I envy the simplicity of Forrest’s conviction. The way he can listen to his own intuition telling him to just keep running without questions like “what the fuck am I doing” and “does everyone think I’m a fucking freak for this?” entering his mind and talking him out of it. I wonder if I could ever wake up with a kind of knowing in my bones that I have to set off and do something and not stop until it’s done. It takes knowing yourself on a level I don’t think many people do.

And sure, you might say that Forrest Gump didn’t have the mental faculties to deal with his grief in a conscious manner, and instead had to run for three years after the death of his mother and rejection from the woman he loved. And to that I say: yeah exactly I’m also jealous of that. I think we try to intellectualize grief too much when in actuality it makes no fucking sense. Whether or not Forrest consciously knew what he was doing, he knew what he was doing. He knew what he needed and he let himself do it regardless of social convention.

Then I thought about Dolly. Oh lord, Dolly. She’s always meant so much to me, but it never quite crystalizes until they’re gone, does it, how important someone was to you. That her accomplishments were innumerable and still the first thing everyone thinks to say about her was how kind she was. I’m especially struck now by just how unflinchingly herself she was– the absolute picture of self possession. Again, conviction. Purpose. She was totally unfuckwithable, even in the face of Barbara Walters acting like a complete shrew, trying to get her to admit to feeling insecure and humiliated by her own persona.

Famously, Dolly said: “find out who you are and do it on purpose.” Seems pretty obvious, maybe, but it’s got me thinking a lot lately whether I really do know who I am.

I envy people who have an innate sense of what they want. I get asked occasionally about my writing practice and when I started– I frequently joke, in maybe a lightly insulting way, about people who say they “wrote as soon as they could pick up a pencil,” that they need to do it to keep on living, they need to write like they need to breathe air. I always assure people I was never one of them. It took me a long time to come to terms with being a writer. I don’t believe those people who say they “need” to do it, because I’ve never had a feeling like that about anything. I don’t “need” to do anything to stay alive. I barely even need nutrients to stay alive, as evidenced by my numerous months-long dips into depression where the only thing I seem to want is crazy bread from Little Caesars. I haven’t paid enough attention to myself to even realize what helps me and what doesn’t. Do I operate better off 6 hours of sleep or 10? Does gluten agree with me? Does my period in fact come at the same time every month? I pay zero mind to myself in this way. Isn’t it time I did? Isn’t it time I took my existence as seriously as it actually is? There’s only one Caitie Delaney and she’s only here right now and that in itself deserves some serious investigation. Does she like hot or cold coffee more? Does she prefer desert or mountain? Solitude or companionship? I guess the thing to do now is challenge all previous notions and build from the start again. What is the most authentic version of me? I started this mission just the other day on the beach.

I’ve always feared the ocean. It’s everything that sounds scary to me: vast, unpredictable, unknown, tastes bad. For as long as I can remember now, I’ve just avoided going into it. Not in a tortured way or anything, I just don’t go in there and it’s not a problem. But that is a problem, actually. I decided so long ago that I don’t like the ocean because I’m scared of it that I don’t even know whether that’s true anymore. A lot of things I think I know about myself may be way past their expiration date. So I went to the beach with my friend Kellie and her son here in Westport Massachusetts and when they went into the ocean to swim I took a couple deep breaths and got up off that beach chair and said as nonchalantly as possible, “I’ll come with.” And I stepped into the water and then another step and another, as if I do it every day, and I pretended the smacking of the waves at my thighs didn’t freak me out a little, and I waded in even further, and I braced myself for another wave launching at my abdomen, and I gritted my teeth and stepped further, and when I saw that violent wave coming straight for my head I said “oh fuck” and quickly clamped my fingers down on my nose and dove under the water. And when I came up, I was suddenly past the breaking waves in calmer waters and seeing the world from a completely new perspective, somehow only still 50 feet or so from my beach towel. And my friends smiled at me and we yelled when the swells came and jumped up to meet them. And when I looked back at our spot on the sand and saw a seagull rooting in my tote bag and stealing my barely-eaten tarragon chicken salad sandwich we laughed and laughed watching the gulls fight each other for it because suddenly I feared nothing and accepted everything. And I kicked my feet up and floated on my back and let the water take me where it wanted. I’m hard pressed to think of a time I’ve felt more free, and just off that one simple act of questioning if my reality still applied to me. Turns out it didn’t. And I drove home with the sunroof open, blasting Dolly Parton, still tasting the salt water on my lips and basking in this new little addendum to my identity.

Seemingly along with everyone else on earth this summer, I’m currently reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck. This book has without a doubt completely reinvigorated my love of reading. All these very profound ideas right alongside this epically compelling narrative of multi-generational families setting out and starting new lives in the central coast of California. On the day Dolly died, I arrived at the following passage in East of Eden, and sorry it’s long, but it’s a good one:

I remember clearly the deaths of three men. One was the richest man of the century, who, having clawed his way to wealth through the souls and bodies of men, spent many years trying to buy back the love he had forfeited and by that process performed great service to the world and, perhaps, had much more than balanced the evils of his rise. I was on a ship when he died. The news was posted on the bulletin board, and nearly everyone received the news with pleasure. Several said, “Thank God that son of a bitch is dead.”

Then there was a man, smart as Satan, who, lacking some perception of human dignity and knowing all too well every aspect of human weakness and wickedness, used his special knowledge to warp men, to buy men, to bribe and threaten and seduce until he found himself in a position of great power. He clothed his motives in the names of virtue, and I have wondered whether he ever knew that no gift will ever buy back a man’s love when you have removed his self-love. A bribed man can only hate his briber. When this man died the nation rang with praise...

There was a third man, who perhaps made many errors in performance but whose effective life was devoted to making men brave and dignified and good in a time when they were poor and frightened and when ugly forces were loose in the world to utilize their fears. This man was hated by few. When he died the people burst into tears in the streets and their minds wailed, “What can we do now?” How can we go on without him?”

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, mo matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror....we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.

Dolly’s death brought no pleasure to the world, and while I’ve never really considered what people will do or say after I die, who cares, I won’t be there– it’s hard to deny the strength it has as a guiding principle. Dolly Parton was so fucking awesome that now I, having never met her or actually known her, am sitting here wondering how I can be a better person my loved ones, how I can help others, and how I can be more alive while I still have my life. That’s sick as hell. There will never be another Dolly Parton. There will also never be another you or another me. Doesn’t it just sound fucking awesome to try and figure out how you can leave this hellish mortal coil some day and have people say with absolute conviction that “there will never be another” of you and to have everyone nod solemnly in agreement?

Do I sound like a Mel Robbins podcast or something? Maybe that’s what happens when someone important to you has died and you start taking stock of everything with a bit more fervor. All I really mean to say is that it actually seems so cool to dedicate your life to finding out what makes you tick, and it’s really easy, it turns out, to accidentally spend your entire life not investigating that at all. It may seem like two incongruous missions to a) decide who you are and b) accept that who you are is constantly changing, but it just kind of guarantees you’ll never run out of fodder for self exploration. I was once afraid of the ocean and now I’m not. I once couldn’t handle horror movies, now I can. I once had panic attacks every time I tried to walk onto an airplane and now I stroll right onto that bitch and doggedly work to ensure the flight attendants that I am the friendliest person they’ve ever had the pleasure of serving a cup of orange juice to. Take note of these things! Let yourself surprise yourself. This builds our conviction. If you wake up one day and you just want to start running like Forrest, do it! But maybe now that we have the technology bring a thigh chafe stick because my god can you imagine.

Good to be in your inboxes again. I feel at peace here, sandwiched between your paperless DWP bill and the sale announcement from the candle place you shopped at once eleven years ago.

What have I been up to? Not a whole lot. I’ve been keeping up an impressive streak here in 2026 of being the most boring woman alive. With little to zero paying work, I’m in penny pinching mode, which means mostly staying at home, making my own meals, giving up alcohol, and getting a bit more clever with socialization methods, ie. turning my driveway into a movie theater so I don’t have to run the risk of leaving home and $40 magically floating out of my wallet for unknown purposes.

With all my free time, I’ve been writing and writing and writing. Not in my substack, as you may have noticed, but in script form, as that is apparently my chosen profession. In the midst of the entertainment industry’s gates getting gate-ier, the gatekeepers being on their 9th extended vacation of the year, and David Zaslav surreptitiously mashing together legacy movie studios like a child turning all the nice colors of play-doh into an uninspiring lump of grey-green depression, folks like me are having to make the difficult decision about whether to stay in the fight. It sucks. The current moment is, I guess, what it took for me to snap out of my imposter syndrome fugue state and get serious. My plan? Go as hard as possible until the wheels fall off, which is to say, write a ton and shove it out into the world until I either strike massive (or even moderate) success, or my bank account hits zero. So far this year, I’ve written many drafts of four tv pilots and two feature films, not to mention countless outlines, multiple show pitches, little smatterings of the dumbest ideas you’ve ever heard, lists of my shortcomings, et cetera et cetera. That amount of work has been doable due to my current lifestyle, which consists of two modes: researching and writing. Reading things and watching things and listening to things and then funneling it all into an often hideous and occasionally stunning display of creative output. I figured I’d list some of those things here, if you’re looking for your next source of inspiration.

Things I watched:
The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) directed by Barbra Streisand, starring herself and Jeff Bridges. Inspiration for an anti-romcom romcom I’m currently writing. On Netflix but leaving soon I think. On Youtube: Alain De Botton on Love, which my therapist sent me years ago amidst I assume some spiral about my love life. Hilarious and insightful talk given at the Opera House in Sydney. De Botton is my kind of philosopher, who reframes romantic love as a very meaningful but ultimately silly pursuit with a signature dry British wit. In theaters, The Invite (2026) which I was so pleasantly surprised by. Everyone’s working at the top of their game. And there’s a delightful Below Deck franchise name drop. Also in theaters, Maddy’s Secret (2026) which is required viewing as someone committed to following John Early to the ends of the earth. Incredible to see a film like this make it to AMC theaters, a true delight, a cast I want to hang out with socially. Obsession (2026) which I watched at home with friends, potentially to its detriment. We were too scared to see in theaters but I think the experience suffered. I found the plot muddled and nothing particularly revolutionary about this given the way it’s being talked about, but listen, I know nothing and I’m also a moron. On youtube, Anne Lamott on Wild Card, and also on youtube, Louis Theroux on polyamory: weird, surprising, lowkey scary as almost all Louis documentaries are. On Netflix, Mile End Kicks (2026) which was extremely up my alley, Barbie Ferreira has the juice, plot lost me a bit in the end but all in all the type of movie I’m so glad is getting made. Finally, on youtube, my new background noise channel, Vampire Robot, which appears to source b-roll video footage from various news stations from the 90s and 2000s like people browsing in a Blockbuster or ordering at Starbucks. A salve for our unbearable modern times and a comforting little lie that things were really so much better back then.

Things I heard:
On Podcasts, Hidden Brain, which is making my evening walks more educational and introspective. As a former anthropology/sociology major, I still go absolutely nuts every time I find out some thing I thought was unique to me is in fact a widespread phenomenon and we are, in the end, all the same. Hidden Brain presents us a new one of these commonalities every episode. Music: new Ryan Beatty album “Sweet Fortune” which makes me feel like a teen girl in limerence which I basically am. New Future album “The Real Me”: a fun fact about me is that my top listened to song on Spotify has been a Future track for the last 10 years. He is my guy forever. New hyperfixation song: Die Next To You by Emyrson Flora, it just kind of appeared to me somehow and grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and yanked me up and said “you will listen to me 10 times a day for no real reason.” I am into this recent sound of indie pop, your Olivia Deans, et cetera. I know nothing about music production but their sound: the kind of clean and sharp production scratches my brain in a nice way. Whatever it is I like it. Thanks very much to these various I assume 19 year old women.

Things I read:
First of all, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, which I am halfway through now. Has obliterated the reading funk I was in, feels shockingly contemporary when I was expecting a slog. Am planning a pilgrimage to Salinas to visit the Steinbeck house and museum when I’m done. Increasingly nervous for the coming movie adaptation. The LA Times list of best hot dogs in Los Angeles, which I hastily skimmed to make sure my neighborhood favorite Walt’s was adequately honored. Best hot dog I’ve ever had in my life and I’m not kidding. The script for Titanic (1997), which actually contains a bunch of deleted scenes and the original ending that tested so badly it required reshoots. Inspiring and comforting to know the real professionals roll with the punches and aren’t too precious about their work. Filmmaking is a never-ending process of cutting, reworking, etc. Also read the script for Casablanca (1942) which is wholly impressive and truly feels like going back in time thanks to the pdf’s xeroxed copy vibe. Lent from the library, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee, a really wonderful collection of essays, one of which has to do with running into Chloe Sevigny in an elevator, which of course I have done before as well, it’s a rite of passage for every American, and mine is bonus good because it was at the Chateau Marmont.

Then for fun, things I wore, which is essentially the same 4 things in a constant loop:

And my current eau de life:

It’s summer and I’ve really been wanting to tap into that feeling of summer vacation from school. Not surprising, as my life seems to be a constant effort to travel back in time to the early aughts, I decided I wanted to smell like I did when I was 14 and going to the beach on a weekday with a puka shell necklace and printed hibiscus flower tee from Old Navy on. This combo: Vacation original coconut oil spf 15 on the skin with Phlur’s Beach Skin body spray on top. Mwwwaahhh darling I can hear Hoku’s Perfect Day in my brain and I am ready to eat a turkey and cheese on white bread with a little bit of sand in it and a snapple lemon iced tea let’s GO!!

Love you all! Talk soon.

Caitie

So listen– I’m trying to be so back. I’m trying, but it’s hard. Jobs don’t exist anymore since they canceled them all, money costs more, I live far away from my mom, there’s like a big UFC structure on the White House lawn now, morons keep thinking they should run for public office, I think I’m getting ghosted but actually don’t even know? You know, things are going on! As they always do. The other night, in an attempt to get something– anything– done, I decided to dive deep into my instagram account in order to archive old posts. The idea that my photos from 10, 15 years ago are just floating there available to view for anyone with the fortitude to scroll that far back has been haunting me for a while now. But I knew the act of looking at them all myself and manually archiving them would be, let’s say, foundation-rocking at the very least. Reader: it was bad. I feel I’ve been alive for hundreds of years and I’ve somehow done nothing all that time. But I’ve also done everything I’ll ever do, and I’ve known everyone in the world and lost touch with them all. I had vigor and verve that’s now mysteriously missing. I am 38 and I am an elderly woman looking back on my life wondering how all that time could have passed without me noticing.

Long story short? I need a reframe. I need to learn to embrace the passage of time when I’ve been lamenting it. I need to behold a blank calendar and look forward to all those things that lie ahead. I wanted to put them somewhere so I can look back at them, so I figured maybe you could use some of my list if you need reasons too. Let’s go. REASONS TO GO ON!!

Disclosure Day in theaters on June 12th

This film is miraculously in the center of a venn diagram of like 9 overlapping interests of mine and it has come to me when I need it most. Sitting in the CINEMA! Big popcorn. Steven Spielberg. Aliens. Score by John Williams. My boy Josh O’Connor. My girl Eve Hewson. My additional boy Wyatt Russell. And I’m assuming, some compelling message about the beauty and strength of the human spirit. Like I can already tell this movie is going to renew my faith in my industry and send me speeding home on the 134 to pen my latest script in a very life affirming fashion. I. CANNAE. WAIT.

My Tomato Plants Growing Up

About a month ago I planted some tomatoes. My mom was in town for Mother’s Day, so of course I made her do manual labor for me instead of relaxing like she deserves. We built a trellis across the front path at my house with two pots on either side in the hopes the vines will travel up and across the top over time and I will be swimming in cherry tomatoes throughout the year. Already in four weeks, I see the vines getting taller and more tomatoes ripening and it is, not ashamed to say it, the loveliest part of my day when I go out and water them and check on their progress. I simply have to go on so I can see how much they grow!

Phantom of the Opera at The Pantages

@avaswagzEven if youve seen it a million times on screen you can’t help but marvel #phantomoftheopera #chandelier #theatre #fyp #xyzbca

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

I get to go see Phantom of the Opera in July at the Pantages and I am dreaming about that friggin chandelier reveal and consequential DROP with that PHAT ORGAN blasting in my eardrums – the most high drama moment ever put on stage that I haven’t had the pleasure of viewing since I was like 9 and saw the traveling show in Providence, Rhode Island and my mom didn’t tell me that that was supposed to happen and I started crying and had to leave the theater. Well I’m grown up and brave now and I WON’T cry unless I’m moved by beauty.

It Happening

You know… it. I’m actually a little bit scared of what it’s going to be like when it happens. It’s going to be like no other moment in human history. Who will I call first?? Where will I go?? The bars will implode. People will flood the streets. Long-broken up couples will get back together. Enemies will be friends again. Is it a surface kind of pleasure that will fail to actually address any of the deeply rooted problems that plague our society? Duh. But we really deserve this one particular thing and I have a feeling we will run it into the ground. I don’t think anyone’s showing up to work for like 2 weeks. I think everyone is going to make out. I think I will feel infinite. I refuse to give up until I get to see it happen with my own two eyes. Yay!

Trying to go to a party at the Summer House

I’ve also been very ill with some kind of mystery illness for the last few days and in that time I’ve blown through multiple seasons of Bravo’s Summer House. Better late than never! It’s now become an earnest dream of mine to attend one of their crazy weekend parties. I’m looking in the background of these shots– there are normies there, just like me and you. There has to be a way in. Imagine the movie Ocean’s Eleven I’m Danny Ocean and I’m trying to figure out how to get an invite to a Summer House party. By my calculations, filming on season 11 will have just commenced and I have until late August to make this happen. Stay tuned.

Whenever Sally Rooney decides to release her next novel

That Irish bitch has me in an Irish chokehold. I’ll wait as long as she needs me to.

My hair getting longer

Literally every time I’ve cut my hair short I’ve regretted it, then I pick up my bindle and stick my thumb out and try to hitch a ride on Hair Growth Highway. My hair was once long and beautiful and perfect and then I spit in God’s face and said “fuck you” and chopped it all off. For what? I imagined it would be “chic?” It wasn’t. I’m not meant for a bob or even a lob (long bob). I know that now. I’m meant to have long, flowing locks that spill over my shoulder when I’m leant over my ceramics wheel and get tangled in the bowl I’m making and my head almost gets sucked in and I drown in clay. Which did happen to me once!

Rediscovering my passions and finishing something for once in my god damn life

It’s bound to happen sometime! Hopefully sooner than later. I’m someone who operates in waves… weeks of inspiration and productivity followed by weeks (or months) of wondering where the hell that went. Am I in one of said lulls right now? Absolutely. But I’ve been alive for long enough to know I always come back. I know I can look forward to hitting a new writing stride, starting a new painting, and discovering a new craft for the rest of my life. Actually?? We’re so back.

What are you Going On for?????? Because I need more.

Love you.

xo Caitie

Reading celebrated writers’ rituals kinda brings the entire practice back down to earth for me– it’s not some magical quality you’re ordained with. Though talent certainly plays a role, the best writers commit themselves to it, every day. They show up for the muse diligently. I love that. But then, when it’s been days or weeks since I’ve written, I don’t love that. Sometimes, these writers’ routines feel too lofty to me. I feel I could never have the discipline. So here’s where today’s post is stepping in.

I thought it would be fun to ask my peers the same question that’s been asked of these famous writers throughout time. How are people doing it right now? How many different ways are there to be a writer? Am I normal for being distracted by social media or am I a weak-minded troglodyte who deserves to be laughed straight out of town?

I hope the following insights are as comforting and also inspiring to you as they are to me. Thank you, friends!!

Let’s start with my dear friend Monica Heisey, because her first two sentences set my soul free:

Ben Mekler on procrastinating:

Speaking of the kids being asleep, Ada DeFriez on working around new parent responsibilities:

Sam Nulman on everything he does before writing starts:

Carolyn Cicalese on the morning hours:

Taylor Garron on where she writes:

Anna Drezen on how she writes:

Carolyn Cicalese on writing in bed:

Katy Fishell on music and writing:

Ben Mekler on music:

and Hayley Frazier:

Ben Mekler on beverages:

Sam Nulman on NSPs:

God, doesn’t that feel nice? Everyone’s got their little tricks, and everyone struggles. As for me, I can tell you what’s been working for me lately:

• Sharing my writing with friends and chatting about it together, so it feels real instead of just a sloppish document haunting my iCloud drive.

• If I just need to look away from my document, which happens often, I’ve gotten into the habit of doing a crossword puzzle rather than resorting to social media. Keeps the brain more active, thinking about words… makes sense to me. I have a couple of crossword books on hand and use the LA Times games website to do their dailies.

• Going to a coffee shop with no internet, phone off, and only my laptop to signal to those around me that I am a real person with real responsibilities. If other people are theoretically seeing me working… I might as well actually be working.

• Don Francisco’s Hawaiian Hazelnut coffee every morning with a splenda and a splash of half and half. I am who I am

• Switching up my location– I have the luxury of a few spaces from which to work and I decide on a daily basis which one feels right: kitchen table, desk, bed, living room couch, chair by the window, chair in the garage with the door open to the street, or, the occasional curveball– hallway floor.

• Constantly reminding myself that it has to exist first and it can get better later. The making it exist is the rigorous part of the process for me– I’m always trying to convince myself that I should quit now because my idea isn’t good enough. Tough luck, it’s going to exist, and once it does, there are ways to make it good.

• Sunflower seeds. Tons of sunflower seeds. In the privacy of my home, obviously, I wouldn’t subject anyone to that.

Okay, your turn!!!!! Tell us all about your writing rituals, morning rituals, skincare routines…

Love,

Caitie

Something I cooked: my morning slop

No it’s not the name of my indie darling cover band, it’s my breakfast and I love it. Since becoming unemployed, I have many more hours in the day to fill, especially so I don’t slip into a months-long depression, so I found this way of making breakfast that takes around 30 minutes and requires constant vigilance. My Morning Slop is steel cut oats, which, for the uninitiated, takes around 25 minutes to cook on the stove. I boil water and oat milk together– a combo that seems dead set on boiling over if you dare to look away for even five seconds, so I stay close and adjust my burner diligently. This is somewhat like meditating; the choice to focus only on the rolling boil of my oats and refusal to have my attention taken away by anything else. I will listen to an audiobook while I do this, but little else. After they cook, I add brown sugar and cinnamon and maldon salt to make it tasty and then flaxseed meal and chia seeds to make it healthy. I slice half a banana and add a handful of blueberries and that’s the slop. It takes a long time to eat and I’m full for like four hours after.

Something I’m reading: One’s Company by Ashley Hutson

I am currently in the middle of this and absolutely loving it, as this book falls into one of my favorite genres: unwell woman on a mission. The book follows a woman named Bonnie, who after losing her parents and going through some horribly traumatic things, wins the lottery for an undisclosed insane amount of money. Until this point in her life, she has filled up every spare moment of her life in her double-wide trailer watching reruns of Three’s Company. It is all she cares about and all she wants to do. With her lottery winnings, she buys a remote property in the woods and hires workers to recreate the set of Three’s Company exactly, down to the house plants and kitchen towels, so that she can live out the rest of her life assuming the personalities of the show’s characters, one by one, plotline by plotline. This book fucking rocks. A bizarre mix of bewilderment and wish fulfillment. Finally, someone treating lottery winnings the way God intended.

Something else I’m reading: The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers

I do have a terrible habit of starting a new book while I’m in the middle of another, but I’ve been waiting for my library hold of this book for weeks and it finally came through so I really had no choice. I immediately fell in love with this book. It follows a young mother who’s recently moved upstate from New York City with her husband. When she meets a dad at a thing for babies and parents to socialize I guess? (sorry I don’t know what they all entail), she begins to fantasize about starting an affair with him. This fantasy narrative runs alongside her reality and we often see two versions of the same moments as she holds both truth and possibility in her head. As a card carrying member of the maladaptive daydreaming community, I live for this. Its characters are cool without being too cool, they talk like real people and as a special treat this book is also deeply funny. See below Cora trying to explain what death is to her toddler daughter that made me laugh a lot.

Something I watched: Vanderpump Rules (again)

I’m good for this about every 18 months or so. I am unemployed, after all. This is probably my 5th or 6th full rewatch of Vanderpump Rules and I can’t imagine I’ll ever stop. I gain something new from it every time. I side with new cast members and find myself freshly vitriolic toward others. The first time I watched Vanderpump Rules all the way through in the dark of covid, I hated Kristen Doute more than any character I’d seen on television up to that point. I hated Kristen Doute in a way that made me concerned for my own wellbeing. Now? Kristen and I are fine. She’s funny more than anything. Wearing the green dress to pick up her mail from Sandoval’s is endearing, actually. This time, my distaste has landed squarely on Scheana’s petite little shoulders. I barely made it through the Rob season. Holy hell. Other than that, I seem to be going through something personal in the way I marvel at just how much Beau loves Stassi, and I can’t help but ask everyone in my immediate circle if they are as touched by how much Beau loves Stassi, and how I want to be transformed at my core by the love of a theoretical Beau in my life like Stassi was, but of course now I’m now onto season 9, where Stassi and Kristen and Jax were famously removed from the cast, and it’s just not the same show after arguably the three leads have left. We are inching closer and closer to Scandoval. I’m beginning to look for the warning signs. I cringe every time Ariana defends Tom with her entire being, which is often. Even though I know what’s going to happen, I’m scared.

Somewhere I went: the Hollywood High School auditorium to see Mitski

I got a ticket for this show at the last minute after a friend fell ill and I decided to go, because I never go to concerts anymore and I’ve experienced an alarming number of Saturdays home alone in 2026 so far. So off I went to Hollywood High School, a delightful choice for Mitski’s run of LA shows. We sat in the very back row in the back balcony of the auditorium. The missing ceiling tiles above us only added to the charm. It was, truthfully, stifling in there on an already unseasonably warm day, and the stale air seemed to magically turn the clock back for my friends and I, as we found ourselves giggling and elbowing each other about stupid shit on our phones like we were 15-year-olds stuck in a school assembly. By the time Mitski started though, I was deep in a heat-induced trance. The songs washed over me like auditory dramamine, my focus drifting between the music itself and reminders to myself not to pass out onto the nice stranger sat beside me. It was a perfect set up for a narrative I’ve fallen prey to many times: this isn’t worth it and I should have stayed home – but I’ve been working on Being Present and embracing everything that being alive has to offer, even the uncomfortability.

Something I saved: my fiddle leaf fig tree

My fiddle leaf fig tree that I just got in January started dying as soon as it entered my house, which certainly felt like a portent of something terrible but I chose to think logically and consider that I was just caring for it incorrectly. I took to my instagram stories and posted photos of the leaves that were rapidly dropping off the tree– browned and shriveled. The advice I received was contradictory and manyfold: Needs more light! Needs less light! Water it more! Water it less! Fertilize it! Don’t fertilize it! Call it intuition or a stroke of luck, but I moved it to another corner of the house and decided to stop watering it for 3 weeks and that seemed to work. One wrong move and we’re trending downward again, and I know that, but I’m just grateful for this moment with her. It’s exhilarating keeping such a temperamental plant in the home. Now I don’t need to have a baby.

Somewhere I ate: Houston’s in Pasadena

My friend Nicky gave me a gift card to Houston’s last year because my Mom and I made her a 3-tiered, 3-flavored cake from scratch for her wedding. I finally used it on a night out with the gals and it all felt like I was eating at the fictional restaurant Bridges from Mrs. Doubtfire. It’s the kind of accessible fancy that I imagined as the absolute peak of luxury growing up. The type of restaurant I’d go to all the time as a modern grown up woman. We shared some steak and sushi and salad and something called a Crisp Martini which changed me fundamentally a bit (upon research I see it contains gin, elderflower liqueur, lemon juice and sauvignon blanc). I’m told Houston’s doesn’t seat any tables over 4 people, which keeps the vibe intimate and sans choruses of the Happy Birthday song every 15 minutes. Also, there’s a koi pond in the lobby and the fish swim right up to you to say hello. Basically the best night of my life.

Something I watched: The Drama

Basically everything that’s going to be said about this movie has been said already, so I’ll be brief, but I loved it. I think it was of vital importance that I knew nothing going in– so stop reading now if you haven’t seen it– because when we get to that scene at the dinner table and I realized that was the premise of the movie, I was jacked all the way in. I love nothing more than a “what if” plot that lets you imagine how you’d deal with a unique predicament such as: what if you were about to get married and your fiance announced they once planned a school shooting. Yep. We’re off to the races. Perfect. Gimme gimme. I could have watched 2 more hours of conversation in that dinner table scene alone. This movie gave me all the things I love about movies: a sort of roving sense of ethical ambiguity, constantly evolving opinions of your leads, beautiful scenery, and Jeremy Levick as a wedding DJ. I understand the gripes of those who didn’t love it– in its DNA it is a touchy subject, that’s the reason the film exists, and it’s very easy to feel preached to by a non-American filmmaker about what’s wrong with our country, but– is he wrong? I’ve yet to see a film tackle the issue in this way– showing how when a culture/aesthetic is prominent enough, young people searching for identity will inevitably fall prey to the sense of belonging and selfhood they get from it. Even if that aesthetic is just– “school shootings.” That is much more of a condemnation of our society in general than any one person, which is how we need to be looking at such massive problems like this. To then watch Alana Haim’s character Rachel become incensed at the revelation, immediately casting aside her own unforgivable sin to latch onto the always honorable “school shooting bad” stance, is a clever way of showing us how we often fail to treat the problem at the source. The Drama is more of a “wow, true” kind of movie than a “we should do something!” movie, but I tend to think there’s room for both in the world, no?

And, as you may have expected, it’s been adrenaline-pinching stuff. So far today the main thing that’s happened is being moved continuously from a room to another room, sometimes a hallway. We started in the juror room, then got sent up to the hallway outside the courtroom, then we went in the courtroom, then we got dismissed to lunch, then back to the hallway, now back in the juror room– and literally nothing has happened in that time. All in all, being on jury duty seems to be an exercise in abiding by the tacit laws of society– which is to say I’m asked to sit quietly and not make a fuss and just Be Normal, a thing I get overly preoccupied with when I realize I’m in one of these situations. As soon as I realize I’m expected to exist regularly– like just sit in a chair until instructed to do otherwise– a sense of panic washes over me and I begin to worry that I’m going to lose control of my body. Since it wouldn’t be acceptable to, say, start shrieking and doing the cha cha slide in the middle of the courtroom, the fear that for some reason I’m going to suddenly start doing that becomes overwhelming. It’s very strange. The last time I had this type of anxiety was a couple months ago at a table read for a movie produced by some friends of mine. I was asked to attend and give notes on the script, which meant quietly sitting and listening to the actors read the screenplay and generally abiding by the implicit rules of normalcy by not, I guess, getting up and walking out, or loudly booing the lackadaisical performance of A-list actress’ sat mere feet from me, or losing control of my limbs and suckerpunching the nice man sat next to me. I understand I cannot do these things, but why not? I have free will, don’t I? Why do I only become concerned with exercising it when I’m in a room where I just need to be fucking chill for a few hours?

I once had a therapist who put me onto a book called Living In The Light by Shakti Gawain, both the title and author of which are exactly how they sound. The book is woo-woo adjacent; all about learning to hear and then trust your inner intuition, this boundless source of knowledge that can guide us through life if we can succeed in tuning out all the noise and tap into it. There’s a lot I didn’t love in that book, but one thing that’s stuck with me for however many years since I read it is this concept of The Rebel and the Tyrant. Gawain proposes that each of us has a rebel and a tyrant living inside of us that are constantly at war. This struck a note with me, particularly about my eating habits. When I’m “being good,” eating healthy, not overindulging, and exercising regularly, the Tyrant is in charge. The Tyrant wants what’s best for you and knows the answers– it is rigid and demands conformity to the rules above all. Tyrant’s a fuckin asshole basically. The Rebel is the other voice in you that defies the rules of the Tyrant, sometimes in chaotic and destructive ways. Life can feel like a constant push-pull between your Tyrant running the show and your Rebel breaking through. In regards to dieting, which– knock on wood– I feel like I may finally be out from under the culture of, so much of my precious brain capacity has been consumed by my Tyrant telling me what I had to do– 1600 calories a day, 10,000 steps– and then the Rebel chiming in with “who the fuck said I have to do that? I’ll show her” and then going to McDonald’s for dinner because technically I am allowed and no one, not even me, can tell me what to do.

I feel the rebel and tyrant dynamic resurfacing here today as I’m starting to realize I haven’t been in many situations lately that force me to be any one way. In my cushy and unemployed writer life, I walk to get coffee in the morning, then I come home and write or do whatever, then I go on a walk later to buy a soda or maybe it’s just a walk to walk. Sometimes I go to pilates. Sometimes I meet up with friends in the evening. Sometimes I don’t. But I live most of my life within a tight 3-mile or so radius and I see the same people. One act of civic duty is enough to send me into an all-out panic attack, just because I theoretically am in less control here than in my normal life. Even that’s not really true, like I could stand up now and walk out and go to my car and drive home, and probably the worst thing that would happen is maybe a couple people would be like “hello?” as I exited and, maybe in a week or two, I’d be summoned to show up for jury duty again. But I am not going to, because I am a normal woman and a citizen of America.

And after all, writers write, or so I’ve heard. Lately I’ve been hyper aware of the fact that I’ve had very few new experiences to write about. I have to jostle myself out of my cocoon and shove myself into the world. In this way, jury duty could be the biggest blessing I’ve ever had the fortune of receiving! Inspiration cascades over me here in this air conditioned room that everyone’s pissed off they have to be in. Yes? Yes???

I’ve been working on a list of all the things that have helped me become a better writer that aren’t AI, and I am starting to think I should add Being at Jury Duty to it. In fact, being anywhere you normally aren’t is huge. Because I could ask Claude or whoever to “give me a list of funny things that could happen in a courtroom during cross examination about tenants rights,” or, I could sit my unlitigious ass down and listen for once. Let my little brain run away with possibilities. Being staunchly anti-AI has indeed become my leading Cause, the thing I’ll go on a heated diatribe about as I watch my friends’ eyes slowly glaze over… but to be fair to ME and how annoying I am, it’s only getting worse. AI joins the conversation more and more every day. A major novel release has been canceled due to accusations the author used AI for the first time– I was absolutely transfixed by a nearly 3 hour youtube video detailing the AI suspicions a couple months ago and completely agree with that assessment. I can’t make a doctor’s appointment with a real person anymore. The fucking Pentagon is using it to kill children, for god’s sake. It’s on billboards, it’s in commercials. My gmail is using AI to summarize an email that says “let’s have lunch soon!” and inform me that, yes, in fact, my friend would like to have lunch soon. AI is everywhere and it fucking sucks and my corner of the world, TV and movie writing, is naturally wrapped up in it. I’ve heard from peers that ChatGPT is now frequently used in writers rooms. Lines are being drawn between the writers who openly embrace it and those who refuse. Some of your favorite showrunners? Whose work you love and respect? Unabashedly using ChatGPT regularly to write dialogue or ideate or do the “grunt work” involved in TV writing like outlining and making pitch documents. I read a post on this very website about a fellow tv writer proudly announcing her use of AI LLMs. She was aware of all the reasons we say it’s bad, like the environmental implications and the plagiarism and the positive feedback loop and she said: don’t care! Using it anyway! It seems because she is a mom and has been writing for a long time, she’s allowed to cut corners and allow AI to do the extra work, so she can get out all her many dozens of pitches per year and reinforce her place in this industry and say yes I’m a writer but I also do business– I’m adapting. Eat or be eaten, she says. Hmm. Ok.

So, fuck that, right? But of course I’m no stranger to writing being extremely hard and annoying and wanting to do anything besides that. People on my side of the battlefield tend to think this vilification of our occupation isn’t something to overcome, but something to accept and work with. Yes, writing sucks. Most jobs suck. Most things that are worth it suck. We’re all just out here choosing which type of suck we’re willing to endure. Life is suck. I understand the temptation to alleviate some of that pain and suffering to a machine is tempting… but don’t do it. If you’re an artist of any kind, you know that the work is the reward. The slogging and suffering is what makes the breakthroughs beautiful and shiny and transcendent. Anais Nin said, “we write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” She didn’t say “I asked ChatGPT what life tastes like and it said ‘lightly sweet, crunchy, and slightly nutty or oaty flavor, with a subtle cinnamon hint’ because it thought I was talking about the cereal.”

Without further ado, here’s some of my list of things that have helped me become a better writer that I’d recommend trying instead of the environment-destroying, world-war-enabling, job-taking, water-guzzling and completely stupefying tech that yes– is going to start charging you soon.

Tape your conversations

I’m starting with one of the stranger ones, but it’s awesome I swear. Tape a conversation with your friends using the audio record function on your phone. With consent of course, if that’s your thing, which it should be. Press record and set your phone down and continue the hang as normal. Later, play the audio back and write it all down in script format. This helps tremendously for learning to write dialogue that flows. I find people speak in half sentences way more than I assumed, and our brains kind of fill in the blanks when we’re in regular conversation with people. If writing naturalistic dialogue is your thing, try this. There’s so many nuances to uncover!

Transcribe your favorite TV shows and movies

A stepping stone to this if you feel too weird to ask your friends if you can record a particularly juicy and/or life-ruining-if-it-got-out conversation is to throw on one of your favorite movies or tv shows and transcribe it back into script form. Have fun with action lines, deciding when or when not to include parentheticals like “(annoyed)” or “(sarcastic).” Decide if you want to spell things phonetically. How to add in interjections or stuttering during dialogue. All of this helps. You’re doing the action– let the inspiration follow!

Read. Just read

Obviously. But what should you read? You can start by googling for PDFs of your favorite movies. This is my go-to when I feel a little uninspired and like I want to throw my laptop into a pond. Even the best movie you’ve ever seen– the ones you can’t believe somehow made it to your screen– started with a bunch of words on paper. Yes, I sound like that guy in that opening sequence at AMC theaters right now (“it all starts with a script”) but, yeah, it all starts with a script. I can’t tell you how it felt the first time I wrote a bunch of dumbass sentences in a document then watched actors saying those lines like they were real… on a set… with a bunch of other people there in agreement that those were the words to be said and filmed and edited and released. When you haven’t had that experience for a while or maybe even ever, it can feel extremely futile to keep tippy typing away. It can feel like delusion. Read other scripts. Those writers probably felt a lot like you do. Seeing it in front of you on the page helps, I think.

You can read pilots– ones that have been made and ones that haven’t. I used to fear this. I worried that looking directly at the sheer number of work out there, thousands and thousands of made and unmade pilots, would overwhelm me and make me feel like “who do I think I am, trying to say I’m unique and deserve a spot in this landscape?” Surely any idea I’ve had has been had before and will be had again. Eventually I had to flip this narrative for myself because it is, of course, damaging. Super unhelpful. I learned to accept that there are maximum maybe… 6? Ideas? Unique ideas? Total. There are 6 of them and every single piece of art you’ve ever seen is a person’s take on that idea. Everything’s been done, everything will be redone. Join the soup, the broth is fine.

Help your friends

Dammit, it’s all about helping your friends. I used to fear this even more than I feared reading strangers’ pilots. I worried too much that reading the work of my peers would send me into a spiral of worthlessness. That my veins would course with jealousy upon reading a funny line my friend wrote because I didn’t write it. That they took all the great ideas and left none for me. I spent years here, and sometimes still it rears its ugly head, as I’m only human. But, annoyingly, the way out is always through. Consider yourself lucky that you’ve been asked for your unique insight on something that came from your friend’s soul. I sat at a diner with my friend for 3 hours last week to talk about her movie script and we could have sat and talked for 3 more. I left feeling inspired and rejuvenated. There is talent surrounding me and there’s just no way some of it doesn’t rub off on me. Community! Community. Why the fuck would you ask AI what it thinks instead of your HUMAN FRIEND over a grilled cheese and milkshake. When you read your friends’ work, you’re a part of it. They can read your work later, provided you ever sit the hell down and do it. You’re part of it! Stop trying not to be!

Morning pages

Hate to say it, dawg, that lady Julia Cameron was right! We must be kind to her because she grew up being James Cameron’s sister and I just know that was utter hell. Imagine trying to play outside with James Cameron and he’s like obsessively world building when you’re more into the vibe of swirling a stick around in some mud. But I digress. Julia Cameron wrote The Artist’s Way, the cornerstone of which is the practice of Morning Pages. Just freewriting first thing every morning. I’ve been doing it consistently for 5 years now and it really does help. It demystifies the act of writing. You aren’t beholden to any rules, it’s more just to clear out the cobwebs. To keep you in practice. Try it! You might like it.

Go to jury duty

Oh, you don’t have it?? Well aren’t you so lucky. Shut the hell up. Call them and tell them you’re coming in. Don’t take no for an answer.

Xo

Caitie

As a currently unemployed person, I still try to imbue my Fridays with some joy, even though I haven’t done anything to earn it. I was thinking back to Fridays of yore, those high school Fridays that really went off, energetically. Which brings me to today’s playlist: Early 00s Getting Ready.

For my money, I’ve never felt my veins coursing with the experience of being alive quite like I did in the early aughts, flitting around one of my girlfriend’s rooms, applying some sickly sweet lip gloss and wondering which boy would make eye contact with me at the dance that night. Oh, you wanna know if I was there? I was there. Allow me to present my resume:

In those days, I was still filled with hope for the future, which I was completely convinced would be comprised of cool-toned colors, cordless phones and a generally positive and sometimes sexy concept of alien contact.

I assumed that adulthood would feel much like existing in a GAP ad— there weren’t really walls or furniture or stuff but a sort of ebullient spark to everything. There would be a lot of choreographed dancing and monochrome rooms and, of course, sending digital messages back and forth.

Shopping would be my job, of course. New nightclub every evening. Butterfly clips never out of style.

Pulling up in my lime green VW new bug, opening up my orange clamshell mac, saying hello to my various chatrooms, then logging off to make pasta with butter for my sexy boyfriend.

Okay, well, I was wrong! Adulthood doesn’t look like that. Corporations decided to stop making their tech fun poppy colors in favor of finding streamlined ways to give us all depression and assist the government in precision-striking innocent schoolchildren. Maybe we lost our lust for life the day that SkyMall stopped publishing, or when food companies decided they shouldn’t put glitter and other suspended objects into beverages. These days I wonder less about if a boy is going to make eye contact with me and more about whether he believes I deserve to vote. It’s okay. At least we have our memories, and my new fun playlist!!!!! TGIF you guys.

lylas <3

caitie

I have often felt as though I’m the Baby in nearly all of my relationships— friends, family, lovers, coworkers, strangers. I’m baby and they’re Mommy. Not in a subversive lifestyle kind of way, sicko, so you can click off right now; no. I mean in the way I compulsively trust everyone else’s experience and judgment over my own. I’m always in information gathering mode. I collect scraps of other people’s lives to try and cobble together my own. Recently, I’ve become quite aware of how annoying that is.

In a Cady Heron Mean Girls type way, I can hear myself getting bored with me. I’m constantly looking for information to confirm my bias that I know nothing and everyone else knows better. Peppering friends with questions like: “are you getting bloodwork done once a year?” or “do you send your agents gifts for their birthdays?” or the ever-popular “how do you know you’re in love with someone?”

Where did I get this idea that the rest of the world has some secret wisdom that I’ve yet to receive? We could go back to childhood, I’m sure my therapist would love that. We could blame it on my unstable living situation growing up. That I had to trust the people in control of my young life knew what they were doing in order to believe all that chaos was necessary. For a child to suddenly realize that their parents are just people too, doing the best they can with no idea how to move forward? That can feel completely destabilizing. So they decide they’re the one that knows nothing and put their trust in others’ decisions. And this inherent trust in others just… keeps going, apparently, if you don’t do anything about it.

I was reflecting on this habit of mine on a podcast I guested on recently— Justin Tranter’s new podcast Unfamous is all about creative collaboration, and my friend Caleb Hearon had me join him for us to talk about writing together. We compared thoughts on various strategies for taking notes from the people who are paying you; in our case, network executives who were developing our television show with us. I realized how reverential I am to everyone in my industry— which I don’t think is a problem, necessarily. But it’s not good when my own taste and my own vision are compromised to take what everyone else says as gospel truth. Someone who’s read the document I spent weeks writing once says something objectively incorrect, or stupid, or thoughtless— and my first instinct is still: “I’m a moron. You know what I meant better than me. Thank you for telling me.” Yeah, that’s a problem.

And in my line of work, TV writing, community can feel like a double edged sword. Writing is often thought of as a solitary act, but TV writing flips that on its head. You’re with other writers all day. The best writers are known for their “voice,” the point of view that sets them apart from everyone else. The unique skill they can bring to the table. This is both inspiring and deeply traumatizing to witness. I’m simultaneously in awe of my peers’ skills and envious that it isn’t my own, and often left feeling like the least original, dumbest person in the room. This is good practice, in doses, and sometimes it’s completely demoralizing. I’m reminded of a table read I attended a couple of years ago ahead of production on the first season of Apple TV’s The Studio. The cast were there and about 20-30 writers, producers, comics, executives to watch the table read and give notes. That particular notes session haunts my memory. I was surrounded by such insightful, thoughtful notes— things I’d never think to say in a million years. Television geniuses dishing out whip smart commentary like it was nothing. I was watching professionals at the top of their game go to work. I stayed silent for the duration of the session, threw out the notes I scribbled on a pad before anyone could see, and drove all the way home from Beverly Hills feeling like a complete fraud. Webster’s dictionary, imposter syndrome, big ole headshot of ME.

It extends to other parts of my life. As someone who hasn’t done like a ton of dating in my life, I seem to have built an ethos around myself that I am a “late bloomer,” which is another way of saying I’m eternally a baby who needs to be taught. When friends talk to me about dating, I’m always perceiving a knowingness to what they say that I never feel when I date. I feel more akin to a pinball bouncing around my life randomly ricocheting off people with no logical course of direction. The problem here, obviously, is my assumption that everyone around me is acting off of knowledge when most of the time people are just going for it, too. “How do you know you want to be with this person?” I ask. “Oh, I don’t know. That’s why I’m dating them” is an exchange that blew my mind recently. Okay, so… no one knows anything, actually? And you’re all okay just living like that?!?

Suddenly I’m 38 years old and still being baby! I have to believe that everyone else around me knows what’s up, because the reality that we’re all just flailing around like morons… not to mention our government officials and the guys with access to the big red button, is terrifying. I’ve really started to reckon with this outdated filter I’m viewing my life through. Because the fact is: I was invited to that room where the table read was with the express purpose of sharing my thoughts! If I’m going to trust other people’s judgments above my own, I should trust that they knew what they were doing when they extended that invite. I get work in my chosen field not through some clerical error but because I am good at what I do and people want to pay me to do it, god damnit! I went on a friggin podcast and shared insight on what I do because I have experience and insights!! Like, get a grip, honestly! It’s time to start understanding that I’m in the world in the same fashion everyone else is: there’s no big secret, other people have just learned that if you’re not getting busy living, you’re getting busy dying. Simply put: it is boring to play it small and try to sneak through life undetected for fear of failing.

So now, I’m making a concerted effort to listen to myself and follow my own intuition and trust that the 38 years of unique experience I’ve had on this planet are worthy of standing amidst all the others. If you relate to this and feel like me, I encourage you to do this with me!! Next time you feel that familiar pull to ask someone’s advice (which isn’t a sin, by the way), stop and ask yourself if you already know the answer. When you want to share a thought with a room of people but you’re nervous everyone will throw rotten tomatoes at you and call you an imbecile, breathe and remember that 1) that doesn’t really… happen, people don’t… carry around rotten tomatoes on their person and 2) the way you say things is unique and insightful just by virtue of it coming out of your unique and gorgeous mouth. Just take it easy on yourself, gang. I am saying that to myself.

xo

Caitie

PS. Thanks for being here for this glorified diary entry. Personal essays are not a comfortable art form for me, but I’m trying new things! And you’re all peaches for being a part of it!

And I don’t mean that like “feel sorry for me.” It feels like coming home, really. I wager I’ve been unemployed and single for more time in my life than jobbed up and taken. This is my comfort zone! But when I’m employed? Dating someone? The pressure to keep spinning the plates can become overwhelming. An “I haven’t messed it up yet, but I’m destined to” type of thing. I’ve often woken up in the morning in a cold sweat, thinking, “hang on. I’m just expected to go to work today, and then the next day? Indefinitely?” The requirement, benign and societally implied as it is, can start to feel like a prison. Even if I love my job or my relationship, the rewriting of my identity away from Alone Woman With No Responsibilities can feel stifling.

When I’m jobless and personless, I just exist. Of course the usual stressors of finances and purpose and loneliness are always waiting in the wings ready to pounce, but I can confront them on my own terms. Each day is completely my own. The calendar is empty. It’s an expansive, highly introspective time. And baby, that is my shit.

What’s more, today is March 1st! A date I’ve come to learn many people see as the real start of the new year. I get what they mean. January is dreary and cold and boring for much of this side of the equator, and it feels impossible to try and change everything in your life and become a new person when laying unmoving under a blanket effectively cosplaying a hot pocket feels like the only thing you’re capable of. March 1st has a springy spark. Much much more conducive to dosing yourself with a pinch of delusion and resolving to be different from now on.

So, the question is now laid before me. A new leaf is being turned, so — What am I Going To Do Now? Whatever I want, of course. If you’re also into imbuing each day with an electric sense of beauty and possibility… or maybe you’re just in the mood to do some random shit (especially around Los Angeles), stay with me.

I’m going to go to the Natural History Museum and look at the gems

I was at dinner the other night with some friends talking about the new minerals exhibit at the Natural History Museum to which one of my friends said: “we have a Natural History Museum?” Reader: YES! We do. And right now there’s a special exhibit dedicated to yummy gems called Unearthed: Raw Beauty. The only thing more LA than a profusion of crystals on display is the fact that for a milisecond I thought there was an Oscar statue lodged inside the amethyst photographed above (I see him everywhere…). So. I’m going to travel to the museum on a quiet week-morning, rip a legal-in-California delight, put on my headphones while listening to something drifty and ethereal like Sigur Ros and think about which one of the crystals feels the most like myself. As I do in any grouping of four women when I ask which Sex and the City characters we are, I also feel the pull to locate my identity in almost any collection of inanimate objects (ie. which Le Creuset dutch oven colorway AM I?!). If you want to see the gems, or anything else in the LA Natural History Museum (the animal hall dioramas are stunning) be advised you can go for free using your Los Angeles Public Library card! You can also get free admission to a dozen or so other museums, including the Academy Museum, The Grammy Museum, MOCA, the ZOO! The AQUARIUM! Utilize your public services, gang!

I am going to read at the bar alone

I am totally swaggerjacking my good friend Catie Disabato with this one, but hey, when she’s right she’s right. Reading alone at the bar is the ultimate vibe enhancer. It’s taken me many years to be cool with doing certain things alone. Even though I love being alone, some activities just seemed too frightening to attempt. One of these for me is reading in a bar alone. The insecurity daggers fly at me from all angles: will I look like I’m performing? Will someone try to speak to me? Will I be taking up too much space? Will my posture suffer so greatly I look like a big Sesame Street Letter C sitting on a backless barstool? But this is exactly why I have to do it. I moved recently and conveniently live in walking distance to my favorite bar now. If I bring a book and go alone, I’ll drink slower and spend less money than I would gabbing and naughtily suggesting “should we do one more?” to whatever company is present. I’ve found reading a book with a lot of background noise weirdly focuses me more, too. Existing in public is allowed and I can do whatever the hell I want, and even though I vaguely fear strangers striking up conversations with me, it’s nice to remind myself that I’m an adult and I actually love meeting new people and I want to do it. Phew.

I am going to get gleaming glowing gorgeous skin

Something I’m bad at but lust over frequently is routine, and recently I seem to have found the one thing I’m able to stick to long term. That’s skin care. To me, nothing beats the sensation of a friggin freshly washed face. It’s like a reset button for the spirit. I got a facial a couple months back where the very nice lady explained things very simply to me. She said: “if you just wash your face for like 60 seconds instead of 15 and wear SPF every day it’s going to completely change your skin.” Say no more. No one’s ever made it sound that simple for me. So now that’s what I do. Day and night, an extended scrub, followed by toner and two serums (a hyaluronic and a niacinamide) from the extremely affordable The Ordinary, moisturizer, and in the morning, SPF. If I’ve done nothing else the rest of the day, I’ve done that. And I’m already seeing improvements! I find myself going out in public with no make up on at all— an achievement I previously considered unavailable to me. It’s a kind of quiet revolution, deciding that people can handle being exposed to my face As It Is. There’s a new “this is me, take it or leave it!” attitude lodged in my chest. I’m here! Eating a bagel! Deal with it! I recognize I’m not really breaking ground here with “do skincare” as advice, but, hey, shut the fuck up, some of us are slower on the uptake.

I’m going to go back to the huge Crucifixion painting at Forest Lawn Glendale

Sorry if we’re friends and I’ve already monologued to you about this before. But did you know that the largest painting in the western United States is housed in a building on top of a hill in a cemetery in Glendale? Now you know, so you have to go see it.

My friend Spencer and I decided to check it out on a whim a few weeks back and the experience did not disappoint. The painting is shown 6 times a day on the hour— it’s not just there in a way you can walk in and look at it, and believe me, it’s better that way. The whole thing is very theatrical. You’re ushered into a impressively large auditorium with a massive curtain covering the entire back wall. As Spencer and I sat in our seats we wondered aloud: surely the painting isn’t as big as this curtain, right? The lights dimmed as a screen lit up and played an introductory video. It explained who painted the work, how it was transported from Poland to the U.S. in 1904, and how Forest Lawn Cemetery built the entire structure we were currently sitting in purely to house this spectacular painting. As the video plays, we could barely make out the curtain being silently and slowly pulled back to reveal the painting. After the video, a voice announced: and now, The Crucifixion painted by Jan Styka. The music crescendoed as the lights came up, revealing a depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus that is fucking 195 feet long and 45 feet high. Okay? The figure of Jesus in the center of the painting is ACTUAL SIZE JESUS! Or thereabouts. I don’t think we knew how tall Jesus was. Wouldn’t that be nuts if he was like 6’8. Jesus should have been on the hard court humiliating Judas with a clean cross jab. But I digress. This painting is sick. Extremely deserving of the theatrics. Unfathomably large. I go goo-goo ga-ga for anything that displays the utter grandeur of human ingenuity and I’m hard pressed to think of a better example. This Polish guy Styka really freaked it. If one guy can figure out how to do a painting the length of like 10 school buses, surely I can figure out how my 32-page comedy script should end. I promise, going to see this is worth it. Also, it’s free, and while you’re there you can take in all the other awesome shit at Forest Lawn, including but not limited to a stained glass recreation of The Last Supper painting, a to-scale recreation of the David, and the graves of any number of famous people you’ve heard of and maybe even respect.

(Also I just googled it and apparently Jesus was between 5’0 - 5’5???????? Christ was a Short King???????)

I am going to get some use out of my AMC A-List status for once

Yeah, I’m an A-Lister. It’s tough holding the weight of the film industry solely on my shoulders but I will do what I have to do. Only problem is, when I’m employed I am seeing far fewer movies. Well, those days are over. The days stretch out endlessly before me and I shall fill them with 11am screenings of some bullshit I’d never see if I had to fork over an individual and purposeful $20. I will study the artform like I never have before. I will luxuriate in an empty showing of the latest Kevin James vehicle — a solo mio watching Solo Mio. I will play a game with myself wherein I test how cumbersome of a food I can sneak in my tote bag. Sushi and Send Help. I will discover flavor combinations on the Coke freestyle machine heretofore untasted by man. I will park at the Galleria and walk to the Americana. And, more earnestly, seeing many movies of all types really does make me better at my job. I get embroiled way too often with my imposter syndrome. The best medicine for that is seeing every movie on the spectrum. The unbelievably bad to the unfathomably good. I love leaving a movie and knowing in my gut what I’d do differently to make it better just as much as I love leaving a movie feeling like there’s no way I could ever do anything like that. AMC Theaters is school! And class is in session!!!

Some other things I am going to do:

Aquarium of the Pacific, The Huntington Library and Gardens, The Velaslavasay Panorama, jumping into the ocean at 7 in the morning, walking 10,000 steps a day fffuucccckkk it really is great though, frequenting Remainders thrift craft store in Pasadena, cleaning out my god damn car finally, hiking with the girls at 8am on Sundays, continuing to humiliate myself at Pilates, learning to make tofu taste better, being grateful for this life which is entirely my own and welcoming whatever it has in store for me next.

I may turn this into a regular series, depending on how long my unemployment persists. The way things are going lately… we could be in this for the long haul, folks. The annals of unemployment. The broke chronicles. Let’s fuckin go.

xo

I didn’t think I’d write about Wuthering Heights (2026) — I figured there would be an abundance of opinions on the widely beloved literary classic being adapted by Emerald “I only wrote one draft of Promising Young Woman and went on to win Best Original Screenplay for it” Fennell. But then I saw it, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the dissonance in reactions in my theater at the Americana At Brand AMC 18 in Glendale, California.

I never read Wuthering Heights. Not growing up, not as an adult. My English teacher opted for the other Brontë with Jane Eyre, and of course by Catholic school law there can only be one female author taught per academic year. So I missed the boat on WH. I thought about trying to read it before the movie came out, but after reading about 40 pages, I realized there was no way in hell Fennell was directing a faithful adaptation and it would probably be a lot more fun if I went into it as blind as possible. Not giving a god damn care about shit and ready to watch hot people get sexual with each other. Well, my plan was foiled. Because I don’t think there is an ideal way to walk into that theater apart from being 23 years old, highly impressionable, and enthusiastically queueing to be run over by Jacob Elordi in an 18-wheeler.

From the rip, Fennell was promising a right ol’ naaahsty little film. A cheeky little filth fest as we open on the sounds of a man grunting along with increasingly rapid rustling. You’re goin: “holy shit, this guy’s jerking off!” Ha. You fool. You pervert! We fade up in the image of, actually? A guy being hanged. So don’t you feel tricked. But what’s this? He’s got a boner. And everyone sees. Okayyyyy, this isn’t your mama’s Wuthering Heights! Buckle your chastity belts! What follows is an actually intriguing if silly opening sequence of the apparent debauchery of 18th century Yorkshire England— people making out passionately underneath the hanged guy. Kids running around being little shitheads. Everyone needing a bath. Charli XCX’s score crescendos quite impactfully here as we see the titular Wuthering Heights home on the hill for the first time looming over a… is that a river of blood? Fine. Whatever. At this point, I was truly locked in. Ready for whatever goofiness was headed for us.

The only problem with that tone-setting opening sequence? The rest of the movie wasn’t… that tone. It was, dare I say, boring. Again, I have close to zero awareness of how original text went, but I still found myself thinking every 5-10 minutes: “well, that isn’t in the book.” Whatever Emily Bronte’s vision was, this is not it. Which is fine! Do your freaky little dance, Emerald Fennell. Just give me an actually compelling film. That’s where it fails. There is a feeling that Fennell cherry picked the parts of the book she liked best and failed in executing the piecemeal. She wants to tell us a love story — some say the greatest love story ever told (??) — but I don’t think that’s what’s here. Cathy (Robbie) and Heathcliff (Elordi) are bound together in friendship and trauma, abused mutually by Cathy’s father. Heathcliff vows to always protect her and then fucks off for like 5 years as soon as he overhears Cathy being kind of mean in the other room.1 Once Jacob Elordi comes back to their shitty hometown with technically better hair and a fuckass hoop earring (reader, this author was triggered, I was surprised he didn’t also have two of his fingernails painted), their love affair begins, despite Cathy now being married to Edgar Linton, who seems nice I guess. And what should be a torrid and sexy love affair just isn’t. Some tongue kisses in the back of a carriage and a room lined with skin does not a titillating experience make. It turns out watching two of the most beautiful people on earth have sex with each other isn’t that riveting. Like, duh. It’s what y’all were born to do. Where’s the drama? Where’s the grit? But it must be noted: this did not seem to be the experience of my theater at large. The room was peppered with audible gasps when the yassified Heathcliff first appeared on the foggy moor.2 Cheers when Cathy and Heathcliff finally kiss. Young women leaned forward in their AMC signature rockers to be that many inches closer to Elordi’s glistening abs. It was working for people. And that’s fine. Gen Z wasn’t there for the library scene in Atonement (2007). They were glimmers in the eyes of their parents when Cruel Intentions (1999) shocked audiences. They don’t know ball. And it’s not their fault.

Amid this rising fever of adultery, we see flashes of — if can you believe it — character! This is where I was stopped up again by my decision to not read the book ahead of the movie. There were times I could see through the sheen of audacious set decor and costuming and recognize a compelling dynamic between our characters. But those were very quickly dropped. Around the end of act two, Heathcliff marries the naive Isabella as an act of revenge on Cathy for ending their affair. Cathy and Heathcliff are both cruel to Isabella, using her as a pawn in their toxic game. Fennell lingers ever-so-briefly on a very compelling and truly fucked up side of Heathcliff: Isabella wonders aloud if he’s not even a human but some kind of monster, and insinuates that he has been sexually abusing her. But before we can even process that, the movie quickly buys it back; that was a lie and Isabella is in on it, as they both want Cathy’s attention and try to coax her back with these allegations. We’re being told “yes, he’s fucked up, but not that fucked up. And Isabella likes it, kinda? See how she’s chained by the neck to the fireplace and barking like a dog? It’s because she likes it, for some reason. Now don’t think about that too much because in twenty minutes we’re gonna need you to be really really sad for this maniac Heathcliff.”

Yes, what was indeed more shocking was when the gasps at my screening gave way to a chorus sniffles and sobs in act three. When Catherine loses her baby in the womb and wallows in bed over the absence of Heathcliff, she eventually goes into septic shock and dies. We watch as Heathcliff races to Cathy on horseback, bellowing her name in the wind, but by the time he arrives it is too late. We see flashes of their past (remember, they’ve known each other since they were kids! So!) to amp up the emotion— they were once young and now they are 50% dead — and the movie abruptly ends on Heathcliff tenderly cradling Cathy in bed. Beyond having cursory knowledge that there’s an entire second half of the book after this event, I was amazed by the gut punch this seemed to deliver to over half the audience. Did we just watch the same hollow, confused movie? Where is this emotion springing from?

As I rode the escalator back to my car in the Americana parking lot, I thought, as I so often do, of A Walk To Remember (2002). Specifically how I sat in my best friend Hayley’s finished basement when I was 15 and sobbed for what felt like three hours after we finished watching it. I remember shouting up towards the heavens: “he just loved her so much!” I think there’s some of this going on with audiences and Wuthering Heights. Maybe Heathcliff is their Shane West. Maybe they just realized for the first time, as I did on that Massachusetts summer sleepover night, that people can die and sometimes they do quite young and unfairly. I don’t think A Walk To Remember was the film of the century, but I think I as the viewer did a sufficient job filling in the blanks, imagining the feeling of loss that extended into each of the characters’ lives. Mandy Moore’s sad little preacher dad not letting himself go into her bedroom, leaving it just as it was for years after her death. Shane West packing up and going to college and passing the graveyard where they shared chaste Christian kisses. I couldn’t bear it. I was torturing myself with this newly discovered feeling of despair and grief. I have to imagine that’s what some viewers of Wuthering Heights are doing — and good for them! But I simply don’t have the patience anymore. If you want me to feel sad about your young lovers’ untimely demise, show me why I should care!

When I got home, I looked a bit into what the book portrays that the movie didn’t touch upon. Surprise! It’s a lot. Things I couldn’t believe Fennell opted out of including in her adaptation. Like, for instance, that whole thing where Heathcliff has a guy dig up Catherine’s grave 18 years after her death so he can see her face again?? And then demands they alter her coffin so it’s open on one side so when Heathcliff is buried their bodies can intermingle for eternity???? You’re telling me the director of Saltburn (2023)… the woman who penned a scene from her twisted mind in which a man fucks his dead friend’s fresh grave… decided to just leave that out? What the hell is going on here? There was a massive opportunity to tell a dark and haunting and deeply sad story about lost love here that I think Emerald Fennell has the potential to excel at. And she decided to do some kind of Bridgerton spinoff instead.

It seems as though Emerald Fennell stripped the story of Wuthering Heights — which covers themes of class, race, grief, abuse, entitlement, possession, and yes, love — for parts, and not the good parts. If you want to make a movie about a toxic love affair, just do that. Not even I, an illiterate and simple bitch, could be tricked into believing this was the substance of Wuthering Heights the novel. I left the theater feeling short-changed by an ultimately hollow story and all the more motivated to actually read the book. And if Heathcliff really does come back to the moors with a performative fuckboy earring in it I’ll take back everything I said.

Something I watched: Terrace House

Sometimes, when the nervous system is really rocking out, being all it can be, “living out loud” as it were, I have to resort to some old standbys to calm myself down. One of these things is the Japanese reality show “Terrace House” (which streams on Netflix). Terrace House is not a reality show in the way you may know them. No drunken fist fights, no flipping tables, no t-shirt time. The show centers around 6 roommates in their early twenties sharing a house. They have their own careers— often model/actors, but also, refreshingly, construction workers, hair stylists, pharmacists, and architects. Their socialization mostly consists of cooking meals together, hanging out at the house, and getting the occasional meal out. It is a salve for the chaos of most reality tv: the kids are overall respectful, driven, and level-headed. Its second season, Boys & Girls In The City, includes my favorite “drama” of the whole series which I returned to this week: the meat incident.

It all started when cast member Uchi was gifted a piece of A5 Wagyu meat by a client at work. He brought it home and put it in the fridge, then 3 of the roommates (including Uchi’s new girlfriend Minori) cooked it and ate it all when Uchi wasn’t home— leaving him nothing but the empty box on the counter. The next day, Uchi finds his meat is missing and our guy is inconsolable. This is an issue that spans the next two episodes as Uchi tries to explain the level of betrayal he’s experiencing and the roommates apologize multiple times, as they should, in my opinion. Uchi was given this piece of meat (that he tells the roommates even came with instructions on how to cook it! ) by a client as a sign of respect and appreciation, from way out of town, as a symbol of gratitude for his hard work. This is no regular meat. Nevermind the fact that it was probably around $200. He told Minori this, and she goes ahead and eats it without him, even commenting on it being too fatty for her while she eats it with other housemates Arman and Hikaru. Understandably, Uchi absconds to his bed for days, crying on and off, which is extremely real. This is the type of drama I want to see on my television. This is relatable. This is true conflict.

Somewhere I shopped: Kitty O’Shea’s

Have my LA folks been to Kitty O’Shea’s in Eagle Rock? If not, you probably should. They’ve been in danger of closing for many months now, and your business really counts. This is a Irish/UK imports grocer close to me that has all of my what I’ll call “innit necessities”: Heinz beans, crumpets, weetabix, hobnobs, English teas, and silly little candies. Plus, there’s a fluffy dog who sleeps on a wee little pillow by the entrance.

Something I wore: this outfit. Idk

My whole thing these days is Subaru-chic.

Something I made: A shirt

It’s true! I made a shirt. Is it a good shirt? Not really. Am I going to wear this shirt? No. But it exists, and that’s something. I joined a little sewing circle at my friend Marian’s house last weekend and learned from my elders (by that I mean they’re probably my age or younger but have been sewing longer than I have) and somehow cobbled together an actual garment. I left Marian’s house feeling that unreplicable buzz that comes from starting a new hobby. I can see a new path laid before me, paved with all sorts of fabric to be made into quilts and aprons and trousers and who knows what else. My new life has begun.

Something I decorated: My garage

I decided to adorn the walls in my garage with all the “leftovers” of art I can’t find room for in my new house. I’ve downsized to about half the wall space I used to have but obviously still need to display everything I own. There’s more still to come, but here’s a taste of my garage, which is starting to feel like a Ruby Tuesday or a TGI Friday or an equally quirk-laden chain restaurant. Side note: I brought my peloton with me from the old house, except it seems the power cord got lost in the move, so now it’s something like a statue in memoriam of the Old Me who once cycled for 100 days in a row in the deep of a worldwide pandemic. Like one of those bronzed fisherman memorials for all the sailors lost at sea, my peloton stands bravely and welcomes your somber visitations.

Something I bought: Crossword puzzle book

I’m on my third or fourth week off instagram and twitter? And, if I may, I think I’m handling it remarkably well. Turns out I don’t need to know everything that’s happening globally at every second of every day. I can just check the news once a day. Turns out I don’t have to have weird feelings about things my peers are doing and constantly turning it back on myself and wondering if I’m good enough to be alive. That goes away when you’re not constantly exposing yourself to it! Anyhow— I still need things to fill the hours of phone time so I don’t reach for it impulsively. One of those things has become crossword puzzles. I bought the New York Times Tuesday puzzles book, which are supposed to be the easiest ones and are still challenging, so I’m simultaneously exercising my brain and being firmly humbled. My boyfriend and I have taken to sitting in my garage with the door open in the mornings with our coffee and looking at dogs and attacking a crossword together. We’re prioritizing wholesome this year. Big recommend.

Something else I bought: Birkenstock suede Mary Janes

They haven’t arrived yet but I had to include it because I don’t think I’ve anticipated a purchase like this in years. I LOVE how these look. I am planning outfits mentally. I really really really hope they’re everything I want them to be. Birkenstock rarely lets me down so I have every reason to hope.

Something I read: Rooting Interest

New romance novel alert!!! My dear friend Catie Disabato has released her third novel, Rooting Interest. I’m in the middle of it now and loving it. It follows a sports journalist covering the WNBA for the first time and what happens when she meets the league’s star player. I’ll give you a hint: sexy stuff! Catie knows character, which is the most important component to building a compelling romance. She somehow writes witticisms in this book that I’m not only not rolling my eyes at, but enjoying! A feat. My BIGGEST recommend.

Something I got in the mail: cookies from my Mommy

My sweet and perfect Mom sent me some cookies for Valentines day in the mail. Crumbl found dead in a ditch. It is maybe my most treasured blessing in my life that I have a mom who dreams up these gorgeous things and takes the time to mail them across the country to me. I’m just a little kid and I need my mom’s treats!!!

Somewhere I cried: Pilates class

In the interest of Keeping It Real, let’s talk about my recent foray into the world of Pilates. I’ve been going for 3 months-ish now and honestly loving it. It’s accessible enough for novices, doesn’t require any particular skill, and you see improvements quickly. That said, sometimes you eat shit in a class and it’s a lot. I took a level 1 class this week that was nothing of the sort. It was less a level 1 and more a level 7 of Dante’s playworld. I couldn’t even accomplish the starting position of many of the exercises we were asked to do, much less begin moving in order to accomplish them. To make matters worse, I felt I was surrounded by an alien species of fitness influencers who moved gracefully through every task while I pathetically clung to my box doing child’s pose until the nightmare was over. It was, dear reader, simply one of those days. My legs quaked violently as I walked back to my car. Most of the time I don’t mind being the Beginner in the crowd, or the heaviest person in the class, or the worst dressed. But this night, it just got to me. My quads and my eyes cried for a while in the car as I wondered whether I should “just lose 50 pounds” before I try something like that again. But after my little meltdown, I realized that’s always inevitably going to be part of it. It’s important to reach the limit of your abilities and then keep going anyway. I will return! I will get stronger! And that’s so cool!

Somewhere else I cried: on the couch playing Animal Crossing

Enter: an additional practice for keeping off my phone— a different small screen! I’ve dived head first back into Animal Crossing, I’m sorry, whatever. I find myself telling friends and loved ones: hang on a sec I have to check on my island. And I do have to check on my island. It’s become very important to me. Anyway I cried the other night when I noticed the sky was streaked with northern lights and took a second to look at them. Leeeeave me the fuck alone.

Somewhere I went: The Madonna Inn

In January I took a quick one-night girls trip to The Madonna Inn, bookended by harrowing solo drives along the coast in historic-seeming heavy rainstorms. We had dinner in the steakhouse and watched the old timers dance to Benny Goodman. I ate a baked potato wrapped in gold, drank a “Pink Cloud” and later a man in his eighties asked if I wanted to dance (still got it). I bought a carpet bag that I really shouldn’t have but not a glass goblet because I already have a bunch and then played cards with the girls in our Danish-inspired room. Damn, it feels good to get out of town with the girlies!

A quick hello if you made it here to everyone who’s joined me this week from twitter! I think we’re gonna have a much nicer time over here. See you next time, gang! I love you very much!

@state0fgracieDisney just dropped an insane amount of new merch for 2026 and here’s a look at what’s here at the World of Disney! @Disney Store #worldofdisney #disneysprings #disneyshopping #disneyparks #disneymerch

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

My preoccupation with Disney folks began in the pandemic. I’ve talked about this before, but the abbreviated version is: Disney World reopened a couple of months into the pandemic in summer 2020 and I found myself equally repulsed and fascinated by the types of people that weren’t just leaving their homes during this astoundingly dogshit moment in world history, but were doing so to go to Disney World. Anthropologically, it is layered. People want an escape from the dread! Hey man, I get that. Should the Disney corporation capitalize on that and reopen their parks way too soon into a global health crisis in the name of Togetherness? Maaaybe not?

I should pause here as I’d be remiss not to mention that I currently happen to work on a tv show produced by said Disney corporation and I am, in fact, writing this Substack post on a laptop leased to me by Disney Television Animation. So, if this post suddenly stops mid-sentence, it’s safe to assume they Got Me. Now I’m picturing myself at my kitchen table writing this entry and suddenly noticing a Mickey-shaped laser beam lighting up on my chest… 50 yards away, Goofy is perched on the roof of an apartment building with a sniper rifle. “Hyuck,” he whispers softly as a single tear rolls down his face. He pulls the trigger. War is hell. And the Mouse is our commander.

Anyway. My interest in the Disney folk has continued to this day, and on TikTok I get fed a lot of Disney influencers whose job it is to show you all the new entertainment, food and merch the Disney parks have to offer. This is what has lead to the feeling that my brain matter is leaking steadily out of my ears. My Disneyland branded Minnie Mouse character ears, of course. At this point, I think Disney is just kind of fuckin’ around and having fun seeing how much of their merch people will actually buy. Let’s get into it.

The Disney brand knows what it’s working with, and one of those things is a sense of belonging for the millions of people that flock to their doors every year. “You wouldn’t get it unless you’re a Disney person” type stuff. A t-shirt that signals to others you’re one of the family because it references an idiosyncrasy of the park experience, like a joke often repeated on the Jungle Cruise ride. Or Dole Whips.

Or a $100 backpack that says “beignet all day” or a Little Mermaid themed water bottle holder for $70 or a sequined Disney princess football jersey that inexplicably says “TANGLED” where the name goes instead of the name of the princess that movie’s about, Rapunzel.

@themagicalmillennial_Even MORE customizations and “build your own” goodies at Disneyland ✨😁 #disneyparks #disneyland #newmerch #foryou #disneyfyp

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

And look, I don’t mean to yuck anyone’s yum. My yuck boot is resting squarely on the neck of the Disney corporation, because I believe they’re going a little far in capitalizing on your nostalgia and your credit card limit and the rapidly waning will to live we’ve all been experiencing over the last few years. “Fuck it, we’re all gonna die, why not die at the fabulous Disneyland Park & Resort?” Which brings me back to: it’s all about exclusivity. Disney aims to provide an experience that can’t be recreated anywhere else, which is all well and good until it hinges on you coughing up all of your cold hard cash. The most recent egregious example of this Exclusive Park Experience I’ve seen is the “Key to Disneyland” introduced for the park’s 70th anniversary.

What you are seeing here is a big plastic key that costs $60 and has a singular (EXCLUSIVE!!) enamel pin inside, and the only way to get your pin is to hit various activation points around the park. You stick your big plastic key into a slot which makes noise and sometimes emits some festive bubbles and when you’ve collected all of them, a tiny door on the key opens and you get your pin, one of six possible designs. So, naturally, you then see people on TikTok buying up to ten of these keys so they could get the entire set of pins. Disney successfully scammed these folks into paying $60 for a pin that costs maybe $1 to manufacture!! Make no mistake, you are paying $60 for one pin and a job, honey!

Which leads me to my next gripe and the impetus for this post. Disney blind boxes. The days of seeing something you want and buying it are over. Now you have to buy one of 6 things and hope it’s the thing you want— and if it’s not, you go back and keep buying it until you get the one you want. I imagine whoever dreamt up this concept is going to be receiving sexual favors from the CEO class for the rest of their life. You could say that all of consumerism has lead to this. Dopamine mixed with feigned exclusivity mixed with nostalgia— the Disney folks are coooooked, mega cooked. The mystery pin sets (sometimes as many as 16 in a set) are particularly wild to me. I’m convinced there’s just a guy in an office somewhere on a hero dose of mushrooms rattling off concepts for pin sets. There are such examples as:

What if the Disney princesses were Dole Whips?

One of these pins costs $16, by the way.

How about a pin that’s a hat that’s also a Disney character?

Fuck it. Winnie the Pooh trucker hat. Stay with me here. What if Two Macarons on Top of Each Other with a Bow On Top? And they were also Disney princesses?

Now we’re talkin. Disney characters riding Disneyland attractions? Disney characters as reusable water jugs? Disney characters except they’re like, babies, and also they’re anthropomorphic food that can be found in the Disney parks? YES! YES! YES! PRINT! SELL!

@soulful.sarahtoninWasn’t even planning on collecting this set but we only need 2 more! Let’s go!👏🏻😉🙌🏻🎉✨ #disneypins #disneypintrading #disneymerch #disneytiktok #disneyfyp @Disney Parks

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

But it doesn’t just stop with pins. Oh, no. Have you ever wanted to buy multiple $15 blind boxes just so you could get a miniature figurine of your favorite Disneyland trash can? Okay perfect because they made that for you, you little freak.

Why would someone want this? Shut the fuck up. I guess you’re not a real Disney fan. If you were you would know the trash cans are literally everything. I’ll use this every day. There’s no limit to the uses. You’d also know that if you were a real Disney head. You’re actually pathetic.

Let’s rapid fire some more weird shit. Why not.

How about a tiny $25 backpack that you can attach to your regular backpack in case your backpack needs a backpack? Well it’s sold out so you’re shit out of luck.

You know those bracelets all the Swifties were giving to each other for free at her Eras tour concerts that cost like, negative money to make? Wouldn’t you rather pay $30 for one that says Disney Girl???

Or a miniature version of a gondola car except there’s a fake plastic succulent in there having (presumably) the time of its life? That’ll be twenty five big ones if you please!

Hurry! Do NOT delay in purchasing this Limited Edition image of Bunsen and Beaker that’s made to look like distressed wood but is actually a mass-produced canvas print for $150!!!!

Go into debt for the things that make you happy, that’s what I always say. And if a $56 reusable mug that has pictures of succulents riding popular Disney attractions makes you happy, I can’t stop you. Like I literally can’t I think this company is too big to fail at this point.

@naynay3655#disneyland

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

In conclusion, all hail the Mouse and don’t fire me please.

xo Caitie

I’ll start by acknowledging a sentiment I’ve seen bouncing around this part of the internet: that January 1, for all intents and purposes, is not the beginning of the year and we are under no obligation to view it as such. January is actually a time for cooking soup and hibernating and reading books and quietly surviving the winter. Many have decided that March is the true start to the year. Listen, I love this, but it just doesn’t work on me. January is unfortunately the start to the new year and I must abide by it and change my entire life. I live in Los Angeles— there is no cold winter to wait out. It’s 80 degrees out right now. And everyone is jogging. I am someone who gets off on those clean-sounding dates. Those numerical fresh starts.

January 1st this year was a Thursday. Woof. One of the weirdest days we’ve got. Nevertheless, I was swooped up by the promise of a new start, as I am every year, and felt at least a little more determined to solve my own problems and live a fuller, more beautiful life on that Thursday.

But that didn’t happen! Get a grip. I’m not suddenly the perfect woman, the perfect daughter, or the perfect girlfriend. I wanted to start running again this year and haven’t been on or even looked at my treadmill since September. I want to write 3 feature films this year and haven’t opened a single Final Draft yet. Despite wanting to save money this year, my wandring eye still caught on a bunch of things I simply don’t need. You know what? Let’s look at some of them now, because I didn’t buy them but I want to.

This Lulu Guinness carpet bag:

This robe from IKEA:

This vintage porcelain change purse:

This mug (which I will be back for because we support small artists and they are absolutely stunning):

This vintage Laura Ashley dress:

You get the idea. Buying things unfortunately inspires happy feelings much of the time and is the quickest way to fulfill this desire to reinvent one’s life, ie. I’m this way now, but imagine how much more elegant, generous, joyful, or disciplined I’d be in the 1995 floral Laura Ashley sundress? You see what I mean?

Something I realized in the many times since I’ve tried and failed to Become New is that you’ve got to make decisions that have a lasting impact. You have to rip yourself off your laurels sometimes and figure out what’s actually going to affect change. So here’s what I have done since the new year started. I canceled my subscriptions to the following services: Instacart, Postmates, Spotify, Nuuly, and Amazon. 2026 is shaping up to be my year of finally banishing the Scourge of Convenience I’ve been wrapped up in since the pandemic years. Time to walk the walk. I must stop giving my money to heartless billionaires who don’t compensate or treat their employees fairly, don’t pay their artists, and depend on all of us deciding we need that thing delivered in 24 hours instead of going to a fucking store owned by a fucking human and engaging in a fucking morally permissible transaction. I’m embarrassed it took me this long to crawl out from under the boulder of perceived “practicality” and have a spine but, better late than never I suppose. I’ll buy my books on Thriftbooks. I’ll listen to my music on Tidal. I’ll commit to thrifting clothes or only getting them from clothing exchanges. I’ll go to the god damn grocery store. I’ll cook my meals at home. I’ll occassionally dine in at local restaurants.

Two services I haven’t canceled in the new year? ClassPass and LA Times print edition. I have decided that taking care of my body and being informed about the world around me are still important things. I’ll take my trophy now. Or after Pilates. Whenever.

Since cleaning house on the subscriptions that were adding up to be hundreds of dollars a month, I’ve become high on the possibility of saving money elsewhere. I moved to a new house last month, and I’m now spending almost $1,000 a month less on rent, which feels amazing. I sold a ton of my furniture, clothes, and home decor. And I had the opportunity to audit all of my utilities and see where I can scrimp and save. Did you know if you just call your internet companies and tell them you’re going to switch providers and you need to pay less, they can usually do it? There is no universal cost of The Internet. They will charge you whatever they can get away with. Pick up the phone and level with these people.

Small, incremental changes. Planting some flowers in your yard. Walking instead of driving. Sourcing joy from saving rather than spending. These things are not going to give me the “I’m different!” boost I was searching for on January 1st, but I have a feeling when I get to like— April? When the wildflowers I planted start to bloom? I’ll realize what has changed. Eww, poetic! But true: we need to give ourselves time to become! Maybe that’s what these people mean when they say the new year doesn’t start in January, even though it does. What they mean is you won’t see the fruits of your efforts for a long time, and you can’t burn yourself out too quickly. If you’re like me, you need to give yourself a break for not being different yet. As they say, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. And no, I won’t actually be running a marathon this year or even a sprint let’s be serious.

Writing has been challenging if not impossible for me for the last few months. I have no new ideas and no motivation. I feel I’m busy trying to stay alive. There’s a time in your life when you feel you have so much to say there aren’t enough hours on earth to express it all, then there’s a time when you’re sitting here saying “No one, not even me, gives a fuck what I have to say.” I’ve been splashing around in the latter phase for a while now. Not even in a “woe is me, no one cares what I have to say” kind of way, but more of an acknowledgement that other voices are more equipped to speak to the current moment than I am. I can dive far too deep into this well and come out with the conclusion that I should actually never speak out loud or express an opinion again. Just take myself out of the equation entirely. While absconding to the wilderness to become some sort of mute forest sprite is tempting, this is wrong, I think.

What’s important for me (and all of you who are trying to express yourself and your thoughts and your humanity in some form of art) to remember is that by existing, you have something valuable and relatable and interesting to say. You just have to figure out what it is. This is the real work of being a writer. I have to sit with myself and decide: what can I write in a way that no one else can?

This takes digging into your life experience and pulling out the unique experiences. These are often painful, humiliating, and difficult to look at. That’s perfect. Start there. Example: I was a very late in life virgin. Oop! It’s true. It was an extremely fraught aspect of my life that haunted me for years. It felt like the Main Thing about me and also something I had to keep a secret. I’d see myself out of rooms where sex became the topic. I shied away from the dating world because I couldn’t imagine trying to explain how this horrible, twisted fate (literally just not having had sex before) befell me, and could any man ever possibly see beyond it and accept me for the broken freak I was. It came before any other trait I’d identify myself by; first and foremost, she’s an Adult Virgin. A few years ago, I couldn’t even fathom writing that sentence, “I’m a virgin,” down anywhere, even in a journal, for fear the words would lift off the page and magically be broadcasted to the entire world. But as my writing career burgeoned, and as I got older and started becoming more comfortable with myself, I came to see it as the thing that made me unique. I realized I had to write about it. No one could write the Adult Virgin movie script like I could, and so I did. And now it exists. (note to film producers tuning in: do you want to make it? cool, right? insightful and funny?)

This kind of expression— putting the scariest parts of yourself on paper and deciding they deserve to exist there— is exactly the stuff we need to keep doing, especially amid the soul-battering times we find ourselves in. Yes, we must speak loudly and boldly about the injustices we see, but I think we must simultaneously always keep this tether to the simplicity of our humanity— those are the things that bind us together. I think of that part in Little Women where Jo isn’t sold on diverging from her usual action-adventure stories to writing about her life with her sisters.

Jo: Who would be interested in a story of domestic struggles and joys? It doesn't have any real importance.

Amy: Maybe we don't see those things as important because people don't write about them.

Jo: No, writing doesn’t confer importance, it reflects it.

Amy: I don’t think so. Writing them will make them more important.

She’s right and she should say that! When everything feels so insurmountable— climate change ravages the planet, fascism reigns, AI drinks all our water, et cetera et ceteras ad nauseum— is it actually very powerful to make art about our own corners of the world, our own experience of life to put your stake in the ground and say this is important too? To remind ourselves that we won’t be swept away entirely by the whims of these fucking lunatics in charge, and actually the most important thing in the world is watching the yellow finches muching on the rosemary bushes outside my window?

What I’m saying is— if you’re struggling like I am to figure out where and how you exist in this rapidly changing world we were born into (without consenting to it btw), come home to yourself. What has made you feel laid bare, raw, just coursing with the experience of being alive? Write that. Who cares if it’s about the time you were twelve and had a seizure while altar serving in front of an entire Sunday mass and the priest just kept going blessing the bread and the wine while you flopped around on the altar and a lot of people thought you were filled by the light of Christ or whatever but actually you were just hypoglycemic and hadn’t eaten breakfast that day? Just an example that definitely hasn’t happened to me personally. Start with you. You are just as alive as everyone else. And we’d all be lucky to have you share it with us.

Love you all. Keep your spirits up and as always, FUCK ICE.

I have a good reason for not writing for 3 weeks and that’s that I’ve been moving. Easily the most hellish move of my 38 years of life in which I've moved a total of 21 times (due to divorced parents in childhood and then being generally stupid and insane in adulthood)— it was particularly harsh because I was downsizing from a house that was always too big for me that I filled with fucking stuff for years on end. My Mom reminded me on the phone yesterday that the first week I moved into that house in 2021 I was panicked, realized what a mistake I’d made, and was brainstorming on how I could get out of the lease. So naturally, I stayed for 4 years and tried to drown out the regret by Making It Nice. (Yes, the one good thing it got me was my feature in AD). I’m finally out, and it only cost me about 30% of my sanity, some broken nails, some severe blows to my temper and a troubling new lower back problem.

And now, all of a sudden, it’s 2026. I’m definitely the reflective type. I spend a nonzero amount of time at the end of every December taking stock of my year, making plans for the next one, writing big bold declarations in a notebook that will not see the light of day again for 11.75 months. The plans have been rolling around in my head for weeks. I’m going to learn to sew, I’m going to have 300 sales in my Etsy store (oh, what Etsy store? This one of course), I’m going to start running again, I’m going to do my morning pages every day, blah blahblah blahhhh. Who caaaares.

Honestly, who has the energy for new years resolutions anymore? I think we’re starting to see a sharp decline in adherence to the life-optimization, grindset-mindset podcast industrial complex. Life is getting harder and harder and no amount of bootstrapping is going to fix the cruelty and brokenness of the American government and the billionaires who own it. What if I simply decided that it is accomplishment enough to be able to pay my rent and put food on my table and love and be loved? The industry I work in is rapidly transforming, some (or all) might even say shrinking!! To a shriveled little prune! No one is working because there are no jobs. So what better time than 2026 to do what you do for the love of the game? Resolving to enjoy life in spite of it all, perhaps?

What follows is a list of “resolutions” I just came up with that prioritize joy and silliness that are attainable and fun. Put down the bullet journal and pick up an ice cream cone, for crying out loud.

• Go to the store for a single envelope. Be like Kurt Vonnegut. Be out in the world, take the long way, stop prioritizing convenience, say hi to someone you don’t know, stop into that storefront you always pass, pick a damn flower off a shrub and INHALE!

• Have a sleepover with your friends. Come on!! Everyone bring one snack and one board game. Call your crushes on the phone. Play MASH. Watch that old Are You Afraid Of The Dark episode with the boy ghost that says “I’m cold.” Remember what the possibility of being 11 years old felt like and let it guide you.

• Learn to make marmalade. Why the fuck are you asking me “why?” Just do it! Then you have marmalade. Like.. duh?

• Host a joint yard sale every couple months. Take it from me, you guys? Getting rid of your shit feels so good. It’s a high that cannot be replicated. Why not schedule the occasional dose of that bliss with your friends? That way, you don’t have to offer up a ton of stuff, you can each have your own table. Make friends with those early bird freaks and connect with your neighbors. And once you start letting things go regularly, you realize you’ve never really owned anything? Actually? And objects just kind of float in and out of your life and nothing is really ever gone. Sorry to get heady on you there but it’s true. Make your life more fluid, release the death grip on the vintage pyrex, let it make someone else happy for a while.

• Write a letter to a loved one every month. Paper and pen style, baby. Pick a new friend or family member or coworker and write them a damn letter showing them some gratitude just because it feels nice to do.

• Count how many dogs you say hi to. Keep a running count and then at the end of the year you can be like “I am friends with 147 dogs” and wow, how cool is that?

• Form an opinion. Who cares. Life is short. Get a brash bumper sticker. Give a politician the finger. Put your money where your mouth is and be a part of it.

I look forward to connecting with you all and writing more in 2026. Having just moved, I can promise a lot more content about little homey things I’m doing, decor hunting and making, arts n’ crafting, etc. It’s going to be FUN and I’m glad you’re here. Thanks for being here in 2025, a historically chill year where not much happened! Congratulations on making it through, though, really. Pat yourself on the back for that one.

Love and love and more love,

Caitie

I love this little tradition I’ve created with myself. I choose my scent based on the season— warm spices for winter, light florals for spring, you get the idea. I choose my scent based on the woman I want to be in that season of my life. And I get a nice little collection growing on the shelf. A bunch of little bottles of who I once was. Ooh! Poetic!

I have many such former fragrances that remind me of the girl I was, too. Many of them are discontinued, so I can only dream of sniffing them again and crash landing on the creaky day bed I had in 1997, staring at my many photos of Leo DiCaprio on the wall and listening to The Velvet Rope by Janet Jackson.

But I digress. As I so often do to my Leo days. Let’s talk scents.

Davidoff Cool Water for Women

Top notes are Melon, Lotus, Lemon, Pineapple, Calone, Quince, Lily and Black Currant; middle notes are Lotus, Water Lily, Lily-of-the-Valley, Jasmine, Honey, Hawthorn and Rose; base notes are Musk, Vetiver, Violet Root, Raspberry, Peach, Blackberry, Sandalwood and Vanilla.

I guess off the bat I’m sort of cheating because according to the internet, this perfume is still available to purchase at my local Walgreens. Which is exactly where it belongs. This perfume for me was the epitome of accessible luxury. It represented the kind of 26 year old I really wanted to be when I was 13. As I recall, it’s a sort of slutty scent, but self-possessed about its sluttiness. Like, I figured Samantha Jones wore Cool Water. Be hot and don’t be ashamed of it with Cool Water by Davidoff. I recall buying Cool Water and then spraying way too much on before going to a birthday party my freshman year of high school, where I spoke to zero boys and was dressed like a background extra in a J-Lo video.

I’m sure if I smelled it again my veins would instantaneously course with adolescent humiliation. Omw to Walgreens, I guess.

Dream by Gap

Top notes are Osmanthus and Tangerine; middle notes are Freesia, Orange Blossom, Osmanthus, Jasmine, Lily-of-the-Valley and Violet; base notes are Musk and Carnation.

Another adolescent favorite. Dream was light and airy and fun. Dream was a Sheryl Crow song on a summer day with the sunroof open. Dream was what I figured cool girls who went to college wore. Girls who didn’t have extra time to decide what fragrance to wear; they’d just spritz Dream a couple times as they run out of the dorm heading to class. The quintessential Dream girl is Julia Stiles in that movie Down To You which I thought was an incredibly insightful relationship drama at the time but then realized is an extremely incompetent kind-of romcom.

If I smelled Dream again, I’d be liable to re-enroll in college and major in something I actually like this time and not just Anthropology because it’s fun. Actually, no, I’d definitely major in Anthropology again. That’s what a Dream girl would do.

Diesel Green by Diesel

Top notes are Ginger and Lime; middle notes are Cinnamon, Cloves, Carnation, Jasmine, Orange Blossom, Iris and Rose; base notes are Sandalwood, Cedar, Amber, Vanilla and Musk.

I’m actually not sure if I ever smelled this perfume, but its memory still looms large in my brain. Based on the packaging and the color and the name, I always assumed it smelled something like a raccoon who got into the gas pump after hours and chugged a couple gallons of unleaded and then expired in the dumpster out back. But based on the notes, it sounds like it smells really good! So it’s beyond me why there’s a brand called Diesel to begin with, which is a gross word that conjures gross feelings, and then why they chose to make a perfume that’s toxic waste green and comes in a bottle that looks like it belongs to an exterminator. I’d like to finally set the record straight and see what it actually smells like.

Lemonade Squeeze Juice Bar by Parfum de Coeur

Top notes are literally lemon. And probably piss.

Speaking of toxic waste! Why did I own this! Not appealing in any way. As I recall, this body spray made you smell like a sourpatch kid. Like you fell into a random vat on your tour of Willy Wonka’s factory. You wore this scent while babysitting a 10-year-old when you’re only 12 yourself but you have some sense of superiority because you are a few inches taller and you’re in 8th grade now and you can use the phone to call 911 when the 10-year-old is choking. Perhaps on the fumes from this very body spray. It’s the kind of scent that attacks the senses— like a bee flew directly up your nose and had a field day in there. That’s funny, by the way. A bee having a field day. He’s like “holy shit I’m in a field, there’s so many flowers.” Is that where that term comes from? Sorry, I’m distracted because this scent was so uninteresting and pedestrian but I want to smell it again nonetheless.

Secret 55 by Victoria’s Secret

This shit is such a deep cut I can’t find the fragrance notes anywhere. It’s floral and powdery but also musky? Man I have no idea how to describe scents. It smells like the 30-whatever seconds of that burst of brain activity you have before you die, okay?

I’ve left the best for last. This is a scent that is so important to me. The first perfume I ever bought. My first foray into Womanhood. I bought a bottle of Secret 55 with my Mom in the (now bulldozed) Silver City Galleria in Taunton, Massachusetts during a girls only Christmas shopping trip. It was my favorite thing I ever smelled the moment I sniffed it. I’m cheating again, kind of, because I still have that bottle from 2000 in my home in Los Angeles now and there is truly like, *a* drop left of it. I smell the nozzle every few months or so. I intend to keep it with me until my hopefully funny and interesting demise.

I’m instantly transported by this scent. Im in the computer room playing Sims 1. I’m downloading sound clips of Ace Ventura saying “Aaaalrighty then” to the family Compaq and eating up precious RAM. I have a crush on Evan and he definitely knows it. My mom just called me down for dinner and I think we’re having Shepherd’s Pie. I am going to live forever.

Anyway does anyone have $400? My venmo is Caitie-Delaney.

Honorable Mentions:

Clinique Happy: I know they still make it, but I haven’t smelled it since my mom wore it in the early aughts. For whatever reason (the color orange) it is synonymous with Vitamin C’s 1999 hit Graduation in my mind.

Sweet Pea by Bath & Body Works: if your middle school bully didn’t bathe in this we are not the same

Curve by Liz Claiborne: THEE font choice of the early 00s. Gorgeous. For the modern woman going to her modern high end retail job and ending the evening at a modern gallery opening.

PLEASE share your favorite discontinued scents and persuade me to purchase all of these scents I just listed for hundreds of dollars so I can feel something for once in my horrible life <3

For me personally? I have a very important white elephant to prepare for, and big shoes to fill after last year when I painted a portrait of Luigi Mangione that was quite the hot ticket item.

So. To eBay we go.

You could get funny mugs for everyone you love

When did being a little goofball at the office become illegal? We need to bring back Hallmark’s Shoebox Greetings collection in a big way.

You can find a shocking number of mugs about women being fed up with men but still undeniably horny, which is an interesting personality to exude in the kitchenette at 8:30am. You’ve also got your classic “I hate my job” and “I hate my body” and “I hate my life” mugs.

Find all these and many more psychotic mugs by searching “vintage shoebox greetings mug” on eBay.

Get a Big Dogs t-shirt for the big dogs in your life

Growing up, we used to go to an outlet mall in Wrentham Massachusetts for Christmas shopping. There was a huge Big Dogs store there in the 90s, and my life revolved around getting in there and reading all the t-shirts. “They can SAY THAT?” I’d gasp, looking at some illustration of an angry Saint Bernard who hates his bitch wife and just wants a beer. I lived for the movie and tv parodies— dude, it’s like the Godfather but it says Dogfather because he’s a Dog. Where do they come up with this stuff? It’s becoming clear to me now that I was always destined to be a middling comedy writer. Thanks, Big Dogs. Now let’s look at the shirts.

This is the perfect gift for someone who loooves to be ironically faux-edgy and doesn’t mind some light misogyny now and again. “No, it’s funny because I’m wearing it” vibes. You can’t really get mad at someone with a patriotic and weirdly yoked dog-human hybrid on their shirt, can you?

Search “vintage Big Dogs shirt” on eBay NOW!

Get a cool hat for all the movie freeks

I have a lot of baseball hats, but the one I get the most feedback on hands down is my vintage denim Bull Durham hat. People will be like “I love that movie!” and, you see, the hat signals that you love the movie too, or at least have seen it. This is what we call a Conversation Starter in the biz. And I think everyone deserves the chance to represent their favorite 90s psychological thriller and keep their head warm at the same time.

My personal fashion sense revolves around the hope that people will see something I’m wearing and say to themselves: “Why does she have that?” Vintage promotional movie merchandise is one of the surefire ways to achieve this.

Search “vintage promotional movie hat” on eBay.

Pogs. Just pogs

Why not?

It’s funny. Give someone a fucking huge bag gift bag of loose pogs. Search “pog lot” on eBay.

Some weird bumper stickers for the car owner in your life

Has it become clear yet that I really treasure the off-kilter humor of yore? You could fool yourself into believing that people only became obsessed with projecting their specifically curated personas with the advent of social media, but you’re wrong. Before all that, there were bumper stickers.

I feel like being a fucking asshole used to be so much more celebrated. When did we lose pride in being beaten down by life? When did we stop connecting over what a fucking slog life is via bumper art? When’s the last time I told a perfect stranger that I’m committing tax fraud and I desperately want to cheat on my wife?

Search “vintage funny bumper sticker” on eBay.

For the Dunkin-head who you love and respect despite that

One of my most treasured collections is my Dunkin stuff. I have lots of vintage Dunkin’ Donuts mugs (some of which are definitely covered in lead paint), travel cups, Dunkin running shoes. I’m from Massachusetts, leave me alone. Do you know anyone from Massachusetts? Do they miss it? Weird, but, get them something like this.

It’s never been more time to make the donuts. Search “vintage Dunkin Donuts” on eBay.

Did you get some ideas for gifts? No? Oh. Sorry about that. People don’t want any of this shit? Right. Okay. Well.

See ya.

Picture this. There was a snow storm two days ago— it’s still freezing, but the initial charm of the snowfall has dissipated and made way for iced-over driveways, dangerous icicles, and brown slush in the streets. Your old beater car (something like an Oldsmobile or perhaps [my dream car] a Volvo 240) takes approximately 72 minutes to warm up, which is fine since it will take you two hours to travel 4 miles anyway. The car smells of nonspecific fumes and frost. You shouldn’t have to attend something as depraved as a job in these conditions, nevertheless, you persist. Here is your playlist.

Some visuals to accompany you:

It is fingerless gloves, it is hot pizza by the slice burning the roof of your mouth, it is a styrofoam dunkin donuts cup warming your hand, it is your uncle’s vinyl collection, it is vintage c9 christmas bulbs under a blanket of snow, it is Mark Borchardt and Mike Schank driving around drinkin’ votka, it is a flat tire, it is High Fidelity (2000), it is vintage pyrex dishware, it is seeing your breath on a cold night, it is not calling back your mom because you don’t know what to even say.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

Something I Hosted: Fake Cake Making

I’ve been making fake cakes here and there for years now, and they’re one of the first things my guests point out when they come to my house. Such a fun little home accent. So I had a few gals over and hosted a seminar on my process. Basically you glue some foam cake rounds together, get a big bucket of lightweight wall spackle and color it with acrylic paint, then slap it on there. Use disposable piping bags to decorate. I also had a nice collection of fake cherries, strawberries, etc to top the cakes with. We had a blast and everyone went home with a little cake!!! And how could I fail to mention how DELICIOUS they are when you’re done? Just kidding guys do NOT eat them

Something I Baked: Levain Bakery Cookie Dupes

Now onto the actually edible. One cozy night I was reallllyyyy craving a Levain Bakery cookie. Only trouble is their storefront is all the way in Larchmont and I live… not there. Either I’d have to go over there or pay a lot of money to have some lovely postmater drive much further than they bargained for, not to mention my cookies cooling to frigid temperatures in the process. The only recourse in light of my very pressing craving was to try and make some myself. Levain cookies have a very distinct quality— mainly that they’re fucking huge, so you get a deliciously crispy outside and a dense, chewy inside. They’re like 50% chocolate chip and they’re perfect. I used this recipe and I gotta say, they came out pretty damn close. Getting to eat them warm straight out of the oven was perfect but next time I’m really going to have to ensure that I’m armed with a cold glass of milk. I ate these with water like some kind of freak.

Something I Ate: Musso & Frank French Onion Soup

Enough said. I’m not really a french onion soup connoiseur so don’t come for me if this is like a famously bad bowl of soup but after two cocktails at The Smoke House, the drive over to Musso’s and then two more cocktails, this big bowl of molten cheese had me feeling right. We had a corner booth with a perfect view of the table where Al Pacino tried to get Leo to star in Spaghetti Westerns in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, and as I sat there, heavily buzzed, slurpin’ on that sauce, I imagined we were back in time too. The room absolutely teeming with cigarette smoke, some starlet making a scene at the bar for her gimlet being made incorrectly, Truman Capote in the corner yapping on about god knows what. I guess what I’m trying to say is this soup transported me and that’s gotta mean something, damnit.

Something I Bought: This Stuff from World Market

Jeeesus Chriiiist so sue me I fell victim again to the ever-churning cogs and gears of commerce. I went into a Cost Plus World Market. And baby? Once you go in there, it’s over. Your wallet’s begging for you to turn around, get back in the car where it’s safe. It’s been all Christmas shit in there since before Halloween even happened. I went in specifically for the Bonne Maman advent calendar, which I did get, but yeah! I got some other shit too! A mug that looks like a pink Christmas tree, for one. I’m sorry to say my life is better now that I have that in my home.

Somewhere I Went: The Huntington Library Rose Garden Tea Room

Let me put you onto this if you’ve never been! I’ve been to tea at the Huntington many times and it never disappoints. Expensive? Yes— at about $70 per person you’re definitely paying for your food and an ambiance. But worth it, if you ask me. Perfect place to bring your visiting Mom or your friend on her birthday or yourself when you just need to transport yourself somewhere else for an afternoon. You get your own pot of tea and scones to start, then the three-tiered display of tiny treats: cucumber sandwiches, little tarts, curried chicken salad, bon bons, all the classics. For being such small food it is wildly filling. And when you’re done, you can stroll the enormous grounds at The Huntington. Be sure to check out the Japanese gardens and the Chinese gardens a bit further down the path, as well as the conservatory. You’ll probably recognize the grounds from some movie or movies you’ve seen, including The Wedding Planner (the scene where they knock over the statue) and Indecent Proposal (one of the museum buildings is used as the exterior to Bob Redford’s house). And I’ve saved the best for last here— THE GIFT SHOP. …People? Listen to me. This is my favorite gift shop in Los Angeles if not the earth. It’s out of control. Insanely well curated, very affordable, lots of different aesthetics. Your mouth will hurt from the number of times you say “oh that’s sooo cute” over and over. I could probably bang out my entire Christmas shopping list in this one place. It is perfection. Go to the Huntington.

Something I Did: Decorated My House for Christmas

I just think if the government is allowed to do whatever they want at the expense of the American people I should be allowed to put up my Christmas decorations whenever I want. Which is early November. Despite the wastefulness spiral I went through upon remembering that string lights are made so cheaply now that you have to just buy new ones every year because they stop working, I had a delightful time decking the halls. I made paper chains from construction paper, I put up the tree, I put up garlands, I put up my 3-building Christmas village (A VILLAGE CAN BE ANYTHING), I put up lights OUTSIDE! I’m glad I did it early because I did just find out I’m moving out of this house the week of Christmas, so I need to soak up the coziness as much as I can now. Let this be your permission slip to go nuts and decorate now if you haven’t already.

Something I Watched: Japanese Food Noodles YouTube Channel

I’ve been falling asleep to this videos the past few nights, which means my dreams are full of the soothing sounds of clanging kitchenware and enthusiastic greetings in Japanese. These videos showcase shop owners and street vendors going through their daily routines, setting up shop, prepping food and serving customers. Everything looks insanely delicious, but it’s really the wholesome pride all these people take in what they’re doing, watching their idiosyncrasies built over years and years of cooking, seeing their methods repeated again and again expertly, that’s what really hits. Food rocks!! And people working hard to provide yummy food to each other is what it’s all about, man.

Something I Made: CANDLES

I’m not sure people are understanding how truly easy it is to make candles. Find yourself any vessel that can hold liquid and you’re already 50% there. I have a penchant for buying any mug at a thrift store that I like with absolutely no discernment then I go home and I’m like that Kanye West “now I gotta be responsible for this water bottle” tweet. So making candles out of them had to happen. I buy this soy wax and just recently got into wooden wicks (jury’s still out on them) but the real fun comes in when you start messing with aromas. Get yourself a bunch of essential oils and mix and match like a mad scientist!!! You can also find recreations of famous scents, like fancy hotels that have their own fragrance. I haven’t found a Chateau Marmont dupe yet but I did find a $10 bottle of oil that is a near exact match for Le Labo’s Santal 33, a famously pricey perfume. Now my house smells like I’m wealthy but in a tasteful way, a Mackenzie Scott “I give it all to charity” way.

Something I Printed: Baby Snoopy Tiny Card

Still obsessed with linocut printmaking. My recent stuff is up for sale on my Etsy here. If people are into the tiny greeting cards, I’ll put those up for sale soon!

See y’all next month!!!!! Be good!!!!

xo Caitie

They don’t make my favorite cereal anymore. I’ve checked. Then I’ve checked again. There are movements online petitioning for its return but they’ve been fruitless (and krispless). And the longer I go without my cereal, the more I convince myself my life will never be as good as it was when I had it. I don’t care what cereals are available now— there was a glorious era of cereal innovation and we let it fall away, like 90s erotic thrillers or democracy. There is a hole that will never be filled.

It doesn’t stop at cereals. There’s a seemingly endless collection of foods that follow me through my life, prodding at my sanity. Dunkaroos. Shark Bites. Altoid Sours. Doritos 3D. Pizza Lunchables. Butterfinger BBs. Buncha Crunch. Philadelphia Snack Bars??? Hershey Swoops?!? Even the foods that aren’t discontinued don’t feel the same without their nostalgic packaging. I yearn for an experience that’s impossible to recreate. I can’t be 10 years old sitting on the stoop outside the convenience store near my house eating Chocolate Ice Cubes.

I’m reminded of Proust’s Madeleine— the famous excerpt from his novel In Search of Lost Time that describes the moment he dipped a petit madeleine into a cup of tea and experienced an instantaneous rush of memories.

I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate, a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory--this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs.

This fool ate a soggy bite of cookie and became immortal for a second. But I get it! I basically feel the same thing when I eat a s’mores flavor Pop Tart.

And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.

another of my personal Proust Madeleines: Les Anis de Flavigny violet mints. My Nana used to carry these around in her purse and would often share them with me. They have a perfumey taste at first that fades into sugary goodness, then in the center is a tiny anise seed. I thought of them a couple years ago after she passed and I was immediately jettisoned to the back of her Lincoln Towncar listening to the classical music station on the radio on the way to Sunday mass.

Food has got to be the quickest way to a feeling. It’s no wonder I focus on it creatively. Look at all my shit!

I mention all this really as a plea to the Kellogg’s gods… please bring back Rice Krispies Treats Cereal. I’m begging you. I promise I am personally good for 1 box a week, sugar intake be damned. I need to sit on the couch with a bowl of your beautiful cereal and watch Hey Arnold for 5 hours and dread going to softball practice. If I can never feel this again I’m not sure what my purpose on earth is. There’s plenty to be said for “trying new things” and “moving forward in one’s life” but for my money? I’m trying to go back. Back when things were nice and cozy and my brain wasn’t fully cooked yet. I guess what I really want is to lobotomize myself via discontinued cereal. I want to eat enough nostalgic foods that are such a potent anti-anxiety medication for me that I look like the stoned girl melting into the couch from that Truth commercial from the 2000s.

Anyway what are your Proust Madeleines????? What other foods have I forgotten about? What can I do a painting or linocut print of next????