Molly
After hitting snooze a bunch, I do finally wake up at around 8:45. I have a three-hour workday from home, so I check my email and respond to one from my boss about my mid-year performance review. I notice a meeting got canceled, so I cancel a different meeting. I’m Jewish and even so—I take my Christmas time off very seriously. Who actually wants to meet with me to talk about higher ed on today of all days…there were so many other days to do so this whole entire year….
I check my phone and finalize plans to get breakfast on with Sammy on Thursday. She’s one of my best friends from college and will be in town for Christmas with her girlfriend Nicole, who I went to high school with. Nicole and I were actually captains of the softball team with my high school best friend, Ella our junior year and Nicole’s senior year. Sammy and Nicole met on Hinge when Sammy and I were living together in 2020 or 2021. My mom keeps saying things like, “Molly! You’re the hinge!” and I have to remind her that the app doesn’t work like that.
I look out my north-facing bedroom window and see snow on the ground. This makes me happy.
Snowy South Philly Christmas Eve
***
I get back into bed after brushing my teeth and washing my face. To get back to my bedroom I have to walk through the kitchen, where I ignore the sink full of dirty dishes. I open the blinds of the window right next to my bed and feel grateful for my view and all of the natural light in my apartment.
The last time I wrote an entry for this project, I was living in a house with three roommates. Now I live in an apartment alone. Whenever I feel like I’ve accomplished nothing in my life, I remind myself of my teenage desire for this exact situation: an apartment to myself with plenty of windows.
There was a song I listened to a lot as a teen called “Interference Fits” by Perfect Pussy and it goes, “I never wanted any children/just a nice apartment with open air/and big windows and all the flowers.” I’ve had a difficult time conceptualizing my future for as long as I can remember. This scene always felt like an attainable and deeply desirable goal. I never wanted any children until recently. Now I’ve come around to the idea that I could be open to children. I’ve just never met anyone I’d want to make that commitment with, so it’s always been difficult to envision. I am aware that I am 27 and these sorts of things—pregnancy things—are on a time crunch. And I have endometriosis. Sometimes I have a bad habit of thinking that the rules don’t apply to me…
***
I hear the birds but I can’t see them. I say good morning to the birds every day. I call it “greeting the council.” There is only one member in attendance this morning. I say hello.
All is quiet except for the church bells ringing and this moment feels so perfect that I want to cry. I notice how I haven’t felt moved to cry recently and this feels both good and bad. I have always been a crier. I have always mourned the loss of a moment as it’s still happening.
***
The lotion in question
I take my phone off of Do Not Disturb and apply to my elbow pits the stick lotion that I bought during the recent 20% off Sephora sale. My eczema has been horrible this winter and the lotion is fragrance free and approved by the “Eczema Board,” which I imagine to be comprised of sentient flakes of skin. The product reminds me of the solid lotions Lush sells. I worked at a Lush location at a mall in New Jersey from 2019-2020 and feel weirdly nostalgic for the job around Christmastime, even though I only got paid $11.25 an hour.
My laser and me
I look at my work email and use some laser with blue and red light that’s supposed to remove the bacteria on my face. Ideally it will rid me of my chin zits.
While holding the laser to my face, I play this game that I’m embarrassingly obsessed with right now called Fruit Merge. In order to merge the fruits, you tap the screen to drop the fruit into the box, merging like fruits, and then they combine to make a bigger fruit. Yesterday I was one of only five people working in the office and I’m pretty sure my boss’s boss saw me playing Fruit Merge on my computer. Now, I am playing while watching Doechii’s Tiny Desk Concert. I love her whole thing—her talent, her attention to detail. I get goosebumps.
This Doechii Tiny Desk kind of reminds me of how it felt to listen to Chance the Rapper’s Acid Rap mixtape in 2013, which is a huge compliment. Both projects have this insanely high energy and clear vision. I wonder what the Acid Rap era would have been like if TikTok existed in 2013…I lose Fruit Merge and look at the pile of dirty laundry in the hamper across the room. There is snow on the ground and I decide that I will not be walking to the laundromat in these conditions.
***
Since this is technically my first day of Christmas break, I decide that it’s okay to be indulgent and lazy. It is 10 am and I am still in bed and watching influencer vlogmas videos. For the uninitiated, vlogmas is a December YouTube tradition where influencers vlog every single day until Christmas. I fucking love this shit. I watch a washed-up beauty influencer’s PR haul. She is sent thousands of dollars of free stuff and it makes me depressed. I am always saying how I would be such a good influencer if I wasn’t morally against selling unnecessary things to impressionable teenage girls. Obviously, I did this exact thing when I worked at Lush, but influencers do it on a much larger scale so I don’t feel too bad about it.
Ella, Lauren, and I unsuccessfully try to make plans to hang out this week. Both friends are very busy and the only day Lauren is free is the same day I have my plans with Sammy. Ava and I text about her courtroom artist aunt making Luigi Mangione (objectively hot) look ugly.
***
I email Jena some materials so she can write me a letter of recommendation. I send requests to my other recommenders through Interfolio and say a little prayer that they don’t have their email notifications on today. It is 11:20 am and I am finally hungry. I put some pants on and go to make brunch. I want eggs but my one pan is dirty, so I guess I will do dishes with breakfast as a reward. I put on an NTS radio show and then put on my dishwashing gloves. The gloves have been a gamechanger for my eczema. I wonder if the Eczema Board has anything official to say about this.
I do most of the dishes, at least the ones I need in order to fry myself an egg. I look up Acme’s hours because I only have one egg and need some more because I want to try making a new babka recipe later. Ava asked me to make babka for her Hanukkah party later this week and I can’t just make a new recipe the day of! I’ve learned that lesson the hard way before.
My mom got this new recipe from a Lubavitch cooking class she attended a few weeks ago and passed along to me. The recipe intrigues me because it requires so much less work than the other recipes I’ve made in the past. Working with butter is my least favorite part of baking, so I am excited that this one uses oil to keep the recipe parve.
I finally sit down to eat at 11:53.
Sort of a fridge clean out breakfast
***
At 12:10 I get back in bed (my “work day” is officially over) to drink my coffee, finish making a balaclava I’ve been crocheting, and watch season 10 of Top Chef. I got an IUD earlier this month and am experiencing cramps. I continue to watch season 10 of Top Chef.
It is an hour later and the balaclava looks so messed up, so I put it down in defeat. Maybe I can resurrect it later. My cramping continues. It is finally time to go to Acme to procure babka ingredients.
***
On my way to Acme, I ignore a call from Nick. I’ll call him back later. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people are on the phone in highly populated public places, like the grocery store. I find it rude when people act like they’re more important than other people in public spaces. This also includes stopping at the top of an escalator when people are behind you and also trying to get off the escalator and dropping down in the middle of a walkway to tie your shoes instead of just moving to the side.
I’m a staunch Acme hater. The vibes there are just bad. The food is bad and expensive. I shop there most of the time.
In the dairy aisle, a short older woman asks me to grab her preferred milk from the top shelf of the refrigerator. This moment feels sweet and quaint. I am 5’7 which I guess is tall for a woman, but I have no concept of just how tall I am until I stand next to this woman to grab the milk for her. There is no way she is even 5 feet tall. I marvel at this and immediately move on from it as I gather the rest of the dairy products on my list and go to check out.
***
At around 3:30 I sit down for a late lunch and late coffee, which is so bad, so so bad I know but I really strongly felt like if I didn’t make myself a peppermint mocha with my new zero sugar peppermint mocha creamer I would die!!!
Today’s theme
Please don’t judge my bean lunch
***
Doing dishes again…
***
Once I am finished doing the dishes, I think that I should use this energy and momentum to clean my bathroom, so I do. I call Nick and start with the mirror. He does not pick up. A few minutes later he returns my call while I am scrubbing the toilet. I got used to cleaning bathrooms when I worked a barista job I hated. I would always volunteer to clean the bathroom so I could get out from behind the counter and away from my coworkers.
Nick and I chat about how he’d love Mad Men, how it’s stupid and hilarious that he makes more money than me working at his old high school, and the pros and cons of possibly attending DC’s “Matzo Ball” event so that he can meet a Jewish wife (Nick is not Jewish). We definitely talked about me too, but I don’t remember those parts of the conversation.
After about 40 minutes we hang up as I get a text in the family chat from Rusty letting us know that his next-door neighbor invited him over for Christmas dinner. Then my dad texts me individually telling me that he got me hot chocolate, tinned fish, and pate (you can either call this a Slavic diet or a house cat diet, probably) and that I can bring my laundry to do at my parents’ house tomorrow. Thank god.
I stopped spelling god like “G-d” a long time ago, but I find it very sweet when Jewish people my age, who I know for a fact don’t care that much about being in god’s good graces, still spell it that way.
***
I’m watching a Remi Cruz vlog and thinking about what to do for dinner later. She gives her fiancé a bidet for Christmas. I switch back to Top Chef.
***
Best non-alcoholic bev
It’s 6:15 and I’m making cutlets for dinner. The thin-sliced chicken breast I bought isn’t thin enough, but I’d actually rather die than do more work than cutlets already require, so I just leave them as-is and go through the hell that is a three-step flour/egg/panko dredge. I sip a phony negroni and get to work. For whatever reason, that process does not feel like hell this time and I am very proud of how the cutlets turn out—the breading is actually sticking to the chicken and is not gummy. I think it’s because I did the lightest slightest flour coat ever.
The chicken mistake
At 6:45 I sit down to eat my cutlet and salad. I cut into the chicken and realize it’s not fully cooked, so I put the oil back on the heat and fry the exposed cut edges to cook the chicken through. I post about this on Instagram stories and Julie, a professional chef, replies and says that it’s what the pros do. I let the refried cutlet rest on some paper towel and eat a different one. I send a photo to the family chat and they all say nice things about how good my chicken looks.
My beautiful dinner
***
Due to my afternoon coffee, I am wide awake and start making my trial babka at 7:15. I know I’m gonna be in for a long night. The dough is stupidly easy and I’m thrilled! I put the dough in a Ziploc bag to proof in the fridge while I do the dishes for the third time today. Rennia asked for a countertop mini dishwasher for Christmas, so I’m excited to see how she likes it, and if she does, I’ll definitely be buying myself one. I can’t live like this!
Yet another fun drink….
I’m not a podcast person, but the only one I listen to is called Gastropod, which is about the science and history of food. While doing the dishes, I listen to an episode about washing dishes and learn that a woman invented the dishwasher because she hated that her maids never got the dishes clean enough and often broke them. She could have probably just done the dishes herself, but ultimately, I am pleased with her invention and covet one of my own.
I put on the electric kettle to make peppermint hot chocolate and pour my cooled frying oil into a plastic Tupperware to dispose of later. I drink my hot chocolate, shower, and watch Top Chef while I wait for my babka dough to proof.
***
I love when delicious recipes evoke not so delicious things for example wet sand
Pre-crumble topping, pre-bake
At 11:08, I finally put the dough in the oven. I forgot to take a picture of the baking instructions on my mom’s recipe the last time I was home, so I’m kind of going off of other recipes and vibes. The bread goes into the oven at 350 for 45 minutes but I’ll start checking for doneness at 40 minutes.
In the meantime, I sit on my kitchen floor and text Ava about her spreadsheet addiction while watching early “what I got for Christmas” hauls on Tiktok from rich high schoolers whose families celebrate Christmas early because they’re going to Aruba or whatever on Christmas day. Everyone got lots of Lululemon this year.
It’s 11:54, I take the babka out of the oven, put it on my counter to cool overnight, go into my bedroom (which is inches away from my oven) and toss and turn until the caffeine and sugar in my system wears off. And to all a good night.
My beautiful daughter
My beautiful daughter’s guts
