November 2024 Month in Review: Cool Like a Sweathog, Sweat Like a Coolhog

Oh, November. You spicy dirtbag what with your chaotic offerings. Pumpkin pie (yes!) My birthday (fine), and *checks hearing* skeet season. Indefatigable skeet season. Because nothing says “charming small town in late autumn” like ten-hour PEW PEW symphonies punctuated by leaf blowers every weekend. Best noise friends forever!

Apologies for griping about this again. I’m tired. And not in the fun “I ran a marathon” kind of way, but in the “I live inside a t-shirt cannon” kind of way.

I’d love to be cool about it. You know, like a Sweathog. They’re still cool, right? Or they once were? Sort of?

Bless their hearts.

Also, just so we’re clear: If I ever so much as hint at interest in running a marathon, call Liam Neeson. Clearly I’ve been taken.

Speaking of taking, my twins are out here taking tests — driver education, PSATs, SATs, a whole alphabet soup of Ts? It’s familiar and not so much. They don’t even have to fill in the circles completely and make their marks dark. What madness is that?

Life is lifing, people, and I’m bracing for the impact of seismic changes as they head out in a few years while also wondering what I did to make my back hurt this time. (Sneezing, probably.) Anyway, the twins and their younger sibling are excellent, hilarious humans who, for reasons unknown to science or the Divine, recently played tic-tac-toe using a photo of Bernie Moreno as the board. I don’t get it. I don’t want to get it. But I love them for it. Probably. Unless Urban Dictionary comes in hot with a definition so cursed it makes me question not just my potentially unholy parenting choices but also which cosmic joke stuck these tic-tac-toe anarchists with me as a mother.

Let’s awkwardly transition here to a more serious note: my mother-in-law passed away this month after illness and a hospice stay that felt both too short and impossibly long. Our rhythms are altered forever. Daily life feels like we’re walking through a house where someone rearranged all the furniture while we were sleeping.

Grief is a strange beast. It’s mercenary and acquisitive. It’s sneaky and insistent. Right now, everything feels very takey. I usually live in the givey camp, so there is clash. At some point, these two modes will need to mesh better (for me, for you, for all of us). But for now, we stand here, holding the pieces, hoping they’ll eventually fit together.

I know I’m not alone in this. Your pieces may look different and might fit together in another way, but we’re all arms-full of pieces.

We’ll figure it out.

This time of year always makes me crave community — real, soft-edged community. Now more than ever, because, honestly, it feels like half of us are allergic to the concept.

For now, I focus on a few good people, naps, moody weather, and curling my fingerless-gloved hands around a mug of something steaming. All the soft, cushiony, slightly drafty things. To be a hygge gourmand, if you will. Or if you won’t. Either way.

Maybe it’s just time to reread Wintering.

For now, the holidays charge at us like an over-sugared, under-napped toddler with a glitter cannon, my writing continues with something like enjoyment, and the world remains a noisy, beautiful dumpster fire of delight and despair.

But we’re here, right? We’re doing the damn thing, even if we have no idea what the damn thing is. I think it involves Hūsker Dū, but don’t quote me on that.

Or maybe Hüsker Dü?

As Brian Eno (probably) said: “You’re most alive when you’re not quite sure what’s going on.” If that’s true, then congratulations to me: I am the most alive human in the history of aliveness.

Pass the soup.

Here are some splashes of marvelous from November, 2024:

• Watch the following at your own risk. I’m not sure what it is, exactly, but it has big car-crashes-into-a-random-iceberg-floating-down-Main-Street energy. And this ditty is constructing a weird little flute-shaped nest in my brain. Rent free.

• This quote by Louise Glück hit me like a piano falling from the sky — sudden, sharp, and oddly satisfying. Except that satisfying part. More like a not-entirely unpleasant metaphysical headache in the key of F#. Anyway, it’s less frustrating than the movie Interstellar.
• Kiese Laymon’s Letter from Home over at The Bitter Southerner is one hell of a nearly-perfect personal essay.
• Read this article about Pulp Fiction turning 30: a retrospective so cool it wears sunglasses indoors. I recommend pairing it with a Royale with Cheese (not included).
• Technically this was an October delight. I attended a reading featuring many of the authors from the anthology 3rd and Oak. Then I got the book. You should, too. And if you ever get the chance to see these authors reunite, drop everything and go. Also, a PSA: if Carrie Hayes is moderating anything — I don’t care if it’s a PTA meeting or a seminar on municipal parking regulations — ATTEND. Trust me.
• Erika Meitner’s poem over at The New Yorker. Read it. Absorb it. Embody it. Punch a clock in its smug little face. Not this clock, though. It’s cute.

Available at kawaii-heaven.com. I have no affiliation.

• Every so often, my teenagers willingly hang out with us, and when they do, we play Jackbox. And let me tell you, I laugh to tears every single time we play. The games are varied enough that everyone gets a moment to shine. Real self-care is enjoying your weird, wonderful family.

So, howdy, December! May yours be full of good essays, weirdly compelling nonsense, and laughter so uncontrollable it could be classified as a cardio workout.

And feel free to call Liam Neeson for me anyway. He seems like he’d be fun to talk with.