For folks who signed up for tomorrow night’s Bibliomancy class, be on the lookout for an email from with additional details — grab your two favorite books off the shelf! — and the link to the Zoom room, in case you missed it. You can still join the class using the button below.

A couple weeks ago, I woke up with a wonky shoulder. I was telling a friend about it over a video call, and her roomie hollered out, “It’s frozen shoulder!” I told her not to put that on me. Frozen shoulder can be a 2-3 year affair and the timing is never great for your shoulder to be out of commission for years on end.

I went on about my week confident that I had just slept on it funny (because injuring yourself in your sleep is also something that happens once you cross the threshold of 40). That is until things got rapidly worse last Monday night. I felt like someone had swapped out my shoulder blade for a bag of cement. A burning, achy bag of cement. NOT GOOD.

It was a painful enough evening that I made a doctor’s appointment the next day. I was seen on Wednesday afternoon and assured that it was just a bout of tendonitis. My shoulder has been slowly on the mend, my sleeping has been shot and my productivity took a dive because pain can be quite distracting.

My last tussle with tendonitis was a couple Thanksgivings ago when I overdid it cooking for my family and my feet made me miserable for the following two weeks. It’s also when I learned my feet are no longer interested in being barefoot indoors! They now demand slippers for padding around my apartment. These are the same feet I used to strap into Jessica Simpson platforms for dancing until 4A, so they’ve earned their old age.

Anyways, since my various body parts have been behaving like fussy babies, my mind has turned toward sympathy several times in the past few weeks for those of you in your 40s with actual fussy babies to deal with. A baby don’t care if your shoulder tendons are decrepit, they want to be held when they want to be held! I hope there’s a hot bath in your near future.

This week I can’t stop talking about:

Minda

P.S. I’ve had a few people contact me about the state of the links in this section and honestly, I dunno what’s up. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t! In theory, when you click a link it’s supposed to take you to the corresponding section of the newsletter, so you don’t have to scroll past me blathering on about butter, or whatever, if all you want is to read the last section. Sometimes the links do nothing, sometimes they take you the webpage, sometimes they do exactly what they’re supposed to do. It’s a bit of a crap shoot. Sorry for the annoyance! (And thanks for letting me know!)

I had no idea who Nicole Meier was until she popped up in my Substack feed with this total banger, “The Depth Shift Many Manuscripts Need to Make.”

Nicole is addressing fiction writers but this is just as a relevant to nonfiction writers, if not more so. You gotta show and tell. In a clear, well-written piece, Nicole explains the three things you gotta stop doing to bring your character to life on the page. Absolutely worth a read.

Did you know they make lactose-free butter!? I was shopping for vegan butter, which I don’t love the idea of because what is even in that ish!? And I came across this tucked up on a high shelf at Whole Foods.

For the most part, when butter is baked into something it doesn’t activate my lactose-intolerance, but there are instances where I’m simply cooking with butter and it can become an issue. For me, I was wanting to make an oatmeal bake and not have to worry about tossing dairy on an empty stomach (because Lactaid ain’t always reliable!). So this felt like a dream come true.

It’s pricier than regular butter, so I’ll only be using it in specific context where I don’t want to sacrifice flavor but do want peace of mind I won’t be upsetting my belly.

I am not very active over there, but I have fallen for the allure of Rec League. It’s just regular ol’ people sharing things they like. Show & Tell meets Tumblr.

As many of you know, I’ve been on a journey to close out the hundreds of open tabs on my iPhone browser. This site does not help! I’m constantly finding new and interesting things I’d like to buy when I have a funds (uhm… how come nobody told me how incredible buckwheat pillows are for side sleepers!?). It’s still early days, so enjoy this new social media platform while it’s ad-free and not overrun with influencers.