So, I was verifying my links, and I took a second look at Molly Faulkner-Bond’s byline, which led me to this totally amazing new feminist resource, Sirens Magazine. Featured articles include “Makeup Is a Feminist Act,” “A Soldier’s Style,” (“I wanted to wear my favorite Club Monaco pencil skirt instead of the high-waisted, polyblend pants that made my hips expand and my butt flatten… I had to admit, when I put on that unflattering uniform and forfeited my feminine fashion, I became more competent as a Naval officer”), “10 Mistakes White People Make When Talking About Race” (you’re not supposed to say “colored,” apparently) and “Why Interracial Dating Is Still Hard.” (Could it be… racism?) My God, you guys, I am so happy I found this site! It totally embodies this fun, sexy feminism that is non-judgmental and non-threatening and also mostly focused on buying stuff and finding yourself a man! You know: my kind of feminism. Feminism of the fourth wave. 

Say, here is some totally feminist dating advice for you: 

You don’t want the guy to feel like he’s going home with an easy girl. Even though he’s a man, and men are the new women—or perhaps because of that—we have to help him feel like a conqueror.

See, now, this is why all of my dates feature a mandatory knife fight. It provides the illusion of resistance! Don’t worry, ladies – I always let him win. By the by, those stitches of mine are healing nicely. 

Did you know that the girls of Sirens Magazine also feel that Sex & the City is, like, totally just like their lives? 

I remember reveling in my absolute hatred for Carrie one whole “Sex and the City” season when she toyed with Aidan (the engagement jitters part, not the cheating-with-Big part). Why? Because I’d done something similar myself. I wasn’t proud of it in the least, but I could watch and see reflected exactly where I’d gone wrong, why it was wrong, and why it was also just my own dumb (ultimately forgivable) humanity getting in the way. I could analyze myself through her missteps in a way that was perhaps a little too painful to take head-on in my own life. I could, in a word, relate.

Oh, my God, you guys, me too! Like, I remember when Carrie moved into this really shitty apartment in a low-profile borough and it was terrible but, it was, like, all she could afford even though she had two jobs which is totally typical in this day and age, and then she was sick one day and her pay was docked, and shortly thereafter she found out she had bedbugs and had to bring in an exterminator, and then she was like,  ”oh! no! I don’t think I will be able to eat next week! What does this mean for my sexy circle of lady friends and all the sexy new clubs we just have to sexily attend in our sexy new shoes so that we can sexily drink some sexy cocktails? I guess the real ‘bed bugs’ are our fears! Of intimacy!”

Oh, wait, that never happened. 

Anyway, whenever you’re bummed out by the wage gap or the rates of violence toward women or the media or just your damn bedbugs, remember: 

Choosing cupcakes over rice cakes is empowering. 

Yayyyy!!!! Cupcakes!!!!!

What is the most important issue that we, as a nation, face today? Why, women’s garments, of course! Which is why I was positively overjoyed to find fourth-wave feminism resurgent in Molly Faulkner-Bond’s vital piece, “The Power of the Miniskirt.”

[Miniskirts] seem so slutty and overexposed at times that we want to pack up all of our formerly favorite flirty little numbers — which, incidentally, have always made us feel sexily in charge, when worn at just the right moments — and give them to Goodwill. But the embattled garment responsible for such incidents has fought such image problems since its creation nearly 50 years ago. So we ask: Is a high hemline a sign of empowerment, or overexposure? Is it feminist — “I may be smart and capable but I can still be sexy” — or just foolish?

My goodness, yes. The amount of leg shown by my clothing has a direct impact on how “empowered” I feel on a day to day basis. That’s why I’ve taken advantage of my roommate’s temporary absence from the apartment, and am currently working in nothing but a besequined thong. I feel so sexily in charge! 

With their legs freed from the weight and cover of long skirts, women could literally move more easily through space; quite quickly this idea acquired symbolic social meaning as well… in an era when young adults were beginning to question the authorities dictating their lives, the miniskirt’s high hemlines became simply another way of challenging convention and looking forward toward a new era in which women were freer.

PREACH IT, SISTER! You know, there is only one way in which this article could be better: that is, if it managed to incorporate a few meditations on entirely irrelevant pop-culture figures who also happen to be fictional. Those are really lacking in this piece. Oh, no, wait, I totally found some!

Heather Locklear’s character Amanda Woodward on “Melrose Place” presented a female professional — she ran an advertising company and owned an apartment building — who happened to have an alluring wardrobe of tight suits and short skirts. Although Amanda might have gotten around, but she was nonetheless a force to be reckoned with, and her professional endeavors on the show were as central to her character’s progression as her many love affairs — in fact, perhaps more so.

Molly Faulkner-Bond, you have convinced me! I’m heading to American Apparel right the fuck now. They’ve got high-waisted shorts, too, and I have to tell you, “finding the right pair of hot pants” is a strong #2 on the list of my priorities, right above “a Democratic candidate who takes a strong position on the matter of choice” and just below “the perfect liquid eyeliner.” Do you have one more rallying cry before I go? 

Perhaps to wear a mini with modesty and grace in today’s fashion world practically is political once again — it resituates the mini-wearer’s power back to herself, rather than leaving it in the hands (and eyes) of watching viewers… it’ll also make our summer wardrobe a whole lot more fun.

My god! A fun summer wardrobe. I’ll have you know that this is literally all I care about. Well, that and talking about boys.

Know and read everything about everyone, comment on it or criticize it on your Tumblr, but never mention it in real life.

This way we can maintain two separate spheres: one, where we are so honest that we hurt each other, and another, where we are so dishonest that we hurt each other even more.

If you haven’t heard, Jessica Roy is apparently a wonderful person. She wrote a piece on the Thinking and Drinking horror (before almost anyone else, as far as I can tell) which became the center of the conversation about what this meant specifically to young (“fourth wave,” apparently, is a thing?) feminists. Moe and Tracie read it, and responded. She was invited to an n+1 party, along with weirdly terrifying letter-writer and potential bell-tower-shooter Alec Niedenthal (“MY MYSPACE-ADDLED GENERATION WHICH YOU HAVE JETTISONED SHALL LEAVE YOU IN THE DUST! SOON WILL COME THE DAY OF RECKONING!”) as a representative of The Youth Today. She was not pleased.

We plucked up a couple of n+1 interns, underage Lolitas in slutty dresses. They were sucking lollipops and carrying six packs of Blue Moon. These girls seemed like they would fuck anyone for a byline, and the men were even worse, charming them with discussions about Gaddis’ The Recognitions or the glory of the em dash. Everything I had begun to suspect — that n+1 was a place where old guys who never got laid in high school finally have their pick of the fine young crop — felt wholly true.

So, yes, whatever, I read Keith Gessen’s blog, which is how I stumbled upon a blog by someone who worked at n+1 once, who made jokes about how “the female interns get laid a lot more than the guys.” Like, ha! ha! Older men in positions of power taking sexual advantage of very young women who aspire to enter their industry, because they can, and because it’s how things get done! What a merry jest! This made my stomach hurt. It also made Roy’s account something less than a surprise.

I talk about these things, occasionally, with a friend who works in the entertainment industry – which, she says, operates by the same rules. We got into it, one day, over (of all things) Maxim.

“I don’t know,” I said, “I’m comfortable with my body, and just because I don’t want to cover it in chicken grease and put it on the cover of Maxim, that doesn’t mean I’m not hot. I just don’t want to present myself as a product for male consumption.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I won’t show up on a Maxim cover one day, if it helps people to find out about what I do,” she said.

“I think that when women have to present themselves in this sexualized way, just to get some name recognition, it feeds into the idea that all women are only sexual,” I said. “Guys might find you hot, because you obviously are, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to value you as an artist.”

“I don’t know about that. Sometimes I think that most of the guys who have helped me in my career have done it, on some level, because they wanted to sleep with me,” she said. “At the end of the day, I have what I want, which is the ability to keep making my art.”

“Yeah, and I know that people say female sexuality is a tool, and that we ought to be comfortable with using it,” I said, “but it’s only a tool insofar as the dudes who control these industries have made it one. It keeps women in this position of having to service men in order to earn their places at the table. And that stifles female voices, because if you can only get ahead on the condition that the male gatekeepers find you desirable, you have to present yourself in a way that incites desire, and you can’t ever really be honest.”

“Dude, look at fucking Madonna,” my friend said. “She got to the top using her sexuality, and now she has more money than God, and complete creative control. People talk shit about her constantly. She’s always offending someone. And do you think it matters to her? Not a chance. She’s in her enormous mansion, getting serviced by Justin Timberlake, while Guy Ritchie cries in the corner. She does whatever she wants.”

Point taken. The thing is, I don’t think most women get to be Madonna. I know writers don’t. And anyway:

I will not give blowjobs for bylines. I will not laugh at peoples’ unfunny jokes because I want them to be impressed by me. I will not become someone else so that I can be absorbed into this elite, nefarious world where people trade intellect like currency.

The girl sounds young (she is young, a lot younger than me), and occasionally awkward, and is still developing a voice (because she is young), and she’s still managed to capture that shit that everyone sooner or later figures out and then sweeps into the closet because we are all in high school apparently and there is nothing worse than not having a date to the prom.

Oh, my God, she is so wonderful.

Fact: over a quarter of New Yorkers have The Dreaded Herp.

Fact: nearly half of New Yorkers with multiple sex partners do not use condoms.

Upon learning these facts, did you immediately think “social networking opportunity”? Then you, my friend, have mastered the Internet.

I am having the same conversation a lot lately. It goes like this:

“Don’t you see,” I say, “that the personal narrative is crucial to the history of women’s literature, and to feminism, rooted as it is in various literary antecedents, some as ancient as Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book and others as recent as Riot Grrrl zines, not to mention the second-wave practice of consciousness-raising, wherein intimate stories were shared as a means of piecing together our shared experiences and placing them in a political context? I maintain that the personal narrative remains a valid and important form for women today!”

“Ah,” they say, “but what have you to say about the phenomenon of the ‘overshare’?”

“Let’s be honest,” I say. “Y’all didn’t know how our genitals worked until about thirty years ago.* You thought we were imagining our menstrual cramps! Our inner lives were a complete mystery to you, and your fear and confusion gave rise to way too many terribly unconvincing female characters in literature, along with the idea that we were all ‘crazy’ and ‘moody’ and unpredictable. Women, as Others, were unreadable to men, and because men controlled the discourse, we became, to a certain degree, unreadable to ourselves. If we didn’t feel the way men thought we ought to feel, we believed that we were crazy or defective. Some of us still think that way. I think we ought to share as much as possible.”

“Mmmm,” they say. “Interesting points. Perhaps you should look at this.”

“I have changed my mind,” I say. “We should shut up right now. Truly, we are a lost generation.”

*UPDATE: Maybe it was closer to 50! “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” was published in the early ’60s, I think, but it was in a very tiny ladies-only magazine. Then, at a certain point, it became a topic of conversation, and folks were like, “whatever! The clitoral orgasm is the frigid woman’s defense against penetration! Freud told me this, and I know it to be fact!” Then the ladies were like, “no, it actually just feels kind of good, so maybe could we focus on that, por favor?” And folks were like, “once again, whatever, bra-burners.” Then, in the super-funky ’70s, folks got to reading D.H. Lawrence again, who said that women who experienced clitoral orgasms were all secret lesbians and should be shot. He also called it a “stabbing beak,” which suggests that Dave Herb dated some unusual ladies, and suggested that we all put flowers in our cooches and give them pet names like “Lady Jane,” which I think was also a plot from an episode of “Sex & the City.” At any rate, in my estimation, it wasn’t until the ’80s when folks stopped really debating how lady parts worked, and started debating whether we should use them at all, and, if so, why, with whom, and how often (see: Porn Wars). It’s been a complicated conversation.

Yeah, this is “satire,” apparently. I particularly enjoy the pseudo-Angela-Davis look they have going for my not-so-secret lady crush, Michelle Obama. Everyone knows that black women with Afros are scary!

If you see the planet, tell it that I am in a fight with it, and I will not be taking any of its calls.

I find myself talking and thinking a lot lately about the role of dudes, and specifically leftist dudes, in feminism.

Feminism’s second wave happened, in large part, because women were dismissed and marginalized in radical circles. At a certain point, it became clear to women that a) folks were talking so very much about liberation and the plight of the oppressed and class and etc., but b) women were still expected to be fuckmates and/or housekeepers, and c) dudes were pretty resistant to giving up these privileges, because apparently all forms of oppression mattered except for those which were most intimate and close to home, so, d) if we were going to fix the problem, we would have to do it our own damn selves. There is a bitterness and a skepticism about dudes’ potential to be allies, I’m saying, that is rooted in history, and cannot be dismissed with oh, what a bunch of man-haters.

True story: in my first year of college at Antioch, I had a conversation with a gentleman who was quite well-respected in the college’s socialist circles. He had such lovely points to make about Trotsky! Anyway, I had a reputation for being That Girl Who Talked About Lady Problems. So, this kind, helpful soul took me aside, into a deserted dorm room, and explained that I was terribly misguided. Didn’t I see, he said, that sexism was insignificant when compared to larger issues of class? Feminism was so terribly outdated and selfish! So invested in the problems of women, which did not, in the long run, matter at all! If only I would listen to him – and perhaps attend one of his meetings? Surely I would see where I’d gotten it wrong.

“You have to decide what you care about more,” he said, “women or people.”

Anyway, that dude later got turned in to the campus cops because he liked to beat up his girlfriend. Dramatic example, I know! Still: these problems exist, and they are rooted in history, and they will not end until men take responsibility for ending them.

I want to believe that dudes can take responsibility for themselves, and can examine their own privilege and the ways in which it affects their worldview, and that, once they’ve committed themselves to unlearning sexism, they can take a critical role in challenging it.

Then I read about the male anti-rape activist who videotapes naked unconscious girls, or the domestic violence activist who was murdered by her boyfriend, or Obama’s abortion misstep (and I like Obama), and I feel a little less confident in that belief.

Nevertheless, this is the week that I have decided to be life-affirming. So, instead of going into this, I’m focusing on Kevin Powell. It would be easy to laugh at Kevin Powell (just Google him) or to mistrust him (“oh, sure, he ‘used’ to abuse women”) , but I’m too busy crying a little bit and feeling validated, because he’s a feminist man with a past who takes absolute responsibility for the things that he’s done wrong, and also happens to be 100% correct:

We men need to understand that we cannot just use our maleness to switch the dialogue away from the very real concerns of women to what men are suffering, or what we perceive men to be suffering… So many of us American males have such a distorted definition of manhood that we don’t even have the basic respect to listen to women’s voices when they talk about violence and abuse, without becoming uncomfortable, without becoming defensive, without feeling the need to bring the conversation, the dialogue, to us and our needs and our concerns, as if the needs and concerns of women and girls do not matter.

Kevin, if I ever meet you, I will make you some cookies. Cookies of gratitude and respect.

While I’m discussing these things, it does seem like a good idea to point out this piece by Jessica Valenti, which is old, but raises some points that are, in fact, helpful to keep in mind. 

Even women who don’t put their pictures or real names online are subject to virtual harassment. A recent study showed that when the gender of an online username appears female, they are 25 times more likely to experience harassment. The study, conducted by the University of Maryland, found that female user-names averaged 163 threatening and/or sexually explicit messages a day…

And while online harassment doesn’t necessarily create the same immediate safety concerns as street harassment, the consequences are arguably more severe. If someone calls you a “slut” on the street, it stings – but you can move on. If someone calls you a “slut” online, there’s a public record as long as the site exists.

Let me tell you, it’s not easy to build a career as a feminist writer when you have people coming up to you in pubs asking if you’re the “Clinton boob girl” or if one of the first items that comes up in a Google search of your name is “boobgate”. And for young women applying for jobs, the reality is terrifying. Imagine a potential employer searching for information and coming across a thread about what a “whore” you are.

Yeah, I know, I know, TAKE BACK THE INTERNET, ha ha, and this is not LiveJournal and you reap what you sow and the Internet is a public place, all points duly noted.

Still, it’s a lot of fun when your blog doesn’t screen comments, I can assure you.

Which brings me back to This Blog I Sometimes Work For, and why I Will Not Tell You Where To Find My Posts. To wit: one of my friends posted a piece about unrealistic beauty standards in fashion magazines; the site was immediately flooded with commenters calling her a “fat nigger” who needed to “shut the fuck up & stop eating donuts.” Another friend posted about a guy who seemed really into her and very emotionally open, until they’d had sex, at which point he stopped answering his damn phone. The commenters told her that he probably knew she was a slut, and that he’d just used her for what she was worth, and that no-one would ever love her or marry her, and that if she had a problem with being lied to and treated badly, she should close her legs and start withholding sex like a good girl. (These commenters were girls, or said they were.) I posted a piece about the word “slut,” and about the fact that, although I can use it playfully, and even self-apply it from time to time, I get really worried when girls actually start to police other women’s sexual behavior via slut-bashing. I got told (again) that I would contract the AIDS and die, that I was a dirty whore with daddy issues, that I had no self-control or self-respect, that I had given men an excuse to use me and leave me in the dirt, that no one would ever love me (this is the most common insult on these threads, and, while I’m being honest, the one that I find myself most tempted to believe – so, of course, it hurts the most), and, of course, that I was a cum receptacle and had probably been passed around like a joint and would have sex with a dog. 

Now, a reasonably sex-positive and feminist reader would see right through this shit. Are most people on this planet reasonably sex-positive and feminist? Dear me, no. So it’s a good thing we all use pseudonyms and don’t share them with anyone but each other! Ha ha! Right? 

Well, no. It probably isn’t right at all. 

You guys, I don’t feel like making fun of Keith Gessen any more.

[Note: I originally posted this on a private forum. I had a conversation not so very long ago (three hours? four?) with someone who told me that if I can't stand behind what I write in a public fashion, I probably shouldn't write it. Which is fair! So, when I re-read all this business this afternoon, I realized that it was precisely the sort of thing I would normally hesitate to stand behind, because a) I am 100% aware that, if anyone actually read it, they might very well disagree or get irritated, b) it's critical of some folks whose careers I actually do admire, and c) it contains at least one sensitive personal detail that I would be reluctant to discuss over coffee. UP IT GOES! Because here is the thing: my private writing is not so very dissimilar from my public writing (although I maintain so many forms of "privacy" that it's difficult to keep track of which piece is being read by whom at any given moment). It just has these little moments of uncomfortable honesty. And, whatever, it's not "honesty" if you deny the fact that you've said anything. So maybe it's time to put everything in one place.]

All of this gives me a headache.

For the precious few who don’t know the story, it goes like this: Jezebel editors Moe Tkacik and Tracie Egan got very drunk prior to their appearance on Lizz Winstead’s talk show, “Thinking & Drinking”. The show, fittingly enough, is available on “Shoot the Messenger.” Lizz Winstead, who is startlingly hostile and apparently prone to quoting her guests out of context, took them to task for being “free, sexual beings” (her words) and strongly implied that they were due to get raped because they were sluts. Things went downhill from there. Here’s a quote:

Tracie: “People are always saying it’s not safe to go home with strange men, blah, blah blah, like Mr. Goodbar whatever”

Moe: “What’s gonna happen?”

Lizz: “You could get raped.”

At this point, Tracie and Moe, who had been engaging in standard silly drunken banter, were made to switch gears and discuss the Very Serious Subject of Rape, and whether they were responsible for getting their readers raped because they wrote about hooking up with dudes.

Of course, drunk people are not good at catching nuances and implications, or at reciting statistics, which means that neither girl was able to counter Winstead’s argument by pointing out that many, many women are raped by acquaintances rather than strangers. The fact that you’ve known someone for weeks, or months, or years, does not mean that he will not rape you. Winstead was just engaging in the time-honored traditions of blaming sexual assault survivors and shaming sexually active women with false and lazy arguments – all the while wearing the mantle of the Weary and Righteous Second-Waver who must defend the One True Feminism. Actual feminists, in my experience, know that the blame for rape goes to rapists, and not to the victim’s clothes or sexual habits or browser history. Her guests, who were obviously stupid drunk (bad choice, duh) were not able to respond quickly enough or intelligently enough to call her out.

This is where things got retarded.

Tracie Egan, who has a history of handling these things poorly, decided to avoid the topic altogether by bringing up her Vice article about paying a dude to act out her rape fantasy, making tone-deaf jokes (“I live in Williamsburg, there aren’t very assertive men there”) which suggested that she was unable to conceive of rape as anything but fantasy (that is, the old romance novel fantasy of a big strong man overcoming your objections and giving you totally hot sex – which, in my personal experience, is absolutely and completely unlike rape), and essentially saying that she was unrapable “because I’m, like, smart” and took self-defense classes and didn’t hang out with “frat guys.” Instead of engaging with the argument, she tried to dismiss it, making it seem as if the subject of rape were absolutely unimportant to sex-positive feminists (the title of her personal blog post about the interview, “Rape Can Be Boring,” is not helping). Since sex-positive feminism’s relationship to rape was precisely what Winstead had called into question, this was bad news for all of us.

Moe, on the other hand, actually seemed to have a few very relevant things to say. Of course, Winstead had no interest in hearing them; at one point, when Moe tried to explain that she had been raped by an acquaintance, and had had complicated emotional reactions, including an unwillingness to blame her rapist (which, by the way, is a nearly universal experience among the rape survivors I’ve spoken to), Winstead actually told her to shut up. This was not even the worst of it:

Moe: “I guess third guy, I ever had sex with, date raped me, and I got very mad at him, but I wasn’t gonna fucking like turn him in to the police and fucking go through shit..

Lizz interrupts: “Why not, you see that’s the problem, why not, I am just curious?”

Moe: “Because it was a load of trouble and I had better things to do, like drinking more.”

You know, if she were sober, and not constantly being cut off, she might have been able to explain that (a) few reported rapes are prosecuted, (b) women who prosecute rapes are routinely smeared and harassed inside and outside the courtroom, (c) very few rape trials result in convictions, and (d) rape sentences are often ridiculously short, meaning that your rapist will be on the streets in a matter of years, ready to rape again. Yeah, that shit is a “load of trouble,” and for me, anyway, it was not worth it, which is why I didn’t fucking report my rape, and why none of the rape survivors that I know have reported their rapes, and why 60% of sexual assault survivors have not reported their rapes. And, you know, if I had to explain this in a clearly hostile situation, unprepared and drunk off my ass, I might stumble a bit and make a nervous joke about drinking.

That wasn’t enough for Winstead, though; instead she blamed Moe explicitly for every other rape that her attacker had ever committed or would ever commit.

What.

The.

FUCK.

Say it with me, now: the only people to blame for rape are rapists. The only people to blame for rape are rapists. The only people to blame for rape are rapists. Oh, and our fucked-up criminal justice system. Other than that: rapists.

Of course, Moe and Tracie are being crucified right now, because they are young women who write about feminist issues, and are therefore expected to speak for every single young feminist on the planet. Their personal fuck-ups and failings are the failings of the entire movement, age group, and gender. If they were men, however, we’d have to take them on a case-by-case basis and be tolerant of their mistakes. Since progressive men are allowed, and even encouraged, to ignore gender issues or handle them in a half-assed manner, it’s likely that this would have very little impact on their reputations.

Case in point: Al Franken, a comedian who is running for Senate and aims to represent the entire state of Minnesota, turns out to have a history of insensitive comments about rape and women in general. I learned about this from Slate, which published an article on the topic, the main thrust of which seemed to be “can’t they take a joke?”

Here is one thing that I have learned from my job: every single human being on the planet believes that he or she has a story worth telling. Usually that story is about parents. These people are almost always wrong.

Nevertheless, I want to tell you a story now. People who read this blog (I assume there are some) notice that I talk about my mother a whole lot. I can only hope that this little anecdote can somewhat explain why that happens.

When I was 18 years old, my mother and I attended an Antioch orientation event. It was dominated by a student with that annoying hippie/punk/hipster Antioch aesthetic (dreads! plastic glasses! facial piercings!), who was concentrating in Women’s Studies and aimed to counsel battered women for a living. My mother, at one point, questioned something that she said on the topic (I can’t quite remember what), and the girl gave a dismissive little laugh and said something like, well, if you’ve actually studied these issues…

At this point, my mother leaned forward, with the most terrifying smile.

“Honey,” she said. “I was beaten by my husband for years. I mean to tell you, I barely escaped with my life. And if you want to ‘help’ the poor battered women, the first thing you might want to do is get rid of that snide little attitude. Oh, and take that shit out of your face. Because no-one in my position is ever going to ask for help from a snotty teenager who thinks she can tell grown women what to do.”

A. W. E. S. O. M. E.

Oh, and my mom totally works with abused women and wives of addicts. In your face, snotty teen!

So, all of this is to say that, this morning, after having a long conversation with my mom about my apartment (waaahhh) and career (wahhhh) and money (wahhhh) and no luck (wahhhhh) and no spare time  (wahhhhhh), during which she remained, as always, infallibly kind and helpful and tough, I opened an e-mail from this blog I sometimes work for, which was like, “Your Mom! Are you scared of turning into her? Do you think it’s happening already?”

Jesus Christ, I hope so.