I’ve been making this bullet list for over a week, popping into the Notes document that I keep open and plain-texting myself some syllables. Served to you with a side of green beans sautéed in garlic and butter.
Summer snuck up on me, but I should have seen it coming. It was like the chipmunk that visits the potted plants on my deck, taking bites of budded cherry tomatoes and stealing sunflower buds from their stems. Stupid jerkface rodent. When I see it, I bang on the sliding glass door to send it skittering back into the yard. I should have done the same thing with summer, except I didn’t so now I’m in it.
I forget what I plant in the garden. Every time a green shoot or a new bloom appears, I’m delighted and also entirely confused because I rarely remember what I’ve put into the dirt. There were peony blooms bursting (which I remembered) and some roses (that I forgot about) and these fire-workish persian blue allium that joined the party (no memory of those) and the dahlias I forgot to dig up but they somehow surprised and they come up looking like flowering geometry proofs. Every day is a surprise and I love it and my family openly wonders if I’m sliding cognitively.
Small diabetes joy: my car has an induction charging pad near the dashboard, and I can use it in a pinch to charge my Tandem Mobi pump. This is helpful on days when I realize my pump charger wasn’t plugged into the wall when I docked it while showering. (This has happened twice this week. I am losing brain cells by the minute.)
In the last few weeks, I’ve read Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (so much online discussion about this book — I read it in a day and thought it was intriguing and also original), Heart the Lover by Lily King (cried a bunch), All Fours by Miranda July (what the fuck does tonka bean smell like – I need to know), and am currently reading The Land and Its People by David Sedaris. On deck is Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead by Mai Nguyen and The Midnight Train by Matt Haig. Reading is fun! This is the end of this paragraph about books.
Until I mention one more book below.
All of those links go to Bookshop.org pages. I don’t do Amazon affiliate links, mostly because I kind of loathe Amazon except that’s where three of my books live (four, if you count Loopy and her sweater). I’d like to build a printing press and open my own publishing house. Nest that all that Gutenberg (not Steve) machinery between the peony-and-whatever bushes.
Have you checked out the Alive! with Steve Burns podcast? In this episode, I 100% heard the boo bee beep sound of an insulin pump in the background audio (check the 15:59 timecode). I initially listened to the podcast in the car and peeked at my pump when I heard the sound, but it wasn’t me making the boo bee boop. I rewound the podcast and heard it again. So it could be one of the guests, or someone on the podcast production team, but there’s a PWD somewhere in the mix, and I felt a rush of shared lived experience when I heard it.
Oh, and that chaotic ADA shit show where renowned scientists were kicked out of the conference for handing out an article that was published in the official ADA scientific journal, Diabetes Care? You should read the article they were handing out.
Bought a crochet pattern off Etsy and am determined to make an army of derpy capybaras before the summer ends.
And last week I checked out an author event featuring Jennifer Weiner (she has written a bunch of books that I really loved and also writes The Inevitable Substack, which I subscribe to). The discussion about ways to tell someone who inspired a fictional character that they didn’t inspire that fictional character made me laugh out loud. She also talked about “her process,” which to me sounded inspired and consistent, but lonely. Writing alone? I cannot anymore. Big thanks to my writing group friends.
The event was put on in conjunction with a beautiful bookshop in southern Rhode Island — Martin House Books. If you want to support an independent bookstore where the store itself has main character energy, check it out.
Evidence of being out of my house on a weeknight below:
(That other book? I picked up a copy and leant it to a friend because I had those other books to read first, but I can’t stop thinking about it because I think it’s going to be batshit crazy and I’m ready for it. Sky Daddy. How does this book exist? WILL IT BE AWESOME? I cannot wait to find out.)
Ahem.
I hope your sneaky summer is treating you well so far. And if it’s not, I’m sending you comfort and support and an iced coffee with extra ice. If you want me to punch someone for you, say the word.
