Lawler and Remy in NYC in April 2020. Lawler is the one with the mask.

I was cleaning out my inbox and came across an old (circa April 2017) email from my daughter and erstwhile blog coach, Lawler. While you are musing about what a wonderful word erstwhile is, I will tell you about the email and how it stimulated me into action. I’ll warn you: This is sure to be a tangential journey, as all the best journeys are.

Lawler’s email was from back in the days when this blog was brand new – so brand new that I didn’t really even know what a blog was because I’m not sure I had ever read one. I know it was long before I started lining my pockets with the $2.17 annual income this forum provides.

Anyway, here is the entirety of Lawler’s email:

Apr 26, 2017, 10:50 PM

Elaine likes this blog: http://www.astoldoverbrunch.com/

This one I read weekly or more. Zine-style. Could be really good inspo for you: http://gothamist.com/

Here's an oldie, pre-instagram, photo-journal blog: http://www.thesartorialist.com/

Geekery: https://blog.codinghorror.com/

I don’t remember whether I clicked on any of the links back then, but I expect I did. And that makes me wonder if you have any memory of this blog and its most epic posts. Posts like Lessons from the Fruit Nazi, The Left Lane Closed Ahead Debate, How to Install a Swim Spa or Easter – Then and Now. If you don’t remember a lot of them, that’s okay. Because there are many I honestly do not remember writing, like How to Revive Stale Bread. Considering I don’t remember writing them, I doubt if you remember reading them, so go to the homepage and click on the Archive by Month link on the left-hand side. Then meet me back here in a couple of hours. Or tomorrow. Whenever. I’ll still be here. And if you think reading this blog sends you down an internet wormhole from which you might not emerge until January, try WRITING this blog. For all you know, I started writing this post in July, which is starting to feel like 12 years ago.

THE EMAIL

Anyway, back to the email. Today I did click on each of the links in the email, because I was curious about what advice Lawler tried to give me back then and to what extent I had ignored it. To hell with what the content of the blogs is; that’s not important. What is important is that the last post on As Told Over Brunch was written May 17, 2020, and the last post on Coding Horror is from April. Gothamist and The Sartorialist are both up to date, but I think that’s because someone makes a living from writing them. Or at least more than $2.17 per year. Statistically speaking (and if you don’t remember what a statistician I am, go back and re-read January Schmanuary or The “I Could Care Less” Rant) 50% of blog writers have not posted in at least five months! In other words, I am in very good company. If you are visual, like I am, this pie chart will help you to understand the impact of this realization:

Sampling Distribution: 4. Copyright © 2020 by youngestsister.com. All Rights Reserved.

I wonder if the writers of As Told Over Brunch or Coding Horror spend their days brooding under a cloud of guilt like I do, on account of not writing any posts since late spring. I wonder if they often get a brilliant-beyond-brilliant idea but then can’t be bothered to put fingers to keyboard. (Fingers to keyboard is the new pen to paper). I wonder if they have received emails and comments from readers who actually miss their posts and wonder whatever happened to that blog?

THINGS I AM MEANT (AND NOT MEANT) TO DO

Nancy Hale, Oil on canvas by Lilian Westcott Hale. Caption by Mary Welby Hardin, Nov. 2020.

I was going to start this paragraph with, “As a writer,” but that would probably elicit emails from both of my sisters, reminding me that blogging and writing are two entirely different things. My grandmother was a genuine, authentic, honest-to-god published writer. And if you don’t believe me, just google her: Nancy Hale. Actually, you had better make it , “Nancy Hale Author,” because there is another Nancy Hale who was an actress best known for a role in The Ten Commandments. Anyway, when I was little, if I ever mentioned the possibility of growing up to be a writer, Granny would say, “Dahling, if you are meant to write, you can’t not write.” I can hear her saying that every time I have an idea about a blog post but just can’t be bothered to write it. Then I just tell myself, “I wasn’t meant to write,” and go back to eating Fritos. During this Covid period I have been meant to do a lot of things, but writing has not been one of them.

DRINK, EAT, SLEEP

In the early Covid period (March-ish), I was meant to drink and eat. And sleep late. What a divine thing it is to stay in bed until you feel like getting up. I’m not talking about staying in bed until noon. I’m talking about hearing Tony get up at 5:30am, then going back to sleep until 7:30 or 8:00, when he presents me with a cup of coffee which I sip until I have finished reading the paper. I’m sorry it took a pandemic for me to find out what a wonderful activity staying in bed is and I have no intention of giving it up when this is over. BTW, if you are thinking you would like to have a Tony in your house, DM me and I expect we can make a deal.

NEEDLEPOINT

By June I developed a strong hankering to do needlework, so I dug through my bags of incomplete projects to see what deserved to be finished. I found a needlepoint pillow that I had started working on in 2017 that seemed eerily appropriate for the times:

That’s Sheppard, but it’s not Cochise. I don’t know what this vehicle was called.

“Stay Gracious… Do not be provoked” is a phrase coined by my friend Sheppard. Loyal readers remember Sheppard as the adventurer who drove cross-country all by herself in her trusty van, Cochise. Once, while visiting in my house (long ago, when you could let people visit you in your house) Sheppard told me that she wakes up each morning and reminds herself: Stay Gracious. Do not be provoked. I said that is absolutely brilliant, and I want to remember that the next time I go to the DMV. I went upstairs to take a shower and when I came back she had put a reminder on my phone that pops up with a ding every morning at 9:00. And it has been years. Since then, I think I really have managed to tolerate a lot of tedious shit that would have driven me crazy years ago. Like standing in the checkout line at JoAnne’s Fabrics with a bunch of craftsy people clutching handfuls of tinsel and red felt in September as they wait for the single cashier to disinfect the checkout station between each visitor. This experience makes the DMV look like a model of efficiency. Trust me.

SEW

I don’t know about you guys, but Covid, for me, has been all about being comfortable. And it is hard to be comfortable when your clothes are too tight because you have gained 15 pounds from all that drinking, eating and sleeping. So by July I decided I was meant to sew some clothes - loose-fitting, super comfortable dresses like Momma used to wear to clean the house in. Plus, I have made dozens of masks. It is my duty to tell you all that I found a MUCH better pattern than the ones I wrote about back in April, right before I went on hiatus from blog writing. Remember the How to Make Your Own Face Masks post? Well, try to forget it, because the best mask pattern you will ever find was created by a woman named Risa and it is reversible. With just a few reversible masks you can be as color-coordinated as Nancy Pelosi is every day. Risa’s pattern and instructions are available on YouTube. I can make one of these masks in under 20 minutes. I still add my own hack, which is to sew a twister seal in across the top so that you can pinch it down on your nose. It makes it so your glasses don’t fog up as easily.

FITNESS

By the time August came rolling around, I was too. I mean I was rolling around like a Weeble. You remember — “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.” I decided I was meant to start a fitness and healthy eating regimen and have now lost the 15 pounds I gained plus 10 more, so I’m giving all those dresses I made back in July to Goodwill. But the masks are one size fits all, so they are all still good.

Because of this pandemic and the need to work out at home, I had to get creative with my exercise. If you follow me on Instagram (@youngestsisterblog), you got to see just how creative I mean.

So much has happened since then — My daughter abandoned the cruel streets of New York City for the civilized country life and brought along a very cool set of weights, giving poor Eula (pictured above) a well-deserved break. With these dumbbells you dial the amount you want and they configure the right plates to serve it up. They are so much more versatile than a 12 pound Jack Russell and were a real game-changer. I was going to tell you about them in the Annual Millennial Gift List but who knows if I will actually get around to writing it this year? You should know that fitness equipment is sold out or on back order everywhere, so if you want to surprise your favorite millennial with a set of these you had better get on it. Lawler got these at trufithealth.net - $369.99. These weights didn’t come a minute too soon because, ever since Eula almost became a bear’s dinner, she has been worthless as a workout buddy. She tells that story better than I do:

VIRTUAL CHOIR VIDEOS

Around September I decided I wanted to figure out how people make those virtual choir videos. Eric Whitacre’s are a good example of what I’m talking about, although they are bigger in scope than what I was imagining. This one has 17,572 singers from 129 countries. I had experimented with this venture back in May, when I downloaded an app called Acapella by PicPlayPost with which I made my sister Janelle a musical birthday video. Again, if you don’t follow me on Instagram you missed it.

It was pretty good, but I was sure that is not how you make those really big choir videos. So I went to YouTube and did some reading and found out there is no easy way to make one of those virtual choir videos. Still, I felt like I was meant to do it, so I persevered and figured it out. By now I have made about 15 of them, mostly for my women’s a cappella group, Fire. I wrote about them back in 2017 in Why I Occasionally Wear Red. We now have our own YouTube Channel with 43 subscribers and our videos have had 548 views in the last 28 days. And seriously, I was meant to do this because remember, if you are meant to do something, you can’t not do it. I can’t stop making these videos. This is one of my favorites but there are others that you can sing along to. So if you like to sing you should take a look at this one.

THE FUTURE

What am I meant to do in the months to come? No, I mean besides stay home, wear a mask and use my favorite hand sanitizer that smells like tequila. From now until this Covid thing is over, I expect I’ll still be sewing, working out, and following my own amazing and effective program, The Champagne and Bacon Diet. I will surely keep making virtual choir videos, because that has a much better chance of funding my retirement than this blog does. And Tony has decided we need to have our attic reinsulated, so I’m afraid in the very near future I am meant to clean out the attic. Because if you are meant to clean the attic, you can’t not clean the attic. I’m thinking there is probably a blog post in there somewhere:

What have you all been up to? Anything good?

Hello again