Last month I left my beautiful, charming, and wholesome friends in Iowa to move in with my sister in Michigan while I get my ducks in a row. My ducks have been acting up. One of my final acts before packing up was to kick back with two of my favorites for margaritas and Camera Obscura. It did not take long for me to lock onto the guitarist with his matte balding head + general broadness. It’s my most basic formula. Then he used a microphone to reveal his Scottish brogue and I got so excited I punched Jason (of the socks). His name is Kenny. Let’s look at his profile on the band’s site.

I am charmed by his current favorite animals and now I’ve been reading AE Housman all morning [Kenny has since swapped AE Housman for a sexy poem about strawberries]. Here’s one that should set you in the right mood for Monday. Make sure you read it in a Scottish voice.

XI

Yonder see the morning blink:
The sun is up, and up must I,
To wash and dress and eat and drink
And look at things and talk and think
And work, and God knows why.

Oh often have I washed and dressed
And what’s to show for all my pain?
Let me lie abed and rest:
Ten thousand times I’ve done my best
And all’s to do again.

Roll over! Stay home! Sunday up with Hitchcock instead. [Sunday up. A typo or a new phrase I was trying out?]

And now the hat. Remember?

While wearing this hat, I have received compliments such as “That hat is so lumpy!” Totally worth $4. I edited the picture to look like binocular vision because the picture was taken before a run and Meg and I have been listening to an audiobook I scored mid-roadtrip for $2 in which ladies spurn their lovers’ early-morning advances to go running and then the ladies get brutally raped AND lose an eye. So that’s been on my mind. Binocular plotting.

This is my new patio. I am currently serving strawberry-basil-vodka-lemonade. The instructions are pretty much revealed in the title, but I know you want to replicate this scene so I will keep sharing.

1. Get a patio.

2. Get a crummy book which you are skimming to finish.

3. Throw a pint of strawberries in the blender, or the closest thing you have to a blender.

4. Muddle a handful of basil with a couple of strawberries and some Tanqueray* vodka. And some lemon juice if your lemon isn’t rotten. My approach to muddling is that it’s just like it sounds.

5. To a container you can drink out of, combine one part vodka muddle with one part strawberry puree. Fill with lemonade. Add ice if your freezer makes ice. Mine does not.

6. Take a sip. Say “This ain’t boozy enough,” outloud to no one, and add more vodka. Add basil, too, to make that last step seem like a culinary decision.

7. Sit, drink, pretend to read.

*because that’s what Darcy drinks

This was followed by a verbal confrontation.

My sister Meghan and I were messing around with the Bump app by Bump Technologies. Does this work for you? We slammed our phones together for at least ten minutes trying to get a connection. We tried top bumps and side bumps, mutual bumps and give/take bumps. Then out of nowhere Meghan received and accepted a bump from a stranger named Jesse. Before I could stop her, she sent him this photo of me sleeping. He did not reciprocate.

Jesse might be my parents’ retired neighbor. I will never ask.

1. Don’t try to build a relationship with a teenage daughter you gave up for adoption even if you want to and she wants to and you live in the same town.

2. Do try to get out of a funk.

So let’s look at things that made me smile recently.

Misinterpreting our order for “pancakes,” the kitchen made “mickey-mouse pancakes.” The ears were on the house!

A dead lizard was discovered in the trunk of a car that has not been south of Ohio for five years. It remains.

Fresh golden baby spiders.

Fresh golden baby human.

This little dog.

So far, outside of work, the only people I really interact with are mechanics and rental car associates, because of course I spend all of my free time getting my car to and from the mechanic. We have been to the mechanic twice. Tomorrow I will have lived here SEVEN days.*

So anyway, one of my pals in the rental car industry, a native of northern VA, told me that people from around here have a reputation for being unfriendly. I didn’t know that people from the greater DC area had a reputation for anything except for sitting in traffic and wearing suits, but now everyone seems impatient and irritated.** They are visibly disinterested in the second half of my sentences. Sometimes they answer their phones instead. So thanks for coloring my perception of this place with a fat black crayon, Doug from Enterprise. I am impressionable. Yes I will consider buying a used rental car from you. This pitch you are making sounds quite reasonable.***

*This car is ruining my life and holding me hostage but I don’t want to go into the details because I know you’re just going to turn on me for staying in this abusive relationship so long, when what I really need is a hug and three cold beers.

**I want to tell you about an exception: my new personal Armenian banker with the sculpted face manages to be both heartbreakingly earnest and super hot. Each time we bank, he says “I hope I have provided you with five star service” and I know if I asked him to take off his shirt he would do it. Everyone please send me small, shady-looking personal checks that I will have to enter the bank to cash.

***However, I will have to consult my personal Armenian banker first.