Well, hello there, my crones!

I'm so glad you're here.

Here is a substack from me! Which you might be getting because you signed up for my MailChimp newsletter, back when I was publishing more at the Ben and Birdy blog. Or because I mentioned the Substack it on Instagram? For some reason I seem to be writing this like it’s an essay for my fifth-grade language arts class called “How I Started My Substack.” Do you like it so far? [slaps own forehead]

We’re going to talk about a lot of different things here, including bodies and sex and holiday gift shopping and semi-grown kids and empty nesting and books and TV and politics and adult-onset weed use—really all the different things that make up midlife, including my recommendation for the very best BEARD-HAIRS-VISUALIZING MIRROR in existence (stay tuned). Also my fun and delicious writer friends are going to be weighing in on occasion, I hope. I’m hoping to publish a weekly little round-up, like a recipe and a tip and a few thoughts. Something like that. I want there to be a recurring feature called “I made dinner from 1 can of chickpeas,” and I want my friends to contribute to it.

Why subscribe? Well, that’s a good question.

I don’t think there will be content you don’t have access to if you don’t pay to subscribe? So please consider buying a paid subscription only if it’s not a burden to you and if you care AT ALL that Birdy still has one and a half years of college left, ha ha ha ha ho hee herg kill me. If it were a normal thing to do, I would be like, “We have x amount of income. If you have more than that, please consider a paid subscription.” But even I can sense that it’s too abnormal to start off that way! If you do pay to subscribe, please know how incredibly grateful I’ll be—I understand that there are lots of demands on your resources. I promise I do.

Stay up-to-date with these crazies

Substack says, “You won’t have to worry about missing anything. Every new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your inbox.” Yes! Plus, you never know when there might be random cat content! Ha ha ha! Or some other weird shit—who knows? I like the idea that this is both a public space and a semi-private one. Like, my parents aren’t likely to fully stumble onto it? But also nor is anybody hiring me and then looking over my shoulder to scold me for being too VOICEY. Which is LITERALLY a thing I have been editorially scolded for being! It makes me feel like I’m in the kind of Ovid myth, where I’ll lose my voice but at the exact moment that happens, the editor who scolded me will turn into an elm tree with, like, an eternally limp dick made of bark. Hi! Are you still glad you’re here? Good.

Photo of me and Snapper by the amazing Lyndsay Hannah Photography

Who am I?

God. I don’t even know anymore. I’m a 55-year-old white half-Jewish cis queer menopausal woman. I am married to the luscious and infuriating Michael, who I’ve been with since we were 21. Our kids, Ben and Birdy, are 24 and 20. I wrote a blog on Babycenter back when I was expecting Birdy—back before the word blog even existed!—which turned into a memoir, Waiting for Birdy, and then another memoir Catastrophic Happiness. I wrote another blog for a long time, which was about food and parenting. Until last year, I was the Real Simple etiquette columnist for 10 (!) years.

Oh nbd. Just a blurb from ANN PATCHETT what?

I have written other books too: the kids’ skill-building books How to Be a Person and What Can I Say?; the middle-grade novel One Mixed-Up Night; the kids’ craft book Stitch Camp, which I co-wrote with my friend Nicole; and the novels We All Want Impossible Things, which came out last year, and Sandwich, which comes out in June of 2024 (pleeeeease preorder it!). I’ve contributed regularly to the New York Times, Real Simple, O, The Oprah Magazine, Cup of Jo, and lots other publications. I live in my empty nest (sob!) in Amherst, Massachusetts with Michael and our cats, Snapper and Jellyfish.

You can also find me on instagram or at my website.

That’s it for now! Thank you so much for being here.