GRAB BAG

• The late and fabulous David Rakoff wrote that “Writing is like pulling teeth. From my dick.” For me though, it’s submitting that’s like pulling teeth—from his dick. But I did it. I did my job. I told Jim that I’d submit essays to 10 publications this weekend, and at 10:05PM on Sunday night, I’m finally done. It was excruciating. I did much of my work at Jim’s house this evening and when Blake, the altar boy neighbor kid, asked me what I was doing I said, “I’m researching appropriate publications for my work and submitting essays to those publications so that they will send me rejection letters.”

• I know it’s super trendy and locavore-like, but I’m not down with eating seasonally. If I want a strawberry in December, I’m getting a friggin’ strawberry in December. I live in the 21st century. We have technology and chemicals and hydroponics enough to get me what I want when I want it. It’s fall. Squash is nice enough, but I’m not making that and root vegetables my mainstay. They bore me.

• Jim doesn’t do vegetables. Like, at all. Sometime in January he opened my fridge, took out a spaghetti squash and said, “Are you kidding me with this?”

• I’ve had “It’s Raining Tacos” on loop in my head for a week.

• Josie is Jim’s 12-year-old daughter. This morning I showed up to church and she was wearing my clothes and shoes. Flashback to 1998ish. Back in them days my sisters and I thieved clothing from each other’s closets like we invented the practice. During sacrament meeting I very spiritually texted the girls and told them what I encountered in the back row of the chapel. Whit’s response: “So are you gonna throw her down the stairs and tell her to eff off too?” (Put simply: No. My stuff worked on Josie. And she doesn’t have my cankles, so those flats felt like rockstars; they never looked so good. Oh, and I'm a grown-up now. Mostly.)

• Last night was my yoga studio’s black light, glow-in-the-dark, music Halloween class. You want a helluva good time? All it takes is darkness, heat, UV-reactive body paint, and the most bitchinest yoga community our lil’ planet has to offer. I tricked out a black yoga bandeau top with fluorescent paint and “Hot Mess” in white iron-on letters. I hot-glued pink EL wire to a pair of yoga shorts. I decorated a black towel with more white letters for me and one for Jim. My towel said, “I locked my knee” and “juicy is sexy” (our studio is Juice Box Yoga, and they have a badass logo that I may or may not have designed on the very computer on which I type these clever words right now) and Jim’s towel read, “Open the door” and “My girlfriend is hot,” and with the room’s temp hovering around 105, that towel told truth.

• That class was my 118th Bikram yoga class in 118 days. Today: 119. I've decided to be done at 125. My body could use a day off.

• I just discovered that my Amazon Prime membership gets me season after season after season of “Chopped” on demand. Peace out. I got some watching to do.