I’ve been doing dinner every weekend with a small group of (responsible, working from home) friends. This week I made panzanella and roasted carrots with carrot top pesto and burrata, and a pluot crisp for dessert. Yummm.

I cleaned up a dead mouse today. Gross, but what makes it worse is that the only unscreened window I leave open is my bedroom, so the damn cat has to have killed the mouse, scaled a trash can, jumped through the window, and carried the mouse through my bedroom and across the house into the kitchen. 

I choke-laughed at that and then felt really bad about it. 

omg “Tephen” is killing me

That gives me hope! I’m glad to hear you’ve got the honesty and respect you deserve. Also four year olds are my favorite because kids get weird and hilarious at that age.

Right!? He was so manipulative that I actually felt like I was to blame for him propositioning my friend, since I’m bi and we’d had a tipsy conversation about how cute she is. And then I was like...wait, no sane person would take me enthusing about how cool and pretty she is to mean “Make sexual overtures behind my…

Oh my god what a horrifying thing to have to live through, I’m so sorry.

I keep telling myself that but some of them were waaaaay below the belt and still sting. If anything, this was a useful reality check that I am vulnerable to sweetness and caregiving, because I missed that so much in my last relationship, and that I need to be wary of being lulled into a relationship by someone who…

I am NOT enjoying dating for the first time in over a decade. WTF happened!?! I mean, I had some brushes with abusive creeps in college, but so far the two relationships I’ve had since my marriage ended have been flagrantly awful - first someone with classic avoidant attachment who ended up dumping me over text six…

He was very charming! I think part of why I’m so shook up is because in retrospect I see the signs, but at the time I was very happy to meet someone who seemed so sweet and caring, and now I wonder how I could have missed them. I guess I’m lucky that I’ve done a lot of work setting boundaries and clarifying what I…

Ooohhh lovebombing is a new concept to me and that’s 100% what it was. He wanted to move far faster and become far more serious than I was comfortable with, he texted me sweet nonsense all the time, he was always very performative about how he wanted to take care of me and support me. And then when he felt thwarted in…

Doesn’t that sound delightful? We can do crafts and adopt all of the recalcitrent kitties Krispy rehabs.

Well, hindsight is 20/20 because now all these little things are coming up - he pressured me to become more seriously involved than I was comfortable with, he didn’t want to use condoms, he would neg my cooking (I know that I’m a great cook), he would have these flashes of irritation if I didn’t respond to something…

I have so many pets to contribute to Spinster Row!

Thank you for the validation. That sort of experience really fucks with you because it’s so easy to slip into self doubt - did I miss warning signs? Did I somehow invite that behavior? Were the nasty things he said accurate?

I love Ben Ben. Please send him to me. 

Yesterday I made fresh fettuccine with garlic scape pesto and a rhubarb-cherry crumble for dessert! We also had insanely beautiful multicolored carrots so I did crudites with tonnato to dip in. It was gooooood. 

New shitty romance update! Or, “Fuck this, I’m giving up and joining a cat-themed nunnery.”

Right?! I have no desire to wear my top as a belt the second a wave hits me, thanks.

I like the high-cut thigh bullshit because my body curves in pretty dramatically right where my hip sockets are, and the high-cut leg holes minimize that dent, whereas regular rise bottoms accentuate it. But that said, sometimes I don’t want to look like an 80s aerobics video thot, and a regular, boring swimsuit that…