We made it to July, friends. Just barely? This morning, every annoying thing that could possibly happen to me did: a dentist appointment, a gas leak, a cavity, a (maybe) flat tire. I have still not had enough coffee. It is still very hot. The Bighorn Fire is only 54% contained, and that is actually a huge improvement.

As I was driving home from the dentist, I was annoyed, and did not think my day was going to improve. It wasn’t a conscious thought, an articulate inner monologue, I just felt like the stars were misaligned and would likely stay that way. Felt that in my bones. Apparently my teeth are unusual, and touch at points that most teeth do not, and as a result, I have this cavity. Whatever.

As I was anger-drinking my coffee at home, I ran across a mention, by Nicole Chung, that it has been four years since the closure of The Toast. (The dash toast dot net!) This was my favorite pocket of the internet, for its brief tenure; a whole period of my life, in some ways. I wrote for The Toast; I drew comics for them. I read The Toast every morning, and when I published The Daughters, I mentioned my book tour on a Toast comment thread, which resulted in a Toast reader coming to an event and buying my book and hugging me, which itself led to my own unseemly shriek of joy.

(If you never read The Toast, you might not know that their heavily—and effervescently!—moderated comments section was the sole exception to the otherwise firm internet rule: “Don’t Read the Comments.” Most comments sections are for petty grievances and the emotionally unwell, but The Toast’s comments were full of people who genuinely liked one another and had passionate, affirming conversations. Periodically, the moderators [i.e. the editors of The Toast] would print a series of dramatically mean-spirited comments that they had deleted, which the readers would cackle around them, creating a light, delicious, foam of schadenfreude.)

Anyway, it’s nice to remember. The Toast was the internet at its best, and we can be happy to have had it, even as we mourn it. Nothing silver stays.

In other news, I guess I’m still a bit sleepy and I’m going to have a cup of tea. Time to relax and pretend I will never have to let someone induce a medical coma in my gums so that they can drill my teeth without inducing the appropriate screaming. Happy Wednesday! The body is a nightmare, but it’s all we’ve got.