My perimenopausal cohort and I used to complain our butts and boobs were losing out to gravity, but we’re over that. Social media has redirected our focus onto our crepey limbs. Not creepy, crepey. Same difference. It’s creepy to find out you’re crepey. I think I’ve made my point.

Before being warned about crepey arms, I never used the word crepey. I didn’t know it was a word. I’ve used the word crêpe. While cooking crêpes, I’ve often called from the kitchen, “I’m making crêpes. Anybody want a crêpe?”

Though I’d never used the word crepey, I believe a friend once used it in a sentence referring to her wedding dress. Something about “not too crepey.”

But crepey as a body description? That was new. I looked it up.

Yuck.

You can spell it crepey or crepy. It’s got no accent circonflexe on the first e. No accents at all, though it’s pronounced cray-peeeeeeee, which implies an accent. Crepey.

So why, you ask, all the talk of crepey? Am I trying to educate you? Scare you? Gross you out? Or am I selling you crepey-aid? None of the above. I am commiserating.

If you’re a woman above a certain age (I am) and you’ve ever clicked on a moisturizer for women after 50 (I have), you know what crepey is. The pop-up ads and Instagrams won’t let you forget about your à la crepey.

I cannot open my phone without a crepey alert, a crepey aid, an anti-crepey French oil that will all but iron out my crepey, making me appear 20.

To those of you who aren’t being assaulted by crepey skin snake oil ads, crepey is what happens to women’s limbs as we age out of dewy. We’re the after in the before-and-after ad.

The online miracle cures for crepey are flying at me like Harry Potter’s acceptance to Hogwarts, promising me endless dewy.

The truth is I never knew about dewy, in the same way I never knew about crepey. What would I do without Instagram?

Do you know about dewy? Not Mountain Dewy or morning dewy, but derma dewy. These promises of endless dewy on my Insta and pop-ups swear they will transform my paper mache arms into bronze muscular sculptures. Even if they never looked like bronze muscular sculptures in the first place.

Oy.

The problem I have is this. I don’t believe it.

I see these aging grandma influencers advertising their 90-year-old dewy skin, but I call bologna sandwich. Or even if that glistening surface is truly their skin, when did they apply that expensive French age-defying oil?

Let me give you an example of what I mean. When I wash my face, it is wet. It will not always be wet. Once I use a towel or when time eventually dries it off (because air exists), I will no longer have a wet face. I feel like face oil is the same. It’s not shellac. French oil doesn’t harden and make us forever shiny and youthful.

Doesn’t our crepey skin eventually suck it up, like water in the desert? How long does the glisten last? Seconds? Hours? Years? Where’s the money-back guarantee if our arms remain crepey?

One over-50 dog park woman recently told me, “You’re lucky. You don’t have crepey knees yet.” Are crepey knees a worry too? Shit. I’m both flattered I don’t have them yet and horrified that they’re en route. Good news: For the cost of my mortgage, I can buy oil that will eventually dry.

Another over-50 woman said to me, “It’s awful. My skin is hanging off my leg bones.” I try not to look, but for the rest of the day, I kept checking my legs to see if I was still attached to myself. We’re like chicken dinners, comparing how tender or loose our meat is.

Our mothers dealt with aging differently. They managed their looks through daily grooming and disciplined diets. They dressed in flattering structured outfits and moisturized with Ponds.

Our mothers didn’t spend one minute online watching over-moisturized, filtered grandmas claiming strangers thought they were 35. Not because these women were better than us, but because there was no such thing as online. There was the grocery store, the department store, and the beauty parlor. No weird online filtered world to gaslight them into spending the farm to oil their face.

Our moms concealed their mottled limbs with turtlenecks, long sleeves, giant glasses, and pantyhose. They didn’t have Instagram reels or pop-up ads telling them they could make themselves more dewy. They had diet pills (speed) and Tab.

Those were the good old days of growing old. Lucky ladies.

Because it’s summer, women my age are already apologizing for our aging bodies, explaining why we no longer resemble anyone in a bathing suit catalog.

The funny thing is we’ll never look as good as we do now, and instead of spending our money on snake oils, we should save up for retirement.

Honestly, once I’m sitting in that rocking chair, and I need a girlfriend to help me up, I hope to hell our arms aren’t dewy. When I’m reaching out to grab onto the arms of my old friend, I don’t want to slide off her dewy arms, crash onto the floor, and break a hip. I need something to grip onto. Something crepey.

I have a confession to make. It’s not a spicy confession. I’m not looking for Hail Mary prayer prompts or a secular over-analysis followed by radical forgiveness.

If anything, my confession is of the meh variety — a first-world confession.

I live with my personal trainer.

Voila. See? No big winner in the top ten sin category.

Judge me.

Am I obsessed with exercise? Am I ridiculously wealthy and seeking out ways to spend my oodles of dinero?

“For the love of God,” you might be gagging. “What kind of person lives with their personal trainer?”

Do you feel sorry for me? Maybe you’re one of those people who think exercise is the eighth level of hell. You flinch at the thought of waking up and seeing a personal trainer at the foot of your bed, jump ropes in hand.

“Good lord!” you mumble to yourself. “How sad for her. Was Amy Attila the Hun in her past life, and this is her penance? To live with someone who makes her do push-ups, and not in a sexy way. Oy vey.”

The younger version of me would agree with your judgments and confusion about my situation. Twenty-something me used to frequent a bar called The Cove. The Cove was nicknamed The Stove due to its soggy, hot, smoke-soaked atmosphere. An evening at The Cove was like drinking in an air-conditionless submarine. Heavenly.

If you ended up hooking up with someone, it was beer goggles, not sober attraction. I’m not judging. This is still the kind of world I want to live in — pre-Instagram, pre-camera filters. AS-IS people. Good personalities, great stories. But, a little too funky to bring home to meet your parents.

If you saw someone doing a push-up at The Cove, it was because they lost a bet or they picked dare over truth. If someone walked into The Cove wearing exercise pants, they might experience a wedgie as they passed by our stools. We were committed to our under-athleticism.

Gyms and gym people offended us.

Young Cove Amy wouldn’t recognize the spandex-clad, sports-bra Amy of today, living with her personal trainer. Cove Amy would take one look at Workout Amy and say, “What an asshole. Keep walking, Jane Fonda.”

Cove Amy would fantasize about tossing a foggy, plastic, beer pitcher in Workout Amy’s direction, yelling “BOOOOOO!” through the dense Marlboro Light smoke.

Cove Amy didn’t dream about abs of steel but believed one day, before she made it to her thirties, she’d get hit by a bus and write a movie about it from her hospital bed.

The personal trainer I now live with never met Cove Amy. He wouldn’t be born for decades. But he’s here now, judging my every move.

Example. When I am jumping up and down, and kicking my legs in front of me to the tune of Let’s Get Physical, my personal trainer asks, “What do you think that does?”

I shrug.

I may have been exercising wrong my entire life. Not my fault. The 80s were more about feeling good in a leotard than heart rate and draining lymphatic fluids. 80s Amy was more about hangover cures than booty lifts.

My personal trainer says, “I know you can work harder. You’re not even sweating.” He’s not wrong, but what am I? An Olympian? I believe 99.9999% of exercise is good hydration and showing up.

My personal trainer tells me I am full of excuses. “It’s not your fault,” he says. “People your age think walking and lifting your knees high is exercise.”

My personal trainer is coaching me on something called plyometrics or isometrics. I tell him, “We’re American. We don’t use the metric system.”

He shakes his head. “You don’t need to turn everything into a joke just because you’re scared of change.”

That gives me an existential crisis because my entire personality is based upon turning my feelings into jokes, so I don’t have to change.

He gives me exercises that cause my body to shake uncontrollably. I grab onto furniture, so I don’t fall. All I can think of is that old woman in the MedicAlert commercial screaming, “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up.”

“You’re not supposed to be comfortable,” he tells me—another existential crisis alert. I’ve spent decades avoiding becoming uncomfortable.

Which reminds me of my nights at The Cove. We were so damn comfortable in our muggy sardine can. Nobody talked about plyometrics or isogenics or hydrotechnics or whatever the metric system exercise mated with. We were loving life, passing time, years away from beer bellies and children telling us to do pushups before we’ve even had our twelfth cup of coffee.

I have a confession to make. You’ve probably figured it out by now. My personal trainer is my sixteen-year-old son. He’s watching me now, sipping my milkshake through a straw as I do push-ups. “Hey, Boomer,” he says. “At least you’re doing a push-up.”

“I’m not a Boomer,” I tell him. “I’m GenX.”

He turns back to his TikTok. “Stop making excuses,” he says. “I’m just proud of you for showing up.”

I’ve concluded I’m aging sort of gracefully. Not a ton of wrinkles, but cloudscapes of white hair.

I’ve discovered, as we all do, the older I become, the more doctor’s appointments I require. It’s like when I first had a baby and had to bring him back every week until they could tell he was properly cooked.

Ageing is the opposite. These appointments are not about making sure I’m thriving. They’re about staving off the loss of all my facilities.

Yesterday, I had a hearing aid inquiry and a tattoo removal consultation. Weird combination, like ordering a martini with baby food. One was necessary, the other was vanity.

My first appointment was with the audiologist. I tried to wrap my ego around having white hair and hearing aids. I concluded with “Fuck it. It ain’t Gaza.”

I walked into the audiology office and checked in with a woman who whispered questions at me.

WHISPERED!

I wondered if that was the first hearing test. I failed.

I was glad I’d filled out most of the forms online before I checked in because I only had to say “What!?” ten times instead of 1,000.

I love hospital waiting rooms. They’re like television. I unapologetically stared at people like they couldn’t see me back. I counted the number of gray/white heads. Ten. It reminded me of church. I feel sorry for the poor clergy who wonder, “How do we get the young people to come walk through those church doors?”

When a couple of 20-somethings checked in with the whispering receptionist, the waiting room became instantly hipper. Do people still say hip? Or does hip now refer to the next surgery I’ll need?

Every ten minutes, another quiet nurse opened the clinic door and whispered out a name. We’d all scream “What?” and she’d repeat it, not much louder than the first time. Test number two. Fail.

After the fourth time the nurse opened the door and whispered a name, the two-hundred-year-old woman sitting closest to me yelled, “Talk louder! We can’t hear!” Many of us nodded. Some adjusted their hearing aids.

When it was my turn, my hearing doctor told me it was up to me if I wanted hearing aids. He said, “You’re 50/50.” That’s either an A or an F, depending on whether you have a full or empty cup.

Apparently, I could sort of hear, but it could be better. My hearing wasn’t life or death. It was “Let’s try something.“ I told him I’d think about it and raced out so I wouldn’t be late for my tattoo removal consultation.

Had the Beatles all lived, their old age hit would have been “Goodbye ageing tattoos, hello hearing aids.” I know the syllables are wrong, but sing it anyway. It tracks.

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced having a tattoo removal consultation, but it’s like buying a car. It’s tricky.

“When did you get this tattoo?”

“When I was 18.”

“How old are you now?”

“A hundred and fifty-five.”

“I can tell because of how puffy the ink is. It’s really settled into your skin.”

“Thank you. Bye.”

I’d gotten the tattoo on a whim when I was 18, and I was done with it. I’d been done with it for decades, but I’d worried about how painful it would be to remove. I’d waited too long. Now it was considered old and puffy, like me.

When I was pregnant, I had to get a zillion tests because I was experiencing a geriatric pregnancy. Now, I was asking for a geriatric tattoo removal.

When woman ages, God laughs.

The truth is, I was inspired by Pete Davidson having an entire body full of tattoos removed. If you don’t know who Pete Davidson is, he‘s a comedian, actor, and writer who is best known for SNL and dating Kim Kardashian. He had over 200 tattoos before removing them.

Honestly, I thought, if a man who had never experienced menstruation or childbirth could remove 200 tattoos, so could I.

Because I had basically been in utero when I randomly branded myself, the ink had sunk in. I would require 13–16 appointments, eight weeks apart, at 150 dollars a pop. I could pay all at once or monthly. But, even if I changed my mind in between, I’d still owe them the total cost. That seemed excessive and long. Two years.

I walked home, happy I still had functional knees and hips, and ordered a tattoo cover-up makeup, which cost $39.99 and would arrive in two days.

I’ve concluded life is too short to waste on getting tattoos removed. On the other hand, I’d like to hear what’s going on in the world, so I will try hearing aids.

Hell, maybe I’ll get a new tattoo to remind my ageing self I was once young and dumb, something I’d love to be now.

1. More storms are in the forecast in Illinois today.

2. The word “Forecast” sounds like “Foreskin”.

3. It’s like foreskin with a cast — briss gone wrong. Bad briss bad briss whatcha gonna do?

4. Governor Pritzker says, “Be careful out there today. Tornadoes”. That reminds me of potatoes.

5. What if the Governor warned us, “Be careful out there because of impending potatoes”?

6. Ask Dan Quayle.

7. In case you don’t know who Dan Quayle is, he was the 1992 running mate on the Republican ticket alongside incumbent President George H.W. Bush.

8. Dan Quayle became infamous for not knowing how to spell potato.

9. How Quayle spelled potato (potatoe) was why we had Bill Clinton and Bill Gore as President and Vice President.

10. Personally, as a bad speller myself, the public shaming about Dan Quayle’s misspelling of “ potato” terrified me.

11. I spell badly, too, and I have boobs! So, there are two strikes against my being Prez or Vice Prez.

12. I think Dan Quayle misspelled potato because his own name is spelled wrong. In my opinion, Quayle should be spelled Quail, not Quayle, but nobody asked me.

13. Do you think Dan Quayle ever mispelled his name as Dan Quail?

14. Ever since Dan Quayle spelled potato wrong, I hate writing the word potato. Also, the word diarrhea. I never spell diarrhea right. I wait for autocorrect to correct me. I type out a collection of the right diarrhea letters and hope for the best.

15. Today, Governor JB Pritzker told Illinoisans to watch out for tornadoes.

16. I hate the spelling of Illinoisans. When I was little, I spelled Mississippi, Mississsipppi, because it sounded better.

17. How do you watch out for a tornado anyway, JB Pritzker?

18. By the time I see a tornado, isn’t it already too late?

19. The Illinois tree-cleaner-uppers haven’t finished cleaning up all the uprooted trees from the last time the tornadoes were in town.

20. Do you think the tornadoes pulled up any potatoes? That seems like it should happen.

21. Do you think Dan Quayle still dreams of spelling the word potato? Do you think he wakes up in a sweat and yells P-O-T-A-T-O-E?

22. Can you believe misspelling a word was once enough to make you unqualified to be Vice President?

Compared to my bestie from high school, I’m a sociopath. Her feelings are raw, unfiltered, hand-rolled, tender. Something sad happens, she cries. A sound goes boom, she jumps.

Not me. My feelings are hidden within the deepest strata of the Earth’s core. You’d have difficulty excavating them with a NASA-grade alien-life-detector sensor.

My mom says it’s because we’re Scandinavian. We come from Vikings, but is it fair to blame an entire people for our coolness? I have no idea whether Vikings were repressed because they were pirates or pirates because they were repressed. I do know I’m afraid my feelings are wrong, so I choose to shut down instead of making a fool of myself.

I work out my emotional repression in my dreams, which is exhausting. Sleeping is the only time I am not trying to steer away from the discomfort of my feelings. Frankly, how I process my emotions at night does not qualify as sleep. It’s more like The Hunger Games.

When I ran away from home freshman year of high school, my high school bestie wrote me a letter with a Sharpie on typing paper. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she wrote. “You’re the only normal person here. How could you leave me?”

We weren’t best friends yet. We were still adjacently friending, but she wrote one hell of a friend love letter. She had me at that opening line.

We had similar fights to this through the years. She’d scream at me. I’d crawl into my shell. She’d say, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I’d leave. I wasn’t trying to be sneaky. I wasn’t hiding anything. I didn’t know what the fuck was wrong with me. I never raised my hand in class when I didn’t know the answer either.

I could have lied to my bestie about what was wrong with me. People do that. Many people answer the “What the fuck is wrong with you? “ question with “My mother, trauma, genetics, hormones, men, being the youngest, being a Viking,” and it sounds legit. But for me, I didn’t have a specific answer. It wasn’t one thing, so I stayed silent, which infuriated her.

It never occurred to me that something was wrong with my bestie. I didn’t question her yelling as a dysfunction. Honestly, I hoped her screaming would melt the calloused repression of my heart, reach into the depths, and find a cause. Save me, oh loud one.

I don’t know why my bestie stayed friends with little cold me. Maybe she was a masochist, or had a savior complex, or possibly I was entertaining enough in between our fights to give me a pass. I could ask her, but she’d probably laugh, which isn’t data.

When I was in college, I met another girl who wasn’t emotionally clogged up. She cried when she saw a three-legged dog. She danced when she heard music in the elevator. When I told her something bad had happened to me, she said, “Oh, honey, come here.” I felt like an alien pretending to act human, faking it till I made it, searching for people who could teach me to fit in with the sensitive humans.

When I met the poet, Robert Creeley, I asked him what the meaning of life was. When I meet my heroes, I like to keep my questions lighthearted. Robert Creeley told me, “The secret to life is hanging out with people who like you.” This was fabulous advice for most people.

However, as a people pleaser, I mistook this as ‘Make everybody like you.’ This proved exhausting. Even when I’d managed to get someone to like me, I didn’t necessarily like them. So there I was, knowing the meaning of life, and distorting it.

I approached people-pleasing the way a Navy SEAL approaches water. With total confidence, the necessity of being an expert in order to survive.

I became friends with every kind of person — from the straight arrow Mensa types to the dropout druggy types and everyone in between. I pulled introverts out of their shells and danced with extroverts on bar counters.

My wild thing friends questioned the love of my wallflowers. My quiet, careful friends were curious about my more feral companions. I loved them all. Each one of them added and subtracted to me. I was a sponge. I was a mirror. I had no idea who I was without them. I merely knew who I was in their presence.

My friendship circles felt like an open audition for a Broadway play. Whenever I was tired of an actor, there was another one to watch. I think part of me was observing humanity, unable to see myself without contrasting and comparing myself to someone else. I was clearly looking outward for something that was hidden within. I was approaching my quest outside in.

I love Poet Robert Creeley’s advice, but it’s only partly right. I can’t tell him that because he’s dead. But, if he were not dead, I’d tell him I think the meaning of life is not only hanging out with people who like me, but hanging out with people I like.

Though I am a people pleaser, I was not a people warmer. Pleasing is one thing, but it is not shelter; it is entertainment. What the fuck was wrong with me all that time was I was observing my bestie’s vulnerability, while not participating in it.

Last week, I talked to my bestie on the phone. Her warmth still leaves me in awe. I still felt like a sociopath compared to her, but at least I know what I’m working towards now. At least, at long last, I can answer her when she asks that fundamental question.

Our power went off sometime on Wednesday night. I woke to a house without electricity. Switches that don’t switch anything on make me panic, like the world is broken.

I don’t want to brag about how good I am in a crisis, but within microseconds, my shoes were tied, and I was halfway to the coffeeshop.

I wasn’t alone as I walked towards Kung Fu Brew on Kingsley Street.

My neighbors and I looked like employees from those work camps where the whistle screams, and the people move zombie-like towards the mine.

Ours was a shuffling, quiet procession of casually clad adults in pajama pants and slide-ons, looking down at our phones.

Our soundtrack sang out, “The ants go marching one by one, hoorah hoorah.”

It was 6:01 am. The panic on the crowded sidewalks created a stench of anxiousness. Sidewalks that, minutes before, had been empty, were now a mass exodus.

God laughed and dumped us outside, caffeine-less, directing us towards our final destination– the only coffee shop open before 8 a.m.

Kung Fu Brew.

Ours was a sleepy town. Businesses closed early and opened late. We made our own coffee. We watched Netflix instead of hanging out in bars and theaters.

We only met our neighbors following disasters. Disasters are meet and greets.

The first time I met neighbors in a disaster was in Iowa City. A level five tornado knocked out much of the city’s electricity. My husband and I drove to the Hy-Vee grocery store, where they were passing out free hamburgers. The whole city seemed to be there, minus the vegetarians. I don’t know where they were lined up. A string bean field, maybe.

Every part of the country has different disasters. I probably need a generator no matter where I live, but then I’d never meet anybody.

Just last week, I met a guy and his dog, Brandi, because they moved to my neighborhood after their house burned down. That’s how it goes. Fire, then hello, nice to meet you.

Cave people probably got together whenever their caves flooded in a monsoon or when someone got dragged away by a saber-toothed house cat.

The New York blackout was like a speed-dating seminar for neighbors. The California fires and Katrina sent people out of state to meet other people in adjacent states.

That’s how we meet now. When we’re jumping onto chairs away from the lava.

Kung Fu Brew opens at six and has a walk-up window. There was already a line of people who were even more Wile E. Coyote than I was in a crisis. I ordered four large cups of black coffee to go.

“Why four?” The woman behind me asked nervously, like I was buying all the toilet paper during a pandemic.

I have a friend who wrote a book called Good in a Crisis. I used to think I was that kind of person, but now I have to ask myself, “Define crisis.” And “Define good.”

While waiting in line with all the other anxious uncaffeinated people outside of Kung Fu Brew, I Googled “Battery-operated coffee pot” and scrolled through the options.

Is having no coffee a crisis?

Is Googling for a battery-operated coffee machine good?

I should tell you, so you don’t have to look for yourself, battery-operated coffee machines are expensive. They take nine minutes to brew, and the capacity is only one cup. That doesn’t sound like a world I want to live in. That wasn’t a crisis I wanted to survive good in.

I closed my phone and introduced myself to the guy behind me in line. I see him every day, but I’ve never found a normal way to say “Hello. I see you.”

The guy was one of those look-downers when he walks, so maybe he’s never seen me back. I am one of those crazy grinnners who assumes we all just haven’t met yet, but when we do, it will be grand.

My friend Jojo told me, “Anyone under 40 thinks people who start talking to strangers on the street are mentally ill.” So, even though my impulse is to talk to strangers, I reserve my introduction for natural disasters.

“I’m Jack,” the man said, looking nothing like a Jack, shaking my hand. He looked like a Francois. I smiled and squinted at his wrong name, like the crazy person I am.

“By the way,” Jack with the wrong name said, “have you ever opened the garage when the electricity was out?”

I shook my head, but followed with, “I think my husband opened ours manually once to see if he could.”

I gave Jack our address. “Knock on our door if you need help. I’ll send my husband out.”

We both returned to facing forward and checking our cellphones for an outage update.

I Googled generator and put one in my Amazon cart. I’m the kind of person who likes to make my own coffee and stay in.

“Taut youthful skin is wasted on the young,” my plastic surgeon, Dr. Chipchop, told me. “Kids today don’t appreciate how unwrinkled they are.”

It’s true. When I was five years old, my skin was so pristine that our maid used to put me away with the china dishes. I had to wait until my mother returned home at 5 p.m. to unlock the china cabinet. Thank God she kept the wine there.

The beauty mafia was way less complicated in the 1980s than it is now. All we had to yearn for was a bony rib cage, a tiny nose, ample bosoms, and blondness.

No Botox, no fillers, no ribs removed, no lips blown up, no eyebrows raised, no eyelids cut off, no electrolysis, no eyebrow tinting, no revirgining. Just the quadfecta–nose, boobs, skinny, blond. Totally doable.

All we needed was a push-up bra, a fake deviated septum, Sun-In, and Marlboro Lights to stave off hunger. God, I miss those days.

Looking in the mirror used to be so simple. I looked tired, I drank a cup of coffee. I appeared gray, I ate an apple. I looked old, I was old.

These days, choosing a body and face is like choosing a snack at Costco—too many choices. When I grew up, it was like Soviet Russia — I only got one loaf of bread and one choice for a face and body. It was an As-Is world.

Sure, in the 80s, we could still choose our nose, our breasts, and how skinny we were, but that was the whole menu. There were no Korean overnight masks and red light radiation face helmets. If you moisturized before bedtime, you were high maintenance.

Hell, there was no high maintenance. Maintenance referred to your car, not your self-care. It meant you got your oil changed. What the hell was self-care?

Now, shopping for a face and body is an international pastime. Rich face, Mar-a-Lago face, face-lift, tummy tucks, lymphatic drainage face, yoga face, face filters, contour face, brachioplasty, Ozempic face and body, chinplants, Brazilian butt lifts, facial rejuvenation, necklifts, cheek fillers, mommy makeovers, injectables, QuantumRF, and CO2 lasers.

Pretty soon, it will be cheaper to buy Botox on Mars than keep up with the Joneses’ faces.

The world is now chock-full of before-and-after people. So many faces and bodies, so little resemblance to the original models. Unrecognizable even to their mirror.

I don’t get it. Don’t we want to recognize ourselves? I don’t want to be like my dog, who never ceases to be confused by his reflection. Always looking over his shoulder, wondering about that dog behind him in the mirror. Where did he go? Why doesn’t he want to play?

I’d rather look at my big nose and wrinkles any day of the week and think, well, at least I know who that is.

If you maintain an endlessly loving relationship like my dog and I do, you are being judged.

Judged for loving your dog too much. Judged for taking your dog everywhere. Judged for discussing your dog when you’re not with your dog.

Judged for asking your dog for advice. Judged for confiding in your dog, for sleeping with your dog, and for discussing your dog’s diet with other dog lovers. Judged for spending too much time with other people and their dogs.

You don’t pick your village. You end up in it.

You couldn’t have convinced the sixteen-year-old me I’d head to the dog park two times a day, discussing my dog’s play style and temperament. I would have asked you ‘What happened to me? Had I lost my mind? Did I bang my head on a big rock?”

When I was young, hanging out took place in bars and diners, beaches and balconies, always with a drink offered and accepted. Life was a cocktail party. All you had to do was pull on some jeans, tuck in a t-shirt, and saunter into a dark room with a sticky floor.

I used to swear by three self-imposed rules.

1. I’d never let my hair go white because then I’d look old.

2. I’d never wear sweatsuits in public because that meant I’d given up.

3. I was never going to stop drinking because that wouldn’t be any fun.

On top of wearing sweatsuits every day and letting my hair go white, I don’t drink anymore. Let me clarify the last statement. I drink non-alcoholic beverages. I’m not massively dehydrated. I’m not that cartoon from Sesame Street dragging my limp body across the Sahara, scratching the words “agua” out of my crackly throat.

I grew up in the 80s, a John Hughes ’ alcoholic adolescence, with Mad Men grandparents, in an era where parents put down their cocktails to ring a dinner bell when they were ready to feed us. That was life.

I didn’t know non-drinkers. I thought of non-drinkers as people who didn’t have any friends.

Growing up meant you got to drink whenever you wanted, whatever you wanted, and with whomever you wanted. If you were out of cash, you batted your eyes and stuck out your chest, which was the same as opening a cash register.

The end of the day meant cocktails. Dinner parties meant wine. Bars meant pitchers of beer and hard alcohol. I stopped drinking way before there were a million names for cocktails. I knew about Manhattans, Mint Juleps, G&Ts, and Old Fashioneds. In high school, I discovered peach schnapps, which I imagine tastes like a peach vape if you could drink electronics.

I quit before you needed a vocabulary to order a drink. Fast forward to my present.

At my age, women go out for wine and cocktails. Drinking is apparently becoming less popular than it once was. However, it’s still a social lubricant and a bridge to getting to know your colleagues and neighbors.

I’m not the person you call when you want to go out drinking — unless your kink is to sit across from a sober person drinking a Diet Coke, complaining the caffeine will keep them awake till 2 a.m.

Since Uber and Lyft, I am not even required to be a designated driver. At bars, I am the sole reminder that you probably drink too much, so I don’t get invited out for drinks much.

And, when I am taken out on the town, people almost always ask me, “Why don’t you drink?” And “Do you think I drink too much?” It’s as fun as being a leper on the uneven bars.

I do, however, get invited to the dog park. Almost everyone is sober there. Mostly. Some people might be a little high on edibles, but there is not one person asking, “Why are you drinking Diet Coke? Are you an alcoholic?” There is only “Hello, is your dog friendly? Oh my God. What’s his name? He’s so cute.”

I didn’t choose my village. My dog did. And if you have the kind of relationship I have with my dog, I’ll see you there. The more you love your dog, the more welcome you are. Roof.

Returning to the scene of the crime to find my keys

Ever since I started perimenopause, I’ve always felt like I’m forgetting something. Where I parked my car, where I set my keys, when I last used my phone, whether I closed the bedroom door and locked the dog in, if I yelled at one of my sisters in a dream, or if that actually happened, if I left the bath on, and that’s why I need to carry an umbrella into the living room.

Menopause is why I can’t succeed in my next life as a criminal. Even if I got away with it, I’d go back and look for evidence. I’d walk right by the cops and ask, “Have you found my murder weapon? I have no idea where I left it.”

Or, had I inadvertently gone into a convenience store and bought a Diet Coke before or after the murder and smiled at the security camera with a bloody knife in my hand? Who knew? Not me.

Had I been carrying my iPhone instead of my burner phone, and was I trackable?

Was that teenager across the street watching me, or were they looking at their phone? Had I been filmed? Was the murder I committed already streaming on TikTok? Was I going viral?

On the other hand, we live in a time of plausible deniability and A.I. Even if I was caught returning to the scene of the crime, couldn’t I say it was fake news or A.I.? I totally could.

You know where you can’t get away with a crime? Ross Dress for Less. Even if you’re a politician. They have tapes of everything. My friend returned some shoes, and they told her she had already returned them. Because she was holding them in her hand, she was sure they were wrong.

The store clerk said, “No problem. Let’s look at the tape.” The tape was from weeks earlier, but there my friend was, buying the shoes in the old picture. It turned out she hadn’t already returned the shoes. She merely exchanged a regular receipt for a gift receipt, and it tracked as returned.

My friend said, “They even recorded my voice in the interaction. Creepy. I feel violated.” I think Ross Dress for Less should be in charge of national security.

Either way, the days of my being a criminal are over. That dream ended before it even began. I don’t have the memory for it. Note to self: don’t become a criminal during menopause.

Two days ago my friend Ruthie hosted an intervention for me. Everybody was there. Her and me.

“I don’t know how to put this,” she began. “I don’t want you to get angry.”

My friend Ruthie has been to rehab enough times to know how to manage potentially defensive people. She knows words are volatile. She doesn’t drop bombs and duck for cover. She sticks around for the aftershock.

She’s not like many of us, who cowardly say, “I hate conflict.” Translation: I avoid conflict so I do not tell people the truth.

“Lay it on me,” I said.

Ruthie tells me the truth but not because she has impulse control issues or verbal diarrhea, but because I value it. I trust her because she’s street smart, which is underutilized in the suburbs, where we avoid the truth like fried foods and non-organics .

Usually, by the time Ruthie calls me out, she’s been thinking about it for a while. Her honesty is not heavily scripted, but it’s been through some thoughtful drafts.

“Amy,” she says, “I don’t know why you’re friends with so many people who annoy you. It’s almost like you like to be annoyed.”

“Huh,” I said, acknowledging but not ready to comment.

“I’m not saying there is anything wrong with it,” she continued a little nervously. “I do wonder if some of these people are a waste of your valuable time.”

My valuable time. God bless’er.

Everyone should have a Ruthie. It’s unfair there aren’t enough Ruthies to go around. You can tell there is a shortage of Ruthies on the planet because millions of humans spend a lifetime believing the stories they tell themselves. If you don’t have a Ruthie kicking your narrative in the ass, go find one.

“You collect these strays,” she went on, “and not just one at a time, but groups of strays.”

It was true. I did collect groups, albeit unconsciously—until now.

However, I had never considered them strays. What defines a stray? Was a stray a human someone else had gotten rid of? Did a stray mean they had crawled out of someone else’s window and into mine? Did a stray mean I was feeding someone else’s discarded person bowls of milk because I didn’t know if they were getting 2% at home?

“I think you’re avoiding something,” she said. “But I’m not sure what.”

That boom knocked me right out into the ocean. Shit. Sink or swim orders. Avoidance was my middle name. I could avoid or quit anything.

The other night, I went to a bar with a friend before a play. She had a beer. I had Diet Coke. I quit drinking twenty some years ago, and boy, am I thirsty.

She asked before we met at the bar, “Would you rather get dessert before the play? Since you don’t drink, we don’t need to go to a bar.”

“I don’t really like sweets,” I said, “so a bar is fine.”

She shook her head. “You don’t drink. You don’t eat sweets. What do you like?”

“People,” I said.

Now, with Ruthie’s observation, I wondered if my people collecting wasn’t something more than that. Maybe people were my drinky dessert. Maybe people were my vaping, midnight eating, or crack cocaine.

Or…

Maybe I liked them. Perhaps, I acquired strays because groups of madness were microcosms of the world and that delighted and informed me.

Every group of strays taught me something different, adjusted my rear view mirror, questioned my previous religion, and allowed me a peek in and out of someone else’s window.

On the other hand, was I also avoiding something? I mean life’s hard. The longer we put it off, the easier it gets. Right?

Dead philosopher Søren Kiergegard believed the untruth was manifested in the crowd, so was that it? As much as I loved Ruthie’s truth, I adored the untruth because it was a lovely place to hide and cower until I was brave enough to start my real badass life.

Where I disagreed with her was I didn’t see some people as strays. I see all people as strays. And perhaps that’s why I occaionally spent time with people who annoyed me. If I dove into them, I could avoid me.

“A crowd in its very concept is the untruth, by reason of the fact that it renders the individual completely impenitent and irresponsible, or at least weakens his sense of responsibility by reducing it to a fraction.”

―Søren Kierkegaard

When I first became pregnant, the obstetrician, Doctor Schlomberg, set me up with an ultrasound and a subscription to AARP.

She referred to my pregnancy as geriatric. After gently patting the radiation jelly off my aging belly, Dr. Schlomberg sent me on my way with an ornate wooden walking cane and an osteovitamin prescription.

After I gave birth, the on-duty Exit nurse handed me a folder filled with pamphlets on breastfeeding, minimizing stretch marks, softening age spots, and recommendations for retirement facilities with adjacent elementary schools.

While I strolled with my new baby in the park, an exhausted, disheveled younger mom in a hearty youthful blond ponytail ran up to me and screamed, “Your daughter is so lucky. My mom lives in California.”

The older moms in our mom group attempted to commiserate with me. I didn’t want to be included in the old mom group. They were old. They discussed age-appropriate haircuts. They whined they couldn’t drop pregnancy weight as fast as the young moms who had already returned to their extreme core hot yoga classes and bikini bods. The old moms wanted to talk about their aching knees and perimenopausal bellies.

One old mom constantly brought up the baby she had aborted in high school. “Had I known,” she cried, “how hard it would be to be an old mom, I would have kept that baby.”

Talk about a conversation killer.

Acquaintances who squinted at my gray roots and sensible orthotics expected me to explain myself. “Why did you wait so long to have a baby? Did you have trouble getting pregnant? Was it IVF? Did you consider adoption? Are you exhausted all the time?”

I recall one young mom, whom I privately refer to as Mama Douchebag, saying to me, "I’m so glad I had babies when I was young so I didn’t have to be an old mom.”

I don’t want to brag, but ten years later, two out of three of her kids look like serial killers. Maybe she should have waited for a crow’s foot to emerge before she got knocked up. Maybe she was too young to bring humans onto the planet.

The good thing about being an old mom is I’m done thinking I’m interesting solely because I’m young. I have to lean on my other qualities. Like knowing other people exist and picking my battles.

Being young is no longer my entire identity. I’m less of an asshole than I would have been as a young mom. I don’t think kale and self-care are the answer to superior parenting. I know good kids are a crap shoot. I’ve learned humans come out as-is. I’ve learned we do our best, but we know nothing. I’ve learned humility, many times over.

Having white hair, I am occasionally seen as the grandma. I’d be insulted, but it’s a relief. Moms are so critical of each other. The kale moms judge the Cheetos moms. The Montessori school moms judge the Nintendo Switch moms. The multiple children's moms judge the only-child moms. The boy moms judge the girl moms. The fancy moms judge the pachouli moms. The yoga moms judge the chubby moms. The book group moms judge the drinkie moms. The young moms judge the old moms. And on and on and on and on.

So, when some young mom mistakes me for a grandmama, I invite it because it means she’s not judging my mommy-ing.

At my son’s basketball tournament this weekend, a young basketball mom touched my arm and said, “You’re amazing. It’s so nice you can be here to support your grandson.” I flinched then nodded.

“I’m so jealous,” another young basketball mom said to me. “I wish my mom were here.” I leaned in.

“Me too, honey,” I said. “Me too.”

If I were seen as a mom, the other moms could pinpoint exactly what I was doing wrong, and how I was failing. But as a grandmom, I get points just for showing up. It’s like being a dad.

As much as my bud, Lizzie, is obsessed with serial killers, Agatha Christie knew that most murders happened at home.

“I specialize in murders of quiet, domestic interest,” wrote AGATHA CHRISTIE.

My old neighbor was under investigation for a suspicious death. And when I mean old neighbor, I mean both she’s no longer my neighbor but also that she was old.

(Pro-tip) When writing mysteries, don’t be an ageist. Anyone can be a killer! Even a dog or a baby.

During a family holiday, my neighbor’s not-so-beloved uncle fell down the stairs and perished at the foot of the stairs. Upon interviewing the family members, the police were not convinced her uncle “fell”.

To law enforcers, falling down staircases is trés suspicious in Murderville. Especially during the holidays! Especially when everybody despises the victim. Beware! Not everyone survives Christmas.

In Agatha Christie’s novel, Dumb Witness, a wealthy older woman named Emily Arundell has an accident on the stairs. Her “accident” was initially blamed on a rubber ball left on the stairs by her wire fox terrier, Bob. However, the more she thought about her fall, the more convinced she became that one of her relatives was trying to kill her.

Hence, when a rich heiress falls down the stairs and no one is watching, was she murdered?

In the real-life murder of Kathleen Peterson, police originally thought Kathleen accidentally fell down the stairs, which was later disproven as not an accident.

Tripping is tricky because accidents do happen, but so does Murder. Especially when there are aging wealthy heiresses walking around or greedy nephews with gambling debts who are sick of asking for loans.

So, yes, I tell my friend, Lizzie, serial killers are dramatic, but the real drama is at home. As Jean-Paul Sartre showed us in his famous play “No Exit”,

"L'enfer, c'est les autres" or "Hell is other people".

The most dangerous place in the world is at home—because you’re stuck with family and sometimes, someone loses it. Bwahaha. Enjoy your dinner.

“I’d tell ya but then I’d have to kill ya”

Secrets.

Most people have secrets. You do. So do I. So does that guy over there. And the woman next to him. Secrets all the way down.

There are websites entirely made up of people confessing their secrets. There are priests constantly passing out Hail Marys because of secrets.

Secrets are weighty. Weight is heavy. I personally know weight is heavy because this morning I was walking on the treadmill on an incline, carrying 10-pound weights in each hand,—and that shit was HEAVY.

And the longer I walked the heavier the weights felt. Gravity is a bitch.

Secrets are even heavier than barbells. Mainly, because you never get to put them down. Secrets create an endless inclining treadmill with hand weights becoming exponentially heavier the longer you carry them.

Why am I talking about secrets in my mystery tip du jour? Because secrets are not only heavy. They are dangerous.

Tangent.

When I was little, I never understood why people were worried about legacies and reputations. Big deal if people thought you had cooties? Or k-i-s-s-i-e-d Chad in the coconut tree. It was your life and you were going to live it however you wanted, juice box in each hand, Oreo cookies stuffed in every pocket. Carpe Diem baby.

Then I got older—Middle-aged older— I began to understand why people cared about their legacies and reputations. Two reasons. One, people didn’t want to waste their precious time on earth. Two, the stakes were higher than when you were little. You could actually lose it all because of a deep dark secret!

Because of the high stakes of secrets, in mystery novels, secrets are writer’s gold. A secret puts you in danger. Someone wants to shut you up. Snitches get stitches.

I was recently watching an Agatha Christie Miss Marple where a secret began to be revealed. This happens a lot in Christies. Her characters are chockful of secrets. In this one, a man recognizes someone from a photograph. Someone who might have murdered his last wife.

The secret keeper begins to tell Miss Marple about this murderer but they are interrupted. Because of this inconvenient interruption, the man never gets to tell Miss Marpel who the murderer in the photo is—the secret keeper gets murdered that very night. Bwahahaha.

Conclusion. If you are writing a murder mystery, go find your secrets. Them’s literary gold.

What would I do without my dog, Waffles?

No matter what genre of crapola is dumping its sewage onto my world, Waffles remains the sane.

Look at you, astute editors. You thought I meant Waffles remains the same, that I made an editorial error because I’m dumb and don’t know words. Not so. I meant Waffles remains the sane.

Have you turned on your TV lately? The only people who aren’t insane are dogs.

On the other hand, maybe you’re not watching the news because you don’t want permanently raised eyebrows or you’ve grown weary of shock and awe.

I get it, but I can’t look away. I am a news junkie. I couldn’t turn it off if I wanted to.

Even after the recently fired Surgeon General, stated “Watching the news will take years off your life” I switched that shit on. What are we blowing up now? What diseases are we bringing back from the Middle Ages? Is that legal?

The news cycle is one 24/7 soap opera except instead of getting laid, everyone’s getting fired or promoted. A 22-year-old with the online name BigBalls just got a big job in government? You can’t make this stuff up which means more writers are out of work. Thanks.

Face it. Cable news outlets started going wrong around Friday, April 3, AD 33, around 3 PM, when Jesus was crucified. Because when he woke up 49% of the population was like “WTF. He’s not dead? Fake News!”

All cable news channels started going downhill from there, no matter how many times Sisyphus tried to push them back up. Talk about a lost cause. Now everyone only believes what their channel tells them.

Manchurian Candidate anyone?

We all joke about living in news bubbles in this country but nobody mentions the bubbles are transparent. You can see through my bubble and I can see through your bubble. Awkward.

My bubble is flawed. Your bubble is flawed, but they’re the only bubbles we know. They’re the bubbles we grew up in.

My dog Waffles is the only person I know who doesn’t live in a bubble. He eats sticks and pisses on trees. Sometimes when he eats too many sticks he barfs. Sometimes he misses the tree.

I try to stop him from eating sticks but he’s too fast. He clenches that stick in his jaw and runs faster than Usain Bolt. Waffles, stick in mouth, darts away faster than the current administration says, “Let’s turn Greenland into one big cold plunge bathtub.”

What would I do without my dog, Waffles? He’s the only sane person I know. He pisses on trees. Maybe we should all start there.

If I had a nickel from every time a friend said “I wanted to kill him” about their partner/spouse, I’d buy a Bentley.

Sadly, I can’t decide what color Bentley I’d order. Black is the obvious color since it’s so classy. Every other color Bentley would make me look like a pimp, but so what?

I used to go to an AA meeting with a pimp and we drove the same car to the meeting—a 92 Fleetwood Cadillac, the longest Cadillac ever made. I could park it in a motorcyclespot I was so adept at parking. Nowadays I can’t even park a Mini Cooper because I refuse to update my lens prescription.

Bentley! Ageing eyeballs! Relationships!

Meanwhile, I was thinking about how much people hate their partners. It’s more pleasant to think about that than my own problems. Helps me sleep better too.

When I was 18, everything I wrote about was autobiographical because I was boring, and young and saw the world through my custom-made blinders.

In middle age, it’s best to remove the blinders. There is nothing more boring than listening to a middle-aged woman complain about her mother and my mother told me boring was the worst thing a person could be.

Meanwhile, when I am thinking about writing mysteries, I think about married people.

Mysteries are filled with relationship problems and who has more relationship problems than married people? Who hates who? Who screwed over who?

Marriage is meat on the bones of material and has endless potential when it comes to murder mysteries.

But before you kill anyone off, think about what happens to people when they marry the wrong person? So many choices.

1. They split up

2. They develop hobbies compelling enough to not give a shit who’s at home

3. They hang out with other people you like better—vacation with those people, brunch with those people, do everything with those people so to avoid the schlub they’ve mistakenly married

4. They work late, get promoted and transferred to another city/country

5. They fight all the time

6. One joins the foreign legion or they both do but different legions

7. They get a therapist

8. They get a dog

9. They have kids and focus on them

10. They cheat

11. They fantasize about the ones who got away

12. They suggest an open marriage so at least someone is getting what they want

13. They murder each other

When thinking about writing mysteries, remember every relationship has drama—the sibling, the marriage, the lovers, the parent-child, the cousin, the boss/employee, the barista/shitty customer, the one who got away.

When you’re working on a character, don’t just kill them off. Think about all the things they tried before they resorted to murder. Relationships drive drama.

Vrrm.

There are only two rules in life:

1. Don't tell everything you know.

2.

Like my Grandmama used to say “If you give the milk for free, why buy the cow?”

Full disclosure. Grandmama never said this to me. That statement would have been way too racy for her.

She said things like “Wash behind your ears (which she called seashells)”.

She said “Don’t snack” because snacking made people chubby.

She said “Little girls don’t punch their sisters in the nose.”

I would have been shocked, had she said "Don’t give the milk away for free.” Saying that would be like her saying “Don’t be a whore!” Not Grandmama’s speak.

I don’t even know where I first heard it but I’ve attributed it to Grandmama all my life cause I like the way it sounded. I liked the idea I came from somewhere that would tell me that. It’s part of my refabricated personal history.

Okay. Exhale. Why am I talking about this on Mystery Tips Du Jour?

Because the quote works the same way with writing mysteries.

Don’t give the milk away for free or nobody’s gonna enjoy your story.

Don’t be easy. Clues. Red herrings. Make everyone look guilty. Make everyone look innocent.

Like my sisters and I used to say when a car raced down our narrow residential street…

SLOW DOWN!!!!!!!

Writing is a slow roll. Don’t rip off your blouse during dinner. Don’t conk the reader over the head with the answers to the mystery.

For a long time, I wrote humor, which I love. Humor helps me navigate this bizarro world. Humor lifts my cerebrally weighty load. Humor is my flashlight to find the funny in the tightest darkest caverns.

So why, when the world has been thrown up in the air like poop confetti, am I deserting the funny and seeking a new path? I’m not and yet I am. I’m being pulled in another direction.

I’m still looking for the funny but I’m also looking for the mystery.

Finding the joke has been an excellent facilitator to quell my anger so I wonder if searching for the mysteries will make me more curious. I have always been not curiouser and curiouser enough. You get me, Alice.

Writing for me is both medicinal and the answer to my existential conundrum. Why am I here? What’s my purpose? And how can I make my purpose more amusing and resourceful?

This newsletter will be my accountability buddy and yours if you so wish. Hello! Bonjour. Hola. Aloha.

Whether you believe in God, Mother Earth, or Mathematical Equations, we can agree the world works in mysterious ways.

And, if you’re not averse to paying attention to its clues, you might begin to understand some of its intentions.

It, being God, Mother Earth, or Mathematical Equations.

If you’re a pessimist and like double negatives, this phenomenon might be explained as nothing happens for no reason. If you hate double negatives and lean towards optimism, a better explanation might be everything happens for a reason.

When my best friend Anya recently shattered her ribs, broke her collarbone, and punctured her lungs on a bike accident, I walked into a 25-pound Peloton weight while carrying a fig plant and fractured my toe.

As I screamed in agony, I looked up at the heavens, or the sun-backed clouds, or the analemma — depending on what you believe in.

Your religion might not have explained this to you, but injuries are a direct line to God, Mother Earth, or Mathematical Equations.

My call from the Above came to me through a fig plant, but there was no denying its message.

The fig plant, in the center of the living room, was interfering with my son’s basketball game.

It was blocking him.

I know it’s important to eventually learn how to block a fig plant, but my son’s not training for college ball yet.

He’s only in middle school. Fig plant defense comes much later. Junior year, I think, unless you’re incredibly advanced.

In my son’s defense, the fig plant had grown more towering than a Redwood. In fact, NASA frequently eminently-domained my plant's sturdy branches to climb up onto the moon. Somedays they wouldn’t even let me water it.

“Too slippery,” said the astronauts.

The religious or religious adjacent event transpired because I was tired of my son whining about the massive, NASA-funded fig plant in the center of the room.

I stood up quickly, lifted the plant, and stomped through the living room blindly, hefting the Ficus across the room.

My toe never saw it coming.

God, Mother Earth, and Mathematical Equations gifted my oblivious digit with a 25 lb. weight, like a wrecking ball.

Had this accident not occurred, I might have entirely forgotten about Anya’s accident.

Remember her? Or have you already forgotten?

I introduced you to Anya in the fifth paragraph. She was my oldest friend who got massively injured in a bike accident. See how easy it is to forget people when you’re not stubbing your toe?

Each time my bone-crushed toe panged, I was reminded of my friend Anya who was lying on her bed in agony, drugged out on opioids — something far graver than my minor injury and unfashionable splint velcro boot.

I’m not a bad friend. I have a terrible memory. That’s why I would have forgotten to check on Anya, had I not been in incessant pain.

The pain reminded me I wasn't the only one hurt. The pain made me pick up the phone. The pain made me Facetime her so I could see how she looked, how her bruises were healing. The pain reminded me I was her family now.

Anya has been one of my best friends since 4th grade. To say the last few years of her life have been difficult is an understatement. She has lost both parents and two siblings. She has survived lung cancer and lost 40% of her lung.

When her last sibling passed away, I called my mother and said, “Anya is your daughter now and my sister. Do you understand?” Mom understood. We do what family does now. We call. We check up on her. We send flowers and food. We let her tell us every gory detail of her life.

Anya’s family and ours shared a fence growing up. When I was angry at my parents, I climbed over our fence and talked to her handsome elegant father, who, because he was European, served me a drink.

We stole her sister's pink-dyed Guess jacket together and traded wearing it at school for a whole day. Then we snuck it back into her sister's closet. I never looked at that jacket the same. It was contraband.

We had one fight that lasted a year, but we recovered.

She was my first friend when I transferred schools. I remember our shared metal desk. We snuck into the back of the library and read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. We dog-eared the dirty parts.

When I started getting invited to boy-girl parties, Anya said, “You’re so lucky” and we briefly lost each other as I wandered off with the less interesting popular people.

When I met her overly emotional creative husband, who was then her fiancé, I said, “Oh my God. You‘re marrying me.”

You think I would remember that my oldest friend almost died in a bike accident, but I forget everything — people, directions, where my keys/phone/car is, why I just walked into this room five minutes ago. What this article is about.

You might be too young to remember the saying “No pain, no gain.”

If you are old enough to remember it, you probably have no idea where your car keys are.

Pain is a reminder. It reminds us we are alive. It reminds us who is alive with us.

If you’re a pessimist, the sad conclusion to this essay might leave you feeling lost and depressed.

If you’re an optimist, however, you’re thrilled you no longer need to rely on your memory, but you can live a perfectly beautiful life by crashing into things.

I’m giving away a secret here. Women are tapped into a pipeline. We know how each other feels, whether we care to acknowledge it or not.

I have a special app stored on my iPad called the —

Why Is That Woman So Mad? Matrix

Sometimes my teenage son looks at a woman’s face and thinks she is scowling or frowning. When he asks me, “Mom, why is that woman so mad?” I pull out my Why Is That Woman So Mad Matrix and pinpoint the particular woman in question.

I find the ‘mad’ woman on the grid — Aha! — there’s her red dot. The app makes some calculations and determines that, yep, this woman looks mad for the same reason all women do.

She just watched the news. She just asked for a raise. She’s pregnant in Texas. She started dating again after her marriage. Her therapist retired. She desperately needs to speak to the manager about the dead bat in her soup but she’s no longer allowed to — unless she wants to be called the K name.

Sometimes I play Twenty Questions with my son. I make him guess why the woman we’re targeting is mad.

He has lots of guesses. Her PlayStation broke? Popeye’s ran out of chicken? She’s being bullied in the middle school bathroom?

He’s not great at it yet, but by the time he’s old enough to have women friends or partners he won’t have to ask, “Why are you so mad?” He’ll have the chops to figure it out for himself.

You’re welcome, future women in my son’s adult life.

The less matrixy answer to “Why is that woman so mad?” is more nuanced. We’re not mad. We’re just done trying to look not-mad.

After a certain age, we can no longer hide our faces behind the dewy elasticity of youth. We’re tired. Too many dirty socks on the floor broke us. Laundry never learned to wash itself. The government took our vagina rights away. People kept asking us why we were mad.

“She’s not mad,” I tell my son. “She’s thinking.”

After decades of walking down the street, hoping she doesn’t get mugged, raped, or told to smile, honey, she’s not paying attention to passersby anymore.

She’s in her head.

She’s finished wasting time worrying about dumb things.

She’s trying to figure out how to cure menopause, cancer, world hunger, world peace, gun violence, racism, hate, narcissism, and the government. And yes, how to raise a teenage son. That shit can’t be smiled away.

Being a woman is both wonderful and infuriating. Does it fuck up our face? Yes, a little.

Stuff.

We collect it. We donate it, buy it, sell it, give it away. We complain about it, brag about it, rub it in each other's faces. We fight with our partners about it, break it, and can’t remember where we last put it.

We have weirdly sentimental relationships with our stuff. Even romantic relationships. Stuff triggers us. Makes us happy, mad, sad, glad.

Marie Kondo tells us to throw out our stuff unless it makes our privates glitter. I think that’s what she said.

We have a crazy dysfunctional relationship with our stuff. It keeps us from each other. We hoard it, covet it, store it, hide it, show it off. We want other people’s stuff and we’re afraid they want our stuff.

Stuff. Whoever has the best stuff wins. Whoever has the worst stuff loses.

Some people present their stuff on lucite shelving and hide it in safety deposit boxes. Other people throw it out back and burn it. Stuff fills attics, closets, cabinets, cars, lockers, purses, trash cans, landfills, Amazon boxes, and proctology tables.

Stuff is mobile. It can be stolen from us.

My son can’t bring his North Face down puffer jacket to basketball games because it’ll get stolen off the bench while they’re playing. His Bose noise-canceling headphones he got for Christmas got stolen at school because he left them out — unguarded, unlocked.

Someone else liked his stuff and took it.

We can’t track his headphones either because they don’t have that locator thingy. We can’t show up at some stranger's house and say, “I think you have my Bose noise canceling headphones. See?” and point to the items button on my iPhone, hoping to God whoever took them isn’t a violent criminal — but just some kid who thought “Cool,” and brought them home.

My husband jokes (sort of) “I wish our house would burn down so we didn’t have so much stuff. Your family thinks everything is a treasure,” he accuses. He’s correct.

My family’s stuff connects us to our history. Paintings my Dad and Mom created. A handmade Norweigan sweater Gigi brought over on the boat. A wooded inlaid box made by my stepfather in the shop of our old house.

Stuff. It defines us. Shows where we’ve been.

The word stuff comes from the word stuffed.

We’re stuffed with stuff.

Or maybe it’s the other way around.

My husband would rather live out of a suitcase than go through our stuff on weekends, preparing donation boxes for the Goodwill. Yet sometimes, when I pick up his family's stuff and suggest it for donation, he pauses.

“Wait,” he says, “that was my grandfather's.” His stuff.

Stuff all the way down.

Humans are judged by the contents of our stuff. Is your kid’s stuff name-brand? What car do you stuff yourself into driving to work? Do you even have a car to stuff yourself into? When a Tesla Cybertruck or Bentley drives past, you lean your head out the car window like a panting dog seeing who’s driving that fancy stuff.

Check out their stuff! I hope it blows up!

When a loud smoky van passes, with a broken muffler, duct-taped on, we look down from our noses.

Man, that’s some crappy stuff. Glad I’m not them.

When we see endless luxury vacations posted on social media and ads for Emirates with airplane seats as big as small houses, our heart, in its craving for better stuff, is suddenly two sizes too small. It Grinch’s us.

Man, why do some people get such nice stuff while the rest of us ride in coach and herd like cattle?

When we drive through expensive neighborhoods filled with castle-like estates, we wonder how much better their stuff is than our stuff. What did they do to get all that stuff?

Is it inherited stuff? Or bootstrap stuff? What gives?

So, when the Palisades residents were recently interviewed on the news, people with less stuff didn’t know how to react. The residents looked so fancy, so well-cared for. They must have had really great stuff.

When the resident on the news complained about losing Andy Warhols, Picassos and a Damian Hirst, viewers commented “He can always get more stuff.”

Sad how stuff makes us not care about each other. Hate each other. We love our stuff but it keeps us from caring about each other. We hate the rich guy because his stuff is better. We’re scared of the poor guy cause we think he wants to steal our stuff.

Nobody wins.

The person with the best stuff wins and the worst stuff loses. That’s the tune we’ve always sung. But in a fire, all we have left is our humanity. And I get the feeling with this current CLIMATE, our humanity might be tested over and over again.

Good luck to us.