Change

Ok nobody panic but I changed some stuff. I know. I know. We're not supposed to change things. Change is not a thing we handle. There's a reason we're all still here hanging out on blogger in 2020. 

TWO THOUSAND TWENTY YOU GUYS.

But we're all still living in 2006 over here. The only thing that could make this site more 2006 is if I inserted one of those widgets that automatically blasts a Jack Johnson song every time you visit Stranger. Don't worry. I'm not going to do that. Because lazy.

I changed things because our super talented artist at The Beehive, Josh Fowlke, messaged me and was like "you do realize you have like 19 different and conflicting brandings you're using across all of your various projects, right?"

Then he sent me some new images and fonts and I had to go in and do stuff with internet code and dark magic and I think I may have accidentally launched bombs at Thailand at one point but eventually everything ended up looking how it looks now. Which is good. I think. Probably. 

I'm so very tired right now. Skylar woke up at negative 3:00 AM screaming. Then he flew out of bed and started running through the house in a full panic. Duncan and I were going to follow him to see what was going on but we didn't because lazy and tired. Eventually he came back into the bedroom, climbed into bed, and whispered "the house is secure."

Spooooooky

Meg is essentially a gay man on paper. I don't mean that she's a gay man on top of paper; I just mean that if you listed all of her qualities and interests on a piece of paper, you would assume she's a gay man named Garrett in West Hollywood. She's got all of the stereotypical interests and she tends to know celebrity hot goss that most gay men know but which I completely don't know. It's very confusing sometimes but also very impressive.

Probably the way she's the most Gay Man is her obsession with Halloween. I drove to her house recently and she had decked the place out like it was the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. She had two large skeletons sitting out on Adirondack chairs (yes, I know what those are now). I don't think it was even October yet. 

When we started contemplating upcoming content for The Beehive, Meg just kept screaming into the zoom call "MORE SPOOKY." We were like "but what about people who are scared" and she just cut us off with a high-pitched cackle that went uninterrupted until the zoom call timed out.

Since she's our scary mob boss we all immediately started writing ghost stories but that wasn't enough for her so she took to social media to ask people to tell us their spooky stories. We've been recording some for Strangerville and editing written pieces and researching accounts people have been sending to us and y'all, I'm basically up to my ears in spooky this month.

This week I wrote a story for The Beehive about how hard I've tried to get my faithless husband to believe in ghosts because he's wrongly dismissive about their existence. Please do me a solid and read that piece. Whenever you click on something I've written for The Beehive they immediately give me $250,000 and a gift certificate to JOANN Fabric. 

Skylar Looks Good In Sweaters

A couple months ago I called my knitting store down the street #supportlocal #citizenoftheyear #It'sScaryToTalkOnThePhone #bravery. I had picked a new sweater to knit, something that would be the most difficult knitting project yet, besides, perhaps, The Scarf That Shall Not Be Named.

The knitting store (Blazing Needles woot woot) was shut down, just like everything else on planet Earth at that time, but they were doing phone and internet orders and then either shipping product or letting you come pick it up on their front porch.

They helped me figure out what I needed, took all of the money I've ever had in my life, and I walked over that very day.

The knitting project ended up being extremely fun to make. Skylar had picked this sweater out online and I was hesitant because I thought it was hideous but I forgot the great Skylar rule, which is that literally everything looks perfect on him and he should have to spend some time in jail for this. (Where he'd look great in an orange jumpsuit he is so infuriating.)

I finished it over the weekend and I wanted you to behold my endless talents so here you go:

Micromanager

Happy weekend, one and all. It's Thursday afternoon but NewYearNewMe so I'm going to start considering Thursdays part of the weekend. And maybe Wednesdays. And entire tubs of caramel pecan ice cream.

This week I published a piece on The Beehive about our tendency in national crisis to fold under the weight of not knowing what to do and why we need to put in the work to figure out how to take actions now that are more than symbolic gestures. I agonized over how to write it and thanks to a lot of help from our team at The Beehive, I think we landed in the right place. Please check it out.

Please also check out this really wonderful piece from Liese Rodger published on The Beehive this week. Liese is a black woman living in Salt Lake City and in this piece she writes about some of her experiences in Utah over the years and what she believes her white friends can do to make a difference right now. It's a really important account that helped give me more perspective on this.

In other news, we are now just two days away from Skylar taking his big board exam test thingy, which I think is the official name. If you all could wear your lucky jersey or pray to Cher or sell a soul to Lucifer to help him do well, we'd appreciate it. We're not picky. We'll take help from your higher power of choice.

The other day he asked me to go to the grocery store and get some snacks he can take with him to the test since this thing is so long he'll basically have five full meals and two birthdays during it. I almost asked him what he wanted but then remembered that the last time I asked him a basic question it stressed him out so much that our health insurance premium automatically doubled.

So I Guess I'm Vegan Now

In 2019 I decided I was going to try to eat less meat because I was basically personally responsible for the slaughter of millions of animals each year and I thought I ought to try to reel that in so I can hopefully go to heaven or gay heaven or heaven minus or at least hell plus some day. It was the first time in my life that I actually thought about how much meat I was consuming. Normally I would skim past vegetarian options on restaurant menus, like those weren't even available to me.

I didn't make any drastic changes or anything, but I did try to get myself in the habit of considering non-meat options for meals and get myself out of the habit of eating meat every day. What happened was I started regularly choosing the vegetarian options at restaurants (and finding out, to my great surprise, that a lot of veggie burgers are actually better than the beef option). Sky and I found a few vegetarian recipes that we liked to include in our rotation. We also tried to choose fish instead of chicken or beef (we already don't really eat pig).

In the end, I still ate a lot of meat, but maybe only like 75% of usual. So I was only responsible for the slaughter of 75% of millions of animals. Which at least gets me on some sort of waiting list for possible afterlife not terrible jobs.

Anyway, while I obviously never got anywhere near vegetarianism, by the end of 2019 I felt like I generally understood it. It was one of those things where I thought, "yeah. I could do that, if I was willing to put in the effort." Like paying taxes or reading books.

I'M JUST KIDDING I READ A BOOK LIKE 18 MONTHS AGO.

The People of Lagoon

As you know since you are all experts on my life, I have gotten a Lagoon season pass every year since 2013.

Why do I do this? I don't know. It's very confusing. Lagoon is our local theme park and it's like . . . how do I describe this . . . it's like if Walmart started a carnival.

Now, am I better than Walmart or carnivals? No I am not. I would submit I'm not even as good as Walmart or carnivals. One time when Duncan was a puppy and he had just gotten neutered I took a day off of work and went to Walmart in sweats the moment it opened for the day and I pushed Duncan around in a shopping cart trying baby onesies on him so he wouldn't lick his crotch.

What are you watching?

We're all binging TV shows and movies right now and that's ok. If there is anyone in your life telling you that is not ok, you should get new people for your life.

I can't imagine what social distancing would be like without streaming. You guys. We would have to read books and talk to each other and stuff.

I've honestly been a little surprised that I haven't been watching really that much more TV in the last few weeks than I was previously consuming. Then yesterday I thought about it and realized it would have been kind of hard to starting watching more than I already was. And that made me a little sad about myself. And empty inside. So I filled that emptiness. WITH MORE TV.

I know y'all are already aware that Meg and I record a podcast called Hive Mind where we talk about what we're watching. Bonus this week, Skylar joined us so we could blab about Survivor. And by "we" I mean "I, while Skylar supportively nodded like a good Stepford wife."

By the way, Meg and Clint Betts are doing these daily live shows from The Beehive, mostly to give Utah updates on COVID-19 stuff. They've been amazing. You can find them at noon on The Beehive's Twitter or Facebook accounts (or watch them after the fact). Sometimes they have me on so I can tell stories, usually about poop or vomit. I was on today. You can find my story below around the 20-minute mark. Sorry my hair looks so great.

Beehive Live - April 7, 2020 https://t.co/HNSbYfSZ6Q

— The Beehive (@TheBeehiveHQ) April 7, 2020

Sweet Tea and Facebook Live

Momma's got a few things for you today.

First, I found the two worst movies of all time. I'm serious. We can stop searching now. These cannot be topped.

They are two Mormon films from the early 80s concerning the "Word of Wisdom" which is the set of guidelines around health practices church members follow (don't drink alcohol, coffee, bleach, etc.). I somehow never saw either of these films growing up and now I'm exactly split on whether I wish I had.

If you've been wanting more movie recaps from me, look no further. I wrote about both of these films for The Beehive. Please check them out.

Second, my grandma ("G-Mac") lives in an independent living center. She moved herself into it a few years ago so she could be around her peers and sort of revitalize her social life.

G-Mac is an extreme extrovert and I'm 100% sure this is exactly where I inherited that gene. Her ideal day is to have everyone she's ever met and liked all in the same room with her together for the full 24 hours, and she would like to repeat that day every day for her entire life. And that's how I feel, too. I ache that I can't see you people right now. This whole social distancing business is honestly my own personal Trial of Job.

Does This Count As Pictures & Distractions Who's In Charge Here?

I was going to do Pictures & Distractions but then I got distracted (ha!) and started word vomiting. I guess the below does include some pictures and links, so maybe this counts? I don't know.

I was going to start this off by bragging to you about how I spent my weekend painting my garage door and patio in the backyard and I went to pull up a picture and somehow clicked on something on Instagram, which turned out to be a "live video."

As you know, I'm what the kids call "not tech savvy." I've seen people do these live videos before but I guess I just always assumed this was not a resource available to me for some reason. WELL. As it turns out, IT IS available to me, and if there's one thing I like more than watching TV it's BEING tv (hashtag attention seeker).

Being the international superstar that I am, upwards of SEVENTEEN PEOPLE tuned into this thing. Now I can't walk around my house without sunglasses on and TMZ hired a new person to just cover my life. That person followed me around for a week and then got fired when there was nothing sensational to report besides my skin-care regimen WHICH IS OUTRAGEOUS.

It was all very fun and very exciting and I think we should do a Quarantine Stranger Show where everyone gets their favorite not-that-I-know-what-that-is-Cathie beverage and joins us on Instagram one night for a story or something. Or is that lame? Is this a bad idea? I've been locked in my house so many days in a row now that I can't tell whether this is a bad idea. Someone reassure me here.

Something weird be happening on the Internet.

Two things:

First of all, we've announced our next Strangerville Live! Come join us in Salt Lake City on March 6 at 8:00 PM. I'm hosting (possibly entirely through song) and we'll be featuring four other storytellers:

Inventor of the circus

Space Jesus

Today I published an article on The Beehive called "Space Jesus." I decided I wanted to write a humor piece on Temple Square (and Salt Lake City in general) around Christmas. But when I set out to write it it just didn't come out as a humor piece, and instead came out as a reflection on what it feels/looks like to have a complicated relationship with religion (for whatever reason).

It's the most sincere and heartfelt thing I've written in a long time and it's really important to me. I'd love to have you go read it. You can find the article here. And I would really love to hear your thoughts on the topic, whether or not you feel you can relate specifically.

Our Snowy Graveyard

Last week we went to Vancouver Washington for Thanksgiving. Skylar grew up there and all of his family still lives in Vancouver or across the river in Portland so the whole place has become sort of a second home for me over the past several years.

I don't know what possessed us to decide we should try to drive this time. We did this for Christmas in 2017 and the drive from Portland to Salt Lake City through a 300-square-mile blizzard on un-plowed roads was so terrifying that ever since I've been about 25% convinced we may have died and we've just been living a Sixth Sense unfinished business ghost situation. Which would really piss me off considering that I've been going to work and doing laundry for the last 2 years like some alive idiot.

I guess we mostly did it because we wanted to bring Duncan. We invited Matt and Ollie to come along, too, and so we just sort of thought it would be a lovely coming-of-age story about three friends and two dogs who drove across the country and learned some things about themselves along the way.

It all started to fall apart before it even began. Skylar bailed on us a few weeks before we left, deciding that since he was done with school several days before Matt or I could leave work, he would just fly one-way to Portland early to spend more time with his mother. I suggested he sell his umbilical cord to pay for his ticket and he thought that joke was very funny but didn't show it at all and instead glared at me and stomped out of the room and then later his mother told me the comment wasn't appreciated. The point is marriage is going extremely well.