An hour and a half before a triumphant Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took the stage on Saturday evening, Susan Orlean was on the phone, doling out praise. “Good boy! Good boy! Sorry—doing some dog training here, so hang on a second,” the author said, speaking from home in Los Angeles. Buck, the smooth fox terrier pup, had successfully peed outside. “It’s just that kind of day, I guess. It’s a celebration! Thank God.”
Orlean’s great relief at hearing the long-awaited election results comes as no surprise to fans of her Twitter account, which has lately been a source of spiritual uplift for many—beginning with a gleefully inebriated play-by-play of an evening in mid-July. “Honestly, drunk Susan Orlean is the best thing to happen in this garbage year and I appreciate her for bringing us all together tonight,” the New York Times’s Ben Casselman tweeted among a chorus of supporters. Another viral moment arrived a month later. “Yes, I’m watching Adaptation with my 15 yo son who has never seen it. Wish me luck,” she posted, referring to the Spike Jonze–Charlie Kaufman movie loosely tethered to her 1998 book, The Orchid Thief. (Meryl Streep plays Orlean—one of many things to throw teenage Austin for a loop.) The next tweet read, “Son’s response to Adaptation: ‘Mom, we have to talk.’”
The longtime New Yorker contributor, now at work on a memoir, is the first to admit that she would have won “pandemic bingo” if we were playing. “Seriously, I’ve done every cliche,” Orlean said. “I started baking bread, I started making my own yogurt, I did jigsaw puzzles, I did needlepoint. And then I got a puppy!” She has perfected her Zoom lighting, with speaking engagements largely transferred to the virtual sphere. Her previously planned book club, launched last month with Literati, proved eerily perfect for the times, with hard copies delivered by mail and an app for the rest. If the coronavirus spawned a group of people too distracted to read, Orlean has found it to be a refuge. (Fitting, considering her last book takes a deep dive into the history of an L.A. library.) As she explained it, “I got so overwhelmed by the news that I needed to just shut it out and read.”
But in the roiling uncertainty of last week, what refuge remained? That’s what Orlean set out to document in this wellness diary, spanning Election Day Eve to Election Day Part Two, aka Wednesday. The collective anxiety was high, the pour heavy—which had Orlean apologizing for coming down ”hard on the unwellness part of living,” she said, ”but I actually think that I was completely channeling the zeitgeist.” Fortunately, we know how the story ends: with a whole lot of Champagne.
Monday, November 2
5 a.m.: This is going to be a doozy of a week. My birthday was on Saturday and I’m still bloated from birthday cake; the election is Tuesday and I’m pre-bloated with the consolation (please no!) or celebration (please yes!) drinks I am sure to have; Daylight Saving Time has just ended; I have a new puppy who just woke me up at the equivalent of 4 a.m. GREAT START. Drag myself out of bed, empty the puppy and then fill the puppy, and try to get a smidge more sleep. Give up on sleep; make coffee. This spring, I splurged and bought a Terra Kaffe TK-01, which I haven’t quite figured out how to operate but it’s pretty. I eat the same breakfast almost every day: homemade granola and plain yogurt. I love not making any decisions early in the day.
9 a.m.: My husband and I saddle up the puppy and our older dog and go for a three-mile walk in Toluca Lake, a beautiful neighborhood near our house. I was a runner for years, but with dog(s) to walk, it started being difficult to find time for both a run and a walk. I miss the endorphin flood you get from running, but I’m actually pretty happy as a walker.
10 a.m.: Extra-long shower with super-hot water; seems therapeutic. Scrubbed my face with something I bought at Whole Foods called Acure Skin Scrub that might be pulverized sandpaper. Oddly, I enjoy it.
11 a.m.: First meeting with a dog trainer to help us civilize the puppy. I feel a bit like a chump paying for someone to help me do this, but I realized a few years ago that delegating is a beautiful thing. Plus, the puppy is a maniac. We work for TWO SOLID HOURS. I am exhausted. The puppy has learned nothing; I have learned that puppies are a lot of work.
1 p.m.: Ah, the misery of lunch when you work at home! How I hate it! My favorite thing is leftovers that I can eat right out of the storage container so that 1) I don’t have to cook and 2) I don’t dirty a plate. Sadly, no leftovers today. I invent a new food—scrambled eggs with black bean sauce, wrapped in a tortilla—and it’s pretty good. I’m a genius.