tiny kazoos

on vacation commiseration, welcome emails, and where to buy a grown person's wardrobe

Hellooo! And welcome to the paid-subscriber-only zone, where we celebrate our week’s tiny kazoos. (Tiny because they’re less visible than the big stuff of growing up. Not because they’re less lovely. Kazoos because they’re less shiny than the traditional milestones. Not because they’re less worthy.) If you like what you see, please consider chipping in for the party. Seriously. Paid subscribers are how me (and Substack!) can offer generous, weird content free of ads and sinister algorithms. Cue the tiny confetti.

1. Was Thanksgiving lovely and painful for you, too? We spent ours feeling the dissonance between the lives we hope for and the lives we actually have. “So, the contrast was a lot to compost,” I told another volunteer at church and he uttered those sanity-saving words, “Oh, I hear you.”

2. I started a new job this week and the orientation was mostly virtual. Which is why it made all the difference when a colleague wrote a short welcome email saying, “Hi. Post-pandemic starts are weird. But still really glad that you’re here.” Welcome emails are the classiest. Any newcomers to the job, the school, the neighborhood you’ve been meaning to fold in?

3. One of the most fun and vexing parts of going back to work is building back up a work wardrobe. I’ve gotten all sorts of great suggestions from Internet friends of where to shop—from second-hand Clothes Mentor to sustainable Aday—but my favorite moment this week was when my man sat down and sketched out a card deck of 30 outfit combinations I already own. Bless.