Luis and I attended the annual Esther Day Virtual Party on Sunday. Esther Day is a birthday celebration of Esther Earl, a Nerdfighter who died of thyroid cancer when she was sixteen. When asked how she wanted to be remembered, she said she would like everyone to take the day to celebrate platonic love and saying “I love you” to people who you might not say it to as often as you want or should; maybe it makes you feel a little uncomfortable because it’s not said as often. It’s a really sweet way to celebrate Esther and her family and the people we love in our lives. It’s just nice. It’s a nice hug of a day.
Do you want a personal example of how kind John Green is? He and his wife Sarah were guests in the virtual party livestream, and he did a Q&A like he often does, because he loves to answer questions and offer “dubious advice.” Luis has been anxious about home repair stuff, as I think I’ve mentioned here, so I casually asked John if he has any advice for dealing with the anxiety. John not only gave us some advice—watch YouTube videos on home repairs (which we can’t really do for our roof, ha.)—he also took the time to give us a shout-out like, “Sara and Luis! We’re fully invested in their marriage.” Which made us both very touched and smiley for the rest of the livestream. And so now, when we’re stressed about home repair stuff, which of course we will keep being stressed about but it’s normal and it will be fine, we can think about John’s shout-out and words of advice, which boil down to us not being alone. 💚
Luis’s birthday is this Saturday! We were originally going to have a birthday party for him because it’s a Saturday and how convenient, but it’s unfortunately a Saturday in summer so all our friends are busy*. But we’re going to see The Naked Gun which is a remake of one of his favorite movies, and we’re going to a restaurant he really likes, and I’m going to make the weekend all about him and what he wants. That’s my other gift to him this year. (I also got him a Switch 2 back in July, which he’s been playing every day since I told him he needed it and we rushed out and got it.) We also also might go see Inter Miami play DC in a few weeks, if we can muster up the enthusiasm since Messi probably won’t play. Busquets will still be there! And De Paul! And Alba! And Suarez! Plenty of fun players, but no one’s as cool as Messi, so we’ll see about that.
We’re still thinking about Ozzy Osbourne. Luis is a big fan, so he’s been showing me all kinds of stuff and playing songs for me. We started watching The Osbournes because I figured it would at least be amusing. It was my idea. It’s fun to learn about the family. It’s definitely silly, but it’s also kind of sweet in a weird way. They had way, way too many dogs and didn’t really know how to take care of them. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
My writing is still going well. I can see how the story plot is progressing as planned, which is very exciting. I’m almost to 50K words. I was looking through my calendar the other day and realized it won’t be long until I’m finished with this draft. September 26th is my goal end date, and that’s not so far away now.
I wish there was a word to describe how good it feels when everything seems to fall into place.
* We are still going to have a party with friends, it’s just not going to be on his actual birthday.
Sara Mazariegos 