My calendar might say Monday March 4, but I’m pretty sure we’re barrelling toward Friday the 13th of Smarch,1 with all the lousy weather and bad luck that implies. No one knows exactly when Smarch, the 13th month of the year according to Springfield Elementary School’s misprinted calendars, falls, but I believe you can feel it in your heart. My heart tells me that Smarch is now.
Maybe it’s SAD, maybe it’s Smarch, but either way my creativity feels like it’s at a low ebb right now. A lot of my mental energy is going into my BIG MOVE. A bunch more is tied up in keeping track of 3 simultaneous seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Oh, and I suppose some amount is going to teaching and email and the various other tasks my job entails. Mostly, I want to pound a non-alcoholic mojito and curl up in the fetal position around my hot water bottle.
In this spirit, I offer an eclectic little charcuterie board of thoughts for your Monday, whether it’s March or Smarch in your heart.
The days are growing longer, but this feels like a lot of pressure
I generally welcome the return of light as much as anyone in the northern latitudes. However, with the longer days comes the implicit pressure to do something with that extra daylight time. Part of me misses the early dark, because it feels like the perfect excuse to end your day by 4pm, make a bowl of soup, and hibernate until the next morning.
Themed months are exhausting
March (if it is March) means International Women’s Day/Women’s History Month, and as a fully-fledged feminist, I’m over it. (Smarch is so lousy it probably has International Men’s Day). Not because it gives women (or any other group that has a theme month) special advantages over someone else (it doesn’t) but because it.is.too.much.damn.work. And aren’t women already doing too much??
I’ve lost count of the invitations I’ve turned down to speak somewhere to someone on IWD, many of which have come in just over the last two weeks. Sheesh! I have some sympathy, because I’ve also had to organize IWD speakers and events. And every year, those of us tasked with this groan collectively and pray that our students will come up with something so we don’t have to.
Maybe it’s the extra labour involved, maybe it’s the performative corporate/institutional bullshit that gets trotted out, maybe it’s watching women get shot while waiting for bread… whatever it is, I am not feeling it this year.
Pep talk for the catering vehicle that got stuck under my plane my last week
In the spirit of
and his weekly pep talks, I offer some words for the catering thingy (truck? cart?) that delayed my flight home by an hour last Saturday night.Little cart, you know the economy passengers are relying on your over-priced Pringles and miniature vodkas to get them through this late night journey. The business class folks already paid for the privilege of your lukewarm meals, goddammit! But as soon as you face one little challenge (suddenly becoming immobilized somewhere adjacent to the plane), everyone is like, “How badly do we need that cart, anyways? Let’s just go!” Sadly, you couldn’t even grant them that, since you were stuck so close that the plane couldn’t move without causing serious damage to both of you.
I know you just wanted to do your ONE JOB. Who can say what foiled you that night. Budget cuts, probably! But you know what, you eventually made it. Against the odds, you refilled both the front and back sections of the plane and wheeled yourself well away. No one applauded this feat, but, belatedly, I salute you.
The mall is dead. Long live the mall!
Shopping malls were very much the landscape of my suburban middle class childhood (shout out to Mississauga, a mall for every mood!). As an adult, I don’t typically enjoy them nearly as much, but I’m thankful for them when I have time to kill. They’re still a fairly accessible quasi-public space where a certain amount of lingering is expected and even encouraged.
Before the aforementioned delayed flight home, we had to wait out a very cold day before heading to the airport at dinnertime. The Cambridge Centre Mall didn’t promise a lot. But we found ourselves warmly embraced by the comforts of climate-controlled corporate-branded consumption.
Free bread at East Side Mario’s with half price appetizers and free soft drinks? YES PLEASE. This was the cheapest meal we had all week, including from fast food places. A movie theatre where all the seats reclined fully, the tickets were cheap, and we could watch Jason Statham kill a lot of people for two hours? WE WILL BE BACK.
I don’t tend to leave a mall feeling relaxed and refreshed, but somehow this is what happened. Not the most exciting story to leave you with, but a reminder that sometimes the boring, basic-ass things in life are exactly what we need.
What I’m reading: Moon of the Turning Leaves, by Waubgeshig Rice. I’ve been looking forward to this sequel to Moon of the Crusted Snow for a few years!
What I’m watching: One Day, on Netflix. I’m about half way through and I haven’t quite made up my mind about this one, but the performances are good and the one day per year storytelling format is compelling enough to keep me watching.
"Lousy Smarch weather." Treehouse of Horror VI: Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace Season 7, Episode 6 Original Air Date: October 29, 1995. (Wow, this aired on my birthday!). Given the title of this newsletter, we have to include Simpsons references whenever appropriate.