That place with the maple leaf on its flag

Visiting the Okanagan Valley is way better when you're old enough to swim in the lakes without bursting into tears. It's also way better when you can hike, swim and enjoy the view with six feet worth of sexy, smokin'- hot blond man.

Even with all the smoke from recent forest fires, it is astonishingly beautiful:







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More of That Place

Ok, fine. I guess Texas isn't the only place with lovely sunsets:



But the lakes there are definitely better. Hands down. Like, you know, you can actually see your feet in the water and you don't feel like taking 700 showers after swimming in it:

Where the roaches ain’t

Some of y’all may not know this, but I was not born in Glorious Fake Blonde City. Nor was I even born in Texas. Or in any other place where every carbonated drink - brown, clear or otherwise - is “Coke.” I was born in a far-off, exotic land where winters are white and potato chips come in ketchup flavor. No, no, not Hell - Canada, sillies. And by the way, ketchup chips are DELICIOUS. Also, I did not live in an igloo. (But I did get pulled to school by a team of Siberian sled dogs.)

I spent my first five years plus my childhood summer vacations in this place called Canada, eating chocolate Smarties, buying clothes from Marks & Spencer and watching Casey and Finnegan on Mr. Dressup. I learned the alphabet’s ending as x,y,”zed” and I won't look at you funny if you talk about parkades or tukes. If someone were to say to me that they were “on holiday with a bunch of Canucks,” I wouldn't for a second think that it involved Christmas trees and/or hockey players. In my mind, this makes me a proud Canadian-born Texan. But in my Canadian-raised mother’s eyes, I am nothing more than an American who knows that she was born some place vaguely north. So ok, maybe I went through a period of time during which I tried to forget everything from my Canadian roots. But that’s only because it’s hard to be taken seriously in a 2nd grade classroom when you ask to go to the “washroom” or you tell everyone that your brother is just around the corner in “grade 5.” Which is why, by the time I was 13 and had just spent my first summer away from home in Vermont, I had this conversation with my mother:

Me: OMG, mom. I can NOT eat this Aunt Jemimah syrup. I’ve had FRESH, PURE MAPLE SYRUP now. PURE MAPLE SYRUP. You know, from maple trees? They have maple trees in Vermont. Have you EVER had fresh, pure maple syrup from a maple tree?

She stares at me with incredulity – a stare that I fail to notice as I am too busy shaking my head and sighing with pity for the woman who thinks maple syrup comes from a plastic bottle.

Her: I. am. FROM CANADA.

I look up blankly.

Me: So you tried some Vermont syrup in Canada?

Her: Oh good GRIEF. Canada has its own maple trees.

Me: Ok, but do they have as many maple trees as Vermont?

Her: THE FLAG, bebe Me. HAVE YOU SEEN THE CANADIAN FLAG?

And that, y'all, was the day my mother knew for sure that the hot, summer Texas sun really did fry young and impressionable brains until every non-texan thought and memory had burnt to a crisp and fallen off into chicken-fried oblivion. But she accepted it. And probably didn't think too much about it. Until a couple of weeks ago that is. That's when I told her about my upcoming trip to Vancouver, British Columbia.

Me: Yeah, well I might not spend ALL my time in Vancouver. I kind of want to go see some place I’ve never seen. Like I might go to this place called The Okanagan Valley…

A pause that I could not just hear, but actually feel, even over the phone.

Her:: The Okanagan Valley?

Me: Yeah, so there’s a city called Vern-

Her: VERNON. There’s a city called Vernon in the Okanagan Valley. Which you’ve BEEN TO.

Me: What do you mean I’ve been there? I just learned how to spell "Okanagan" a couple of days ago.

Her: I mean that you’ve BEEN THERE. The cherries? Remember picking cherries? We have photos!

Silence.

Her: And the photos of you when you’re standing in the water, bawling because we left you out there to take a picture of you…

Me: Ooooh. You mean the ones where I’m standing in the ocean**?

Her: The ocean?

Me: Yes, I’m in the oc-

Her: You know what? You just enjoy your very first visit to the Okanagan Valley then.


**In case you’re, you know, TEXAN and are unable to tell from the name, the Okanagan Valley is full of lovely lakes, but nowhere near the ocean

I drew a pretty sweet Pegasus too

Over the past few months, I’ve shown my portfolio to at least 30 advertising creatives from more than15 agencies across 3 different cities. So you’d think that by now, I’d feel a little more comfortable carrying around my black leather portfolio case. That it might even feel as natural as carrying around my violin case still feels. Even though I haven’t actually, you know, OPENED my violin case in about six (nine? twelve? twenty?) months, I can still strap it around my shoulder and wear it as confidently as a push-up bra. I feel justified in holding a 7-pound, 31-inch, extremely conspicuous oblong case around my shoulder. Because hell yeah, I can play a four-octave arpeggio in any key you want and I know exactly where to put my bow on the string for a perfect up-bow staccato.

Yet, when I’m carrying a 3-pound, 10” x 13” portfolio case that I can discreetly hold under my arm, I feel totally self-conscious. Even though, if held the right way, it could absolutely pass for just a slightly large day planner. No one in a cramped elevator would even notice the thing if I’d just stand calmly and silently stare ahead. And that’s what I try to do. So that no one can see that my heart is pounding, my cheeks are flushing and my brain is screaming, Can they tell? Do they KNOW that the extent of my Creative Suite knowledge goes just slightly further than knowing where the selection tool is?

Sure, the work in the portfolio case is mine, but I wrote the words. In WORD DOCUMENTS and messy pencil scribbles in a $3 notebook. I feel like a big ol’ Word Doc -usin’ POSER. And one day, I just know that one of those people in the elevator is going to look at me, smile and say, "Hi." And in response, I will of course blurt out, I KNOW HOW TO USE THE CLONE TOOL IN PHOTOSHOP. AND I USED TO DRAW UNICORNS FOR MY FRIENDS AT SCHOOL!

And then I will look around and hope to God that I’m standing naked in front of my entire junior high school. *



*Actually, I never did have this recurring nightmare. But it would’ve been just plain confusing to write “running away from a badminton shuttlecock that had come alive and whose only aspiration was to creep out little future copywriters with its exceeding ugliness.”

You may remember me from such places as Event Management Company X

Last week was my first week as a part-time, long-term temp. The job has little to do with copywriting, but it’s a pretty sweet temp gig and I think I’ve made a brilliant first impression. Yup, I’m pretty sure that I impressed the hell out of the marketing communications manager on my fourth day when I was trying to save an event schedule I'd just created in Microsoft Office and I leaned over and had the following exchange with her.

Me: “Hey, I was just, um."

My eyes dart around to see if the director of marketing is still sitting at her desk, ten feet away and within earshot. (She is.)

Me: "Just wondering how I can, uh…"

MC manager is looking at me expectantly.

Me: "Well, you know..."

I lower my voice and lean in closer.

MC manager leans across the desk.

Me (whispering): "How do I...”

Her (whispering): "How do you what?"

Me: "'Save As...'?"


This after a week of trying to navigate my way around an exotic, black laptop that didn’t have a picture of an apple anywhere on it. Apparently, I’ve missed an entire generation of Windows since I last used a PC. And what with trying to remember to close documents on the right instead of the left and to use the scroll bar instead of the two-finger touchpad scroll, it’s a miracle that I didn’t ask her what the hell that crazy extra button at the bottom right corner of the touchpad was. Or maybe it’s a miracle that she didn’t ask me if perhaps I’d feel more comfortable carving the document onto a rock.

Ah but yes, how I have missed being Stupid New Girl. (Hello there, She of the Cool Hats!)

And then I saw fireworks

It’s no secret that when I was living in Austin, I missed Dallas the way I’d miss a vital organ. A vital organ AND a best friend. Some days, just to fill the void in my heart, I’d listen to podcasts from Dallas radio shows that I didn’t even like. And then there were the little things, like changing my car registration to Travis County, that brought a surprising rush of totally embarrassing tears to my eyes.

Which is why I fully expected an embarrassingly emotional day when I moved back here to Glorious Fake Blonde City. I’d pictured it all in slow motion, set to a song like Chris Daughtry’s Home - the long drive back would be filled with tears and maybe a big dramatic moment where I’d forget all about the steering wheel and throw my arms open and put my hands on my heart.

But when that day finally arrived, and I drove those three hours from Austin to Dallas, there was no crying and no clutching of the heart. Because my mind was completely consumed with only three things:

1.If I change lanes now, will there be enough room behind me for the U-haul truck and my parents’ SUV to change too without causing a 9-car pileup?
2.But if I don’t change lanes now, my friends who are helping me unload will leave and I’ll have to spend an hour on the other end of my brother’s murderous looks that clearly say, “I did not get a degree to work as a heavy furniture mover and WHY DO YOU HAVE SO MANY THINGS?”

and of course:

3.What’s going to be the best way to clean the floors at my new apartment? (well what did you expect a certified germaphobe to think about?)

So then I thought the embarrassing moment would come while I was unpacking. But it turns out that having a crew of loved ones (God bless them) helping me unpack means that I spend all my time saying, “that goes over here,” “don’t put that THERE,” and “you’re using WHAT to clean wha-?? Step away, just let me do that!” Well, then I was SURE that I’d really feel it as soon as everyone left and I was truly alone in my new place. But instead, when I was on the stepladder, filling up my storage closet or on my hands and knees, scrubbing baseboards, I found myself thinking about other things. Like how I’d kind of miss HEB Stores, Amy’s Ice Cream, and busloads of die-hard fans heading to Longhorn football games on hot, fall Saturdays. Even more often, I was thinking – ok, panicking - about how I now had a higher rent but did NOT have, you know, a JOB. And for some reason, that week, my portfolio was getting a lot of positive feedback from agencies in New York. So when one of my art directors, who was hustling in New York that week, texted me to ask me AGAIN why I won’t consider moving to New York, I’ll admit that for a fraction of a second, I thought, yeah, why is that again?

Luckily, the answer came in loud and clear last Saturday night at the Red, White & Blue Festival at the lake - and not just because my hair, which in Austin would have fallen completely flat by then, still held some curl. But also because as I sat, covered in sticky insect repellent from fake blonde head to sparkly flip-flopped foot, watching fireworks on a blanket 10 feet from the lake and surrounded by gay men, I finally felt it. For the first time since I’d been back, my heart said, I’m home. No embarrassing tears, no dramatic gestures. I’m not saying that I will never be at home somewhere else. I know there are other things, other people, even other cities that can change what makes life feel complete. But right now, right at this very moment, I am home.

yes

It’s been a little while since I’ve been sappy on this site. But this, being the beginning of life as a grad school survivor, seems like a good time to spout a little saccharin.

The last time I visited my parents, I’d just gotten back from a week of hustling my name and my work to a handful of industry professionals. And their responses were enough to get me to look back again at the last two excruciating years - the gut-punching months of creative pain; the near-death moments of business math ; the bleak homework-fraught weekends and all those onsets of soul-encompassing panic.

Last year, at this time, the only redeeming thought I could draw from all of this was: “Sometimes it just sucks. And I still look ugly when I cry.” What I didn’t write on that day was that I’d spent several weeks working on that post because I'd really, really wanted to tell y’all that I’d come away with some small piece of salvation that made all the pain of that semester worth it. But I couldn’t do it. At least not with any shred of authenticity.

Which is why, this year, I let myself feel encouraged when all of those industry professionals, including the one at this agency, told me that they liked my work - that my work is smart, funny and up to par.

Then, one evening during that visit with my parents, my father asked me, “So you’re almost done with school. Are you glad you did it?” And I looked at him - the man whose emotional and financial support never wavered despite the night I called to wish him a happy anniversary only to end up sobbing and gulping that I “h-h-hated” school, despite the fact that I spent an entire summer telling him that degrees were overrated and maybe I just wouldn’t get one after all – and I answered with a genuine “yes.”

And now, six weeks later, I can still say, “Yes.” Not only because of the things that the professionals said. Not only because of what my teachers (even this teacher) said. Not only because I almost cried when another girl in my program told me that she looks to my advertising writing (mine!) for inspiration. I can say it because at least right now, today, I believe what they say. And I believe that I’ve come a long way and that even though the road ahead will beat down on my soul again, I believe that if I want to badly enough, I can keep going further.

And I believe that the last two years had something to do with that.

BAGEL: CREAM CHEESE:: MAN: __________ (you finish it because, guess what y’all? I never have to take another GRE again!)

Right about the time I wrote the last post on here, my last semester of grad school suddenly turned from spending weekends gallivanting around downtown (and spending weekdays planning said gallivanting) to a mad, mad blur of headline writing, PhotoShop fumbling, InDesign layouts, screaming at iWeb, stalking industry contacts, and a few token panic episodes. I had one foot in Austin and school and the other foot in Dallas and job networking. And straddling 180 miles of Texas country, it turns out, turns me into an even bigger ditz than the one I was that time I stood in front of the door to the stairwell, wondering why in the hell I couldn’t find the elevator down button.

Which means that I’ve spent the last two months on an extended, two-city ditz-crime spree. There was the day, for example, that I decided to stop by Einstein Bagels to pick up some cream cheese. It wasn’t the shop that I usually go to, but they’re all about the same, right? So you can imagine my shock to find that there were no cream cheese coolers in this one.

But I’d come to Einstein’s to get some cream cheese and I WAS GOING TO GET SOME CREAM CHEESE. So I went up to the counter to get it there.

Him: How can I help you?

Me: (brightly, of course) Hi, I’m just looking for the cream cheese.

Pause as man looks at me for a long time. So long that I start wondering if I have spinach AND lipstick on my front teeth.

Him: (totally straight-faced) We don’t have cream cheese.

The voice inside of my head: AN EINSTEIN’S BAGELS? WITHOUT CREAM CHEESE? Where do I call to get THIS taken care of? This is like a butterfly without wings, a car without wheels, a man without his-

Him: Now, there’s a bagel place next door. They probably have cream cheese.

(Which is when the God-given ability to evaluate and deduce that got me into graduate school finally kicked in. I looked at the food they were serving. Green beans? I looked at the menu. Rotisserie Chicken? I looked at the guy’s uniform. Boston Mar-)

I gasp and put both hands over my mouth.

Me: (like a genius) I walked into Boston Market!

And then the entire restaurant got completely silent and the diners watched in wonder while the universe pushed the slow-motion button and I skulked right out of Boston Market to go next door.

And that, y’all, was just one of the many, many events that could’ve ended with the graduate school police handcuffing me, throwing me into a big yellow school bus and putting me on trial for STILL TRYING TO ACT LIKE SHE BELONGS IN GRADUATE SCHOOL.

The way to my mother’s heart is through the cacao

Last Christmas morning, as I unwrapped a 10 oz. box of GODIVA chocolate and a simple, silver framed heart with the message, “Break the rules or you’ll miss all the fun,” I squealed with delight and my mother’s jaw dropped.

“Oh my gosh. And that box is ALL DARK CHOCOLATE.”

“Well, of course. I only eat dark chocolate.”

“Yes, I know that. I just can’t believe he knows you so well that he could give you such a thoughtful, personal gift.”

“What kind of relationship do you think we have, Mom? You’re not the only one who buys me fine chocolate.”

A few days later, as we passed by all of the GODIVA gift boxes at Macy's, she couldn’t resist checking out the current chocolatier market prices (since you know, she usually sticks to buying this). And when she turned back around to look at me, I could see the change in her face.

It’s a very special day when your mother realizes that your gay boyfriend is more than just a fling.

And even if the bitches did catch up to me, he promised that he would throw on his pumps, drive all the way down to Austin and kick some serious ass

Email exchange last Friday between me and my gay boyfriend as we discussed my going to a gay bar that night to celebrate Mardi Gras:

But my question is what do the pre-op trannies flash to get beads? And as a straight, small-boobed girl, will I be able to get any beads?

If they won’t give you any beads, then just take some off the bitches’ necks! Then run as fast as possible.

Damn, does this mean I'll NEVER be Britney?

Recently said to me by a school friend (on behalf of a handful of friends I’ve known for almost 2 years now):

You're NEVER going to tell us, are you? No matter how hard we try, you’re never going to tell us about your secret life with your secret boyfriends and your secret weekends.

Not bad. It takes some people three years to finally figure that out.

Reeking of Sweet

Yesterday, as I walked down Guadalupe Street and wished for the 639th time that I could roll a great big stick of 100-prescription-strength deodorant over the entire street, I braced myself for the usual waves of revulsion that pulse through my soul at the start of every new semester - one hundred and sixteen days of endless academic drudgery.

But as I bravely put one foot in front of another, instead of wanting to catch a plane to a 16-week vacation on a beach with white sand and turquoise water, I realized that I felt perfectly fine right there on that stinky street. In fact, I felt extremely thankful. The sun was shining, the sky was blue and I was on my way to watch the presidential inauguration of a man who I believe can lead a nation of people who are making great strides to rise above intolerance. I was also on my way to start my very last semester as a girl who didn’t always believe in her own ability to actually earn a Master of Arts – a degree that is now a short four months away. Guadalupe never smelled so sweet.

But in any other situation, OF COURSE I'd write two paragraphs about the cowboy hats

Recently, I had to get a letter of recommendation from a faculty member. I wanted to ask my writing teacher (who was also my creative advertising teacher last semester) not only because she’s a writer, but also because I was pretty sure she’d write something a little more specific than “bebe Me is a fine student in a fine program.” Of course this is also the teacher who will still look at fifty of my taglines and approve ONE of them. With reservation. Fortunately, she seems to genuinely like some of my other writing – most recently, a humorous essay that she assigned and that I wrote in the style of this blog. Oh yes, that would be a four-paged, single-spaced essay of COTTON CANDY FOR THE BRAIN. But it was her response to my cotton candy for the brain that gave me the courage to ask her to recommend me as someone who could maybe one day have a scintilla of potential to write for advertising.

And the Gods of Advertising must have been looking out for me because she was happy to write one for me. My feeling that she’d write a thoughtful letter was confirmed when she asked me to write two paragraphs for her: one about my greatest strength and one about my greatest accomplishment. Since owning two cowboy hats with attachable tiaras probably doesn’t count as a strength or an accomplishment in this situation, I sat down at my blank laptop screen and tried to figure out my greatest strength.

I’d answered this questions plenty of times for job interviews so I had a short (very short) list of things I usually said: annoying optimism, the ability to see the “big picture,” the ability to see many possibilities for every problem and that I can write pretty well. But as I considered all of my options, I realized that this past year had quite possibly killed all of my strengths and their little dogs too. All I could think about was last spring, when I told everyone that it would probably be best for me and all of my creative partners if I died before critique because I couldn’t think of any more possibilities to solve the problems in our campaigns, because I didn't seem to have even one smart headline coming from wherever it is that any of my mediocre headline writing comes from and because any future for me in the “big picture” of advertising was about as real as a three-headed dragon.

And for a minute or so, I felt a bit sad. But then, like any good eternal optimist, I remembered that this was a different semester and a fresh beginning. Surely, something had changed for the better. And then it hit me - I now thought that any future for me in advertising was about as real as a one-headed dragon. And everybody knows that a one-headed dragon is way more realistic than a three-headed one. And maybe the next semester, it would be a green dragon instead of a spotted teal one. Glorious! So, feeling relieved and much more like myself again, I wrote her a paragraph about my optimism.

It must’ve been believable because my teacher really did write a lovely letter for me. And on the last day of class, when she wished us luck on our careers as advertising copywriters, I’m sure it was pure coincidence that she looked straight at me when she added, “or a career as another kind of writer.” I’m absolutely sure of it. Because I am an unrelenting optimist. Either that or an extremely good blonde. And bloody hell, I’m damn proud to be both.

Quote of the week

I kind of like my boobs.

-My art director (different one from this art director)

Ok, ok. So it was the end of a loooong week before final critique during which we all spend too many stressed hours in the creative lab, saying and doing stupid things. Also, she wasn't actually talking about HER boobs so much as the ones she implied in one of her executions. But how were we supposed to know that?

P.S.

Here I am pursuing a future of writing in some sort of professional capacity and the only adult books that have influenced my life in a significant way are chick lit and an out-of-print self-help book. Clearly, I need to take myself more seriously. It’s time to start reading and writing about things that will change people’s lives. Very, very serious things.

So I’m going to start now with a thought-provoking piece on a very current event, that event being the celebration of National Cotton Candy Day:

It all began in the 1400s when Italians discovered that they could make a fantastic dessert by melting sugar and spinning it with a fork. Over the next four years, spun sugar emerged as a popular dessert for very rich people. In 1899, a couple of guys from Tennessee decided it was about time that all the regular people be able to enjoy a little sugar. So they invented a big machine that would use centrifugal force to turn sugar, flavoring and coloring into what they decided to call Fairy Floss. In 1904, the guys took Fairy Floss to the St. Louis World Fair and the sugary star was born. In 1920, someone decided to start calling it cotton candy. Cotton candy comes in pink, blue, rainbow and probably a lot of other colors and if you were to eat it for every meal, every day, you’d have a lot of cavities.

Serious. I used the word centrifugal.

The last time I'll post an assignment from my writing class

A short list of books that have had a significant impact on my life

1. A Light in the Attic (Shel Silverstein)

Oh how I loved this book when I was little – these crazy stories/rhymes made me laugh and laugh and it was my first experience with words that were used not only to tell a story, but also as devices (rhyming, assonance, onomatopoeia, etc.).

2. Ramona the Pest (Beverly Cleary)

This was the first “big book” I read. “Big books” were interesting! Ramona was my girl for years – I was just as frustrated with grown-ups and even though I was more shy and less impulsive than her, I shared some of the same urges to make trouble.

3. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (Judy Blume)

Every girl’s rite of passage! This was only the beginning of my love for stories that center on the inimitable experience of being a girl. But as I read it over and over again as I got older, it also helped me figure out that one of things that makes Judy Blume’s writing so engaging is her ability to use ordinary details to illustrate reality.

4. Jobsmarts for Twentysomethings: A Street-smart Script for Career Success (Bradley Richardson)

When I thought I was going to die because I had no idea how to find a job as a recent graduate with a ridiculous degree, this book gave me the courage to start networking and to feel confident about finding a job I liked and knowing how to act professionally. The language has just enough attitude to speak to twentysomethings, but the content is solid and helpful. Everything this guy said would happen happened. I bought this book for all of my friends and family until it went out of print.

5. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)

There is plenty of badly written chick lit out there with appallingly cliché characters and stupid plots (which I admit to reading anyway), but Confessions of a Shopaholic is not one of them. Even if the content seems fluffy (shopping), the characters have depth and the writing is never awkward. Either that or I just really identify with British, self-deprecating humor.

6. Sloppy Firsts (Megan McCafferty)

I am possibly the oldest teen fiction enthusiast on this Earth – well, besides the authors who write it. When I was a teen, I read serious adult books (like Chaim Potok novels or biographies about classical music composers), but as an adult, I started reading young adult novels because I love the concept of self-discovery – this thing that teens are doing every day. There is something really invigorating about immersing myself in reading about the painful and exhilarating feelings surrounding it and Megan McCafferty does it best. I vividly remember the first time I read this book because I’d have to keep putting the book down and saying (out loud to myself), “How the hell did she get inside my brain?”

7. Dreamland (Sarah Dessen)

I read this teen novel right at a time where I was grappling with a situation in which a good friend of mine was about to marry her horrible, toxic, abusive boyfriend. I was so frustrated because I just couldn’t understand how someone got to that place. This book offered an interesting perspective from a girl that let herself be abused for a long time. My friend still married the bastard and I still couldn’t reach her, but I felt a little more settled that I understood at least some of the reasons why girls fall prey to that poison.

I’d pay with cash, but then I wouldn’t get my advantage miles

It’s that time of the semester. When I have so much to do that the more I try to motivate myself to do it, the more I want to sit in front of the TV and watch Frasier reruns. The time when my usual love of knowing that there is not just one answer is replaced by my wanting to scream at my creative professors, “IS THIS IDEA RIGHT OR WRONG? I HAVE A DEADLINE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!” And it’s also the time when I start going to a lot of print shops. I wish I could say that I’m cool enough to go to the funkier, less-known, independent print shops. But once an art director sends me a file that’s ready to print, I will immediately go to the nearest shop that’s open at the time so that I can print and mount my ads as soon as possible. Just in case on the day before critique, the universe decides to curse my hands with an uncontrollable shake as I try to cut straight, clean lines with that damn X-ACTO knife.

So I often find myself at a 24-hour Fed-ex Kinko’s. Which is all fine and good until it’s time to pay. Because the credit card machines there don’t let you sign outside of the box. Every single time, it makes me start over. The first time the girl behind the counter said matter-of-factly, “It doesn’t like it when you go outside the box,” I felt so stifled by the bloody box and the girl’s bored expression that I almost threw down the stylus so that I could run outside into the parking lot and tell all the people to RUN FOR IT OR YOU WILL NEVER GET OUT OF THE DAMN BOX!

I still get that urge every time I’m there. And the urge is even stronger when I’ve spent the last couple of weeks biting my tongue in front of professors and worrying about eleventh-hour hand tremors. But I don’t ever give in because the last thing I need right now is for a bevy of very controlled, meticulous Kinko’s security officers to drag me into a back room, subdue me and then flag my name on all of their records: WATCH OUT FOR THIS CUSTOMER. CANNOT CONTROL HER OWN SIGNATURE.

My cousins can beat up your cousins

My mother’s oldest sister had five kids. They are a loud, rowdy, affectionate family who gives a group hug the same way a St. Bernard accidentally knocks you down when it’s just trying to say hello. And just as you’ve managed to get yourself off the ground, they’ll finish it off with an enthusiastic booty smack and a wholehearted “BOOYAH!”

Last month, I spent a week in Canada with my five cousins, my uncle, my grandmother, my parents and other various members of my family because on November 3rd, my mother’s oldest sister, my aunt, passed away unexpectedly. In the days following, our family did our best to understand that this lovely lady who meant so many different things to so many different people was no longer just on the other side of an email or a phone call. But even as our hearts ached for the daughter, mother, sister and aunt who loved learning so much that she got three bachelors of science, our smiles persisted. Because how could we NOT smile at the memory of her being so engrossed in reading whatever most recently caught her brain’s attention, that we could sing and dance around her in big purple cow costumes and she’d never even notice? We smiled because when she and her sisters were all starting to leave their small French-Canadian town for “big cities” like, you know, WINNIPEG, my aunt was the one who educated her younger sisters on the difference between a friendly man and a sleazy perv. We smiled because she was endearingly straight-forward and because she was the only one who knew how to smooth over the occasional collisions that occur in an extended family that includes more than a couple strong and opinionated personalities. And we smiled because she loved to smile.

My aunt made me feel special from the time she’d send me hand-sewn nightgowns with my name embroidered across the front every year to the time in my twenties when she made me feel really special and yet totally normal during a time when I was especially worried that my not-so-conservative choices would alienate my entire extended family. Of course, it didn’t. And in the last couple of years, her kids have made a particularly conscious effort to embrace me unconditionally So I smiled and cried as I watched my cousins say their final goodbyes to her resting body at the funeral home. Shoulder to shoulder, arms embracing, crying, laughing, whispering memories, jokes and love – a testament of their mother’s sweet, funny, loving spirit.

And for the rest of the week, I wanted to lift and support my loud, rowdy cousins and uncle. But as usual, they gave me more collective love (and smacks) than I felt I could give back in return. Because they don’t know any other way to live. And oh, how I love them – as much as one little, sometimes prissy, not especially loud-voiced, non-booty-smackin’ person can.

Friend quote of the week via email. And just for her, count how many times I can write Ben Folds in a 60-word post.

“I am a Ben Folds evangelist!”*

"...I think I cold live happily on a steady diet of Doritos and his last 4
albums."

-Ben Fold’s most dedicated fan after I told her that I’d just taken my first step onto the Ben Folds bandwagon

*That’s how she wrote it, but what I read was, “I am a BEN FOLDS EVANGELIST!!”

Forgive me, for I know not what I write

Three of the greatest feelings in the world are: stepping into a perfect gold stiletto, biting into a Tamborina NOKA Chocolate truffle. and finally remembering a word that has been taking over your life because it’s been sitting precariously on the tip of your tongue for weeks and refusing to roll off of it.

Yesterday, I almost experienced the last one. I say “almost’ because I had to use the one look reverse dictionary (this, the glorious tool that changed my life this year) in order to “remember” the word “malapropism.” And the reason I was so urgently trying to remember it was because I committed a malapropism right here on this very blog just a few weeks ago*. And ever since I realized the error of my ways and finished cringing and blushing furiously here at my keyboard, I’ve been debating whether or not to correct it or to keep pretending I was being intentionally, but not necessarily skillfully, subversive.

I still haven’t decided whether or not to change it and because I am just THAT crazy, the debate in my head will probably keep raging on until some other ridiculous issue takes over the part of my brain that handles ridiculous issues. But the good news is that because of my idiocy, I almost experienced one of the greatest feelings in the world.

The glass, my friends, is always half full.


*Of course I’m not going to tell you. But if you noticed it too, I’ll tell you if you’re right. Or, if I’m really lucky (because a good, healthy cringe and blush is just what I need sometimes), you’ll discover yet another one that I haven’t even noticed.