The Absolute Chaos of This Entry

A dash of Benjamin Franklin, a smidge of Home Alone.

Well, well, well, if it isn’t that newsletter you forgot you signed up for because its author hasn’t updated it for several months. Do you feel like life is even more ridiculously hectic than usual right now? I hate to rely on that tired old trope of Google search histories (what is this, a blog post from 2005?) but I happened to catch sight of mine yesterday and it was an absolute PANIC of green sequin dress, Pottery Barn customer service number, what is pleurisy, square white sinks, Santa hat, Hanukkah hat, how to get hot oil out of cashmere, how to get more dopamine, which Christmas tree sheds the least, Benjamin Franklin hair, Benjamin Franklin wig, headache for 5 days straight, and that was just, like, an hour’s worth of searches. (My kid is playing Benjamin Franklin in a school production next week, we’re in the middle of a bathroom renovation, I’m throwing a holiday party three days before I host actual Christmas, and guess what, I did manage to get hot oil out of cashmere! A few drops of dish soap, wash on the delicate cycle in cold water, lay flat on a table to dry.)

Anyway, I don’t know, I guess it’s just December or whatever, but it’s a lot. And so much of it is self-inflicted, of course, I do know that; nobody is holding a gun to my head and telling me to throw a holiday party, I just love throwing parties and have been dreaming since August of a living room full of people holding cranberry-based cocktails while a fire blazes in the fireplace, A Rat Pack Christmas plays on the record player, and I circulate amongst everyone in a green sequin dress offering flutes of champagne and miniature ham sliders with several mustard-based dipping sauces. I haven’t thrown a holiday cocktail party since 2012, when I was like five minutes pregnant and feeling pretty rough, so I have fairly high expectations for this one, which I’m sure are going to come crashing down around me right about the time I start trying to fashion an edible wreath from various meats and cheeses (Pinterest is a helluva drug!)

Side note, I have always thought that the platonic ideal of a holiday cocktail party is the one Kevin throws in Home Alone, or rather the one it looks like he’s throwing while he’s inside doing this:

But from the outside, it looks like this:

Anyway, while we’re talking about Benjamin Franklin (weren’t we?), I must just express my absolute glee that this is the part my kid was assigned in the American Revolution production, because there was a time that I went deep on Benjamin Franklin and I therefore have something of a soft spot for him (Benjamin Franklin, not my child, though obviously I have something of a soft spot for him too.)

When I was studying for my American citizenship test in 2019, it was heavy on Benjamin Franklin, like way more than any of the other founding fathers, and I went down a kind of Benjamin Franklin wormhole for several weeks as I learned all about him. On the day of the test, I really hoped that the citizenship examiner would ask me about him — you have to study this big packet of information about America but what they ask you about is totally random — and when one of my questions was “name one thing Benjamin Franklin was famous for,” I practically screamed “FIRST POSTMASTER GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES, STARTED THE FIRST FREE LIBRARIES, WRITER OF POOR RICHARD’S ALMANAC!!!” (I always like to go for extra credit). I’m sure it will be totally chill and cool at the school production next week when my child, in full balding wig and white silk cravat, opens his mouth to say “Hello, my name is Benjamin Franklin—” and I yell out from the back of the auditorium, like a crazed fan demanding Freebird at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert, “Poor Richard’s Almanac, woo-hooooooo!”

Switching gears to a little old-fashioned self promotion for a sec, I published two stories back to back in The New York Times last week, one on Tuesday and then one on Wednesday, which was a new and slightly exhilarating experience for me as I usually have at least a few weeks between them to catch my breath. The first was about how to exercise with your kids, which was a delightful piece to write because it took me right back to the parenting stories I first wrote for the NYT in 2020, and the second was about why going to concerts feels like time travel, which was an extremely satisfying thing to research because it turns out that there is lots of actual science behind why we like the music we liked as teenagers, and therefore I no longer have to feel like an uncool dinosaur when my Spotify Wrapped looks like this:

Sorry, but it’s science, baby.

On that note, let me wrap up by wishing a happy “A Long December” season to all those who celebrate, which is to say that it is my firm belief that “A Long December” by Counting Crows is a holiday song, and you may only listen to it during the month of December — even better if it’s during the latter part — when it is entirely appropriate to wail “maybe this year will be better than the laaaaaaaaaaast” while driving your car to Trader Joe’s for the eighth thing you forgot to buy for some sort of seasonal celebration you thought it would be a good idea to throw when you weren’t on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Take it away, Mr. Duritz!