Folding into the shape of sleep

˙⋆✮⋆˚࿔ Above the paywall: I consider Sara Ahmed’s theory of happy objects + John Locke’s grapes in the GLP-1 era, puke in my yard, call for the Everything Shower to be reframed as a coping mechanism, exit reality via prescription antihistamines, and recall a scene from Euphoria in the context of identity and desire. Below the paywall: My three-hour glucose test, “beauty writing” dread, and a girls’ night in Asbury Park. A paid subscription is $33.33/yr˙⋆✮⋆˚࿔

Saturday, 8/8/26

Last night’s sleep aid of choice was Diclegis: a delayed-release tablet of doxylamine succinate and pyridoxine hydrochloride—aka Unisom, every pregnant bitch’s right-hand antihistamine + Vitamin B6. It’s been an interesting week of testing the escape quality of prescription antihistamines, gauging my tolerance and next-day functionality. I’m making good use of my bedside pharmacy where I’ve been stockpiling (relatively harmless) scripts for years. You never know.

This morning I woke up feeling decent. I slept on the couch and left the baby monitor with Andrew so that I could sleep uninterrupted and get the full Diclegis experience. I was groggy but nothing close to post-hydroxyzine (more on that below).

I pulled my hair into a slicked back bun (the hypocrisy!) because I already had that OGX coconut oil spray (which smells, to me, like buttered popcorn) in my hair from like, two days ago; sprayed my face with rosewater and covered it in Weleda Skin Food; thought about putting sunscreen on and didn’t because I don’t; filled my brows in with Anastasia dipbrow pomade; applied the Merit stick to my nose and other red patches; contoured heavily with the e.l.f. wand, from which the product is leaking grey-brown mucus all over my makeup drawer (I am the type b friend); tight-lined with a MUFE black pencil despite knowing this does not look good on me; curled my lashes and applied Lancome Lash Idole mascara (I got a free sample and I don’t really like it. I’m not a curved wand girl.) Got dressed in a white linen skirt and a vintage black Woolrich tanktop and black flip-flops. Then it was off to the farmer’s market.

Collingswood was bustling with hot, interesting people getting their Jersey tomato fix in the blazing sun. Right before we left, I thought to myself, it would be really cool if someone started selling books at the farmer’s market. Not only did we come upon a charming AQUAMARINE BOOK TRUCK called INKWHEELS selling everything from Truman Capote to Richard Scarry children’s books, there was also a band there playing “Casey Jones.” Immaculate! Mattina mia! We picked up some greens, a parsley plant, two cucumbers, and a cantaloupe.

At home, I ate a shitload of green seedless grapes from Costco. As they popped in my mouth I thought about John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, by way of Sara Ahmed’s theory of ‘Happy Objects.’ Locke says, “When a man declares in autumn, when he is eating them, or in spring, when there are none, that he loves grapes, it is no more, but that the taste of grapes delights him.” Ahmed considers the seasonal nature of happiness, the way happy objects, like Locke’s grapes, remain delightful even in their absence. Think about how nuts we go for a fucking nectarine in August. Standing over a stainless steel sink flesh and juice busting out your teeth down your chin all summertime savage. Memory is, overwhelmingly, a warm thing.

Locke warns, however, that “an alteration of health or constitution” can destroy one’s love for their object of delight. “If our bodies change over time,” Ahmed explains, “then the world around us will create different impressions.” I wonder how this translates in the GLP-1 era. Does reducing food noise alter one’s capacity to delight in the memory of a fruit when it’s not in season? Is food no longer a “happy object?” I ask these questions purely out of curiosity.

I spent the rest of the day hanging with the baby, napped while she napped, read Flannery O’Connor, and cooked a fresh dinner with stuff from the market: chimichurri tilapia, sweet potato fries, and a big green salad. We listened to those songs that are on every “chill cooking” playlist, like “Cherish the Day”... “Time Moves Slow”... “Minetta Creek.” Observed our child’s impressive taste for vinegary green things. And now here I am, eating a chocolate fudge Yasso bar in bed, feeling anxious about writing.

Friday, 8/7/26

Sick all day. A self-diagnosed emetophobic, I was annoyed by my inability to induce vomit. For whatever reason, I thought being in nature might help loosen my body’s natural mechanism for the job. So I went into the yard, hugged our big tree, and said “please tree, make me puke.” Stuck my finger down my throat and spewed ginger ale into the grass and hung there folded over laughing a while, kinda touched by the theatrics of illness, how goofy and desperate we get when we have a wittle tummyache. The landscapers next door had a clear view of the scene. It’s a shame they didn’t clap.

Wednesday, 8/5/26

9 AM

Solo parenting these last couple days while my husband is quarantined in the living room with a stomach bug. I’m surprised by how well I’m handling it in my current state. At 32 weeks pregnant, my son allegedly the size of a JICAMA (hilarious flex by my hospital), Newton’s First Law still holds up: An object in motion stays in motion, even when she gets out of breath standing still.

I just dropped Bianca at daycare. It was pouring buckets when we went to leave and my first instinct was to wrap her in the towel I showered with last night? Not carry an umbrella across the yard, or grab my raincoat, but swaddle my giant baby in the damp towel crumpled on the floor next to the hamper that I’ve been showering with for at least a week straight. Ok.

In the car, I wondered if they make some kind of gadget or outerwear for this, for carrying your child through the rain, both arms too busy to manage an umbrella. And then I was like, wait… no. NO! I mean, yes, I should buy her a raincoat. But it’s also a good thing that my first instinct was to wrap her in a musty towel because that means I’m still stupid and uncomfortable and that means I’m not a machine (yet).

One of my things lately is letting my YouTube algorithm drop me off in Sloptropica (not to be confused with the island nation of Floptropica). Sometimes you have to commune with the worst the internet has to offer to appreciate your normal haunts. I’m still recovering from this video “22 Amazon Products You’ve Never Seen Before,” in which a robot-man recommends 22 pieces of crap to solve your made-up problems. I am the target audience for this content. Not because I would buy any of it, but because I will watch it in the passive stupor it’s designed to sustain. And for a moment, I might even think I need that 360-degree rotating portable high chair that would definitely snap off the table and kill my child.

But then I come to, and I am driving my Mazda down White Horse Pike, listening to Scott McClanahan talk about his new book in his Cracker Barrel drawl, windshield wipers swishing at full speed. And I am grateful for my towel, which did absolute fuck all to keep us dry.

1:30 PM

Valerie Estrina, my genius friend behind club reticent, interviewed me for her new series The Grit, described as “beautiful conversations with my favorite women about their creative lives – unpredictability to craft.” And a beautiful conversation we had. Was I intimidated to be the second guest after the glamorous novelist, Allie Rowbottom? Hell yeah. But Valerie was such a gracious and thoughtful interviewer, which made me feel comfortable being myself. We talked about everything from being Very Online to grappling with motherhood as identity to our shared thoughts on “selling out.” Love a video call. Love slowing down and reflecting on the writing process. Love Valerie. I’ll be sure to share when it comes out.

Monday, 8/3/26

I hereby declare a moratorium on calling the Everything Shower a routine. Even if it fits the formal definition(s). Even if you do it on the same day, at the same time, in the same order every week. That framework is, for many of us, spiritually meaningless and therefore defunct.

Instead, consider the Everything Shower as a coping mechanism: a habitual response to the low-stakes trauma that builds up on the dermis like a translucent film. Anyone who’s ever come off autopilot mid-slough has seen what lurks behind the African net sponge, has heard the voices chanting “SCRUB HARDER.” Our filth is existential, but we tell ourselves this is what it takes to be beautiful and clean. Hmm.

I personally prefer the coping mechanism framework because, on the rare occasion that my mind clocks in during the process, it is like post-nut clarity: Ah, yes, I am buffing my skin raw because I feel weird about this thing and need to get the weird feeling off of me. This was especially palpable after my three-day hydroxyzine experiment over the weekend. I was in the shower today moving quicker and scrubbing harder than usual, and I could tell that it was fueled by the shame of taking an evil pill three nights in a row, frustrated that my brain still felt like Swiss cheese.

A little background: In September 2025, I saw a psychiatrist who did not like that I took Ativan, despite my assuring him that I could count on one hand how many times I’d taken it. Instead, he prescribed me 25mg of an antihistamine called hydroxyzine. It sat unopened in my bedside pharmacy until this past Thursday when I felt weird after my three-hour glucose test, and figured I could use a good night’s sleep.

Good… good was glorious. Like sleeping in a pod with all the elements optimized to mimic a cottage at the foot of the Alps. I woke up Friday morning stick-straight on my back, motionless beneath the soft circulation of the ceiling fan. And I felt RESTED! Groggy, but RESTED! Stoked on some unfounded delusion of full cellular regeneration and my impenetrable dream state to care. This hydroxyzine is good stuff, I thought, the kind of inconsequential sleep aid I’d always hoped to find so that whenever I needed a hard reset, or to fight illness, I could just knock out for 12 hours (which is not something my body naturally allows). When I looked in the mirror, my face had de-puffed, my angularity was somewhat restored. My eyes were bright white. No beauty product on the market rivals sleeping like the dead.

The day passed by uneventfully, but Friday night brought on a classic, third trimester double whammy: restless leg syndrome and a yeast infection. Pregnancy is such a beautiful, embodied, freeing experience of divine femininity, right, mamas? Just buy my gestational yoni cleanse brewed with 14 rare herbs I foraged in Nepal for $399.99, mamas. I’ll throw in a free belly butter, mamas. Lordy. I took Monistat as one does, and Miss Hydroxy arrived on the scene to take it from there. Night night!

Waking up Saturday morning was far less romantic. I knew that I’d slept the whole night, but the hydroxyzine had pulled me under so quickly that I never felt myself drifting off. Startled by the blackout, I went back to sleep until 11 AM, hoping I could shake off the fog and have a normal day. No such luck. We went to a coffee shop and I got a ROOT BEER FLOAT COLD BREW (divine)—my third coffee of the day—and I still couldn’t break through this wall that separated me from reality. I told myself I’d never take this shit again. THROWING THE BOTTLE AWAY! I literally said to Andrew over coffee, “I’m throwing that bottle away.”

But I did not throw the bottle away. In fact, I took it again that night thinking I’d have developed some semblance of a tolerance by that point. Silly me to believe I could outwit the hat man. He pulled up with a branding iron and stamped my brain like livestock to remind me always that I am his, that my desire to escape the pain of being alive—of carrying a child—will burn me every time.

I messaged my OB asking for a lower dose hydroxyzine prescription. She replied that she’d prefer I take Unisom for sleep troubles going forward. The only sentence I wrote from my first dose to today was this:

There is nothing I can do but fold my body into the shape of sleep.

Thursday, 7/30/26

In the season three finale of Euphoria, our crew of fentanyl mules returns to the US from Mexico in an ambulance. Border patrol checks the vehicle to find two strippers coming off a little medical tourism. Kitty, the haunted doll played by Anna Van Patten, gets her much-awaited BBL. She’s lying on a stretcher, smiling dreamily, and accidentally gives the name Kitty to the cop before cooing, “Oh my God, I’m so stupid. Catherine.”

But the other woman, Christina, has undergone a facial procedure, and the bandaging redirects your eyes to her body. Her bronze legs and implants and lime green g-string hiked up over her hipbones. I wondered if the visual would be as striking if we had a full view of her face; I don’t think it would. And it made me think of that one “faceless pornstar” people were obsessed with a few years ago, and why we sometimes prefer our objects of desire to have no identity. When we’re forced to engage with a full person it feels intimate in a way that reminds us of our own perversion. Removes us from those lawless islands of the mind.

I was reflecting on some of the ways I do this, and I kept coming back to the grotesque more than the sexual (though it comes up for me in sex, too). Books make it easy to engage with the grotesque without ever having to brush up against it, smell its funk. I like books full of ugly shit that makes me squirm but I can barely commute into Philly for work these days—the city I lived in for eight years— without losing my mind, feeling like there are bugs crawling all over me.

Today I had my three-hour glucose test for gestational diabetes. The one-hour screening is not fasted, so you’re encouraged to have like, eggs or whatever before downing 50mg of sugar. The three-hour test, though… you’ve gotta fast for 12 hours (not even black coffee!) and drink 100mg of sugar to get the real diagnosis.

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