Stephanie Drury champions compassion, understanding, freedom from (religious) oppression and is one of The Monarch’s patron saints of excellence. Which is why, of course, we had to ask her one super important question – a simple question this time: 

Jake Uitti: What did you do last Sunday?

Stephanie Drury: Oh god. I’m bad at remembering general things like what I do over the course of a day. But I have an autistic-caliber memory for things like movie lines and 80s commercials and off-script things comedians say. I can seriously recite for you the entire Punch-Kit infomercial that was constantly on Nickelodeon in 1985 including the zip code to send $9.95, not to brag.  So let me check my calendar, okay, last Sunday…I think I woke up pretty late for me, about 9:30. I have kids so that’s late. The night before we watched Airplane! at my friend Carrie’s house. It was my son Judah’s first time to see it (he’s 12) and he didn’t really like it. Too slow for him, kids these days and their attention spans. Not that I should talk because I couldn’t pay attention to it either. I’m horrible at watching shows and movies. Well, I mainline them but I’m always multitasking during. Is that bad? I don’t care. I can’t remember the last time I just sat and watched a movie all the way through without getting up or looking at my phone or reading a book during or something. Might have been when I saw The Exorcist at the Cinerama in 2000. Oh my god, we took our French exchange student there. That poor guy. We were supposed to kind of adopt an exchange student from Seattle U for a semester. His name was Valentin and we only saw him twice. The first time we made him come over and make us crepes and the second time we took him to see The Exorcist. If he hates America now I do not blame him.

So I got up about 9 and probably checked Twitter. On weekends I like to stay in bed until my phone battery is run down to 50% and then I know it’s time for coffee. My husband David always brings it to me in bed like I’m Imelda Marcos, it’s really nice of him. Or maybe he knows I will whine less that way. I looked through my pictures from the night before at Carrie’s, she has the greatest stuff all over her apartment and I want to examine every last thing and read all her books, which probably makes me annoying company. She has a new oral history of Twin Peaks and I’m pissed the library doesn’t have it. I also took a picture of “Amber Tamblyn’s Poetry Corner”, which is apparently a regular feature in Bust magazine and I am still laughing at that. Our friends Dawn and DW were over there too with their son Graham who is almost 1 and extra adorable and they recently asked us to be his godparents which is so kind and a little scary because it seems major. Maybe I will impart to him the ability to memorize commercials, or at least present the example.

On weekends I try to stay on Bed Island as much as possible, and while I was doing that I was loosely supervising my daughter Lolly’s playdate. Please don’t judge me, they were just in the next room painting their nails and one-upping each other. She’s 9 and the girl drama has already started. It actually started at around 3. It’s kind of hilarious at this point, I’ve taken to shooing them away and telling them to work it out and they actually do. She also just got an email address and she’s been sending me the cutest emails ever in the history of the world. She sent me this on Sunday, even though she was in the next room: “I sent Aunt Jenny the pictrure [sic] of you and her when you were both very little and I sent her… (find out in next Email because it is so exciting and you don’t know yet) TEE HEE!;)” We send each other a lot of cat memes and also discuss her new backpack for the upcoming school year. It is really occupying her thoughts. I also worked on Judah’s Etsy store for his art. He’s had a booth at Short Run the last two years for his zines and comic books and he calls his operation “The Dangerous Deadness.” I think that is just hilarious. The aforementioned Dawn and DW help put on Short Run every year and they have been instrumental in encouraging Judah’s art. Dawn teaches at Cornish so she kind of knows what she’s doing.

I usually bake eucharist bread every Sunday but this week church was cancelled cause everyone was camping, so in lieu of bread I started reading “The Most Dangerous Animal Of All” by Gary Stewart – it’s an autobiography about how he went looking for his birth father and found out that he was the Zodiac killer. Squeal! I also watched some of “The Killing,” I just got into it last week when Dawn told me that it’s good. It’s like a modern Twin Peaks because it’s set in Seattle and has such a similar plot, but I guess without the Lynch mind games. I always have several books going, must be my self-diagnosed ADD, so I read some of “The Fingerprints of God: Tracking the Divine Suspect Through A History of Images”  by Robert Farrar Capon – he was an Anglican priest that I wish I could have met before he died. Then I read some of a memoir called “Her Last Death” by Susanna Sonnenberg. She talks about her super dysfunctional family and that stuff is so fascinating to me. Then I watched “Californication” which is horrific but it makes me feel like I’m in LA. And I watched a Bond movie for the very first time. My parents never let us watch them because they were so dirty or whatever and I only just got around to watching Goldfinger. Holy. Shit. I love it. LOVE. The architecture, wardrobe, music, I was drooling. The misogyny is totally expected and still shocking – like in the first scene he told a woman to leave because he had to discuss “man stuff,” then he smacked her on the ass. I screamed and rewound it to watch again. So I’m a late bloomer when it comes to James Bond, and The Killing, even.

Since the kids were so good while mommy was watching trash TV, I made pizza for dinner. I make it from scratch and that’s only because it’s seriously super easy and way better. It’s not impressive to make dough from scratch, it’s just flour and water and after it rises you get to smash it down which is tactile heaven. Just that part makes it worth it. Then I made the kids watch this video that Peter Rollins had just put on my Facebook wall where a guy in Belfast yells positive things out the window to people on the street. The backstory is that the last time Peter was in Seattle we were giving him a ride and Judah asked if he could yell “balls” out the window at people. I said okay and then Judah proceeded to roll down his window and scream “BALLS!” at bystanders while we were stopped at a red light. Pete was like “No, you can only do it while the car is moving! Otherwise they’re just staring at us while we wait for the light to turn green!”  Then we went out to see the supermoon which was kinda scary, if I’m being honest, and then the kids asked a bunch of scientific moon questions we couldn’t answer. Parenting is tough. So I went back to Bed Island and watched a documentary on Jonestown. You know, to ensure sweet dreams.