five good things

1. Winter really started punching me in the kidneys this week so I am fighting back with my favorite 90s love song Pandora station, many consecutive episodes of When Calls the Heart on Netflix, and plans to get out of town in a couple of weeks when my revision is done. This happens every year around this time, it always surprises me and feels a little bit unfair, and it always passes. That’s the part of it that is good.

2. Catastrophe, which I finally watched on Amazon and which was so much funnier than I thought it would be for some reason, and which also gave me the warm fuzzies in the best possible way. Just great and romantic and also not that big of a commitment (six episodes!) while still feeling very satisfying. Go do it.

3. Deb’s Spaghetti Pie which is delicious and easy and, along with a green salad and a glass of wine, will make you feel sophisticated as all hell even if you are eating it in your pajamas. I would know.

4. I’m reading the fourth Outlander book, Drums of Autumn. Real talk: this book almost didn’t make it on the list this week, and I’m still not sure if it’s the right thing to mention it or not, because this whole series does a lot of really awful, egregious shit when it comes to race and sexuality, and among other purposes Five Good Things is a rec list of sorts and I don’t recommend these books, really? But it would be a lie to say I don’t like the love story and the descriptions of food and the dresses and the adventures, and I think it is important to own the problematic shit you enjoy even when you know and want to do better, and also to recognize my own privilege in finding these 50 page scenes of log cabin building soothing when I know a lot of other people would experience them differently. I don’t know. I would love to talk about this more with you guys, but in the meantime: onto the list it goes.

5. Last night I ate s’mores but instead of graham crackers it was Oreos and instead of a chocolate bar it was melted peanut butter. GOD BLESS AMERICA.