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Hi friends!

How are you? I hope you’re doing well! I’m doing alright. This week, some workers came by our apartment and replaced all the faucets in the house. Our bathroom faucets used to be overpowered for some reason, so that if you lifted up the handle all the way, water would shoot out too far and splash all over you. We adapted to it and just used a lighter touch, but we’d forget to warn friends who were visiting our place and they’d always come out of the bathroom soaking wet. It was almost like a weird prank we would end up apologizing for. Well, now the faucets work normally, so fun’s over, I guess.

Currently, I’m waiting for sushi to be delivered for dinner, trying to figure out how I’m going to spend my holiday weekend. My husband Ross and I are supposed to go out to dinner tomorrow night, but we don’t know where yet. We also have an appointment at the post office tomorrow to get new passports, because (and this is quite embarrassing) we lost ours somewhere in our home. I know, it’s ridiculous, but we’ve truly looked everywhere and couldn’t find them. And of course, being able to leave the country is pretty dang important to us.

I don’t want to prattle on too much at the top here, because today we’ll be reviewing the results of the 2025 Like You Know Whatever Reader Survey, including all your anonymous questions for me! So let’s just get right into it:

Survey Results

Thanks so much to everyone who filled out my survey! About 5% of total subscribers responded. Honestly, I would have liked to have heard from a larger cross-section of subscribers, but I do really appreciate everyone who took the time to respond! You’re real ones!

Here’s how you responded:

Once again, the intro part where I talk about my life wins! I am always amazed that anyone gives a shit about that part, but I’m so glad it resonates! Those who responded “Other” basically said they liked a mix of different things. Shout out to the one person who said they liked hearing about my “outfits & I guess the stories that go with them!” Thank you!! I usually don’t highlight my outfits unless I attend a wedding or something, but maybe I will more in the future.

Well. Listen, I love you all for responding, but that wasn’t very helpful, LOL. I guess I will just continue with the current cadence as much as possible!

I love all of you so much for being willing to answer this question! This came up for me recently at an otherwise casual bar hang with a friend before the Kylie Minogue concert, because apparently, neither of us are afraid to get dark. The majority of you (43.33%) believe in “Something about energy neither being created nor destroyed and becoming one with nature,” with the second largest group (30%) committing to “Nothing, you’re worm dirt.” I myself vacillate between the two, but I have respect for all viewpoints. Of the two people who selected “Other,” one replied, “Luckily I have no idea!” while the other simply said, “Ghost,” which made me laugh a lot. Ghost, indeed.

The next question asked what was your favorite food to cook, and only five of you (16.67%) replied that you don’t cook. Among those of you who DO cook, it seems like there are a lot of vegetarians in the mix (respect), but also people who love pasta, grain bowls, seafood, Mediterranean food, and soups. And then there was this person after my heart:

“I can highly recommend a fellow Aussie cook called Nagi who has a fantastic recipe site called RecipeTin Eats. She thoroughly tests all her recipes and they always work out great for me. I've got her first cookbook which I'm making my way through. As an added bonus there's some juicy goss recently where she called out another Aussie cook for stealing her recipes and I'm Very Invested in reading all the gory details in the media. Speaking of gory details there's also the court case of a woman who allegedly murdered her estranged husbands parents and church friends with poison mushrooms inside a beef wellington that she cooked for them. Wild but also very sad. However, I digress!!”

Oh, trust, I am familiar with both of these scandals!! I love Nagi and RecipeTin Eats and have made many of her recipes before, and I am attuned enough to the recipe blog drama that I heard all about the Bake With Brooki tea. I believe now another food writer has come forward and accused Brooki of stealing recipes, too! Googles about it Yes, and it’s Sally from Sally’s Baking Addiction! 😱 I don’t bake very often, but I would trust Sally with my life, baking-wise.

And as a true crime person, I am also aware of the beef wellington story as well, since it was covered in a Hollywood Crime Scene mini episode. Fascinating!! I actually did not realize that this all happened in Australia (allegedly)!

Finally, I asked, “Where are you and what are you doing right now?” Most of you said that you were at work, not working (hey, I meannn), but here are a few other responses:

In my room about to do some very silly remote volunteering after clearing my email (writing bios for shelter cats)

Home, doing a French lesson.

Melbourne Australia! I read your newsletters the next morning after you send them as they land about midnight here, on my phone while in bed with my cup of English breakfast tea (made with leaves steeped for 5 minutes and cow's milk) with my partner beside me and our little Maltese Shih Tzu snoozing in his fluffy bed on the floor. Autumn morning sunlight streaming through our window

Reedley, CA! Middle of the middle of Central California (ag land, too many trump flags :/ ) very cute diner/cafe Willie’s Cafe. Delicious breakfast burritos after 6 miles on a cool walking trail they built along an old railroad line.

I'm at home drinking and watching my sister and boyfriend practice muay thai

I'm at home, waiting for Scrivener to open so I can write some self-indulgent fanfiction. :)

In my living room rocking a cranky baby

On the toilet🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

OMG, I love all of these responses so much! You are truly my people!

Ask Me Anything

Finally, I invited you to Ask Me Anything anonymously! I intend to answer every question that was asked of me! I’m also going to include some questions that you put in other sections of the survey, because I feel like it.

I've been subscribed for so long that I feel like I know you, but also that if I saw you in LA I would debate with myself for way too long about saying hello because I DON'T actually know you and don't want to make things weird. Have you ever been recognized? Would you like someone saying hi?

What a generous question! First of all, good luck catching me out and about in L.A., because I am a real homebody sometimes! Haha! But to answer your questions, yes, I actually have been “recognized” before, once for my newsletter, and once for my Bachelor recap podcast I used to do with my husband. Both times, it was someone who I didn’t know personally, but who was a friend of a friend, hence us being at the same parties. They came up to me and introduced themselves as, “hi, you don’t know me, but…” And both times, I was fucking delighted!!! It happens so rarely that someone coming up to me and saying hi is definitely not annoying. It’s hard for me to imagine a situation where that wouldn’t be an absolute joy for me, honestly. 

Would you ever get Zadie a friend or is she a solo cat?

Oh man, you’ve touched on a subject of constant debate in my household. Ross and I have gone back and forth on this for YEARS. When we got Zadie, we were told that she is happiest as a solo cat, and judging from how she reacted when she was forced to be in the same space as other cats at the shelter, that seems accurate. However… that was almost 13 years ago, and we really want another one!! A couple years ago, we even went so far as having a kitten picked out at Sante D’Or, the shelter I was volunteering with here in L.A. for a while, but someone put in an application just before we could (that was a fluffy grayby who was so cute, btw).

We haven’t pulled the trigger yet on another cat because I am just always worried it would ruin Zadie’s life, and I just want her to have the best life possible. She really has the run of the apartment right now, with a cat tree or scratching post in every room. If we did get another cat, it would probably have to be a kitten, because apparently that is less threatening to older cats. Years ago, I was listening to an interview with the director of Sante D’Or on The Purrrcast, and she said that if you think about it, it’s like walking into your home and finding a strange child there versus walking into your home and finding a strange man there. One is a lot more threatening than the other. Anyway, we often talk about adopting an orange kitten, because they are such goofy dumb weirdos, but idk!

I will say this: after Zadie moves on (I’m going to pretend she is immortal but will eventually leave us to live abroad and be a fabulous Parisian cat), we would definitely be looking to adopt a bonded pair. One cat just isn’t enough!

Would you guys ever get a dog?

For a long time, I always assumed we would get a dog one day, when we lived in an apartment complex that allowed it. Then we moved into an apartment complex that allowed it, and still, it never seemed like the right time. Dogs are a lot more work than cats, and we travel fairly often. I love hanging out with other people’s dogs, but I don’t know if I want the responsibility of having our own, at least not right now. Also: I have no idea how Zadie would react to a dog, but just judging by her brief encounters with them at the vet, not well.

What's your happiest childhood memory?

Am I in therapy? What a deep question! I love it, though. The first thing that comes to mind is honestly just playing by myself or being creative by myself in my little pink bedroom. As a kid and teenager, sometimes I would spend hours and hours just writing stories or playing guitar and making up songs, having a blast. One time I got in trouble because I was supposed to have gone to bed but instead was having a pretend sleepover party by myself in my room. This is sounding a little sad now that I’m writing it out but the thing is, I always had friends, it wasn’t like I was a total loner. I’ve just always enjoyed spending a lot of time alone, too. It’s one of the reasons I was really scared to move in with Ross at first.

Which mythological creature would you choose to represent yourself on a tabard if you were to march into battle?

What a fantastic question. And yes, I had to look up what a “tabard” was, which is pretty sad, since I read all of those Game of Thrones books back in the 2010s (it’s like a little sleeveless tunic). After way too much thought, I think I would have to go with a phoenix. I think I’m a pretty resilient little fucker, and even though I’m still in my 30s, I’ve had many different chapters of my life, endings and new beginnings. I would like to take that value, of resilience, into battle.

How often do you cook fancy things that require lots of effort? Does your partner cook? If so, how do you decide who cooks?

That’s a great question! I usually cook dinner 2-3 times per week. I aim to cook twice on weeknights and almost always on Sunday night, so that we’ll have some leftovers for the beginning of the week (which tends to be busier for me, work-wise). Fancy is subjective, but I usually save the more time-intensive cooking projects for those Sundays, either things that are going to take two or more hours or recipes I’ve never made before.

Technically, Ross can cook. I mean, he lived on his own for years before we moved in together, and he fed himself somehow. I just don’t really like his cooking, to be honest. My biggest gripe with him is that he doesn’t season. He could totally live off of bland, meal-prepped baked chicken breast and steamed broccoli forever, while I get bored with food way too easily. Just as an example, he eats the same thing (oatmeal) every morning, while some days I will make an elaborate egg sandwich and other days I’ll skip breakfast entirely (much to the chagrin of my dietician). So, I take the lead on cooking, and I think we’re both happier for it.

F/M/K: instapot, air fryer, blender?

Ooh, this is a good one! I don’t own an Instant Pot, but my understanding is it can be used as both a slow cooker and a pressure cooker, right? I would say marry the Instant Pot, because that seems like the best for batch cooking. An Instant Pot is stable and hardworking, and going to be able to provide for you and your family for a long time. I would say fuck a blender. Blenders are sexy and cute and fun (frozen margarita time!!), but they can be hot and cold, and sometimes unpredictable. And I know this is going to shock a lot of you, but I would kill the air fryer. Mine is bulky and awkward and takes up a bunch of space, yet it can only fit like two chicken breasts in it. It’s both too big and too small at the same time, and I don’t use it very often at all. The air fryer is like that losery guy who hangs around hoping one day you’ll notice him, but you have noticed him, you just don’t like him. Idk. What say you, readers?

If you couldn't live in LA (or NYC), where would you live?

That’s a hard one for me! I’ve lived in L.A. for almost 10 years, lived in Brooklyn for five years before that, and both my husband’s family and mine are in the NYC area. So, naturally, if we didn’t live in L.A., I think the second option would be NYC.

I think, based on my desire to stay in California and both my husband’s company and my company having a presence up there, San Francisco/The Bay Area would probably be the third option, although I don’t think I would be as happy there as I am in L.A. It just seems like a pretty difficult place to live unless you are making tons of money in the tech industry. I also prefer living in larger cities, and a warmer climate. But, beautiful scenery, absolutely amazing food, and some remnants of hippie counter-culture? Yeah, I could fuck with that. Plus, a couple of my dearest friends live there, and I would love to see them more.

What’s your take on the death of American democracy? And can George Clooney save us?

Haha, George Clooney?! Yeah, I wouldn’t put money on him.

Oh, gosh, I don’t know. It’s a very depressing and upsetting time to be living in this country, as someone who tries to stay moderately informed of what’s going on. Every day, there is more bad news. Every day, there is a new low. I feel a lot of anger toward all the people who allowed this to happen, who truly exist on all sides of the political spectrum. The Democrats blew it, too. 

I don’t feel good about the future at all. I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better. But what do I know? I’ve been wrong a million times before. 

There’s a book I read in 2013 called The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker, a young adult novel about what happens to a teenage girl when one day, the Earth literally stops spinning. It doesn’t halt all at once, it slows gradually, until days and nights become longer by minutes, hours, until they last days and then, weeks. There are a lot of things that happen in the main character’s personal life in that book, but what I’ve never been able to get out of my head about it, though, is that human beings adapt and go on living. People go to work and school in the darkness and sleep in the sunshine. People keep having kids. It speaks to the resilience of the human spirit, or maybe our own madness and stubbornness to keep on living, I don’t know.

Obviously, that book was a commentary on climate change, but I thought about it a lot during Covid lockdown. I’ve thought about it again recently, too, when things have felt so dark politically, yet life goes on. Maybe we will just adapt and keep on living. Maybe there will still be beach days and birthday parties and afternoons in the park with friends. What do I know? What does George Clooney know?

This isn't just for you but for any of your readers too: does anyone have a good system for fitting small political things into their lives? Not talking about like, going to long protests every weekend but how to regularly remember to call your reps, etc. Looking for normal person ideas, not budding activist ideas, if that makes sense.

Well, readers?

I know that a lot of people like 5calls.org because it organizes a bunch of different issues and gives you scripts that you can call your reps with. But I’ll put it to all of you! Leave a comment and let us know what you think!

Do you feel writing this newsletter helps you be a better writer? Is it a kind of journal? Do you enjoy going back and looking at old newsletters?

That is such a good question, whether or not writing this newsletter helps me be a better writer, and it’s one I ask myself fairly often as well. In a lot of ways, I don’t always “count” writing this newsletter as “real writing,” because it isn’t narrative or formal like my other writing. When I sit down to write this, I really am just writing to some amorphous idea of a close friend in my head, even though the last time I checked, something like 85-90% of you didn’t know me IRL. 

I think that over the years, writing this newsletter has helped me be more honest and vulnerable and put more of myself into my writing, which in turn, has made my writing better. I think I’ve talked about it a bunch of times, but before I started writing this newsletter, I was always writing in a character voice or from a fictional person’s perspective. It was scary writing about my life at first, but eventually you realize: nobody really gives a shit. And that’s freeing.

On a technical level, honestly, I think writing copy for different companies and publications and being an editor has made me a better writer than writing this newsletter. The fun part about writing an email newsletter is that I get to be casual and break grammar and style rules in the name of it feeling like a long email from a friend. Sometimes I wonder if that’s cost me jobs, if prospective employers read old posts and think, “Boy, what’s with this chick using more than one question mark at the end of a question??” (I think it adds emphasis in a less angry way than an interrobang!)

I kept diaries and journals throughout my whole life from childhood-on, and at this point, the newsletter has definitely replaced those things as a way for me to catalog my life. I actually do really enjoy going back and reading old newsletters. Sometimes they are super cringey, but other times, I’m so glad I have them as records of my life at that time. The newsletter I sent two weeks after my wedding recapping that day is an especially cherished one (WPE #83, if you happen to have it in your inbox–maybe I’ll repost it someday). I’m also weirdly glad to have the issue where I catalogued everything that was terrible about our last apartment, so I can go back and feel grateful that I don’t live there anymore.

What's your favorite part of your newsletter?

Wow, every year I ask you all that question, but no one has ever asked me that before! I would say the hardest part to write is the intro part where I talk about my life, probably because there is no real format to that, and some weeks I don’t do anything too exciting. Yet, when I go back and read old newsletters, that’s always the part I’m most excited to read. So, yeah. That part.

Alright folks, we’ve reached the end of it!

If you have a second, I’d love it if you’d like or comment on this post–just click this link to go to the post page. This post is public, so feel free to share it on social media, or forward it to a friend.

Until next time—if you see me, say hi!

Love,

Liz

XOXO