Dana Burland

Right before Christmas I get this Tweet sent to me. Hey, I’m a Wall Street Journal reporter and would love to connect with you. Would you follow me back so we can message each other? I mean, I regularly wire the Prince of Albania $100 when he emails me asking for it, so why not connect with the WSJ reporter? (In actuality I did my research on her, and yeah, she’s in fact a WSJ staffer, and published author, and c’mon like you wouldn’t be very curious to know what in the world she wanted to talk to you about if you were in my shoes.) Turns out, this older Tweet of mine had gotten her attention: Nov 18, 2020 Happy holidays from all the wives who accidentally open their holiday present (which came via Amazon) from their husbands (who doesn’t use Twitter). She was writing a light-hearted story on how the pandemic has increased online gifting this year, and how that has made gift-giving tricky. She wanted to chat with me more about my experience for the article. So, on my first ...

You know that feeling when it’s just been A. Day. and you don’t feel like making dinner? There’s always Qdoba (again) but it’s not carry-out night, and why am I strict on one specific night for carry-out? Well, because I now hold on white-knuckle to simple routines in my life to feel like I have a degree of control as I combat a seemingly daily feeling the world is spinning off its axis. Wee! My friend Karen, who is living in a particularly unfortunate time to answer to that name, sent me a HelloHomeFreshChefWeCookYourDinnerBoxWhatever recipe that she received and especially loved. And if you want to know what life looks like in early January 2021, it’s me standing in my slippers in my lovely warm kitchen reviewing this recipe and thinking, Oh wow! I never thought you could cook ground turkey like that, Karen! mere moments before the US Capitol building is violently raided. Anyway. This Teriyaki Turkey Rice Bowl was easy, mindless and good. Remind me to make it again in a few y...

Step 1 : Find yourself in a global health pandemic where going out to a salon concerns you. Add a desire/interest you’ve always had, for some reason, to cut hair. Take a moment to congratulate yourself for not going wild with that always-had desire. It’s amazing how many Barbies, My Little Pony's, friend’s and sibling’s heads survived around me in my youth. Also one time I did trim my own hair, and at my next haircut appointment when the woman who had cut everyone in my family’s hair for 15+ years questioned me about it, I lied and said I didn’t cut it. Just wondering why I did that. I’m really sorry, Nikki. Step 2. Consider all the ways in which your perspective has shifted due to said global health pandemic. Does it really matter if this haircut turns out poorly in The Grand Scheme of Things? We’re all healthy, we figured out how to keep at it with big shifts to our finances , and we never ran out of toilet paper–I think we could work our way out of a bad hairdo. Step...