Broken mirrors ⚡ & taboos [Like You Know Whatever]

Hi friends!

Before we get into it, if you haven’t had a chance yet to fill out the 2023 Like You Know Whatever Survey, would you please give that a go? According to Survey Monkey, it only takes most people three minutes to complete. So far, the feedback I’ve been getting from it has been EXTREMELY helpful, so thank you so much to everyone who’s already taken it! I would love to hear from as many different readers as possible. Thanks!

So. How are you?? I’m doing okay. I don’t feel great about the current rising global tensions, shall we say (Editor’s note: this was written the day after the discovery of the “Chinese spy balloon”), but in many ways that is also none of my business, since I can’t do anything about it. Except, apparently, at night, when I’m trying to go to sleep, and suddenly I might as well be Antony Blinken himself for how much it all weighs on me. Sigh. Is it so much to ask for us to just fucking live our lives in peace? I have a friend in China, and I know that he and I want the same things out of life: to live a creative life, have enough money to buy fun outfits, and occasionally go out dancing with our friends. Okay, so maybe our priorities are not everyone’s priorities (I don’t think we’ll see Biden and Xi Jinping twerking together at The Abbey anytime soon), but I still think that we’re all more alike than different. Why can’t our governments just chill the fuck out? And while I’m ranting, why are groceries so fucking expensive? I paid $8 for a pack of hot dogs the other day. Hot dogs! It was at the “fancy,” everything’s-organic grocery store (Sprouts), but still. That’s over a dollar a goddamn dog! How are you all coping with this craziness??

So, yeah, I’ve been a little anxious lately. It probably does not help that my husband, Ross, has been away for the past week on a combination visiting-friends-in-Vermont/bachelor party ski trip, so I’ve been spending more time than usual alone this week. I have friends in long-term relationships who RELISH those times when they get to have their homes all to themselves, and I used to be that way, too, but something’s changed for me lately. Maybe it’s different now that I have my home office that is entirely my own space (and Ross has one, too). Maybe it’s different now that we’re going back to the office a few days a week and aren’t home with each other 24/7. I totally support him taking this trip, I just feel a little lonely and bored and melancholy without him home. We don’t even hang out together constantly when we are home together! We’ll totally be chilling in separate rooms, doing different things, for hours. It’s just comforting having him here, I guess, which could be the very definition of codependency, what do I know?

This is going to be a more anecdote-y newsletter than usual, but a lot of the survey responses so far have indicated that you all are into that, so I hope that’s true! Let’s go!

- Before I go too off the rails with story time, let’s talk cooking. I made the fettuccine with white ragù from Smitten Kitchen Keepers (page 202) for a Saturday night in when Ross and I were going to watch The Godfather: Part II, and OMGZ. So simple and good. Why don’t I cook with ground pork more? This recipe was the closest I could find to the one in the book, although SK’s is even more pared down, just pork and mirepoix. My only regret is not doubling the recipe in the book, since it only used a half pound of pasta and we had no leftovers.

As I said, we were going to watch The Godfather: Part II, but decided at the last minute to throw on Tàr while I finished cooking, a movie that’s been on our list but that we’ve been avoiding due to its length. We ended up getting completely sucked in, and those two hours and 37 minutes flew by! I loved it! I’ve actually been looking for more movies about women whose whole lives fall apart as comps for the screenplay I’ve been working on, and this was a great one.

Then, last weekend when Ross was away, I made this green olive pasta, because he hates olives and so I never get to cook with them. (It’s fine, he can’t eat tuna salad around me, either, which is a lot to ask of a Jewish man. Marriage has food trade-offs.) This was an even simpler recipe where the results were so much greater than the sum of its parts. The sauce was only a few ingredients, Castelvetrano olives, garlic, olive oil, butter, and lemon juice, but holy cow, it was so silky and salty and perfectly balanced between the amount of fat and acidity. Yummmm. I might go eat some leftovers right now. (Editor’s note: She did, in fact, go and eat leftovers, straight out of the tupperware while standing in the kitchen.)

And then, for Superbowl Sunday, I made something that I’ve been wanting to make for a while now, buffalo chicken dip. Ross does CrossFit, and whenever there are potluck parties at his gym, someone always brings this dip because it’s keto-friendly and high-protein or whatever. At first I was totally grossed out at the idea of a meat-based dip, but then I tried it, and wow, that shit’s undeniably delicious! Some people use canned chicken for this, but I just shredded the meat from a grocery store rotisserie chicken. I ate it with celery sticks and blue corn tortilla chips. Whatever you eat it with needs to be pretty sturdy, though, because it’s a heavy dip.

I also made lemon bars from this old Smitten Kitchen recipe, because Imperfect Foods had bags of lemons on sale, and nothing sounded better to me during this dull winter than a bright, citrus-y custard atop a buttery shortbread cookie. I know that Deb has an updated, supposedly easier lemon bar recipe in The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, but I’m so skeptical about that one, because it involves shoving a whole lemon into the food processor, peel and all! The old recipe just uses lots of zest and fresh squeezed juice, which might be fussier to prep, but it’s a tried and true recipe in my arsenal, so I stick to it. If you’ve tried the other recipe in the book, will you let me know how that went?

- As I’ve been working on my book of essays, I’ve had the most random memories float to the top of my mind, as if to ask, “Could THIS be a thing?” The other day I thought about Mrs. Notty, my elementary school gym teacher. One time, she had my class take a vote on whether we wanted to play kickball or dodgeball that day. Everyone else wanted to play kickball, but I was the one kid who voted for dodgeball (what a little sadist, am I right?). Instead of doing the logical thing and playing the game that 99% of the class wanted to play, Mrs. Notty had us play dodgeball, because “sometimes, it’s important to listen to the minority.” Of course, that just meant that everyone in class was mad at me for the rest of the period. To this day, I can’t figure out what she was thinking. Like, damn, Mrs. Notty, I bet you really thought you did something there.

Before you go thinking that she was some misguided liberal trying to impress upon us the importance of lifting up minority voices, I also remember a very heteronormative bet that she made with a kid in my class, Doug, who said that girls were gross (I know—how very dare he!). We were, at most, ten years old at the time. I don’t 100% recall the context, but I bet it had to do with square dancing (yes, we did square dancing in gym class! To an actual record! I am 100 years old!). “I bet that when you’re a teenager, you won’t think girls are gross,” she said. At stake? A Power Rangers action figure. To my knowledge, Doug never collected on that bet. And yes, I tried to Facebook stalk him to see if he likes girls today. I suppose we will never know, which is why this is a newsletter anecdote without a satisfying ending and not an essay that I’m getting paid to write.

- I also promised a few weeks ago that I would tell you the story of how I broke the same side view mirror on our car twice in one week. Gosh, this is so embarrassing, but maybe it’s funny? It pains me to admit this, because I don’t like playing into gendered stereotypes, but I am maybe not the best driver. Okay? There, I said it. I am trying all the time to be better! And I have never hit a human being. One time, as a teenager, I did lightly hit a deer, which was a hazard of living in my rural corner of New Jersey. It ran away after I hit it! But it was SUPER upsetting and I felt AWFUL about it, especially because I was a vegetarian at the time. Other than that, I have mostly hit buildings and parked cars and once, I totaled my Dodge Neon on my way to Marshall’s when the car in front of me stopped short, but that spoke more to how little that car was worth at the time than the amount of damage I did, in my opinion. Anyway, I think that I’m maybe not the best driver because I am just in my own head a lot. That can be a good thing—I can focus in noisy and chaotic situations, and you all see what comes out of my brain every two weeks, and you seem to like that. But lord knows I can drift from the task at hand, shall we say. I also have a terrible sense of direction and the number of times I’ve ended up exiting through an entrance or getting lost and going in a circle for twenty minutes is more than I can count.

So, down to the side view mirror in question. It was the driver’s side mirror, and sadly, I broke it the same exact way both times. I was working at the CollegeHumor offices in West Hollywood at the time, and their parking garage was an underground structure made up of multiple levels held up by these enormous, rectangular cement pillars. You can probably see where this is going. While backing out of a parking space, I got a little too close to one of these pillars, and SMASH! Goodbye, side view mirror.

The worst part of this entire unfortunate scenario was having to tell Ross what a fucking idiot I’d been. It never feels good having to tell him that I fucked up, let alone in a way that will cost us money. He was pretty nice about it, though, because he is pretty nice in general, which is why I married him in the first place. I Yelped a repair shop nearby and took it in the next morning, they replaced the mirror, and that was that! Until it wasn’t, and a few days later, I fucking broke off the mirror AGAIN!!!! I couldn’t believe it. Those pillars were brutal, I’m telling you.

There was a brief period of about a half hour, A/K/A my drive home, when I seriously considered just getting the mirror fixed again and not telling Ross at all. I couldn’t get it fixed until the next morning, but at that time, he didn’t drive the car regularly (he worked from home and could walk to the gym and a lot of other places in our old neighborhood), so the only risk of him finding out was if he went to throw out garbage or recycling or do laundry that evening, which were all located off of our building’s parking lot. There was a good chance that he wouldn’t end up doing any of that, and then I’d get away with it, nyah nyah nyah! Ultimately, though, I decided that I didn’t want to be in a relationship with lies, however stupid they might be, so I told him about it. After 1) being shocked and confused and 2) laughing his ass off, his reaction was, “You know, you totally could’ve just gotten it fixed and not told me about it.” To which I said, “I KNOW!!!”

So, I went and took it back to the same exact repair shop, just a few days after the first time I’d fixed it. At first, the guy there didn’t recognize me, but then he said, “Wait a minute, weren’t you just here with this mirror the other day?” It’s a good thing that I’m in comedy and am comfortable with humiliation. I suppose I could’ve taken it to another shop, but I mean, they did a good job for a reasonable price, why bother looking elsewhere? And they did, do a good job for a reasonable price, I mean, and thankfully, that is the same side view mirror that’s still on it today, years later! Wow!

- I would like to talk about something that is the ultimate taboo in our society, regretting becoming a parent. If you are dealing with infertility, loss, or otherwise think this might be a triggering topic for you at the moment, please feel free to skip this part.

One threat that is always hurled at childfree people is, “you’ll regret it!!!” And of course there are people who regret not having kids. But by that same logic, shouldn’t there also be people who regret having kids? They can’t publicly admit that, of course, because it could be incredibly hurtful and damaging to their children, but wouldn’t sharing their stories anonymously be helpful, for the greater good of people making informed reproductive choices?

The first stories I ever came across on this subject were in the book Regretting Motherhood by Orna Donath, an Israeli sociologist. You can read my Goodreads review of it here; suffice it to say, I think it’s an incredibly important study. The stories are so varied—they’re not just from women who were pressured into motherhood in extreme situations, as you might imagine. There are stories from women who desperately wanted to become mothers, and even spent years doing fertility treatments, but who later ended up regretting their choices. I know that women are not the only parents who can have regrets, but I think this study was so important because mothers usually bear a different burden, often a heavier one. So much of what these women shared resonated with me as things that I fear I’d feel if I were to have kids. I found it all very affirming, although of course very tragic as well.

Recently, I came across the subreddit r/regretfulparents, a safe and supportive space for parents who regret their choice to have kids to share their thoughts and experiences. I’ll be honest, it can be a bit depressing at times to read about so many people who feel miserably trapped in their own lives, but I also think it’s really wonderful how people support each other without judgment there. There are a variety of experiences represented, from people who fully feel parenthood was a mistake for them to others who are just having a bad couple of days and need to vent.

I would say the overarching theme is that these parents love their kids and are happy they exist, but they struggle with the daily realities of parenting—the monotony, the sleep deprivation, the strain on their romantic relationships, feeling over-touched, etc. One topic that comes up very often is how alone parents feel today, how much they wish they were a part of that mythical “village” that was supposed to appear. The number of duties that parents are expected to take on by themselves is pretty staggering, at least in the United States. It is wild to me how my coworkers who have kids basically live a full day before they even get to the office in the morning, while I just have to roll myself out of bed and slap some makeup on. As more and more of my friends become parents, it has me wondering about how I can best be a supportive friend. If you’re a parent, what are some things your friends did or could do to make your life easier?

- Lizzie Logan (whose newsletter you should totally subscribe to) recently wrote a list of 101 differences between New York City and Los Angeles that is full of correct opinions. I was simply stunned by the insight of #29:

“In New York, the way to show you are successful is to always be working, perhaps at multiple jobs. If you are successful in LA, you haven’t worked in years.”

I haven’t shared my thoughts on New York vs. Los Angeles since the newsletter I sent on 4/24/15. That was right after I’d visited L.A. for the first time to scope it out as a potential new place to live (I was living in Brooklyn at the time). So, let’s do this! Next Friday, I’ll be sending out the next newsletter for paid subscribers only, and in it, I’ll share my 2015 AND current thoughts on that classic coastal feud. But ya gotta be a paid subscriber to get it! As a reminder, paid subscribers get access to the full archives plus one additional newsletter every month. You can upgrade here:

- Let’s end on a positive note. I tried to look up some positive news stories, but they were all horror stories about capitalism masquerading as heartwarming, you know, “this teenager donated their college fund to pay off school lunch debt,” etc. So, I guess this will just have to be personal. Here are Five Good Things in my life right now:

1. I’ve been using my standing desk more when I’m in the office for work and it has really helped my lower back pain! I never thought I would be a standing desk person and honestly, always found them a bit ridiculous and privileged (I’ve had plenty of low-wage jobs where I had to stand all day and would’ve killed for a chair). But I gave it a go and it really helps balance the damage I do when I work from home, or should I say, work-from-the-cheap-couch-in-my-home-office.

1. Since I wrote the beginning of this newsletter, I’ve read this Slate piece that made me feel a lot better about all the unidentified flying objects being shot down in the U.S. lately. Although, his point was basically, “There’s probably tons of stuff floating around up there that we’ve just ignored in the past!” which, as an anxious flyer, was not necessarily helpful.

2. Ever since we had that crazy period of intense rain in L.A., I’ve noticed that the road conditions have been really crappy here, full of potholes that could really fuck your shit up. There were a few on my commute to work that were seriously dangerous if you didn’t see them and manage to slow down in time. Recently, though, I’ve noticed that most of them have gotten patched up. So, yay for infrastructure, I guess??

3. Ross and I are going to Las Vegas for our friend’s all-gender bachelor party in May, and I’m really looking forward to it! I haven’t been to Vegas since December 2019, and that was the only time I’ve ever been. I find Vegas to be wonderfully over-the-top if you don’t think about it too hard and just go with it.

1. Cats! Last weekend, I got to meet my friend’s new kitten, and it was everything I dreamed it’d be. He’s already quite TikTok famous since he is @one_eared_uno’s brother. Uno and Dos are two of the friendliest cats I’ve ever met–they really do live up to the Internet hype!

Okay my sweets, let’s leave it here.

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Until next time—don’t forget to take that survey, please!!

Love,

Liz

XOXO