(very Kate Bush voice) CATHY IT'S ME I'VE COME HOOOOOOOOME

it's so coooooold

Yeah, I’m doing great. Definitely not spiraling. Absolutely not watching all of Justin Trudeau’s videos just to hear a Canadian accent say firm and soothing things to me in both official languages. I even watched Sophie’s Instagram story to make sure she was doing okay, and, frankly, she looks amazing. Really coming around on the Trudeaus, who I have never cared for.

Also, if you have never seen the most Curb Your Enthusiasm moment in Canadian history, it was the time Sophie decided to go Free Bird and sing an impromptu song she wrote for a tribute to MLK (if you can make it more than 30 seconds in without dying of contagious embarrassment I will send you a butter tart). She has a perfectly nice voice, though:

We’re loving FaceTime’ing with my parents and my stepmom and Grandma Peggy and Grandpa Stu, and I personally definitely get some catharsis from how we always break into sobs when the kids get bored and wander away from the call.

My cleaning gentleman and his wife are out of quarantine and we joyously bumped elbows today. Never have I been so excited to listen to my beloved cleaning gentleman tell me a meandering 30-minute story while I’m trying to work. It was like Christmas. Tell me more, sir! Go on! What was your first car? How are the grandkids? (I know so many incredibly personal details about their kids and grandkids, I could easily write a book, and I have a mental list of which ones are my favourites, despite never having met them.) We are paying them even if they cannot come but I think he would wither away and die if he didn’t get to talk at me while I work. Am I on Zoom? He does not care. I love this man. I missed this man. Thank you to this man. Talk to me, baby. Tell me everything.

I want to get back into doing our Featured Pets of the Day, so I want to receive your quarantine pet pics, pls. With a few sentences about your pet and their provenance and personality, for the people. Please email me at nicole dot cliffe at gmail and put “Featured Pet: (Pet’s Name)” in the subject line so I can sort them.

---

Oh, here are Justin and Sophie singing and dancing, these fucking nerds are such showboats:

Also, I will ALWAYS watch Justin doing bhangra:

---

(very Pink Floyd voice) mother, leave that kid alone:

Dear Care and Feeding,

I have a 10-year-old son who is in fourth grade. I feel as though he is at an age where it’s appropriate to start introducing more mature topics, or at least signaling our openness as parents to his questions about those topics. I’m thinking about anything from puberty, sex, and substances to peer pressure, race, and violence.

The trouble is that while we have a great relationship otherwise, my son completely closes up when either my husband or I try to initiate conversations about these topics. For example, he told us recently that the gym teachers at school gave kids the “puberty talk.” When I gently ask follow-up questions (“how do you feel about that?” or “are the kids on the bus talking about sex?”), he gets uncomfortable, clams up, and changes the subject. Last night we watched a kids’ TV show that touched on the topic of racial discrimination. I casually tried to use that as a springboard to start a conversation, and he shut down. He is an advanced and voracious reader, and I know he’s read books that include mature themes involving sex, race, or violence, but when I ask him if he has questions or about what he learns and takes away from what he reads, he’s not interested in discussing it.

I have started resorting to saying, “anytime you have a question or want to talk about something, please come talk to dad or me.” I’ve gotten to the point that I’ve even “bribed” him by withholding something he wants (like a dessert or screen time) until he tells me, say, one thing his friends are saying about sex or one question he has about it!

This topic in particular is an important one to me, as I want him to grow up in a sex-positive household and to understand the meaning of consent (which is not the way I was raised). As he gets older I imagine that he’ll be exposed to more (quite likely biased or inaccurate) information from peers. I don’t want to alienate him by being too pushy, but I’m concerned that if he doesn’t open up, we won’t have the opportunity to correct misinformation or educate him.

He is not especially introspective, so I can’t tell whether he genuinely doesn’t have questions or if he really just doesn’t want to talk about it (I think it’s a bit of both). I guess I’m wondering in what ways we should continue to attempt these conversations as he gets older. Do you have any suggestions on how to get him to open up?

—Open Your Heart to Me!

---

People still holding it down for r/Bigfoot:

---

Will never stop watching this gif.

---

ohhhhh noooo:

2. Our COO sends non-stop jokes about coronavirus

My workplace views the pandemic as something of a joke; I frequently hear higher ups brush it off dismissively or even laugh about it. But the main issue is that our COO has taken to sending frequent emails with serious-sounding subject lines that often claim to have some sort of tip or work-related information in them. However, opening the email and included attachment, they’ll always have some kind of jokey image that shows that our COO is, essentially, punking us. For example: an email that seemed like it discussed work travel opportunities turned out to be a blueprint of a floor plan of a house. These emails are sent to everyone in the company, but it is only other male execs who hit “reply all” to congratulate the sender on his wit (one replier commented on the lack of beer for the house). Another email from the COO advised that he had property values tips for us, but instead it was a picture of a house covered in toilet paper.

I get that he’s trying to be funny, but I feel like this would be better geared towards just his friends. I have no capital or standing at all, and I am leagues away from a high level exec — meaning I worry constantly about losing my job, having to interact with coworkers and contracting the virus, and how on earth I will pay my bills with my partner being laid off and we were already struggling to begin with. To me, there isn’t much to joke about, although I acknowledge that it could be humorous at another time.

What I really want is to opt out of receiving these emails. I fantasize about writing “unsubscribe” and hitting send (although I would never!). Knowing that I can’t change it, how on earth can I reframe this in my head to keep from screaming out loud the next time I get some bizarrely flippant joke email about the pandemic? He just. Keeps. Sending. Them.

---

Majestic longboy:

---

This was very sweet, and also I just finished Andy Greene’s book-length oral history of The Office and enjoyed it very much (my favourite kind of book is an oral history of a TV show, I gotta level with you):

---

Our daily Absolute Unit:

---

BECOME BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER AND SAY YOU WOULD PREFER NOT, THEN TORCH THE CEO’S HOME:

My employer, a medium-sized nonprofit, is experiencing a lot of understandable fundraising and budget anxiety during COVID-19. While I know everyone’s doing the best they can to prevent cuts to staff or layoffs, I heard through a coworker this week that one idea our CEO has been kicking around has been to lay off all the organization’s employees, have them collect unemployment, and ask them to volunteer for the organization for the duration of their unemployment eligibility.

Aside from the general ickiness I feel about this proposal, which is not yet a certainty (unemployment won’t equal my salary; will they still provide healthcare coverage?), is this legal?

---

MUSIC:

Well, I DID just quote this song:

A different, equally good Pink Floyd song:

Unplugged? Yes (this is on my top ten all-time list):

I watched SEVERAL seasons of Nashville, and this is actually by the brilliant Kacey Musgraves, but the scene always cracks me up bc I am pretty sure people do not really write songs this quickly and also, hot damn, Deacon is hot (Hayden is Steve’s celebrity crush and it INFURIATES ME we could NOT look less similar, I should have given him time to pick someone I would find less threatened by, but also I shouldn’t have asked. It’s even worse, bc I asked and he said “the blonde woman on Heroes” and I was like, “oh, Ali Larter, for sure” and he said “no the cheerleader” and I was so mad I could barely talk for at least thirty seconds):

The full version is here:

“Black Beatles”, a true bop:

Mary J. Blige will NEVER DIE:

Solsbury Hill is connected so directly to my feelings ducts that I cannot have it on my driving playlist:

I like Billy Joel, I’m not ashamed of that:

I do get mad when he yells at an imaginary woman for wearing a Halston dress. Halston is great! You are no longer working class. YOU are constantly wrapping luxury cars around telephone poles, sir, first remove the log from thine own eye (still a good song):

TV on the Radio:

I love all versions of “House of the Rising Sun”:

But now I want to hear Joan Baez do “Henry Martin”, my fav (also my audition song in my youth), even though she does a dynamite “House of the Rising Sun”:

Her self-titled album also has these two other songs that have never left me, thanks to my dad:

It’s about a dog, who doesn’t love a song about a dog? The dog does die. I want you to know that going in:

And now for something completely different, Migos:

Ciara!

This always makes me think about John Mulaney laughing about this being Bill Clinton’s campaign song (“an album made by and for cheaters”):

It’ll happen. I promise:

---

I love you. You’re great. You’re simply the best, honestly. You are the person Tina Turner is singing about. You are good to your friends and you are struggling, but you keep waking up and moving and that’s perfectly sufficient. If you do more than that, wow. WOW. You inspire me every day.

xoxooxx

nicky