Category Archives: Humor

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.

Buckets, Knuckles, and Hex Codes

Humor, Inspiration, Life and Other Existential Problems, Month in Review, Parenting, Writing, , ,

December (Not Quite the End of the Month) Month-in-Review

It’s been a year since I’ve done a month-in-review post. I’m sure you are all very excited to have me draw back the curtain again. Well, joke’s on you. Behind this curtain is a trove of canned goods and a mysterious bucket no one remembers buying and no one is willing to throw away. “Never discard a mysterious bucket” might be some sort of unspoken family rule. THAT joke is on me.

After this reasonless hiatus, I’m resurrecting the month-in-review because sometimes it’s useful to return to a familiar container and rattle around inside it for a bit. Will the month-in-review posts continue in 2026? MAYBE.

Before any sticklers jump into my mentions without even offering me a cookie, I am well aware that the month is not over.

However, many of you mentally end the year sometime in mid-November, based on how many “Wrap-ups” and “I’m ready for 2026” comments are floating around out there. Look, you do you, friend. I was taught to run through the finish line.

But, sure, we can call this the “Not Quite the End of the Month Month-in-Review.” Not fussy at all.

ANYHOO, Happy Holidays. Let’s begin with an injury.

Earlier this month, I busted my knuckle open (not a euphemism). A few people noticed and asked how it happened. “Fighting crime,” which no one believed. Then I said the untrue but plausible, “I was just walking around.” Everyone believed that. Thanks, people who know me.

(Between you and me, I used a little extra oomph putting on a sweater and slammed my hand into the door jamb after successfully locating the arm hole.)

Please don’t be freaky and ask for photos of my (admittedly sexy) busted knuckle. It’s hard to photograph your own hand while recovering from getting dressed all by myself vigilantism.

There were wonderful parts of December, for sure, despite my ability to get hurt by doing nothing and also by doing things. (See: colliding with furniture in my own house, ambient exhaustion, December.)

One of my sons has begun making Jeopardy! games for the family. In the last five weeks, he has made three.

These are not casual games, nor intended to make us feel good about ourselves or our inability to quickly access our knowledge base. These are utterly lawless events fueled by a natural understanding of humor that routinely takes us out.

The categories alone injured me once because I rolled off the couch laughing. (Note to all of my ex-boyfriends: I still got it!)

We’ve had Prehistoric Fish, Former FBI Director James Comey, and Shades of Red (a block of color labeled with its hex code). This so thoroughly aggravated my husband that the next game had the category Tints of Red. In one game, he created a category called Who’s That?, which involved identifying people from photos. The first image was of Millard Fillmore. The second was Dilbert. Two questions later: the same picture of Dilbert.

We considered ourselves lucky that the Dilbert questions were straightforward. Half the fun this kid has is in figuring out the most obtuse ways a question can relate to the category. And I will add that at least once each game is a question that simply says, “Touch the dog.” Which, yes, that is not a question, but we all run to Buddy like maniacs. He likes it. It’s got this vibe.

For my birthday, he shamelessly calibrated the game to some of my alleged areas of expertise, including Kurt Vonnegut, the family dog, Danish Butter Cookie Tins, as well as an entire category based on photographs of his school lunches.

Somehow, I lost.

Somehow, my husband won with a final score of –2400.

This game has it all: Intellectual chaos, hostile specificity, everyone yelling “WHAT IS GOING ON?” while the dog enjoys his celebrity and hopes Final Jeopardy is “Belly Rubs.” (It is not.)

So December has been largely survived up until this moment, and my knuckle is healing.

Does anyone know what that bucket is for?

Until we all figure it out, here are some

Splashes of Marvelous from December 2025:

  • Fellow Snarkians, I had no idea this was still a thing. I am delighted to be wrong. Entire stretches of my childhood were spent drooling over these guys.
  • If you ever have a chance to go see/hear the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus, do it! I went to the Holly Dolly Christmas show and remained in an excellent mood for 2-3 business weeks.
  • It might technically be too late to prep for Jolabokaflod, but every day can be Jolabokaflod if your heart is pure. Or you feel like it. I’m making the rules now. If you need some ideas, I’ve got you.
  • Related, I would like to formally propose an evening where we gather around a fireplace, eat treats, and read. Silently. Shhhh. Let’s make this introverted bibliophile’s dream a reality. And if you talk, I’m cramming one of these in your mouth, and not gently.
  • This is the only type of “conversation piece” I’d ever want to wear.
  • The Best Simple Stuffing Recipe | Bon Appétit Trust me.
  • I baked three dozen cookies for school, another 900 dozen (give or take) for home. Emergency preparedness is important. This is why I have a small bag of sprinkles in my purse at all times. (True!)


After I sent those cookies off to school with my boys, one of them came home and brought me…a cookie. Not one I made, but a snickerdoodle. And before you have a problem with that, NO YOU DON’T.

  • The “two inches that were actually six” of predicted snow on 12/7. Insert jokes as you wish.

Well, what do you want? A cookie? (I may have several hundred dozen.)

Enjoy your week and watch your knuckles. (Maybe a euphemism).