well over the mileage limit

on the malaise of modern expenses, failed negotiations and quitting sex until my lease is up

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Everything is too expensive.

I say this to myself a thousand times a day.

On the phone I try to negotiate a new contract on my lease for a car that isn’t due for trade-in until September but I’ve already maxed out my miles. Last time this happened a new car showed up at my door hours later and my monthly payments didn’t change but this time I am told that that’s impossible. This time I am told that my car payment will go up by $300 a month if I do that.

*Plus an extra five thousand dollars down.

So now every mile I drive I have to pay for. Twenty-five cents times however many thousands of miles I will inevitably drive. I am trying not to look at the speedometer. Feel relieved I’m terrible a math. Pretend like I’m paying myself gas money. Small price to pay to the party gods style.

a prayer for chaos in the new year

I signed my original lease during lockdown before I lived 50% of my life in my car.

Before my kids all went to school on the other side of town.

Before we spent our weekends in warehouses full of volleyball courts in Anaheim.

Before I had three teenage daughters who are as social as they are unable to drive themselves to The Century City Mall and The Americana even though we live in walking distance to The Grove.

This is not going to be an essay about how expensive everything is because there is no reason to tell you what you already know but in case you don’t have three teenage daughters at home — all of whom have elaborate skincare routines and very different hair specifications that require very specific products that come in bottles that explode when you drop them in the shower or put them in your backpack or your sister throws one across the room as a weapon — my car payment is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount I spend at Walgreens, or as we call it, Not-Rite-Aid. (RIP)

Do you know how many times I have tried to preach the gospel according to Cetaphil and Pan-fucking-tene?

I came of age in the days of Noxzema. When all you needed was a splash of water to the face. Toothpaste as pimple patch. A mascara would last me an entire year in those days and Rum Raisin was, like, the only shade of lipstick Revlon made.

Bath and Body Works Freesia lotion worked as perfume, lotion, sunscreen AND hand sanitizer because fuck it and whatever. Cover Girl compacts were THE ONLY OPTION for mid-90s teen girls and no one dared use a blending sponge or a brush. In my day, the more oil-streaks in your pressed powder the badder the bitch. And if you didn’t apply it with the pad it came with? Sacrilege.