Embarrassing Confessions

Taking my inventory

Hello hello hello, welcome back to Crone Life, my newsletter about accustoming oneself to middle age. Are you wondering if you’ll ever be able to retire? Come sit by me.

Very slight smirk here

You’re only as sick as your secrets, they say, so in an attempt to heal, here are some of mine. But these are also things I don’t want to feel defensive about. It’s not just me, right? I’m only a human, and fallible.¹

1. I am embarrassingly low energy. Left to myself, I will nap and snack and read books and if I feel intentional enough, watch something (but this also takes too much energy, because of having to choose). I am probably never going to initiate anything, except by accident.

2. Even though I try to eat healthily, I am technically obese, which is very hard to admit.

3. I’m smarter and better educated than a lot of people, and this is usually not that much of a problem, because I like to help, but sometimes I get fed up, especially with men who want to explain things. Women are somehow easier to cope with.

4. I’m a homebody (goes with #1) but not the kind who has a perfectly appointed home. Leading to

5. I’m really quite untidy and sloppy, not to mention disorganized. Or at least I think I am (but I also might be a perfectionist).

6. I don’t care about crafts, or tablescapes, or hand-lettered menus. Well, I appreciate them and occasionally wonder why I seldom attempt them. But then I see a headline like “Make pumpkin spice candles in yogurt jars!” and think, nope.

7. I’m always broke.

8. I love science-fiction and fantasy novels. The more aliens and spaceships and witches and intrepid heroines, the better.²

9. I prefer public transit to cars. I feel guilty that I’m on my third car in eight years (though only the first one was my fault). But I also killed my dad’s 1986 diesel Jetta because nobody told me I needed to change the oil regularly.

10. I don’t want to be “chic.” In fact, I refuse.

11. I have low self-esteem and I don’t always know how to overcome it. Sometimes I’m a rockstar, other times I’m barely present.

12. I want to be there for you, but I can’t always. This might be self-preservation, but it also worry it might mean I’m a terrible friend.

13. I don’t like coffee, or dogs, or peanut butter. Well, dogs are OK—if they belong to other people and behave themselves appropriately.

14. I love cats! Unequivocally. At times, my personal cat collection has numbered in the low double digits.

15. I’m not sentimental. I’m pragmatic. I have a cold eye and a heart of stone.

Glad to get those off my chest!

In my defense, I am not mean, at least not deliberately.

What’s happening in my life

I’m reading, I’m writing, I’m sleeping, I’m eating, I’m going to work. I spoke with a fiduciary money management type person and he reassured me that I will not be destitute in my old age, which was a surprise (see #7 above). If all goes well, I will have planted 40 daffodil bulbs by the time you read this.³ I also neatened up my desk and threw out some useless papers and clothing I will never wear again. I transferred my sweaters from storage to ready to wear. Maybe I will even delete some of the many unused apps on my phone.

I feel like such a grownup!

What’s happening in the world

Our president sucks. He is a terrible person and we are all at his mercy. I am so upset he has torn down part of the White House, a place I never think about otherwise, and we are powerless to stop him. I’m also upset about the other things, but the thought that we’re going to be stuck with his ugly buildings forever really irks me. I can ignore the Trump Tower but the Trump Ballroom is a step too far.

I accidentally⁴ watched a clip of PHegs addressing his unnecessary mass meeting and realized how obviously out of his element he is. I am no longer concerned about the generals taking him seriously. Nobody could take that seriously.

JD Vance has earned my ire by declaring people can’t really be American citizens unless their ancestors fought in the Civil War. I think it’s a dog whistle, since he didn’t specify which side those ancestors may have fought on. Also I think he doesn’t feel being married to a daughter of immigrants and fathering ethnically mixed children is a sign of hypocrisy because, in his mind, women and brown people are on the same level, so none of this matters, especially if your father is descended from Civil War veterans.⁵

It’s almost Halloween, another thing I don’t really care about. I don’t decorate and I’m not going to wear a costume, though once or twice I have dressed up as “a chic French girl.”⁶ If I weren’t so low energy, I might have done some kind of cosplay, if only I could find my neon blue wig.⁷

One thing about this particular October is despite bouts of rain and clouds and ever-dropping temperatures, it has been a beautiful month. Sometimes, when I’m driving down a back road, or gazing out my kitchen window, and the red and yellow and even some still green leaves are glowing with color, and tiny gold leaves are drifting down like sequins from heaven, I think “I am living in the most beautiful place on earth.”

Fall color

News from Veronica

She has abandoned the top of the dresser for a folded-up yoga mat positioned so she can look out the back window, I assume so she too can see the falling leaves. She also watched out the front window, paws up on the sill, all agog, as I was planting daffodils. Those humans, she no doubt thinks, they are crazy.

Veronica doesn’t mind the mess (I have tidied up since)

Farewell everyone! Thanks for reading! I’m so grateful you opened this and I hope you feel moved to subscribe, share with friends, comment or click the little heart. Maybe all of the above?

1. My first confession is that I repurposed this idea from

Grace Atwood

of

Scratch Pad by The Stripe

2. Unless you are talking Star Trek or Harry Potter.

3. Udate–I managed 15 before my lower back started warning of the impending apocalypse. But there will be a next time!

4. Courtesy of HIGNFY, either UK or US.

5. As a descendent of veterans going back all the way to the American Revolution and the Mayflower etc., I do not think this makes me better than anyone else. Shut up, JD. Pedigrees are for show dogs and race horses.

6. Striped mariniere top, black pleated skirt, red lipstick, black pumps, maybe a beret if I can find one.

7. Kidding, I haven’t seen it in a decade, maybe longer.