I wasn’t going to post today… The day started off well, and I got my hair styled, and the color turned out perfectomundo, but I’m still vacillating back and forth on the cut, which is the shortest one I’ve ever had, and I didn’t get the most rave reviews on it from someone important in my life, and it took the wind out of my sails, rendering me super depressed. (It doesn’t take much these days.)

But after putting Joel to bed I started reading Department of Speculation, a short novel by Jenny Offill that we’re reading for November book club, and I don’t think I’ve ever liked a book this much, ever. This book is so fucking weird. It’s like this list of kind-of-unrelated-yet-related thoughts/anecdotes that form a larger story with a plot, and like each of these thoughts/anecdotes is either speaking to me or making me chuckle. And I’m not sure what the story is ultimately supposed to be about, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

I’m only 41 percent through the book, but here’s a couple of passages I’ve bookmarked so far.

So this passage seems negative but also realistic, and I’m pretty sure my light was snuffed out abruptly… I mean, I’m trying to emit some light for my living loved ones, but it’s difficult sometimes. What are your thoughts on this passage below? Accurate?

“We applied our muzzy intellects to the theory of light. That all are born radiating light but that this light diminished slowly (if one was lucky) or abruptly (if one was not). The most charismatic people – the poets, the mystics, the explorers – were that way because they had somehow managed to keep a bit of this light that was meant to have dimmed. But the shocking thing, the unbearable thing it seemed, was that the natural order was for this light to vanish. It hung on sometimes through the twenties, a glint here or there in the thirties, and then almost always the eyes went dark.”

Also, this passage makes me laugh because it’s true for Mark and me too. (Although it’s a bit of an exaggeration. Maybe.) I’m kind of our relationship’s resident asshole, so most who meet us tend to like Mark better…

“This means he never forgets to thank the bus driver or pushes in front at the baggage claim. Nor does he keep a list of those who infuriate him on a given day. People mean well. That is what he believes. How then is he married to me? I hate often and easily. I hate, for example, people who sit with their legs splayed. People who claim to give 110 percent. People who call themselves ‘comfortable’ when what they mean is decadently rich. You’re so judgmental, my shrink tells me, and I cry all the way home, thinking of it.”

And this passage is literally me. Like every single word of it…

“I keep forgetting to get glasses. It makes my husband crazy. I ask my most stylish friend to come with me to pick them out. The salesman wants me to buy bright blue ones. Fashion forward, he calls them. My friend laughs, ‘I don’t think they go with the way you dress.’ How do I dress? I wonder. Like a bus driver is the answer.”

So yeah, I’m recommending this book based on the 41 percent that I’ve read, so if the last 59 percent sucks I’m so sorry…