Tag Archives: humor

Oct 04 2012
6 Comments
Anecdotes, Humorous, Open Letters

Dear High School Crush

Not our actual high school. No romance was here.

I hope you’re doing well. We haven’t talked in a couple of years, except for that random facebook message you sent me semi-recently which I responded to coldly just to let you know that whatever kind of crazy non-romance we had between us is definitely over. Thanks for the chance to reminisce.

We could have ruled the school, you and I, you with your skinny arms and me with my daring sweatshirt/dangly earring combo. I thought the two went together because the white bangles in my earrings matched the white letters on my sweatshirt. Years later, part of me still wants to believe that they do.

A couple of months before we parted forever, we had a little spat regarding a certain writing instrument. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of the details. As a result of this disagreement, I believe I posted an angry message on your wall, which you deleted.

In return, I erased all of the facebook messages you had sent me in which you asked for advice in another romantic relationship. I’m not sure this had the desired effect on you that I wished it to, but it does keep me from reminiscing too deeply and rereading all of them. Perhaps I should be thankful.

On that recent trip down memory lane, however, I saw that I had called one of the teachers at our school a “skanky ho betch” in the last message I sent you. For that, I’m truly sorry. I assure you that I have grown personally and that my derisive names are much more sophisticated now, dummy.

For a while after graduation I would stalk you on facebook. And then one time we ran into each other at the University of Oklahoma’s freshman orientation, when I was visiting a real friend. That was the last time I talked to you, besides the facebook message. You didn’t confess your like for me then, and I’ll admit I was disappointed.

You and I both know what happened between us, the tale of unspoken like, how I would look forward to my classes with you, how I practiced your signature and watched for you at your car. Okay, maybe you didn’t know, and that’s probably for the best. At any rate, I wish you all good things in life, and I’m doing just fine myself. I only cried three times in the last week, stress-ate 6 bowls of ice cream, and compulsively cleaned once. And I read a book.

We’re both going to make it, I hope. Maybe we could even be friends. That is, if you’re as cool as you were as a junior in high school.

Best,

Emily

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Sep 26 2012
6 Comments
Modern Life, San Francisco, Serious-ish

And You Wonder What’ll Happen to You

Got one!

Every day begins the same. The curtains open onto the morning. Waking up. Either too early or too late, the last dreamy wisps evaporating, leaving only vague recollections of my father, Colorado, and a buffet. The hot water boiler takes the same amount of time, with its impossible churning and final beep beep beep “I’m done.”

One cup of hand-brewed coffee, because Folger’s isn’t ground for the French press, and it’s either Folger’s or Ralph’s coffee crystals, which look like brown glitter and taste like a nightmare, so the Folger’s is in my cup, and yes, it’s a pretty damned good part about waking up.

And then I’m at the computer, my morning, evening, and afternoon friend, my whirring, over-heating, crashing buddy, my decrepit warehouse. My morning deletion of emails is followed by the usual wondering what to read, the nagging feeling that something better is always out there, and that my time would probably be best spent reading articles all day and learning about the world since it’s so easy to have it shrink to the size of my personal experience.

I read an article and in the back of my mind I want to be looking for jobs instead, jobs that will bring me into new social circles, to new realms of pay, to continued lack or blessed presence of health benefits, to 9-5, to an office with catered food or an office where I’ll be bringing my PB&J or something else entirely.

And then it’s Halloween again, and I’m wondering what I want to be today. What is the perfect intersection of my dreams, my skills, and the realities of living what with the mounting cost of soft serve ice cream? What is the worth of each corner of the triangle—are dreams less valuable than reality even though I think I was told I could be anything I wanted to be?

The game is different than I thought it would be. I’m not sure of the rules, how it’s won, and who’s on my team. Making a difference seems secondary to making a living.

And you wonder what’ll happen to you, when the things you thought you believed in don’t affect your actions, when there are so many opportunities for you to become either someone you wanted to be or something you never thought you would be.

It’s easy for these things to change based on your neighborhood.

Maybe I’ll go hunt unicorns in ancient Redwood forest groves, but not to capture them. I just want to speak with them, and find out how they’ve managed to stay who they are for so long.

Then I’ll trap them, and start a circus about following your dreams.

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Sep 24 2012
15 Comments
San Francisco, Two minute read, Writing

An Oklahoman Laments the Loss of Fall

Redwoods don’t drop their leaves.

So it’s fall now, I think. I’m not really sure anymore if the seasons exist. Here in San Francisco nothing changes. Quinoa’s on its way out, boar’s on its way in. Gourmet sausage is somewhere in the middle, the roasted pork chop probably isn’t going anywhere, but fall isn’t coming. That’s for darn sure. Even though sometimes the wind blows and it’s got that crisp feeling and maybe there’s a leaf somewhere in there too, but it’s all an illusion. Fall isn’t going to come here at all.

Sure we get the Halloween Candy, and the pumpkins, and fall-themed lattes from Starbucks, but they won’t bring me a proper autumn. And the kids are back in school, and preschool-high school teachers are wearing themed sweaters over wildly patterned turtlenecks, but it makes no difference whatsoever.

The fog rolls out and in.

We’ve already been wearing sweaters for the past three months and one hundred years. We’ve already lit our fireplaces to stave off the cold of a chilly summer night, and warmed our hands at a bonfire on the beach to keep our fingers from turning blue in late May. We never put our scarves away in the first place, but we’ll never have to turn on our heaters because we don’t have them. Time doesn’t progress here so much as ebb in and out. Other places go in circles, but we move back and forth along the same straight line.

Still, the children get older. The facial hair on the hipsters gets slightly more ironic. Banana Republic models get more smug as they laugh in their business casual clothes.

Somewhere, college students are planning apple picking trips and updating their facebook statuses about how excited they are about wearing fall clothes. Somewhere, the leaves are beginning to turn slightly less green as they prepare to all fall down. But not here. Not ever.

I’ve only been on the West Coat for 2.5 months. Thank God it’s never too early for nostalgia. I’ll go out and drink $8 cups of coffee until the pain goes away.

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Sep 19 2012
6 Comments
One minute read

The Adventures of Dreamily

Arabic dreams are the most frightful of all

Late at night when I’m a-slumber, Dreamily traipses through the land of nod and discovers many strange and wonderful things and writes them all down in her little notebook. But when I awake, Dreamily has already left long ago with her little notebook and I never can know exactly what she saw.

That’s why I had to start following her on twitter, because she’s a fairly diligent tweeter/instagramer, and man this stuff she sees is weird. Last night, at 1:30 am she tweeted that she saw a full-grown man wearing a Winnie-the-Pooh costume eating pie with his hands on a deserted playground and that she wept but then he turned into a huge baby the size of king kong who wanted her to pick it up so she screamed and ran away.

And then at 3:03am she tweeted a picture of a swamp full of dragon flies with human faces that had gotten stuck from watching the television too close.

At 5:34, she was prowling around someone’s house in Kansas on the night a storm was brewing and a little boy was sitting alone in the kitchen next to the stove with a kettle on it. A door was squeaking somewhere.

6:49 found her interviewing for a job she was completely unqualified for at a techie startup where no one realizes they all have horrible body odor and then suddenly she finds that she’s the stinky one and is mortified but can’t remember which person is her interviewer to ask to leave and go take a shower.

After reading her twitter feed, I usually decide it’s for the best that I don’t remember everything Dreamily sees or does. At least I’m not missing out on any magical feasts.

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Sep 12 2012
9 Comments
Food, Humorous, One minute read

How to Defeat Salad Anxiety

There’s nothing more terrifying.

Lately I’ve been eating salads. Don’t ask me why or how that’s happened, just accept the fact that it has, that sometimes the salads are salty, and that I eat them along with a slice of buttered bread. I think the roughage has cleared out the macaroni and cheese residue in my brain, which is why this blog post is hilarious.

Salads as a food item have always stressed me out. Something about a plate full of leafy greens puts me on edge and all of the sudden I feel like there’s no way in spades that I’ll be able to eat all of it, because it takes so freaking long. The leaves are so big, and the dressing is spread unevenly and the toppings are always the tastiest but they’re hidden in a forest of vitamin K and if I want to chop up the salad in order to make it physically edible that’s going to take at least 2 minutes but the problem is I’m hungry NOW. Anxiety and resentment result. Lunch takes a vicious left turn for the worst.

That’s why recently I developed a new way of viewing salad-eating. No longer do I think about chopping it up or eating it with anything close to the pace of a normal meal, because salads are not a normal meal. They are a challenge. Even though I’ve never quit eating a salad because it took too long, I always feel like that’s a possisibility and I, alone in the world, hate losing.

I’m going to beat you, you dumb leafy monster.

So now, when I see those hand-like organic gems piled high on my plate, instead of even pretending to behave like a normal human being, I take my fork and pound that mother narker down, literally shoving the leaves into my mouth in order to forgo the waste of time it would be to cut them, chomping them like my bovine cousins (cows, not my actual cousins).

As a result, I’ve beaten every salad recently in ever shorter amounts of time, but I’m now also afraid to eat salads around other people, for fear they will judge me for my salad-pounding prowess. But that’s another struggle for another blog post.

Today I defeat the salad. Tomorrow the world. And on Friday, I take a break and go to the park. It’s me time.

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