So what’s the deal with this newsletter?
On the morning of my fortieth birthday, nine months pregnant in hundred-degree heat, I found myself careening across south Minneapolis to Dairy Queen with the DQ app pulled up on my phone. Yes, Dairy Queen has an app. An app with app-reserved deals for DQ Rewards(TM) members, of which I am one. Deals which, at the time of this writing, include $1 OFF BLIZZARD(R) TREAT and 50% OFF A KID’S MEAL WITH A SIGNATURE STACKBURGER COMBO. In other words, excellent deals:
Because it was my birthday, my DQ Rewards(TM) membership was offering an even better deal: $5 off a DQ cake. I’d been craving an ice cream cake for weeks: a melting, heady mix of crushed cookies, chocolate and vanilla ice cream, fudge and whipped cream. A cake for a child. I was not a child, but I was about to have one, and I’d been eating like one for two trimesters. Let me eat cake! An aunt in California had heard my cries and sent me $25 DQ digital gift card. My mission was to have the good folk at Dairy Queen apply both the coupon and the gift card to my order, thereby getting my birthday cake gratis.
Long story short: it didn’t work. Something something digital gift cards something cash register something system, etcetera. I think I paid thirty bucks. But my euphoria over what could have been a very good deal compelled me to tell all my friends about it. “It would have been free!” I told them. “I would have basically made money!” The prospect of a deal, not even an actual deal, sent my dopamine levels soaring. I was GIDDY on deals. See for yourself:
This is how all forty-year-olds celebrate their birthday, right?
It occurred to me then, as the sun set on my thirties, and then again two weeks later, after my daughter was born, as I spent sleepless nights scouring secondhand baby shops on the internet, that I spent almost as much time trying to find fancy things for non-fancy prices as I did on other, perhaps nobler, pastimes, like writing and reading. And while I was not unique in my love of a good deal, nor distinguished enough to have made a name (i.e. “brand”) for myself in deal-finding, I did, without a doubt, enjoy myself in the hunt for one. I believe this is what people call a “hobby.”
This newsletter is an extension of that hobby. Many wonderful writers use Substack to talk about writing, but it appears I am using mine to say: let me eat cake! Let me tell you about all the dumb deals I got or almost-got, and have you tell me about your dumb deals, too. Once in a while I’ll give you the deal on book stuff — and obviously notify you IMMEDIATELY of any sales and discounts on my merch — but mostly I’m here to sound off about my hunt for a good, cheap turtleneck, and tell you about the time I went to a J. Crew sample sale at the Javits Center in college and nearly got stampeded. Also, everything I bought was ugly and didn’t fit.
In closing, here is a picture of daughter Harriet’s first Christmas dress, which I purchased in EXCELLENT CONDITION on ThredUp for $16 (it retailed for $58 on Hanna Andersson). A very good deal! Robeez were a gift from pal/auntie Kate, whose friendship transcends monetary value.
