Friday Bitch & Brag
December 22, 2023 - The Festivus Edition
Exclusive for paid subscribers: the Corinne Channel is a roundup of what I’ve been reading, watching, and listening to over the past week. This list will be included at the end of each Friday Bitch and Brag.
In case you missed an older Friday Bitch & Brag, you can check out the index here.
Who’s ready to air some grievances and participate in a feat of strength? I got a lot of problems with you people, so let’s go!
Bitch: Last year, someone I know raved about peppermint snowball cookies, and the idea of a cookie with a creamy peppermint filling sounded pretty good, so I found a recipe online. Never again. If you want a peppermint delivery system at the holidays, may I recommend a candy cane? Or some Andes mints? Because those cookies were a waste of good butter. I’m not going to link to a recipe as they were an abomination and, like the worst-ever holiday song “Wonderful Christmastime”, they need to be banished from the cultural lexicon. I said what I said.
Brag: I baked an old favorite recipe for cinnamon sugar cookies and they turned out as delicious as ever. These kinds of cookies are the ones that make Santa smile and little kids’ eyes light up as they are the perfect combination of chewy, sweet, and spicy.
Bonus Item: This morning I saw Max the cat and he is doing very well. He splits his time between the cozy A-frame cat bed outside and the screened porch. When I saw him, Max was extra friendly and full of purrs. He is such a sweetheart and I gotta give Mari a lot of credit for making him more social.
Who needs resolutions when you can start a new habit before Christmas?! My free newsletter, Connecting the Nouns, offers fun exercises and prompts to get you writing. Subscribe to get a new prompt in your inbox every week.
Bitch: This week I saw two different Instagram Reels using the same background music that was incorrectly transcribed for closed captioning. I do love a misheard lyrics mishap, sure, but misheard lyrics of “every time it rains, it rains panties from heaven” on a holiday-related Instagram post is too much for me. Fortunately, it looks like the issue was fixed and/or both users had the presence of mind to edit their content to remove the closed captions.
Brag: My friends over at Write Notepads and Meet Haus called me an “influencer” when they shared my 2023 Favorite Things post on Facebook. I feel so young and on trend now.
Enjoying the Friday Bitch & Brag free content? I hope you’ll consider making a small donation in support of my writing via Venmo or PayPal. Thank you!
Bitch: I’ve spent this past week dealing with the worst withdrawal symptoms as I attempted to go off Effexor using the piss-poor tapering instructions provided by my doctor. It started Monday evening, with chills but no fever, headaches, nausea, fatigue, dizziness…and continued off and on through this morning, when I finally got a lower dose of Effexor in non-extended release tablet form. I had to cancel all my plans this week—pre-holiday brunch with Desi & Rimi, visiting friends, dinners, pre-holiday work meetings—all because I could barely function. Big kudos to Uncle Ned*, the retired psychiatrist in the family, who read my Wednesday morning missive email about my history with Effexor and trying to get off it, and called with suggestions as well as quirky warmth & humor. He gets all the good chocolate & treats in his Christmas stocking. My GP (who, in my honest opinion, has no business prescribing SNRIs to patients, and I plan on breaking up with her in the new year) gets coal and a rotting orange. On the up side, however…
Brag: …my tears are back. I hadn’t cried since May 8, the day I started taking Effexor. While there is something to be said for control over one’s emotional outbursts, I can tell you from personal experience that it sucks to be unable to cry when you really want and need to. Lying on my bed feeling glum did not satisfy me as much as a shower stall sobfest. That’s because for me, tears are healing, and I am grateful to once again be crying over news stories, unexpected gifts, texts from loved ones, and even dumb car ads on Hulu.
And now for the weekly media wrap-up on The Corinne Channel!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to A Life of Moxie to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.