A(nother) Very Special List Of People I Am Mad At, 1/21/22

This newsletter is a weekly (sometimes) list of people I am mad at. It’s my dad’s birthday tomorrow, so please enjoy this special list dedicated to him, as I recently visited him for three weeks. This is the list for January 21, 2022.

1. Ben Affleck.

2. My dad asked me to Google a kind of pasta he couldn’t remember and his only recollections were, “It’s yellow and it has cheese.” Three days later, he told me he was talking about carbonara. He does not eat pork.

3. Two weeks ago, my dad caught me looking at Kim Kardashian’s Instagram stories and he asked me what I was looking at and I showed him her in one of those stupid outfits that looks like she got tangled up in some curtains and he asked, “So, she sends these to you? For what purpose?”

4. Names my dad called my friend Bjorn: Raul, Bornio, Bearing.

5. Names my dad called my friend Lakna: Lakania, Shobna, Binaka, Dilma, Dilmo, Noreen.

6. My dad keeps calling my husband “cute.”

7. My dad interrupted me during a work call to ask me if pilates is for women only.

8. I just found out my dad goes to the McDonalds for the senior citizen discount on coffee ($1) and then asks for extra cream to bring it home. He drinks his coffee black. I don’t know what the cream is for.

9. My dad watched a PetSmart ad where someone kissed their dog on the face and my dad groaned and said, “They’re crazy, these white people.” (Tend to agree on this one, honestly.)

10. Every single fucking day he asked me what the weather was at 10 am, 3:30 in the afternoon, and 9:15 at night. He would ask it while looking directly at his laptop, which I can guarantee displays the fucking weather.

11. I made my dad this cherry tomato sausage bocconcini pasta per his request and then he put raw walnuts on it. Not like, a few. He just put thirteen whole fucking raw walnuts on top of a sausage pasta.

12. I asked him to go to the store and get some ramen for me and my niece but he came back and said that, apparently, the entire grocery store was sold out. Then I asked him to repeat back to me what he asked the grocer for and he told me, “Bolga.”

13. My dad was trying to do the “Cartwright” bit from the Chinese restaurant episode of Seinfeld but instead of doing it right, he kept walking around the house yelling, “STANFIELD.”

14. I’m not sure you understand: For three weeks, he went to grocery stores around Calgary and asked them, “Where do you keep your bolga?” and then got mad because no one knew what he was talking about.

15. Happy Aquarius season: my dad is one, and so am I. This, I know, explains a great deal. I am not interested in investigating that any further.

I’m going offline for a few weeks to take a bit of a break. If you need me, try harder not to.