Jaime

I wake up at 4:58 and fight the urge to just be awake now, because I’m trying to readjust myself to daylight savings time, which is always harder for me than I think it should be. I eventually convince myself to drift halfway back to sleep until almost 7. I dreamt that all the pipes under the sink in my upstairs bathroom mysteriously disappeared and water was pouring everywhere. I should’ve just stayed up at 5.

A few weeks ago, I thought that I’d try to make today interesting. But between last week’s election results and the anxiety of the impending holidays, I am pretty much a husk.

It has just gotten cold, which I intellectually understand is what should be happening, but I resent it anyway. I pull yesterday’s sweatshirt and my yoga leggings off the top of my dresser and put my feet into my slippers. I take the glass of water I brought upstairs last night and rest it on the flat top of the banister while I use the bathroom and brush my teeth. I shut the windows in Hugo’s room before I go downstairs. It’s cold in here, I should have thought of this last night.

Since it’s been warm enough for iced coffee up until now, I have cold brew in the fridge, but it’s 62 degrees inside, so I heat up a splash in the microwave. I have the same thought I have pretty much every morning, which is, “oh yeah, that’s the stuff.” Otherwise, I am very normal about coffee.

I open my laptop and log some responses for a work project. I get the notion that, while I’m already doing this, I could make folders to log scheduled future check-ins, and so I do that in one go to save my colleague and I a very small amount of time in the future. I wonder in this moment if the reason I tend to do things like this in advance is a form of anxiety or self-care, but decide not to dwell on it, because a real argument in either direction feels self-pitying.

It’s payday, so I log into my credit union’s website to make sure that everything that’s supposed to have happened did. There is no reason why it wouldn’t have, I’m just an anxious person. Payday is also a reminder that I’ve been meaning to set up a monthly recurring donation to the Abortion Liberation Fund of PA instead of just throwing them some money when I’m feeling flush and think of it or when they have an emergency funding ask.

I have been focusing my capacity to ingest news on reading the Inquirer (I subscribed when UArts declared it was closing at 6pm on a Friday this past spring, which was very on-brand for the institution for which I took out my student loans) and not other people (however rightfully) panicking on social media. This does not necessarily make me feel better, especially with headlines like, “Penn says it has found more human remains from the MOVE bombing at its museum,” or seeing that a representative of the 76ers owners said “potentially shame on us for not starting low and negotiating up,” about the already skimpy community benefits agreement in the proposed arena deal, which does not seem to be beneficial to anyone but the people who own the basketball team and the mayor’s ego. But there’s a sliver of good news – City Council voted to rename the street I live on today.

I text my brother that I learned from an article about a stolen memorial plaque that there used to be a Roy Rogers at the corner of Broad and Snyder. Once upon time, you could get a holster of fries on the way to the vestments store.

Mark generally wakes up after me and likes to go for a walk shortly thereafter, which, if I do not get up before the sun, is when I do yoga. As a non-athletic person who suffered through elementary school gym class, I don’t like to be perceived while exercising, which I suppose I could examine, but I think just doing the yoga is enough work on this front for the time being.

My brother texts back and asks when he should defrost the cupcakes I made for my nephew’s third birthday party this weekend. I tell him around noon on Friday if he wants to frost them Friday night, which I hope is the correct answer.

I have to sit through a 90-minute workshop at 10, so I put on Matt Berry’s Kill the Wolf, which I’ve had on pretty steady rotation lately and make myself some oatmeal. I’m still cold, so I preheat the oven and pull some cookie dough from the freezer. I throw some flaky salt on top and put them in the oven while I eat my oats.

While I’m in the workshop, I clean the bathroom and throw some towels in the laundry. Once it’s over, I put the clean laundry in the dryer and send some emails. Some days, I think about lunch in advance. Today is not one of those days, so I make a little plate of scraps.

I text with Deb in New York about her upcoming move to a new apartment. I text with Alanna about work. My brother texts to ask if I’m in a meeting. I say “no” which means that he and my niece can Facetime me. She says “sandwich” and “owl” and “bunny” and most frequently “no,” because she’d prefer if I ate her lunchtime strawberry through the phone. My brother moved to the suburbs in December, so I have spent a lot more time on facetime with his children in the last year. They are adorable and smart and chaotic and funny and I would die for them.

I try to go for a walk every weekday, whether that means getting to the office or running errands or doing the loop at Gray’s Ferry Crescent. I went to the Schuylkill yesterday, so today I decide to go knock around Grocery Outlet. I walk under the railroad bridge out of Gray’s Ferry. Point Breeze is littered with flyers announcing community meetings about a twice a week trash collections program. I think one way to “help Mayor Parker make Philadelphia the safest, cleanest, greenest big city in the nation” might be to avoid dumping a bunch of loose paper all over the ground, but no one asked me.

Grocery Outlet is like going to Ross Dress for Less, but for food. You probably aren’t going to find the exact thing you need, but the options can be intriguing. Mark’s 10-year-old eats as if he is growing (go figure) so I end up getting a lot of Hugo supplies here. This time, it’s some Skippy because he won’t eat the hippie peanut butter I otherwise buy, Nutella, which is a necessary component of his daily waffle, some weird Poptarts, a couple random snacks, and a case of seltzer.

While I’m on Oregon Ave., I swing by Aldi to see if they have any wrapping paper I can use for my nephew’s birthday presents (I went a little nuts buying vintage Sesame Street books on Thriftbooks, so this is also what my niece will get when she turns two in May), but things are already in Christmas mode. When I briefly cut through Girard Estates on my way home, there’s no flyer litter.

When I get home, it’s like 4pm, and I still haven’t showered, so I do that. I’m so cold, so I put on a full sweatsuit, socks and slippers, and a fleece cardigan. I have a personal rule that I can’t turn the heat on before Thanksgiving, which though completely arbitrary, I am compelled to follow. I was raised Catholic by a person with an untreated personality disorder, so all of my magical thinking is punishment-based.

Mark and I watch the absolute stupidest (compliment) network TV show going right now, The Irrational and then the most recent episode of Doctor Odyssey, a television show where Pacey is the sexy doctor on a cruise ship. I would NEVER go on a cruise. I always need to know that I’ll be able to leave a place. But I will watch a ridiculous television show set on a cruise ship. This episode wraps up the central story ten minutes early in order to lure the three main characters into a “good threesome” before cutting immediately to the boilerplate “if you or someone you know is suffering, please call the suicide hotline” text, because a character in the episode died by suicide. I laugh SO HARD at transition.

I had big plans to make myself an actual dinner, but it’s after 6:30 and I’ve forgotten about it. I end up heating up some leftover pizza from last weekend in the air fryer. I greatly underestimate the amount of time I need to cook it, take a totally frozen bite of one of the slices, and then cook it for four more minutes while I eat some steamed broccoli while impatiently staring at the machine. We watch the most recent episode of Somebody Somewhere, because I can also watch good television.

Mark’s not feeling well, so he goes up to bed early. I remember the cookies I made earlier and have one with a cup of tea and watch a few episodes of The Comeback. I make it to ten o’clock without falling asleep on the couch, which, for me in the last couple of weeks, is an accomplishment.

Jaime Fountaine was raised by “wolves.” She is the author of Manhunt (Mason Jar Press, 2019). She’s on Instagram at @jaimefountaine.