What's IN/OUT this week

As I write this, it is 80 degrees out. I am going to walk to our neighborhood poke restaurant, drink wine on the balcony, and make a rhubarb crisp with ice cream. It almost makes me forget that my beloved Penguins are absolutely choking on their playoff run.

IN: Wild tales of people who DoorDash too much. I’ve seen an influx of videos and reports of people who get many of their meals delivered — like, daily. If not multiple times a day. As someone who can probably count on one hand the number of times she gets delivery in a year — and as someone who hates unnecessary spending — this is an extremely foreign idea to me. My recent favorite article on the topic is from The Cut, which reported on couples with mismatched delivery desires. One couple has $20,000 in credit card debt from their wedding (I looked it up: the average cost of a wedding today is apparently $35,000???), and the wife estimates that her husband spends “between $200 and $400 a week on DoorDash.” It reminds me of those videos of people at Disney (average cost of a trip to Disney for a couple: between $4,000 and $7,500) discussing how much debt they have. The financial Venn diagram of DoorDash enthusiasts and Disney Adults is a circle. OUT: Peering into those deliveries. There is someone in my own building who DoorDashes the most outrageous orders. I’ve stepped over delivery bags of loose Red Bull cans (we live maybe 300 feet from a Walgreens) and yesterday passed by a single plastic clamshell of precut watermelon. He must have moved too fast one day, because a container of honey mustard got caught in the door and the sauce sprayed across the foyer — where it remained for a couple of weeks.

IN: Sunny, warm mornings. My eyes are snapping open a little earlier these days now that the sun has risen by 6 a.m. I am again able to spend some crucial pre-work moments on the balcony, just drinking coffee, writing, and eating these muffins (you will not regret making and eating those muffins with a smear of butter). This week I watched a woman pull her car over in our alley to eat her McDonald’s breakfast and stare at her phone. Solidarity, my sister. OUT: The beautiful lilacs I stole to add to the spring energy in the house. They wilted and died within a couple of days after I yanked them off of a tree (bush?) near the Metra tracks. 

IN: Spectacular, coy pronunciation. One of the best music videos I’ve seen in recent memory is Kacey Musgraves’s “Dry Spell.” In the song, she manages to draw out the word “lonely” in a way that the “o” begins to sound the way it does in the word “horny.” Artistry! Country isn’t my genre and I’ve never been much of Mus-head. But that little play on word/sound? Bury me in the Musgrave-yard!!! OUT: Very bad pronunciation. I’ve been very diligently working out to these videos each morning (look at me, thriving) and one of the instructors always pronounces “across” as “acrosst.” Cuts right into my form and focus.

IN: Chicken caesar wraps. I had no idea these were so trendy, but I’m not mad! They are delicious! If you need to know the best ones in Chicago, they are at the Buttermilk pop-up inside of Little Victories (hyped, but for a reason) and in my home when Dave makes them (he has mastered it). I bring this up because Vox just ran a story about the current cultural infatuation with the wraps. Which brings us to… OUT: Overanalyzing their appeal. “Like any obsession, though, these feelings often say more about us than they do the thing we’re infatuated with.” In this case, I do not think that is true. I think it’s just simply a trend because the hype machine happened to shift in that direction, and not because they are “healing millennial ennui.” A chicken wrap cannot do that. Only a second home in New Orleans that you share with friends can do that.

Tell me what you hated this week!