FEATURED PET! FEATURED PET! We have a true glow-up today. Meet Toby. His human companion Sydney tells us of his travails and triumphs:
“He also answers to Detective Toby - he's a hound mix of some kind, so he's constantly sniffing and investigating the goings on outside our window - and Mr. Sniffingtons.
Toby was an unplanned pet - my husband texted me last September telling me a friend had rescued a dog side of a busy road without any tags or microchip. We were three weeks away from getting married, had recently moved, and neither of us really thought getting a dog was a good idea. I decided to visit our friend to meet this dog anyway, because, well...look at that face! Look at those polite paws!”
“Of course, I fell instantly in love. Toby was very shy, he had to be coaxed out of our friend's house to come meet me. His paws were badly burnt from being outside on the hot North Carolina pavement for who knows how long, he had ringworm, and when I met him he crawled on his belly to sniff me with his tail tucked. But, he responded to gentle coaxing and pets and I brought him home that night. We knew that there was a chance that someone would see the posts we made on Facebook and the local vet and claim him, but if not, we wanted to give him a good home. His extreme shyness, perma-tucked tail, and his skinny-ness made us think he'd been through a lot. But he was so responsive to comforting talk and gentle pets that we hoped he would relax and open up given time. He was snuggling with me and my husband on the couch by the end of the first week. He's constantly sighing and huffing and puffing and it just breaks my heart every time.”
“We got so lucky with Toby. It was a slow start, but with time he became more and more comfortable and confident. I started taking him to our apartment building's dog park, where he started by sitting in the corner watching the dogs play or being my shadow until I took him upstairs. Essentially, he had to learn how to be a dog. After a month, he started running and playing with the other dogs. The first time I got him to play fetch I nearly cried. There are still struggles - he won't walk on busy streets, he is still a bit timid when new people come to the house, he barks and cries when my husband or I leave for work, but it's been such a joy watching him go from a scared and malnourished pup to our sweet, snuggly boy.”
MY HEART, look at that glossy happy boy. Thank you, Sydney & Toby.
We’re working our way through a full Deadwood rewatch tonight on our way to watching the movie and our most recent episode was the…extraordinary “Two-Headed Beast,” which is such a brilliant one. It’s so emotional, going through the show again. Steve is very schmoopy about it, which I didn’t understand until he was like “it was the first show we binge-watched together, like 12 years ago?” and so, you know, then I got schmoopy too.
It hurts more, not less, that it ended after three seasons, now. It just seems more unfair, especially now that David Milch is dealing with dementia, that he was robbed of that time. Fuckin’ HBO and their dragons. I had to sit with this for a long time:
Milch: The world gets smaller. You’re capable of less work and you have to learn to accept that—that’s a given of the way you have to live. And that’s a sadness. But it’s also true that a focus comes to your behavior which is productive.
Singer: Elaborate upon that.
Milch: (after a long pause): I’m having a good deal of pain.
Rita leaves to get him some water. He’s sitting in an armchair, looking away from me, as if I’ve left the room.
Singer: Can I ask what you’re thinking right now?
Milch: I’m wondering if I’m going to be able to tolerate this discomfiture.
Singer: Can you read things you’ve written in the past?
Milch: No.
Singer: Would you pick up a new novel and read it now?
Milch: It’s not likely.
Singer: Is that because the hours in the day you’re able to focus are diminished?
Milch: To some extent. But more so I feel the constriction of possibility, what I’m able to undertake responsibly. I have only a certain amount of energy.
Singer: Do you feel like you’re in a race?
Milch: Yes.
Singer: You’re racing to finish this memoir?
Milch: More so a larger enterprise, of which this is just a part.
Singer: Can you be more specific?
Milch: I’m trying to make work, the undertaking in general, coherent. To restore a dignity to the way that I proceed, and it’s a demanding process. You’re tempted to . . . toss it in. Just to quit.
Singer: Before this, were you someone who had preoccupying fears?
Milch: No.
Singer: And now what is it you’re afraid of, if you could identify it?
Milch: I intuit the presence of a coherence in my life which I haven’t given expression to in an honorable fashion.
Singer: So this is an opportunity. Is that what you’re saying?
Milch: Yes.
Singer: The rush to get to work, that inner necessity to make something. You still have that? Do you wake up every day with that?
Milch: Yes.
Singer: Did you feel during the “Deadwood” movie shoot that anyone regarded you as diminished?
Milch: I don’t think so.
Singer: Do you think about the future?
Milch: In a very constricted way. I have disabused myself of any thought of a normal future, but I allow myself a provisional optimism about the possibilities of what time I will be allowed. And I’m determined to experience what life will allow me. I know I have a short while possible to me, but I don’t want to constrict or profane that with recrimination or a distorting bitterness. And I permit myself a belief that there is possible for me a genuine happiness and fulfillment in my family and the work I do.
Those last two sentences have been on my heart since I read it, since it is also my belief and the belief of so many of us, who may (we hope, but can never know) have more time available to us than David Milch.
I adored this, and it’s such a glorious example of how things never change, like children and looking after them in the summer:
This book is made all the more interesting by the fact that it’s written by a man, at a time when many Americans venerated connections between mothers and children, while perceiving fathers as distant wage-earners who barely had relationships with their offspring outside of the administration of necessary discipline. Nathaniel was a more present father than many, but he still found life alone with a 5-year-old trying. On July 28, Nathaniel wrote: “I hardly know how we got through the fore-noon. It is impossible to write, read, think, or even sleep (in the daytime), so constant are his appeals in one way or another.” On Aug. 3:
Either I have less patience today than ordinary, or the little man makes larger demands upon it; but it really does seem as if he had baited me with more questions, references, and observations, than mortal father ought to be expected to endure. He does put me almost beside my propriety, never quitting me, and continually thrusting in his word between the clauses of every sentence of all my reading, and smashing every attempt at reflection into a thousand fragments.
It was this incessant quality of Julian’s conversation that most bothered Nathaniel, who was clearly an introvert trying to parent an extrovert. Recording a July 31 walk, Nathaniel described Julian’s chatter: “All the time, a babble at my side as if a brook were running along the way.” On Aug. 8, father and son were housebound due to bad weather, and Hawthorne reported that he “deafened and confounded me with his interminable babble … I think I have hardly known Julian to talk so incessantly as he has today.”
Yet, at times, following his own fluctuating moods, the writer found the son’s monologues quite charming. On Aug. 3, during one of their daily walks, Nathaniel sat under a tree, and Julian climbed up and looked down: “His round merry face appeared among the green leaves, and a continual stream of babble came dripping down upon me, like a summer shower.” A few times in this journal, Nathaniel described a sentiment familiar to any parent who can’t quite figure out how to record the extremely context-dependent delights of a child’s conversation: “He often says odd things, which I either forget, or cannot possibly grasp them so as to write them down”; “I wish I could record all his apothegms; but they do not seem worth writing down, ‘til I have so far forgotten them that they cannot be recalled in their integrity.”
ugh you sound unbearable (also you might just not be a good fit):
Dear Moneyist,
I work in finance and, even before working in the field, I had a strong interest in personal finance. I carry no debt and, while I know it can’t stay that way forever, I’m doing my best to maintain that for as long as I can.
I live with my girlfriend in a house she owns and we have our fixed costs broken down amicably. She does not share my affinity for finance.
When I moved in, I suggested she save the money she would theoretically be spending on the bills I now pay, to finish her basement. She keeps going back and forth and now wonders whether she wants to finish the basement at all. Instead, she floated the idea of taking out a loan to complete the project, and I almost fell out of my chair.
More recently, I incentivized her with a special getaway if she paid her car off at least six months early. She is nearly there, and I am excited to take the trip. But when I suggested she roll over the money she had been paying toward the car to her student loans, she scoffed.
My reason: She wouldn’t really miss the money. It would save her years on her loans and tons of money in the long run. She said that she would rather save the money for a house, which we would like to buy together when the time comes (read: after an engagement).
Although we have a general idea/understanding of each other’s spending, etc., and make similar amounts of money, she does not think it’s necessary to do a deep-dive on each other’s finances until we are engaged.
She has told me in the past that she wants me to handle this area of our relationship, but has also told me she doesn’t want to combine finances. She said that she might reconsider if we were to have kids.
I know the statistics and influence finances have on marriage, and also know people aren’t going to change once they’re married. So, I guess my question is this: Are these major red flags or is it just a matter of financial literacy? If it’s the latter, where does one begin to teach?
Confused in Pennsylvania
Q. Soon to be separated: I’m leaving for college in a couple of months. My newish boyfriend thinks we’re staying together, while I’d like to break up before we leave. Do I have an obligation to talk through this with him before we break up so as not to blindside him? Or do I just wait until the last minute? He’s thinking long-term and I’m not, and it feels like I’m inevitably going to break his heart.
A: If you think you could enjoy spending the rest of the summer with him as he blithely discusses your long-term plans, acting like a dog who thinks he’s about to move upstate to a big farm where there’s lots of room to play, all while you have to dodge questions about the future with a lot of vague evasions, then sure, you can wait until the last second. But if that idea makes you feel slightly worn out—and a bit like a jerk—then you should tell him now.
I just finished “I Trapped the Devil,” which is an excellent, very bloody horror movie, and I think you should watch it. I also promise you, my friends, that if you tell me you have trapped the devil in your basement I will believe you and not let him out.
I am now watching “The Convent,” which I suspect will be terrible, but I do not care.
Update: oh it’s so bad but I do love over-the-top evil nuns IN HORROR MOVIES, not the real evil kind in actual life, who are an abomination.
I WILL FIGHT YOUR HUSBAND IN THE THOROUGHFARE:
Dear Care and Feeding,
I have a 2-year-old and a 1-month-old. My husband made a comment that made me feel like a bad mom. He said that since my second son was born, my first no longer seems important to me and that I focus solely on the newborn. He says this because I need to breastfeed my newborn almost every two hours.
The feeding is worse at night, and as a result, I am too drained of energy to play with or tend to my older son during the day, and my husband does most of that work. I’m looking for stories on how you made your 2-year-old feel that you love him just as much as before.
—Worn-Out, Heartbroken Mama
Texas Monthly remains the source of some of our greatest investigative journalism as a nation, and this is no exception:
For years, Smith County had been one of the most stringently law-and-order communities in Texas. Judges and DAs in conservative Tyler were elected on promises to wage war on crime, which meant punishing those they thought were guilty, protecting victims, and keeping the streets safe. Prosecutors plowed through cases, and they were particularly relentless with murders. In one notable example, beginning in 1978, they tried Tyler-area resident Kerry Max Cook three times for the same murder over the course of sixteen years; one attempt ended in a mistrial, the other two in guilty verdicts that were thrown out by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Even without any physical evidence tying Ed to the scene, prosecutors felt they had a good case, especially with the charismatic Dobbs at the helm. One of Ed’s lawyers, Tom McClain, had worked in the DA’s office with Dobbs and knew what he was up against. “Dobbs tried a case as hard as anyone I’ve ever seen,” said McClain. “And he’s really smart.”
At trial, Dobbs theorized that Ed killed Griffin, stepped in her feces, drove her car to his girlfriend’s, and returned home after midnight. The state offered no motive and indeed no proof that the debris on the bottom of Ed’s shoe or the clumps in her trailer were human feces. An FBI expert could determine only that the smudge on Ed’s shoe was “protein of human origin,” which could have been anything from sweat to spit. Although Ed had been in trouble with the law—besides his trouble in Oklahoma, he’d also been busted several times in Tyler for misdemeanor theft as well as for forging a check—he had no history of violence. The jury, which included two African Americans, couldn’t reach a unanimous decision and after two days was deadlocked at 8 to 4 for guilt. Finally, on the third day, Judge Louis Gohmert declared a mistrial.
Ed thought that he had finally put his troubles in Smith County behind him. He asked Kim to marry him on Christmas Day. At their wedding the following April, Ed, a towering figure in a white tuxedo, danced with Kim to “For You I Will,” a soaring love ballad. “I will stand beside you,” sang R&B star Monica, “right or wrong.”
It was late afternoon in Virginia, humid but not too hot. The Hampton River rippled with a light breeze, lifting skirts and blowing ties. Guests sipped their beer and swayed a little — the way one does when watching a slow dance, unconsciously mimicking the movement of other bodies — as Chris Nalley led his mom on the floor. His bride stood nearby, red-gold curls framing her face, watching her new husband with a smile. Chris looked poised, in control of the dance, as a man looks when a long-awaited moment arrives and he steps confidently into its shape. A moment later his mom stepped away, and he gestured toward another woman standing nearby, a blonde in her 40s.
“Who’s that?” I asked my husband, who grew up with the bride.
“It’s his donor mom,” he whispered back.
Vicky West stepped into Nalley’s arms and laid her ear to his chest. Inside she could hear Nalley’s breath. The warm Virginia air moved through two lungs donated by a boy named Hans, who died of a brain aneurysm at age 20. West’s son’s lungs.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, what if I have a breakdown in the middle of the dance floor?’” West recalls. She had brought her sister and her best friend to the reception to help her prepare for the emotional moment. “I’m never going to dance at my son’s wedding, and he’s my only child. They gave me something that I never thought that I would get.”
MUSIC VIDEOS:
The Kinks’ “Come Dancing”
kelly clarkson
this is actually my fav song from the VERY PROBLEMATIC (not bc of making good-natured fun of Mormons, the entire Africa portion is….awful) “Book of Mormon,” performed by high school boys really giving it their all, which is how all musicals should be performed, tbh
see also:
you know how I love to force Stan Rogers on you, and my current fav song by a dead man I have been listening to consistently since I was ten is “The Wreck of the Athens Queen,” which is actually a wildly funny and catchy song (it’s the spiritual opposite of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”), I ORDER YOU to listen to it, even if just for the intense Maritimes-iness of it all:
popstar WILL BE RECOGNIZED AS THE GENIUS MOVIE IT IS (honestly, the lonely island is probably the peak of white culture)
joshua radin “the fear you won’t fall,” one of the many songs I know only from Scrubs
okay i like the new taylor single (this is not the real official music video)
the chantels, “maybe”
carly rae, “real love”
did I shave my legs for this
Love you, hope it’s a good one, the week is swiftly upon us.
xoxooxoxo
n
I AM JUST HERE TO SAY THAT THE DONOR WEDDING DANCE BROKE ME
thank you so much for including 'did i shave my legs for this' in the music roundup. it's one of my karaoke standbys that is basically only for me bc no one else EVER knows that song! and it was so formative for lil teen me!