A mind of my own

My last post got more views than normal so Hoda is my bestie now!

There are some new faces here this week, which is to say more people saw my last post than typically do, which is to say I got some new subscribers i.e. new faces, which is to say I’m feverishly engaged in a whirlwind fantasy, imagining this moderately viewed Substack will have the book deals rolling in, the Big Five Publishing houses in a massive bidding war over my manuscript, the splashy deal announcement, the Reese book club pick, the talk show interviews, the fast and wild ascension into literary fame, the designer tortoise-shell frames and Pucci scarves I’ll buy myself with the advance to make myself look more persuasive and writerly.

One Substack post goes viral (let’s be abundantly clear, it did not go viral, but rather garnered a more substantial amount of clicks compared to the modest number I’m usually raking in), and suddenly my brain is doing this jig where Hoda Kotb is interviewing me and praising me, and I’m saying Oh Hoda, stop it you silly goose, you’re making me blush! And Hoda and I are hitting it off so much on air that we exchange numbers afterwards, and she adds me to a group text with her and Jenna Bush Hager, and they’re texting me empowering things like You got this girl strong flexing emoji and Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars. Star emoji moon emoji, and so on.  

This is not the first time an innocuous event has prompted me to fall headfirst into a perfectly articulated dream life. I have lived many lives in my brain, lives which are textured and vivid and completely distinct from what my actual day-to-day looks like. I like the idea of things more than the actual doing of things. In my brain, I tend a robust garden and attend dinners with friends where my gifts are the bounty of my harvest, ferried over to their houses in woven baskets. These friends of my imagination are impossibly chic, artists and chefs and poets, and when receiving my gifts, they say things like Lael grows the best rutabaga you’ve ever tasted and I brush them off with false modesty but inside I’m like fuck yeah it’s the best rutabaga you’ve ever tasted, no one else’s rutabaga so much as touches mine!!

Oprah living my dream life in many ways tbh

When you have a detailed imagination and a voracious appetite for daydreams, it is inevitable that your actual life will fall short at times. Real life comes at me, day after day, and it seems I’m not some impeccably dressed waifish writer but rather a bone-tired, massively pregnant toddler mom whose time is not spent gallivanting around being elegant at various social events but rather scrambling eggs and sprinkling them with a three-cheese Mexican blend, cleaning up dog puke, and breaking down Amazon boxes.

I’ll get it in my head that the only thing stopping me from living this sort of dreamy, aesthetically charged life is some hobby I need to try on for size, some vacation I need to take, some daily practice I need to incorporate into my routine. If only I knew how to make Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon, if only I had a cabin to escape to in the Catskills, if only I lost twenty pounds or worked my way through Chaucer or started making jam from scratch or collected antique typewriters—  then, and only then, would everything fall into place!

Maybe I’m this way because I’m an avid reader, or perhaps it’s because I’m an even more avid internet user. I am a consumer of thoughtfully designed narratives. In books, the characters fall in love in grand ways; their stories are sweeping and interweave through generations. Online, I am fed a never-ending stream of small fictions: curated homes, outfits, selves.

My real life is messy and unglamorous, the rhythms of it are not meditative nor serene, but chaotic and tiring, awash with (aforementioned) dog puke, toddler slime, and heartburn. But – the reality is undoubtedly lovely as well. My imaginary life as a rising literary star with a thriving garden is leaving out the tiny moments I would be missing out on if I were constantly on book tours, texting Hoda and trading secrets with Reese. I am trying to catalogue more of these real-life things that are incredible: the excited little patter of feet, the Koala-cling hugs, the kisses blown in my direction each morning, the many seasons of Survivor that wait for me at the end of the night, the comfy worn in T-shirts that I get to live in, the soft contentedness of routine.

Anyway, I’m afraid I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent (read that in the British voice of a quirky professor.) This all began with me saying hello to some new faces, which feels like something an influencer might do, and an influencer I am decidedly not. But – if you’re new here, or if you’ve been here, here are some things about me, real or imagined.

1.     For Mother’s Day, I slept in, and when I awoke, I found my son had a fever and the day would not be spent in the luscious ways I imagined, being brought breakfast in bed and having praised lavished upon me, but instead watching hours of Ms. Rachel and Daniel Tiger, feeding an upset sniffly person small cups of medicine and cuddling him during his nap while I continued my online search for a supportive slip-on sandal. For Mother’s Day, I was a mother, because even though it is a day where you are meant to be celebrated, it does not grant you some temporal escape from the role. Once my son was asleep though, my husband delivered some Mother’s Day luxury by cooking me dinner and then rubbing my feet while we watched Rock the Block, a ridiculous reality-home-design-competition-show hosted by Ty Pennington, who I find strangely hot.

2.     Another reality host I find strangely hot: Jeff Probst. Two famous pranksters I find strangely hot: Steve-O and Eric Andre. Two other people I find hot but not strangely so: Brad Pitt and Rhianna.

3.     I currently have whatever my son had, am deeply congested, slightly feverish and feeling scratchy, because he finds it hilarious to shove Cheerios in my mouth with his sickly little fingers, and I can’t help but allow it because I love his laugh and because Cheerios are good.

4.     I am pregnant, and I ate ham on Saturday. It was ham and Emmental cheese on a French baguette at a French café because my town is strangely chock-full of French people. You aren’t supposed to eat ham while pregnant, but if you’re telling me that French pregnant women avoid such a sandwich, I must shake my head at you in French disgust. The sandwich was fucking amazing and both me and my baby seem to have survived my transgression. I wasn’t going to tell anyone but consider this my little internet confession booth. Maybe this family sickness is all because of my ham sin.

the sick bed I wrote this post on — who am I, Frida Kahlo?