The Gift of Exercise

For Christmas I was given two yoga mats. Yes, TWO yoga mats, and both are the exact same shade of “I hate exercise” purple. I can take a hint, so I spent January going to yoga class…twice. What? It was a REALLY intense two classes and it seemed fitting, given the two yoga mats.

Since February I’ve been to yoga a few more times, but only because I now have a plethora of yoga mats and I need to determine which one is the best so that I can do something totally ridiculous with the others. After testing it out, I’ve realized that one of the new purple yoga mats is skinnier than I am and the last thing I need is my yoga mat making me feel like a doublewide on a narrow country road. The other new purple mat is quite nice, although it lacks the necessary squishiness to make me feel buoyant and light while downward dogging. And my other yoga mat is my old yoga mat, and it’s, well…it’s old. So I guess each mat has its own flaws but it doesn’t matter which one I keep, what does matter is what I decide to do with the extra two. Here are my ideas:

1. Send one to my sister, who will hate it and yell at me: “Whoa, bitch! Are you calling me fat?”
2. Use them as napping mats. Remember napping mats from kindergarten? I had one that was blue on one side and red on the other side and it folded up into a little rectangle. I miss nap time so hard. If yoga was more like nap time I would go everyday.
3. Watch Aladdin and sing “A Whole New World” while pretending the yoga mat is a magic carpet.
4. Use it as padding in the dog’s crate…for five minutes or until he chews it to shreds.
5. Pad the coffee table edges because it keeps attacking my shins in the dark.
6. Fashion them into a pair of riding chaps. Then find a horse to ride.
7. Make placemats. Then figure out why people use placemats.
8. Cut out hearts and cover them in glitter to make Valentine’s Day cards.
9. Freeze them. Whenever I don’t know what to do with something, freezing it always seems like a good way to not make a decision.
10. Donate the two extra mats to Haiti because that’s apparently what earthquake victims need. Forget about silly things like food, water, shelter and money - the people of Haiti need yoga mats!

Whatever I decide to do with the extra yoga mats I’m going to keep going to yoga, at least until my new student special runs out next week and they're all, “hey you can’t come to class unless you pay!” and I’m all, “watch me steal your yoga!” and they’re all, “we’re calling the cops!” and I’m all, “namaste, bitches!” and then I run away and find a new studio who accepts me and my napping mat.

How To NOT Do Laundry

1. Assess your laundry basket: Is it overflowing onto the floor? Is it almost too heavy to carry (i.e., does it weigh eleventybillion pounds)? No – it’s not laundry time yet. Yes – it’s laundry time.
2. Carry laundry basket to the washer and dryer. Set it down on top of one of these machines (unless you’re fancy and have special cool machines, in which case, go to hell, I mean, set it on the ground) and walk away for several hours and/or days.
3. Are you on your second or more day of wearing dirty underwear? No – meh, another day won’t kill you. Yes – proceed to step #4.
4. Return to abandoned basket in laundry area. Open the lid of the washer and find clothes already in there from a load you started a couple weeks ago. Decide you’ll just go commando.
5. After a day of realizing how uncomfortable it is to go commando – open washer lid and remove the old, formerly wet but now hard, moldy clothes.
6. Discover that the dryer is also still full from another previous load. At this point you should let out a scream of anguish and frustration about how unfair life is. Then pile the wet laundry from the washer on top of closest open area (e.g., top of the dryer).
7. Start grabbing items out of the dirty laundry basket and put them in the washer. Put as much as you possibly can in the washer – you should need to sit on the lid in order to make it close. (Do not bother separating items by color as this will take more time away from your precious non-laundry time.)
8. Wash on whatever setting matches your mood. (I like the notch somewhere between Regular and Permanent Press, but I fluctuate between Warm/Cold and Cold/Cold.)
9. Move on to something else and immediately forget that you started about laundry.
10. Wake up the next morning to find that you still don’t have underwear. Retrieve a wet pair from the washer and throw them in the dryer. Wait 10 to 20 minutes.
11. Realize that said underwear is now lost in an overstuffed dryer. Pull everything out of the dryer and onto the floor, preferably next to the pile of dried dog barf and mud. Find underwear stuck inside a pair of pants. Leave other dry clothes on the floor because you do not have time to deal with laundry right now.
12. Return after a stressful workday and decide tonight will be the night you finish your laundry. For real.
13. Gather dry laundry from floor. Spend several seconds analyzing proximity of dog barf and mud; smell the clothes. Do they smell clean? Yes – they are clean. No – dude, they are clean enough.
14. Toss dry clothes into laundry basket. Take basket full of dry, clean-ish clothes and put it on top of your bed, which will surely force you to fold them before going to sleep.
15. Remove newly washed clothes and throw them in the dryer. Again, pick a setting that corresponds with you present mood. (I tend to prefer Mostly Dry/Medium Heat/Fluff.)
16. Decide the old, wet clothes piled on top of the dryer now need to be rewashed because Febreeze won’t cover up that mold smell (trust me). See step #7.
17. Now you’re tired, and despite the buzzer alerting you every 15 minutes that a load of laundry has completed its cycle, you’ve already decided that tomorrow will be the day you finish your laundry. For real. (This also means you can skip folding the basket of clean-ish clothes on the bed and just put it on the ground next to your closet.)
18. Wake up the following morning and retrieve clothing as necessary from the dryer. Repeat for 3 to 4 days.
19. When roommate/spouse tells you they need to do their laundry and they start asking you annoying, inconsiderate questions like, “Do you know when you’ll be done with the washer and dryer?” tell them you’re “Right on top of that, Rose!” even if you’re not really on top of it.
20. At some point during the next couple of days, acknowledge your laundry situation. Set the dryer to 30 minutes/Tumble Press. Walk away. This will give you enough time to completely forget about doing laundry for another week.
21. Do not return to laundry area again until you have acquired another loads-worth of dirty laundry. Realize that you’ve been putting your dirty clothes in the basket of unfolded clean-ish clothes, which you never folded after removing from dryer two-plus weeks ago.
22. Start over at #1 and repeat steps as necessary. (Alternative: wait for your roommate/spouse to remove your clothes, fold them for you and place them in your room.)

Words of Wisdom, or Lies Our Parents Told Us

1. “Your face will stick that way.”
Uh, no it won’t. I’ve made plenty of awesome faces before and I have not found a way to make my face stick in any of those positions. This was one of those parentisms that I heard at least once a day as a child. I was the kid who spent hours contorting her face and crossing her eyes in various unnatural ways to impress my friends and serve as entertainment during my parents’ dinner parties. Although it took me many years, I have finally perfected the one eye crossed look, so maybe “your face will stick that way” isn’t entirely untrue.

2. “The Boogieman isn’t real.”
Yes, he is. He lives in the dark corners of all my fears and anxieties, and one of these days he is going to pop out of the slightly ajar closet in my room and eat my toes.

3. “Only boring people are bored.”
I’m bored right now. Am I boring? Don’t answer that. When we were growing up, my sister and I had a babysitter named Faye who used to say this to us. Whenever I approached her with those fateful three words, “I am bored,” her answer was always the same, “Well get un-bored! Only boring people are bored!” Boring people might be bored a lot, but you know what? Super interesting and awesome people are bored a lot too because super interesting and awesome shit just doesn’t happen regularly enough to keep their attention. Ha, so there! Your move, babysitter, your move.

4. “Someday, you could be President!”
It’s 1992, an election year, and I am eight years old. One day, instead of going outside for recess, I stayed inside to make friendship bracelets (for my friends who were outside playing during recess, I guess?) and I started asking my 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Englebright, about the presidents. I wanted to know specifics—what kind of toys do presidents like, do they watch TV, what are their favorite colors, do they carry guns or ninja swords? As my teacher patiently answered all of my questions, she proceeded to tell me that just about anyone could be President, “You could even be the first female President,” she said. I remember thinking I must be infinitely special for her to tell me this until the next day when she decided to incorporate a lesson plan about Presidents (undoubtedly spurred by my questioning) and told the entire class, “Someday, one of you, any of you, could be President!” Seriously? Anyone? I was dejected. As I grew older I realized that my teacher was partially right, just about any asshat could end up as the President.

4a. “You can be anything you want to be.”
I made it pretty far believing that this was true, and I’m sure this belief is directly related to why I still believe I'll one day be a ("real") writer, but that’s not the point here. Before I wanted to be a writer I wanted to be a veterinarian, before that I wanted to be a singer, before that I wanted to an actress, before that it was a Ninja Turtle, and before that it was a pony. I truly believed I could be all or any of those things. I wonder what my parents would have said if I came home and told them I wanted to be a pterodactyl, or a bulldozer, or…a “shovel”?

5. “Don’t go outside with wet hair.”
This is an old wives’ tale that I will forever blame for my perpetually dry hair. But guess what? Scientists discovered that, like most wives’ tales, this one was totally made up. These days, if I leave the house with dry hair, it’s abnormal. I see wet hair almost as a courtesy, like, “Hey, just wanted to share with you the evidence of my shower this morning. I realize my cleanliness, or lack there of, might be an issue some days, but not today!”

6. “_____ are just jealous of you!”
That group of 7th grade girls who spent a week putting fake love notes from the cutest, most popular boy in school in my locker did not do it because they were jealous of me. And I didn’t fail to get invited to the party of the year because the hosts were jealous of me. And I didn’t get laid off and spend six months searching for a job because someone was jealous of me. Seriously, thank god I was born with low self-esteem because otherwise I might be walking around acting like another Kardashian.

7. “Money can’t buy you happiness.”
I don’t know about you, but a mansion on the beach with a live-in gourmet cook and masseuse, a collector’s library of first edition books, and a little person with an Italian accent who brings me a frozen cocktail with one of those tiny umbrellas whenever I blow into a conch shell would make me pretty damn happy. Don’t get deep with me about this; complicating happiness with silly things like morals is so unnecessary. So, let’s be real: Mansion + beach + cook + masseuse + books + little person + tiny umbrellas = Happiness. You might call that shallow and materialistic, but I call it blissfully content — toe-may-toe, to-my-toe.

8. Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny and The Tooth Fairy
A part of my childhood ended when I suddenly I realized that all of these gift-bearing creatures looked a lot like my dad. Nevertheless, I can’t wait to have kids so that I can endlessly threaten them with, “If you don’t go to bed, Santa Claus won’t bring you any presents,” even if it’s May. The Easter Bunny was always confusing to me because, why would a human-sized rabbit come to your house and hide eggs? As long as candy was involved, I didn’t question anything – but for the record, I always knew the Easter Bunny was a sham. (And, okay, so what if I still sort of believe in the Tooth Fairy?)

9. “Boys only want one thing.”
My dad used to say this to me during my teen years. “Now, remember, boys only want one thing, and I know this because I was once a boy too, even though that’s hard to believe now, I was, so I know. [Awkward pause.] Just don’t be stupid, okay?” While it didn’t take me long to figure out what that one thing was for sure, I think this statement is only half true. Now that I live with a boy, I mean, man, I’m pretty sure that there could be more than one thing that they want…I’ll let you know when I figure it out.

10. “Going to college will make you a better decision maker.”
Bullshit. Going to college did not make me a better decision maker. The only thing I learned in college was how to make really bad decisions, barely avoid the repercussions and then do exactly the same thing again the next weekend. Of course, in a really roundabout way, perhaps by learning to make bad decisions well, I did become a better overall decision maker. However, I doubt this is what my high school counselor meant while he was convincing us all to spend four years drunk, I mean, go to college.

12. “I promise, it won’t hurt.”
Whenever someone says, “I promise it won’t hurt,” just know that whatever it is will hurt like shit.

13. “You’ll grow out of this phase.”
Oh really? Well I am about to enter my 13th year of what a school nurse once referred to as my “awkward phase,” so this is obviously a lie. I’m guessing there are some things we may never grow out of, or, in my case, awkwardness is more of an unfortunate characteristic as opposed to a phase.

14. Almost anything said, seen or practiced in Sex Education classes.
No, a bird doesn’t bring me my period, and yes, I am pissed about it. Also, forcing us to practice putting condoms on bananas did nothing but provide us with unrealistic expectations, which would be met with massive disappointment later in life. Am I right? Of course I am.

15. “These are the best years of your life.”
This phrase was uttered by almost every adult I knew at one point during the course of my high school experience. I know they were telling me to cherish my youth, but the only thing I ever thought was, “Really? These are the best years of my life? Really? Great, I guess I’ll just quit now, while I’m apparently ahead, because if life doesn’t get any better than field parties and 6 a.m. detention for chewing gum in the halls, then I don’t care to go on.” I can safely say that my high school years were not the best years of my life and I doubt I will ever look back and feel differently.



What lies did you hear growing up? Tell me about them in the comments. Please. I'm not ashamed to admit that I live for comments - so don't hold back.

I'm Super Busy and Important...

This title is true if it is opposite day, which it is not.

I know that the 25 people following this blog, and the three people who actually read it, have been tossing and turning because I have been seemingly absent from my blog for quite awhile now.

It's been 20 days. That's almost three weeks.

Given these numbers, I understand why you might be mad at me, why you might decide to give up on this blog, and why you might want to send me hate mail (I've never received hate mail before, but it seems like something important people tend to get - so, naturally, I'm expecting some very soon.). But before you start fashioning grammatically incorrect protest signs about Quinnterruption, please know that I have every intention to turn this blog around. No, it will not be a 'glob', but it will be more regular, kind of like a bowel movement, only prettier, and less...er, um...smelly.

This new promise of regularity should be taken as seriously as all of my other promises, which I have upheld completely to not at all. So, if you gave up on me, please, come back. If you feel as though I no longer deserve your loyalty as a reader, then I urge you to reconsider your obviously stupid feeling. You can't quit me. You can try, but you won't be able to because that will just make you a quitter at quitting and nobody likes a quitting quitter.

In an effort to suck empathy from you via distraction, I'm sharing a few of the things that have been occupying my productive time over the last 20 days:

1. By browsing this site, I've become an expert in the field of child psychological by identifying why some people (read: serial killers) grow up to hate their parents:

2. I've been attempting to contact my long-lost group of BFFs after finding this picture of our last reunion:
Needless to say, we had a falling out over what constituted as "liquor." Of course, it might have also had something to do with the fact that I was always drunk - but, hey, hindsight is 20/20, am I right?

3. As usual, I'm always busy learning about how to call on magical unicorn powers:

4. This sentence: "My passion for you grows like mold: unavoidable due to exposure and neglect."

5. I've been rejoicing over the fact that someone has finally sought revenge on Subway's "Five. Five Dollar. Five Dollar Foot Long." campaign from hell. (Whether it was intentional or not hardly matters.)

6. I'm also very busy increasing my hair-esteem on daily basis:

7. I can't stop listening to people sing the dirty words I type. So neato! (Beware: You may lose hours of your life to this website.)

8. Also cutting into my productive time: Regularly giving into my very large Etsy obsession.

9. Okay, I'll admit it - my latest career kick has also contributed to my lack of posts. Here's the deal: I think I should get a second job as an official wedding guest. Oh come on, not an escort - get your mind out of the gutter! - I'm talking about something I could actually make money doing, like, entertainment in the form of unintentional comedic relief. I've attended nearly a dozen weddings this year and managed to embarrass myself in one way or another at all of them. This usually works in the favor of the bride and groom (I'm like the free side-show circus that came with the band). But last weekend a wedding in Santa Fe proved once again that yes, I can injure myself by tripping on flat surfaces and red wine does in fact stain white wedding dresses. But seriously, most of the time, I'm a big hit at weddings - invite me to yours and I promise I won't bring a gift, but I will embarrass myself for the sake of your entertainment.

10. My camera broke and it wasn't my fault. WIN!

11. I had to stop everything I was doing and read this beautiful insomniac rant.

12. If you want to know the real reason why I haven't blogged, see #13.

13. Made you look. See #14.

14. Ugh. I guess you really want to know. Fine. Let's just say someone built a damn in my writing brain and broke my funny bone. I'm still in the ICU, but the doctors have high hopes and expect me to fully recover in no time, which is really good news considering how I've had my head up my ass for three weeks.


There you have it. All 14 excuses, I mean, valid reasons, for my blogony. I should be a politician; or maybe I should just be David Letterman. Anyway, I hope you'll understand, and stay tuned for more Quinnterruptions.

Incomplete Thoughts

Words That Make My Mouth Feel Weird When I Say Them:

• Schtick
• Niche (Is it ‘neesh’ or ‘nitch’? Either way, people will judge you based on how you pronounce this stupid word.)
• Touche (It’s just “touch” with an ‘e’ but I always say it like “Olé!” and that usually makes me feel like a tool.)
• Jalapeno
• Hue
• Sauvignon
• Philanthropic (Reading it, I’m okay, but saying it in conversation makes my tongue feel like it’s doing somersaults.)
• Parfait
• Ampersand
• Ellipses (I get a lisp just looking at this word.)
• Cutlery
• Acquiesce
• Tyrotoxism (means to be poisoned by cheese, I swear I didn’t make it up.)
• Supercilious

Are you there Dove? It’s me, Smelly…
Dove has a new line of products that focus on scent, and their new campaign makes me feel like I must naturally smell bad. But, really, why would I want every part of my body to smell the same? Not that I have anything against the smell of grapefruit and lemongrass, which is apparently an energizing scent when combined, but who wants their hair to smell the same as their armpits?


Clumsy Strikes Again
I wasn’t in any kind of rush, nor was I distracted in any sense, just trying to open the car door and get in—something I do every day. Unfortunately, it’s the “open the door” part that tricked me this time. As I grabbed the handle, my overwhelming strength (let’s just call it that) surprised me, causing the door to fling towards me and into my forehead. It was like I forgot how to get into a car, or as if I was in a fight scene from a movie only instead of someone else beating me up by opening a car door in my face, I was beating myself up (flashback: “Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself! Why are you hitting yourself, stupid? Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!”). As soon as my forehead made contact with the door, I felt my head fall back and my eyes swell with tears. Sniffling, I jumped in the car and drove away without looking to see if anyone had witnessed my door-to-head bunt. Now I have a raised bump and a slightly discolored (bruised) forehead for which my only explanation is: I opened a door on my face. Awesome.
(p.s. – This happened directly after my trip to the eye doctor. Even awesomer.)

Posting Status: Mostly Deleted

Maybe you've noticed that I haven't posted in the past seven days. Perhaps you've missed me. Or maybe you stopped reading this blog a long time ago and so it makes no difference to you if the posts are regular or not. Either way, I haven't been posting. It's not because I haven't been writing, or because I've been occupied with more important endeavors. It's because I've been really busy making sure that my 'Delete' button gets a good workout (at least one of us is getting exercise). So, yes, basically, I've been writing a lot of crap.

Here are 20 things I either wrote about or thought about writing about in the past week:

1. Deleted.
2. Sleep talking and walking.
3. Deleted.
4. Rules of Leaving: Part Deux.
5. Deleted.
6. Deleted.
7. Deleted.
8. This quote: “When aspiring writers ask for advice I tell them: ‘Exhaust all other possibilities.’ Then if all you can do is write, never give up.” (-Louise Erdrich)
9. Deleted.
10. Deleted.
11. Oma’s Dampferstamm.
12. The Kathy Griffin Ratio: Women & The Funny.
13. Deleted.
14. How to dissect the world one Golden Girls reference at a time.
15. Bathroom Politics.
16. Deleted.
17. Deleted.
18. Skin tags—can’t you just cut them off?
19. Goldfish and tang.
20. Deleted.

Okay, last week sucked. But I have unreasonably high hopes for the next seven days, so try to stay tuned for some worthwhile interruptions.

This Heat Is Hot

For those of you who don’t live nearby, and don’t watch The Weather Channel 24/7, it’s been impossibly hot in Kansas City. With 47 counties under excessive heat warnings, not even the notoriously hottest places in the world have come close to matching Kansas City’s paralyzing heat index of 110 degrees this week. I love hot weather, but most Kansas Citians do not; in fact, they are big babies about hot weather. I hail from the Southeast, which means I’m used to excessive heat and humidity so thick you feel like mold could grow on your forehead if you’re outside for too long. But people here go indoors and refuse to venture out when the heat gets too hot. I’m not saying it’s not hot, because it is, painfully hot, but it’s not like you’re going to evaporate if you go outside. Of course, I’m a huge baby when it comes to Kansas City winters, and everyone makes fun of me for not being able to handle myself in ice and snow, so it’s only fair for the tables to turn as the seasons change.

I can think of lots of things to do outside when it's hot, even when Gary Lezak and Brian Busby (our proud local weathermen) scare everybody by going into dramatic meteorologist mode with their you-might-die extreme weather reports (it’s tornado season, can you blame them for being a little eager?). To prove my point, I’ve created a list of activities for you and the family to enjoy, which wouldn’t be possible without this heat.

1. Make sweat angels. Lie on a concrete sidewalk or driveway and raise your arms up and down while pushing your feet in and out. Stand up and see whose angel last the longest before drying up.

2. Lemonade stands are so out. Make popsicles out of random stuff and sell them on the street (people will buy anything cold when it’s hot). Some ideas: toothpaste popsicles, ketchup popsicles, toilet water popsicles, and, my personal favorite, spit popsicles.

3. Buy a really crappy above ground pool. My neighbors did this and it has been a pleasure to look at that plastic blue siding all year-round.

4. If the “buying” or “above ground” part of #3 turns you off, grab a shovel and dig a hole in your back yard. It might take awhile for it to fill up with water, but when it does—oh boy, everyone’s going to want to play in your mud pool!

5. Decorate the sidewalk. Who needs chalk when you have sweat and food coloring?

6. Stand on top of an office building in the middle of the day and throw water balloons at people walking by who look really hot. They won’t say ‘thank you,’ but just know that’s what they really mean.

7. Fry an egg on the sidewalk. I don’t know, they do it in the movies and it always looks kind of cool. Once it’s fried, put it in an envelope and send it to KMBC or KSHB—Lezak and Busby will go crazy and it will totally make the evening news.

8. Buy a boat, park it in your driveway and sit in it. The rest is up to your imagination.

9. Go to a local “Cooling Center” and rub elbows with a sweaty homeless man.

10. Kansas City is the self-proclaimed “City of Fountains.” So, go swimming with some stone statues that spit water.

Disclaimer: Quinnterruption is not responsible for any of the repercussions of the activities listed above. No, seriously. Don’t even try to blame me if you get arrested, suffer heat stroke, or severe disappointment. The heat makes people crazy, and I have heat on my side—so, yeah, tell that to your lawyer.

List-Making Therapy

I make to-do lists when I get overwhelmed or stressed out. But sometimes instead of a to-do list, I end up making a different kind of list; for instance, the Unemployment Pros and Cons list I referred to in yesterday’s post. Occasionally, the lists I make are humorous and just a way for me to articulate whatever frustration is plaguing me at the moment, such as: Things That Asshats Do to Become Asshats, Reasons My Sister and I Should Never Live Together Again, Why the Olson Twins Suck at Life, and 20 Endearing Ways to Embarrass Yourself (the last one could actually be 50 ways as I’m quite experienced in this realm). Anyway, below is one I wrote today and decided to share.


Things That Will Always Make Me Feel Stupid No Matter How Much Learnin’ I Do:

1. The Stock Market. Numbers, math, numbers, abbreviated words, tiny print, percentages, points, numbers, math, down, up…I’m already tired.

2. Insurance. This is what I know: I have a plastic card that has my name and a code on it and this is what lets me play $30 at the doctor’s instead of $3,000.

3. How to change my oil, or a tire—actually, I’m not even certain that I know how to replenish my washer fluid.

4. How to drive in the snow without causing an accident. Yeah, I have an SUV, but I’m from Virginia, so I don’t get it.

5. Mortgages. When I was little I thought a mortgage was something that had to do with funeral homes and cemeteries – oh, the irony! While I still don’t understand mortgages, I might one day, thanks to HGTV.

6. Taxes. Given one through five, I don’t think I need to elaborate on this one.

7. Plumbing. No, seriously, from the disposal to the washer to the toilet—where is it all going, and why the hell does it make the basement flood?

8. Directions. I am directionally-challenged, so giving me compass instructions is pointless. If people don’t say things like, “hang a Louie and then turn at the sub shop with the space ship sign,” then I’m lost. I never know what direction North, South, East or West is in relation to where I am because I’m too busy concentrating so that my directional dyslexia doesn’t cause me to turn right when you just told me to turn left.

9. How to make a good pot of coffee. I blame a lack of patience for measuring portions.

10. This blog. I don’t really understand it. But if you do, please fill me in.