Today is my 50th birthday. I won’t lie: I am having a little trouble with this. This past week I have been filled with a strange type of upset and a little bit of panic that crashed into me out of nowhere. This “mini crisis” isn’t about anything related to my life itself. I have nothing to complain about (to say the least); the source of all of this is literally the number, and I am mostly surprised that I feel this way…but in a way, I’m not. I was one of those kids who did the math to learn that I would be thirty-two years old in the year…
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There Are Worse Things To Obsess Over.
I have an odd obsession: toilet paper. My preoccupation doesn’t have anything to do with a particular type of toilet paper or even having a firm stance on whether it should roll over or under. I’m obsessed with having enough in the house. Weird, I know. I have worried about it for as long as I can remember, and I was never able to figure out why until I came up with a theory a while back. More on that in a minute. I get extremely nervous when the stash in the house goes down to single digits: heart palpitations and all. What if someone has a bathroom crisis and…
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Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut and Sometimes You Need to Learn How to Share.
I received some devastating news on Saturday*: my twenty one-year-old son said that he enjoys an Almond Joy candy bar now and then. DEVASTATING*. I thought I was the only one in the family who consumed Almond Joy bars. I mean, I have enjoyed the heck out of grabbing the fun-sized Almond Joys out of the boys’ trick-or-treat bags after they spent Halloween night ringing doorbells for sweets, because they ranked Almond Joy down there with Circus Peanuts and Whoppers. I’ve loved buying the occasional Almond Joy and leaving it on the counter where it would stay untouched until I was ready to eat it. Making sure that Almond Joys…
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The Mystery of the Denim Shorts
Alternate title: Designer Label Averse, Apparently. The scene: my bedroom. Jim, home for the first time since August, has handed me a pair of Calvin Klein denim shorts and questions to whom they belong. “You, I thought…” I replied. “They aren’t yours?” “No,” he said. “They aren’t my size and anyway, I don’t wear Calvin Klein anything.” “Oh, maybe they belong to Dylan,” I said. Sidenote: Dylan, who currently lives here full time, is so well-known for his love of wearing denim shorts that his college/fraternity nickname was “Jorts”. Jim strolled into Dylan’s room and put the shorts on his bed. About an hour later, I was back in my…
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Garage Sales. Don’t Get Me Started.
Garage sales. Sigh. I’m not a fan of attending them, and I’m not a fan of hosting them. When I was a kid, my mom hosted multiple garage sales every year, and I wasn’t enamored with the process at all, to put it lightly. Sure, my sister and I got to be the creative geniuses behind the signs, which took hours thanks to my mom being an evil genius (story here), but we also had to do the work of going through our stuff, helping to price it, and sitting outside watching strangers pick through it all. Of course I completely get that many people LOVE garage sales as a…