Sari's Shit List #1
Winter, Germs, Shitty News
I’ve decided to make my shit list its own thing…
Winter. I fucking hate North East winter. I’ve now been through 59 of them—this one is technically my 60th, as I approach the completion of 60 years in October—and while here and there some nice things have happened in the colder months, for the most part, every winter of my life has largely sucked. I’ve sampled enough winters to know that they are just not for me.
I’ve tried so hard throughout my life in this region to make friends with winter, bundling up with extra layers to brace frigid temps, investing in good flannel sheets and shearling slippers, even going so far as to buy cross country skis and snow shoes one year. Nothing has worked. I’m sorry, but this season does not have much to recommend it by. It’s miserably isolating. It’s dark. It’s often dangerous to drive in. My depression reaches new depths. Boo, winter.
Which is also when I’m most vulnerable to the next thing on my shit list…
Germs. One good thing about recent years of intermittent Covid lockdown is that I was sick less often. My lemon of an immune system caught a break for a few years, although I did have mononucleosis for six months in 2021, and Covid twice, in 2022 and 2023. But no strep, colds, sinusitis, bronchitis, pneumonia—my usual assortment of frequent ailments. It’s only mid-January and this winter I’ve already been sick twice, with a nasty cold while on vacation in Puerto Rico in December, and for the last few days, a stomach virus.
This past Thursday through this coming Monday I was supposed to be attending a fun writing and yoga retreat about an hour north of my home in Kingston, but whatever the hell this is—norovirus?—had other ideas. I had decided to treat myself, to carve out time away from my editor duties to devote to a long essay I’ve been working on for some time, and to shake things up for myself in the dead of freezing January by meeting some new people/writers. I was all prepared, and planned to leave Thursday afternoon—I’d pre-edited and pre-scheduled all of my Oldster Magazine and Memoir Land posts through the middle of next week. Then Brian came home early from work on Wednesday barfing, and the next morning I awoke with that disgusting affliction.
Fuck you, germs.
All the unbelievably shitty news right now. Above all, You-Know-Who’s imminent return to office four years after what in hindsight was a successful, slow-moving coup. The shock and disbelief I’ve been mired in since election day is giving way to abject terror, not just for me but for people I love who are marginalized in assorted ways, and so more vulnerable to the horrors to come. Grief is mixed in with it. I’m mourning the death of my understanding of how the world is supposed to work, basic human rights, and how people are supposed to treat one another. I’ve been joking that Free to Be…You and Me didn’t prepare me for this moment, which is really true, but I no longer find it funny.
Let’s see…the L.A. fires continue on, tearing apart a great city, and the lives and careers therein…I’m glad about the Gaza ceasefire, but skeptical and anxious about the first stage’s staying power, and whether we’ll ever get to the subsequent stages so necessary for the whole thing to have any lasting effect for those whose lives (and homes and schools and hospitals) and families have been destroyed.
There’s also Lila Shapiro’s excellent but sick-making Neil Gaiman sexual assault expose in NYMag/Vulture. The whole thing is so viscerally disturbing, for a moment I thought Maybe it’s not a stomach virus, but utter disgust from reading that piece.
Take a hike, shitty news.