In advance of International Self Care Day on July 24, I’d like to share my own self care routine, which you can modify to your own needs, according to your free time etc etc. Check with your doctor before starting any new exercise!

I get out of bed after a few hours of nightmares, tossing and turning, and general sweaty discomfort. I stumble to the kitchen to turn on the coffee, and take a cup to the couch, where my phone is. I take my Adderall.

I turn on MSNBC for the liberal-leaning news, and settle in for the next 4 or five hours. At some point, I remember to take my Cymbalta and Welbutrin. While I hear about the latest deranged shenanigans of the Republican party, alarming Covid statistics, geopolitical conflicts and climate catastrophes, I scroll through my Instagram feed, clicking Like and typing “beautiful!” or clapping hand emojis.

In between liking and clapping, I check my email, deleting billions of shopping site updates and pleas from Eric Holder and Kamala Harris. I dutifully look at the 450 new items at Net-a-Porter, careful not to miss a single offering.

Periodically, I get up to pee and inspect my hair situation. Is it nice and smooth or a frizzy rat’s nest? I squirt saline in my nose in a doomed attempt to clear my sinuses and breathe.

In the afternoon, I get dressed and wander around the house, wondering what to do and why I’m even alive. I might go grocery shopping or to the mall, where the endorphins of commerce lift my spirits enough for me to charge something at Nordstrom that I will return in the next few days.

Back home, I continue with the news and scroll Instagram some more. I consult the mirror a few more times to evaluate my hair and wonder if there’s a way to get a neck-lift without getting a neck lift.

I walk the dog for 20 minutes or just let my husband do it.

After dark, I smoke some weed and wait for him to make dinner. My husband, not the dog. We watch TV while we eat, starting with our favorite shows and ending with some poorly written and laughably performed garbage about missing girls and homophobic Spaniards.

Finally, I shuffle off to bed, take a teeny bit of Ativan, and read a novel, preferably something dark and devastating, until my eyes start to close.

There you have it. It’s challenging, sure, but you can do it. I forgot to note all the cups of coffee, the scrupulous avoidance of water, and the chips and salsa. They are actually essential to my wellness program.

What are you doing for self care?? I really want to know, but I will deduct points for the words yoga mat.

Having left off with a heartbroken post about Mother’s Day, I am back with more miserable reflections of the state of things, or more specifically the state of me, Sister Wolf.

Remember when I fell and broke my pelvis? Well, I have done it again! Hard to believe, I know, and yet there it is. This time I fell in my own home in a stupid fluke accident and landed on my bad leg with the hardware in it. The hardware was sturdy but my pelvis was not. The part that broke is the pubis ramus, a fucking bummer.

So I had to get an ambulance, and the EMT guys were sorry about taking me to the hospital, acting like they were delivering me to certain death from Coronavirus. I sobbed about dying but since I couldn’t stand up, I had no choice.

The hospital was great! There were no COVID patients there, and the nurses were lovely young women who chatted with me about everything and brought me extra coffee when I begged for it. At night, the ward was full of screaming and moaning, but not from me. One doctor talked to me for more than an hour about his life and aspirations. When I went home after 2 days, I missed all the companionship.

Twelve years ago when I broke my pelvis, some awful Russian cunt made it a project to mock my pain on her stupid blog, which I then parodied on a blog I devoted to mocking her back. Those were the days, eh?

So now I need to use a walker to get around my house, and I’m in nearly constant pain. I guess I could take this opportunity to become addicted to opiates, but nah, why bother? I have a nice physical therapist who keeps calling me ma’am. My poor husband has to help with everything, and I secretly wonder if he can distinguish me from his 103 year old mother. His mother has a better attitude, obviously.

Yesterday, my oxygen saturation was 94 %, not good. It connects me to the cultural inflection points of George Floyd ( I can’t breathe) and the pandemic (low oxygen is a symptom of COVID 19.)

I watched the funeral service in Houston today, and envied the solidarity of black families. My friend Romeo told me that this is because we’ve never allowed black people to have anything else. If this is true, I still envy those families. The love and the loyalty is so absent in my own family, a pill that grows more bitter the older I get. All the feuds and petty squabbles. Even when times are tough, my family is incapable of pulling together.

On top of everything, I found a hairdresser who is making house-calls, so she came over last week and spent four hours ruining my beautiful hair. She left me with some shit in my hair to rinse off in 15 minutes. If she’d stayed for it to dry, she would have heard my shriek of horror when I looked in the mirror to find a platinum fright wig where my beautiful highlights used to be.

Ha ha! Life is full of jokes, if only you have the sense of humor to enjoy them! I do enjoy them, up to a point, you know?

If you have time, pray to the gods of your understanding that my pelvis mends and I don’t die of Coronavirus before I get to have a last laugh at someone else’s expense, hopefully Trump’s.

Thanks in advance! xoxo

You know how I am about hair, right? So I wrote about hair for Miista over here if you’re interested.

If not, here’s some more hair.

Sometimes people worry when I go silent for awhile, thinking I might have drunk the weedkiller. I really appreciate the concern, by the way! But I’m going to London for a couple of weeks *sans weedkiller, and I plan to have a great time.

Museums, Harrods, museums, Camden Passage, museums, curry, Fortnum and Mason, Miista, etc.

I haven’t been to London in forty years, but I know that Primrose Hill and Hampstead are still there so there will be some good nostalgia to be had.

Enjoy your break from my whining or read shit in the archives. Write to me if you think of somewhere I should go in London.

*Easily the stupidest and most maddening word in contemporary writing, I use it here to show my love xo

I decided to skip the new Caitlyn Jenner show because (1) I am just sick of her/him, and (2) I was busy watching my other Sunday shit as discussed only last week.

But upon reflection, I feel I should have my own Reality Show and of course, you should too!

Mine will be about My Journey. There will be laughter, tears, and whining, and then more tears. There will be a lot of yelling and cursing.

My family members will make appearances, nagging and berating me. My sister will bring her list of things she resents me for, like she did the last time we went out for coffee.

My gender will remain pretty stable throughout, but my mental state will be all over the fucking map.

Like I imagine Caitlyn did, I will invite you into my closet. I will grab a bunch of stuff and throw it across the room, announcing, “No more Bruce!” Or I can just moan, “Why did I spend money on this stupid shit?” as my husband wrings his hands in the background.

We will review the history of my hair, and we’ll wonder how long before I die of cancer from those ‘keratin’ treatments.

Fine, it sounds a little boring but in fact it will be mesmerizing, like Apocalypse Now crossed with Grey Gardens, only not. Maybe I can get a synopsis of every Caitlyn episode and just follow her/his lead. We can certainly talk about my tits and make-up and how fearlessly I insist on being Me.

I fucking love this. And it’s not just about me. It’s about everyone struggling with existence as an angry, self-involved shopping addict with mood swings who wants attention but doesn’t have a voice. Cunt or not.

I was going to a wedding on Sunday, so my friend Andy insisted on  straightening  my hair for the occasion. It’s the first time I’ve ever had my hair flat-ironed.

It’s so silky and it looks so much longer! But I can’t afford to do this on a regular basis and I wonder why we all want the kind of hair we don’t have. It’s probably the same  reason  we all want a body shape that doesn’t come naturally either.

I’ve been going around feeling superior to everyone without long straight hair. Tomorrow after I wash it, I’ll turn back into a  pumpkin.

If anyone lives in L.A. and you want good hair, Let me know and I’ll hook you up with Andy, whose  Salon  is in Santa Monica.

As for the  wedding, It was the most glorious and romantic occasion you could ask for! The bride and groom are both in their forties and had nearly given up on finding someone to love. But when they   met, it was clear to all that they were soulmates at the deepest level. The bride was breathtaking in her satin gown and swirling veil and I did her red lipstick. Their love is like an orchid blooming in a wasteland. It proves that good things still happen.

I’m grateful for the miracle of love and flat-irons.