Lately, my life has shifted quite dramatically. Since I’m getting ready to sell my house (as part of a cross country move), I’m basically living out of a single suitcase. I only use the microwave to cook, never the stove or oven, so I won’t have a big mess to clean up in the kitchen. » Read more
There’s Something to Be Said for Being a Good Sport
“You’ll be fine,” my dad said, as we waited in line for the roller coaster. “It’s not so bad.”
But the old man was tricking me.
My first clue was the screams that we heard as we waited in the enclosure. “They’re just being dramatic,” Dad had reassured me. “Some people ride these things just to scream.” » Read more
People Are Constantly Talking About You Behind Your Back — But Sometimes It’s a Good Thing.
As much as it pains me to admit it, I’m the friend who runs around talking up my other friends when they’re not around. And if you get a drink or two into me, I might even set you up with one of them, if I think you’d hit it off.
This sounds like a really good quality — » Read more
If You Ever Want to Piss Someone Off, Tell Them They’re Not Trying
Unless what you’re trying to do is piss someone off or hurt their feelings, whatever you do, don’t tell them, “You didn’t even try.”
Because that’s not something you can possibly know.
Maybe you don’t like the results.
Maybe you’re dissatisfied.
And maybe you would have done a better job if you were in their shoes (but then again, » Read more
Not a Grown Up
Me: I’m not a grown up. I don’t know what I’m doing.
Skyspook: No one really does.
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When it comes to feeling truly loved and understood by another human being, I am roughly 3 years old.
My relationship with my mother is deeply troubled as she is mentally ill and only recently compliant with any sort of treatment (to the tune of starting talk therapy about 3 or 4 years ago). » Read more
You Can’t Go Home Again
February 2009
I nearly break my ankle on my nephew’s robot dog as I walk in. Its eyes are glassy, and I shouldn’t see anything in them at all, but I feel like they’re sizing me up. I hear heavy footsteps from the kitchen, and then my sister emerges, “Hey.”
“Hey.” » Read more
Could it be any more Freudian?
I’ve had my training collar for about a month. At first, I just wore it to events, and then Skyspook and I had a sit-down a week or two ago, at which he requested that I wear it as much as possible around the house, which I happily obliged. I don’t wear it outside the house other than to take out the trash or get the mail – » Read more
Today Nintendo, Tomorrow the World
1988: My grandmother woke us in the middle of the night. I saw her standing there in the hallway in her velvet bathrobe looking quite the grande dame and knew instantly. My brother and I leapt from our beds and jumped up and down like little howler monkeys. Our parents were home!
They’d only been gone for two days on a trip to Portland, » Read more
I’m the hyper, nauseatingly precocious kid in all the snaps, wearing an evening gown at the breakfast table, correcting my mother’s grammar in a Grover t-shirt. A good Catholic girl who still idolizes her father because he works 70 hours a week and never says anything to her.
Those are the years before I understand loneliness as more than an abstraction, » Read more