Breakup Cookies, and Other Fables For Our Time
Breakup Cookies, and Other Fables For Our Time
A happy newsletter filled with very interesting facts and some opinions
One morning last week, I got so overwhelmed by some small thing not working out on my bank’s website that I immediately collapsed into a sobbing, heaving, bank-website-hating heap of despair.
Now, I have not been getting a ton of sleep lately, and that is surely partially to blame for my inability to [gestures to everything around me slowly accumulating in piles marked “undone” and “even more undone”]. Grant heard me crying and came in and said, sweetly, “Come, let’s leave this and go get a coffee,” and so I put my laptop down and went in to brush my teeth, thinking, “Well, at least if I start brushing my teeth, I’ll have to stop crying,” and what I learned is that it’s actually possible to sob straight through brushing your teeth, which some of you probably already knew, but for me was a fun new 2020 discovery.
Anyway, I’m okay, I just feel a lot right now for all the people I know who are going through something hard, which is everyone. (Including me! That bank website is inscrutable and terrible and yes I do take it personally they did it to attack ME, me PERSONALLY.)
DON’T TOUCH THE OCTOPUS
I know a lot of us are probably missing traveling right now. I know it because I’ve had a lot of discussions with friends where the word “Mexico” is mentioned and then everyone gets sort of a glazed-over look in their eye. As this mad year comes to a close and we face the possibility of quieter and weirder holidays than we ever thought to experience, I wanted to share a quick note about the dangers that lurk in the world outside. Just to make us all feel better about the proposed three more months (at least) of wintry, Covid-y isolation, I give you: the tiny, adorable, very deadly blue-ringed octopus. They carry enough venom to kill 26 people and there is no antidote. They are also EXTREMELY CUTE and if you saw one while snorkeling and were the type of person who desires to disturb wildlife while snorkeling, you almost certainly would want to pet one.
So, you know, stay home where it’s safe and there’s very little chance of death by adorable-octopus bite.
Stay home and make cookies. Speaking of which.
THE SAGA OF THE BREAK-UP COOKIE
I was asked by Grant’s clinic manager to participate in a cookie-baking exchange with the folks at his work, and I agreed, if only to have an excuse to make the life-givingest cookies on the planet, which are salted-brown-butter chocolate chip. If you make these, and you should, be sure you crush a lot of flaky Maldon salt on top before you stick them in the oven.
I also made pignolis, which are a long-time favorite cookie of mine that I have never made for Grant in the entire history of our seven-year relationship because they are a break-up cookie.
This is one of my little pieces of personal superstition, along with my superstition that “Stand” by R.E.M. is a song of terrible foreboding, and I will immediately change it if I’m riding in a car and it comes on because I am actually afraid that “Stand” will be the song that is playing when I die and this is so ingrained that it feels like I’m inviting a car accident if it happens to come on. I know this is a dark, weird thing to share, but it’s 2020 and I know we can all handle it.
In full transparency, I don’t like to listen to “Stand” in any other contexts, either. For instance, I am relatively safe right now, sitting in the study in my ninth-floor apartment in Canada at 7 a.m. in my pajamas, but I would not risk it all by listening to “Stand,” because like I always say: Safety First, and if you play a decades-old Michael Stipe tune, a murderer might get in, you never know.
Anyway, we were talking about cookies.
Pignolis are a generally un-screw-up-able showstopper of a little not-too-sweet cookie, and I love them. They’re just perfect. Crunchy outside, chewy inside, nutty, and they’re even gluten-free, if you care about that.
But pignolis, despite my love for them, are, as I mentioned, a breakup cookie, so I’ve been — understandably — too superstitious to make them for Grant. I told him about all this, about my reasons (they’re threefold!) for saying they’re a breakup cookie, and he said, “They sound delicious, and I think we can risk it,” and I agreed that it was probably time.
So over the weekend, I made the cookies for his coworkers, while Grant joined me in the kitchen by cleaning out the pantry and fridge while I baked.
I reminded him as I was making them that the pignoli cookies were delicious but risky, so as to subvert their dismantling power by talking about it and exposing it to the light. No sir, breakup cookie! You will not get us! NOT TODAY, COOKIES.
Eventually, Grant got to a point where everything was out of the pantry and all that remained was trash, recycling, and reorganizing everything.
ME
[covered in almond flour, humming “The Christmas Waltz”]
GRANT (brightly)
Okay! I’ve gotten through 85% of the work. I think this is the right time for me to stop and go do something else, leaving the last 15% — also known as the hardest part — for you.
ME (yelling)
Pignoli cookies, come on, work your magic!
But in fact, the pignolis did not break us up. Which is great because then we got to eat a few pignolis together. And when I say “a few,” I really mean “one.” I burned an entire pan, leaving just enough for Grant to take to work and one cookie for us to sample between us.
It’s truly fitting that I burned them, because I had spent the better part of a week bragging to Grant how delicious and unscrewup-able they always are. Hubris is, or should be, the death of us all. (Not R.E.M. songs. You hear me, Michael Stipe? NOT R.E.M. SONGS.)
XENNIALS, THEY’RE JUST LIKE YOU AND ME: CONSTANTLY TALKING ABOUT THEMSELVES
I realized something about being a Xennial, which I’m hoping a lot of you will relate to since you are either Gen X or Millennial or Xennial yourselves.
(Xennials were born between 1977 and 1983, and their defining characteristic is getting their first email address in college and also talking about how they’re Xennials even though literally no one cares. But if you’re still not sure whether you are one, there’s a quiz.)
Anyway, my realization: The response “no ❤️” was definitely invented by a Xennial. Think about it. Xennials are defined by having both the cynicism and disinterest of Gen X, PLUS all the bubbly heart-centeredness and deep feeling of Millennials. It’s no wonder we’re always confused. An entire microgeneration of people whose main driving ethos is “go away forever, to everyone except three people and my dog, and I will fight to the death anyone who slanders a) those three people or b) that dog or actually c) anyone else in the entire world because ❤️ (but also no).”
I am also now prepared to announce that I, a Xennial, have decided to learn the 15 seconds of dance that Sasha Obama and her friends did that went viral on TikTok a couple of weeks ago. I am obviously too old for TikTok, but not too old to appreciate great choreography hastily slapped together in someone else’s kitchen.
The video is very soothing, particularly on a loop like that, and I have watched it 400,000 times. I read that some people were mad at the fact that they sing the word “bitch” (what) or that she was hanging out with white friends (what) or or that she is young and hot (come on) or that they were not social distancing and wearing masks.
Which… fair, that last one, sort of, but also: they are 19, and I have determined that that is the hardest age to be during the global pandemic.
Pop quiz: Are you feeling like it’s basically fine to be isolated for this long? Like maybe you miss people and are bored and worried, but you also know you can handle it cause hey, you’ve made it this far and you’re a grown adult and the vaccine’s coming and at least Biden’s president now, and you’ve also learned to bake or gotten some projects done or gotten more in touch with yourself?
Cool, me too.
That is because we are not 19.
You remember being 19, right? I do. I remember it well.
Literally all I wanted to do at the time was:
go out
dance up on strangers at terrible clubs
be an idiot
make increasingly questionable life choices
not get carded
wear tights with alien heads on them
stay up all night
not check my phone constantly because that wasn’t a thing back then (and thank god)
drink bottom-shelf liquor purchased for me by someone else, usually in the form of a watered-down drink with a tiny red plastic straw
and like such as
It was both great and terrible and it was totally instrumental in helping me figure out who I am. I don’t want to revisit that time, but I also cannot imagine having it taken away by a brutal global pandemic that makes you stay home and stay away from everyone. So, although the teens’ non-distancing is not ideal, I feel for them. Who among us has not, etc. etc. This newsletter officially supports the American 19-year-old’s desire to dance up on people and be an idiot and say the word “bitch.” Y’all heard it here first.
Christmas really came early for Xennials, in the form of the guy from Eve 6 ("wanna put my tender! heart in a blender!") doing hilarious Twitter takedowns of other 90s bands, and it is so very the end-of-2020 experience you have been looking for:
I know I say it every newsletter, but this time I truly mean it: “he who is durst shall be last” is absolutely going on an inspirational throw pillow. I’ve been doing needlepoint this month, and I know I can do it! The needlepointing is occurring because I found some old “Houses of Yorktown” needlepoints from my hometown that I bought many years ago and forgot about, and it seems to be a form of grieving my dad to be finally completing them. Actually it is probably called cross-stitch and not needlepoint, but I don’t know the difference and feel it would be playing against type and personal brand for me to learn.
Grant has already instructed that although he totally understands the grief-needlepointing and appreciates why it is happening, this should in no way morph into my becoming a Person Who Needlepoints. Which is awkward since I’ve already ordered my “Person Who Needlepoints” nap sweatshirt.
Lastly in Xennial news: I just learned that Howie Mandel played Gizmo. I don’t know why, but I’m unhappy about this. It feels wrong to me somehow, like if you learned that Robert Goulet was somehow in Beetlejuice. Can you imagine!
UGH I TAKE BACK WHAT I SAID BEFORE ABOUT DEFENDING *ALL* PEOPLE
If it were possible to DIE of sighing and making this face 😐, you would already be at my Zoom funeral.
Getting knocked around, emotionally, by the Trump sideshow has now started to take on a ridiculous character, though, given that now people like Putin and McConnell finally recognized Biden’s president-elect status.
Leaving aside the fact that I mentioned Putin and McConnell in the same sentence as if they are colleagues: Poor Donald! His friends no longer wanna sign his yearbook! It’s hard out here for a dictator. But I’m sure he can always rely on Giuliani, to perpetually scramble over with “lylas! Keep in touch! Ur 2good2be4gotten” in his mouth and at the tip of his gel pen.
I do want to say this: I am proud of our country and our damnably plodding democratic processes and bureaucracy, for coming through against the attempted coup. You may be a failed real estate entrepreneur who uses inherited millions to sue your way out of trouble every time you cause any, but you forgot about the stolid, paperwork-clodden machinations of the U.S. Government. You haven’t got a properly notarized form for your autocratic attempt? Whoopsie-doodle! Back of the line!
Grant was very proud of me for making a “Hey, lay off him, the man’s got some good ideas” joke about Trump a few weeks ago. He actually stopped and noted the time and date that it happened, since in the four years since he was elected, I have been a humorless wasteland when it comes to Trump’s perfidy. But the day the states all certified Biden’s victory, I was able to breathe out enough to joke about it for the first time ever. It’s a turning point.
BRAND NEW YEAR, BRAND NEW OPPORTUNITIES TO EMBARRASS MYSELF
Grant and I like to start January with some sort of challenge to start the year. It’s like how self-help people say to make your bed within the first ten minutes of waking up so that you have a win early in the day. I’m not sure what these types would advise as far as Winning the Day in the Covid era, but probably something like, “If you’re going to cry, try brushing your teeth at the same time and see if that helps you stop crying, and if not, well hey, you’ve learned a Fun Fact you can share with all your newsletter friends!”
Ahem.
So Grant and I started doing Dry January in 2018 (Dry January: no alcohol for the month) and in 2019, some friends were doing a ten-day juice fast called the Master Cleanse, and we decided to join them. The Master Cleanse is a bonkers thing where you consume spicy lemonade and nothing else for ten days straight, and it’s hard, but it also rewires some mental fixations, which is neat. That said, I don’t really recommend it and neither do medical experts. I am only telling you about it because it’s something we do to challenge ourselves, but this is in no way meant as an endorsement or a suggestion about “Covid body” or losing weight or anything horrible like that. I like doing the Master Cleanse because it is hard.
I also like making and eating cookies and borscht and cheese and enjoying my life and my healthy, hard-working body. Master Cleanse is not a “diet,” and it wouldn’t work as one because the weight comes back when you eat again. Diets are, in the opinion of this newsletter, stupid. I’m gonna die someday. In the meantime I’m going to make and eat all the banana bread I want.
Also, this is only marginally related, but Jameela Jamil should be queen of this entire planet.
Anyway, so we are planning on doing both Dry January and the fast again this year, and for 2021, we’ll also be adding a book club. I am excited because I love to read, but I’m also nervous because I have a particular mental issue around books in that I have absolutely no recall once I am done reading them.
It’s like I immerse myself in the author’s world happily, luxuriantly, for a few weeks completely and then completely forget the author exists once the book is over.
I will usually know afterward that I have read a book, and even whether or not I enjoyed it, but as to character names or plot points or even general theme, I will be lost.
I read East of Eden two summers ago and loved it so much that I devoured it over the course of a single weekend. Few other books have ever held my attention so thoroughly. And now? I could not tell you one single thing about it. I don’t have a clue what the main characters’ names are. Henry? Maybe? Or George. Might’ve been a Maria in the mix.
And if you ask me what East of Eden was about, I will confidently say “moving to California,” but of course, telling you a Steinbeck novel is about moving to California is like telling you Paul Simon wrote that one song where he’s sad in New York City.
It is embarrassing that I’m like this.
The only other book I ever devoured more quickly than East of Eden was The Kite Runner, which I read in a single sitting over the course of about eight hours. I sobbed furiously at the end of it and felt altered by the story on a molecular level.
What is it about? No idea. Afghanistan? Kids, I think. I KNOW THERE IS A KITE IN IT.
Once, at work, I was casually crowing to my boss about how much I loved The Bonfire of the Vanities, which I had read a few months earlier, and he said “Oh, I read that so long ago. What was it about, again?”
My brain seized up in panic and held up signs that said “BONFIRES” and “VANITIES” and I shook my head and literally the only other thing I knew about the book started spilling out of my mouth, which had me telling my boss (who I really respected and who went to Columbia for journalism) just how much I loved the scene at the very beginning where the characters are driving around aimlessly on a highway in the Bronx.
Folks, this is the only thing I could remember from my reading experience (and this is still, years later, the only thing I remember) and it happens in the first, like, six pages. BY THE WAY I am not even confident, even as I sit here, that this wasn’t from a completely different book.
Of course, it then looked to my boss like I hadn’t read it but simply *pretended* I had, which is the worst imaginable vibe there is, so I’d just like to say for the record to all my coworkers who overheard this conversation and cringed on my behalf that: a) yes I did too read that book, I just have mental problems; and b) your cringing is totally appropriate but for different reasons than you think.
ME
Hey! I read a book and enjoyed it!
YOU
I love books! Tell me all about it!
MY BRAIN
[Mariah-Carey-I-dont-know-her.gif]
ME
Sorry, so you were saying?
YOU
😐
So we are doing this book club, and I’m excited but scared. I have never done a book club before, so I’m hoping maybe it’ll help with my recall if I know there’s a test coming at the end of the book. But the last time this was true was in high school, where I neatly skirted around this issue by simply never, ever reading any of the books that were assigned to me, even though I love to read and always have.
“No, not THOSE books, though,” was apparently my brain’s reasoning.
I read recently that this personality trait is not “lazy,” or “stubborn,” or “annoyingly, maddeningly willful,” but merely “resistant to enculturation,” which is number eight on the list of the fifteen characteristics of self-actualization as defined by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
So you see, being obstinate with high-school teachers and maintaining a consistent C+ average in AP English was Good, Actually.
It remains to be seen what I’ll do with our book club. Either I’ll read the book, enjoy it, and forget it instantly, then regale my friends with nonsense observations like “I liked the part where they ate soup on page three,” or defiantly not read the books we choose and then dare anyone to complain about my glorious path of self-actualization.
Actually reading the books, absorbing them, and then getting to have a meaningful discussion about literature with thoughtful friends seems unlikely, but it’s a new year and I suppose anything is possible.
AND NOW FOR SOME LINKS TO SOME THINGS YOU MIGHT LIKE
Some people are REALLY INTO figuring out who made the Unicorn Tapestries.
The etymology of ampersand. aka: “WHAT?!”
The neuroscience of peripersonal space.
An important story I missed on boba liberalism.
It is the exact correct time in the world and in your life to make Gabrielle Hamilton’s white borscht, but be warned that it’s made with kielbasa and you will sing Tenacious D the entire time you are making it, which takes much longer than 1.5 hours the New York Times claims. Caveat emptor.
It’s also always the perfect time to revisit R. Eric Thomas’ “Patti Labelle Flipping Out During ‘This Christmas’ Is All That’s Getting Me Through.”
Consider the life you might have led.
I know that pandemic-based sitcom called “Pandemonium” was inevitable, but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with.
There’s so much to despair over, but there is also so much to feel hopeful about.
Martin Shkreli looks like if a mushroom became animate and I am only sharing this horrifying story so I can make that joke. I don’t think you should read it, because it is good but HORRIBLE, but if you choose to, just remember: that dude is the worst person and he looks like a talking mushroom, and I thank you for your time.
In case you haven’t already heard about this, Jupiter and Saturn are coming into conjunction on Dec. 21st for the first time in 400 years, and both astronomers AND astrologers are stoked.
If you do nothing else, you should definitely read about David Kenyon, the Black inventor of the fire pole.
The King’s Hand is as upsetting as it is ill-begotten, and I’m happy it exists. My favorite thing about this, other than its existence, is that none of the commenters seem all THAT confused by it. No one is even asking him how it tastes, and you have to scroll pretty far down to get to the first “what the fuck.” As true a testament to what 2020 has done to all of our brains in terms of subversion of expectation and acceptance of uncertainty as anything else I have come across.
And here’s the oldest known song of all time, the Hurrian Hymn.
I WISHED FOR THIS. ALL OF THIS.
I’ve been undertaking a long-overdue digital minimalism email clean-out since election week, spending a couple hours every week cataloguing, archiving, and deleting emails, which I have never done since joining Gmail in 2005 but now must because I am “out of space.”
Going back through my emails has been illuminating. I am currently looking back on a time in my life where I felt most personally unsettled, namely, that time period between late 2013 and mid-2014 when I fell in love, quit my job, sold my car, put everything I owned into storage, upended my life, betrayed my friend who was formerly married to Grant, had to be brave in facing recrimination and social death from former friends who didn’t understand me or my choices, moved to South Africa, got robbed on our second night in Cape Town and lost everything we owned, got trapped in South Africa and then in Canada, grieved the death of my beloved pet rabbit, moved eight times in three countries, and contracted shingles.
It was the most unsettling — ah, understatement — eight or nine months I have ever lived through, or ever hope to live through.
During that time, I often used to wish for calm. For things to feel settled again from the tornado-like circumstances that I, in fairness, had (mostly) created.
I am seeing that theme, a wish for calm, over and over in my emails to friends at the time. An example, from June 12, 2014:
“I’m jet lagged, but excited to get my life back in order again… just find a job and decorate an apartment and all that boring domestic-type stuff. It sounds so glorious to me right now. Also, to get my books out of storage.”
(Always with the books.)
It’s funny. So many of the things I wished hard for then are now indisputably and unmistakably mine: A settled life with Grant. Work. A decorated apartment. My books out of storage. Boring domestic stuff? In 2020, we’ve had so much boring domestic-type stuff we can barely even remember a time existed before boring domestic stuff.
Covid has upended things, but casting back, I can remember how I once wished for this moment. This here-and-now. This boring, everyday, domestic sameness.
It reminded me of something important, which is that nothing at all is ever permanent, not upheaval and not grief and not boredom, either. And there are lessons and joys to be squeezed out of the boring moments, the hard moments, and even the grueling moments and the tornado-y moments. Not because they are foils and antitheses to joy and light-heartedness, but actually, in and of themselves, in and of the pain, there are those lessons and joys. Breakthroughs are always possible. Laughter, too.
So: How can I fully lean into my experience and find its good? I’ve asked myself this question a dozen or hundred times in 2020. I’ve had to. And while I’m not sure I found any perfect answers, I can tell that just learning to ask the question was important, and that’s something I’ll carry with me forever.
That and “He who is Durst shall be last,” obviously.
Thanks in earnest, 2020. This is my life and I appreciate its lessons.
And thanks to you all for reading. I miss you. See you in 2021.
