絶望な｜女

Look into my eyes, y’all: 🫩

I am fast approaching fifty. Full speed, like a truck. I know how old I am, and so does my lower back.

I was not cool when I was a kid. I was still not cool when I was a teenager. I have never been cool, and I don’t care. I don’t dye my hair to hide my grays. I haven’t shaved my legs or pits since 2008. I’ve had the same favorite band since 1996, and it is still Matchbox Twenty. I still wear boot cut high rise jeans and I will not be switching.

I turn my ringer back on when I leave work and I have custom ringtones for all my contacts so I know who is calling me. I leave the default settings on my phone, so my texts all start with capital letters and end with periods. They are almost always completely grammatically correct, because I’m not being charged per character/per text anymore and I don’t have a T9 keyboard, so I see no reason to abbreviate things.

I am not going to police my use of emojis and force my phone to lowercase all the time to keep up with the Gen Z trends, because I am not Gen Z. I am a Xennial and this is my face: 🫩

Boomers and Gen Xers have been trying to make Millennials apologize for existing/taking up space since we were in high school. Don’t start that shit with us. We’re already so fucking tired.

👍🏼 means “Acknowledged.” when the person texting you is old enough to remember where they were on 9/11. It’s not passive aggressive. It’s shorthand. Just let it go.

kind of like why the other library has all of the parasol protectorate books and the first three custard protocol books but NOT the last one

Anyway his grandpa name is "Pops," but my nephew is just shy of a year old, right, so of course he can't say it perfectly and it comes out "Pots," which is unspeakably cute.

Also my nephew's grandpa assigned endearment is apparently the Kreyol version of "my itty bitty cabbage," which is so cute I might vomit.

“What is your favorite time of day and why?”

I really like the earliest parts of the morning, from either side. The slow steam of the earth as the sun makes her return to the sky, the glow of mist, the build of birdsong, the security of knowing that it all hasn’t ended in the night and we can all try again— I get an immense comfort from it and I feel like each soft dawn makes for an affirmation of refreshed chances and replenished spell slots.