Category Archives: Creative non-fiction

Face-Planting and Whatnot

Creative non-fiction, Humor, Life and Other Existential Problems, Parenting

Yes, I Want Fries With That

A small note:

Things are horrifying right now. This isn’t an attempt to pretend otherwise. In the past, I’ve written about what’s happening in the world, In the past, I’ve written about what’s happening in the world, which got some…responses. I’ll write about that soon, because it’s important. Today, I’m choosing a tiny thing that makes my brain unclench for ten seconds.

Many of us are fighting on a lot of fronts, and (regrettably) that sometimes involves me deploying dumb humor. Or something dumb-humor adjacent. (*mutters something about containing multitudes, then clicks out of italics*)

I don’t like fishing. I don’t like wearing damp pants and pretending it’s relaxing to stare at water while someone argues the relative merits of lures and crankbaits.

I don’t even like aquariums that much. I like dolphins. Dolphins are not fish. They shouldn’t be in aquariums, though, because if a creature is smart enough to understand captivity, you are officially running a prison.

This is all just to say that I am not fishing for compliments. I’m telling a moderately funny story about questions.

SO.

The other week, I went into a beauty store with my daughter. We went in because we like to sniff perfumes and sample the lotions. We also went in because Mother Nature had turned winter up to “hostile.” This was at one of those outdoor malls, and the architect must have gone through life without ever personally experiencing wind chill. We went in to be somewhere with flattering lighting and tubes of coconut-scented things that soothe chapped lips.

I walked in cosmetically questionable. My hair was auditioning for Gorgon! The Musical!

Sidenote: my hair doesn’t usually behave. It’s fine. I work from home. My dog doesn’t care. My husband loves me for my inner beauty and because I’m fricking hilarious, which means my ‘do is free to express itself.

Beauty stores do not operate on this value system, FYI.

ANYWAY, there were roughly fifty employees and two other customers in the joint. The folks who work there are extremely kind, ridiculously attractive, and really attentive. If you even cast a glance at something that may or may not make you look like some sort of elvish tart in a middling fantasy series, a sales associate will apparate and ask if you’ve considered a serum.

Let’s set the scene more clearly. I had attempted “natural makeup,” which takes twice as long and still makes you look like you forgot to finish getting ready. Also, please recall that it was cold and windy, therefore, whatever makeup I had on was cried off.

SO.

I am not a natural beauty. It’s fine. I’m more concerned with being curious, kind, fricking hilarious, and/or not-so-vaguely terrifying. I mean, let’s not get carried away – I don’t want to be the model for a Netflix monster series as either monster or hero. Could I be cast in a Netflix monster series? Sure, probably as the neighbor who opens the door, says, “I heard screaming,” and then dies immediately in an unintentionally hilarious way.

ALSO, I take a certain pride in my lack of vanity, which is a sentence one says only if they are about to get humbled in a beauty store.

We encountered a gorgeous salesperson in her late-fifties, I would guess. She did the usual thing first and asked if we were aware of the sales. We were. Several times over. Then she looked at us and asked, “Are you related?”

Another sidenote, as long as we’re here: My kid and I look a lot alike, but I think about families who don’t and how that question might land.

“Yes.” I didn’t say more because I assumed that was the entire exchange. She stood there, visibly recalculating, starting and stopping her next sentence.

My brain caught up. Ohhh. She was trying to figure out if I was the mother or the grandmother.

Honestly, that’s fair. I had my daughter at what doctors call “advanced maternal age.” Not, like, “Weird Human-Interest-Story” advanced maternal age,” just regular “I Don’t Kneel On The Floor Without An Exit Plan” maternal age. It’s fine.

She continued stumbling.

“Oh, don’t worry, you look good.” (Mercifully, she did not add “for your age.”)

Reader, it’s entirely possible I’m not as lacking in vanity as I thought.

I don’t think she meant anything by it. Her mouth simply activated before the rest of her system had completed its startup sequence, which is a malfunction I also struggle with.

She is a midlife person surrounded by 20-somethings who can expertly wing their eyeliner in a hurricane using only one hand. She’s standing in a store that worships youth, and she’s trying not to step on a conversational landmine.

I liked her.

She asked us to let her know if we had any questions, and I asked her to point me to products that would make my hair look less like something that required filing an incident report. My daughter, once again victim of Mom Doing Bits In Public, went over to the Sol de Janeiro section for what I can only imagine was plausible deniability.

I purchased some sort of hair potion, then we left and got burgers. The man taking our order (age indeterminate) asked if we wanted fries.

THAT is the best question to ask me. No fishing required.

And you shouldn’t have to fish for your best question either, no matter your age, your face, or your current relationship status with moisturizer.

Wow. That’s preachy and doesn’t exactly make sense. Okay. Sorry. Let’s maybe end with the slightly less cringy “This was probably about understanding that we’re all just trying to get through the day without face-planting,” and then run credits.

Bonus post-credits scene: (*stares at camera*) Is anyone interested in doing a Netflix series called Gorgon! The Musical!?

Auld Lang Sigh

Creative non-fiction, Humor, Life and Other Existential Problems, Under 750, ,

I, Too, Have New Year’s Thoughts

EEveryone else seems to know how to do this.

Pop Quiz! In the above sentence, “this” refers to:

a) Navigating a Trader Joe’s parking lot without emotional or vehicular damage.

b) Leaving a voicemail (!) without a panic outro.

c) Loading the dishwasher without it provoking a weird fork argument with your spouse.

d) The New Year’s ritual of declaring goals, intentions, and a revised version of yourself.

The answer is D.

(Technically, “All of the above” applies to me, although for the record, I recently exited a TJ’s parking lot and only two people flipped me off. I also tumbled headfirst into a grocery cart corral, if you’d like a fun visual. But I digress.)

New Year’s goals are an annual ritual for deciding who we will become next. Broadly speaking, the available options appear to be: Do more of something. Do less of something. Be more yourself. Be less of whoever you’ve been.

I am not by nature a Grand Goals Person. I am a “Could These Goals Be Administered In A Single Daily Capsule?” Person. What I’m trying to say is that I’m in a stage of life where I forget that I set goals at all, never mind following through on the “actionable steps” required to achieve them. January rolls in, and I’m already behind on being aspirational and/or functional.

Predictably, I once again started January on decidedly WTF footing. I, too, want more and better (or less and better), and yes, Random Enthusiastic Person On The Internet, I understand that only I can make that happen.

Most New Year’s resolution advice assumes you have quiet to reflect, sufficient attention to make good (enough) choices, and enough solid ground to stand on while doing all that.

I am not on solid ground. I’m dog paddling through whatever swamp-adjacent mucky fuckery all this is. As such, I’m not doing anything other than scanning my surroundings and wondering how long we all can keep this up before stress-testing floating debris to see if we can comfortably nap on it.

Many of us are operating with severely depleted attention, and we’re absolutely fried due to what feels like oversubscription to the world. When attention thins, decision-making degrades.

Last year, I said I wanted to pay attention to where my attention was going – real genius stuff until I tried and immediately forgot what I was doing. Attention is what allows you to evaluate options well, and without it, every choice feels loud and wrong. I hate loud. I hate wrong. I especially hate loud and wrong.

This unsettled, flayed feeling is apparently the emotional launchpad for Grand Goals Setting.

But, I DID set goals.

Last year.

Just for posterity, here they are:

  • Let my inner weirdo become my outer weirdo.
  • Find more wonderlands: big cushions, warm chairs, fireplaces, and someone patting the seat next to them like, “Come. Sit. Stay a while.”
  • Work the phrase “everything went tits up” into more conversations.
  • Be like my dog: long walks, bursts of speed toward nothing, naps in the sun, and flappies (scientific term) to clear my head.
  • Read more. Write more. Read better. Write better.
  • I used to tell stories here. Real ones. Small ones. Messy, absurd ones. Somewhere along the way, I got stuck in broad magician-off-the-Strip tellings. No more. Back to real ones, with all the tits-up moments.
  • Schedule my damn flu shot.
  • Play.

I am not going to tell you which of these I accomplished.

Ok, yes, I will. I got my flu shot.

So for the sake of rest and attention, I will recycle that list.

This space, whatever it is, remains open for oddness and wonderlands. And for madly gripping joy, especially because it may be a floating debris pile to nap on to take a break from all the mad dog paddling.

And if things go tits up as we tumble into our grocery cart corrals in the Trader Joe’s parking lot – well, maybe we can figure out how to use them as flotation devices.

Nestled. Stacked. Mashed. Cosplay.

Cooking, Creative non-fiction, Humor, Life and Other Existential Problems, Writing, ,

Food-in-Food Ad Nauseam

I just made several dozen cookies using cookie butter, essentially folding finely ground cookies into other cookies. This was after I contemplated making Oreo-stuffed chocolate chip cookies.

Maybe it’s the season. Maybe it’s my brain. Most likely, it’s the eggnog that leads me to share these thoughts.

Once upon a time, food had a certain dignity. I don’t mean to romanticize the past – the food wasn’t necessarily good, but everything sort of stayed in its lane, just as God and Ina Garten intended. Pies and cakes didn’t go seeking thrills inside one another’s layers. A turkey wasn’t trying to form some sort of poultry Voltron with a duck and a chicken. And you could enjoy a donut without fearing it would attempt a surprise flank maneuver on the croissants.

(We’re just going to take a moment to pour one out for the troubling put-everything-in Jell-O era, okay?)

Image via Molded Memories (moldedmemories.food.blog)

Do yourself a favor and do not look up photos of the final product.

ANYHOO. BeJell-Oed fish aside, these were orderly days. Predictable.

Naturally, this didn’t last, because America, God bless her goofy heart, just had to ask things like, “What if this were two foods?” and “What if this were three foods wearing a trench coat?”

And we just had to answer, “Let’s find out!” We even had the temerity to be enthusiastic about it.

Long story short, everything started declining.

It’s not total collapse. Not yet, at least. Decline takes time. Decline is a gentle slope you slide down while clutching a cocktail weenie.

First came the turducken. Fine. Well, not fine. Terrible. But it was a novelty, a kitschy one-off we could pretend was harmless.

Along barreled the cronut, then entered the piecaken, and at that point the Universe quietly ducked out for cigarettes.

Of course, the Tofurkey strutted in trying to claim creative credit for all these food mashups. Pretty bold for a plant impersonating meat with more commitment than half the actors on the WB in its heyday.

Now, for those preparing to storm the comment section of this VERY SERIOUS AND HIGHLY ACADEMIC TREATISE to inform me I “misunderstand food” and to quote from the Book of You Got Chocolate in my Peanut Butter, I say unto you: NAY. NAY, ESTEEMED SCHOLAR. I am not speaking of such blessed unions

I speak of “Your chefs were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” I speak of culinary unions baroque and unsound, where a food is nestled inside another food, occasionally mashed with a third, and often pretending to be a fourth. I speak of the insult added to injury via portmanteau.

You may ask, “What ho, Malvolio?”

Which is a weird question right now. Why are you asking that?

A better question is, “What comes next?”

I (or maybe it’s the eggnog) have taken the liberty of imagining exactly that. (Oh, no.) I’m not saying these will happen, and I’m not saying they should.

Except they will.

And still, they definitely should not.

So, what horrors await?

A pork tenderloin tucked coyly into a soufflé, resulting in the Souffloin? The Brûléurger, a burger with a cracked sugar crust, because separating dinner and dessert is a real time waster?

There is, I fear, a genuine possibility of a Sushperd’s Pie, sushi nestled beneath mashed potatoes. This is the sort of thing you serve only to your nemesis.

Our pastries may develop pork issues (Baklavacon), and our Fritos may develop pastry issues (Fritocotta).

Let us not pretend we are prepared for the arrival of the Chocochimachattorellacci (Chocolate + Chimichanga + Cacciatore + Cappellacci).

Any faith in humanity you’ve been clinging to may at this point be folly.

Now, this is the part of the essay where I write some sort of takeaway. (Pun not intended, unless you laughed, in which case pun intended).

Ahem.

This is the part of the essay where I make it about me.

Look, maybe culinary monstrosities are born of loneliness and/or an impulse to unnecessarily break something, hot glue it back together, and call it innovation.

Maybe we keep stuffing food inside food because stuffing feelings inside feelings is harder and definitely not something to bring to an office potluck.

Or maybe some influencer is issuing gastrointestinal dares to shoppers as they enter the grocery store. I don’t know. Theories abound.

What is certain is that someone, somewhere, is going to read my jokes and think, “Bisquisketbabka? Challenge accepted.” And suddenly I’ll be forced to eat some sort of bisque in a brisket in a babka, and it’ll be my own damned fault.

But there’s still hope for you, dear reader.

If someone produces a Quesoquichewich, or a Mortarollini, or a Bouillabiscuitryanibatten, rise from your chair, walk to the door, and leave without looking back.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, my Salisbury Schn’moruflakanaki (Schnitzel + S’mores + Soufflé + Saganaki) is calling.

No, wait. That’s the eggnog.

I’ve named it Malvolio.