Hi Toasties, hope your Friday is Good so far. One of my husband’s coworkers asked him why their entire office is getting a half-day off today: “Is it…Ash Friday?” Some of us prefer to think of today as “Cadbury Eve,” or “The Day We Watch Easter Parade In Peace And Quiet Before Our In-Laws Arrive With A Giant Ham.”

We had an excellent week together! First, thanks to Lyette Mercier, we all had some fun talking about weird jobs we’ve had. (In the comments, I reveal without shame that as a youth I accepted a rich old guy’s cash money to teach his dog to swim. [Eliza Hamilton voice] IIIIII’m not sorryyy)

ETHAN FROME: welcome back, Zeen
me and Mattie broke your favorite red dish you asked us not to use while you were gone
if it helps we weren’t having sex
just staring at each other so much we broke your dish
Z if it helps I don’t have sex with her I just wanted to buried with her and love her more than any woman I’ve ever met
I’m only cheating you of your emotional rights as my wife
not the sex ones
if that helps

Jaya poked gentle fun at Andrew Zimmern and it was PERFECT:

He almost expected it the day it started. As soon as he saw her, he saw the rest of his life stretched before him. “We are ready,” they had said to him in his dreams, “we are here.” In his sleep he smiled and kissed his fingertips. He whispered, “If it looks good, eat it.”

You do not want to miss this beautiful essay by Ary Smith about their top surgery and genderqueer identity:

The other day I was sad for a minute, per the human condition, and to calm myself I took a deep breath. Then I noticed something, and then I did it again. For about ten years, taking a deep breath meant expanding my ribcage against a binder, wincing a little, discreetly digging my fingers under my collar and hitching a shoulder strap back into place. It doesn’t anymore.

About six weeks after surgery I went for my first post-surgery run. I hadn’t run without a serious sports bra and a constantly negotiation of bodily comfort versus self-consciousness since I was about thirteen years old. It felt like a funny postcard from fifteen years ago, like discovering a diary entry in my middle-school cursive. It felt like one less thing to worry about, well, two fewer things. And that’s why I was laughing as I ran down the sidewalk, startling passersby and kicking up leaves as I went.

Katie Rose Guest Pryal on the consequences of resisting a professor’s advances:

I was truly terrified—all of my hard work and all of my student loans, they would be for nothing. He had all of the power, and I had none. He wasn’t even in my field, but that didn’t matter—I knew that all of the negative consequences would fall on me. I was an expendable graduate student. He was a tenured professor.

When I should have been working on my thesis, I was worrying about whether I needed to protect myself legally.

LightHouse for the Blind SF’s Month of Blind Women essay series continued with Sheri Wells-Jensen’s critique of the characterization of Marie-Laure in Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See.

Every Meal in Jane Eyre, Ranked in Order of Severity

I interviewed writer/comedian/Friend of The Toast Josh Gondelman, whose new comedy album is A+++ and also available for purchase. (If you want a preview, here is his clip from Conan!!)

Finally, my friend Kathryn Hamilton wrote this fun piece about her family’s traditional Easter egg hunt, and though I scorn family traditions personally* it’s one of the Daddest things we have ever published and I LOVE it.

* not really; but I do not like it when “but we’ve ALWAYS done it this way!” is used as a means to control adult children and squash the perceived threat posed by new people in the family (honestly, I never know whether to thank Nicole or curse her for introducing me to the internet crack that is DWIL Nation).

I hope you have a splendid weekend, whatever you’re up to, and that you are well supplied with pleasingly egg-shaped chocolate candy if that’s your thing (it is very much my thing). I love you all.