Oversharing
Don’t worry, your fiancee will not get mad.
Live-Blogging the Overnight Security Shift at the St. Mark’s Parish Festival II: The Year the Rains Came
10:39 PM: Once again this year I’m working the overnight security shift at the St. Mark’s Catholic Church community festival in St. Paul, Minnesota. My task: to remain awake and alert for the next 8.5 hours, and to make sure no one fiddles with anything they’re not supposed to be fiddling with. I’ve been instructed to take particular care to ensure that no copper wiring is stripped from the ferris wheel and that the deep fryers aren’t rolled away. I’ve set up a base camp in the...
Boston, Tragedy, and Time
When I think of Copley Square and the Back Bay of Boston, my first thought is of a night a few years ago, when I was dancing—silently—in the rain. There were dozens of us having an iPod dance party: we’d arranged via Facebook to meet with headphones and rock out in the plaza next to Trinity Church. The rain fell hard and harder, and eventually my friends and I broke off to dance down Boylston Street, jumping on benches and generally making fools of ourselves....
Less Obvious Reasons I’ll Be the First to Die in the Zombie Apocalypse
Were we to take a poll of the general population as to the top three most important zombie survival traits, they’d probably be 1: an ability to resist panic, 2: general survival proficiency (DVRing Bear Grylls doesn’t count), and 3: an ability and willingness to defend oneself. I’m not going to write about why I don’t fit any of these categories, because one need only size me up for a moment to realize that this is approximately how the first thirty seconds of my zombie...
My Semi-Ironic College Spring Break Trip to Disney World, 1997
This is the spring of Spring Breakers, which reminded me that I too had a college spring break trip to Florida; though my friends and I didn’t do a lot of the things Selena Gomez et al do in the movie (make out, do coke, commit murder), it was still an epic journey in my modestly eventful life. It was spring 1997, and we were seniors at Boston University. The idea to drive to Disney World came from me and my friend Megan. She was...
On Being a Liberal Suffering From Conservative Episodes
I’m a pretty liberal person. I grew up with a lesbian pastor and parents who earnestly campaigned for an opera hall to be built in lieu of a new Vikings stadium. When I was six, I lovingly embraced a tree for 20 minutes, tears soggifying my pink velour overalls, as exasperated laborers waited to remove the rotting ash trunk from my back yard. I was the girl on campus who, three lattes deep and donning a “yes we can!” button, shoved a clipboard stocked with...
Long-Term Effects of Unending Unemployment
Two years ago this week, I was laid off from my last full-time job. I’ve since had a smattering of temp jobs, “odd” jobs, and freelance work, but a guaranteed steady paycheck is a rapidly fading memory for me. Unemployment can have its up-sides; the initial “funemployment” period is almost carefree and a tad exhilarating. Who doesn’t like drinking beer in the midday sun and having the ability to say yes to almost every single event on your calendar? Once you dive into the abysmal...
Perfectly Legitimate Reasons to Cry a Little
- You got overzealous about exiting your bedroom and didn’t open the door wide enough before trying to walk out, and thus smacked your boob dead center against it. You’re in a crumpled heap on the floor and Mr. Lefty smarts like a bitch. - You have piled all the necessary ingredients for a seriously impressive ham sandwich into your arms, including but not limited to a bag of potato chips and a container of half mayonnaise half avocado that you keep handy (you’ve taken...
Ten Things I’ve Thought I Was Dying From
Age 12: Self-induced brain trauma. When I was a kid, for some reason I preferred shaking my head like a dog to dry my hair, rather than using a towel like a normal person. It occurred to me that it might not be entirely safe to violently shake my head once a day, so I called a nurse hotline and asked the nurse whether I could damage my brain by shaking my hair dry. There was a long pause, and then finally she said that...
I Lived in a Church for Two Years and All I Got Was This Blog Post
It started when I tried hooking up with some hot babes on a missionary trip. I wanted to go and help the indigent in Chicago, but when that was all dudes, I joined with the group going to a group home in Iowa. Turned out the babes weren’t much to write home about, but I did make friends with a nun who asked me to be one of the two student residents at a church over the next two years on campus. My room was...
On Dodging the Nine-to-Five Life Indefinitely
Becky just wrote about the comforts of the nine-to-five life post-college, so I thought I’d weigh in from the perspective of someone who’s entirely avoided that life for almost 16 post-college years. Yep, 16 years. I graduated from college in 1997, and decided to push straight on to grad school since (a) I didn’t want to go to work doing what I’d studied in college, which was being a preschool teacher; (b) my college roommate was also going to grad school in Boston, and I...
Thoughts I’ve Had While Working at a Meat Processing Plant
I work in a meat processing plant. It’s not quite like the Upton Sinclair book but there’s desperation in the whiteness of it. Fluorescent lights are not good to spend your day under. Whoever decided to install them in nearly every place of work or study clearly was a major asshole. There’s a sort of boredom I associate it with, one that borders on madness. The only stimulation among the burnished steel and white walls is the red of the meat, and that quickly becomes...
Things I’ve Been Observed Doing While Sleepwalking, Ages 4-23
Age: 4 Witness: My parents Description: I make a habit of walking into my parents’ bedroom and standing at their bedside, releasing incoherent strings of words. “Mommy, milk the kitty state fair for the gingerbread next orange dinosaur tree cookie.” I’m still surprised they didn’t put me up for adoption. Age: 12 Witness: Summer camp night watchman Description: I’m at summer camp, and, knowing my tendency to jabber in my sleep, vigilantly fight the urge to rest to avoid spilling to the 10 girls I’m sharing...
