The Ugliest Christmas Sweater Party

A Shorter Short Story

"An ugly Christmas sweater party is as original as depression in dentists," I said.

"My dad's a dentist," he said.

"Well, I'd rather go to the dentist than go to that stupid ugly Christmas sweater party," I said.

"My dad's not depressed," he said.

"Whatever," I said. "So can I borrow a sweater from your mom?"

"My mom's dead," he said.

"Well, shit. This is awkward,” I said, because I had real problems. “How am I going to find a Christmas sweater that's ugly enough?"

He pulled out his phone and started kneading out a text message.

"Are you looking up where to find ugly Christmas sweaters?" I asked.

"No," he said without looking up.

"I bet your dad is depressed. I mean, if your mom is dead and everything...and he's a dentist," I said.

He still didn't look up from his phone. It must be important, I thought, even though I couldn't imagine something more important.

"I can't go with you," he said.

"What?”

“Yeah, to the ugly Christmas sweater party. I can’t go anymore,” he said. His voice was calm, nonchalant.

“But…why not? You promised!"

"Sorry, something came up," he said, tapping away again.

"All of a sudden? Like what?"

Before he could answer me his phone started vibrating with an incoming call and a familiar jingle played. Did he really have “Little Drummer Boy” as his ring tone? Registering my disapproval, he looked at me with hard yellow eyes shaped like splinters felt. When he answered his phone he held a stubby index finger up to my face. As I was trying to decipher whether that finger meant shut up or hold on, he walked away from me.


I went to the ugly Christmas sweater party alone. I wore all black, because that's what you do when things die.

Number 69

A Shorter Short Story

“Mark, can you be a dear and tell me what cartridges you’re using?” Eleanor asked, shifting around the perimeter of Mark’s cubical. Eleanor was old, too old to be working, according to Mark.

“What cartridges? You mean printer cartridges?” Mark asked. Eleanor rolled her eyes and jutted out one hip in a way that would have been considered sassy in her time, half a century before Mark’s time.

“Well of course, silly. What else would I be talking about?” she said. Mark wondered if she was flirting with him.

Mark knew what cartridges he was using but he didn’t want to tell Eleanor. It was his second day on the job and he could sense his coworkers listening, their ears straining against the silence and stretching over the tops of their cubicles.

“Uh, well, I—um—I-I’m not sure I need more—I just—” Mark was uncomfortable with his immaturity, that was the problem, he thought—to most people it was just a number.

Eleanor was standing behind him attempting to open his printer. “Here—let me take a look. I’m pretty sure you have 69," she said. "Oh dear, I don’t have my glasses, can you see that? Does it say 69? Without my glasses 9's and 6's always look the same to me!” Eleanor grabbed a pen and a notepad, ready to jot down his answer.

“Yes, 69.” Mark said, his voice squeaking on the nine. He looked away hoping to hide his flushed face.

“Pardon?” Eleanor looked at him, her face was like a map with deep lines leading to a treasure chest of more eager and antagonizing expressions. Mark wondered if this was a joke, a ritualistic hazing all his coworkers had undergone and now it was his turn to endure the awkward moment. Or, maybe, Eleanor really was flirting with him—he thought she had been overly friendly since he started, two days ago.

“I said 69! I’m using 69 printer cartridges!” Mark said in one shrill, anxious breath.

“Okay, good. Thank you. See that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Eleanor patted Mark on the shoulder. “So, you’re doing 69,” she said, writing it on her notepad. “Okay, I’ll let you have 69 for now but you might have to switch to another printer if 69 is on back order. I don’t know why—it’s just the darndest thing—but 69 is popular so it’s hardly ever in stock,” she paused for a moment, staring at her notepad while Mark sank deeper into his chair, willing the image a naked Eleanor out of his head. “Well, I suppose I need to find out if anyone else is doing 69 with you...” Eleanor looked around for a moment as if considering her next victim before walking back to the reception desk.

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.

Afterlife Insurance (Short Story/Fiction)

Woman Causes Fatal Accident – Sweaty Feet To Blame

That was the headline of the article that ran in the newspaper the day after my death.

Yes, I’m dead.

How, then, am I talking to you? I’m not sure. I guess you’ll have to die to find out, but I wouldn’t recommend it because so far, death is boring and unfair.

Now you ask, what happened? I’ll tell you.

It was a normal day and I was walking home from work in the most uncomfortable shoes. Actually, the shoes that caused my death weren’t uncomfortable so much as constricting, and after a full day of sitting in these shoes I realized that my feet were suffocating.

It’s true that Plantar Hyperhidrosis, or sweaty feet disorder, runs in my family; however, I had not been diagnosed mainly because I have dainty, adorable feet which make it impossible to believe that I could ever suffer from such a thing. Besides, my foot sweat always smelled good, kind of like a strange, but delicious combination of nutmeg and dill.

I briefly remember thinking I should remove my shoes and walk barefoot because my feet were slipping and sliding like clumsy fat ladies on ice. What happened is somewhat unclear, because death will do that to you, but the next thing I remember is meeting with a surly insurance representative. Apparently this is the first thing that happens to you when you die—you meet with an insurance rep who tells you the details of your death and confirms your pre-existing conditions before allowing you into the afterlife.


“What-what happened? Where am I?” I asked.

A middle-aged woman in a beige, polyester suit, sitting behind a desk looked up from the newspaper she was reading.

“You’re in the pre-afterlife phase, you won’t even remember this, so that’s all you need to know for now. Let’s see…hold on while I get your file,” the insurance rep said. She was surrounded by overstuffed filing cabinets and stacks of paper covered the surface of her entire desk. “Aha! Here it is…Okay, apparently you were walking on the sidewalk when you bent down to remove your shoes and wipe your feet off in the grass and—Ewww!”

“Ew? Oh! No, no, it sounds grosser than it is. You see, Plantar Hyperhidrosis runs in my family and—”

“Oh really? I see...Please hold while I update your pre-existing conditions chart.”

“My what?” I asked.

The insurance rep pulled some papers out of a manila envelope and held it over the paper so that I couldn’t see whatever she was scribbling down.

“Don’t worry about it. Look, I literally have a busload of people coming in for their appointment in about ten minutes. Do you want to know how you died or not?”

“Yes, of course, tell me everything,” I said.

She turned back to my file and rifled through the contents before pulling a newspaper out.

“All right, where was I…okay, it says here you put your sweaty—ugh, god, I’m sorry but that’s just really gross,” she said with an exaggerated gag. “Anyway, you put your sweaty shoes back on and continued walking but you slipped, because of your sweaty feet, and fell into a lane of oncoming traffic.”

“So a car hit me?”

“Um, no, actually, a bus hit you.”

“Oh my god.”

“Yep, pronounced dead at the scene.”

“Was anyone else hurt?”

“Look honey, I’m really not supposed to get too far into the details, but you seem sweet, despite your sweaty feet—”

“Excuse me! But you’re being extremely unprofessional here. Please stop talking about my sweaty feet.” I was about to put my feet on her desk so she could smell them and realize they weren’t that gross.

“Right, of course—ha! Where are my manners? Yes, of course, other people were hurt. After the bus driver hit you, he swerved into another lane and a trailer hit him head-on. Everyone on the bus died—not that many, only about six people—but, like I said, they are going to be here any minute now, so…”

“So my sweaty feet killed not only me, but other people too?”

“Yes. Look, sweetie, don’t beat yourself up over it. After you fill out this paperwork you won’t remember any of this and you can go on to whatever your destiny is or wherever your path leads you, your fate, your—ahem, your ‘God’—whatever you believe.”

The insurance rep handed me a stack of paperwork as thick as the Bible.

“So, then, does this mean you’re dead too?” I asked.

“Yep.”

“How did—”

“Cancer.”

“Why are you—”

“Why am I here talking to you about afterlife insurance instead of enjoying some kind of paradise or heaven like they show in the movies? Ha! God lord, you’re all the same…listen, sugar, it doesn’t work like that.”

“Well, what am I supposed to—”

“Ah, stop! How could you possibly have more questions? Go fill out your paperwork. That’s all you’re supposed to do. That takes you to your next step. Usually, if you don’t have too many pre-existing conditions, you move on to your afterlife right away.”

“Well, I don’t think I have any—”

“Let’s see. Whoopsies! Looks like you do have quit a few, actually. Well, you might have a bit of a wait period, but nothing too extreme—not like eternity! Hahaha!” She had a wild laugh, and I imagined that’s what a hyena might sound like, but I can’t be certain because I didn’t live long enough to ever hear a hyena laugh.

“What does it say? I didn’t think I had any pre-existing conditions!”

“The good news is that you had insurance—crappy insurance—but you had insurance, which means your afterlife won’t be spent paying off the debt you acquired like a certain "Man in the Mirror." Yeah, I hope you didn't like his music because I'll tell you right now that you won't be hearing much of it in the afterlife, sham on! Ha-ha!"

"Uh, okay...and the bad news?" I asked.

"What was I saying...oh, right, the bad news, all right. So the bad news is that your pre-existing conditions, like your sweaty foot disease and the fact that you’re a woman, will make it harder for you to start your afterlife right away, and you probably won’t be able to get new insurance…”

“What? New insurance? I’m dead! Why would I need insurance now?”

She looked at me and sighed, as if to say, I’m sorry you’re too stupid to get this but that’s not my problem.

“Oh honey, the private insurance companies have been collecting from the dead since the early nineties when they realized they’d have to deal with health care reform eventually. And now that reform is actually, well, almost happening, they’ve become even more strict about enforcing afterlife insurance.”

“But-but…I don’t have any money, I-I don’t have anything,” I said.

“Hahaha! Oh, you are silly! Of course you don’t have anything, you don’t need anything here—you’re dead, honey! Money doesn’t have meaning in the afterlife, so the insurance companies use time as currency—they take a small fraction of your afterlife, which you haven’t been to yet, as payment for the afterlife insurance. Ugh, you know what? I’ve said too much. Look, sweetheart, it’s complicated, and I don’t have time to explain it all to you now, but basically the dead have to have insurance in order to get to their afterlife, which will happen as soon as you fill out your paperwork and your application is processed. But, this is all explained, in detail, in your paperwork,” she said, slamming my file closed. “I’m sorry, but I really must go because my next appointment is here.”

Suddenly everything was dark, but it didn’t feel dark—it just felt like nothing. There was the sound of a slamming door and when I opened my eyes, which I didn’t know were closed, I was in an all white room with the same florescent lighting as the insurance rep’s office. For a moment I thought it was some kind of heaven, but there was a long table with one chair and in the center of the table was my bible of paperwork and two pens.

I don’t know how long I’ve been here but I know it’s been at least several days in the living world. At one point a loud, booming voice from above told me nothing would happen until the paperwork was finished—I thought it was God until I realized there was an intercom system. I’ve been testing things out here. Sometimes I run full speed into a wall, or I pinch myself until I think I can almost feel something but I never really do. I used the pens to draw a picture of mountains on the wall, it reminded me of pictures I've seen of Switzerland. As I was putting the finishing touches on my mural, I turned away for just a second and when I looked back the mural was gone; it just disappeared.

Eventually a newspaper appeared on the table. It was dated November 10, 2009—the day after I died. The front page was splattered with headlines about health care reform, and just when I was feeling grateful for something to read I noticed a tiny Post-It sticking out from the center section of the paper. The Post-It read: This is real. You are dead. Finish your paperwork. Afterlife is waiting. It was stuck on top of my obituary.

They (whoever they are) thought I was in denial but I know I have to be dead because my feet aren’t sweating, and they don’t smell like nutmeg and dill anymore—they smell like nothing like everything else.

I can’t explain why I can’t do the paperwork because I don’t really know. But I do know someone is watching me, waiting for me to hurry up and be done, I feel nothing but the presence of something or someone—I can sense frustration. I suppose I like to think of it as my own personal form of protest, like Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist” only different. By refusing to complete the paperwork I’m denying the process completion, I’m debasing the system. I could be a hero, I think. But then I remember, dead people don’t become heroes.

Window Watching

Two years ago I lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment on the Plaza. It was my first brush with "city living." My desk was set up in what the leasing office referred to as a "sun room" and it faced out towards Brush Creek. Many days were spent sitting at my desk, watching people and the traffic on Ward Parkway. Below is a brief (revised) excerpt from something I wrote during this time. I’m not sure how to classify it, so let’s just call it true-ish fiction.


Looking out this window is like looking into a glass display case at a department store. You see things you might want, consider needing, but can’t bring yourself to investigate further. Cars race side by side, honking out their frustration. I know they just need to be heard by someone. I hear you, I say. But no one listens. I see possibilities, things I want to know about, but my interest is lost in the effort it takes to get outside.

It is a big bay window, though there isn't a bay to speak of, this being a landlocked state. I do have a river in view but it’s more of a polluted creek. Sometimes I imagine myself gazing out of this window onto a different scene, but I never go to the trouble of envisioning a view. No, I prefer to imagine myself imagining. There's less disappointment that way.

I hear other city noises from this window. Sirens from ambulances, fire trucks and police cars whip through the air and the brief moments of silence are interrupted with blaring car alarms. I don’t mind the noises. I’m curious about the carnage. Once, there was a police car in the middle of the street, blocking traffic both ways. The officer was bent over examining the pavement. I watched the scene unfold as if it was a movie and my window was the screen. The officer picked up a white trash bag that had been abandoned, haphazardly left to rest on the streaming yellow lines. From where I sat, a dark, weighty object appeared to be inside the plastic bag. A lost appendage, suicidal squirrel, contaminated clothing—what was inside? The officer wore gloves that made him look guilty even though I knew it was for a purpose: fingerprints or DNA, or maybe the bag held a toxic material that would burn the skin of anyone who touched it. Holding the plastic bag away from his body, the officer dropped it into his trunk. When he drove away traffic flooded as if nothing ever happened.

There was another time, late at night, when I saw a couple arguing from my window. I turned off all the lights so I wouldn’t be seen, grabbed a bag of chips and pulled up the blinds. It was cold outside and I watched their words freeze in the air until the space between them seemed dense and impenetrable. Even I could see from my window five stories above that she was taller than him by a head. I recognized the man as the guy from the sixth floor who was always sweaty and carrying a gym bag (I called him cranky workout guy), but the woman was unfamiliar to me. I wondered if they were arguing because she was so tall, or maybe it was because he was so short, or maybe it was because they loved each other, once. The man sat on the building's designated bench holding his head in his hands as the woman climbed into a car that seemed too small to carry all of her rage. I kept watching, waiting for the man to move. When I woke up it was morning. They were both gone.

I also like watching bathrobe lady. I don’t know bathrobe lady’s name, but I imagine it to be something like Ethel or Marge. When the weather isn’t bad, she wears a housedress and carries her cats outside like two footballs, one under each arm. She sits on the bench, smoking skinny cigarettes and petting her cats. When she walks through the halls inside, she hums a tune without a melody like she wants to announce her presence to those trying to ignore her. The only interaction I've ever had with bathrobe lady happened as I was standing outside, trying to light a cigarette and she was walking inside. When she saw me struggling she put one cat down, holding it still between her feet and said, "This will kill you when you get old," while cupping her hand around my lighter to help block the wind.

And then there was Gene. I called him Walker Texas Drunkard, which turned out to be a pretty accurate nickname, and I watched from my window as people pitied him and held doors. Gene was the middle-aged drunk with a walker who fumbled his way in and out of the building while yelling obscenities at the cab drivers that took him everywhere he went, which appeared to be mostly bars and liquor stores. We met in the elevator once, he was carrying a heavy white plastic bag; we were both going down. He talked about loneliness nonchalantly and smelled like cauliflower and malt liquor. I was never curious enough to ask why a man his age was using a walker, but as I held his arm and guided him down the stairs he told me a botched surgical procedure, lots of pain pills and too many bottles of Scotch were to blame. He slurred, spit, stumbled and swayed as I tried to steady him in a way his walker couldn’t. We talked briefly about his broadcast career and his glory days. I asked questions to avoid the awkward acknowledgment of his blatant instability and he gave me sad answers with a smile. As I sat Gene down on the bench I asked if he was going to be okay and he looked at me and laughed. I asked again, this time with more purpose, if he was sure he was going to be okay—all I needed was the peace of mind so I could leave him and not feel bad. But he saw right through me; I was just like everyone else. Then he heaved his plastic bag onto his lap and said, “Thank you, Kim. I’ll be just fine right here.”

I know all of the people who live in the building from my window. I know when they go grocery shopping, I know their visitors, I know their parking spots and how often they leave and come back. I developed a story for each of them and I don’t want to spoil it by learning the truth. For the most part I keep my communications to quick head nods and forced smiles to discourage any worthwhile interaction. I go around knowing as much as I want to know. I tell myself it’s better this way as I sit at my window and wait, I'm always waiting now, for something interesting to watch.

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.

Creative Advice

If you live and work as a "creative" then you've likely been the recipient of often well-intended but mostly empty and unhelpful advice. This advice usually comes at the expense of yet another creative meltdown where you look at your work and wonder why the hell you keep trying. Well, we all know why we keep trying—because a.) we can't help it, and b.) it feels unnatural to do anything else. It's not because someone once told you to "never give up" or to “try harder.” It's because every time you think about giving up and resigning yourself to a future of desk jobs where you crunch numbers and prepare TPS Reports, you manage to feign a streak of creative inspiration that propels you out of the meltdown and into temporary awesomeness (at least until your next meltdown).

Successful people love to give advice. Hell, I love to give advice and I’m not even successful (but oh boy, I’ve got a few pointers that will really make a difference when you make your next set of macramé pot holders!). We all go through phases in our own lives where “GIVE ME ADVICE” seems to be tattooed on our foreheads. During the time that I was unemployed this year (ahem, most of this year), I heard a lot of advice. Some of the advice I got was helpful like, “if duct tape won’t fix it, it is definitely broken,” and, “don’t bite the hand that feeds you, even if they insist on feeding you shit.” It was the vague, general and ultimately shallow advice that seemed to eat away at my soul everyday—things like, "be yourself - that's enough," or, "you have to believe in yourself, and then your career will take off."

You know what?

Shut the hell up.

I’m not giving up because I’ve already made it this far, I can’t avoid being myself (although sometimes I wish I could), and I believe in myself enough to know that you are full of shit.

So how about that?

What you got now?

Yeah…that’s what I thought—don’t you bring that weak Chicken Soup for the Soul shit ‘round here no more!

(Sorry, my outbursts are unpredictable lately.)

Anyway, being the obviously harsh judge of friendly advice that I am, I came across this golden nugget of Ira Glass advice that made me heave a sigh of relief, and for a moment, allowed me to forgive myself for all of the mediocre work I seem to be vomiting out on an uncomfortably regular basis. I’m sure some of you have seen this before, or heard it, but the message is one we all need to be reminded of while calm and sane (i.e., before the regularly scheduled meltdowns occur).



“It takes a while; it’s going to take you awhile; it’s normal to take awhile. You just have to fight your way through that, okay? You will be fierce. You will be a warrior. And you will make things that aren’t as good as you know in your heart that you want them to be, but you just [have to keep] making one after another…”

Alright, now I'm going to go write a whole bunch of crap that—if I'm lucky—will make me cringe when I look back at it years from now.

Thanks, Ira.

Bathroom Politics

There is a certain amount of decorum expected when you walk into a ladies’ room, perhaps only because it says “Ladies Room” on the door, which seems to establish an atmosphere where ladylike behavior is expected. Based on my experience, I can only assume that the men’s room is an entirely different situation. Generally, I imagine groups of men peeing their names on the wall while others stand around the urinal as if it’s a magical fountain, talking about sports, plucking nose hairs, adjusting themselves, high-fiving each other, exchanging germs and doing other male-tastic things. I don’t get the feeling that there’s any unspoken sense of etiquette in a men’s room, other than to avoid looking left or right while “painting” your name on the wall. But in the ladies’ room, things are very different. For instance, we have stalls with locks—that’s our one option and there isn’t an alternative, such as an open trough, in which to relieve ourselves—and depending on the ladies’ room, sometimes there are little indulgences to be enjoyed, such as candles, Glade Plug-Ins, extra toilet paper, scented lotion and the seats are always down.

Of course, one of the drawbacks to this effort to maintain decorum in the ladies’ room is the propensity of passive aggressive behavior, which actualizes itself in the form of notes. There are notes on stall doors to tell you what to do with your feminine waste, notes above the toilet to remind you to ensure that all of your waste does in fact flush from sight, notes on the mirror to remind you to wash your hands, notes near the wash area to remind you to dispose of your paper towel in the appropriate receptacle, and notes on the door as you exit to remind you of your personal belongings in the event that you should be stupid enough to leave them in the bathroom. Despite always paying attention to the notes in every bathroom I’ve ever been in, I have never seen one as featured in Figure A below.

Figure A:

What kind of crazy pee-bandit instigated this type of note? When I read this, which is at least once every single day, I always think about the vague wording and how it’s strange that other women automatically know what this means while a man might look at it and think we were smearing poop on the walls. Basically, there’s a squatting sprinkle queen in my office building that is assaulting this one particular bathroom “DAILY! (sad face)” and what better way to encourage them to cease their pee-bandit ways than to post this handwritten note?

How many notes are in the men’s room? Probably none. Want to know why? Because they can pee standing up (incidentally, I’m amazed by how many things in life seem to come back to this one glaring disadvantage) and their tolerance for filth is exponentially higher in most cases. I know how women behave in a public restroom, and while I’ve experienced moments that left me genuinely disgusted and horrified, it’s a generally pleasant and polite atmosphere. However, I never really thought about what the men’s room must be like until I started sharing a bathroom with a man.

My boyfriend used to be responsible for cleaning the bathroom, I do my fair share of cleaning, but he was responsible for this one tiny room in our house because of his atrocious lack of ladylike behavior concerning the bathroom. I’ve come to realize that appropriate bathroom etiquette is an issue for most men, not just Steve, which only reconfirms my childhood belief that all boys are dirty, smelly dumbheads.

There is nothing worse than waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and dunking your ass in cold, dirty toilet water because the lid is up, and I think most women would agree with me on this specific type of unpleasantness. Steve and I have had many disagreements on this topic.

“If I have to lift the seat up, then why can’t you put it down?” Steve says.
“Because the seat and the lid should both always be down unless you are using the toilet!”
“But if men and women are equal, like you always say, then you should do your part in terms of lifting and lowering the lid of the toilet, right?”
“No! That’s not—no! This is a totally different issue. I’m not arguing about this anymore. Put the damn toilet seat down or I’m never making fried chicken for you ever again!”

When you share a bathroom with a man there is also the constant dusting of facial hair debris covering every surface, the dirty, discarded boxers and undershirts piled in the corner, once white bathmats are now beige because of carelessly muddy feet tracking dirt in, and don’t even get me started on replacing the empty roll of toilet paper with a full roll (not just setting it on top of the empty roll – this does not count). While my complaints are many, I never really considered the torture I was inflicting on the bathroom until the day the drain clogged.

“Um, so, I think there’s something wrong with the shower…” I said, drying my hair with a towel.
“What do you mean?” Steve said.
“Well, it just filled up with water while I was in there,” I said.
“The tub?”
“No, I was showering,” I said.
“Yeah, I get that, but the tub was filling up with water?” Steve said.
“Oh, yeah, the tub, like, it wasn’t draining,” I said, scrunching up my nose in a way that means I’m not dealing with it.
“Alright, I’ll fix it,” Steve said.

Steve grabbed some tools, went into the bathroom and closed the door. He had to close the door in order to keep the dog out—Bear likes to jump in the tub and lick the shampoo bottles (yes, we are really proud of how our dog is progressing)—but watching as he entered the bathroom with such conviction, tools in hand, ready to face the challenge, made it seem like he was embarking on a serious mission and the only thing missing was a plunger resting on his shoulder like a rifle. A few minutes later I could hear him.

“Oh my god—ugh! Sick! Ewww!” Then I heard the sound of draining water.
“Did you fix it?” I yelled from the couch. Steve walked out of the bathroom with his tools and into the kitchen.
“Uh, yeah.” He was washing his hands.
“What was the problem?”
“Well, I used an old pair of tweezers to reach down and clean out the drain and, yeah…I pulled out a bunch of hair and other shit I don’t know about.”
“Oh,” I said.
“So, it was really gross—it’s still in the trash if you want to see what I pulled out.”
“Ew, no way! Unless it was a beautiful baby unicorn or dinosaur artifacts, I’m not really interested,” I said.
“What do you mean ‘ew’? It’s your hair, your…stuff!”

After this event I began to realize that perhaps I contribute to dirtying the bathroom in a more subtle (er...ladylike?) way that I wasn’t aware of. I mean, it’s not like the glob of long, mangled blond hair that came out of our drain could have belonged to Steve. And I guess, maybe sometimes, I leave the counter (which isn’t really a counter, but rather a sink with a ledge) full of hair products and “other shit [he] doesn’t know about.” Okay, I will also admit to occasionally creating hair art on the shower walls, but only out of necessity and never out for fun. And sometimes I get a little sloppy with toothpaste, especially when I’m in a hurry (in my defense, the toothpaste usually ends up on me rather than caked on the sink).

Shortly after this drain discovery, in a moment of weakness, Steve caught me breaking my own rule of not immediately replacing the empty toilet paper roll. Yes, he caught me setting the new roll on top of the empty one, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen his eyes light up in the same way since. Now we share the duty of cleaning the bathroom, and I feel even more strongly that boys are, in fact, dirty, smelly dumbheads. As a result, I will sometimes leave a passive aggressive Post-It note on the mirror that is expertly disguised with loving wit and charm (and therefore harmless, and also surprisingly effective):

Hi honey!
The toilet is too gross to shit in.
Just FYI. K?
I love you SO much! :)
xoxoxxxxxxx
<3,
Me

WWYCD?

My dad, never a man of few words, has several phrases that he keeps in his back pocket and likes to use at the most infuriating moments. One of these phrases is, “be the bigger person,” which I know I heard at least a million times growing up because he found a way to work it into almost every tear-filled, dramatic moment I presented him with.

At age five:
Me: Daaaa-aaaad! Tori pushed me down and now I’m bleeding!
Dad: Why is your sister crying if she’s the one that pushed you down?
Me: Because I pushed her back.
Dad: That’s not what big sisters do, Quinn. You have to learn to be the bigger person.


For the longest time I’m pretty sure I believed that being physically larger than the other person in question counted as “being the bigger person.”

At age 13:
Dad: How was school today?
Me: Terrible. I hate it. I’m never going back.
Dad: Oh really, why is that?
Me: Because—because there’s this really popular girl and she’s mean to me.
Dad: She’s probably just jealous of you.
Me: Ugh! Dad! Not-uh! No one is jealous of me, stop saying that!
Dad: Well what did this popular girl do?
Me: She wrote mean things about me in like this like notebook thingy she shares with other popular girls.
Dad: Well, all you have to do is ignore it and just be the bigger person, Quinn.
Me: No! I don’t want to be the bigger person!

My dad began substituting “be the bigger person” with “take the high road” sometime after my agonizing adolescence when it had lost some, if not all, of its influence. But I hated “take the high road” even more. Where the hell is the high road? Did I miss the exit for this elusive high road? And, damnit, why is my road automatically the ‘low road’?

At age 19:
Me: I don’t know, dad. The T.A. is just a big jerkface.
Dad: What the hell is a T.A.?
Me: Teacher’s Assistant, duh.
Dad: Okay. So, basically you’re not getting a good grade because you never go to class?
Me: No! I go to class! But he’s trying to say I didn’t turn in this assignment but I totally did! I showed him the paper, it was dated and everything and he refused to believe me. I think he’s out to get me...
Dad: Well, obviously, you need to talk to your professor about this and not this P.A. or T.E. or A.T.—whatever the hell their name is—and get this cleared up. But, just remember, take the high road—no need to make any enemies.
Me: Oh my god, dad. It’s not like I’m going to go all "Jerry Springer" on him, but this is really, really, super unfair. He should be the one to take the high road, not me!
Dad: Whatever the case—you take the high road, Quinn…

At age 24:
Me: We keep getting in petty arguments.
Dad: Right, well that sometimes happens when you’ve been together for a long time.
Me: It’s so stupid, dad! We fight about doing the dishes, how to pay the bills, letting the dog out, buying groceries—crap like that.
Dad: I know it’s frustrating, but you know what…?
Me: Yes, I know, I know—be the bigger person, take the high road—I KNOW!
Dad: Exactly.
Me: Right...

I think these phrases were so ubiquitous throughout my childhood that I failed to ever think about the meaning and find a way to apply it to my own life. You can only hear “be the bigger person” and “take the high road” so many times before you start tuning it out as one of those antagonizing things your parents will inevitably say whenever you have a crisis. But the good news is that I get it now, and it’s only taken 24 years! (Ah, youth, there was so much I didn’t understand then. Luckily, I’m brilliant and know everything now…)

I’ve never been one of those overly optimistic people; I prefer to see my glasses as half empty because that leads to a quicker refill. This being said, the last six months were particularly rough. I lost my job, and then some sanity, respect and dignity. Of course, I was never that attached to the last three, but when it all hits at once and you find yourself wearing the same pajamas you spent the last three days and nights in because you haven’t left the house in a week, you start searching for a new outlook on life before your friends start planning an intervention.

After searching for inspiration in all of the places one might normally find it—nature, books, love, friendship, art—I gave up and threw myself on the couch for what I planned on being a day of utter nothingness and self loathing. With a coffee table full of candy, chips, soda and gossip magazines, I started surfing the channels for some cheesy movies I could let my brain zone out on, and that’s when it hit me as if I was the target in a particularly cruel game of dodge ball: If I was watching the movie of my life, is this really how I would want my character to act? No! The main character in the movie of my life is a badass—she’d never let herself wallow like a sloth until reaching new levels of low self-esteem, or if she did, she would have an epiphany like this and put a stop to her pathetic parade immediately so that she could get on with being as awesome as possible.

Of course, in real life, I proceeded with my day as planned because it was too inconvenient to try to change things up when I had nestled nicely into a little couch fort, but it wasn’t a day of utter nothingness as I continued to ponder this thought. Later, Tori called and was talking to me about the drama in her life—a particularly enjoyable form of entertainment to me which always wins out over anything else—and as she got to the part in the story where our dad would typically regurgitate one of his favorite phrases, I had something incredible to say.

“Well, think about it like this: what would you want your character to do if you were watching this scene in the movie of your life?” I said.

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone and for a brief second I began to doubt my wonderful epiphany.

“Wow. That’s a really good way to think of it—yeah! I like that!” she said.

From there we devised a solution based on her character in the movie of her life, which is far more fun than listing, and then stressing out about, the negative ways you’re afraid you might react while handling the various hypothetical situations you’ve created in your head.

Now I know what my dad really meant when he said “be the bigger person” and “take the high road.” When I talked to him the other day and I told him about my new phrase, WWYCD (What Would Your Character Do?), he was flushed with pride (or maybe it was disappointment, I’m not quite sure)—this was evidence that something he tried my whole life to teach me had finally stuck. Of course, I would have internalized the meaning much sooner had he explained it to me using a movie analogy…(I’m just saying, dad).

Haven’t you ever watched a movie or read a book and wished you could change the character’s path or their reaction? Haven’t you ever looked back at a situation and wished you behaved differently or that you could take back the bad things you said? I hate that feeling; it’s a dangerous combination of regret and dissolution that often leads to miserable passivity. But I have more faith in my opinions and decisions as a subjective audience member watching the movie of my life play out than I do as the main character—from my view as an audience member, I can see how to be the bigger person and I know how to get to the high road.

Now when I am faced with a situation I don’t know how to handle, or when I’m nervous, or worried, or anxious about whatever issue I’ve built up to be a monster taking over my mind, I think about watching my movie and what I would want my character to do (WWYCD?), and then I do it. Of course, real life presents limits that don’t exist in movies, so when I want my character to roundhouse ninja kick someone in the face, I have to think twice before acting it out...or so I’ve learned.