Let Me Eat Cake!

Stress, plums, flies and other enemies

Aug 29, 2024

Good morning and welcome to the week I sent my first born daughter off to college. It’s fine, I’m fine, she’s fine, we’re all fine.

It’s great that every time I hit a new milestone of aging that I am TOTALLY, visibly, spiritually coping with, all my hair starts to fall out. Just a super special indication that my anxiety suppressing skills, while strong, will always eventually cascade either to the uterus, or the top of the scalp, and make themselves known to me. Thanks for jumping ship, you follicular COWARDS.

This week’s excellent Choice Words features Very Busy Human Jon Lovett, speaking to me from the DNC, which was last week, but feels like it happened three months ago.

We spoke about many terribly interesting matters–including his choice to offer himself up as a contestant on Survivor, yes, Survivor. I loved hearing him articulate the thinking behind that decision, and related to his desire for risk - or surrender to an experience with no guaranteed outcome, and no promise of dignity.

I personally was once asked to participate in a reality show rooted in grueling 24/7 physical fitness challenges? Including falling backwards out of a helicopter into…the churning ocean. Hard no from me, even as I sit at my computer pretending to relish the thought of taking risks. I told my friends and they laughed until tears squirted from their eyes imagining me, on purpose, doing athletic things. Knowing that my head has its own gravitational pull, its own force field if you will, that pulls in any or all flying objects, especially if observant teenagers are nearby.

Lemme put it this way: once I was riding a bus and saw someone on the street throw their plum at the bus. Just as I was thinking ‘did someone just throw their plum at this vehicle?’ that plum snaked its way down through the vent at the top of the bus, reared up, and hit me squarely in the face. So yeah. No amount of love or money is going to get me on TV doing chin ups in cargo pants and a sports bra, but Jon I will be rooting you on from the sidelines!

Today in all of my mom chore drives I saw an RFK Jr. for President sign and I just thought… interesting. After all this. After the brain worm, and the lengths he will go for bear meat… and now this latest revelation. If you haven’t already read it and don’t plan to - the man chainsawed the head off a dead whale and strapped it to the roof of his car to drive it five hours home from the beach to Westchester. He likes to fondle skulls because he is a man of science, she said, with maximum sarcasm.

How many ways can the universe say “this man should not be president of America.” What sign are you looking for, Sir? I get that you are mad about vaccines or whatnot but honestly you think… that this is the best course of action? Lol ok.

Speaking briefly of worms, it has been fun to watch Donald Trump initiate the process of wriggling out of the scheduled September debate, which we all knew he would do.

Has anyone ever NOT wanted to be President as hard as him? Don’t get me wrong, he wants to win, he just doesn’t want to be president. Look I get it, it’s hard. Everybody asks you questions all the time, and they make you wake up earlier than you want to, and when you get mad at them and throw ketchup bottles at them, they leak it out and that is embarrassing. Not to mention all these gross actual people want to touch you all the time and crap, and you have to pretend to care about all of their real people problems, many of which you have never even heard about before.

Gossip alert. Did I ever tell you about the time I interviewed some of his ex-staff from Mar-A-Lago and they told me that he is so grossed out by houseflies but ALSO likes to eat outside on his balcony? Such that if they knew he was coming, they would hang up dozens of sticky fly catchers on the balcony to hopefully reduce the overall fly population, however briefly. Then when he was pulling in, they would run around pulling them all down so that he could have a mostly fly free lunch. If a fly came, he would get mad at them. This is the type of President we could end up with again if we are not DILIGENT. A blithering idiot who is afraid of houseflies and who has the means to believe that HIS outdoors could naturally be housefly free. Ugh. Puke.

I think it would suit him much better personally if he could just remain perpetually aggrieved, which obviously he already is, and that it will be very dangerous and terrible for us either way! It’s hard to stay quite so aggrieved when you yourself are in charge. People are all “what should we do about this pandemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people?” and you are all “Can’t talk now! Look at me! I am too macho to wear a mask!” Fun stuff.

I am going to get a lawn sign that states “Kamala, obviously” and enjoy looking at it each time I roll up the driveway. WHILE MY FRANTIC STAFF PULLS DOWN ALL THE STICKY FLY CATCHER TAPE. Jkjk I do not have staff and *I* am the fly catcher around here. Menacing.

And now I shall spend two hours making this beautiful bundt cake, because I need a snack, and I miss my kid, and now require cake. I have already made it… (counts on fingers) three times so far this summer and it is perfection. Best with fresh peaches, or juicy berries, or in your hand on the way from one room to another, and then another piece in the other hand on the way back.