Tensions were running high. Soon I’d be asked to urinate outdoors in a campground leveled by a forest fire (was God’s message to stay home any clearer?).
Have you ever dropped a tab of acid while at work and thought you were in Richard Scarry’s Busytown? Yeah, me neither, but sometimes I think that’s the only way I’m going to survive until I can retire. (Includes bonus douche bag-to-human translation for common office jargon!)
My camping origin story. Includes a flash-flood at Mammoth Caves in Kentucky which had TT threatening to put me on a plane back to Seattle, and me angry with TT for using hotdogs to encourage raccoons to cut our throats while we slept.
Sometimes I’m so embarrassed by my words and actions that I have to lash out at my coworker’s wardrobe: Did he confuse ‘causal Friday’ with ‘gay disco circa 1978’?
I conflate two things I dislike–sports and camping–although only one of the two requires outdoor urination.
I don’t like self-promotion. I have always wanted to be a writer. But, I don’t want to have to tell people to go read my stuff. It seems pushy. Curiously, this intersects with my father’s death-emails.
I’m fat. Not fat-fat, but if I go up one more pants-size, I’ll be shopping in specialty stores, a realization that led to my recent dalliance with Weight Watchers. People say I carry my weight well, to which I say, “go fuck yourself.”
I got into an argument with my husband Michael this weekend, although now that I’m thinking about it, argument might not be the wrong word. It was more like a meltdown with a witness that ended in a group nap.
When my mom was pregnant with me, my parents bought a house in the middle of a forest, as in, trees coming up to the house. They spent a great deal of time clearing the land so that we kids could have unevenly-cut and poorly-stacked firewood to play on. Given our locale, it wasn’t surprising when displaced wildlife ventured into our yard. What is surprising is the apparent lack of a vision health plan for my family, because my mother once chased a bear off our property with a broom, thinking it was a dog.
The bon-voyage family brunch is a common occurrence in my family, for which Dad invariably suggests, “Let’s meet at the firehouse,” which is, in fact, a diner housed in Historic Firehouse 18, Ballard Washington.