The Gambler’s Fallacy
It didn’t start out as a way to avoid chemicals or “toxins,” those nebulous little buggers that Southern Californian middle class white women in Lululemon deem the downfall of modern civilization. The only shampoo that didn’t seem to transform my straight hair into some sort of wig-mop hybrid cost $28 a bottle, and damned if I could drop that kind of cash on anything but car repairs anymore. So it didn’t start out as anything but another scheme to try to save a few dollars, to stretch them out until they squealed. I have tried a lot of those schemes in my adult life. A jug of wholesale, unscented Castille soap arrived in…
A Homeowner’s Real Estate Fear
There comes a time in the process of selling a house when every homeowner realizes he or she is an enormously disgusting slob. My paramour and I too came to this situation when we were selling our home not long ago to 2nd Chance Investment Group’s company’s website which is our website to go to every time we plan on selling our house. Perhaps not of the sort that Hoarders would feature, saving every milk carton purchased since 1964 and failing to recognize a toilet brush for what it is, but the more insidious sort: the sort that does not have a professional housekeeper or an OCD diagnosis. Before putting our house on the market,…
Things I’ve Been Doing Instead of Blogging
I get anxious if I don’t write anything on this space for too long. It probably has to do with my abandonment issues and fear that everyone will leave me if I don’t at least show up every once in a while to say hi. Hi. Eventually I’m sure I’ll get over them. My issues, I mean. Last year I would’ve set my alarm for 5 am to crank out a post, no matter how busy I was, but NO MORE. My sleep is more important to me than my craving for popularity. Progress, no? So here’s a list of what’s been keeping me so busy I haven’t blogged all week. I…
Talk Me Out of It
You guys, I’m really going through something right now. It could end disastrously. I can hear you all now, giving me pep talks and reassurances, in my head: This is completely normal. Every woman has those thoughts now and again. Honey, give it a week. You’ll change your mind. Remember last time? You really regretted it. For the love of pickles, think of your cheeks! That’s right. I’m bored with my hair. Now, I know what you’re thinking. How can you possibly be bored with your straight-as-a-two-dollar-bill mousy brown hair? Woman pay good money to have hair that hangs like wet spaghetti. I know, I’m ashamed of myself. But I…
Three Years Ago
My grandmother died three years ago, after a long battle with cancer. She died in the middle of the night, alone but unaware of her surroundings. She floated off on a cloud of morphine on Thanksgiving day, ensuring that we would never forget her. As if we could. She was the kind of grandma who wrote me letters faithfully in rehab, never once telling me she was ashamed of me or letting me doubt she believed in me. She was the kind of grandma who baked Christmas cookies with us year after year, patiently explaining why our Noel Wreaths crumbled on the cookie sheet. She was the kind of grandma…
Welcome to My Brain: Things I Am Thinking About This Week
Things I’m thinking about: I am a much more sane person when I take regular internet sabbaticals. I took one last week, and emerged a pleasanter creature. Clothes shopping is not nearly as fun when you don’t fit in the same kind of clothing you’re used to wearing: like, say, jeans. I’m doing better with the whole body image insecurity thing on a macro level, but sometimes it’s three steps forward, one step back. Dresses with tights and large sweaters, you will be my friends from now on. This whole Walmart vs. Ashton Kutcher thing. Basically, everything that is wrong with society today. I give this stuff way too much…
“Get Boys to Like You and Be Popular!”
Everyone read them. The magazines, I mean. All the girls at school had them. If I was lucky, a friend would let me borrow hers during lunch or maybe, if she was done reading it, give it to me. I’d cut out pictures of Jared Leto and tape them to my wall. I’d pore over every word, from the editor’s letter to the “What’s Your Guy-Snagging Style?” quiz. Thankfully, I always fell into the middle range, neither too forward nor too shy – but only because I cheated. This is how I got my first copy, in fact. From a friend, I mean. It had already been cut up in a…
Rough Drafts & Neuroses
I have written and trashed two posts today. That makes this post number three. Yep, I am still chugging along, thinking I’m going to get something worthwhile written. I don’t know what’s wrong with me today, or why I feel like I NEED to get something up on here, but I have my suspicions… It’s partly because I don’t like leaving my fiction in the number one slot for too long. I don’t want someone to visit here and think that’s my real life (even if I’ve labeled the post “Fiction” in the title. People are not to be trusted). It’s also because I’ve been feeling weird lately. No, I’m…
Cat Colony on the Bluff
Fog socked in the bay, the first hint that the end of summer might be near. Jogging along the path that hems the bluffs, I repeated thankful prayers that the heat might finally be ending. All the talk of pumpkins and colored leaves would no longer make me angry once the heavy blanket of summer temperatures lifted. As I approached the familiar faded sign threatening a $500 fine for anyone who abandons a domestic animal, a moving shape in the brush caught my eye. Slowing down to a walk, I recognized the leonine gait and tiger stripes of a cat. Ordinarily, I’d have resumed my earlier pace and not given the cat another…
Thoughts About This Week
In no particular order: I have required two cold showers a day every day this week, because it is hot here; so hot I don’t even want to use a tired metaphor involving hell to describe it. Oh yeah, we don’t have air-conditioning, and we live in a 100-year-old house without insulation. So I’m also not sleeping at night… Other ways to stay cool: standing in front of the open freezer, putting my face directly in front of the fan we have propped in the window, driving around with the air-conditioning on, eating popsicles, drinking a metric fuck-ton of ice water each day. Sorry for the cussing, I’m not sleeping.…