weekly digest #18
april 27 - may 3, 2026: daffodils, the brothers karamazov, the pitt s2 finale, medical cats
I’ve finally traded my winter coat for my spring jackets. The daffodils are blooming and my dad’s war with the dandelions has begun again. I’m more tired than usual and my muscles are killing me but I’m excited about the flowers. Soon it will be warm enough to open all the windows.
reading
I’m now 83% of the way through The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (published 1880, translation 1990). I don’t subscribe to the belief that an author’s biography is a kind of key that unlocks the meaning of their work, but it can provide interesting context. As I read through the murder trial portion of the novel, I keep thinking about the scattered facts I know about Dostoevsky’s life – namely that as a young man he was sentenced to death. He was already in front of the firing squad when he learned that the tsar had commuted his sentence. He served four years of hard labor in Siberia instead – the fate that now hangs over Dmitri in his novel, published 31 years after his arrest.
watching
I finally watched the season 2 finale of The Pitt – what an underwhelming hour television. The whole season felt underwhelming, actually. Each episode seemed to be setting things in motion for the next episode, then that episode tried to set more things in motion, only to end up with a tangle of ideas that were resolved too quickly or dropped altogether. Character development was minimal, because how much can people really change over the course of 15 hours, real time?
listening to
I cycled through some new and old favorite albums: Mitski’s Nothing’s About to Happen to Me, Platonic Sex’s Face to the Flywire, and Mannequin Pussy’s I Got Heaven and Patience. Drunk II is a perfect song.
I also listened to Heart’s cover of Alone which is wonderfully corny – it would make a great karaoke song.
eating & drinking
This week I have been loving Moroccan vegetable stew, maple hoisin tofu, coconut curry salmon, those french butter cookies that I sadly finished, homemade gluten free boston cream pie, and grocery store generic brand raisin bran crunch (still). I’ve noticed that the sun setting later in the day has made it significantly more likely that I’ll have a third cup of coffee, since it doesn’t feel like the it’s bed time at 4:30 any more (yay!).
making
I’m continuing to make progress on my Mary Quant-inspired dress – I finished attaching the facing and sewed up the side seams. I tried a tiny hem on the raw edge of the facing but it was too visible from the outside of the dress so I unpicked it. I think I’m going to overcast the edge instead. I’m still skeptical that this will hold up and prevent fraying over time but the only way to find out is to try. I still have to do that, hem the skirt, attach the back belt, and finish my seams. We’re in the home stretch!
shopping
I bought my sister a birthday present, but she reads this blog so I shan’t say what it is…
kitsch corner
Behold, the May page of my vintage cats calendar. For some reason this globe is also an advertisement for Dr. Thomas’ Eclectric Oil, a cure-all over the counter medicine that contained spirits of turpentine, camphor, oil of tar, red thyme and processed fish oil. There’s some speculation that it also included laudanum, hemlock, and chloroform. Yum! They had several other ads featuring cats:
Not as cute.
That’s all for now. See you next week.
xoxo,
Franny 💋🐱