Too Much Ham, Ivermectin & Satan's Pawns

A day in the life in Anchorage, Alaska | November 2024

6:46 a.m.

I wake up to my third alarm and immediately open Instagram to scroll. I see that a middle school friend has posted an email she received from her reproductive health clinic notifying her that early that morning, someone drove by with a gun and shot multiple rounds into their (thankfully unoccupied) building.

Fuck.

I screenshot the post and send it to my husband who is at the gym.

“Ugh!!” I text. Eloquent as always. I need him to drop the weight rack in horror and audibly gasp.

I know that my husband has never audibly gasped.

“I saw that,” he replies. “Really awful. But you don’t know what happened…could’ve been some interpersonal grudge.”

Since I admittedly DON’T know what happened, I don’t reply. But I have a pretty good guess.

For months, I’ve been operating a push campaign to convince him that we should move back to Ireland – his country and our former home. Since the election, my approach has lost all subtlety.

I pepper his phone with screenshots of greyhounds for rescue near Dublin. Homes for sale in County Wicklow. Heinous reports from local Alaska news.

He remains unmoved.

“If you really, really want to, we can move back,” he sometimes says when I bring the conversation up – usually at the worst time possible like while navigating the icy, Costco parking lot or immediately before falling asleep.

But accepting that response would not be a clean win.

I need him to want to move countries. Otherwise, when he inevitably comments on high Dublin rent prices or the lack of good peanut butter in Tesco, I’ll interpret it as criticism of my decision to abandon his citizenship process and uproot our lives for the fifth time in four years.

I relent, for now, make breakfast (pu-erh tea, eggs on toast) and log in to work.

10 a.m.

My dad sends me a Whatsapp message to let me know that he is in town visiting my grandma and that he has my tupperware in his car. Can he drop it off to me?

I threw an Alison Roman Ham Party this month and the true party has been the never ending parade of leftovers that is still feeding my household and many of my friends and family two weeks later.

I’m done with my meetings for the day so I reply “drop by any time!” (I desperately need that tupperware in order to freeze the rest of my ham leftovers).

11:25 a.m.

My dad has arrived and has filled me in on the news: a cousin has strep throat, my grandma started a fire in her room by putting an apple and a knife in the microwave.

I’m aware that my dad and several of his siblings have been languishing with Covid in the last couple of weeks and he keeps coughing. As I sit across the table from him, I awkwardly turn my head to the side before taking each small sip of breath.

A giant bouquet of dying roses, leftover from the ham party, sits between us as a partial virus buffer. I try to remember what kind of plants doctors used to stuff inside their beaklike plague masks. Probably not roses and babies breath, but it’s better than nothing.

11:30 a.m. - 12:14 p.m.

Conversation has devolved. My dad is insisting that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a net worth of $31 million. That sounds…incorrect.

I have never, not even for one minute, wondered or cared how much money AOC has but I find myself googling the answer.

I don’t have to scroll too far to be able to safely conclude that his estimate is, shall we say, off.

My dad and I established an agreement in 2016 not to talk about politics and this has saved our relationship. If one of us veers too far into dangerous territory, the other is usually quick to shut the conversation down. But it’s been a bad week and I’m feeling combative.

12:15 p.m.

I close the door as my dad leave my apartment. My father, who has voluntarily taken veterinary medicine every day for the last four years, believes in his heart that I’m deluded because I don’t share his belief that the European Union, World Health Organization and UN are literal pawns of Satan.

I worry that he’s actually crazy. At least he doesn’t have parasites?

4:30 p.m.

I’m exhausted. I’m done with work and decide that as it’s already basically dark outside, it’s okay to pour a glug or two of whiskey into my sparkling water.

I start to feel numb.

5:15 p.m.

Because my husband and I are spiritually 75 years old, it’s dinner time. Ham time!

I spend the next several hours on the couch administering myself a healthy cocktail of whiskey, “Grace and Frankie,” and funny cat videos.

I remind myself of all the benefits of spending these purgatorial years in my hometown: time with my grandmas, the ability to share mundane things like leftovers with my loved ones, bathrooms that have water pressure and don’t require you to turn on the immersion 45 minutes before you want to take a 3 minute shower.

We are less than a year out from my husband getting the chance to apply to become a dual citizen, meaning that we could move freely between countries in the future without restarting his green card process.

It’s worth it. I can wait.

9:00 p.m.

While setting my alarm for the next morning, I accidentally open the weather app and see that tomorrow’s high temperature is expected to be -6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Righteous fury courses through my veins. I gain a second wind. I turn my head on my pillow to face my unsuspecting husband.

“Do you want to move back to Ireland?”