Mimosa

To lead a full, busy life is exhausting. I don’t necessarily recommend it. If you can remove yourself to the great heights of a mountain and live simply with an endless supply of books and maybe old records, then go do that. Maybe you’ll have a view of a highway with faint lights and the occasional airplane above you. Maybe lost hikers will run into you, ask for shelter, and you give it. That is your only conversation for months, in which they relay the great world below to you, in which they learn what the meaning of life is from you.

I’m just saying.

On Saturdays instead of heading to Molasses Books to sit and read, I’ve instead been going to doctor’s appointments or doing massive loads of laundry. Today I’m off to Macy’s to return WORK TROUSERS, my friends, for something that fits better. I’m going to the exact part of town I work at five days a week, on my day off, in order to better prepare myself for work.

This is alarming. So, here’s a list of things that have kept me a happy human lately:

IKEA MONKEY

Friends, the world has provided us with ample opportunity for levitas. Par example, if not for the IKEA monkey (“Darwin”), how would I survive rough moments at work? I just think, okay, somewhere a monkey in a fabulous jacket thought he was going to go shopping at IKEA:

It’s that simple. If you ever wondered for a minute if we evolved from monkeys, let’s just hope, for your sake, that you recognize the joy in a world where we just might have.

BRUNCH

Historically speaking, human beings, upon being introduced to brunch, will never cease to shut up about brunch. It becomes part of a cultural identity, for both the functioning alcoholic and the impassioned foodie and all who fall between.

I hadn’t gone to brunch for quite a while when my friend Gaelan invited me to go with another friend at Harefield Road. It was like the world had “suddenly turned, turned color” as Sylvia Plath said in that one bizarrely happy poem of hers. Brunch creates more brunch; I have a brunching plan in place for Sunday with my college friend JuJu, whose hair is a mass of curls that I plan on hiding things in like pencils and birds. It’s going to be excellent. We’re going to brunch! I’ll probably put straws in her hair!!!

FRIENDS

I was asking my Hindu coworker about the threads he wears on his wrist, and he said, “They are my holy threads,” as a means of explanation. The next day I found my matching friendship bracelet I bought some time ago for my friend Sarah; she had also bought me one in return, and there we go. These are my holy threads, I thought, when I put them on, and I’ve been wearing them since.

Not to wax poetic about all the LADIES in my life who I just adore endlessly, but I will say this: the more my life mirrors the Golden Girls, the happier I am. It’s just that simple.

NINA SIMONE

I guess I’m becoming a grown-up because I listen to Nina Simone all the time now, but what better anthem is there than this?

BEYONCE

Don’t worry. I also listen to this a lot on my way to work so that by the time I arrive I’m flipping my hair and not taking shit:

This video is always going to be the most amazing display of nonviolence in music video form ever.

Everything I ever learned about glaring someone down who has something against you I think I learned from Beyonce. This is why I now use Beyonce as a verb, which I’ve determined means to “spiritually flip one’s hair at one’s aggressor.”

I will let you determine what that means. That’s all for now. Happy holidays, friends, foes, and the terribly ambivalent!

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