Monday Miscellany: Beneath the patter of long-awaited rain

Notes from May 18 - 24

May 25, 2026

Hello from my front porch, friends! Welcome to a new week.

The inside of our house is still complete chaos, so I’ve set up shop out here in my child-sized IKEA chair for the day. The normal mix of birds have kept me company for most of the morning—cardinals, doves, various wrens and finches—but the most exciting moment was when I spotted a huge rat snake making its way across the front yard. Fair warning: there’s a photo farther down, in case you need to scroll past!

The week in books

I was very aware of The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop when it came out in 2024, but for whatever reason I didn’t jump on it immediately. So I was very grateful to Rosamond for writing about it recently, which nudged me to check Libby, find that the audiobook was available with no wait, and check it out! Man, I just tore through this one. Kelly recounts her life in show business pretty linearly, so listening felt like sitting down with my grandma to learn what she was like as a young person, knowing where she’d end up (and eagerly awaiting those stories) but equally as engrossed in the experiences that got her there. What a sassy, classy lady. What a lesson in both self-confidence and gratitude. This is definitely a must-read for Gilmore Girls fans, theater kids, and anyone who wonders if it’s possible to keep doing what they love well into old age (spoiler: it is). I will echo Rosamond and say that audio is the way to go if you have access to that!

Speaking of memoir, Libby came through for me again this past week with Lena Dunham’s new one, Famesick. I didn’t watch Girls when it originally aired,1 but I liked her film Tiny Furniture and her book of essays, Not That Kind of Girl, and I remember the general online attitude toward her during the early 2010s, so I was very curious to hear what she had to say fifteen years later. Let me tell you: she’s been through some shit. Learning about all of the health struggles and surgeries she was dealing with in the background during her sudden rise to fame made me feel so sad about the way the public treated her at the time. When Girls premiered, she was so YOUNG (twenty-six!), and inexperienced, and hard-working, and under so much pressure. Not to mention dealing with a body that was at best barely cooperating and at worst fully disintegrating; I don’t know how anyone in that situation could have been expected to keep going. And still, she discusses her chronic illness not as an excuse, but to provide context—I appreciates that she addresses and owns up to her mistakes as well. This memoir won’t be for everyone, just like Lena Dunham herself might not be, and that’s okay, but if you’ve followed her work for any amount of time and/or are interested in how fame can interact with physical and mental health, I recommend it.

My favorite of the week, one that you might’ve already seen me posting about in my instagram stories if you follow me there, was The ADHD Field Guide For Adults by Cate Osborn and Erik Gude. This is, as it says on the tin, a nonfiction book all about ADHD, written for adults, particularly those who were diagnosed or have self-identified the condition in adulthood. It’s specifically written and formatted in ADHD-friendly ways: short chunks, important concepts in bold, etc. And it covers so many topics and areas of life! I was especially fascinated by the section about comorbidities, in which Cate and Erik discuss the overlaps between ADHD and other diagnoses like Autism, depression, anxiety, and more. And the part about how hormonal shifts, both short- and long-term, interact with ADHD. And the chapter on creating systems to make life easier, from thinking through home layout, to counting backward in order to be on time, to strategies for remembering to brush teeth and do other hygiene tasks. There are so many tips and suggestions, both from the authors and from their online followers who wrote in with contributions. I could go on and on about how seen and affirmed this book made me feel, and how hopeful. The copy I read was from the library, but I will absolutely be buying this one to have on hand for future reference.

Right now and upcoming

Staring down the end of one month and the beginning of another, I have several directions I could go with my reading.

Do I pick up something from my older unread shelf, since I haven’t checked that box off for May yet? I’d probably choose this one, especially since there’s a recent Zero to Well-Read episode about it that I could listen to as a companion piece.
Do I read the Stacks book club pick for May before the discussion episode about it comes out on Wednesday?
Do I dive into my early copy of Daniel Lavery’s new novel so I can hype it up ahead of its June 2nd release date?
Or do I go for my IRL book club’s choice before our meeting on June 3rd, one that I’m having to borrow from a friend because the library wait list is so dang long?

What would you choose, friends?? What are you reading right now and loving?

On the screen and in my ears

After seeing 28 Days Later back in January, it was fun to finally experience the follow-up, 28 Years Later (2025), this week with the same friends. And wow, still zombies, but what a difference. I liked the gimmick of this one (that it was shot exclusively on iPhone) and for whatever reason enjoyed the storyline a bit more than its predecessor. So visceral! Such skull pile! The ending had me laughing with delighted confusion. Guess we’ll have to watch 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple sooner rather than later.

The limited series Wayward (2025), created by and starring Mae Martin, has been on my radar since a friend who is a fan of theirs told me about it last year. The show opens with Martin’s character, Alex, moving to a small community in Vermont with his pregnant wife, Laura (Sarah Gadon), for a fresh start. Evelyn (our queen Toni Collette), Laura’s mentor and head teacher at the eponymous local Tall Pines Academy, sets them up with a house, but they quickly start to suspect that all is not well there. In Alex’s new job as a local police officer, he starts digging into the place’s history and feels increasingly uneasy the more he uncovers. We’re simultaneously following Leila and Abbie, two students sent to Tall Pines against their will and desperate to escape, which they’re hoping to do with Alex’s help. The atmosphere of this show is everything—dark, mysterious, deeply unsettling and creepy, with a dollop of culty vibes—but I’m still chewing on the ending, which to me felt largely unsatisfying. The more I think about it, the more I suppose that anything different would’ve been unrealistic, but I can’t help being frustrated by its extreme bleakness. If you’ve seen this show, please talk to me!

Haiku round-up

This poetic form, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern, originated in Japan and traditionally includes thematic reference to the seasons. Mine vary in topic, but I’ve been writing one each day since the beginning of 2024 as an exercise in structured creativity. Here are this week’s poems:

Monday, May 18