funny. There are three episodes, but hours of material if you replay (and I did)(and you should.) Thanks to the hilarious guys behind Cook St Productions, this has been such an awesome contribution to my year.

Save The Dates is available on the Eko platform (cough website cough)

7) Albert Finance: I love a good app. We carry around these hunks of aluminum and glass and we just wait for it to vibrate all day so we can feel something... why not try to harness its powers for good? Disclaimer: make no mistake, many finance and productivity apps claim to save you tons of time, and I have found this to be true almost never. Almost all of them require upkeep and general vigilance from the user in order to work properly. But they just make everything so much more fun.

Albert is like a beautiful (read: flat UI) slightly different version of the Mint app. Not only does it give you pretty graphics telling you you paid too much for Lyfts but came in under budget on your groceries, it regularly prompts you to complete short exercises that allow you to review your financial health and checks that it's interpreting data from your linked accounts correctly. Yes, you do have to link your bank accounts to get the full experience, but don't even stress about it, the government already has all of your info. That ship has circumnavigated the globe many times at this point.

Albert also analyzes your income and spending habits every day and sets aside small amounts of money you can safely save. It saves money FOR YOU but only when you can definitely afford it.

My favorite part of Albert is what they call "Albert Genius". For as little as $5 a month (you choose what you pay!) you can text their team of financial advisors PRETTY MUCH ANY MONEY QUESTION and they'll give you objective answers, colored with some mild guidance and suggestions, personalized based on your actual financial circumstances. They've already helped me through my student loan refi and gave me advice on how to start investing.

This app is not for those who have anything more than simple personal finance questions but for the price it's a little bit insane. I probably shouldn't even be writing about it, there's no way they won't start charging more once word gets out. We never had this talk.

Albert is available to download on the App Store, currently only available for iPhone.

8) SmittenKitchen.com: Deb. Deb, Deb, Deb. How is it that you have such a perfect internet presence and yet I don't resent you? This cooking blog, written by Deb Perelman, has been around for a while now, so the fact that it's one my 2017 favorite things only means that my love for Smitten Kitchen has some serious lasting power. I mean, she bills it as "Fearless cooking from a tiny kitchen in New York City." I live in New York! I have a tiny kitchen! I like to take pictures of my food like any red-blooded Millenial! 

This is a love that afflicts all of the Seyfried women.  And most of her recipes are of the simple and delicious variety- bitch mixes pretty much anything with an egg and fries it and brains explode around the interweb. Broccoli? Zucchini? Old newspaper? You name it, she's frittered it.

Cauliflower Feta Fritters, picture courtesy of Smitten Kitchen
https://smittenkitchen.com/2012/12/cauliflower-feta-fritters-with-pomegranate/

9) Laser hair removal: Get a Groupon. Suck it up. You'll resent every single time you have to go for a session (it takes 6-9 sessions to see permanent results) and you'll still end up thanking me. I was a waxer for years, which is an exercise in futility- a nice lady covers you in hot wax and RIPS IT OFF WTF in the opposite direction of how your hair grows. You go home red and sore and wake up the next morning to ingrown hairs. Wait six weeks, repeat. Laser hair removal is way less painful, and the FDA hasn't discovered yet what horrible side effects it has later on in life (score), and it works (hand to god). Not convinced? Let's say you spend $80 every six weeks for waxing, from ages 20 to 60. That's a lifetime cost of almost $30K and it's a miserable existence. For the same area, laser would cost you $1800 total at full price. But also Groupon! And it's permanent. Do it do it do it and then come back and tell me I'm right because I'll never stop wanting to hear that.

10) HQ Trivia: This is one of those fleeting, beautiful 2017 loves that I am positive will not hold it's place in the line-up particularly far into 2018. If you haven't been indoctrinated yet, basically, it's an app that's a live trivia game, that happens twice a day (3pm/9pm). 12 questions, progressively harder, and if you get them all right you win (or split) the pot, which is usually around $2K. At the time of writing, I have not won a game of HQ Trivia, but I haven't yet been discouraged enough to  NOT try to play when I'm free and the reminder on my phone goes off. It's bizarre to see the moment each afternoon when my entire start-up-y office stops what they're doing and picks up their phone, eyes glazed over until they miss a question and are eliminated (I've only ever made it to question 7.)  The regular host is an mysteriously popular guy named Scott Rogowsky, who has grown on me, I guess. Want some extra drama? Here's a super insane article about the HQ CEO being a crazy asshole to a reporter. for actually no reason. 

11) BECs: There are very few things that make me happier than a bacon egg and cheese sandwich on Sunday morning that I can eat in bed while I watch SNL from the night before.

12) The Onion: The Onion has been on its game this year. Did you know that it's been around since 1988? That's just shy of 30 years old. Way to go, The Onion. The current political climate has obviously provided lots of Onion fodder, but they do a great job of reporting on the equally important if slightly smaller news stories, such as this, which I laughed at for about 10 straight minutes. Honorable mentions to Reductress and AboveAverage.

13) My Favorite Murder: Oh my god ok. This podcast has popped up on the scene in the last couple of years and amassed an enormous following for good reason. Basically, it's two comedian friends (Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark) telling true crime stories. Serial killers, one off-ers, family killers, child killers, buzz killers, you name it. And somehow they make it hilarious and entertaining but still respectful and (duh) disapproving. Fans are called Murderinos, and they have multiple catch phrases from episodes, among them "Stay Sexy, Don't Get Murdered" and "You're In A Cult. Call Your Dad." This is prime commute listening, friends. Also, if I die and you find Wikipedia articles about murder in my browser history, this is what was happening there.

My Favorite Murder can be downloaded wherever you get your podcasts.

14) Levain cookies: The cronut was a disappointment and I don't need a rainbow colored bagel. But as far as trendy NYC foods go, Levain cookies absolutely live up to the hype. When I have the occasional day off of work, I'll make the journey up to the UWS just for these. They weigh about as much as a medium-sized cat and now that they opened a second location, there is never much of a line.

AND FINALLY... RAPID FIRE ROUND

Favorite artists: Sigrid, Matt Maeson, Astrid S, Greta Isaac, Oh Wonder, Phoebe Ryan, POWERS
Favorite first date spot: Doris (Bed Stuy)
Favorite place to write: Tom and Jerry's (NoHo)
Favorite workout: Boxing at Church Street Boxing Gym (TriBeCa)
Favorite movie: The Shape of Water
Favorite book: Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

I'm not sure I've ever worked at anything my life as hard as this girl is on The Bachelor right now trying to talk about herself. This season is hardcore Benjamin Button-ing. We're on episode 2, and there have been 2 inSANEly girlfriend-y one-on-one dates.

Date one. At this point, I am at the peak of my engagement with this show. Just sitting back on my couch with my feet up, like "Wow me, bitches." Bitches being what I call ABC.

The bachelor this season is this guy Arie, who is a part time race car driver, part time realtor, and full time creepy thirsty single guy.

For date number one, he picks up the girl on his motorcycle. Already you've lost me. Motorcycles are dangerous. I'm not getting on your motorcycle, unless your motorcycle is actually a portal to 2005 when I was young and dumb(er.) After they head out, the (brilliant) editors cut to the girls who weren't chosen. I feel slightly vindicated when one of them goes "My father was in a horrible motorcycle accident. It ruined his life." But then she followed it up with "So if it were me I would have had to mention that to him before I got on." I'm sorry, WHAT? You're still getting on, crazy?

He takes her to this house in the middle of nowhere, where apparently he's been keeping Rachel Zoe for what I'm assuming is weeks without food and the date activity is... the girl trying on clothes. That's the plan for the afternoon. We watch as Rachel Zoe tries to earn her freedom from ABC's indentured servitude program by plying Becca H. (or Lauren S. or whatever) with expensive dresses that Arie is pleased to announce that she "can keep!" Then he gives her a pair of Louboutins and some insane diamond necklace. But he's super not buying her affection. That's not it at all.

While she's going through her weird, solitary makeover at the hands of the world's youngest old lady, he just sits on the couch and watches.

The date ends with a dinner where the couple sits together and, by candlelight, Arie tells her that he thinks she's really down to earth and special, which is fascinating that he knows seeing as he hasn't asked her a single question about herself.

Date number two consists of him flying a different girl TO SCOTTSDALE TO SEE HIS APARTMENT AND THEN MEET HIS PARENTS. That is, date two total. Date one with this particular girl.

At this rate, the final date will be happy hour drinks at a conveniently located bar and he'll wear bad shoes.

Ok ok. I know. You don't watch it. You're a more complete person than I am and I commend you for that.

(Wait but which one do you think is worse, killing a bunch of people or describing your son to the guy you're dating on a reality show as "the other man in my life"?)