Who wants to lose to me in a card game?

On routine, my summer movie challenge, and Married at First Sight. This is a newsletter from GRIEF AND MEDIA!

I am learning this more and more about myself the older I get: I love routine. I like to think I’m spontaneous in many ways, but I like spontaneity to fit in around my standard routines. And perhaps the biggest spontaneity is that you never know when I will cancel a routine, never to return to it again! This is true in many aspects of my life. I will eat the same meal for breakfast, every single day, until I decide I can’t stand it any longer. Right now I must have a banana, an iced latte with brown sugar, and brown sugar oatmeal from Trader Joe’s with chia seeds and frozen blueberries. Oatmeal from anywhere else? Get that shit out of my face. Husband of GRIEF AND MEDIA will often ask if I want him to make me a breakfast burrito or whatever else when he makes himself breakfast. The answer is always, “Why would I want that?” Before my current breakfast, I would have Trader Joe’s O’s cereal with chia seeds and freeze dried strawberries. I think I ate this cereal every day from 2022 to sometime earlier this year when I took a bite one morning and thought, “This is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever eaten in my life.” I have never looked back.

My routine comes in many forms. Most notably in my media intake. I will make playlists for each season of my life and listen to it on repeat; I remember once husband of GRIEF AND MEDIA had to skip Someday by Sugar Ray when it came on in my car because he said, “I have heard this 400 times in the past two weeks alone.” When Ariana Grande’s sweetener came out, I listened to my favorite track (REM) on repeat my entire drive from Los Angeles to San Diego. I have seen my favorite movies (Clue, Hairspray, The Purge, etc.) more times than I can possibly count. I received my childhood favorite movie, Mean Girls, on DVD for Christmas 2010, and I watched it ~30 times before school began in January. (My first job was at AMC, and our name tags listed our favorite movies. Mine read, “Alex / Mean Girls,” so people constantly asked me if I was a mean girl. UGH.)

As such, I gave myself an end-of-summer challenge. I am watching one new-to-me movie a day until the fall semester begins. (I am teaching, btw!!!! More to come there. <3) I am 16 movies in so far. It’s been fun; I’ve only fallen asleep three times. The oldest movie I’ve seen is The Blob (1958), and the newest is One Night Only (yesterday). My favorites so far are Young Adult (I like seeing Charlize Theron in movies specifically because of Long Shot), Zombieland (I fucking love 2009), and Undertone (I can tell when a director was shaped by Paranormal Activity as much as I was, plus he wrote it while caregiving for his parents). My least favorite was Voicemails for Isabelle (honestly, no comment). Regardless, I’m having a lot of fun.

I’ve been experiencing some annoying health issues, one of them being suspected endometriosis. (I have PCOS and recently learned that incredibly painful periods are NOT a PCOS symptom!) I was watching Napoleon Dynamite last week when I started having 10 out of 10 pain. Suspected endometriosis is crazy because one moment you’ll be watching Napoleon Dynamite ride in on a stallion, and the next you will be almost fainting on the floor. There are no lessons to be learned here, but I did love the movie.

I am open to any and all movie recommendations, particularly horror and/or comedy that are older than 2000. Whoever sends me a movie recommendation that becomes one I watch over and over again wins.

Other media I’ve been into lately:

• Married at First Sight. Trust me. I’ve seen a few seasons before, but this season was revamped specifically to give Love Island viewers something to watch when the season ended. You have the wildest cast of Seattle-based contestants, with matchmakers who made the wildest decisions: a late-night-partier Atheist restaurant manager who cheated in the past paired with a normal and chill woman whose faith is important to her and has been cheated on; the most annoying man you’ve ever met who also owns a jet ski paired with the coolest person on the show; a woman who spent all her life (with a successful career and her family) in Seattle with a man asking her to move to Portland for his community college basketball coaching career, which seems like something he could definitely do in Seattle. Mind you, these are the best couples! This season is a social experiment in What if we took beautiful, incredible women in Seattle and paired them with the weirdest men we can find? I’m locked in.

• I’ve been listening to Ariana’s newest album petal. I like a few songs (nowhere, nobody is by far my favorite, plus bad thing (bunny hop) and kiss me), but it’s not my favorite album of hers—I think I struggle with songs/albums that explore fame and one’s relationship to it, because I cannot relate. (The one exception here being Holy Grail, a song I had on repeat, no surprise, in 2013). My favorite is the aforementioned sweetener, an album with only one skip (breathin, sorry!). I was reflecting on my love for a Pharrell-produced Ariana song, which made me recently discover Arturo Sandoval, by Arturo Sandoval, Pharrell, and Ariana. Song of the fucking SUMMER. As all 2018 music is.

• Playing cards. This isn’t media, but I can say whatever I want, wherever I want in this newsletter!!!! I grew up playing Shanghai rummy with my family, and I brought it back into my life once more. Playing almost every night with husband of GRIEF AND MEDIA reminds me of times I would play with my parents. (We were especially into it my senior year of high school in the months before my dad died, on Friday nights after we got home from football games in which I cheered and my parents came to watch). I wonder if my dad thought of his parents when he would play with my mom and me. In general, I’ve been trying to spend less time on my phone/computer, especially as I relax. It’s been really fun to relax while winning Shanghai rummy (I love winning) or playing solitaire repeatedly. Who wants to play with me? (You will lose.)

GRIEF AND MEDIA updates:

I am bringing back my podcast Grief Support Group!!!! It got a rebrand (see for yourself on Spotify or Apple), and I’ll be bringing it back whenever school is back in session—since I have my orientation for my adjunct faculty role next week, you’ll be hearing from me! Syllabus to come. (Just kidding. For now.) I’ll still be answering your advice questions, so get them in for this week’s episode at bit.ly/askgriefandmedia.

Big Brother is BACK in my routine (and if you’re watching, thank GOD for a power shift this week). My latest essay on reality television, morality, and grief as a game move is out, and I’m proud of this one!

That’s all from me! I’ll be enjoying the rest of my summer. See you soon 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟

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