Rat Girl Summer check-in
It’s the dog days of summer, but the rat days can still go on.
As we all know, this is the year of the Rat Girl Summer, and I’m assuming that everyone reading this newsletter already knows about the rat girl summer because at least seven billion people sent me that one TikTok like a month and a half ago.
The premise of Rat Girl Summer are all things I’m into, such as scurrying around town (going on long walks by the lake), eating nourishing food (I scrounge up meals using ingredients my roommate has abandoned in the fridge), being ruled by whimsy (I am naturally embarrassing), and not overthink (actually, no, I do that one a lot). Even though the rat girl summer is something I embrace and would love to do, the rat girl summer has not been easily achieved. One cannot fail Rat Girl Summer on the principal of what Rat Girl Summer is, but because I am also not adhering to these rules, I am failing by default.
It is easy for me to embrace a concept like Rat Girl Summer because even before the summer began I have always been one with the rats. I am in an improv group called Ghost Rats after all, and every time I see a giant city rat scurry by it feels like I just ran into a close friend. I love rats, feel as though I am a rat, so the concept of Rat Girl Summer should be something I not only embrace with my whole heart but also something that I do well at without even trying. And yet, this is not the case.
Sure, did the person who created Rat Girl Summer factor in that some rat girls are dealing with heavy heavy stuff out of their control (taking care of their sick mom who then dies on Grimace’s birthday—yeah you thought this wasn’t going to mention my dead mom and THINK AGAIN!)? She most definitely did not. Someone who is thinking about living like a rat does not also have incurable brain cancer on the mind, and that’s okay! That’s actually preferred! This rat girl content was made for the girls who are just regular people with regular people problems, telling them to worry less about trivial things and to focus on having fun.
Now that I’m back living full-time in my city apartment, I thought I could just bounce back from caregiving depression and achieve all my full rat girl potential—but it simply cannot be done so easily. There are still forms to fill out and loose ends to tie, the exhaustion from never having a weekend in a year is taking an extremely long time to recover from, I’m trying to find people to canoodle with (a waste of time), and it’s so hard to not care about what I look like when I gained 40 extra caregiver pounds in one year and now have nothing to wear in my closet (buying all new clothes isn’t really something that I can afford or am interested in doing, sorry). While trying to bounce back into my original form, I’m veering off the path of the Rat Girl way.
With summer coming to a close (it’s still hot as fuck for another month and a half but school is starting soon, a thing I know nothing about anymore) I hope that next summer can be Rat Girl Summer Part 2, so I can have another chance at being the rattiest rat I possibly can—to scurry around town with reckless abandon. I need time to recharge and reestablish myself as someone who actually exists (a thing that rats don’t do but I need to do to like, do shows and also make money at my job to live and dumb stuff like that). I would like to make my fellow rat people proud.
Some fun news: me and the rest of the Ghost Rats are heading to Iowa City this Saturday to perform for the University of Iowa’s freshman orientation in Hancher Auditorium. Since I think none of you are incoming freshman at U of I, I don’t think this is helpful information but it’s still a cool thing we’re doing that I’m very excited about!