Maddie Howard lives in Boston, where she is a project coordinator by day and good-for-nothing layabout by night. You can occasionally hear her on the Sistertime Podcast, where she discusses lost and forgotten TV shows with her wildly successful cartoonist sister, Abby.
91 Comments
theburnersmydestination+140
I always think that if I had to be cartoon villain I would want my evil super power to be the ability to cast very small curses. Sure, laser vision is cool, but no one is going to mess with someone who can condemn them to a life of Always Stubbing You Toe on the Coffee Table, Sitting Next to a Baby on the Airplane, The Pot on the Stove Always Boiling Over, Hitting Every Red Light on the Way to Work and It Turns out that Guy Wasn’t Waving at You and Now You Look Like an Idiot.
I would be unstoppable.
hammocknap+51
Mmm, yes. More small curses for you: Paper Cut in a Meeting. Just Missing Every Bus. Always Having Your Shirt Tag Sticking Out. Always a Line When You Need a Public Bathroom.
Absotively+41
The third one should be Always Having People Tuck In Your Shirt Tag Without Asking.
blushingflower+37
I don’t know, the last time I sat next to a baby on an airplane he was ADORABLE and it really improved my travel experience
theburnersmydestination+28
Honestly, the last time I did it was this super adorable baby with ENORMOUS eyes and a teeny tiny Afro that I just wanted to eat right up. And I normally don’t like kids. But pretty much every other time it has been miserable.
Household_Opera+14
Yeah, I once sat on a plane next to a baby who cooed and giggled and burbled happily through the whole flight, and I would happily sit next to that baby again. (Though I’ve also been on planes near small children who were much less happy than that baby.)
Scared_Vagina+47
This is my favourite thing to do! May a yoghurt fall out of your fridge next time you open it and explode all over your floor. May the train be JUST pulling out of the station as you arrive. May your phone die before your Uber driver confirms.
theburnersmydestination+30
May the bindings of your books fall apart! May you find out that someone ate the last cookie you had saved! May you snag your new sweater on a nail!
It’s fun!
firstmute+44
Getting in the Slow Line at the Grocery Store.
This may have happened to me this morning.
summerestherson+29
I’ve already been cursed with this. It’s a hereditary curse I received from my mother.
firstmute+8
Hey there I like your username.
summerestherson+3
Thanks muchly!
goonerkate+3
Me too! It runs in the family, the slow grocery store line curse.
Ivans_Sister+34
I was thinking this exact thing yesterday, because of a situation I’m in.
Persistent Hangnails on Both Thumbs Wishing to Set Up Internet At Your New Address But The Previous Owner Put Their Account On Seasonal Hold
naglayaxuliganka+38
You people are all MONSTERS. Genius, genius monsters.
leslieellenjones+7
OMG, this needs to be a book.
hammocknap+80
May your bus stop be pleasantly scented.
May your neighbors have good taste in music.
daystarre+15
^ THIS. We are moving in part because my neighbor exclusively likes thumping baselines, and Mars’s neighbor exclusively likes high-volume emo-pop. And both are apparently exclusively home between 1 am and 4 am.
RudyRed+14
Both my next-door neighbor and my kittycorner neighbor have band practice late into the evenings. They’re not bad, but I really don’t need to hear the same bass riff+drum snap twenty times in a row.
atlasblue85+24
One of the guys in the dorm below my friends sophomore year of college knew, in total, two song intros on bass, nothing more nothing less, despite the fact that he played every. single. day. It was Smoke on the Water and Crazy Train. That was it.
Crivens+1
That is a very special version of hell.
inkwashed+4
Hey there, at least as you were slowly but surely boarding the crazy train you knew it was coming? This is an attempt at a joke that is not working; I blame the Claritin.
hammocknap+34
I had a neighbor that played nearly round-the-clock Elliott Smith, which is a very compatible music choice for me, but the quantity he was going for just made me want to knock on his door and give him a hug.
OnceAHeroine+20
I need these today, since I am moving very soon to a new and larger city. Thank you and amen.
Strophoria+68
May the thrift store always have cool boots in your size
May you always have a number of empties divisible by 5 so you don’t get a bunch of random change back when you return them
aqueousmedium+50
May your corner store stock your brand of kitty litter, permanently on sale.
coloredlights+4
Oh my GOD. This is the best one. I have visited no fewer than 10 bodegas in a 3-block radius of my apartment and NONE of them have my cat litter. Not even the ones that also have cats.
poppy+58
May your landlord repair your elevator in a timely way.
May no one leave bleach/dog hairs/old kleenex in the shared washing machine.
sausagedog+43
I grew up with a very-sheddy labrador and am still confused as to how my neighbors manage to leave so much dog hair in the washer? It *cakes* the door. I don’t mind a few hairs here and there, but I suspect they are washing their whole dog in there.
Adrian+1
If they tried to wash the dog, I’m sure you would have heard about it. It’s amazing how much fiber can stick to the inside of a washing machine…I try to just wipe it down with a swiffer-thinger before using it.
I once lived in a building where one of my neighbors apparently (or whatever the word is when my nose told me, rather than my eyes) spent a lot of time in a car, smoking camel cigarettes, eating French fries, and farting. I never saw them, but it was obvious when they had used the elevator recently. Or the washing machine.
Adrian+1
If the washing machine has a strong agitator and rinses effectively with plenty of water, it will remove hair (human or animal) from both clothes and washer. I have wonderful red fuzzy flannel sheets, and I wash them in the rather wimpy machine provided by my landlord. Usually, the pillowcase has a lot of strands of my hair before washing, and the sheets come out with the hair uniformly distributed. The inside of the washing machine is coated with a uniform film of red fuzz.
I’m sure it’s better for the environment for me to use a lint brush, but it hurts my hand and I don’t like it.
daystarre+24
May the traffic congesting your route be for a fun parade, and dissipate the instant you need to leave.
typewriterandgramophone+42
May you never get into the same bus or subway car as He Who Keeps Coughing and Sneezing Without Covering His Mouth and Nose.
mooocheller+83
May that weird guy at the bus stop leave you alone this time.
hammocknap+29
Yes, this! My bus stop was next to one of the medical centers in Boston and we got some characters. One man waited for the bus, waited for the door to open, took a slurp of drink through a straw, spat it on the bus driver, and then ran away.
mooocheller+33
Oh my god. That is so much worse than my weird bus stop guy. He just yells strange, indecipherable things at me (and everyone else, I assume?). Like “I’m gonna beat up somebody!” or “Your umbrella is good!”
Who was he going to beat up? Was he threatening me or just informing me of his plans? I may never know, but I have found a different bus stop.
Mrs_Peel+19
Does he just threaten people who are carrying what he considers sub-par umbrellas…?
mooocheller+9
This is a definite possibility.
psinistra+5
A weird bus stop guy once stopped to full-on shriek at me about the colour of my coat (green) and how unholy it was, and how I was offending the Lord. He ranted at me for like 10 minutes whilst I just stood there and fiddled with my buttons awkwardly. I have never been so relieved to get on a bus.
felaleof+3
The last presidential election day I had a weird bus stop guy who started off normal and quickly started ranting for ten minutes Romney winning the election and the evils of Obama. I’m just glad this happened in broad daylight in an open space with witnesses because he got scary fast.
It was like watching Fox News in person with spittle and being unable to change the channel or turn it off.
neeelkomol+3
The last weird bus stop guy masturbated at me in full broad daylight. There was only one other lady around, and at a distance.
UGHHHHHHHH.
RudyRed+62
May you always find an open seat on the train.
Battle_Swine+24
And may the man you sit next to reposition himself so you have plenty of room, without you having to elbow him or shove your knee into his.
Household_Opera+22
May the people with massive backpacks stand with their backs away from you, and may the subway preachers choose another car to preach in.
coloredlights+12
And may your morning commute train be free of mariachi. (It is just too early for all that, okay.)
Household_Opera+6
May that one guy with the saxophone go play at some other subway station.
sausagedog+76
May a seat open up at the coffee shop seconds after the barista hands you your to-stay drink
May your mailbox be secure and waterproof, and may FedEx never leave those little notes saying you needed to sign for a package for it to be dropped off.
Es_Petal+67
…especially when you hear the ‘sorry we missed you’ note come through the letter box but they are driving away by the time you make it to the door to ask why they didn’t bother ringing the bell.
Ivans_Sister+44
I’m having a rage stroke just thinking about this because I Have Been There.
depizan+8
Or when FedEx leaves the package at your manager’s office even though you were home all that day. And they don’t leave a note. And the company you bought from never actually sent a confirmation they had shipped. And since you didn’t know it had shipped, you didn’t know to look for it yet. And your manager didn’t tell you there was a package waiting in the office for over 4 weeks. And you needed those books for your grad school class and it’s several weeks into the semester and lots of runaround until you finally find out where they’ve been sitting this whole time.
Either_Ada+29
Related: May all your apartments have working doorbells. (I’m at about a 50% success rate.)
urspostrophe+31
It infuriates me how bad the entire package delivery system is in cities. That’s the one thing I actually miss about living in a small town–I could depend on stuff getting delivered on time right to my porch. No notes posted on the door. No weighing the pros and cons of getting a ride out to some godforsaken suburb to pick up my package if I missed it more than once. No stolen packages (hope someone out there is enjoying the monogrammed blanket my best friend sent me as a wedding present)!
Es_Petal+12
I am currently fighting with a company about a parcel that was allegedly ‘left secure in apartment lobby’ when my apartment block does not have a lobby you can get into without a key/being buzzed up (and if the delivery driver could get into the lobby, why would he not leave it outside my door rather than in the lobby?). They insist that their tracking says it was delivered to the correct address and are not having it that either the driver took it to the wrong place, left it on the road outside, or is just lying.
Sel+9
True story: we sent my SIL (who lives in Australia; my husband and I live in the US) a package and Australia Post did nothing to indicate to her that they had attempted to deliver it. No note, nada, RIEN. She lives in Sydney in a tiny apartment and no doorman. When she went to the post office to pick it up, they told her they had marked it undeliverable and RETURNED TO SENDER. She said “That package came the whole way from America” and they were like “Oh yeah, we noticed!” Needless to say, the package is lost to the aether.
This is the THIRD TIME this has happened.
tl;dr, fucking FedEx your shit to Australia, because Australia Post is useless.
lbolesta+4
I order dog food (50 lbs) and kitty litter (30 lbs) from Amazon. Recently, they sent them via USPS instead of UPS. 4 days after they’re supposed to have been delivered, I get the slip that the packages are at the PO for me to pick up, reason: “heavy.”
Mmmmm yes, that is why I ordered them online instead of dragging them around town.
So I wait for the date to pass when they say they’ll send them back and look for my refund from Amazon–no dice. I complain and finally get a refund.
TWO WEEKS later, the PO decides to deliver the kitty litter (but not the dogfood.) So…free kitty litter? Yay?
annecara+45
May your neighbors always pick up their dogs’ poop from the sidewalk.
PaigePoo+20
May there always be a trashcan near by for everyone to throw away their dog poop bags.
(Someone in my building has been leaving their bags of dog poop in the grass in front of the main door).
tinypaperme+2
I haaaaaate that. Bagging it and leaving the bag on the bike commuter path DOES NOTHING.
mariahnotmaria+8
Or from your small lawn 🙁
olive_cat+8
Or the lobby of your apartment building
betsymore+78
I’m having an emotional morning, I admit, but these made me tear up with their general kindness and grace.
May there always be a 24-hour drugstore within two blocks of your apartment, and may your favorite takeout joint live forever.
Either_Ada+70
May you always find enough quarters to do laundry.
May it always stop raining when you want to go home.
May all your Uber drivers’ conversations never exceed the minimum necessities of etiquette and situation.
May all your bartenders run interference with THAT guy.
ayelltee+59
May your transit card always be loaded.
amygriz+80
May your upstairs neighbors have soft, gentle footsteps like snow falling at dawn.
lemonack+49
May the hot water in your shower last exactly as long as you want it to, at exactly the right temperature.
BiadeMedici+32
The fireworks.
I live in Europe and it’s been a rough week in terms of memories of recent collective trauma and now I might be crying a little but it’s OK
ipomoea+36
May the needles in your park always be capped. May your neighbors pick up the poop in a timely fashion and dispose of it in the proper container (not my compost). May the parking enforcement ticket the hell out of that asshole who parks four feet into my driveway you MONSTER.
stirringsofconsciousness+42
May you never need to parallel park.
mariahnotmaria+7
I only have street parking where I live right now and have to parallel park every night. It is honestly the #1 reason why I want to move.
Household_Opera+25
May your nearest bodega always have a friendly cat in residence. May the subway rats always remain down on the tracks and never venture up onto the platform. (Both of those may be New York-specific.)
rkfire+19
Perhaps it is, but I think if you expand “nearest bodega” to “frequented local businesses” then it can be very inclusive of any city (or town for that matter.) For instance, I find it delightful that the Ace Hardware stores in Baltimore City all have a store cat, and they’re usually named after a brand that the store carries. At least one of them has a FB page.
adoptraya+5
This is the most delightful thing. And what a brilliant place for a cat! I bet hardware store cats are very happy.
urspostrophe+6
Yeah, I was supremely charmed when I went to Amsterdam and saw that a lot of the bars and cafes had a cat. Not necessarily “theirs,” either, but one that would just pop by from time to time like the human regulars. LOVE.
Household_Opera+3
Oh my goodness. I have family in Baltimore, and now I want to go visit every Ace Hardware store I can the next time I’m there to see them, just to meet the store cats.
(I used to live in Philadelphia near a lovely little used bookstore presided over by a majestic fluffy longhaired gray cat named Holly. I’d go there to pet her and browse the books.)
bibliophibian+19
Bodega Cat is, like, the benevolent patron god of city blessings.
amanita+6
Chicago has a lovely and vibrant rat community.
Crivens+3
They are… Not Small.
amanita+2
They are NOT!
adoptraya+32
I dunno about the “May someone be reading the same book as you on the subway today” one. With a certain kind of person, that just becomes a reason for them to interrupt me while I’m reading to talk about our shared tastes.
I would amend that prayer to: “May someone be reading the same book as you on the subway today, and when you both notice, you nod with respectful camaraderie and then go back to reading your books”.
amanita+15
I always thought I’d be so happy if I ever ran into anyone reading my favorite book on the train, but it is actually terrible and I hate it so much. Also once I made the mistake of reading Gravity’s Rainbow in public and was saddled with a commute “friend” for MONTHS. MONTHS.
coloredlights+29
I was standing next to a guy on the train one time while I was reading a magazine article about Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book, Between the World and Me, right after it came out. The guy next to me glanced at my page, caught my eye, said “huh, look at that,” and showed me he was reading the actual book. We grinned at each other and went back to reading and it was great.
adoptraya+12
That is SO. LEGITIMATELY. GREAT.
aqueousmedium+20
We grinned at each other and went back to reading and it was great.
Yup, that’s a blessing right there.
Marrella_+9
Oh, the fireworks one. In my city, filming a movie/tv show is also an optimistic reason for those sounds.
sluts4ever+37
May your upstairs neighbor never be an Airbnb host.
amanita+22
May your neighbors be expert at calm, respectful conflict resolution.
inkwashed+8
Brb making an altar at which to light candles in honor of this blessing & send the vibes in the direction of my one neighbor who sends long, meanspirited emails to the entire building about every.goddamned.thing anyone has ever done in the history of the universe that offends her.
PettyVengeanceFetish+9
May your neighbours be graceful and quiet losers if they play video games alone.
May all the personal belongings you lose on public transport be handed in to lost property and be easily retrievable
anniekate76
Same. 95% of the time it is.
Adrian+2
These are so wonderful. I want to set them to Dylan’s “Forever Young.” (Whose lyrics are not speaking to me today, when somebody I care about won’t be growing old.)
The Elitist Semicolon
I haaaaaate that. Bagging it and leaving the bag on the bike commuter path DOES NOTHING.
I always think that if I had to be cartoon villain I would want my evil super power to be the ability to cast very small curses. Sure, laser vision is cool, but no one is going to mess with someone who can condemn them to a life of Always Stubbing You Toe on the Coffee Table, Sitting Next to a Baby on the Airplane, The Pot on the Stove Always Boiling Over, Hitting Every Red Light on the Way to Work and It Turns out that Guy Wasn’t Waving at You and Now You Look Like an Idiot.
I would be unstoppable.
Mmm, yes. More small curses for you: Paper Cut in a Meeting. Just Missing Every Bus. Always Having Your Shirt Tag Sticking Out. Always a Line When You Need a Public Bathroom.
The third one should be Always Having People Tuck In Your Shirt Tag Without Asking.
I don’t know, the last time I sat next to a baby on an airplane he was ADORABLE and it really improved my travel experience
Honestly, the last time I did it was this super adorable baby with ENORMOUS eyes and a teeny tiny Afro that I just wanted to eat right up. And I normally don’t like kids. But pretty much every other time it has been miserable.
Yeah, I once sat on a plane next to a baby who cooed and giggled and burbled happily through the whole flight, and I would happily sit next to that baby again. (Though I’ve also been on planes near small children who were much less happy than that baby.)
This is my favourite thing to do! May a yoghurt fall out of your fridge next time you open it and explode all over your floor. May the train be JUST pulling out of the station as you arrive. May your phone die before your Uber driver confirms.
May the bindings of your books fall apart! May you find out that someone ate the last cookie you had saved! May you snag your new sweater on a nail!
It’s fun!
Getting in the Slow Line at the Grocery Store.
This may have happened to me this morning.
I’ve already been cursed with this. It’s a hereditary curse I received from my mother.
Hey there I like your username.
Thanks muchly!
Me too! It runs in the family, the slow grocery store line curse.
I was thinking this exact thing yesterday, because of a situation I’m in.
Persistent Hangnails on Both Thumbs
Wishing to Set Up Internet At Your New Address But The Previous Owner Put Their Account On Seasonal Hold
You people are all MONSTERS. Genius, genius monsters.
OMG, this needs to be a book.
May your bus stop be pleasantly scented.
May your neighbors have good taste in music.
^ THIS. We are moving in part because my neighbor exclusively likes thumping baselines, and Mars’s neighbor exclusively likes high-volume emo-pop. And both are apparently exclusively home between 1 am and 4 am.
Both my next-door neighbor and my kittycorner neighbor have band practice late into the evenings. They’re not bad, but I really don’t need to hear the same bass riff+drum snap twenty times in a row.
One of the guys in the dorm below my friends sophomore year of college knew, in total, two song intros on bass, nothing more nothing less, despite the fact that he played every. single. day. It was Smoke on the Water and Crazy Train. That was it.
That is a very special version of hell.
Hey there, at least as you were slowly but surely boarding the crazy train you knew it was coming? This is an attempt at a joke that is not working; I blame the Claritin.
I had a neighbor that played nearly round-the-clock Elliott Smith, which is a very compatible music choice for me, but the quantity he was going for just made me want to knock on his door and give him a hug.
I need these today, since I am moving very soon to a new and larger city. Thank you and amen.
May the thrift store always have cool boots in your size
May you always have a number of empties divisible by 5 so you don’t get a bunch of random change back when you return them
May your corner store stock your brand of kitty litter, permanently on sale.
Oh my GOD. This is the best one. I have visited no fewer than 10 bodegas in a 3-block radius of my apartment and NONE of them have my cat litter. Not even the ones that also have cats.
May your landlord repair your elevator in a timely way.
May no one leave bleach/dog hairs/old kleenex in the shared washing machine.
I grew up with a very-sheddy labrador and am still confused as to how my neighbors manage to leave so much dog hair in the washer? It *cakes* the door. I don’t mind a few hairs here and there, but I suspect they are washing their whole dog in there.
If they tried to wash the dog, I’m sure you would have heard about it. It’s amazing how much fiber can stick to the inside of a washing machine…I try to just wipe it down with a swiffer-thinger before using it.
I once lived in a building where one of my neighbors apparently (or whatever the word is when my nose told me, rather than my eyes) spent a lot of time in a car, smoking camel cigarettes, eating French fries, and farting. I never saw them, but it was obvious when they had used the elevator recently. Or the washing machine.
If the washing machine has a strong agitator and rinses effectively with plenty of water, it will remove hair (human or animal) from both clothes and washer. I have wonderful red fuzzy flannel sheets, and I wash them in the rather wimpy machine provided by my landlord. Usually, the pillowcase has a lot of strands of my hair before washing, and the sheets come out with the hair uniformly distributed. The inside of the washing machine is coated with a uniform film of red fuzz.
I’m sure it’s better for the environment for me to use a lint brush, but it hurts my hand and I don’t like it.
May the traffic congesting your route be for a fun parade, and dissipate the instant you need to leave.
May you never get into the same bus or subway car as He Who Keeps Coughing and Sneezing Without Covering His Mouth and Nose.
May that weird guy at the bus stop leave you alone this time.
Yes, this! My bus stop was next to one of the medical centers in Boston and we got some characters. One man waited for the bus, waited for the door to open, took a slurp of drink through a straw, spat it on the bus driver, and then ran away.
Oh my god. That is so much worse than my weird bus stop guy. He just yells strange, indecipherable things at me (and everyone else, I assume?). Like “I’m gonna beat up somebody!” or “Your umbrella is good!”
Who was he going to beat up? Was he threatening me or just informing me of his plans? I may never know, but I have found a different bus stop.
Does he just threaten people who are carrying what he considers sub-par umbrellas…?
This is a definite possibility.
A weird bus stop guy once stopped to full-on shriek at me about the colour of my coat (green) and how unholy it was, and how I was offending the Lord. He ranted at me for like 10 minutes whilst I just stood there and fiddled with my buttons awkwardly. I have never been so relieved to get on a bus.
The last presidential election day I had a weird bus stop guy who started off normal and quickly started ranting for ten minutes Romney winning the election and the evils of Obama. I’m just glad this happened in broad daylight in an open space with witnesses because he got scary fast.
It was like watching Fox News in person with spittle and being unable to change the channel or turn it off.
The last weird bus stop guy masturbated at me in full broad daylight. There was only one other lady around, and at a distance.
UGHHHHHHHH.
May you always find an open seat on the train.
And may the man you sit next to reposition himself so you have plenty of room, without you having to elbow him or shove your knee into his.
May the people with massive backpacks stand with their backs away from you, and may the subway preachers choose another car to preach in.
And may your morning commute train be free of mariachi. (It is just too early for all that, okay.)
May that one guy with the saxophone go play at some other subway station.
May a seat open up at the coffee shop seconds after the barista hands you your to-stay drink
May your mailbox be secure and waterproof, and may FedEx never leave those little notes saying you needed to sign for a package for it to be dropped off.
…especially when you hear the ‘sorry we missed you’ note come through the letter box but they are driving away by the time you make it to the door to ask why they didn’t bother ringing the bell.
I’m having a rage stroke just thinking about this because I Have Been There.
Or when FedEx leaves the package at your manager’s office even though you were home all that day. And they don’t leave a note. And the company you bought from never actually sent a confirmation they had shipped. And since you didn’t know it had shipped, you didn’t know to look for it yet. And your manager didn’t tell you there was a package waiting in the office for over 4 weeks. And you needed those books for your grad school class and it’s several weeks into the semester and lots of runaround until you finally find out where they’ve been sitting this whole time.
Related: May all your apartments have working doorbells. (I’m at about a 50% success rate.)
It infuriates me how bad the entire package delivery system is in cities. That’s the one thing I actually miss about living in a small town–I could depend on stuff getting delivered on time right to my porch. No notes posted on the door. No weighing the pros and cons of getting a ride out to some godforsaken suburb to pick up my package if I missed it more than once. No stolen packages (hope someone out there is enjoying the monogrammed blanket my best friend sent me as a wedding present)!
I am currently fighting with a company about a parcel that was allegedly ‘left secure in apartment lobby’ when my apartment block does not have a lobby you can get into without a key/being buzzed up (and if the delivery driver could get into the lobby, why would he not leave it outside my door rather than in the lobby?). They insist that their tracking says it was delivered to the correct address and are not having it that either the driver took it to the wrong place, left it on the road outside, or is just lying.
True story: we sent my SIL (who lives in Australia; my husband and I live in the US) a package and Australia Post did nothing to indicate to her that they had attempted to deliver it. No note, nada, RIEN. She lives in Sydney in a tiny apartment and no doorman. When she went to the post office to pick it up, they told her they had marked it undeliverable and RETURNED TO SENDER. She said “That package came the whole way from America” and they were like “Oh yeah, we noticed!” Needless to say, the package is lost to the aether.
This is the THIRD TIME this has happened.
tl;dr, fucking FedEx your shit to Australia, because Australia Post is useless.
I order dog food (50 lbs) and kitty litter (30 lbs) from Amazon. Recently, they sent them via USPS instead of UPS. 4 days after they’re supposed to have been delivered, I get the slip that the packages are at the PO for me to pick up, reason: “heavy.”
Mmmmm yes, that is why I ordered them online instead of dragging them around town.
So I wait for the date to pass when they say they’ll send them back and look for my refund from Amazon–no dice. I complain and finally get a refund.
TWO WEEKS later, the PO decides to deliver the kitty litter (but not the dogfood.) So…free kitty litter? Yay?
May your neighbors always pick up their dogs’ poop from the sidewalk.
May there always be a trashcan near by for everyone to throw away their dog poop bags.
(Someone in my building has been leaving their bags of dog poop in the grass in front of the main door).
I haaaaaate that. Bagging it and leaving the bag on the bike commuter path DOES NOTHING.
Or from your small lawn 🙁
Or the lobby of your apartment building
I’m having an emotional morning, I admit, but these made me tear up with their general kindness and grace.
May there always be a 24-hour drugstore within two blocks of your apartment, and may your favorite takeout joint live forever.
May you always find enough quarters to do laundry.
May it always stop raining when you want to go home.
May all your Uber drivers’ conversations never exceed the minimum necessities of etiquette and situation.
May all your bartenders run interference with THAT guy.
May your transit card always be loaded.
May your upstairs neighbors have soft, gentle footsteps like snow falling at dawn.
May the hot water in your shower last exactly as long as you want it to, at exactly the right temperature.
The fireworks.
I live in Europe and it’s been a rough week in terms of memories of recent collective trauma and now I might be crying a little but it’s OK
May the needles in your park always be capped.
May your neighbors pick up the poop in a timely fashion and dispose of it in the proper container (not my compost).
May the parking enforcement ticket the hell out of that asshole who parks four feet into my driveway you MONSTER.
May you never need to parallel park.
I only have street parking where I live right now and have to parallel park every night. It is honestly the #1 reason why I want to move.
May your nearest bodega always have a friendly cat in residence.
May the subway rats always remain down on the tracks and never venture up onto the platform. (Both of those may be New York-specific.)
Perhaps it is, but I think if you expand “nearest bodega” to “frequented local businesses” then it can be very inclusive of any city (or town for that matter.) For instance, I find it delightful that the Ace Hardware stores in Baltimore City all have a store cat, and they’re usually named after a brand that the store carries. At least one of them has a FB page.
This is the most delightful thing. And what a brilliant place for a cat! I bet hardware store cats are very happy.
Yeah, I was supremely charmed when I went to Amsterdam and saw that a lot of the bars and cafes had a cat. Not necessarily “theirs,” either, but one that would just pop by from time to time like the human regulars. LOVE.
Oh my goodness. I have family in Baltimore, and now I want to go visit every Ace Hardware store I can the next time I’m there to see them, just to meet the store cats.
(I used to live in Philadelphia near a lovely little used bookstore presided over by a majestic fluffy longhaired gray cat named Holly. I’d go there to pet her and browse the books.)
Bodega Cat is, like, the benevolent patron god of city blessings.
Chicago has a lovely and vibrant rat community.
They are… Not Small.
They are NOT!
I dunno about the “May someone be reading the same book as you on the subway today” one. With a certain kind of person, that just becomes a reason for them to interrupt me while I’m reading to talk about our shared tastes.
I would amend that prayer to: “May someone be reading the same book as you on the subway today, and when you both notice, you nod with respectful camaraderie and then go back to reading your books”.
I always thought I’d be so happy if I ever ran into anyone reading my favorite book on the train, but it is actually terrible and I hate it so much. Also once I made the mistake of reading Gravity’s Rainbow in public and was saddled with a commute “friend” for MONTHS. MONTHS.
I was standing next to a guy on the train one time while I was reading a magazine article about Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book, Between the World and Me, right after it came out. The guy next to me glanced at my page, caught my eye, said “huh, look at that,” and showed me he was reading the actual book. We grinned at each other and went back to reading and it was great.
That is SO. LEGITIMATELY. GREAT.
We grinned at each other and went back to reading and it was great.
Yup, that’s a blessing right there.
Oh, the fireworks one. In my city, filming a movie/tv show is also an optimistic reason for those sounds.
May your upstairs neighbor never be an Airbnb host.
May your neighbors be expert at calm, respectful conflict resolution.
Brb making an altar at which to light candles in honor of this blessing & send the vibes in the direction of my one neighbor who sends long, meanspirited emails to the entire building about every.goddamned.thing anyone has ever done in the history of the universe that offends her.
May your neighbours be graceful and quiet losers if they play video games alone.
May all the personal belongings you lose on public transport be handed in to lost property and be easily retrievable
Same. 95% of the time it is.
These are so wonderful. I want to set them to Dylan’s “Forever Young.” (Whose lyrics are not speaking to me today, when somebody I care about won’t be growing old.)
I haaaaaate that. Bagging it and leaving the bag on the bike commuter path DOES NOTHING.