Today is the first day of Summer on NYC. Did you know that?
Yeah, it’s Summer.
Lucky for me and my little family, we got our A/C’s cleaned and in the windows last weekend, and we were prepared for this event. Not to brag, but I’m going to brag. It’s nice a relatively cool in my apartment.
In other news; I sure am sweating a lot when I go outside.
Sometimes that’s all you can do; Just show up. Not feeling it, don’t have the energy, or running on empty? Yup, all of those apply today. Probably because I stayed up too late last night, but that’s neither here nor there…
I’m dragging today, but I got my family obligations completed. There is a chance I might go and kick a soccer ball with the kid when she gets home from school, and I do believe that will push me over the edge and I will fall into a deep sleep or coma as soon as we get home.
But I’m pushing through and showing up, and getting some writing done today. Posting a blog, even this crappy half assed blog, still counts as checking off the box.
Hooray for doing the bare minimum!!!
(I’m going to make time stop…)
First of all, the China bots seem to have gone away, but they have been replaced by what I can only assure is another data scrubber out of North Bergen, New Jersey. I say this because someone/something in that town is hitting up my blog close to twenty times a day is not more. Now, I do think my writing is amazing, and I should have millions of followers, but in the real world of reality, we all know both of those things aren’t true, and as such there is no reason for one person in North Bergen to go about and read this blog that many times a day for the past month. Now, if you happen to be a real person, then by all means, please leave a comment, and let me know what you find so interesting. If this is an AI bot scrubbing for information, please, there are other, better sites out there, and your mother was a Hoover because she blows!
Part of the reason I’m in a hurry today is that I gotta get a jump on all of my errands, because I need to start painting window sills and get air conditioners in the windows. Come the start of next we, NYC is about to have three f not four days of Summer (Temps in the 80’s) and we’re going to need those a/c’s.
And the wife is doing our taxes this weekend, which also means that she’s going to be in a bad mood. Not because our taxes are particularly difficult. No, it’s more a matter of no one wants to do this chore. That’s it.
(The short story “Rate Your Happiness” by Catherine Lacey appeared in the April 13th, 2026 issue of The New Yorker.)
Photograph by Tobias Nicolai
When I finished reading Catherine Lacey’s “Rate Your Happiness” I was reminded of driving a car with a manual transmission. Especially when you don’t put the car in gear and still step on the gas which causes the engine to rev really high, but you don’t go anywhere. In this story, the narrator calls this “meaningless motion” and they’re right. And it’s also very frustrating.
I understand that the theme of this story was existing in atrophy, and motion that leads to nowhere. Unfortunately, having a protagonist that doesn’t make a decision or choice leaves the ending of the story empty and unsatisfying. There is one sentence in the last paragraph which I think attempts to bring about a conclusion: “Louise returned to the street with real intent, finally carrying her contradictory desires with total clarity…” but I have to say that this sentence is being asking to do a whole lot of heavy lifting for this story. It implies that Louise has made a choice to accept who she is when it comes to how she has reacted to the situations the story has presented. Yet, is it truly a choice when the character is only acknowledging that they don’t make choices? Though an interesting philosophical question, it doesn’t work narratively.
What “Rate Your Happiness” presents is something that feels akin to the first one or two chapters of a novel. There are a lot of moving parts here, and Lacy does a good job of balancing them in the narrative. No one idea, theme, or character dominates, and it all flows and ripples over each other creating the feeling of a very real and complicated character in the protagonist of Louise. In fact, I enjoyed all the characters that were presented in this story, and wanted to see and hear more from them.
Like I said, if this was the first chapter of a novel, I’m hooked and I want to see how this plays out. As a short story, the engine is revving up, but we didn’t go anywhere.
Sometimes I plan these songs out ahead of time. And then sometimes you wake up in the morning with a song in your head.
If you never met me, you might not know what a huge Beatles fan I am. As such, I do have fun with some of the deeper cuts on their albums that most people forget about. “Devil in her Heart” is a song written by Richard B. Drapkin and recored by The Donays and released in 1962. Though a good song, it wasn’t a hit in the US or UK, but it made an impression on The Beatles. I always loved how those four guys loved American girl groups, to the point that I think they tried to copy those harmonies in other songs that they wrote.
For comparison, here’s the original:
