Dead Letter Department #55
weather report
Every time I leave through the back gate I shove my face up against the low hanging plum branches & gaze longingly at the little clusters of buds. They’re working on it, I know they are. The crocuses are already starting to come up in some sunny spots, although not my yard yet, and the snow drops. I even saw some pink tree blossoms in one of the lake neighborhoods—a whole row of little fruit trees, I think, standing in someone’s front yard, one of the earliest banners of spring. It’s very back & forth this time of year—a few days of milder temperatures, actual sunbreaks, tentative green things pushing up out of the ground, and then a random hail storm, a few days of impenetrable soggy gloom. Spring really must be coming, I think, and then—oh no, wait, it will be like this forever & your feet are going to rot off from being wet all the time.
I am bolstered slightly through the continued dampening of both mood & body by actually owning a rain jacket for the first time in an embarrassing number of years. I had a very busted up dog walking jacket, and when it finally died, I just somehow never replaced it, even though it rains constantly here. Is this a baffling wardrobe oversight? Yes. Did I mostly get by on various layers of hoodies, except in the very coldest weather? Also yes. Fortunately, I saw a sale last month when I was also buying (surprise!) a hoodie on something that I thought would probably not make that plasticky swooshing sound every single time I so much as breathe. I understand that the truly outdoorsy folks need garments that weigh about 6 ounces, & that they’re willing to put up with the nigh-constant rustling in order to do it, but I can’t stand the feeling of being trussed up in plastic like an unhappily roasted duck. It turns out water resistant canvas is my friend here, & as an additional bonus the pockets are so enormous that I was carrying a paperback book around in my coat for about a week & didn’t even know it was there.
One of my favorite people in the world is staying here for a while, so I’ve been getting to run around to different spots I haven’t been to in ages, including spending a lot of time at the various dog parks watching her dog make friends with everything on four legs. So far my favorite dogs have been a Shiba Inu named Boba (5 star name, no notes whatsoever), every single Samoyed I’ve met because they all look like happy clouds of meringue, & the ancient pomeranian who seemed perplexed at having to be there, but game enough to trot around on his tiny teddy bear legs.
The dog dreams are back, of course, since I’m spending so much time with her very excellent dog—the ones where my brain tries to solve the problem of me not being able to get a pet right now by inventing various magical breeds that would cause no logistical problems & cost no money. Sometimes this magical breed looks like an existing breed—last week’s dream No Problems dog was a sort of brindled pit bull—& sometimes they’re literally magic, golden-eyed creatures that stand waist high, have almost too human expressions, & are about four seconds away from offering me a quest. If I did see one of those at the the shelter, I must confess I’d adopt it immediately & set off on that quest before we could even get a dog tag engraved.
The perfume for today is Goest’s Lartigue, which I should probably put my back into trying to learn to pronounce if I’m going to insist on wearing it. I had gotten a sample set of Goest’s whole run, which has some unusual scents (Silent Films, which does indeed smell like celluloid, somehow, & Dauphine, which makes me think of the sweetest, prettiest femmes I’ve ever known), & fell in love with Lartigue’s peachy brightness. I ordered it after completing one of those logistically complicated tasks that seems to go on forever & is constantly throwing out terrible blackberry runners of additional tasks to wind around your ankles. It makes me feel like someday I’ll see the sun again.
A complicated reward system for various good behaviors & task completion sometimes makes me feel like I’m an angry little animal someone is trying to train, but when you work so much by yourself, setting your own deadlines, unable to alter the mood in the room except by your own devices, anything that helps the forward motion is at least worth a try. After all, if I bite the hand that feeds me, I’m just gnawing away at myself.
one good thing
Elissa’s second book is out! Elissa R. Sloan is also represented by my brilliant agent, & I absolutely loved her first book, The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes. I’ve been waiting impatiently for this one, which is called Hayley Aldridge Is Still Here. It follows a former Hollywood It Girl & child star who’s been trapped in a conservatorship, & Elissa’s writing on beauty, celebrity, & the price paid by everyone who gets chewed up in the fame machine is both sharp & beautiful. I can’t wait to get into this one, & I’ll tell you all about it when I do.
If you like the newsletter, please share it with a friend or consider subscribing to the secret edition, where I’m writing my way through transition. The next one is likely to be about the absolute hell of trying to get top surgery scheduled. Thank you, as always, to my current subscribers, who make these letters possible. Write to me anytime at departmentofdeadletters@gmail.com.
I hope to see you here at the Dead Letter Department again soon, & in the meantime, have you tried offering the small angry animal in your brain a reward of some kind?