The Fluffbucket Diaries

I always appreciate it when people of color tell woke white people to calm the f–k down. Case in point: A “Karen” of color says no, the meming of “Karen” is not sexist or racist.

Finally, an outlet for all my sonnets about Chalupa Supremes.

There’s a Facebook group dedicated to “news and comments” about our town. The husband loves it. I glance at it for tidbits of news. If I look any closer, like I did just now, I find too many reasons to steer clear of my neighbors and wonder why I live here.

“The Gathering of the Juggalos’ collapse conjures something else—the crisis’s disruption of subcultures for which belonging and togetherness can’t be taken for granted.”

The latest retail shortage: sympathy cards.

“It makes me sick in my heart, every order that comes in,” said one Etsy seller who has sold more than 275 sympathy cards this month.

Illinois has had its governance problems, yes. But pointing them out the way the “president” just did isn’t leadership. It’s being an asshole.

Slowly going insane.

The Animal Crossing camper is starting to look too much like my real-life environs.

More from today’s South Side drive.

This weekend’s Sunday drive sent us southbound on Lake Shore Drive.

Winter has turned into a fine car dog.

“Facebook and Instagram are a conversation. They are for others. A journal is for you. You deserve a record. Write it down so you will remember how you got used to this — and how you got through this.”

Appreciate that a tween’s boredom can remind me that we need a new oven mitt.

Lockdown living.

Whiling away some time during #PokemonGOCommunityDay at home.

Finally listening to the Minutemen’s “Double Nickels on the Dime” in its entirety because I don’t want to leave this world an incomplete Gen X’er from Southern California.

“You can ‘reopen’ the country all you want. You cannot force people to act as though there is not a pandemic.”

I am enjoying the dress-up options in this game. #AnimalCrossing #PocketCamp #luchadorable

One bit of fallout from this coronavirus business: My Facebook activity is starting to rise. Not by much, but I’m tiptoeing into the news feeds occasionally, usually with things I first share here or on other platforms. (In the case of the latter, the stuff on other platforms makes its way back here.)

My desperation for human contact has led me to the Evil Empire. God help me.

A friend on Facebook shared a story where he and a mutual friend of ours ran into Willie Mays at a ballpark. He used the anecdote to solicit stories of “unexpected brushes with greatness.” Here’s what I shared.

I was walking down Michigan Avenue with my sister and a friend visiting from San Diego; I think this was in 1998. My sister nudged me and looked over her shoulder.

“I think that’s Tony Gwynn!” she said. I thought she was nuts, but then I remembered that the Padres were in town. I looked behind us and the first thing I noticed was That Laugh – that unmistakable gurgling laugh of his – and then saw him lingering in front of the Nike store, talking to an older guy that I suspect was the Padres' hitting coach at the time, Merv Rettenmund.

My sister, her friend, and I kept nudging each other to go talk to him, and I finally caved and ran back. Gwynn sighed and didn’t seem thrilled to be recognized, but I still babbled at him about how I was a big fan, that I grew up in Chula Vista but moved to Chicago a couple of years before – to which he replied, “What the hell did you do that for?”

He agreed to sign a copy of a newspaper I had because I didn’t have anything else for him to sign, and this was well before the days of cellphone cameras. And then he went on his way. It was a fleeting surreal moment to run into a hometown hero well out of context of my actual hometown.

I just ate a whole bag of dark chocolate Reese’s peanut butter cups. The dark chocolate makes it healthy. At least that’s what I tell myself.

The husband was reading through a list of “band names completely transformed by one letter.” For example, The Why (instead of The Who) and the Yeastie Boys.

The pinnacle, for me: Goy Division.

I’m all about the whole stay-the-f—k-home thing. But I think I’m officially tired of TV shows where panelists are talking at each other from their living rooms.

Pulled on my rattiest shoes to run a quick errand. It dawned on me that I used this opportunity to buy chocolate, Pringles, and diet soda. It’s like living through my first job all over again.