I Want to Be Hot and Rich

I would love to eat homemade sourdough but I don't want to make homemade sourdough so I would love for a private chef to come make it for me.

Nov 11, 2024

My husband is the King of the Kitchen because I cannot be trusted with a cast iron skillet due to my propensity to play dishwasher roulette.

Recurring actions that make me unsuitable for culturally-accepted wifedom include loading the dishwasher like I am playing a game of ring toss (I am) and creating new mountain ranges of laundry to hike through (because if the laundry never ends, why must I ever fold it?), among many others apparently.

I ask my husband as I’m typing this what other wifely duties I neglect that I should include in my short list. He laughs and then deadpans, “All of them.” He’s in the kitchen and I’m on the couch writing my silly little Substack.

Truthfully, I’m a pretty good cook. Also truthfully, I hate to cook.

I love an at-home dinner party or a tea-time brunch or a lively holiday gathering. I love preparing fresh gnudi drenched in my grandma’s secret red sauce recipe on Christmas. But the day-to-day tasks of putting things into your body so you can grow and consume necessary nutrients to survive and stuff? I writhe.

My husband and I have a house rule: do not ask me what I want for dinner until 5PM. If the question is asked before 5PM, I will malfunction and have a breakdown for utterly unknown and irrational reasons. Which usually means I’m eating whatever my husband makes for me. He’s the Lord of Flavor and I’m the Princess of Avoiding Mealtime Preparation (and realistically, he’s the much better cook who actually enjoys the art of cookery).

I’ve noticed that a lot of families (moms) lately are baking homemade sourdough bread. The loaves are perfectly golden and look delicious. But I simply cannot do it. It is another act of labor that feels like a chore. You know who can outsource chores? And ditch the cutesy apron and put a little zing back in the zang? People who are hot and rich.

I want that. I’m taking the money and running. With a fancy satchel full of unlimited, crispy cash to buy someone else’s overpriced artisan sourdough bread. So unmotherly.

I want a signature red lip and matching nail color and I want a closet so big that it gets confused for a guest room and I want all these surprise labor and delivery bills that randomly appear to stop cutting into my savings that never grows because I’m in the great in-between of young adulthood years and I want a hairstylist on command to curl my bangs whenever they fall flat and I want to hire someone else to make me the freshest sourdough you’ll ever sink your teeth into.

I want to have my bread and eat it, too — as long as someone else bakes it for me.

I’ve written recently about The Softening I’ve experienced in motherhood so far. While The Softening remains true, it coexists with another dual truth:

I want to be hot and rich.

I want money to be flowing in so fast that I don’t need to reconcile my own bank account every week — I’ll have a “wealth manager” instead. I want money to be flowing in so fast that I can hire someone else to make me exactly what I want for breakfast, lunch, and dinner so I can hold my daughter longer instead of holding a kitchen knife chop, chop, chopping away into stinky shallot oblivion.

I often think of all the monotonous tasks that could be outsourced so I could spend more time doing the things I love. Oh yes, I would love to be rich. Martini by the pool looking like Meredith Blake at 5PM rich. Buying a pair of Louboutin Jane Pumps so casually I forget I ordered them when they arrive rich. Not having to hack-an-Ikea-billy-bookshelf-for-built-ins and hire a contractor for a home library with unlimited books of my choosing rich. Never stepping foot into a grocery store ever again rich.

If you ask me what my dream car is, I will tell you that I don’t have one. My dream car is someone else driving me around at my whim to wherever I want to go.

Of course there is more to life than money (kind of). I’m grateful and blessed for everything I already have (#gratitude). Money doesn’t buy happiness (but it does buy security). Blah blah blah. I’m not here to caveat and intellectualize this desire burning out of me right now. Because you know who doesn’t have to spend three hours of precious time calling the IRS who threatened a “levy” on their income because it erred in creating a $87.31 charge on a 2023 balance already paid? Rich people (I assume, I don’t actually know, I’m not rich yet, but I really don’t think they would spend three hours caring about $87.31).

I want to be hot and rich!

“You are beautiful just the way you are!” Am I though? Is this unkempt, dirty mom bun that’s been festering a family of robins on top of my head for four months really beautiful? Is this hypothyroidism vampire skin, Vitamin D deficient sickly paleness accenting my postpartum anxiety acne face really hot?

Come on, I want to be HOT. You know what I mean. I want to be REAL HOT. I want to be TAKE ME ON THE FANCY COUNTER WHERE THERE IS NO SOURDOUGH STARTER HOT.

I’ve said before that my body was a home for my baby in utero. It was fascinating to me during pregnancy to watch my body grow and expand and change shape, and it was my favorite thing about being pregnant. But I’m not pregnant anymore. I’m postpartum, and my thoughts are different. This unending duplexity of matrescence.

I am not praying at the altar of self-love because I love what my body has done. I am so in love with my baby girl. I know that I need to be gentle on myself and rest, and I am doing those things! I know that postpartum healing takes time and I don’t believe in “bounce back” culture. I also know that there are so many women breaking barriers publicly in the beauty industry right now doing the necessary work to remind the next generation that life is not all about vanity.

But right now, I’m craving a little bit of it. Sue me! Have you seen Selkie’s new mini dresses? A literary woman’s fantastical academia-inspired dream. Dress me in all of them until my imagined mansion becomes one giant poofy pile of black tulle!

I’m not in the mood to fight the patriarchy right now by prancing around in my unwashed pajamas (my husband’s t-shirts) chanting that I love myself to nobody in particular, vis-a-vis the mirror, where no one can hear me anyway. I want to smell like Marc Jacobs Daisy, not Joni Roo’s Milk Crusties, and I make no apologies.

I will work for it. I will work for it until my fingers bleed. I will work until my books are no longer manuscripts sitting in my Top Secret: Nuclear Codes folders on my desktop and are instead on shelves following six-figure advances with screen rights negotiated. And when my fingers bleed, my personal doctor will bandage them for me so I don’t have to and then maybe I can write some more or maybe not because I won’t have to.

Sourdough makers, you’re all invited to my future dinner party. It will be fully catered and professionally decorated. Because there’s nothing I love more than bread I didn’t have to bake.

Xo,

Violet Carol

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