Obsessions This Week: December 8–14, 2024

Miss Havisham as bachelorette party theme and a book rec from my mom.

Dec 15, 2024

Writing this to you from Michigan, where I am celebrating a dear friend who is getting married. Leah is having a Miss Havisham-themed bachelorette weekend, which some might call ironic but which I find simply inspired. The joke, the drama, the aesthetic! We are doing spooky crafts and eating and drinking well. Our fabulous friend

Liv Hanson

read Tarot last night; Danielle and Abby are making dinner tonight. It’s a multi-talented group of women in our thirties and the vibe is impeccable.

It’s finally happened, however, that I lacked enough fixations this week to stuff a whole issue. Now, some might say this is “healthy” or “progress” from my perennial obsessions, but damn it, I have a newsletter to get out. So it’s a short one today, filled with things that have come up during the intensive time together.

The group indulged me by letting Gordon Lightfoot onto the Spotify playlist. I JUST THINK HE’S NEAT! For cabin in the woods vibes!

🧦 The Goop grippy socks

“When enough white women gather, the statistical mention of Goop is high.” - My friend Wren Romero, very accurately

Thanks to Wren for alerting me to the grim, darkly comic fact that these culty socks with grippy bottoms (for workouts or stays in hospital?) are currently sold out.

📚 Wintering by Katherine May

I haven’t yet read it, but my mom recommends it, so I will.

Have you? Got any other book recommendations? I’m fresh out since finishing Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

🔥 The North Ave Beach Sauna

Who knew? Make your polar plunge experience ten thousand times better by doing the proper Finnish thing and alternating an ice bath with a hot sauna.

🪡 Crafting

This particular group of women is quite crafty. As I type, Joy is crocheting something while wearing a burnt orange sweater she made for herself. Leah and Jill are decoupaging; Brittany made sheet nachos for lunch; Abby is a mixologist who’s tending bar. Earlier today, Liv and I fixed a minor leak at the borrowed house we’re staying in. I have never been particularly crafty, but I do LOVE a cross-stitch project. These kits, from Junebug and Darlin, are my faves: I’ve made four or five since 2020, when my mother got me a giftcard, including the “YES HOMO” cross-stitch that was a gift to my friend Janie.

🎞️ Bell, Book & Candle

This Jimmy Stewart/Kim Novak rematch was the movie slated to be screened this weekend, in keeping with the general interests of the crew. I’d never seen it!

✒️ “Her Kind” by Anne Sexton

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

I have gone out, a possessed witch,   
haunting the black air, braver at night;   
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch   
over the plain houses, light by light:   
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.   
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.   
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,   
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,   
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:   
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,   
learning the last bright routes, survivor   
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.   
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.   
I have been her kind.

Copyright Credit: Anne Sexton, “Her Kind” from The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981). Copyright © 1981 by Linda Gray Sexton and Loring Conant, Jr. Reprinted with the permission of Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc.

Source: The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1981)

It’s the last full moon of 2024 tonight, babes, enjoy. 🌕

Obsessions This Week