To heal. To relax. To nurse the little drummer boy. I really didn’t sleep last night, but it was ok because I stayed on TikTok and posted stupid drafts from last week of myself dancing to Depeche Mode, drank cheap wine, and watched The Counting Crows documentary waiting for the hours to click by to give him more drugs.

@amyturnsharpit is my honor to be @Depeche Mode old. 🖤 #genx

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It was fine, though, as I sat there missing the dead, being maudlin about the past, watching the boys shuffle in and out doing their own life things. It’s all right because this was a surgery that was not life threatening—it is going to be life enhancing. He did great and is recovering here beside me right now. He is handsome and childlike and adorable when he sleeps. Eyelashes for days. I love to watch the people I love sleep. I always have. I think it reminds me of the poem by Margaret Atwood, that I know I have referenced before, the one that made me want to be a poet. “Variations on the Word Sleep.” It is like that. What peace and energy to be in sleep with another. I remember being a teenager and standing on Mound Street in Logan, Ohio in 1991, and I just stood there in the middle of the street with a book in my hand and gasped. I wanted at that exact moment to figure out how to make someone else gasp. I still go toward this feeling.

So, I get to watch him sleep. And then we will talk and listen to records and make lists, and probably I will try and write and plan and scheme. And although it is at the holidays, it just means I get to be with my family 24/7 with no going out to the wine bar with the gals or shopping or being what my ex-husband called a dirty stop out. It’s a funny slang from the north of England, and it stuck with me all these years. It kinda means party girl or slut, idk. He used it sweetly, but I still laugh and call my friends that. Sometimes the older boys too. Feel free to take it into your own lexicon.

Anyways, I am home. And let me tell you about home. It looks pretty messy. Like, the kind of messy that I would hesitate to let anyone come inside. I am having a nap and then trying to get life in order today. We had not had a working washer OR dryer (how dare they both die nearly at the same time) for a month. Well, we found one on sale and just had it installed by my nearly 80-year-old dad and the boys, and if we had 10 loads to catch up, we had 19!!!! It’s kind of a sexy tower appliance, though as we have always had a macabre basement with old school Maytag beast top loaders and cheap dryers that my dad would work on, but these are fancy, and thank god for credit cards. It has an app! Is it elderly to be excited by appliances? Perhaps.

Here’s a prompt today.

Write about three people (one you can live with or be immediate family with), but two must be dead/alive, friends or whomever that you would want to take a nap with. The nap is platonic. But what is it like? How does it start? Where is it? What is the room like, the conversation, the necessity, the duration, the feeling? Call it The 3 Naps. It’s a fucking triptych. It’s a fantasy. It’s yours. <3

Hey, thank you for subscribing—it means the world. I appreciate it, and I saw yesterday the two of you who did. :) Please know that in 2026 every single $ sub gets a piece of SNAIL mail from me. If you want it! It is the least I can do. I have so many cool things cooking.

So, as you make your lists of gratitude and presents and groceries and worry, know that there is a lady in Ohio who is thinking of you. Wishing you the best. Sending spells your way. And she’s also on a twin bed on the living room floor beside of her love trying to be creative. Trying to find her way. If you have any idea of what I should do with the rest of my life, please comment. I need insurance for my children, and I need to make some money, nothing like I used to make. That is not important to me anymore. People and this precious life day by day is what is.

ilysm

xo

Amy