the march dispatch

clara's little life updates

I wanted to do a bit of a catch-up today because I have a few Serious Pieces I'm working on and to be honest, even I get tired of myself. I hate the feeling of dragging myself from paragraph to paragraph. It doesn't make for good writing. It's too heavy.

So this is the newsletter equivalent to dropping my shoulders, I guess. Relaxing my words a bit, telling you about my life recently. A little dispatch, of the kind I used to send my grandma as a teenager and trying not to fail Calculus.

Oh, before I start, I announced this on Notes (lol) but more properly now: annual subscriptions are now $40/year, down from $50/year, and as of Monday, March 10, monthly subscriptions will be $6/month, up from $5/month. I’ve been thinking about pricing for a while now, because frankly I’m aware of how unnecessary, downright frivolous almost, a paid newsletter subscription is within a household budget, and my goal is to make the newsletter as accessible as possible while still making a living. I’m hoping the lower annual subscription cost will accomplish that.

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Sorry, this is an old photo, circa December 2023. It’s also out of focus. Would it shock you to know this was somehow the best photo my family took of me on this trip?

I got a wax this week. Sorry. Really jumping into things with that. I did say this would be a dispatch, although normally I wouldn’t tell you this, even in a dispatch, but the reason I'm telling you, and the girls that get it get it, is that the technician started with my legs and ended with the bikini wax (telling you what kind of bikini wax I get seems unnecessary?), which, if you’re unfamiliar with the proces,s is not the usual order of things. It really threw me for a loop for a few minutes.

Eventually, I drummed up the nerve to ask if she had me down for a Brazilian as well (there you go), or just legs, in case I had made a mistake when booking and she thought I liked going full Winnie the Pooh on her little waxing table for no reason, a thought that mortified me to no end, and she, cool as a cucumber, said yep, legs and Brazilian, so I just kinda laid there in a state of relative shock as she went around her business, which I suppose was really my business. She was great, to be clear. Accused me of shaving and told me I should exfoliate more, which is something they always tell me, no matter how much I exfoliate.¹

On my way to the wax, I got stopped by two old ladies, which thrilled me because I was sure they'd ask me for directions, and I actually love giving people directions, both because I cherish the opportunity to impress strangers I'll never see again and because I appreciate when something I know becomes useful to someone other than myself. Multitudes, etc.

Anyway, the old ladies did not ask me for directions. Clutching a thick folder to their chests, they smiled back at me one of them asked if I knew what God's plan was, her tone suggesting they knew and would be willing to share the information. Unwilling to find out what they were asking for in return, I thanked them for the offer but demurred.

Hard not to imagine, looking back, that I might have made the wrong choice. Would love to know God’s plan right now.

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On the subject of my geographic location, which I think has concerned some people based on questions and comments I've gotten recently: