Urgent Field Trip Update

Happy six(ish) months on Substack! I’m here to beg for money.

(And don’t you dare offer me a water bottle or granola bar or your Olive Garden leftovers. Not that I wouldn’t gratefully accept, Substack just won’t let me enable anything other than cold hard virtual cash)

One of my parasocial media friends History with Amy recently turned on paid subscriptions, saying, “It is deeply, classically un-British of me to start rattling the collection tin when the paint on our virtual front door is still wet.”

I do not feel this way. It is deeply, classically un-American of me to have waited this long to rattle that tin. So here I am, finally. Shakey shakey.

Welcome to AP Field Trip

Original Field Trips will always be free. If you enjoy closing knowledge gaps and dismantling sexist bias through fun weekly essays about the women the world needs to know about, this will always be your place.

These free essays will now be every other Friday (bi-monthly or bi-weekly, depending on how you see the world).

Now, paid subscribers will have access to AP Field Trip, published on the off-weeks. These personal essays will be more:

• Unfiltered

• Personal

• Intimate

• Valuable

• Life Changing

• And most importantly

• have more pictures.

• All for the price of one (1) monthly McDonald’s Happy Meal

Paid subscribers will also have the satisfaction of supporting me and my dreams, not to mention Ophelia’s future presidential campaign and her current gelato fixation.

I first started writing this newsletter to keep you updated with our life abroad, an alternative to destroying my mental health on other social media. My writing has hydroplaned away from that original purpose into a passion project that is changing my insides in ways I did not expect. I still want to share our stories and document life…while also slowly writing my memoir. Journaling with a pay-walled audience, I guess.

Ophelia’s Column

Ophelia is also getting a place here. With her new monthly guest column, we get the perspective of living abroad from someone just 0.81 meters above the cobblestones. Here is a taste:

Italian nonnas adore me. But they need to learn their place.

Every morning at 9:47 am, groups of old Italian ladies gather in twos and threes along our town’s promenade, anxiously awaiting my arrival in my gelato-stained pram. With long red nails, big fur coats and perfectly pressed pants, the matriarchs bow their fluffy heads and coo at me as I bounce along the cobblestone.

“Che bello! Ciao, tesoro! Good morning, our beautiful treasure!”

I wave and blow tiny kisses, to their delight. They compliment my cherubic cheeks, my blonde curly hair, and my big cerulean eyes. They usually assume I am a boy, but I excuse their misgendering. I know I am the spitting image of my father, and I look great in blue.

While I adore the attention, I brace for what always comes next.

“Wait…where are his gloves? Where is his hat? Where is his right shoe???”

Come si dice, “that’s none of your business, old lady?”

(Subscribe to find out how Ophelia discovers boundaries, and more!)

Oh, the stories she will tell.

In Summary

For a small monthly fee, join AP Field Trip and receive:

• Free Field Trips uncovering the forgotten women in history

• Paid-only bi-weekly personal essays

• Ophelia’s Column

• Full access to archive essays

• My undying gratitude

Future AP Field Trip essays, Coming Soon:

• Exposing My Two-Year-Old to a Spanish Nudist Beach (this happened 48 hours ago)

• Surviving A 15 Hour Plane Ride Solo With A Toddler

• How Training For a Marathon Healed My Relationship With My In-Laws

• How We Saw The Vatican/Sistine Chapel With No Crowds (all you need is a stroller)

• A Ranking of Every Visitor We’ve Ever Had (this ranking is still fluid and open to bribes)

just a humble beggar woman with access to a computer

A Sincere Note Of Thank You

Writing every week has been difficult, stretching and completely unnecessary. However, these months have also been fun and vulnerable and happy. Through this research, I am realizing how much I don’t know. And it is changing who I am.

I could not do it without your support. It’s embarrassingly human of me (I am but a mere people-pleasing mortal), but your kind texts, emails, comments and suggestions fill me with joy every time. Whether or not you decide to invest in the Field Trip, there is always a space for you here. And I love you no less. It is my honor to take you on these Field Trips. Thank you for being here.