History Repeats Itself

An end of year stroll down memory lane.

Resurfacing the below festive reading material for you all as odds are I will not be getting my annual Christmas Manicure this holiday season.

I have arrived in Florida but my downstairs toilet and shower overflowed with shitty sewer water flooding the bathroom and parts of the living room. This resulted in a multi-hour plumbing emergency (still unresolved!) which really put a kink in my holiday beautification schedule.

The horrors persist, but so do I, ya filthy animals.

We are mere moments away from the downhill ski through CHRISTMAS EVE and CHRISTMAS DAY. Some of us will then log back on 5lbs heavier for a few days before ramping up for NEW YEARS EVE and NEW YEARS DAY. Then we’ll skate right into THE INAUGURATION (…on MLK Day?). It’s all a bit much.

Amidst all of this deafening capitalism and apocalyptic dread I have found time the first week of January to squeeze in my other annual winter holiday tradition: the Miami Standard trip. I have optimized this minibreak by scheduling it over the days when my floors are being redone.

My Florida condo Seabird got flooded with salt water during Hurricane Helene so everything had to be ripped out, dehumidified, bleached and now replaced. While we wait we’ve laid brown paper over the subfloor. It’s kind of like living in a paper doll house or a giant brainstorm session without any ideas written down.

Anyway, brown paper floor soaked in shitty sewer water I can handle. But what I absolutely cannot handle is literally typing this Substack missive to you from my couch and hearing the pitter patter (x6) of little hairy roach feet scurry across around in the kitchen.

Which leads me to my next throwback:

When I say the roach scurries across the floor I mean they raise up their entire body to get more speed and run on their tiptoes at a full chaotic clip, possibly directly toward you. They have been doing this since before the dinosaurs (and Jesus) and will be doing this after humans are extinct. They are innovators. THEY EAT GLUE.

They also love to eat brown paper. They “find it appealing.”

What more can I tell you, you do the math, it’s the holidays, it’s lawless. The shitter is full and the roaches are feasting on your brown paper floor buffet. Abundance is everywhere and Santa forgets no one. We’re all just lifting our bodies up, scurrying around, trying to make it to the next year without getting squished.

Good luck out there.