You'll Think of Something

Sharp Pincers and Snap-on Hair

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 16:40:33 GMT

I am alone in my family in the relief that summer is waning. Today is a gross rainy day, just the way I like it. This weather, though, is torture for Bailey, who just spied a truck, but when running for the doggie door, realized it was raining. Truck! Rain! What’s a girl to do?

Don’t worry. She figured it out. And is now barking—loudly—from the front room.

Anyway…

You’ll think of something…

about shellfish

My family has a very complicated history with shellfish. Pork and shellfish are the bedrocks of traif (nonkosher food), the one Jewish law that pretty much everyone knows about. Which makes it particularly ironic that for a couple of years, the Husband and I had a standing date on Wednesday nights. I dropped the kids off at their evening Hebrew school at our Conservative synagogue, then met the Husband at Summer Shack for lobsters and martinis. I figured their time at synagogue made up for our blatant rejection of kashrut.

My grandmother never let pork nor shellfish into her house. She was raised keeping kosher and in fact, her sister (my great-aunt) had married into a very prominent Orthodox Jewish family in Memphis. My grandmother was forever trying to play down her own lapse of religious fervor. She was extremely active in her reform synagogue, but to someone who is Orthodox, reform might as well be Christian.

I remember visiting this aunt and her family with my grandparents some time in the ‘70s.1 It was a Friday afternoon. My aunt insisted we stay for Shabbat, which my grandmother didn’t want to do. I wanted to stay. I was meeting new cousins who were fun. But had we stayed for dinner, we would have had to stay until Shabbat ended the next day at sundown,2 because you couldn’t drive (or do many other things) on Shabbat.

My grandmother leaned down and whispered in my ear, “If you keep your mouth shut and say you don’t want to stay, we’ll get Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner.”

Friends, I will happily sell anyone out for Kentucky Fried Chicken.3 Who needs cousins when you can have an extra crispy drumstick. We did not stay for Shabbat.

I don’t think I ever saw my grandmother eating pork, although many non-Orthodox but generally kosher-keeping Jews don’t view the pork in Chinese food as traif. But shellfish? Folks, we lived in South Florida. You didn’t live in South Florida without eating stone crabs. I wrote an essay, “The Life and Death (and Life) of Miami Beach,” for an anthology called “In Season: Stories of Discovery, Loss, Home, and Places in Between” edited by Jim Ross, in which I discuss Miami Beach’s famed stone crab eatery.

…I loved going to Joe’s Stone Crabs—according to my father, who I admit has been wrong on occasion, Joe’s owns all the crabbing boats so its stone crabs are the best, succulent and juicy. My family only went to Joe’s when my grandparents would take us. Joe’s has never taken reservations, and the wait for a table could last up to three hours. All the waiters were older men who walked stiffly, carrying trays laden with the chilled orange legs of stone crabs. When we went, we followed a precise routine, as unvaried as “Who’s on First.” My grandfather would go up to the maitre d’ and slip him an undisclosed amount of money. I’d peer but my grandfather was too slick, and I could never see the money actually changing hands. My cousin and I would debate how big the bribe was. Twenty dollars? Fifty? My grandfather would return to us, giving my father a little nod and a grin. Then my grandmother would say—every time—“We’re never going to get a table. It’s going to take forever,” to which my grandfather would say, “Don’t worry. It won’t be long.” And sure enough, moments later, “Kapelow, party of six,” (and it never mattered how large a party we were—sometimes with friends and other family members we were as many as sixteen) would boom over the microphone and we’d bypass envious tourists still propped against walls, sliding onto the floor, or leaning on any piece of furniture close to them.

My grandmother very much enjoyed her stone crabs. But never at her house.

Fast forward a few decades, and I’ve given birth to Baby Boy. The bris is scheduled. I’m a wreck. Motherhood was a difficult transition for me. My family has come in for the bris. The night before, my mother declares, “There’s a lobster out there with my name on it!”

And indeed there was. My mother had lobster. And got such a bad case of food poisoning that they had to stop at Bread and Circus4 on the way back to their hotel so she could throw up in the bathroom.

My mother didn’t make Baby Boy’s bris.5 To this day, we talk about the lobster with her name on it. At her 80th birthday party last year, I bought a ton of small stuffed lobsters to place around the party room and one larger one that I embroidered her name upon and posted this sign:

Anyway, this all came to mind this week, when my friend K., knowing how passionately worked up I can get about punctuation—but not knowing my crustacean concerns—sent me this post:

A punctuation lobster🦞 My former agent used to go through my manuscripts deleting every exclamation point because the action/dialogue should convey the emotion, not the punctuation.

But she had never met the punctuation lobster🦞 What a beautiful way to add extra emphasis to a sentence. I think, from now on, the punctuation lobster will be a must in all my writing.

There may not be a lobster with my name on it out there, but somewhere there’s my name punctuated with a lobster.

Now to get the Chicago Manual of Style to include it.

Subscribe now

about passing the torch

Baby Girl—who is majorly allergic to shellfish so there is most definitely not a lobster with her name on it—this tiny little thing, this little bug, turned 21 last week.

Baby Girl at five days old

It was difficult to find a cute baby picture of her, but I do love this one. While all moms think their babies are beautiful, I’m not all moms. After she was sliced out of me—failed VBAC, and no, I’m going to explain what that is here6—I called my sister and said, “I love her with all my heart, but she’s not very pretty. Her hair looks like the smushed on hair of Fisher Price’s Little People, her eyes are red, and her cheeks are oddly wide and smushed.”

You can see the resemblance, can’t you?

I am happy to report that at 21, her face is no longer wide and smushed, her eyes are a lovely hazel, and she has hair that doesn’t look like it can snap off.

Baby Girl grew up. She’s an adult. And somehow, when I wasn’t looking, she formulated these—dare I say?— thoughts. Opinions. Knowledge. That I didn’t give her! She developed beliefs of her very own.

Wild.

We’ve always been a relatively politically active family. I’ve been taking the kids with me to vote since the days of trying to maneuver a stroller around the voting booths. Politics was a regular dinner time conversation. Once upon a time, the Husband was a Republican (I assure you, he’s been a Democrat for over decade), so the conversations weren’t just a preaching-to-the-choir type of thing. The Girl has been to way too many protests (way too many in the sense of “Why do we have to keep protesting these things?): gun violence, reproductive rights, BLM. We’ve seen Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama speak.

She’s studies politics, has been working on campaigns, and plans to continue in this field once she’s graduate.

But yesterday, there was a first. Yesterday, she was schooling me on elections. When we chatted, I admitted, “I’m so torn about who to vote for [in the Massachusetts Senatorial primary: Ed Markey vs Seth Moulton]. I mean Moulton—”

“Markey.”

“Yes, but—”

“Vote for Markey.”

“But he’s old. What if he Dianne Feinsteins us?”

“You have to trust he’ll get out when it’s time. Then Governor Healey will pick his replacement. Are you saying you don’t trust Governor Healey?”

“No, but, the artificial intelligence thing—”

“As opposed to the anti-trans thing? Voting for Trump’s defense budget?”

“Yes, but—”

“Yes, but Markey. I have to go. I have to run a campaign call.”7

Baby Girl is not only old enough to drink, she’s old enough to know her own mind. And to do something about it.

Wild.

about platelets

I don’t want to say I’m a shallow person—despite all the evidence to the contrary—but I was being lazy about making my next platelets donation. While I love the Oreos (and I’m totally hooked on Oreogate, and I don’t care if it’s real or not), I have to schedule the donation before a rest day, because you can’t exercise for 24 hours after. (Once, when I was marathon training, I went on my 20-mile run, but after 8 miles, had to give up. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with my body! Then I remembered I had donated blood the previous day. Don’t do that.)

While blood donation is fast, platelet donation takes a few hours, another barrier to finding the time for an appointment. However, I signed up in nanoseconds when I got the email that said the September platelet gift is a Hello Kitty mascot clip and sticker. If you’re looking for me next Tuesday I’ll be at the blood donation center.

While I’m here, for those three platelet-donation hours, I’m plopped in front of a TV that has Netflix. But I’m running out of reality shows. If you have suggestions for what I should watch—movies or series—drop them in the comments.

Leave a comment

So consider this your PSA to donate blood or platelets. Short supplies of both blood… and Hello Kitty clips. And I’m not shallow!!

See! I may go for the Oreos and swag, but I do go!

about a writing class

Don’t forget! There’s still time to sign up for my one-day online class: Can You Sum That Up? How to Write a Synopsis for Queries. It’s on September 19 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. ET/10 a.m. to 2 p.m. CT/8 a.m. to noon PT

about Bailey

My Husband, what big ears you have….

Until next time, make good choices🦞

jennifer

P.S. See that little heart button below? It helps a pal out—if you enjoy my newsletter—to click on it.

Note: I occasionally use affiliate links in this newsletter, which means I will earn a small commission from books you purchase through it.

Which means the basics of this story are absolutely true but I may be misremembering the exact details.

It’s actually later than sundown; Shabbat ends when three stars appear in the sky. Just to be technical about it.

I am pescatarian these days, but it is possible you could still sway me with KFC.

Although there is debate if it had changed at this point to Whole Foods, which bought Bread and Circus.

Insert joke here about Jewish woman eating traif and getting too sick to attend the welcoming of her grandchild into the traditions of Judaism.

Okay, FINE! VBAC is a vaginal birth after cesarean. Baby Boy was breech so he had to be cut out.

The girl worked on a ballot campaign over the summer and continues to work part-time now that she’s back in school.

Daily Habits

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:02:33 GMT

I’m currently in New York visiting my parents, which is always an adventure. We have the same conversations that I’m sure you all have with your parents: The ethics of going to the dentist who helped Jeffrey Epstein’s girlfriend get into Columbia dental school.1 The proper location for scattering ashes, and if you’ve said you want them scattered at Mt. Olympus because you’ve decided in your old age you only believe in the Greek Gods, is Mt. Olympus in Washington State an acceptable substitute?2 3 Whose side would I take if my parents—who have been married for 62 years—get a divorce.

Sigh. Anyway…

You’ll think of something…

about Finch

So 440 days ago—I know because every morning I’m informed of my streak—I started using the Finch app, courtesy of a friend who introduced the app to me and then not long after decided it wasn’t for her. The app calls itself your “self-care best friend.” The app is free, although you can pay for additional things that you 100% don’t need.

The idea behind the app is that, basically, it’s a gamified friendly to-do app, with a focus on things you do to take care of yourself. I track my water intake, let it remind me to meditate, tell me to get off my ass and walk. But for me it’s most useful for the things that aren’t daily; reminders to water the plants once a week, take my estrogen twice a week, and which days to exercise. It has plenty of suggestions of goals if you’d like to choose them, including easy wins, like “get out of bed.” However I mostly input my own goals because many of their goals are bullshit. Give myself a hug? When I say I don’t like hugs, I include myself in that equation. Eat my meal without my phone or TV? Is that a thing people do? Brush my hair? Not worth a trip to the drugstore to buy a brush.

In the app you get a “berb,” a Finch, who you help go on adventures by earning rainbow stones, which you can use to buy clothes, furniture, and trips for your berb. You get micropets to accompany you on those adventures. (I fear I’m doing a terrible job explaining this. Whatever. I don’t have “speak coherently” as one of my goals.)

One of the things you can do is buddy up with other folks. You can request another berb join you on a goal as a way to encourage them and yourself to get things done. I had encouraged a friend who had a hard time decluttering to buddy up so we’d both spend 15 minutes a day getting rid of shit. It worked. For a day. Then my friend somehow disappeared. (I’m looking right at you, Tuna!)

Because this isn’t a social media app, there’s no way to communicate with other berbs in-app. I have some berb friends that I don’t know if real life. I can “send vibes” to them—such as “encouragement,” “sweet dreams,” and “birdhouse love”—but there’s no way to send a message. I love this aspect of it. However, there is one time where this is problematic.

I recently I received a request to buddy up. The goal? “Wear clean clothes daily.”

Now some might see that as an easy win goal. A simple way to earn rainbow stones.

Not for me.

As you all know, the Husband does laundry. On Sundays, he’ll pick up clothing items from the closet floor and ask, “Is this for washing?” I’ll evaluate it and usually will say, “No, it’s still in play.”

Changing clothes daily is overrated. If something is comfortable on Monday, it’s comfortable on Tuesday. And Wednesday. Possibly even Thursday. I’m not working at a landfill. I don’t process fish. I’m not a house painter. I write. Inside. At a desk. In air conditioning. I’m not working up a sweat. There’s no reason not to wear my clothes multiple days.

It’s not laziness; it’s a conscious decision to help the environment by using less water.4 Yes, if clothing becomes smelly, I put it in the hamper. Or if it’s stained. Which happens frequently, although I will often eat in just my tank top to avoid this. (Me: What is this spot on my shirt?” The husband: “It’s your inability to not drop food on yourself.”) Back in the early days of my online writing group, I’d say, “If this outfit looks familiar, it’s because I was wearing it yesterday.” I don’t need to say this anymore. They expect me to have the same outfit for the week.

So, alas, I have to decline to buddy up on this goal. But I feel bad because I can’t communicate to this person why I don’t want to buddy up with them. I don’t want them to think it’s because I don’t like them5; I want them to understand it’s because I’m a slob.

Sigh. Anyway, if you want to join Finch (and get a starter micropet), I’m happy to give you a code.

But please, don’t ask me to wear clean clothes. Unless it’s a weekly goal. I think I could manage that.

about what I’m reading

Often when I finish a book, I dust myself off and pick up the next one on my TBR list. Not so with Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy. I didn’t want to start another book because I was still lingering in the world of this one.

If it hadn’t been recommended to me by, oh, a zillion people, I could have easily passed it by. I bought the book in the beginning of the year and only read it now, always finding something else that intrigued me first. I feared this book, with its main themes of climate change, would be dry.

Oh my, it was most definitely not dry. In fact, with all the rising seawater, it was sopping wet and a fascinating read.

Dominic Salt and his three children live on Shearwater, an island near Antartica that holds a vast seed vault—a storage facility for the world’s seeds to be used in case Earth needs to have it’s flora restored. Shearwater, though, is disappearing under rising sea waters, and Dominic and his children are the last ones on the island, packing up the seeds to be rescued and sent to safety. Not all can the seeds saved.

Things are thrown into upheaval when a woman, Rowan, washes up on to the island, clutching the last of her destroyed boat. There’s a thriller element to this—what are the Salts hiding; who is Rowan and why is she there—but the environmental parts of the book were the most interesting to me (although the thriller part is well done). Normally descriptions are what I tend to skim over, but not in this novel; the gorgeous descriptions allowed me to disappear into the novel.

He was born the day he first heard the song of a whale, and he has been finding ways to record them ever since. In one moment high and squeaking like the top note of a violin, in the next guttural, echoing, some space between the moan of a cow and the trumpet of an elephant. Sometimes joyous and playful, sometimes mournful and searching. Sometimes with a trill or a creak or a rumble. A question, a call, a love letter.

The novel was surprising and moving and sad and exciting. It’s going to take me a while to let this one go.

about a writing class

For you writers out there, next month I’m teaching a one-day online class through the Loft about writing synopses: Can You Sum That Up? How to Write a Synopsis. (The Loft added “for queries” but these synopses are for many purposes other than that). The basics:

Synopses are a necessary evil in the world of publishing, used for pitching at conferences, querying agents, submitting for awards and residencies, marketing your book, and more. It should be easy—you know what your book is about—but some writers find writing these summaries more difficult than writing the manuscript itself. Synopses are also useful if you’re struggling with your manuscript and need clarity on what your story is about.

In this class, we’ll delve into the four types of synopses—loglines, two-paragraph, one-page, and marketing copy. Looking at summaries from published authors, we’ll break down what works and what doesn’t. Then we’ll start crafting our own.

If you’re interested, sign up!

about Bailey & Ferris

Our buddy Ferris stayed with us again while his family went off gallivanting without him. Bailey tolerated him.

Bailey now has the house to herself again. But she’ll be upset when the Girl returns this week and tries to re-take her bed. But that’s a problem for Monday.

about being a human

Good news! Substack allowed me to check my own newsletter for AI. Turns out, I am human and I wrote this. You’re welcome.

Until next time, change your clothes and make good choices.

jennifer

P.S. See that little heart button below? It helps a pal out—if you enjoy my newsletter—to click on it.

Note: I occasionally use affiliate links in this newsletter, which means I will earn a small commission from books you purchase through it.

Not a hypothetical conversation.

God forbid you say, “When we were in Italy, we saw Mt. Etna and it was beautiful,” because then you’ll get a long lecture about the difference between the Greek and Roman gods, and a Zeusian would never be scattered in Italy, and how could I be so insensitive?

The verdict was, Yes, I can scatter them in Washington but then he’d haunt me for the rest of my life to make me aware of my misdeed.

It is 100% laziness.

Which is absolutely ridiculous because I don’t know this person. I know their animated berb avatar. And yet, I feel bad rejecting them.

Bully for You

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 13:04:13 GMT

You’ll think of something…

I’m not one to leave my house but lately I’ve been social and it kind of hurts. Since the last newsletter, I’ve had two dinners out with friends, a breakfast with the Husband at our favorite diner, twice went to my favorite cafe to write, donated platelets (again! there’s a shortage, you know), and on Sunday, I’m not only walking with two friends in the morning, but I’m going out. In the evening. To see a movie. In a theater! Crazy! We’ll see if I live to tell the tale. In the meantime, I’ll think of something…

about being a bully

While FaceTiming Baby Girl, I said, “I’m gotta start working on my newsletter.”

“Don’t forget,” she said, “you said you’d write about being a bully.”

Sigh. The girl is very invested in this topic. Sometime in elementary school, the girl announced at dinner, “We were talking about bullies today, and I said my biggest bully is my mom. But that’s okay!”

I’m surprised the teacher didn’t call CPS on me.

In my office working years, I received a big promotion. I went from being a Senior Editor, managing myself, to leapfrogging the Managing Editor and becoming the Editor-in-Chief, suddenly managing a team of five or six people, with zero experience doing so. When I told my sister, she said, “Don’t forget, there’s a difference between being bossy and being a boss.”

I think I can make the same distinction here: I’m not a bully; I’m simply bullheaded.

While, perhaps, occasionally, it may seem like I’m crossing that line,1 it’s generally more like I’m assertive. Okay, extremely assertive. Okay, very happily extremely assertive. I like standing up to folks. I’m always up for a battle.

I’ve never had a problem telling kids who weren’t my own to knock it off when they were misbehaving. I might have enjoyed reprimanding folks when they missed deadlines.2 It may have seemed like I was going to explode at my game partner when he gave dumb clues3 playing Codenames on game night. But I didn’t! I merely seethed, made the occasional obnoxious comment, and swore not-quite-under my breath.

Note: It has been decreed by the game group that I am no longer allowed to play Codenames with them.

I never pushed my kids (much) about grades. I never forced them to participate in an activity, although if they asked to do said activity, and I shelled out money for them to participate, then I did push—we had a few VERY ugly months when the Girl decided she wanted to play bass, but didn’t want to practice. (Before she started: Are you sure you want to play an instrument twice your size? Yes! Are you sure you’ll be able to carry it yourself? Yes! You know you’ll have to learn to play “Treme Song.” for me. Okay! Amazing how it turns out she got every answer wrong.) Did I force her to practice. Damn straight! Did she ask to play again the following year? I know you think the answer is no, but she did, and I refused to let her.

She was miserable even during classes

My Girl and I butted heads quite a bit over the years. While now she and I are close, when she was growing up my philosophy was “I’m not your friend; I’m your mother.”

For instance, the sex talk. She refused to let me have the sex talk with her, and I pushed the issue. And, boy did I push the issue. (I even wrote a piece about her refusal to talk to me.4) She now knows an awful lot about sex.

Also, the girl has the nasty habit of saying “I’m sorry” about things she in no way should be apologizing for and it makes me crazy. Maybe I threatened to smack her every time she said it? Perhaps there were a few light taps? Who can remember. But she does apologize less frequently now.

Oh, and when she said she was too scared to walk down to our completely finished brightly lit, walkout basement by herself, and could I please go down there with her, I said, “Woman up, kid.”

So am I a bully? I don’t think so. I’m strong willed. Assertive. Perhaps a little combative. But a bully? No.

Disagree with me? I dare you to say it to my face.

about marshmallows

Can you believe the Guardian had the nerve to write this in their “Feast” newsletter?

Why? Why would anyone ever have a campfire without marshmallows? That is the entire reason for a campfire. I was a Girl Scout leader for thirteen years (Kindergarten Daisies through Senior Ambassadors). When the kids were younger, we carefully rationed out the marshmallows, not wanting eighteen sugar-high eight-year-olds on our camping trips. But when they entered middles school, we decided we needed a strict and formalized set of marshmallow rules for camping.

Needless to say, I’m reconsidering my Guardian subscription.

about writing

Sometimes the biggest success in a week of writing is not taking my novel (and the computer it lives on) and hurling it into the Mystic River. I’m happy to say, this has been a very successful week for me.

about guy trips

The husband went on his yearly weekend with his buddies from high school. After he left, I found his packing list on the kitchen counter. I guess that covers all the basics?

about Bailey

She is such a diva. I am offering her peanut butter, out of the kindness of my heart. But that’s not enough for her. She also wants me to open the door for her (hence the pat pat on the door). I will only indulge so much.

Until next time, make good choices.

jennifer

P.S. See that little heart button below? It helps a pal out—if you enjoy my newsletter—to click on it.

Note: I occasionally use affiliate links in this newsletter, which means I will earn a small commission from books you purchase through it.

A friend was over the other day for coffee. She told me how someone had asked to borrow something of hers, and she really didn’t want to lend it, but what could she do? I pointed out she could say, “No.” The friend didn’t feel comfortable saying no. The borrower made a joke about how she hopes the item won’t be stolen, and I said, “No fucking way are you letting her borrow that!” I offered to come over and tell the person myself. When my friend refused and said it was easier to just lend it than cause a problem, I may have threatened to slap her upside the head until she freakin’ womaned up. Note: she didn’t woman up and I didn’t slap her upside the head. But I thought about it. (Gads, it’s hard to tell a story when I’m trying so hard not to name names or give away clues as to who they are!)

When I ran the elementary school newsletter, I had an ongoing feud with one of the fourth grade teachers. And the principal was a little scared of me. God, I miss those days.

Although the consensus seemed to be that his clues were fine and I was just hyper competitive. As if they know anything!

When I asked her permission to publish the essay in Cognoscenti, she read it and shrugged her shoulders. "I'm fine with you publishing it," she said, "but if this is some elaborate trick to get me to talk about sex, it's not going to work."

You should (not) be dancing

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 13:44:25 GMT

If I were the type of person who watched Love Island USA—which clearly I’m not—I’d be mourning the fact that the season is over and that I’d have nothing to do with my nights except—gasp!—talk to the Husband. I’d probably be enjoying all the dish happening online as we learn that Sincere’s mom (wait, who is Sincere?) is a nasty person and for some reason everyone now hates Zach (as if I knew who that was!), and I’d probably be aghast at how many contestants—from the U.S.A.—didn’t know where New Hampshire is and that I still have no idea what “french frying” is, and, Kenzie, please! Enough with the clam slams! If I were that type of person, I’d probably be placing bets on how long till Melanie gets her head out of her ass and if Bryce and Trinity are a forever thing…

But thank god, I’m not that type of person. Anyway…

You’ll think of something…

about dancing

On Saturday, I donated platelets. I promise, it’s nothing altruistic. I do it for the free Oreos you get after the donation. Yes, I really am that shallow.

After my blood had been sucked out and piped back in and I was bandaged up, the phlebotomist said, “No exercising for the next twenty-four hours.”

“I’m supposed to go dancing tonight,” I said.

She thought a moment. “Just don’t make lots of big movements with your arms.”

I was incredibly flattered. She thought me coordinated enough to move both my hands and my feet at the same time.

Before our wedding, the Not-Yet Husband and I took a class at a community college on basic ballroom dancing to prepare for our first dance at our reception. Another couple we knew who was marrying shortly before us decided to take the class with us. At our first session, the instructor played music and said, “Now, I want you all to find the beat and move from foot to foot on it.”

The Not-Yet Husband and friends cracked up. “Ohmygod,” one of them said. “This is ridiculous.”

“SHUT UP!” I yelled. “I CAN’T HEAR THE BEAT WITH YOU BABBLING!”

It was all downhill from there. The Not-Yet Husband and I ended up taking a private class. I never did find that beat. I was incapable of letting him lead. That I stepped on his feet is pretty much a given. In the end, we picked the shortest song we could find (“It’s Love” by Lena Horne, a whopping 2:13 minutes) and I faked my way through it.

But here’s the thing. The Husband can easily keep a beat. But he hates dancing. I have the skills of Elaine from Seinfeld. I love dancing. I’ve been dancing like no one is watching long before it became a slogan painted on wooden boards to hang in your living room.

In elementary school the best days in P.E. were the days we danced. Clarification: Not the days we square danced, which required—GAG!—holding a boy’s hand. But the days we danced things like the Hustle. Yes, that’s how old I am. We danced the Hustle in the P.E. pavilion (when you go to elementary school in South Florida, you don’t have a gym; you have an outdoor pavilion).

The P.E. pavilion (this is not my class) with our teacher, Mr. Angelica, who I don’t think I ever saw without that hat.

That is the extent of my dance training.1 All other dancing has been alcohol-fueled convulsions on the dance floor. My peak dancing years were the late ‘90s when I could get away with doing moves such as the lawn mower, churn the butter, and the sprinkler (why yes, that video is from AARP). Give me very specific, ridiculously overblown movements, and that I can do.2 Slam dancing also works well for my sense of rhythm. Alas, those fads faded all too quickly.

So what’s a rhythmically challenged gal with a husband who won’t dance to do?

Enter the Earlybirds Club, “a dance party for ladies with shit to do in the morning.” They have dance parties all over the country for women and gender nonconforming folks. But the best part?

The dances start at 6 p.m. And are done at 10 p.m.

They’re speaking my language!

Of course motivating myself to go is a challenge of a whole ‘nother sort. I read about the dances over a year ago, fully intending to go, but never actually leaving my house.

Until I saw that last Saturday would be a New Wave Dance Party. Hello!

I immediately texted my two friends who I thought would be the most game. I don’t think those two ever texted me back so fast.

They were in!

Or so I thought. The day before the dance, one of them texted, “I threw out my back.” Ugh. Like, I’m sorry you’re in debilitating pain and can’t get off the couch, but WHAT ABOUT ME? You’re supposed to come dancing with ME!

So it was going to just be me and my other friend (whom we shall call Librarian because she’s… an electrician. No, of course not! She’s a librarian dammit)—which would still have been great fun—until it occurred to me: Bad-back friend has a daughter. A daughter who I’ve known since she was two-years-old. A daughter who my daughter glued herself to in the toddler room at preschool and hasn’t let go since.

But most importantly, she had a daughter who turned twenty-one on Friday night!

“Jazz [not her real name], you’ll come dancing with me and Librarian.”

“Uh…”

In a future Substack I’ll discuss my bullying tendencies, but let’s just say, after a bit of cajoling, whining, and direct ordering, Jazz agreed to come with us.

I’m sure that was on her 2026 bingo card: Going dancing with two 58-year-old women who needed to be in bed by 10 p.m.

Librarian and I had agreed that we’d go early and leave early. I mean, bed by 10 p.m. is fine and dandy, but bed at 9 p.m. is where it’s really at. And I promised Jazz that not only would I buy her drinks, but she could stay for just an hour and then I’d put her in an Uber home.

Two Gen Xers and a Gen Zer walk into a bar….

Did I buy her drinks? Yes. Did I tell every single person we passed that she had turned twenty-one the day before and they needed to wish her a happy birthday? Yes. Did I tell her stories her mother probably wished I hadn’t? Yes. Did we all dance like idiots? Well, no. Jazz and Librarian danced very nicely. But I danced like an idiot. Did all three of us end up staying until the 10 p.m. closing? Also yes.

The night was a success. Not only will we go again, Jazz said she’d even join us in the future. Well, as long as we invite some other folks her age. Apparently the novelty of dancing with two fifty-eight-year-old women wears off fast (like probably before we even got her out of her house).

And the best news: only one more month until I can ~~force~~ take my own baby girl out dancing!

I’m sure she can’t wait.

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about research

This week’s research took me to the Settlement House, the organizations that helped (and still help) new immigrants learn American ways. I found a schedule of activities from 1900 at the University Settlement on the Lower East Side of New York. Of note, I’d like to make mention of these two offerings.

On Wednesdays at 3:30 p.m.:

I’m sure this is a very wholesome activity, but I’m thinking the name of the club hasn’t aged well.

And on Fridays at 3:30 p.m.:

What, pray tell, is Fairy Fingers? My googling tells me it could be the covering on the hooves of newborn foals or a species of fungi. I’m not sure either of these were in abundance in the New York city tenements. To me it sounds like a class on shoplifting.

If that’s not bad enough, in 1905, a scandal erupted at this very same Settlement House that made front pages across the country. From page 1 of the Chicago Tribune, September September 5, 1905:

That’s right! A woman—wearing men’s pajamas—danced that oh-so-sultry dance of the… mazurka? Both Mr. Durland—the assistant head worker (and Harvard grad the article notes)—and the woman in question were dismissed.

At least we know I shall never run afoul in such a depraved way. Because wearing pajamas? Yes. Dancing anything recognizable? A big fat no.

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about my writing

My book, The Whisper Sister, was included on People magazine’s “16 Historical Fiction Novels to Celebrate America’s 250th Anniversary.” And if you haven’t had a chance to read my novel yet, it’s on sale on Kindle through the end of July.

about Bailey

This is Ferris (Jazz’s dog), giving me “come hither” looks. Ferris likes it when I pay lots of attention to him.

This is Bailey. She’s checking me over for Ferris cooties. She doesn’t like it when I pay any attention to him.

Until next time, make good choices.

jennifer

P.S. See that little heart button below? It helps a pal out—if you enjoy my newsletter—to click on it.

Note: I occasionally use affiliate links in this newsletter, which means I will earn a small commission from books you purchase through it.

I believe there may have been a misguided attempt at ballet in my preschool days. Pretty sure I demanded the classes, but then hated the way the leotard climbed up my butt and how hard it was to take off to pee. I don’t think I lasted more than two classes.

I can confidently say that I rock “The Time Warp,” although “The Macarena” is a little too complicated for me, which should give you a solid impression of my abilities.

Metal Mouth

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 13:08:09 GMT

You’ll think of something…

Nothing like a potential record-breaking heat wave to start the summer. (The solstice was on June 21 so summer is only a week and a half old therefore I stand by “start the summer.”) As if I weren’t cranky enough already, now I’m going to be a slippery ball of sweat? Anyway…

about teeth

In movies, a kid having braces is a shortcut to defining who they are1; braces signaled that the kid was mean or awkward or too geeky for anyone to want to date. Braces were bad. The only thing worse than braces? A neck gear. If the character had a neck gear, watch out! That kid was a holy terror.

Darla, the terrorizer of fish, in Finding Nemo

However, there is something worse than the neck gear. Way worse.

Yes, friends, this is my villain origin story.

As I child I had buck teeth. Think Bugs Bunny. Little girl. Protruding teeth.

Neither Bugs nor I could keep our teeth in our mouths. (I was in kindergarten here; not sure what grad Bugs was in.)

My overbite didn’t bother me one bit. But they bothered the dentist who sent me to an orthodontist. Dr. Motley must have looked in my mouth and thought he’d found a gold mine. “She needs braces,” he told my mom.

Most kids get braces in middle school, the tween years.

I was eight.

In third grade.

But it wasn’t just any kind of braces. Did he look at me and see a rotten kid? Was he simply a masochist? Was he aching to be part of some poor child’s villain origin style? Maybe he simply hated me.2

Because what Dr. Motley gave me weren’t just braces. They were braces on steroids: a head gear. A full head gear encompassing not just my neck but my entire head. And I had to wear it. Twenty. Four. Hours. A. Day.

First day wearing it to school, the cutest boy in third grade said, “Wow. You look like a horse.”

I wanted to punch him,3 but he wasn’t wrong.

The head gear was painful. My mom thought it would be easier to manage if she lopped off my hair. Great. So my mouth ached and I no longer had my lovely pigtails. I took off the head gear to eat, although in the beginning I simply didn’t eat because it was too painful to put on and off. I remember shortly after getting the head gear, my grandparents took us grandkids to Lion Country Safari. At the end, we each took a photo with an animal. I chose an ocelot.

“Don’t you want to take off your head gear for the photo?” my grandmother asked.

“I can’t. It’s too hard to put back on.”

"But the photo will look so much nicer if you take it off. Don’t you want a nice photo?”

I wanted to not have a head gear. In the end, a poster-size photo graced my bedroom wall: the ocelot, me, and my head gear.

Happy in pigtails in the beginning of third grade; sad and shorn on the first day of fourth grade

You’d think, “Hey, that’s great though! You got your braces when you were eight so by the time you hit those awkward years, you were done and had great teeth!”

You’d think wrong. This is only the start. But how can that be? Is there anything worse than a twenty-four hour headgear in elementary school?

Yes, dear readers. There is.

In junior high—please do that math; I have now been in braces for five years, complete with rubber bands that popped and wires that would come loose and poke—we moved and so a new orthodontist entered my life. Looking him up now, people seemed to love him.

I did not.

“She’s a tongue thruster,” Dr. Fronczak told my mother. Note, I can barely remember the names of three people from junior high, yet I have no problem recalling the names of the men who tortured my teeth. “We need to get her to stop or she’ll continue pushing her teeth out.”

Did I get a brace that blocked the tongue thrusting tendency? No. Did I receive myofunctional therapy? Also no.

I got hooks. Two prongs placed on the inside of my teeth, designed to pierce my tongue any time it grazed the back of my teeth. Did it hurt? Like hell. Did it correct my tongue thrusting? Nope. I just learned to thrust beneath the spikes.

My braces came off in ninth grade. That’s seven years of braces (not counting the retainer I wore until my wisdom teeth came out in my twenties). Seven years. The happy ending to this story? Well, there isn’t one. Because now, as an adult, while my teeth look straight, they don’t line up so my bite is off. Trying to scrape the flesh off an artichoke leaf involves weird machinations of my jaw. Despite the misery those braces caused, a few years ago I womaned up and went to an orthodontist to get my bite fixed. “I wish I could help you,” she said. “But any repair will be temporary.” She told me why—something about my jaw—but by that point I was so busy cursing Dr. Motley and Dr. Fronczak for not fixing it all the first time around that I didn’t hear a thing she said.

So why am I so mean? It all started with Dr. Motley, third grade, and an overbite.

Speaking of third grade…

about the holiday no one can pronounce (except my sister who had to learn to pronounce it because she’s a political science professor)

Third grade was 1976. The bicentennial. Patriotism oozed from all corners. You couldn’t walk out the door without seeing red, white, and blue. We collected bicentennial quarters. Everything was packaged with an eagle and “1776" [gift link].” Burger King and McDonald’s had bicentennial giveaways. It was talked about again—and again and again and again—in the elementary school. In Miami, Bicentennial Park opened. The halftime show at the Super Bowl was Up with People singing songs in honor of the U.S.A. School House Rock aired America Rock to coincide with the bicentennial.

The bicentennial was unavoidable. For everyone, no matter your politics.

The semiquincentennial? Eh, blink and you’ll miss it unless you live in MAGA country. Besides being a mouthful4 of a name, the semiquincentennial—250 f’ing years!—doesn’t feel like something to be so proud of today. It’s sad. While I understand as an adult that there were problems with the bicentennial, I think we can all agree the problems are far worse now. Patriotism has been co-opted by the right. Saying you’re patriotic feels downright unAmerican as a liberal, which is the strangest sentence I’ve probably ever written.

I really don’t have any grand comment to make about this. It just seems sad that this is where we are today, and I wish we could celebrate as we did in 1976.

At least my state can be proud…

about Massachusetts

I have now lived in (a suburb of) Boston longer than I’ve lived anywhere else. It’s not quite been half my life, but it’s getting close.

Here in Massachusetts, history surrounds us. I’ve walked the Minuteman Trail with Bailey, the path Paul Revere rode on his night warning that the Regulars were coming.5 My town boasts the site of the bloodiest battle of the revolution and we are not going to let you forget that! Boston’s streets are crazy hard to follow because they’re simply the old cow paths paved over. Our most popular beer is named for a founding father.

Rather than Independence Day, we can take pride in Patriots Day, although the semiquincentennial celebration of “the shot heard ‘round the world” was last year.

I was reluctant to move here (from Seattle), but did so both to be closer to family on the East Coast and for the husband to go to grad school. I’ve always turned my nose up at it a bit. But lately, I realize I’m more Massachusetts than anywhere else. Yes, I still think the idea of beach in New England is ridiculous—at its warmest, it’s still ice. I will always—ALWAYS—have a stick up my ass about the Patriots and the smugness surrounding them. And I can’t believe the way housing prices have gotten so completely out of control.

But… I like it here. I love the seasons. Give me snow any day. I love the hidden parks; the seafood; the literary scene (which is out of control—I’m convinced more writers live in Greater Boston than anywhere else in this country); Boston Commons; Sleepy Hollow Cemetery; the cafe culture; the walkability; kayaking on the Charles; all those colleges, which makes researching so much easier; the T, even with all its unreliability; the museums.… I could go on, but this isn’t a tourist brochure. In fact, one of these days I’ll list everything I hate about the area to keep the tourists out.

Lately, Massachusetts has been getting some decent P.R. The Tartan Army loves us and drank us out of that founding father-named beer.

I’m not a baseball fan, but it’s so easy to jump on the Red Sox bandwagon, especially when they sweep the Yankees (note: this only matters because the two members of my writing accountability group are both ginormous Yankee fans and I thrive on being annoying). We were the first state to legalize gay marriage, have universal healthcare (instituted during by a Republican governor so don’t tell me it has to be a partisan issue), and while I’m not Bostonian enough to worship at the altar of Dunkin Donuts, I find it reassuring that a donut is always a block away.

So am I excited for the U.S. semiquincentenial? Not really. But I will revel in my Bostonian-adjacent home on the 4th, enjoying a lobster roll, Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops, and my air conditioning because it’s going to be a freakin’ hot one.

I hope wherever you live, you can take some pride in something about being an American.

Happy Independence Day, however you wish to acknowledge it. And stay hydrated!

about what I’m reading

Here’s the dilemma: Often times I read a book and have difficulty articulating what I did or did not like about it. It’s just a gut thing.

But then there are books like Ruins by Lily Brooks-Dalton, where I can tell you exactly why I liked it, but I just don’t want to tell you.

Okay, I’ll tell you a few things about it: gorgeous writing, unlikable main character (always a huge plus for me), and lots of thought-provoking ideas.

I went into Ruins knowing nothing about it. So when strange things happened or seemed a little off, it was a complete surprise to me. Here are the very basics: Ember is a university professor, without much love for teaching. Her obsession in life is archeology and she longs to be working in the field, but her grant requests have all been rejected. She has some controversial opinions about a lost civilization that she is certain once existed.

That’s all you’re getting from me. The aha moments are fantastic and I want you to go into the story blind.

I loved this book. I didn’t want it to end. This book works on so many levels, and now you all have to read it so we can discuss it.

Go ahead. I’ll wait here.

about Bailey

This is the “Husband isn’t here to feed me and it’s already 8:25 a.m. and what the f are you doing, Jenny, when my belly is empty” series.

Until next time, make good choices.

jennifer

P.S. See that little heart button below? It helps a pal out—if you enjoy my newsletter—to click on it.

Note: I occasionally use affiliate links in this newsletter, which means I will earn a small commission from books you purchase through it.

Preempting any comments on my use of the singular they: It’s easier than writing she/he/they, so grammar police will simply have to deal.

To be honest, I did get in trouble once for biting the hygienist. To this day, I’m unsure if it was a reflex to something she was doing or pure maliciousness on my part.

I may have gotten into a couple of fights as a kid. One of my parents’ biggest disagreements was about fighting. My mother said there was never any reason for a physical fight. My father, Peter Brown, always said, “If someone hits you, you hit them back harder.” Alas, I wasn’t that sophisticated a fighter, but my nails were a ragged mess and I could inflict a mean scratch.

A mouthful I definitely wouldn’t have been able to pronounce wearing a head gear!

It’s a misconception that he said, “The British are coming.” At that point, the colonists still considered themselves to be British so he had to specify which British were coming.

What Does the Fox Say?

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 14:03:24 GMT

You’ll think of something…

I’m in New York, visiting my folks1, and I’m very disappointed because I wanted to buy a “Suck My Knick” t-shirt, but no one in my family would agree to wear it.2 My family doesn’t appreciate what I’m willing to do for them.

Speaking of family, you’ll be happy to know my father, Peter Brown, hasn’t changed, although he seems to think he has. Last night my mom was wearing a t-shirt that reads, “i like table tennis and maybe 3 people.” I texted a photo of it to my family and wrote: “There’s me and [my sister]. The rest of you can fight it out for the number three spot.”

This morning at breakfast, Peter said, “You can tell I’m mellowing in my old age. Once upon a time I would have taken you to task for writing ‘me and my sister’ rather than ‘my sister and I,’ but now I won’t bother mentioning it.”

Thanks for not mentioning, Peter. Now to tell you…

about a foxy lady

Or perhaps I should say “a lady fox.” A vixen

Fun fact #1 about the red fox:3 It’s species name is Vulpes vulpes, which I of course read as Vulva vulva. Now you will too. You’re welcome.

We live in a suburb of Boston. Six miles from Harvard Square. Ten miles from Fenway Park, the Boston Gardens, Copley Square. We have seven elementary schools, two libraries, three Dunkies, a Trader Joes and a Whole Foods. Nothing rural about where we live.

Which is why it’s so surprising that we’re being stalked by a fox.

“Ha ha,” you’re thinking. “Why friend shaped if not a friend? How cute that you think a fox is the least bit interested in you.”

I don’t just think the fox is interested in us, I know she is. Or at least she’s interested in Bailey. Either way, this fox is out for us.

Almost every morning, when one of us takes Bailey for a walk, the fox follows us. I know (healthy) foxes are harmless. That doesn’t make it less creepy. I particularly dislike when she lurks from behind where it’s hard for me to keep an eye on her. I much prefer when she stalks next to us, hopping from lawn to lawn, so I can be nervous without craning my neck to watch her. My neck already hurts. The fox doesn’t need to make it worse.

Fun fact #2: A group of foxes is called a skulk. Which is fitting because this vixen is clearly skulking as she stalks us, slinking behind us with her devil-may-care attitude.

These videos were taken over multiple days. Can you guess which (calm) video was taken by the Husband and which (frantic) ones were taken by me? No, that’s definitely not me with the panicked “No!” That would be ridiculous. It’s not like a wild fox would listen to my commands. (Just like my children.)

We have figured out that she’s trying to steer us away from where her kit lives (hence why I’m sure the fox is a she). But the den is very centrally located and she does this when we are nowhere near her den. It’s not like we can avoid her because she’s been known to stalk us ON OUR VERY OWN STREET (the calls are coming from inside the house!).

Fun fact #3: The red fox has extraordinary hearing. Which means—also much like my children—she has selective hearing and is willfully ignoring me when I try to shoo her.

Do you remember the Ylvis song “The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)”

He sings “But there's one sound that no one knows / What does the fox say?”

Bullshit. I know what the fox says. Because I hear it every night. And I can confirm it’s not “Fraka-kaka-kaka-kaka-kow!”

This is not a great recording because it’s one I took from inside my house on a random evening. But this, this is what the fox says. Or rather screeches.

The point of all this is if this newsletter suddenly stops arriving, know it was because I became fox food. And that Ylvis needs to update his song.

about what I’m reading

I recently finished Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino, and it is perhaps one of the most unhinged novels I’ve read in a long time. Margo wants to buy a house in D.C. with her husband. She’d like to start a family but lives in a tiny apartment. Although they have a generous budget, it’s not a D.C.-worthy budget and they’re outbid every time. So when she hears about this great house before it goes on the market, Margo is determined to get it.

At first, I was a bit wary, as it seemed like this would be a book about a woman lying about her life to get a house, and books like that make me cringe. I hate the whole “will I get caught in a lie?” plot.4 I didn’t need to worry. This book goes dark. Dark, dark, dark. But in a funny kind of way. Margo is a seriously unlikable character, which means I was rooting for her the whole time. The twists were twisty, and I suggest not reading any reviews if you’re going to pick up this book, because I notice that some of them give spoilers. This wasn’t a super deep book, but it was super fun.

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about the Boy’s thesis

From the Boy’s mouth (or rather fingers as he texted this) this is what his thesis is about: “When you make a cpu you want to verify its correct before you spend all the money to get it made. So I’m working on verifying a specific cpu.

“The problem is that it takes a lot of computational power bc you’re essentially trying every possible combination of inputs at once. This is okay for some things but if you have something like memory access it’s not really feasible bc you have to do this process for every possible memory location of which there are billions but the process is identical for each of them.

“So there’s a technique called symbolic indexing which lets you handle stuff like this by exploiting the fact that ur doing the same thing for each of them and only the location changes. What I’m doing is I’m applying that technique to a specific subsystem of the cpu called the scoreboard.

“To make things faster cpus will try to look ahead and start things that will take a while early. The scoreboard is where the results of those things sit until they’re actually needed.”

Are you still here?

I’m so happy I was able to clear this up for you. (It’s all clear now, right?) Nadia, Wendy, and Jane definitely gave great wrong answers. You all deserve a copy of the novel.5

Since no one even attempted a real answer, I still have the nonfiction book to give away.6 The best (or worst) answer to this question will get the book: While I have many villain origin stories, something happened in third grade that started me on my path of evil. What was it? (My family members: you are disqualified from answering this question correctly. Which really just means Peter Brown and the Sister, because I’m pretty sure my mom has no idea. Questionable if the Husband and kids do.)

about Bailey

As much as the Husband and I disagree on turning on the heat in the fall, we disagree equally about turning on the AC in the spring. “Just open more windows,” I say. “Put on the fan.”

However, I cave much sooner in the spring. The Husband has learned the magic words: “Look at Bailey. She’s so hot!” It took me a minute to realize he doesn’t mean our dog is one sexy lady but that she’s lying on the wood floor, her tongue hanging out, trying to cool off.

The AC was turned on in nanoseconds.

Because photos of Bailey suffering in the hotness of New England could be sad, I’m instead sharing photos of her on the hunt in the backyard. I love watching her hunt. I hate seeing her actually find anything.7

She’s such a cute little stalker.8 She’s got the best nose twitches.

Until next time, make good choices.

jennifer

P.S. See that little heart button below? It helps a pal out—if you enjoy my newsletter—to click on it.

Note: I occasionally use affiliate links in this newsletter, which means I will earn a small commission from books you purchase through it.

And yes, there has already been ping pong. A fundraiser for Ping Pong Parkinson NYC at Spin.

Why don’t I buy it for myself? Because I’m giving person and I want to share my love with others instead of selfishly keeping one for myself. (That sounds better than “no f’king way would I wear that in public!” right?)

Fox facts taken from the Wildlands Conseverancy

I’m currently reading a book with the “will I be caught in a lie” plot and I really need to just put it down, but I’m far enough in that I feel compelled to finish it, but it’s royally pissing me off and there better be a big payoff in the end.

Let me know if you’d like your book signed to you or to someone else.

I was counting on the Boy’s girlfriend to give an understandable answer, but alas, she didn’t. And now I have to worry that I’ll get in trouble for calling her out. But clearly not worried enough to not call her out.

We won’t discuss that time my dear sweet Bailey turned into Murder Dog.

Yes, I realize the irony of enjoying my stalking dog while being annoyed by a stalking fox. What can I say? I’m a complex woman.

The Puzzle Master and Me

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 14:03:14 GMT

You’ll think of something…

Every spring the Husband and I spend too much money on plants for our vegetable garden, picking out the prettiest plants to kill in our yard. Green thumbs, we are not. We are frauds in the nursery, murders seeking our prey. We don’t mean to kill, but given that year after year that’s what happens, I’m pretty sure this could be considered murder in the first degree; we know what’s going to happen to those poor tomato stems once they hit our soil.

Never have I felt so seen as I do by this sign

Anyway, I have much more important things to discuss than my horticultural homicidal tendencies. So let’s get at it. I’ll think of something about…

about world records

It’s not so much that 1,037 people dressed liked Marilyn Monroe (in honor of what would have been her 100th birthday) to break the world record, it’s that there was a world record in the first place to break. I mean, who has this idea twice?1 (Yes! This news is more important than my plant murdering.)

about “What did he just say?” and a book giveaway

The Boy is working on his master’s thesis. The title is “Applying symbolic indexing to the verification of the CHERI-CVA6 scoreboard subsystem.”

What do you think that means? I’ll take right and wrong2 answers. The best right answer will be sent3 a personalized signed copy of Elizabeth Preston’s nonfiction book, Creatures Guide to Caring, and the best wrong answer will receive a personalized signed copy of Susan Donovan Bernhard’s novel, Westerly.4 THERE ARE NO DUMB ANSWERS! Just creative thinking.

Leave your best guesses in the comments by June 14. The Boy will be the judge. I mean, he has to be the judge because I have no idea what his thesis is about (and yes, he’s tried to explain it to me. Multiple times).

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about Will Shortz, Wordle, and me

I made Will Shortz proud today.

This is a little bit of a long story. Bear with me.

I love puzzles. If you recall from my very first newsletter, it was the Wordle Bot who gave me the sign to start this Substack.

As a kid, few things excited me as much as a new issue of Games magazine in the mailbox. While the crosswords were often out of my league (I could do most of the easy side of the The World's Most Ornery Crossword, but never the hard), the logic puzzles5 were my forte, so I’d jump straight to Pencilwise. But I loved all of it. The fake ad. The hidden contests (I never could solve one of those). The eye benders.

Today, my go-to game is NYT’s Spelling Bee. It’s my favorite and also my main form of regular communication with the Boy because he plays and we share our wins and our annoyances.

I’m the blue text, he’s the gray.

But I also do the crossword, Connections, of course Wordle. My stupid sister6 got me hooked on the New Yorker’s Shuffalo.7

Anyway, this post is about to seem to digress WILDLY, but I swear this is all relevant.

My mom has Parkinson’s. She’s had it for a good while, she’s fine, no need to worry, or email me concerns. This is not some sad sappy post about my mom. She’s still makes art while watching Law and Order, and if you met her randomly, you’d have no idea she had it.

Exercise is important for managing symptoms. But as musician Nenad Bach says in the below video, “Exercise is boring and ping pong is fun.” So Nenad Bach founded Ping Pong Parkinson. (Please consider this a PSA and share the below video with anyone you know who has Parkinson’s.)

Enter the Brown family ping-pong craze. My mom has become quite involved with Ping Pong Parkinson’s, and she plays with them multiple times a week. She’s made a ton of new friends through it. My father—who does not have Parkinson’s—has gotten on the ping pong bandwagon as well, and now he plays all the time.

How much do they like ping pong? In December of 2022, my family walked into the Florida apartment for our yearly trip home and discovered they’d replaced the living room couch with a ping pong table. “Where are people going to sit?” I asked. My father said something like (I’m paraphrasing) “Nowhere. Maybe now people won’t come over.”8

Parents gone wild

It’s provided endless fun for us, not just because we enjoy a good game of ping pong, but because they’re so serious about it. Apparently new ping pong balls can be dusty, so we got to hear my mom yell, “I’m in the kitchen! I’m washing my balls!” God forbid we accidentally use one of their paddles instead of the guest paddles (yes, they are labeled). Using the ping-pong picker upper is actually my favorite thing. Hitting the floor with the basket to suck up those balls.9

Ping pong has become a part of our lives.

In March of 2025 there was the Ping Pong Parkinson New York Open being played in Westchester (there are tournaments around the world). My mom flew up for it and went up with my sister. I decided to surprise her and come to spectate.

She was surprised!

The point! I’m getting to the point!!

The Ping Pong Parkinson New York Open was held at the Westchester Table Tennis Center. Which. Is. Co-owned. By. Will. Shortz!

For those not as geeky as I, Will Shortz for years was an editor at Games magazine and today is the NYT crossword puzzle editor, as well as the Puzzle Master on Sundays on NPR’s Morning Edition. I listen every week.

I 💖 Will Shortz.

You can keep your [insert name of young famous actor whom I’d never heard of until I Googled “famous actors today”: Amandla Stenberg? Jacob Elordi? Whatever]. Give me Will Shortz any day. I’m a fangirl.

“Ohmygod,” I said to my mom and sister after learning this tidbit. “Will Shortz is a co-owner of this place!”

My mom said, “Yeah, I know. He’s over there. Nice guy.”

HE’S IN THE SAME ROOM AS ME?

And really? That’s it? Nice guy?

IT’S FREAKIN’ WILL SHORTZ!

My mom said, “Want me to bring over to meet him?”

Um… DUH!

You know how they say don’t meet your heroes? You’re bound to be disappointed? THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO WILL SHORTZ! If you have the opportunity to meet Will Shortz you should take it because not only is he a nice guy, he is THE nicest guy. He was so warm and friendly. His friend/assistant/person kept saying, “We have to go. We have to be there in fifteen minutes,” and Will Shortz would nod and then continue chatting with us. We were discussing Wordle strategies, specifically our opening words. I’m a choose-a-random-word-every-day kind of player; he’s a same-word kind of guy. See! We can be different and still get along in this world!

Will told us, “My goal in Wordle is to have more threes than fours,” meaning solving the puzzle more often in three tries than four. He even showed us his guess distribution! Yes!! I saw Will Shortz’s Wordle guess distribution!!

Hey, guess what my Wordle goal is (now)! Every time I get the Wordle in three, I announce to the Husband, “Will Shortz is proud of my today!” and he knows I solved it in three.

This is my guess distribution. A bit of a ways to go to get more threes than fours, but I’m trying!.

Today, today was a good day. I got Wordle in three. Will Shortz, wherever you are, I’m confident you’re proud of me. Because you’re just that nice of a guy.10

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about Bailey

This is her “Yes, I know I threw up a huge wad of grass on your duvet, but it’s your duvet so your problem, and I’ve already found another bed to inhabit so screw you” look.

Until next time, make good choices (and get your Wordle in three!) (and answer the question of what the Boy’s thesis is about!).

jennifer

P.S. See that little heart button below? It helps a pal out—if you enjoy my newsletter—to click on it.

Note: I occasionally use affiliate links in this newsletter, which means I will earn a small commission from books you purchase through it.

Apparently, though, whatever you can think of can be turned into a world record, no matter how weird.

Pre-empting my father’s question, “What do you mean you’ll accept wrong answers?” by saying it means you can make up an answer. It can be as wild and as far off the mark as you like.

Alas, I can only mail within the United States, but I’ll take your answers from anywhere!

Get? Nonfiction for the nonfiction answer; fiction for the fictional answer? I kill myself with my cleverness.

I know I’m opening myself to comments about “Logic? You? Have you ever?” but it’s true: I love a good logic puzzle.

I texted her: “Will our relationship survive if I call you stupid in my newsletter?”
My sister responded: “It will. I’ve got another new game: uncrossy.” Which I suspect will be making me call her stupid again very soon.

My father complains all the time that my sister introduces him to new games, he gets hooked only to discover she stopped playing them.

Peter Brown is the most curmudgeonly people person you will ever meet. He loves getting together with his friends but he also likes to gripe about, well, everything.

This is sounding more and more obscene, but truly, it’s all wholesome!

I told you there was a point!

Life is a highway...

Fri, 15 May 2026 22:24:10 GMT

You’ll think of something…

After weather delays, I made it home last night, tired and cranky, though that had nothing to do with the travel; I’m always tired and cranky.

The Girl and I not only survived our trip from L.A. to St. Louis, but we had ended up being the perfect road buddies. We have the same need for frequent bathroom breaks, listen to the same music (she was surprised I like Noah Kahan and I was surprised that she added Carly Simon to the playlist), and eat the same junk food. She never complained when I said, “I think we need more chocolate” and I never complained when she said, “I think we need more ice cream.” We agreed that the McDonald’s museum, the world’s largest rocker, the town with more burros than people, Cadillac Ranch, and the bathroom tour of the Gearheads Curios Shop (where we didn’t hit the funnel) were all places we had to stop.

One of the town’s big money makers seems to be selling burro food

A fun time was had by all.

about local politics

We were driving to St. Louis because Baby Girl will be campaigning against a Missouri ballot measure. In 2024 Missouri passed a constitutional amendment—Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative—guaranteeing the right to legal abortion and all manners of reproductive care. Yay!

Not yay. Because the Republicans are back with a new amendment proposal to make abortion illegal. Seems most Missourians support choice, so what’s the problem? The problem is that most Missourians are polling that they do not support gender transition for youth. So the Republicans lumped the two together into one constitutional amendment, Proposition 3, because they are devious. The two issues are unrelated—well except for the fact that they both trust that a person will know what is best for him/her/themself, God forbid!—and it makes Baby Girl’s job that much harder convincing people to vote against the measure.

I have always lived in places that have been primarily made up of Democrats. Miami, of course, is now purple, but the rest—New York City; Boulder, Colorado; Seattle; Austin, Texas; Boston—all bleed blue.

Driving in the Southwest, however, meant long stretches in red territory. Baby Girl and I stopped at the Dairy King in Commerce, Oklahoma. The place has been around forever and as we ate our soft serve, the friendly locals struck up conversation with us. When Baby Girl mentioned she was off to work in politics, one of the men (Mike) mentioned he was running for re-election as county commissioner in Miami, Oklahoma (pronounced My-am-uh). (He’s also a former professional wrestler.) He told us the town used to be mostly Democrats, so much so that Republicans couldn’t vote in the primaries because there weren’t enough Republicans to vote for one. Now, he says, that’s reversed. Yet a man at another table says he’s always been a liberal and can’t stand what’s happening today in the government.

This is Ron. He’s not running for office. But he was hanging out at the Dairy King.

Traveling through Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas gave us a different perspective. So many small towns are either dead or close to it. Mike mentioned a factory in Miami that had closed, putting lots of folks out of work. We passed some pretty dilapidated houses and farms. I had read the New York Times article about the closing of the Butter Ridge Dairy (gift link) and this trip was filled with people working hard yet not making money. I can’t ever excuse the social beliefs of conservative folks, but I could see how economically they would vote for whoever they thought might help them the most, even if it was the most hideous of humans. I was reminded of a book a read a few years ago, Strangers in Their Own Land by Arlie Russell Hochschild, that explores why people voted for that man. I highly recommend the book.

Clearly I need to get out of my bubble more often if I truly want to understand what’s happening in the country. Doesn’t mean I’ll like it, but perhaps (economically speaking) I could be more sympathetic.

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about mortality

Nothing reminds you of how much you hate heights than hiking into the Grand Canyon. I hugged the canyon wall, trying not to notice the sheer drop on the other side of the trail. I remember how terrified I was the first time I went down the canyon—back when I still had two working knees—and it turns out it’s just as terrifying going down a second time.

My knees were pissed walking down. And the next day, my thighs joined in the complaints.

For more trip photos head to Instagram where I have Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Days 4 to 5, and 5 to 6, plus a bonus National Lampoon Vacation homage.

about Bailey Bruno (except we don’t talk about Bruno)

We had to visit Bruno on our trip. Bruno lives in Tulsa and is the goodest boy ever. He gives the best licks, loves tummy rubs, and thinks he’s a lap dog. We tried to steal Bruno for the rest of the trip, but alas, we were foiled. And, oh, Bruno happens to live with my high school bestie Eric, but once we saw Bruno, Eric was pretty irrelevant. (Sorry, Eric.)

wait, what about Bailey?

Of course I still love Bailey, the goodest girl ever, the most. She’ll always be my heart. (Sorry, kids.)

Until next time, make good choices.

jennifer

Getting My Kicks on Route 66

Sat, 02 May 2026 01:56:43 GMT

You’ll think of something…

The Husband has been traveling so I’ve had a week to myself, just me and Bailey. I’ve had popcorn for dinner, watched lots of reality TV, and no one woke me up at 4 a.m. Alas, that ends tomorrow. I suppose I’m happy the Husband will be back, but it was rather nice while it lasted.

about road trips

Like Fannee Doolee, I hate driving but I love road trips (okay, so maybe that isn’t exactly what she said, but I’m sure she would have if she’d had a license). Want me to drive carpool? Nope. Need me to drive to Montreal? Sure! Why not?

I’ve taken many many road trips, my first at age 14 when, for some reason, my mother and I drove from Boulder, Colorado, to Miami Beach, Florida, because my sister couldn’t take her gerbils on the plane, so we had to transport them. Why me and not my sister? No idea. In those days, my mother and I had a, shall we say complicated? relationship. I navigated on that trip using something called maps and a TripTik (I can explain to you kids later), and more than one tense moment passed when I couldn’t figure out quite which exit to take fast enough for my mom who was flying down that highway. We did get pulled over for speeding and luckily the cop didn’t notice my mom’s license had long expired, and our alternator gave out in Georgia on a Sunday morning when repair shops were mostly closed (my mom somehow charmed one guy to take an alternator from a different car and put it in ours so we didn’t have to wait), and we drove Alligator Alley in pitch dark when it was an unlit two-lane highway because we just wanted the damn trip over with.

Since then, I’ve driven from New York to Graceland, took a three-month road trip from Miami Beach to Seattle, and drove twice from Seattle to Boston. Plus shorter trips in between (Seattle to Manhattan Beach, CA; Seattle to Wyoming; Boston to D.C).

The summer before the boy went to college, I tried to convince him to go on a road trip with me, driving to his school in LA.

You’ll be shocked to know the Boy did not take a road trip with me. His loss.

The Girl though… She will be interning in Missouri this summer, working on a campaign to oppose Proposition 3. She needs to get herself and her car from LA to Missouri.

“Do you want me to drive with you?” I asked, using my oh, I seem like I don’t care either way, but I really want to go voice.

Any sane person who knows me would say, “Um, I’ve got it, thanks.” But the Girl? She said, “Yes!” The Girl is a smart young woman yet for someone reason, when it comes to me, she’s not always the wisest. Thank god!

It’s going to be a little crazy timing wise. I’ll be in Cincinnati for a book event (are you in the area? It’ll be a fun night of cocktails and conversation!) on Thursday, come back Friday, then head to LA on Saturday for a few days of singing “Behind the Wheel/Route 66” at the top of my lungs, complaining when I’ve eaten too many Reese’s all the while shoving more in my mouth, and backseat driving when I’m not at the wheel. I’m already thinking about where we’ll stop. Cadillac Ranch? Get some crystals in Sedona? Walk around a crater?

By Richie Diesterheft from Chicago, IL, USA - Tipping Painted CarsUploaded by PDTillman, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6736240

Bonus for me: I was in the U.K. with the Boy for British Mother’s Day, and I’ll be traveling with the Girl for American Mother’s Day. Only downside is I know she won’t do ayahuasca with me.

The Girl has no idea what she’s in for. Do me a favor: Don’t tell her. She’ll figure it out soon enough.

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about my terrifying my parents

I texted my folks: “Apparently the Husband had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day!”

Within minutes my phone rang. My mom said, “What happened?”

“What do you mean what happened?”

“Your text. You said the Husband had a terrible day.”

“No, I said he had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”

There was a pause.

“Oh!” she said. “He went to Australia.”

We read that book so many times, I can’t believe it didn’t register immediately.

By the way, after this conversation, I had to look it up: In Australia, Alexander says, “I think I’ll move to Timbuktu.” Doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Speaking of Australia, this is the first time the whole family doesn’t fit on one Find Your Friends screen. Four family members, three continents, two U.S. coasts.

We’re such a cosmopolitan family. Either that or we don’t like each other enough to be on the same continent at the same time.

about Bailey

A morning saga. The Husband usually is up before 5 a.m., so Bailey relies on him for an early breakfast. With the Husband traveling, poor Bailey has only me, and I’m not quite as an early riser. The other day, at 6:20 a.m., she let me know she’d like her breakfast.

I went to the kitchen to get her breakfast. I put it in the bowl. And waited. And waited. And waited.

Went upstairs to see what was going on. Turns out, it wasn’t breakfast she wanted; it was my side of the bed.

Until next time, make good choices.

jennifer

The future is now...

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:18:11 GMT

Just returned from my yearly writing retreat at Boyds Mill (formerly Highlights) with my online writing accountability group. That place is magic. A cabin to write in. Three amazing meals a day, snacks around the clock, a wine/appetizer (half)hour. Lots of places to curl up and write. Beautiful trails to walk. Evenings spent reading our work to one another. I spent the long weekend writing and reading and eating too much. Heavenly.

You’ll think of something…

about what I’m reading

I have finally gotten around to reading The Testaments, Margaret Atwood’s follow up to The Handmaid’s Tale. When my kids were little, the rule was always you have to read the book before you can watch the movie.1 That rule holds for me, and I definitely want to watch the new Hulu series so reading the novel comes first.

While I’m enjoying the book, I’m a little bummed that I can’t get the actors from the TV series The Handmaid’s Tale out of my mind. One of the best reasons for reading a book first is so I can picture the characters the way I believe them to me; I now have too many film characters and settings crowding out my own images.

When The Handmaid’s Tale was first published—sometime while I was in high school—I devoured it. Yet the book seemed more sci-fi than prophetic. I couldn’t fathom a world where all my money was tied up in cards. While apparently there were ATMs at the time, I don’t remember them, but I do remember my mom making sure to get to the bank drive-through before it closed on Fridays to insure sure she had cash for the weekend. This was also around the time when I remember reading that someday we’d be able to watch any movie we wanted on our TVs, and I couldn’t imagine turning the TV dial through all the movie to get to the one you want. If you wanted a movie that started with S, it would be two days before you’d find it!

However I was very aware that there were men trying to take away many of my rights. As a teen I was a vocal defender of reproductive rights while living in the era of Phyllis Schlafly and Anita Bryant. So after reading, I teetered on the edge of “This could never happen” and “But could it?”

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one with a lack of vision. The New York Times book review of The Handmaid’s Tale, written by Mary McCarthy, found the entire premise of The Handmaid’s Tale too unbelievable:

Surely the essential element of a cautionary tale is recognition. Surprised recognition, even, enough to administer a shock. We are warned, by seeing our present selves in a distorting mirror, of what we may be turning into if current trends are allowed to continue. That was the effect of “Nineteen Eighty-Four,’” with its scary dating, not 40 years ahead, maybe also of ‘“Brave New World’” and, to some extent, of “A Clockwork Orange.’”
It is an effect, for me, almost strikingly missing from Margaret Atwood’s very readable book “The Handmaid’s Tale,” offered by the publisher as a “forecast” of what we may have in store for us in the quite near future. A standoff will have been achieved vis-a-vis the Russians, and our own country will be ruled by right-wingers and religious fundamentalists, with males restored to the traditional role of warriors and us females to our “place” - which, however, will have undergone subdivision into separate sectors, of wives, breeders, servants and so forth, each clothed in the appropriate uniform. A fresh postfeminist approach to future shock, you might say. Yet the book just does not tell me what there is in our present mores that I ought to watch out for unless I want the United States of America to become a slave state something like the Republic of Gilead whose outlines are here sketched out.

Looking back, I’m surprised at McCarthy’s blind eye. The 1970s saw the nascent rise of The Heritage Foundation and Focus on the Family. The 1980s, The Moral Majority, a call for a return to family values, Marches for Life, and the backlash to ERA. All could be interpreted as signs of what was to come, although I suppose that’s easy to say in hindsight, which McCarthy, who died in 1989, never obtained because she didn’t live through the Gilead-like turns this country is making.

I’m enjoying The Testaments, but of course it doesn’t have the shock value of the first book, that “could it actually happen?” feeling, because we know it can. We have become the proverbial frogs in boiling water, no longer shocked by what we’re reading because we see it happening daily. I hope for the day when instead of asking, “Could it happen here?” we’ll be able to say, “That didn’t happen here.”

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about drinking

The Husband is always grabbing cocktail recipes from Instagram but can never find them again. (Me: “Oooh, let’s have a Black Betty cocktail!”2 Him: “Um, I would if I knew where I got the recipe from.”) So he’s creating an app, Dashed, that will save the drink recipes he finds. It’s not live yet—but you can see what it is here—although he needs the app tested, so if you’re a drinker who gets recipes from online, email/message me, and I’ll send you the testing site. He needs feedback!

about why I am the way I am

When my sister and I were home, we went through some of my parents’ papers and souvenirs to see what we wanted to keep and what we could get rid of. My father, Peter Brown, was most unhappy that I said to toss all my baby shoes as well as the 57-year-old pacifier that looked pretty gnarly.

Gross!!

One of the things I found that I had no memory of was a test my father gave to three of my boyfriends (one of whom became the Husband). It’s not so much that he gave a test, but that he gave the same test to each of them, like literally the same piece of paper. He didn’t bother rewriting it so the guys would think they were the first to take the test. This is par for the course for Peter Brown.

I think there’s something rather obnoxious about all of this. But not obnoxious enough to stop me from creating a quiz for both my kids’ partners. Because who am I to not continue family traditions? (For the Boy’s Girlfriend: When did the Boy start eating salad? For the Girl’s Boyfriend: When did the Girl stop crying all the time?)3

I am nothing, if not my father’s daughter.

about Bailey

Last newsletter, my friend Simon commented that he was disappointed I wasn’t reveling in the post-Easter half-price Peeps. But just because I didn’t mention it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. (Peeps were acquired and I immediately poked holes in the packages to help them get stale faster, because everyone knows that stale Peeps are better Peeps). And it’s not just me. Bailey loves her stuffed Peep.

(Sorry for the shaky video; it’s hard for me to hold the camera while stealing toys.)

Until next time, make good choices.

jennifer

P.S. Because there’s always more to say!

My son, at nine, part way through the movie Lord of the Rings, asked, “Um, if you’ve read the book, do you have to watch the movie?” I assured him he did not, although I believe he saw the movie a few years later and enjoyed it.

In case you don’t yet have the Black Betty saved on your Dashed app, it’s on Frederic Yarm’s Instagram.

If you know my kids, you know these are trick questions.

When Getting Along Is Hard

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 20:48:14 GMT

Today is April Fool’s Day, but you will get no tricks for me. For almost a decade, I produced the newsletter at my kids’ elementary school. Wrote it, designed it, sent it out, posted it online.

On Friday, April 1, 2011, I decided to include an April Fool’s joke in the newsletter (with the blessing of the principal, I should add). I wrote things such as:

A new Massachusetts law will implement MCAS testing in kindergarten, starting in spring 2012.
The fourth grade teachers will host a kissing booth at the end-of-year picnic.
To help with next year’s budget deficit, the PTO will be installing Coke vending machines in the cafeteria.
The PTO is considering a proposal to sell ad space in the classrooms

And I ended it with: “Join us for our next PTO meeting on April 28 when everyone will learn the meaning of...April Fools!”

I put April Fools in a large font.

What did I learn from my little fun and games? People are idiots. And they don’t read entire articles. One parent was so outraged that she called the superintendents office in horror that we would sell soda at the school. The sugar! Standardized testing for five year olds? No big deal. Ads in the classroom? Fine and dandy.

BUT THE SODA!!!

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You’ll think of something…

about visiting my spawn

For many many years, my mother and I had a wee little problem getting along. My mother sometimes spoke without thinking through what she was saying. I had the ability to take offense at her mere existence. I’m happy to say I’ve grown out of this. Of course, it didn’t happen until I was in my 30s.

My sister through the years served as the Human Buffer Zone. She would insert herself between us and say, “What I think Jenny meant was…” or “Mom was trying to say…”

I thought everyone knew my sister was the HBZ until a family trip to Italy, where I made a comment about my sister as the HBZ. “What?” my mother said. “Who is she buffering? You have to manage me?” to which my sister of course buffered, “What Jenny meant was…”

Traveling to Oxford to visit my first-born spawn, I realized I’m still in need of an HBZ. But for me and my child. I sometimes speak without thinking through what I’m trying to say. He has the ability to take offense at my mere existence.

On Saturday, the boy and I had a little spat. We separated unhappily. The next day, however, my boy did something I could never have done at his age: He apologized to me, and I returned the apology. Things went well after that.

When we left him, I said to the Husband, “I bet he called his girlfriend and she said he might consider apologizing to me.” The girlfriend is kind and sensitive. Unlike anyone in my family.

“One hundred precent,” the Husband agreed.

The torch has been passed from my sister to the Girlfriend. The Human Buffer Zone lives on. Thank God.

My favorite English activity: Drinking at a pub with my family

about looking old

On a tour of Bodleian Library at Oxford, we chatted with an American couple living in Oxford for work. We chatted about their jobs. Then the mid-30s woman said to us, “Are you guys retired?”

And then she didn’t understand why I was annoyed.

Millennials!

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about protesting

I had two book events in South Florida, so I decided to visit my folks and surprise my father, Peter Brown, for his 86th birthday. My sister also came down, so it was a lovely family affair.

Of course, the No Kings Protest was on Saturday, so my mother, sister, and I trekked to Pride Park in Miami Beach to rally with the troops. Well, my sister and I trekked; my mother scooted along next to us.

The rally reassured me that not everyone in Florida is as much of an asshole as is portrayed in the news. Liberal people do live there too.

My mom made our signs, and both my sister and I each took a turn speaking (a megaphone was passed to whoever had something to say—I always have something to say). However, I was not at all reassured by the police sniper on the roof of the parking garage next to the park. Makes me very glad I don’t live in a red state.

about what I’m reading

Oh my god, I downloaded a friend’s book from Netgalley, and it’s so freaking good! Westerly by Susan Donovan Bernhard. I’ll write a proper review when I’ve finished it, but in the meantime, I want to skip my seder and stay home to read more. Definitely worth a preorder!

about Bailey

When I travel, I like to FaceTime Bailey. Bailey, however, is not a fan. She probably needs a Human/Dog Buffer Zone to deal with me.

To all those celebrating Passover, enjoy your Manischewitz. To those celebrating Easter, enjoy your chocolate bunnies. To those who celebrate neither, enjoy the upcoming half-priced candy.

Until next time, make good choices.

jennifer

P.S. See that little heart button below? It helps a pal out—if you enjoy my newsletter—to click on it.

A broad abroad

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 10:03:07 GMT

It’s Mothering Day! I’m writing this early because I know that on Mothering Day, I will be too busy being feted by my first born to write this.1 This will be a fairly brief missive, however, I’ll catch everyone up on my English shenanigans next time.

You’ll think of something…

about visiting my first spawn, a story in texts between an enthusiastic mother and a son who—occasionally—throws her a bone

about what I packed

The boy has the eating habits of a toddler. Which I fought all his life, trying to force him to eat a slice of apple (you can dip it in cinnamon!), a piece of red pepper (a nibble, just a nibble), a goddamn carrot (why won’t you eat like a human being??)2

However, now that he’s an adult3, he can eat whatever the hell he wants, and not only do I not care, but I abet it. I made him matzah crunch, which I’m guessing won’t make it till Passover, and I picked up his all time favorite cookie from our local farm shop.

I sent a picture to his sister. She said, “What’s he going to eat next week?” I replied, “ha ha,” and she said, “No, I’m serious,” and alas, I fear she is correct.

My bag is considerable lighter now (the cookies weigh a surprising amount), so I can fill it up with English goodies.

about the odd things that pop up while researching that distract me from finding what I was actually researching about

This clip is from a newsreel I found on archive.org:

about Bailey

Bailey is the very definition of “any port in a storm.” She’s made herself right at home in our friends’ bed. Hopefully she’ll give them more room than she gives us.

As they (don’t) say over here, tally ho!

Until next time, make good choices.

jennifer

P.S. See that little heart button below? It helps a pal out—if you enjoy my newsletter—to click on it.

This is ignoring the fact that I’ll be up at 7 a.m. and have approximately seven hours until he is awake.

I can’t tell you how first world I felt when he was sent to food therapy.

And to give him some credit, he does actually eat these days. Not as many veggies as I like, but his food repertoire has expanded greatly.

Let It Snow

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 18:21:59 GMT

Nothing makes me happier to be an empty nester than snow. I still get palpitations remembering those days of young kids and snow. Nothing—NOTHING—is as frightening as that ringing phone, the one you approach with dread, praying it’s anybody—ANYBODY—but the superintendent. When that realization hits—when the caller ID indicates the call is coming from inside the school—it’s all you can do to hold back the tears as the recorded message intones, “Hello. This is the superintendent. All school will be closed today.”

This child gets a little weirded out when the snow is over her head.

The only thing worse than a snow day was multiple snow days. And even worse than that, multiple snow days after a holiday. Which is what parents in Massachusetts got this past week. February vacation1 ended only for parents to learn that next two school days were snow days, making a one-week vacation with kids who need you RIGHT NOW into a one-and-a-half week hostage situation where you will give the children any amount of sugar and TV just get five minutes of work done.

Now? Now I can luxuriate in front of the fire, drink bourbon as early in the day as I like, and not have to share my snow day snacks with anyone.

Let’s hear it for empty nesting!

Reason #493 that the Husband is weird: “You put too many marshmallows on your hot chocolate. Just a single layer for me.” He was slightly horrified to learn that this is marshmallow pile number one; when this stuff melts, I add another layer. AS ANY NORMAL HUMAN WOULD DO!

You’ll think of something…

about my first spawn

When he was five-years-old, Baby Boy announced he wanted to be a sko-lar when he grew up. After determining he meant scholar, we applauded his lofty ambitions.

Fast forward seventeen years. Those lofty ambitions feel a little less lofty when we realized he meant for us to foot the bill.

When the kids decided both to go2 to college on the West Coast, I felt okay about it because if things ever went truly to hell, I could get in my car and be there in a few days. Apparently, this was a little too close for the boy, so when choosing where to be a sko-lar, he chose a place inaccessible from Massachusetts by car: England.

Sucker! We fooled him. We know how to book airline tickets!

We’re headed across the pond to see what kind of trouble Baby Boy has gotten himself up to.3

I’d like to visit with a cousin who lives in England, and said she’d love to see us but not on the Sunday we’re there, because she’ll be spending the day with her mother-in-law. When I found out why, I was understandably thrilled. “Guess what cousin had to say!” I texted Baby Boy and Husband. “Any ideas?”

Yes, I had to look up what U.K. Mother’s Day had to do with Christians and
HELL YES, I’LL ABANDON MY GOD TO SPEND THE DAY WITH BABY BOY SHOWERING ME WITH LOVE AND AFFECTION!

If you know Baby Boy, you might check in with him on March 16, to make sure he survived the American invasion.

about the knot

It’s still knotting.

about AI

Yes, yes, I hate AI, I’ve done enough rants about it, but recently the Husband was asking Claude some questions on business moves and Claude responded with Let me be blunt. You’re rationalizing: [it’s] all post-hoc justification for what is fundamentally a step backward and when husband said that Claude needed to tone it down, Claude responded with You’re scared; you can tell yourself it’s strategic, but it’s not strategic, it’s risk avoidance and then the Husband told me Claude hurt his feelings, and frankly, while I don’t want the Husband to have hurt feelings4, I have to admit I have mad respect for an AI that can hurt a man who wasn’t the tiniest bit emotional when Bad Bunny said at the end of the Super Bowl halftime show, “My homeland, Puerto Rico, we are still here.”

Blunt. Slightly mean. Doesn’t take criticism. Claude just might be my people.

about Bailey

I am the boss of this house. I am the boss of this family. But clearly—sigh—Bailey is the boss of me.

Until next time, make good choices.

jennifer

P.S. See that little heart button below? It helps a pal out—if you enjoy my newsletter—to click on it.

February and April vacations are a decidedly New England thing. In my youth, we had winter break (aka Christmas break as it was known back then) and spring break. Here we still have winter break, but there’s a week in February (the week of President’s Day) and a week in April (the week of Patriots Day) that kids have off from school.

Peter Brown, that sentence was for you. I originally wrote “decided to both go,” but figured, hey, it’s Peter’s birthday this month. Let’s give him this gift of a non-split infinitive.

Oh, how I’m sure the phrase “across the pond” annoys him for its pretentiousness, but it’s my newsletter so “across the pond” we go.

Rephrase: Hurt feelings that I didn’t cause

I've got Hi-Tide pride!

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 18:59:40 GMT

It’s both the most wonderful and the saddest day of the year. Happy half-priced chocolates day! And my condolences to all of those who are spending the first Sunday of the football off-season at a loss, wondering what to do, who to yell at.

I observe both. If you see me stalking around on a sugar high, furious that this didn’t pan out, you may want to walk away. Quickly.

You’ll think of something…

about Hi-Tide Pride

I have not attended a single high school reunion, but for some reason have decided that I will attend my 40th in the fall. I’m not sure why; I smoked enough weed in my late teens/early twenties that I truly don’t remember most of the folks in my graduating class. I’ll be the one squinting at everyone’s name tags, pretending I totally remember them.

Who are we, wild ‘n sick?
Senior, Senior ‘86!

As I’m sure everyone my age believes, 1986 wasn’t that long ago. Yet it was a different era. For example, my 10th grade honors English teacher signed my yearbook with “Jenny, When you wed the Texas oilman1, don’t forget to fly back to MBSH2 and say hi.”

I was going to write, “Can you imagine a teacher writing that today?” but then it occurred to me: In Florida? Yeah, I guess can.

Also no one had an issue with the caption under the photo of an Asian boy (and he was probably one of maybe three? Asian kids at the school) on the phone that read, “Let me see if I’ve got it right,” confirms NAME. “You want three orders of egg rolls and two orders of fried rice.”

Going to Beach High was… an experience? Is that the right word? Some students from Beach High went on to be NBA and NFL players, journalists, screenwriters, some rappers, the music producer who added the cowbell to “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper,” a Dolphins owner, and lots and lots of actors. In my class? We had the guy who received a 20-year-sentence for a $930 million Ponzi scheme (he’s been under house arrest since Covid—will he be allowed to attend the reunion? If so, what accessorizes with an ankle bracelet?). And the film director who was me-too-ed out of Hollywood and recently has had photos surface of him and Epstein. He is, though, making his big comeback by—wait for it—directing the Melania film.3

In 1985, a film came out that was amazing for how terrible it was: Band of the Hand (which is available to watch for free on Tubi). A bunch of juvenile misfits (all boys of course) are going to be prosecuted as adults unless they decide to join a new program that trains them to be good guys by teaching them how to survive in the Everglades. It features a few will-be stars, but all in all, it contains every stereotype of Miami in the ‘80s. This was the Miami Vice era. One thing I like about the film is that it shows what Miami Beach looked like in the day. People say, “You grew up in Miami/Miami Beach? How cool!” Um, not cool. Miami Beach didn’t become cool until the late ‘90s and then it stopped being cool in the mid-2010s. The second thing I like is the scene that takes place just 3 minutes and 23 seconds into the movie.

Yep. That’s Beach High.4 In all of it’s Hi-Tide Pride (our mascot, a wave, because who isn’t terrified of… water?).

The best video I found about Miami Beach in the 1980s ignores the huge drug problem and focuses on the tragedy of… being old.

A community of hundreds of thousands of aging Americans who have come to spend their last years in the Florida sun. It is a curious and sad community whose dominant feature is the specter of death. Where the laughter of children has been replaced by the ever-present wail of the ambulance siren.

Makes you wish you grew up in Miami Beach, doesn’t it! (And what is up with that soundtrack??)

Anyway, I’m sure you’ll be hearing lots of stories of Miami Beach over the next few months. Assuming of course that I can keep the specter of death away from me.

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about an update

So I was working on the knot while watching the new season of Love Is Blind (I am a reality show junkie), but I wasn’t paying attention and I apparently pulled the wrong strand because I did, indeed, make the knot bigger.

Also, Duo is still trying to guilt me. Luckily, I have a heart of coal and this image just makes me want to squish his face.

about what I’m reading

The world is a shit show so I decided I’d distract myself by reading a light and fluffy romance novel. Something to take my mind off the yuckiness out there. And reading it reminded me… I hate light and fluffy romance novels. I’m sure it’s a perfectly fine book, and I won’t yuck anyone’s yum by naming it, but it’s back to non-happily-ever-afters for me.

I spent the entire day yesterday curled on up the couch reading Jenna Blum’s newest book, a thriller called Murder Your Darlings. It had everything I love. A thriller. About writers. About writers with writers block. Grad school workshops from hell. Sex. Death. Good twists. As a bonus, Jenna and I share an agent, who is a character in the novel, complete with her delicious real-life French accent. I need to remember this is the kind of book I need to read when I want to shut out the world: one with lots of death and sex.

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about Bailey

Sometimes after I meditate I open my eyes to find this girl. Staring at me. As if she hadn’t eaten in days and would happily gnaw off my arm to sate her infinite appetite.

Until next time, make good choices.

jennifer

P.S. See that little heart button below? It helps a pal out—if you enjoy my newsletter—to click on it.

I transferred into NYU. My freshman year was spent at the University of Texas.

Miami Beach Senior High

Just checked the yearbook. He was voted “biggest flirt.” And how prescient was whoever wrote the photo captions?

Or rather it was Beach High. The school took its cue from the movie and razed it to build a much prettier Beach High.

Problems with Time

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 18:50:39 GMT

On Saturday, I taught a class on metaphors through The Loft Literary Center. The class ran from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Teachers are asked to sign on fifteen minutes before the class. Which I did.

And I waited.

And waited.

At 12:59 pm, I started to panic. Where was everyone? There were nine names on the roster. Did they all decide not to participate?

I checked the email again. And again. And again. It was that third time I realized it started at 1 pm CENTRAL time. Which is 2 pm my time. Oops. Oddly, I’d told my Tuesday night class that I was paranoid about getting the time zones wrong. But is it paranoia when it’s clearly something I do? At least I showed up an hour early, not late. And I got a bonus hour out of it, giving me the time to write this newsletter.1

You’ll think of something…

about the January

I realized—too many rows in—that I’d screwed up the count on my crochet project and I was making a mess. I decided to frog2 the project and start again. No problem. However, somewhere along the way, I seemed to have dropped the ball of yarn and it knotted. And I mean knotted.

How? Did Bailey get to it? Did I put it in the bottom of my bag and forget about it for twelve years? Did the husband sneak in and tie millions of knots into the yarn? I have no idea. This knot is completely unreasonable. The knot is endless.

I’ve been trying to unknot it for WEEKS! I don’t know why! I can simply cut it out and still use the rest of the yarn. But I am determined. Yet I must I sleepwalk and reknot what I have unknotted a la Penelope, because even though on many days I think, “I’m almost there!” the knot persists. The strands of the yarn are ripping. There’s a huge matted area that resists all machinations.

And yet, even though I have started crocheting again with a new ball of yarn, I persist in trying to undue the motherf*cking knot.

Did I mention I taught a class on metaphor yesterday? Because January was that knot.

Oddly enough, last year I made a point of saying that I like the month of January. And it’s true. I do like January. Just not this January.

I think everyone reading this understands that the first month of 2026 was a dumpster fire and a news overload for most of us. Between NPR, The New Yorker,3 Substack, and The New York Times, I’m on a constant diet of ICE atrocities, fascism, climate change weather, and general horrors. I feel a tug whenever I log on to teach my classes—the Loft is located in Minneapolis, and most of the students are from Minnesota—because I want to shout, “You are all amazing! Keep standing up against ICE!” but of course it’s completely inappropriate for me to bring up any kind of politics in my classes, as I’m not teaching political writing, and I don’t want the Loft to fire me.

I successfully completed dry January in a month that deserved nightly bourbons.

So for February, I’m going on a diet. A news diet. I’ll read my daily newsletter from the Times and listen to my NPR morning brief, but I’m going to do my damnedest to stay off the news the rest of the day. I’ll crochet red hats, listen to Springsteen, and continue what I do: writing, volunteering, drinking too much hot chocolate, donating to places I think will help make things at least a tiny bit better, and trying not to worry about the world my kids will be inheriting.

And working on my knot. That goddamn knot.

I’m not giving up on that knot.

Make of that what you will.

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about research

Moving on to a lighter subject, I had another day of “writing”4 that led to me reading a 1926 newspaper for a few hours. How do I get any words on the page with all these digressions? I have no idea.

I discovered a 1926 syndicated column called “Meditations of a Married Woman” written by Helen Rowland. Helen Rowland was considered the American Bernard Shaw of her time.

I’ve read Bernard Shaw. Mrs. Rowland, you’re no Bernard Shaw.

Shaw wrote quips about the world in general. These feel fairly apt:

If there was twenty ways of telling the truth and only one way of telling a lie, the Government would find it out. It's in the nature of governments to tell lies.

It is not that I am so clever; it is that everyone else is so stupid.

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

Rowland writes quips about men and women. Only. No passing the Bechdel test here! In short snippets, she writes about the evils of women, of men, of marriage. I’m sure at the time it was quite funny. Today it reads as the misogynistic ramblings of a Republican.

The funniest part of this is the idea of doctors’ making house calls!

Seems I was middle-aged in my twenties.

Am I the only one who has no idea how tenacious a caterpillar is?

Do I need to explain to the Gen Zers out there what a certified check is?

Is this implying that at forty, one needs a nurse?

My heart is like Pandora’s box; you do NOT want to open it and discover what’s in it

I wonder what Mrs. Rowland (who was really, it turns out, Mrs. Lutz, but I guess that’s not sexy enough for an American Bernard Shaw) would make of romantic relationships today? My hunch is she’d be cancelled before we could find out.

about Bailey

Bailey prefers it when she’s taller than the snow.

Until next time, make good choices.

jennifer

P.S. See that little heart button below? It helps a pal out—if you enjoy my newsletter—to click on it.

My sister, who keeps track of these things, is probably wondering why the hell this newsletter is going out on a Sunday anyway. For the past year, I aimed for it to go out every other week. But I was constantly thinking, Wait! Is that this week or next week? I’m not so good on the time thing. (Note: see above), so I’ve settled on sending it on the 1st and the 15th of each month.

It’s called “frogging” because you pull on that yarn and “rip it rip it.” If that’s not clear, say it out loud.

And I’m actually completely up-to-date on my New Yorker reading. Not sure how long that will last, but I’m starting off strong.

No actual writing was done.

New Year, New Complaints

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 17:12:12 GMT

If I’m particularly cranky this month, it’s because of the unfairness of Dry January. For years now, I’ve abstained from alcohol in the month of January—clearing out the rubbish from December—but my sinuses are terrible in January. I don’t sleep well and I wake up each morning with a killer headache. It seems completely unfair that I should wake up miserable NOT due to a hangover. At least let me have done something to earn that headache!

You’d think I’d tire of saying every morning to the Husband, “Did you pour a bottle of bourbon down my throat while I was sleeping?” But I don’t. I’m fun to live with like that.

You’ll think of something…

about Duolingo

Am I the only one who views the Duolingo owl (Duo) as a nemesis? He is 100% my enemy and the one creature I’d love to bring down, if one could indeed bring down an animated app logo.

I tried using Duolingo for longer than I care to think about, and my French improved not a single percent. In fact, if anything, I think I might have lost some of my knowledge of French grammar, because Duolingo would throw out random things and confuse me.

The streak thing is oppressive. I get it. That’s the point. Make you feel like you HAVE to get your day’s lesson in so you don’t break the streak. After all, you’ve done it for 198 days in a row now; wouldn’t it be terrible to go back to zero?

I was resentful of that owl and the pressure he was exerting on me to begin with. But then, he threw this into one of my lessons:

Uh, what? My relationship with Duo was clearly turning abusive. I wish I could say I quit the app then, but I kept going, convinced that one day I would speak French beautifully. J’aimerais parler français sans accent.1

But one day, when I was overloaded with novel edits, teaching, and life in general, I decided I’d had enough of Duolingo. I was done. Finished. Kaput. Someday when I have more time to learn French, I’ll just move to Paris, dammit!2

So it was no small joy when I received this email from my nemesis:

I made him sad! I’m one up on that snide, little, novel-hater. Of course he turned it around to guilt trip me:

No, it is not the day I come back! My flesh-and-blood kids are unable to guilt trip me; why does Duolingo think it will work for a corporate mascot?

So that was back in February. I kept the app on my phone, because deleting seemed like too much work. Except, last week, I noticed something strange. Duolingo appeared to be glitching at me.3

Was I breaking Duolingo because I’ve stopped using it? I’m not sure… but I hope so! This app will forever be on my home screen now, because it’s a daily reminder that I can fight the owl, and win!

about research

I was reading newspapers from the 1920s, as we are all wont to do. (Wait? You don’t read papers from a century ago?) My research ground to halt when I discovered the horoscopes. Specifically horoscopes from 1926 in the Miami News. They weren’t the horoscopes of today, giving advice by your sign, but they advised for the city (state? country? world?) as a whole. I’m not into horoscopes, and I probably would have skipped them except I noticed they advised what your child would be like if they were born the next day. Hoo-boy. (Clicking images will enlarge them for easier reading).

I think I know a few folks who were apparently born on December 7.

Is it me or does the general horoscope sound a lot like a weather forecast? If your child is born on December 8, they will be unreliable, good-for-nothing, temperamental artists born.

Loyal but dumb is what you get on December 11.

Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be artists. Skip the December 23 birth if you’d like them to be able to support themselves. (Or is “different” coded language for “gay”?)

What was one to do with this knowledge? If you didn’t like the attributes your child would have, did you just keep your legs shut and hold ‘em in there for another day? Or let them enter the world, knowing they will be a great disappointment to you? I will say one thing for the 1926 papers: They didn’t hold back.

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about what I’m teaching

Next Tuesday (January 20) will be the start of a four-week online class on dialogue that I’m teaching through the Loft Literary Center: “Say What?” Writing Dialogue that Speaks to the Reader. On Saturday, the 31, I’ll be teaching a half-day class on metaphor: Unlocking the Mystery of Metaphors. (Note times given are CST.) If you’re looking to work on your writing craft, join me.

about Bailey

Bailey is clearly not happy living as a Dolphins fan. (But then again, who is?)

It’s okay, Bailey! We’ll get to the Super Bowl next year!

Until next time, make good choices.

jennifer

P.S. See that little heart button below? It helps a pal out—if you enjoy my newsletter—to click on it.

Which is ridiculous, because English is my first and only language and I can’t even speak that properly.

You know the old joke?
What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual.
What do you call a person who speaks two languages? Bilingual.
What do you call a person who speaks one language? American.

I read that this is a tactic that Duolingo is using for all users to get them to notice the app. But please let me think this was just for me.

It's the end of the year as we know it...

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 22:21:20 GMT

You’ll think of something…

The end of the year always seems to demand some sort of wrap up, a summing up of the past year, something beyond, “It was a dumpster fire.” So I’ll give it some thought. Forgive the slap-dashery of it all. In the meantime, let’s talk…

about expired products

People joke all the time about the expired products in their parents’ homes, and my parents’ home is no exception. I always seek those products of yore out. This irritates them both to no end, and I’ve been forbidden from throwing anything out because “it’s still fine to use!” but every trip home to South Florida, I make new discoveries.

For the New Year’s party we attend every year, I bake something. I go through my parents’ cabinets beforehand to see if there’s anything useable in there. This year, I discovered the cloves. The tin is so nice! One might say “retro.” Or even “vintage.”

When the kids were here, I asked them to guess how old the cloves were. I got guesses ranging from 1986 to 2012. Well, dear readers, they were wrong. All of them.

Our family spent four years in Boulder, Colorado. We moved in 1979. We left in February 1983. That is the only time we shopped at King Soopers. So, if we’re feeling generous, the cloves are from 1982 (my parents weren’t buying spices as we were preparing to move, so 1983 is out); honestly, they’re probably from 1979.

If I need cloves, I’ll buy more. But I won’t throw these out. The tin is too cute.

P.S. Speaking of parents, it’s currently 54 degrees in South Florida. My father, Peter Brown, just turned on the heat. Because you know. 54 degrees. FRIGID!

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about 2025

So with the year ending, it’s time for that obligatory look back. Here is a very random list my life in 2025:

the movie that stayed with me: Sinners. I saw it in January. I’m still thinking about it. Yes, it’s horror, but it’s so much more.

my favorite hooking projects:

And, no, these aren’t the only things I crocheted this year.

the music I couldn’t quit: Lily Allen’s new album, “West End Girl,” was the number two most listened to album on my Spotify Wrapped this year. My friend V wasn’t sure how that happened.

best celebrity run-in: Will Shortz! I met him at a Ping Pong Tournament and he was simply the nicest, most genuine guy. We compared Wordle strategies. He said his goal was to get more answers in three guesses than in four guesses. Guess what my Wordle goal is now?

the best doggie ever: Duh.

(Licking peanut butter from inside a cereal box; noise is from house construction.)

my favorite family member: Duh.

most ridiculous app notification for a 56-year-old woman:

best review of my novel:

my least successful attempt at organizing my work-in-progress:

my favorite books (in no particular order):

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, translated by Ros Schwartz
The Displacements by Bruce Holsinger
Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
North Woods by Daniel Mason
The Daughters of Nantucket by Julie Gerstenblatt

the books I had the most fun reading:

Far from the A-List by Stephanie Burns
The Happiness Collector by Crystal King
Alan Opts Out by Courtney Maum
From Here to the Great Unknown: A Memoir by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough

the book that made me fear for the future the most:

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams

That’s about all I can come up with before I run off to a New Year’s party (the same one I’ve been going to for twenty-one years, okay twenty, if you want to be picky about that covid year). My bourbon balls are bourbon-y, my yankee swap gift is wrapped, and I’m ready to toast in 2026, with high hopes for a better year.

about Bailey

What? You want more Bailey? Well, who am I to deny you?

Wishing everyone a very happy new year. Remember, in 2026, make good choices!

jennifer

P.S. See that little heart button below? It helps a pal out—if you enjoy my newsletter—to click on it.

Feeling my age...

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 16:28:14 GMT

Thanksgiving was a lovely blur, my Miami Dolphins are actually getting their mojo back, and I finished designing this year’s family holiday card and I expect them to arrive this week. But in the meantime…

You’ll think of something…

about Spotify Wrapped

Yes, I know, everyone is posting their1 Spotify Wrapped and no one really cares about what I’m (or anyone else) is listening to. However, this year’s Wrapped gave me some serious bragging rights: I’m old.

You will respect and honor me, because I am your elder, no matter who you are (including you, my father, Peter Brown). For I have a listening age of 100 years old2.

My listening age

I have not seen anyone anywhere online who is as old as I. While I am indeed older than the Husband outside of Spotify, I do love my extra-cougar status as a woman married to a man sixty-one years younger.

The husband’s listening age

I also like that he got a kudos for his age—”You’ve got decades of good taste”—while for I, the aging crone, the best that can be said is I have history.

And that is very true. I definitely have history. If Spotify only knew….

about (yet again) AI

Something is happening to writers everywhere. We are being bombarded. With AI pitches.

Every one of these emails (from humans? from Bots? ::shrug::) details what they love about my book. These are from three different emails:

I came across your book last night, and The Whisper Sister immediately swept me into that smoky, electric world of 1920s New York, the immigrant struggle, the danger humming under the speakeasy floorboards, Minnie’s resilience, all of it.

From the struggles at Ellis Island to taking over her father’s secret speakeasy, Minnie’s journey blends resilience, family, and ambition in a way that resonates deeply with readers.

I […] loved the duality of the soda shop and the hidden speakeasy, a clever and compelling reflection of the American dream’s promise and its costs. The stakes you build around Minnie’s choices kept me invested the whole way through.

Everyone loves my book! Hell, even huge, bestselling authors love my book:

I recently read The Whisper Sister, and I was thoroughly impressed by your vivid portrayal of Prohibition-era New York and Minnie Soffer’s remarkable journey. […]
I’m James Patterson, author of the Alex Cross, Women’s Murder Club, and Michael Bennett series, among many others. […]
It’s always inspiring to connect with authors who bring such heart, authenticity, and nuance to their work. I’d love to hear more about what drew you to this period of history and how you approached balancing the challenges of Minnie’s world with her personal growth and resilience.

Wow! James Patterson! Wants to hear how I write? Happy to tell you all about it, James. I can call you James, right? After all, you love my work.

My favorite is supposedly from NYT-bestselling-author Mary Balogh, who sent “A Quick Note from a Fellow Author.” She would love “to connect and learn what sparked this project for you. What part of your writing has been living most strongly in your mind lately?” But my favorite part was her signature:

Mary Balogh
Author / Novelist (Historical Romance), Penguin Random House lists her as an author

“Lists her as an author.” Why didn’t I think of adding something like that in my signature?

Jennifer S. Brown
Author / Novelist (Historical Fiction), her children list her as an ATM

You’re never supposed to engage with these folks. And yet… I couldn’t help myself. I recently received one about my first novel, Modern Girls.

She wrote: I came across your book Modern Girls and was instantly drawn in by the compelling dual narrative of Dottie and Rose. The way you wove together a mother and daughter’s parallel, unintended pregnancies against the backdrop of 1935 New York is masterfully done—timely and timeless all at once. I particularly admired how you captured the quiet tensions of immigrant family life on the Lower East Side and the personal costs of progress, especially for women navigating limited choices.

When I didn’t respond, she wrote again, which is very common among these marketers: I wanted to follow up on the note I sent about Modern Girls. I’m still thinking about the layered strength of Dottie and Rose’s voices the way their choices echo across generations and reflect so much of the historical and emotional weight women carry.

Wow! Still thinking about my characters. How could I not respond to someone who connected so beautifully with my book? I’m curious, people feel quite divided about the choices both Rose and Dottie made. What did you think of them? Do you think it will be controversial for your groups?

She deserves serious kudos for her AI skills: Thank you so much for your thoughtful response and what a powerful question. I actually think the division around Rose and Dottie’s choices is exactly what makes Modern Girls so compelling for book clubs. It’s the kind of novel that asks readers to sit with discomfort, reflect on their own values, and consider the complex forces social, cultural, generational that shape women’s decisions. […] I can already imagine some of the conversations your characters will spark: Is agency the same across generations? What do we inherit from the women before us? How do we measure “right” or “wrong” in a world with limited options?

At this point I’m more than a little horrified at how much AI is gleaning from my novel: Ah, but you haven’t answered what you think about their decisions.

Response: You’re absolutely right I didn’t answer directly, and I appreciate you nudging me to! Personally, I found both Rose and Dottie’s choices deeply human, and that’s part of what moved me. I didn’t always agree with their decisions, but I understood them. Rose’s need to protect her family, even at the cost of her own desires, felt heartbreaking but true to her time, her values, and the sacrifices many women of her generation made quietly. And Dottie’s insistence on carving her own path, despite the risks, felt like a spark of something both rebellious and necessary.

I found myself torn between admiration and frustration often at the same time. But isn’t that what great storytelling does? It refuses to let us settle into easy judgments. Instead, it pulls us into the emotional and moral gray areas that mirror real life.

Me: I’m surprised you would say that given that Rose’s decision [deleting because it’s a spoiler].

She is sticking to her story! …You’re right: Rose’s decision does come off as self-serving in some ways, and I can absolutely see how readers might feel frustrated or even betrayed on behalf of her husband. The secrecy alone introduces a major ethical dilemma. But I also found myself wondering: was it selfishness, or desperation? Or maybe a mix of both? To me, part of what makes Rose so compelling is how she embodies that in-between space—caught between duty and the ache of what she never got to choose for herself….

At this point I’ve had enough of this, and I straight out ask: Your answers are interesting enough that I have to ask: Have you read the book?

And this is where she ‘fesses up: I appreciate your directness and you deserve an honest answer. I haven’t read Modern Girls cover to cover yet, and I should have said that sooner. What I have read excerpts, early chapters, critical reviews, and commentary gave me a strong sense of your voice, themes, and the moral complexity you crafted so well. That, combined with the feedback I’ve seen from readers in the historical fiction space, is what initially compelled me to reach out.

We read all the time about people scammed on the Internet. It’s easy to dismiss these folks with a shake of the head until you realize just how compelling a person with a smidgen of AI access can be. The Author Guild forums are filled with “Is this a scam?” questions (and, the answer 99.9% of the time is “yes”).

I don’t have an answer to any of this. But I’m becoming more creeped out by AI every day. I wonder if any other technology has felt so threatening to such a great swath of people.

about my loving children

When I asked folks on Facebook what answer I should have given, I realized the extent of my error. So I apologize to the Girl. Instead of giving reasonable, sound advice, I should have simply said, “I’m sorry, it’s my fault.”

about book launches

My friend Crystal King launched her latest book last week, The Happiness Collector, and it was not only a great event, but I truly loved this book. This is one of those books I didn’t want to dangle in front of you before you could read it. It’s got Italy, Roman gods, Covid, art, a bit of romance, and disappearing happiness. In my Goodreads review, I called it “engrossing and magical.” I highly recommend it!

about teaching

Just a quick note that I’ll be teaching two online classes in January: a four-week class called “Say What?” Writing Dialogue that Speaks to the Reader and a half-day class on Unlocking the Mystery of Metaphors. Would love to have any writers—burgeoning or experienced—join me!

about Bailey

Bailey always knows how to find the most flattering light.

Until next time, make good choices.

jennifer

P.S. See that little heart button below? It helps a pal out—if you enjoy my newsletter—to click on it.

Yes, I know: Everyone takes a singular. But “everyone has his/her/their” is too cumbersome so I’ll stick with the singular “they/their” in my writing.

Mostly because when I’m writing, I either listen to music in another language so it won’t distract me or I listen to the music of the era I’m writing about.

Seeking a Well-Made Woman

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 17:15:42 GMT

My sister arrived late last night for Thanksgiving. This morning, as I was making my second batch of cranberry sauce (I always do the one everyone loves and then a different one; this year I’ve made a spicy cranberry sauce, which I can already declare delicious), I said, “I’m a little late on my newsletter this week.”

She said, “I noticed.”

Luckily, I’m guessing she is the only one who knows when I attempt to send out this Substack, so never mind, I never said anything, and here is the newsletter exactly on time.

You’ll think of something…

about airports

Hot take: The Rochester airport is the best airport ever.

As I mentioned last time, I had an event at the Louis S. Wolk JCC of Greater Rochester. The event was fabulous and not just because my welcome bag had wine in it.

Equally fantastic, however, was the Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport. I can’t imagine how an airport that small can accommodate international flights, but whatever.

While the size is nice—easy to get through, all food options in one central location—it’s the video games that sold me. Not just video games. FREE VIDEO GAMES! Ms. Pac-Man. Space Invaders. Pong. Didn’t mind one bit how long I had to wait as I chomped chomped chomped my way through the Pac-Man maze.

The only depressing part is learning that I, a Space Invaders champ, now suck at the game.

So, if you have to be stuck at any airport, I’d suggest it be Rochester.

about personal ads

Also lovely about Rochester were the two delightful kids I chatted with on my flight to city. (By “kids” I mean early 20s; hi Matty & Sea Bass!)1 (Why do I think they could possibly be reading this? Because while we were chatting, I told them to subscribe, and they are young enough and I’m old enough that they did as they were told.)

[Side note: I looked up the motto of Rochester, and it did not disappoint. While there is no single motto, this advertising slogan for the town did stand out: “Don’t knock the ROC.” Way to stick up for yourself, Rochester!]

The kids and I were talking about significant others, and they asked what the husband does. I told them he works at an online dating site. I commented that it was ironic, because we had never used them; we are both old enough to have completely missed the dating-app era and have never had the fun of swiping2. “But,” I said, “I do have friends who met through the personal ads.”

Want to feel old? Mention personal ads to twentysomethings. They had no idea what I was talking about. When I explained it—ads in the paper as a way to meet someone— they said, “Oh, yeah, that sounds familiar.”3

Personal ads were fun! When I was a single twenty/thirtysomething in Seattle, I scoured the “I Saw U” ads in The Stranger hoping I was a missed connection, because how cool would that be? Alas, no one had ever missed me.

Anyway, the conversation made me wonder about personal ads, so I sought them out. The Public Ledger in Philadelphia was one of the first papers to regularly post personal ads4. This one is from August 16, 1854 [hover over the ads with your cursor for the text].

But then I got distracted. By the other ads in the Personals section.

In case you can’t read that:

Rebecca Davison would be desirous of seeing her husband, Samuel Davison. He will find her at the same place he got married. I have a present to give him.

WHAT? The old “I have a present to give him” trick! What’s the gift? A summons? A punch in the face? Was this a new enough idea that Samuel might think, “Oh boy! A gift for me! I must go find Rebecca immediately.” Because anyone reading that today would run so fast in the opposite direction.

This just brings up so many questions. Where has Samuel been? How long has he been gone now? He’ll find her where he got married. Was it a church? IS REBECCA A GHOST NOW, HAUNTING THE CHURCH SHE WAS MARRIED IN?? Why did Samuel leave? Was it a business trip? A mistress? A mister? A chance to join the circus? To become a dancer? To become a dancer in the circus?5

Alas, we’ll never know if Samuel returned to discover a gift (and yes, I searched for both of them for far longer than I should have and yet learned nothing about what happened to them).

But of course I had to dig deeper into the personal ads of the Public Ledger in the 1850s. Entire novels could be written from any given ad.

“[H]e will hear something concerning his son.” Not too ominous.

A one-cent reward?6 Oh my, I must hurry off to find this indentured apprentice7, although I don’t really have to hurry because the escapee “walked away, too lazy to run.”

What pray tell is “well made”? I assume he’s looking for a petite woman with huge boobs. Doesn’t matter if she’s smart or capable or responsible. She just has to be kind and have big boobs. And I love the name of the dispatch. Most letters were sent there.

I have so many more, but I’m guessing no one else finds this as fascinating as I do, so I’ll stop here.

Anyway, the point of all this diatribe is that Gen Z knows nothing about personal ads.

about Bailey

Bailey would like you to know that it’s currently Dumbo-ear season.

Until next time, make good choices.

jennifer

P.S. See that little heart button below? It helps a pal out—if you enjoy my newsletter—to click on it.

The boy is rolling his eyes, suffering second-hand embarrassment that I was talking to kids his age, but they started talking to me first! I swear! (Back me up here, guys!)

I was once hanging at a bar with a much younger friend, and she showed me her Tinder app. “That’s so cool!” I said. “Can I pick out some guys for you?” She allowed it so I started swiping to the right, swiping to the left. Messages started popping up, all sorts of booty calls. “What is up with this? Are men only looking for one-night stands? No relationships on Tinder?” She said, “Well, you are swiping at 11:30 p.m. on a Saturday night.” I quickly handed the phone back to her and that was my last experience with a dating app.

Oddly enough, when I mentioned there was a song—”Pina Colada”—about a personal ad the 70s, they had not only heard of it, but could even sing a few lines. So that messed with my head because they know “Pina Colada” but not personal ads? And, yes, I know the song is actually called “Escape.” But who the heck ever refers to it as “Escape”?

Or so Wikipedia tells me.

Yes, yes, he’s about 75 years too early and in Southern Florida, but how cool would this be?

According the web, this is equivalent to about 42 cents today.

I checked; it’s not a euphemism for an enslaved person. It was a contract.

Torn Between Two Lovers

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 21:53:35 GMT

Bailey and I survived Halloween. Not happily, but we’re still here. I have a much better relationship with the month of November so you can expect 2.4 percent less snark.

But for now…

You’ll think of something…

about flying

I’m going to be part of a fiction panel at the Louis S. Wolk JCC in Rochester, NY. (Do you live in the area? You can buy a ticket here.) I’m especially looking forward to it because my former agent, Laney Katz Becker, has written a novel and she’ll be on the panel with me.

But this isn’t about the panel. This is about getting to the panel.

Rochester is about a six-hour drive from where I live, although with all the bathroom breaks I need, it’s more like eight hours. So I’m flying. Stopping in Newark.

My 9 a.m. flight gets into Newark about 10:30 and into Rochester at close to 1 p.m.

Easy breezy.

Except—you guessed it—that lovely 9 a.m. flight was canceled so I’m on a 6:02 a.m. flight. Meaning I have to leave my house at 4 a.m.

I am not a 4 a.m. kind of gal.

And while I’m now supposed to get into Rochester close to 11 a.m., have you seen what’s happening at Newark Airport?

Luckily I’m flying in the day before the panel so unless the wait for takeoff is more than 20 hours, I’ll get there on time. Cranky, but on time.

about reading

Luckily, if I’m stuck on the plane, I’m in the middle of a book that I’m loving, The Daughters of Nantucket by Julie Gerstenblatt. I’ve wanted to share more of what I’m reading, but lately 80 percent of it has been books that are in draft form (critiquing for friends) or advanced copies (and I don’t want to taunt you with something you won’t be able to read for months). But this is an actual paperback book (bought from my favorite indie bookstore) that I hold in hands and turn physical pages to read. I haven’t finished it, but the first half is engaging enough that I feel safe calling this book a winner. It’s about three women—the financially distressed wife of a whaler, a pregnant free Black woman, and a woman who runs the Atheneum by day and is an astronomer by night—and their lives just before and after the Nantucket Fire of 1896.

I’d like to have a clever segue from 19th century Nantucket to my next topic, but nothing is coming to mind, so…

about bigamy

I’ve been thinking a lot about bigamy, as one does. What? Not you? You’re missing out. Am I researching for a novel? Or plotting my second wedding? I guess folks will just have to wait to find out. (If it’s the latter, I’ll be registering at Tiffany’s.)

You may be bigamist, but damn, you’re still sexy!

Florida law states:

“When a wife is an innocent victim of the husband’s wrong, then the court may allow permanent alimony and attorneys’ fees on equitable principles as well as under Section 65.08, Florida Statutes.” Burger v. Burger, 166 So.2d 433, 436 (Fla. 1964)

Because, you know. A woman could never be a bigamist.1

The research, however, disputes this. Men and women equally like to lead two lives. When trying to decide what to share with you, I became frustrated because bigamy stories are all SO GOOD.

There was the itinerant preacher who seemed to get hitched at every stop. (The Miami Evening Record, Tue, Feb 05, 1907)

And there’s the woman who had men falling at her feet (The Miami News, Wed, Sep 20, 1905)

Disappointingly, when I fact checked this in the New York Times, I discovered it was only three husbands and she was none too concerned about her arrest. (September 9, 1905)

The reporter for this article (appearing in the The Miami News, June 20, 1906) was clearly shocked to find that bigamists don’t have to have movie-star good looks.

Finally, this woman was acquitted, but still has some regrets. (The Miami Evening Record, Mon, May 09, 1904)

In this case, I think I side with Kraft.

Meanwhile, this has been playing through my head nonstop and now it’ll be your earworm. You’re welcome!

about Bailey

I think we can officially declare it autumn.

That’s it for me today. Until next time, make good choices.

jennifer

P.S. See that little heart button below? It helps a pal out—if you enjoy my newsletter—to click on it.

Note: Modern laws do allow for the possibility of a female bigamist, but what’s the fun in that? I mean I understand male bigamists—women are great!—but two husbands? I think one is plenty.