easy like Sunday morning

which is to say really hard but all shiny

Congratulations, it’s me.

It’s been so long that my laptop’s space bar stopped working. I think about you every day, but writing is hard and publishing is harder. There’s so much lazing around and procrastinating to be done.

It’s been so long and I would say life gets in the way, but there’s no need for shallow pretense. You know, and I know… and I know that you know¹: the main thing standing between me and a consistent writing routine is my somewhat out-of-trope addiction to Call of Duty.

Love me, hate me, I’m here anyway. Pew pew.

🌟2015🌟

I came close to joining a pyramid scheme once. Well, not really, but. I did find myself in a room with a man explaining to me a structure I later came to recognize as a Multilevel Marketing Scheme in its purest form.

My first mistake was trying to find a job. I’m just a girl, you see, jobs should not be my thing. Just kidding, I romanticize the shit out of working; it’s like a superpower.

You know I sort of naively considered a job interview to be a fairly mundane premise, with little to no adventure potential. This is what they tell us work is like. But the labour market is full of bear traps, or whatever the expression is. Pitfalls.

The MLM is the pitfall, and “Entry level marketing exec” is the camouflage. The baddies put all the foliage and twigs and stuff on top, call it a job. Then they sit and wait for a clumsy 21 year old bear.

So this is what happens next. You are the clumsy 21 year old bear they’ve been waiting for. You’re about to graduate, time to put your big girl skirt on. It is a pencil skirt, of course. Well, in 2015 it had to be a pencil skirt, they haven’t yet invented the other skirts back then². And never mind that to them you’re a bear; you’re just excited someone’s been waiting for you.

…and they say hi there, welcome to the interview. Three men introduce themselves. You instantly forget their names. Pretend you’re straightening out your skirt while drying your sweaty palms. Shake hands, like all the big kids do.

Next thing you know, you’re in a car with them without any warning whatsoever, and you’re going somewhere. This is an unexpected surprise; are all job interviews like this?

You don’t have much phone battery, or money, or any emotional support snacks.

You wonder if you should tell someone that you’re being taken out of town by three strangers. Your big girl moment is slipping away right before your eyes. You’re rapidly regressing back into your former confused and marginally smaller self, from how low you’re sinking into the middle seat in the back of the car.

“It’s not how I imagined, being trafficked,” I thought to myself. Would I look so so silly if I asked them where we were going? Would they mock me for sounding worried? Would their answer be given in that condescending tone I knew so well, when men think you’re being all female and emotional? AM I being all female and emotional?

I’m 21, so I accept the latter. Far be it from me to kill the vibe of this, so far, rather benign kidnapping.

We were crossing a very long bridge I’d never seen before. “Hmm…” my brain offered.

As concern grew inside my feeble heart, I mustered up my courage. “Um… where are we going again?” I asked, implicitly taking the blame. Again! As if I happened to forget some previously communicated information. They never told me, I swear.

Some people grow up entirely without the fear of being kidnapped and raped and murdered and it shows.

“Gosport,” the driver said. Fucking Gosport?

Honestly, even now, more than a decade later, I feel strongly that it was all rather rude. You can’t just take a person to Gosport, of all places, without telling them. But! Of course, I was 21, and, well, me. I just nodded. Tell me, how is one to engage with life sincerely when the threat of being awkward and embarrassing is worse than actual death?

But then again, if you have no intention of trafficking a person, then you might as well tell them where you’re going, right? Anyone who even had a smidge of empathy accidentally stuck to the sole of their shoe should understand how a small girl in her first ever (you could tell) pencil skirt might feel in the back of a car being driven out of town by three unfamiliar men.

And if they did in fact intend to traffic me I would rather they just tell me anyway, so I could finally stop worrying.

Of course they were like, 25 or something, so what are we even talking about here.

🌟Present Day🌟

Mila has been a demon at bedtime, and sometimes at night. Sleep regression’s the name, agonizing struggle to retain sanity and not tear hair out of one’s head is the game. Sleep regression? More like I’m beginning to understand this woman who abandoned her family and children and moved to China and shaved her head, am I right? Ha! She’s living a tranquil life of peace atop a foggy mountain, embraced by greenery as far as the eye can see.

I joke, you know. I’m well, the children are well, we are all well. Even when life’s a little bit like…

6 am, Sunday morning. A toddler stomps into the room. Through the haze of a prematurely interrupted slumber I feel burning rage beginning within me. Meanwhile, Zoe is shouting “Mommy, Mommy!” from the other room. A coordinated, two pronged attack. They finally unionised, I should have anticipated this.

“You should go get her,” Jules says. Flashback images of bribing, begging, and threatening the child to go back to bed earlier at 1, 2:30 and 3:30 roll through my mind’s eye.

“YOU should go get her.” I say, hoping desperately my tone speaks for itself. “You take this small one, and the slightly bigger one, and I swear to god if I see a child come through that door again before 9 am I’m going to flip a motherfucking fuse. You get them.” Not all love is gifts and rose petals and sipping the same milkshake with two straws while gazing into each others’ eyes. Some love is taking the children away and executing what one must assume is the most epic performance in three acts to keep them away from the bedroom door.

And for all those who think oh Ani I cannot believe you’re a potty mouth first thing on SUNDAY! morning… Lissen here, punks. I want genuinely to do like Nietzsche and all of them smart guys. I do my best to confront the problems and complexities of existence head on (unless it’s admin, fuck admin).

But tell me, how is one to engage with life sincerely on 2 hours of sleep? There is absolutely no way. So I get Jules to take the kids and put the phone on airplane mode.

Love it, hate it, the time of raising small children is finite and it’s here anyway. I don’t hate it, but some mornings I do not love it, either. Humans are almost supernaturally devoid of any productive consequential empathy up to a certain point, and lord do I live that truth every day.

Then I look at adults and realise some just stay there.

🌟11.2024🌟

I learned recently that it takes 8 minutes for the sunlight to get to us. Everyone knows that starlight can take years and years to reach us. Our nearest star takes 8 minutes. We could be technically as good as dead from some solar flare, but only actually dead some 8 minutes later. Is that how physics works? Either way, you know what I mean.

People say live every day, or whatever. Maybe living every 8 minutes makes more sense. If you had half a second to consider how you spent these last 8 minutes, just waiting for that cold, inevitable universal verdict to be delivered to you. Would you want to know? Maybe 8 minutes isn’t long enough to make a difference and you would rather spend them doing whatever it is you’re already doing.

8 minutes or 80 years, we’re waiting either way, with a small footnote of… if the sun explodes, then *everyone* goes. I’m not sure if this thought should feel as liberating as it does.

But wouldn’t you rather know, so you can finally stop worrying for everyone at once?

🌟12.2024🌟

For me, past memories of December always have a warm glow around them. It’s pavlovian, sure, but I *am* conditioned, so might as well enjoy it. Tell me, how is one to break out of societal programming and engage with life sincerely on two hours of sleep?

Either way, it’s kind of neat how star anise and cloves and nutmeg are December, family, miracles, but like, oregano and coriander just aren’t. Coriander especially. Coriander is just the strangest of herbs. “Oh, I hate coriander, no coriander please.” Apparently some people think it tastes like soap, some genetic thing. Or, even worse: “it’s cilantro, actually”.

I like meaning, so go ahead. Fun new date idea: lets get together and semiologically program each other until every single thing in the world makes sense. The more layers of imposed meaning there are, the more fun therapy will be during mid-life crisis/menopause years. And that’s not me saying that, that’s Einstein.

🌟Present day🌟

It’s January now, so the smells and the holiday burnout are all over and done with. January brings that sobering feeling and not just because everyone is refusing to drink all of a sudden. There was nothing wrong with alcohol literally the night before, but okay.

I don’t make resolutions. Failing at things other people expect from me is enough, why start inventing new things to fail at? But I did vow to eat more fermented foods.

Now every food has to be ran through the “Is this fermented?” filter. If it has fewer than 70 billion live bacteria, don’t even call me. My mom was over yesterday. She’s a biologist, also, Slavic, which does make you automatically 14% more qualified to answer questions about fermentation.

“Is apple cider vinegar a fermented food?” She started laughing. I said, hey there, don’t laugh at me, punk. She said: “I’m not laughing at you, I’m just laughing at the question. It’s not really about fermented food, it’s a product of fermentation. The bacteria are still all there…” Literally never ask scientists anything. Maybe all those expert-hating anti-vaxxer conservative-voting misinformation-spreading culture murderers have a point. Life is already exhausting, and now I’m being laughed at.

I still couldn’t understand why that was funny. “Okaay… is apple cider vinegar a fermentator filled fermented food, mama?” Anyway. Year of our lord 2025, I have never encountered anyone having an issue with the term Fermented Food before, but we’re a quarter through the century now so I guess it’s time to level up the vocab.

I started this year so tired. Maybe, in 8 minutes it will all make sense. For now, I will continue my hopeless tired attempts to engage with life and its fermentators sincerely, maybe stop worrying.

A few minutes at a time.

1. …and you know that i know that you know…

2. spot the engagement bait for my fashion babes