398. Bitches Assemble: Recommendations for Comfort with Sneezy, Ellen, Tara, Maya and Aarya

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello there, friend, and welcome back to the podcast. This is episode number 398 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I am Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books –

Zeb: [Sneezes]

Sarah: – and with me today is Zeb, who is sneezing, because he’s begging for food and I won’t give him any.

But also in this episode I have Sneezy, Ellen, Tara, Maya, and Aarya, who want to tell you about new books, old favorites, and some games to play that are bringing them comfort right now. As with last week, I am connecting with members of the Smart Bitches team to bring you recommendations and maybe some laughter.

I do want to mention that when Sneezy and I are talking, she does talk about the stress of witnessing racism on a global scale.

But above all, we are sending you good thoughts and good wishes and good recommendations from a safe and respectable social distance.

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We have a Patreon at patreon.com/SmartBitches, and if you have supported the show with a monthly pledge, thank you. Your pledges are deeply, deeply appreciated. They keep the show going every week, they make sure that every episode has a transcript, and it helps me connect to the readers and listeners around the world. If you would like to join our community, it would be wonderful if you did. Have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. And hello, Patreon community. Again, you are fabulous in every way.

I will have links in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast to all of the books and games and links that we talk about in this episode. There’s a lot to sample and enjoy, so we will link to all of it.

But now, let’s do this podcast. On with my first interview with Sneezy from Taiwan.

[music]

Sarah: Hey, Sneezy; how you doing?

Sneezy: I’m all right! How are you?

Sarah: I’m okay! You know. As of this moment, I’m good. What are, where are you, and what are things like for you right now?

Sneezy: [Sighs] So, I’m in Taiwan, and –

Sarah: There is absolutely nothing happening there at all, whatsoever!

Sneezy: [Laughs] It’s, it’s, it’s a little bit quieter, and I don’t know how much news coverage we get, like, internationally speaking, ‘cause we’re so incredibly small, but we have been able to contain the number of people who are infected with COVID just purely from paranoia, which served us well in this case. But yeah, we’ve been essentially social distancing since the Chinese New Year, which is, like, I, I didn’t realize I don’t like being antisocial to this degree, but here we are.

Sarah: So you’ve been isolated for – time has no meaning anymore – what, like a month now?

Sneezy: It was, it was actually late January this year, so –

Sarah: Good gravy! See? Told you: time, it is, the only way I can measure time is how much milk has disappeared into my teenager. Like, that’s really the only measure I have. I don’t know what day it is; I don’t know what time it is. Do we need milk? Yes, no!

Sneezy: [Laughs] That’s the only measure of time that matters when you have a teenager.

Sarah: Pretty much, yes. So you’ve been isolated for like six weeks now. You’ve been doing social distancing for like six weeks, now. What has started to get to you the most?

Sneezy: Trying to keep up with what’s happening in, like, Toronto, ‘cause I have a lot of friends there, and, and I’m reading all these articles – some of them are heartwarming, but also just like really fucking infuriating. Like, there was this burger joint that said, if you buy flowers from this flower shop, I will give you a free burger if you show me the receipt, because they’ve been struggling since the virus got out. Why? Because they’re Chinese! There is this noodle shop that’s called Wuhan Noodles. Do they not realize how geography works? You name a thing after a place; doesn’t make it the actual place! And then they’re like, oh yeah, we’ve been getting, like, a lot, a fucking ton of racism, and it’s just like, this is, like, super fucking stressful! And, and it’s just really infuriating, and it’s, it’s that kind of thing where it’s really weird, ‘cause, like, when you’re Asian, you realize you have a certain amount of privilege from this kind of “model minority” bullshit, but then when these things happen it’s like, yep. They, they’ve, they’ve always been there. Yep.

Sarah: So the thing that’s getting to you is reading news that affects you personally that you can’t do anything about, and you can’t fix it, but you know it’s just going to keep happening.

Sneezy: Yeah, and it’s just really scary. It’s also this weird thing where, because I am in a more privileged position where I’m in Taiwan, I don’t look like the minority here, so it’s not like, it’s not like I’m feeling it personally? Like –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Sneezy: – no one has ever called me a derogatory term because of this to my face here. It’s, it’s just that thing of knowing that, well, maybe this shouldn’t get to me as much as it does, but being really fucking angry and depressed because I, I see it everywhere?

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Can I give you a piece of advice?

Sneezy: Yes, please!

Sarah: There is no “should.” There is no “should” that you should feel something or you should do something. There is no should. This is a global complete clusterfuck, and there’s no prescribed behavior or expectation that you can place on yourself? Our job is just to get through it and take care of ourselves and each other moment to moment, so adding the pressure of “should” doesn’t help – and I do it too. I’ve tried so hard to remove “should” from my vocabulary, and I’ve realized how much I tell myself, you know, you should do this. Fuck “should”! Fuck “should” off a pier! “Should” can go –

Sneezy: [Laughs] 

Sarah: Yes. “Should” can go fuck itself and then keep going and fuck off again and then fuck off some more, and when it gets back here, it can fuck off one more time. Fuck should.

Sneezy: Into the sun!

Sarah: There is no should. Yes, fuck “should” into the sun; there is no should. So please, if, if I can, if I can be so presumptuous as to offer advice, try not should-ing all over yourself, as therapists say.

Sneezy: [Laughs]

Sarah: It’s okay to be mad about racism, ‘cause it fucking sucks! But would you, would you like some, some good news?

Sneezy: Oh yes, please.

Sarah: There are so many people around the world working together to make sure that everyone has food.

Sneezy: Oh, that makes me so happy! Just like on so many levels; like, we’re banding together, and we’re feeding each other, which is a beautiful thing! [Sighs] Thank you; that makes me so happy.

Sarah: Our school district is now using the school buses, ‘cause our, our schools are not in session, to deliver food –

Sneezy: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – to many different locations throughout the county, and –

Sneezy: Ohhh!

Sarah: – so not only are they delivering meals – and anyone under eighteen can get breakfast and lunch takeaway at all these different locations; it doesn’t matter if they’re a public school student or not – but they’re doing backpack food, and they’ve partnered with a hunger charity to make sure that there are food distribution centers, so the school buses are driving around the county full of food.

Sneezy: The cheese wagon is bringing cheese to everyone! This is great!

Sarah: Right? It’s like, okay, a lot of stuff sucks, but there’s also, there’s also places where there’s food. Hi, kitty! And Wilbur is here. My coworker has arrived for, for duty.

Sneezy: [Laughs] Hey, Wilbur!

Sarah: Hello! He’s going to try to climb in the sound box ‘cause there’s foam in there and he’s, like, really obsessed with it. He wants to play in the foam.

So what recommendations do you have for comfort and solace for other people? What, what recommendations do you want to make this afternoon?

Sneezy: Okay, so once again, you are a diabolical sorceress for limiting it to only three. These –

Sarah: Yeah.

Sneezy: [Laughs] You’re going to have to help me a little bit. Like, I might just ask you to choose a number between one and three or something, ‘cause I, I did not narrow down my list like a good girl.

So the first one I actually haven’t finished yet, but I have to tell you, it makes me feel so good, I sometimes, like, snap myself out of it in, like, a panic. I think, oh my God, this feels, like, really amazing. I’m, like, happy; there’s no anxiety. This is, like, perfect, and is, is, like, the world ending that I didn’t know about? Anyway. So it’s City Kitty and Country Mouse by Alyssa Linn Palmer. It’s just, ohhh my God, it is a beautiful book. It’s so cute, it will melt you. I don’t care how black and desiccated your heart is, if it’s like mine, which is, like, almost gone, but it’s, like, oh my God, I have feelings again! It’s just, it’s, it’s this lesbian couple, and it’s, like, insta-love, but better! You have, you have, you have this, like, half Chinese person and, and this, this lady, and, and one’s, like, a high-powered lawyer trying to make it into, into partner, and the other one is, like, this happy farmer who’s really talented in other things, and then they meet, and first she falls in love with blackberry, the, the lawyer falls in love with the city mouse’s blackberries, and then they fall in love with each other, and it’s just amazing! And everyone should read it and realize there’s good things in the world. Like you told me about the, the, the cheese wagon bringing everyone cheese? This is that, but in a novel. And, and yeah, the world might end while you’re reading this book, and you won’t know about it ‘cause it’s just that good.

And then – [sighs] – I think my next recommendation – I think – will be Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg? Not because it will necessarily make you feel good – it did for me, but it’s just because we’re all going to be cooped up in a very limited space for who knows how long, because anyone who tells you it’s just going to be fourteen days –

Sarah: No.

Sneezy: – is a Liar McLiarPant. Part of my background is in facilitation, and –

Sarah: Is that like mediation?

Sneezy: Yeah. So I’m not, I can do some mediation, but I’m not, not someone you would look to as, like, a therapist or whatever, like –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Sneezy: – nothing like that. But I am the kind of person who is supposed to, like, keep the conversation going and hold space for people and, like, really hear people out, even if they’re saying things that I don’t personally agree with.

Buzz and Zeb: Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark!

Sneezy: Oh, hello, doggy!

Sarah: You get both dogs right now. I just want you to know this is very special.

Sneezy: [Squees] I feel very happy right now! I feel like they’re saying hi to me. I want to give them cuddles.

Buzz and Zeb: Woof! Woof, woof!

Sarah: Well, let me see what’s – I don’t know what they’re barking at. Probably a truck backing slowly up the driveway.

Sneezy: [Laughs] Oh!

Sarah: Or someone is walking their dog, and they take great exception to it. So yeah, both Buzz and Zeb would like to tell you they support your choices as a facilitator to hold space for them to bark right now!

Sneezy: [Laughs] Well, they’re, they’re much better than some people? Putting these things like nonviolent communication and whatever into practice in your family is not easy and oftentimes feels impossible, so if you feel like it’s not realistic or it’s just not helpful or whatever, use the techniques in this book on yourself and get in tune with yourself, because that’s what I think will really be helpful, ‘cause you can’t control people outside of yourself.

Sarah: How do you advocate nonviolent communication with yourself?

Sneezy: There’s a lot of literature that says very similar things to what Rosenberg is advocating for in this book, right, ‘cause a lot of things really line up, things around, like, shame is not helpful, and largely, guilt isn’t either. And –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Sneezy: – needing to be gentle with yourself and loving yourself first and best is not a narcissistic thing, right.

Okay, so, you know, I’m actually going to go with, Cheese in the Trap is a webtoon. You may have heard of it; it kind of blew up a few years ago? It is long, and you will probably be able to be very good friends with it for, like, I don’t know, I want to say at least a week during, you know, our social distancing project here. It’s a bit hard to describe because it’s the kind of – okay, first of all, it’s a romance. It’s about this girl, she’s in university, and she’s having some issues just sort of in her social circle. Like, not her inner social circle, but just, like, in her year, the, the broader sort of university community in, in her degree, program, I should say. There’s this guy that they, she, he’s as smart as her – she’s one of the top students in her class, right – and they just don’t get on. It’s not a competitive thing so much as like, I low-key think he’s a sociopath, but I can’t prove it. Everybody likes him, and I don’t know why I don’t like him; maybe I’m just petty, but I don’t like him at all!

Sarah: Hmm!

Sneezy: And he’s done some things that I can’t really describe, and if I did, it’d sound like I’m crazy and overly sensitive, but he made me feel humiliated and small, and I just, I just want to keep away from him. But then suddenly, out of the blue, hey, you want to get dinner together? And then they ended up going out somehow. And it’s just always this thing of, he’s doing really nice things for me, but I can’t stop thinking about what happened back then. I’m feeling really good right now, but, like, how do I talk about what happened back then? Oh, I guess we’re not going to talk about what happened back then. But I can’t stop thinking about it. Right, and in their social group, he also has more, has more power than her, you know. He, he –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Sneezy: – comes from a wealthy family, right. He’s more popular than her, and he’s a little bit stronger than her academically, and this is set in Korea, so that’s kind of like one up on the, the social ladder – and I’m going to stop giving away spoilers! It’s really good! You should go read it!

Sarah: Okay. So what wishes do you have for the world? When, when people listen to this, what wishes do you have for people?

Sneezy: Get snacks. Snacks are really important. You don’t think they are until you don’t have them. Whether it’s snacks you make yourself or, or snacks that you buy, make sure that you feed your soul and your body well. And this is a time for pleasure. Like, this is a time to break out all of the amazing, like, whatevers that have, like, lard and, like, sugar and, like, just things that make you feel good, the things that you reward yourself with, and that’s the key! You have to reward yourself, because we’re going through tough shit right now and you deserve the reward!

Sarah: Yes.

Sneezy: Yeah, and, and also just be gentle with yourself. I’m such a hypocrite, ‘cause I’m, I’m the worst at being gentle with myself, but that’s, that’s really key here. Don’t think optimism is naïve or overrated or whatever, because that’s what’s going to keep you fighting, and that’s what’s going to make you okay with taking a break, ‘cause it’s like, you know what? It’s okay if I just turn off for, like, X amount of time. It’s okay if I don’t perform the perfect employee in closed doors right now. It’s okay –

Sarah: This is hard.

Sneezy: It’s, it’s, it’s not easy. I beat myself up for beating myself up, right? ‘Cause, like –

Sarah: Of course!

Sneezy: – oh, I should know better! Well, you know what, we’re all learning; we’re all doing the best we can. Love yourself first. Love yourself best. And if, if nothing else, especially for, for those people who are quarantined with only themselves right now, this is a really good time for that. I feel like now is a time where we have no more excuses to not get in touch with ourselves, you know?

Sarah: Yep! This is going to be hard because we are around ourselves and each other so much more right now.

Sneezy: Yeah, and it’s just like – I’m also really bad at this, but you have to really learn what you need, because if we keep telling ourself that what we need is stupid, that’s beating ourselves up. Like, if I need to –

Sarah: That’s not going to help. Hmm?

Sneezy: If it makes myself feel good, I’m going to do that!

[music]

Sarah: How you doing, Ellen?

Ellen: You know, I’m, I would say I’m good under the circumstances.

Sarah: Yeah, I think that’s pretty much everyone’s answer, right?

Ellen: Yeah. I’m in Chicago. Pretty much everything is closed, and pretty much everyone who can work remotely is working remotely, so I’ve pretty much just been inside.

Sarah: It’s a lot of inside, isn’t it?

Ellen: Yes. So much inside.

Sarah: So what recommendations do you have for the people who will be listening?

Ellen: So my main recommendation right now is actually the Mixed Signals series by Alyssa Cole. And so this is kind of a post-apocalyptic series, so it might seem like a little bit of a strange choice for the current situation, but what I really like about it is that it’s a, mostly about, like, people trying to help each other and then, like, rebuilding things after there’s a sort of apocalyptic event, so I think it offers a lot of hope for the idea that even if something really catastrophic happens, people can still come together and move forward.

Sarah: That’s a really good recommendation. Are you reading the whole series?

Ellen: I read the whole series when I was in graduate school, actually, and I’ve just been thinking about it a lot in the present circumstances.

Sarah: Like, this is the kind of gentle model we need for post-apocalyptic times?

Ellen: Exactly.

Sarah: That’s a really good recommendation.

Ellen: [Laughs] Yeah, so my other main comfort recommendation is the Sailor Moon manga.

Sarah: Ohhh, good choice!

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, I was obsessed with Sailor Moon as a child, so it always gives me those, like, comforting feelings, and I read the whole manga probably two or three times, and it has that same feeling of just being super, super optimistic, even when things are really bad, plus it’s very funny. It’s very over the top and dramatic, and I mean, like, what’s not to love about magical girls? There’s something just inherently comforting about a magical girl.

Sarah: Right? Like, giving girls more power, I’m always interested.

Ellen: Yeah, and, like, magical girls always save the day. Like, you know they’re going to save the day, and –

Sarah: Yep!

Ellen: – they’re going to save it wearing an amazing costume! So.

Sarah: With amazing hair!

Ellen: Yes.

Sarah: Gravity-defying, impossible hair.

Ellen: Yes, even more amazing hair than when they’re in their regular girl form.

Sarah: Oh, well, the hair is the first clue! It’s like the difference between Jerrica and Jem or Adora and She-Ra: the hair is a key element to these transformations.

Ellen: Yes, true.

Sarah: Big and impossible hair.

Ellen: Yes.

Sarah: Those are really good recs. I really, I really like that one. Can you start anywhere with Sailor Moon, or do you need to start at the beginning? ‘Cause I have never read it.

Ellen: I would start at the beginning just because I think the first couple volumes of all of the girls, like, meeting up and becoming a team are not to be missed. And then later, like, in the, towards the end, the sort of world really expands, and it becomes very, like, intergalactic, which is also fun in its own way, but I think you need everything that comes before that to kind of make sense of what’s going on in, in the later volumes.

Sarah: And it’s popular enough that it should be in a lot of digital library collections.

Ellen: Yes, and they’re also currently re-releasing, like, a super special ultimate edition, so I would imagine that may – I mean, I guess people probably can’t really get hard copies from the library right now, ‘cause a lot of libraries are closed, as they should be. Not in Chicago, though! [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah. Unfortunate.

Ellen: But, but it’s very much still in circulation, so.

Sarah: That is brilliant! Those are really good recs. I’m going to have to try that one, ‘cause I’ve never read them, but I’ve seen them enough to sort of know tangentially who they are, but I don’t know the full story. I think I might have to go read this.

Ellen: They’re just delightful.

Sarah: Awesome! So do you have any wishes for the people who will be listening when I run this episode?

Ellen: I wish that everybody finds the book that they need right now to help them get through whatever coronavirus-related issues they are facing right now.

[music]

Sarah: Maya, how you doing? You doing okay today?

Maya: I am doing okay. I am self, self-quarantining, so I haven’t left my house at all in a little over a week, and so it’s, as a person with generalized anxiety, it’s been a deep gift that I don’t have to say to me why I don’t want to leave my home. It’s, it’s what the world is telling everyone, but it’s been a little challenging, ‘cause it’s like, I would like to be in the sunshine a little bit.

Sarah: So what recommendations do you have?

Maya: The books that I’ve been reading over and over again for the last, I’m going to say twenty-plus years, is the, the Tortall series – Tortall? I don’t know how to say it – by Tamora Pierce. All of her, like, Alanna and Beka Cooper and the Tricksters series, just all of those books? I read Alanna first, like, as a pre-teen and loved it so much. So it’s YA fantasy. Alanna is a girl who wants to be a knight, but girls can’t be knights, so she switches places with her twin, who’s a boy, and she pretends like she’s a boy, and then she spends, you know, four-plus years telling everyone around her that she’s a boy, and she becomes a knight, and then her secret is revealed, and everyone is mad that she’s a girl who became the best knight ever in the whole wide world, and so I really love those books, and as TaMORa Pierce – TAMora, sorry, TAMora Pierce – expanded the worlds to, to, to other series, it’s one that I go back to a lot.

Sarah: And it must be nice to sort of re-enter that world and visit with all of those characters.

Maya: It really is? As an adult, the, the reading of Alanna’s relationship with, like, the Prince John, who’s her first love, is interesting, and because the, the, he’s the prince and she’s just a girl who’s a knight, and so he sometimes wields his, wields his power, both in terms of his gender and his position at court, in ways that is, like, kind of shitty. Like, be-, and he, he doesn’t even, he, he doesn’t realize how much power he has and, like, how, you know, Alanna is hiding her gender and has to be not even, like, twice as good, but, like, ten times as good as everyone around her because of the part where she knows once everybody realizes she’s a girl, that she’s a woman, that everything she’s done will be brought into question, and, and she will be dismissed just out of, outright, and, like, he, John never really quite understands that? And so when she moves on to George, who’s the, like, he’s the king of thieves, basically, in, in that kingdom, he, he understands sort of a little bit more, like, what exactly she’s risking and, and how hard she’s working to be accepted and to, and to prove herself, and so I am, I’m very, as, there are some folks I think that, that really seek the Alanna and John relationship, they ship them really hard, and it’s like, no! He would never actually understand her, ‘cause he’s too busy, like, thinking the world will do whatever it is that he wants, because that’s what’s happened more or less in his life.

Sarah: Do you love hiding-your-identity stories?

Maya: I do! It really gives the character a chance or the control to define themselves in a way that, in a way that they wouldn’t have been able to, which I sort of like, as a person, identify with a bunch? Sort of being a woman of color who has entirely too much education? The, the body, me and my body sort of precedes, like, me and my brain, and so a lot of times folks are judging me on, like, what it is that they’re seeing, as opposed to what it is –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Maya: – that I’ve achieved, and so I, like, so deeply identify with that, like, desire to be like, nah, you don’t, you don’t actually see me, and this is who I am, and folks being able to really control that, as a person also who has some control issues, I really identify with that too, being like, no, this is who I am, and this is the only way that you actually get to perceive me. Also the part where they’re engaging in this explicit critique of the, the culture they’re in and the society that, that they’re in? They’re, they’re hiding –

Sarah: Yes!

Maya: – themselves, and pushing back against sort of the normative expectations of culture is something that is so powerful because of the fact that it feels so impossible sort of in the day-to-day, right? You try to push back against racism or sexism, pushing back against the patriarchy or white supremacy, and it feels like an impossible fight, but you have these narratives where, like, Alanna is pushing back against this patriarchal society that says that she cannot be a knight because she, because of her gender, and then she does it, and so then it, so then she’s like, well, well, I did it, and I still have, you know, these secondary sexual characteristics that mean, that you were telling me, that you told me would make it impossible for me to be excellent, and here I am being excellent, so then what? Like, what? Try me. Like, come at me.

Sarah: So you recommend the whole series.

Maya: So my favorite in the Tortall series is Alanna, like I said, but, like, tied for second, and I, I was wrestling over this, is the Becker Coop, Beka Cooper has a series? And so she is the, like, great-great-great-grandmother of George, and so she is being placed maybe a couple hundred years before the Alanna series, and she –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Maya: – becomes a cop. And so she’s coming, she’s coming from these extremely poor circumstances, where basically she was orphaned at a very young age and taken in by the head, what, which is, like, basically the head of the police system, the policing system, and she decides to become a cop. And so you have this really deep examination, both of, of what policing means from –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Maya: – a person who, who had lived in a highly policed community, but then also this, this woman who, who believes very much in the need for, for that type of intervention, and I really liked that sort of more sophisticated analysis of, of, of good and bad and how sometimes they look pretty similar? [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah.

Maya: Right? And, and this person who has to decided, like, what side she wants to be on, and she’s surrounded by people who, who jump that line.

And then the other one that I really love is the Trick-, Tricksters duology, which is following Alanna’s daughter Aly, and she’s actually kidnapped and sold into slavery and ends up on this island of, of people who are trying to fight for their independence from basically colonists. It’s this, like, anti-colonial story about people of color trying to shake themselves free of oppression?

Sarah: That’s such a great recommendation. Thank you!

Maya: You’re welcome!

Sarah: Do you have any wishes for the people who will be listening when I air this episode?

Maya: I would first say, you know, please take care of yourselves and people around you. We’re all sort of sitting here observing the world, this world in which, you know, two weeks, four weeks of, of not being able to work is putting people’s ability to survive in danger. Businesses are shutting down; people can’t pay their rent, can’t pay their mortgage. And I, I would invite people to maybe examine a little bit of this, like, world and, and the ways in which capitalism has sort of structured this thing where two weeks is, is actually a really dangerous, two weeks of not being able to work is a really dangerous and scary place for a lot of folks, and I, I personally, it’s really easy to see right now how harmful capitalism is, because people are being so quickly harmed by the inability to, to work.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Maya: But I would invite people to, to question whether or not the society we have set up is really actually doing what it is we sort of all value and, and think is important for the world.

[music]

Sarah: So how you doing, Tara? What’s going on with you?

Tara: Ohhh, you know.

Sarah: Just mild national quarantine; no big deal.

Tara: Just, like, my literal nightmare fuel happening all the time.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Nooo!

Tara: That’s, like, honestly –

Sarah: No!

Tara: – I cannot, I cannot read pandemic books; I can’t watch pandemic movies. I mean, thankfully there’s a lot of actually good, measured media things about it? I think the thing that I’m struggling with is our par-, some of our parents, my dad especially, and my husband’s dad, have not been the best at social distancing, and they both have compromised health, and I’m like, what are you fucking doing? There’s only so much we can do, but our little family of four, we’re doing our part, and fortunately it’s been cold as balls in Calgary, so we have not been leaving the house very often? Yesterday, Neil was able to take the kids out sledding, ‘cause we have a little hill near us, where apparently all the families were having their own little parts of the hill, making sure they were keeping separate from the other families?

Sarah: Aw!

Tara: I know. It’s, I mean, it’s hard! We have a five-year-old and an eight-year-old. The five-year-old actually doesn’t mind. About three weeks ago, like kind of before this all exploded, she said something to Neil one day about, well, I just want to lick my hands so you all get sick so you can just stay home with me.

[Laughter]

Tara: Which I thought was –

Sarah: Okay!

Tara: – one of the most demented things I’ve heard.

[Laughter]

Sarah: So are you locally being told, don’t talk to anybody, don’t play with anyone? Are you, do you have specific guidelines that you have to follow? Is it for your whole province? Is it for the country? Like, what are the restrictions that you’re under?

Tara: Yeah. We’re being strongly encouraged – I suppose that’s the Canadian way because we’re all so polite – [laughs] – we’re being strongly encouraged to not go out unless we absolutely have to. I’m lucky enough that I work for a tech company where we all have laptops anyway, and so last week, about a week and a half ago, they said, we’re just all working remotely. That’s how it is. So all the meetings that I have with my coworkers, there’s at least five minutes in every meeting of just trying to connect and talking about how weird it is.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Tara: And I think everybody that I’m talking to is just mourning right now, because we don’t necessarily all know somebody who has COVID-19, and we, especially we don’t, at this point, at least here in Calgary, don’t know many people who’ve died, but it’s like mourning the lives that we had a week and a half ago –

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Tara: – and –

Sarah: Absolutely! I just saw someone talking about that, that it is normal to just cry or feel like you’re going to lose it because you’re mourning –

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – the loss of a life that you had two weeks ago.

Tara: That’s right. And, and we don’t know how much of that we’re going to get back. So schools have been closed indefinitely here.

Sarah: I was going to ask that. You guys have been closed possibly for the rest of the school year.

Tara: That’s right. We got an email, finally, yesterday, from, I don’t know, the Board of Education or whatever. Basically, it sounds like, so they’re on March break right now, or spring break or whatever you guys call it, so they have two weeks, I think, for the teachers to figure out how they’re going to continue to provide resources so kids can learn. So in the meantime, my husband has gone from, like, just a dad to also a math teacher and a reading teacher and all that. And –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Tara: – you know, I think we’re very much identifying with Shonda Rhimes’s tweet about how teachers need to be paid like a billion dollars a week or a day or whatever it was?

Sarah: Right? ‘Cause this is hard!

Tara: Oh my God. He doesn’t get paid enough; he needs a raise.

Sarah: I know, right?

Tara: Figure that out. Mm-hmm?

Sarah: @badasscrossstitch on Instagram, which is one of my favorite Instagram activist accounts, craftivist accounts, did a small hoop that was cross-stitch: Maybe we’ll get socialism out of this.

Tara: [Laughs] Okay, that’s pretty good.

Sarah: Oh, that, that’s pretty nifty! So what recommendations do you have for comfort and encouragement in these super weird-ass times?

Tara: Okay, I have a few. I’m going to start with a book, and then I’m going to go out of books, and then I’m going to go back into books. But I have a reason. So – [laughs] – the first one, I actually, I’m not done yet. I started reading this a month ago, because it has been, like, all the stress, all the time at work, because I work in a high-growth, like growth-mode tech company? Which –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Tara: – I don’t know if you’ve ever worked in a company, but, like that, but it’s, like, bananas all the time.

Sarah: Oh yeah. It’s like working with, with extremely hyper squirrels.

Tara: Yes! Yes, and I’ve been doing it for almost four years now, and – [laughs] –

Sarah: And they don’t stop being hyper! What is that?

Tara: No! They just hire more of them, because it’s growing! So there’s more and more hyper squirrels all the time. That’s a perfect way of putting it. Thank you!

[Laughter]

Sarah: You’re welcome! Feel free to use that far and wide.

Tara: So, and it was, like, our busiest time. I’m on the marketing team, and the busiest time of year for the marketing team is always January and February, because we have our user conference every year in February, which we still had. So I thought, I need to do something for myself, and I picked up the bur-, the book Burnout by Emily Nagoski.

Sarah: Oh! I love that book!

Tara: Isn’t it the best? It is, it –

Sarah: You know they have a podcast too.

Tara: Mm-hmm! It is the best, and at this point I would say, I don’t recommend it as comfort. I recommend it as survival reading right now. Even if people only read the first section about completing the stress cycle –

Sarah: Yes!

Tara: I have been clinging to those tactics; it’s been so helpful. So I’ve been exercising more. I’ve been actually purposely, like, setting up meetings, one meeting a day with a colleague just to, just to connect so we can talk –

Sarah: Yes!

Tara: – so we can talk our shit out, and it’s so helpful. You know, cuddling with my family, taking the dog for a walk, all of that stuff, but, like, now is the time to lean into your stress management practices, because it’s not –

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Tara: – going away.

Sarah: No, and it’s only getting harder, because –

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – the longer we sustain this constant level of change and alertness and rumor and what’s going to happen next, the more energy our brains and bodies use trying to manage the stress of all those changes! Like, we’ve lost all of our autopilot, so –

Tara: Absolutely.

Sarah: – completing the stress cycle becomes bigger and bigger; it’s a bigger cycle that you have to close. I’m so with you on all of those things. I’ve been doing the same thing, and it’s made a noticeable difference.

Tara: Yes! I mean, I can tell the days that – so I probably, I find that for me, it’s better to exercise a half hour five or six days a week than it is to do an hour three days a week, because –

Sarah: Agreed!

Tara: – if I work out –

Sarah: Same for me!

Tara: Right? Like, if you work out hard enough in that half hour, you’re going to burn off some of that stress, but if I don’t do that, I can tell the difference. If I skip meditating for one day, I can tell the difference in my sleep that night.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Tara: So that’s the, yeah, so my first recommendation is honestly, everybody, as much as you can, complete the stress cycle –

Sarah: Yes!

Tara: – every day. Probably –

Sarah: Such good advice.

Tara: – yeah, like, probably multiple times a day. I’m having to do it about twice a day right now. That may go up; that may go down; it depends on how this goes and how close to home this virus ends up hitting. But it’s absolutely been crucial for my sanity and my anxiety management, keeping it at, like, manageable levels.

My next thing that’s been working super well for me is gaming. I have a couple games recommendations that are not stressful. So the first one was, was Hustle Cat, which I picked up in a big-ass Steam sale where they had a bunch of visual novels for sale, and this game is super weird, but pretty fun, where you, you get to choose if you are a boy or a girl or a nonbinary person, and you get a job at a café, but there’s a curse where all the people who work at the café, when they leave the building, they turn into cats.

Sarah: As you do.

Tara: As you do. So the, like, you get to date pretty much everybody who’s there, including the boss, so there are different paths to take you through all of that, and you solve the curse, and I think I dumped fifteen hours into that game in the last week. It’s just super chill, and the music is super chill. So that’s my, I recommend that.

And then I recommend one more. It’s called I Love Hue. It’s incredibly soothing. It’s a puzzle game where it brings up a bunch of squares, and it shuffles them, and then you have to put them back in the right place, but it always does some kind of like a color gradient?

Sarah: Yes!

Tara: The only thing I’ll say is that if you have any kind of color blindness issues, this game is not going to work for you, so I apologize for that, but this is one that I’ve been spending a lot of time with, because it just puts me again in that kind of meditative state. It’s really satisfying when I get it right, and every time you get a puzzle right, the game compliments you!

Sarah: That’s so lovely! I love that part too.

Tara: Mm-hmm. It’s very, yeah, I highly, highly recommend its – I find the ads are not too intrusive, and it’s just working for me real well. I might actually end up throwing some money at it because I’ve been playing it so much lately.

Okay, so my last thing, and my last recommendation: I am someone who loves fluffy books at the best of times? I don’t mind angsty books, but when things get tough, like right now, I especially can’t handle, like, a creepy stuff, but I don’t want to reread a book; I still want to read something new. And I decided to pick up a Christmas book that I’d never read before. I know it’s March, but it worked really well for me. So I picked up, it’s called Christmas Inn Maine, I-N-N, so it’s a cute pun, I guess, by Chelsea M. Cameron, and it has this grumpy, nonbinary demigirl named Colden, who sometimes uses they/them pronouns and sometimes uses she/her pronouns, and she doesn’t like anybody. She doesn’t really have many people in her life, but she decides that for Christmas she is going to treat herself and get an Airbnb in Maine. She’s super excited about this. She’s just going to read, and she’s going to have wine, she’s going to have good food, and it’s going to be amazing, and then she gets there and the property doesn’t exist, ‘cause she’d been screwed over, and she has to stay at this lovely, beautiful inn that’s close by that is actually owned by her coworker’s family. She hates her coworker – [laughs] –

Sarah: Oh no!

Tara: – but, as it is an enemies-to-lovers situation, it’s so freaking cute! It’s so cute. It was like, honestly, I’m so glad I picked it up. It was the best choice! I like every Chelsea M. Cameron book that I’ve read, so I can also say, if you want a bunch of fluffy books, go run at all of them.

And one other recommendation, if you are not into, like if nobody wants to pick up Christmas right now, is called In Her Court by Tamsen Parker, and it takes place at an adult sleepaway camp, and it has a, it’s, it’s another f/f book, and it is a, like, falling for your best friend’s sister story. It’s super cute. It has all the geeky references. If you want, like, somebody who’s into Star Wars and Wonder Woman and all that stuff, falling for her brother’s, her best friend’s little sister? That’s the one.

Sarah: Do you have any wishes for people who will be listening when I release this episode?

Tara: It’s actually pretty similar to what I tell people who’ve just had a baby, which is, it’s going to be hard, and that’s okay. You just do your best –

Sarah: Yeah!

Tara: Just do your best, ‘cause at the end of it, all that matters is that, you know, everybody is as healthy as they can be. Whatever your coping is, as long as you’re not hurting anybody, lean into it.

And also, sorry, the other, the other thing I’ll add is that it’s hard for everybody, but, like, it’s okay, even if you’re doing well, it is okay to still acknowledge that it’s hard. That’s the thing that I’ve been having to remind myself, because I know that I am so much luckier than many people right now. I still have a job. Like, that’s great, but that doesn’t mean that my hard moments are less hard; it just means that my hard moments are different. And I think we all need to give ourselves permission to acknowledge that and just work with it so that we can figure out what our new normal is.

Sarah: It’s hard when your new normal is new every third hour.

Tara: [Laughs] Yeah, and there’s, like, kids screaming in your face about it.

[music]

Sarah: How you doing, Aarya?

Aarya: I am – you know what, I’m not going to say that I’m, I’m okay, because I am not, and I do not want to, I don’t want to lie, but I am doing better than I was last week, and I think a net improvement is always good.

Sarah: Absolutely true. No question. So what recommendations do you have for the people who are listening of things that they might want to read or check out in the future?

Aarya: Yeah, so, before I get to that, I feel really bad about saying this, but I couldn’t read anything for a week. I guess what I’m saying is, it’s okay to not be productive just because you’re at home. You deserve, like, you don’t have to feel guilty because you feel incapable of working or devoting creative energy to a hobby. It’s okay to be scared and worried. So, like, it’s great if you can read a book, but if you can’t, it’s okay. Anything at this point is okay. That being said, I did read a book, so I have a rec.

[Laughter]

Sarah: I completely agree with you. It kind of makes me a little annoyed to be like, well, you know, so-and-so wrote this great masterpiece when he was in quarantine, and I’m like, well, yeah, but probably also had people taking care of all the other basic stuff that he needed, and this is hard, and don’t feel the need to be super productive! This is not a time of super productive; this is a time of get through the next hour. Come on!

Aarya: At this point, I never want to read King Lear, because people keep on talking about Shakespeare writing King Lear.

[Laughter]

Sarah: So what did you read that helped you out?

Aarya: So the first thing I read is a nonfiction book, and it’s called Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them by Jennifer Wright. And it’s really strange that I picked this up, because I have been avoiding those plague books like a plague – oh God – but –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Aarya: – but, oh no.

Sarah: Ching!

Aarya: No, because people keep on making lists of, like, here are my zombie apocalypse books, here are my pandemic books, and I don’t, I feel like there are people who really enjoy it, but I did not want to go that route, because even imagining it in fictional characters was difficult? But then I saw, someone I follow on Twitter wrote this book, and she said it was funny, so I said, okay, let me read an, an excerpt and just try it, and the reason why this is really good is that it’s funny. There’s so much black humor. It’s, like, it’s terrifying, and it’s about history, and it’s about, like, cholera and the, and the plague and whatnot, but it’s, like, you can’t stop laughing while you’re reading it? So for people who are really, really scared and they want to learn more about plagues, but they don’t want to, like, just start crying all the time, read this book. The introduction is so weird to read, because it was, it was written in 2017, and the author is like, we haven’t had a serious illness in about thirty years, and we may not ever see one again in our lifetime, and it’s like, oh, three years later, here we go!

Sarah: Surprise!

Aarya: [Laughs] It’s just, yeah. So I am reading the e-book, but I’ve heard that the audiobook is very good too. And I don’t know about you, but, like, and when it comes to social media and stuff, I am responding really well to the black humor tweets, like the jokes about quarantine and self-distancing. Like, I know that people think that maybe it’s a bit inappropriate at, at a crisis, but I like the humor, I like the black humor. Like, I don’t know how else to deal with this except to laugh. The nice thing about this book is that it’s not dry. I really struggle with dry nonfiction like many historical biographies. I think, like, even teenagers would like this. It’s just like, it’s written in a voice that’s very accessible to everyone, so I would recommend – I mean, I’m not done with it, but I’ve read half, and it’s really good, and I, and I rec it.

Sarah: That’s awesome! Thank you! What else you want to tell us about?

Aarya: Yeah, so I said earlier that comfort reading was not working for me, but what is working for me is reading that an author that I know that I love, but it has to be a new book. It cannot be a reread, because if it’s a reread, my mind knows what’s going to happen next, and then because I’m not as focused on the read, it then wanders to real life, being like –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Aarya: – oh, I should check Twitter now. But if it’s a new book, then I’m, like, more, a little more invested to keep reading because I don’t know what’s going to happen? And the book I, I chose is The Sword Dancer by Jeannie Lin, and I binged like seven of her books in a week last year, and then I stopped, because I was concerned that I would run out of books.

[Laughter]

Aarya: Like, it was painful to stop, but I was like, mm, then I’ll, I’ll be even sadder if I run out of books, so I said, nonono, it’s time to stop this Jeannie Lin binge. And she writes –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Aarya: Yeah.

Sarah: I could just see you putting this book behind glass and then, like, holding a hammer and standing there like, is it time? Is it time? Is it time?

Aarya: Well, that’s what it is, right? It’s a break emergency glass if needed moment.

Sarah: Totally!

Aarya: And if this pandemic does not qualify, I do not know what does. [Laughs] So if you don’t know what Jeannie Lin writes, she writes Tang Dynasty Chinese historicals, and I just love everything about her.

So this book, first of all, it’s about a thief and a thief hunter. It’s kind of like a Tom and Jerry vibe. The hero see, sees her sword-dancing in a market, and then she runs away because she’s been accused of stealing some jade, and he catches her, and he puts her in prison, and then she escapes prison, and then she steals his horse, and then he catches her again and takes her his prisoner, and then she runs away, and then it keeps going and going, and then they fall in love. So it’s just, it’s just fun.

The thing about Jeannie Lin is that her writing is so beautiful, and I wish I knew more about prose, because I don’t know how to explain why it’s beautiful, but I just marvel at her sentence structures? And the thing about Jeannie Lin, I just want to, she writes beautiful everything. She writes beautiful sword-dancing, emotions, descriptions. Every single paragraph is beautiful, and this is like the perfect example of why reading books, even one month after the next, is so variant on the mood that you’re in. [Laughs]

So I had picked up Real Men Knit by Kwana Jackson. It doesn’t come out until May 19th –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Aarya: – but I had had an ARC of it, and I tried reading it like a month ago, before all the, before the pandemic, and I DNFed it like in chapter three, because it is a perfectly lovely book, and it was like, it was about knitting, and, like, nothing against knitting – like, I know Elyse loves it and many people love it, but it’s, like, not my thing – [laughs] – at all – and it’s, wasn’t angsty, and it just felt so boring to me? But of course it wasn’t boring; it just felt boring at the time because I’m a very high-angst reader, and then I DNFed it. Yeah, like, I don’t know how else to describe it. Like, boring is not, like, an objective opinion. I just wasn’t in the mood for it at the time. And then I picked it back up two days ago in an attempt to read it again, and it was like I was reading a completely different book, because my, my mind was like, oh, I like slow now.

Sarah: Yeah!

Aarya: I like soothing now.

Sarah: Yeah!

Aarya: Like, who have I become? [Laughs] So it is just, it’s – so the premise is, it’s about these four young men whose mom owns a knitting store, and she just died, so they have to take over the knitting store and figure out the business and save the business and all that, and one of the sons is reconnecting with the woman, but she’s a family friend, and it’s just, it’s about, it’s about family, and it’s about knitting, and I was not into it a month ago, but I am now. I don’t know, like, it’s, it’s just a month ago I was not in the mood for a soothing read, and now I am, and it’s perfect.

Sarah: So it sounds like you found the book that works for you right now!

Aarya: Yeah. And I feel guilty that I’m rec-ing it ‘cause it’s not out for another month so you can’t one-click right now, but hopefully you can one-click in a month or so, provided that the release date is still May 19th.

Sarah: What wishes do you have for the world right now?

Aarya: Oh my God. [Laughs] If we could have a vaccine this second, well –

Sarah: That’d be pretty spiffy! I agree!

Aarya: Yeah. I just hope everyone right now is just taking care of themselves.

Sarah: Yeah.

Aarya: And what I said, what I said at the beginning, like, it’s o- – like, if you’re listening to this and you’re like, oh, I can’t read a book now, like, don’t feel bad. It’s okay that you can’t read a book. Like, no one is required to do anything except survive at this moment.

Sarah: That is absolutely the truth. And if you get through the next ten minutes, you’re doing good.

Aarya: Yeah.

Sarah: Thank you for taking the time to help other people get through the next little while.

Aarya: I’m glad. Well, I’m glad I have a book to rec, because I didn’t last week.

[Laughter]

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. I hope this has brought you some amusement and comfort and some ideas of things to do or read. If you are looking for comfort recs, we’ve got them. And I’ll be back next week with more from the rest of the Smart Bitches team.

Speaking of Smart Bitches, if you’d like to come hang out with us, we got some things going on this week, couple of things, like a big major annual day for us. First, on Saturday we have Whatcha Reading? where we all talk about what we’re reading, and then you tell us what you’re reading, and then we all buy more books, because that’s pretty much what we do all the time! We also have Cover Snark; Books on Sale; it’s the first of the month, so we’re going to have Hide Your Wallet for the first half of the month, but it’s also April 1st, so I invite you cordially – well, if you know what that means, you can come by and see what nonsense I’m up to this year. [Laughs evilly]

I love April Fools. I know so many people hate it. I love it because I get to treat the world with a little bit of affection and gentle humor. I’m not here to make you feel dumb. I never want to make you feel dumb, but I hope that I make you smile or at least laugh this year. I’ve already tipped you off that it’s April 1st, haven’t I? Yeah, oh well! Enjoy! [Laughs]

I will have links to all of the books that we talked about, and the games, and the articles, and the apps, so feel, fear not. If you were thinking, I want to go find that! Yeah, I’ve got in the show notes: smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast. You know you can count on me; I’ve got this for you.

As always, I end with a terrible joke. Are you ready for a terrible joke? This is really bad.

How do you get to the weight room at Hogwarts? Which I’m presuming is closed, but presuming that it was open, how would you get to the weight room at Hogwarts?

Through the dumbbell door.

[Laughs] It’s so stupid; I love it so much. Yeah, I wouldn’t advise going to the gym, but if you were going to go to the gym at Hogwarts, now you know how to get there. That is from JCokedaKilla – that’s a nice, that’s a name – from Reddit, and the dad jokes forum brings me much joy.

On behalf of all of us to all of you, we send you good thoughts and good wishes, of course from a safe and acceptable social distance. Wherever you are, we hope that you are okay, and we send you best wishes for the very, very best of reading.

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

[super pretty music]