Perforation Problems

There's a song by the Avett Brothers called The Ballad of Love & Hate. I love it, but I think I also hate it. And the more I listen to it, the more I'm certain I should hate it. What I love: It's poetic and full of all those poetry terms I used to teach my English students. In fact, it's one big giant metaphor, where Love and Hate are in a complicated relationship and Love makes everything better. Listen to these lines: "Love sings a a song as she sails through the sky." "Hate sites alone on the hood of his car Without much regard to the moon or the stars Lazily killing the last of a jar Of the strongest stuff you can drink" Alliteration! Personification! Imagery! It's also one of those songs that's a perfect puddle of acoustic mellowness. It makes you want to sing it while looking out a window at rain drops or while waltzing around your kitchen in a flowy dress. No? Is that just me? But here's the thing—this song is ba...

Late at night I'm poetic I should be sleeping but somehow can't Can't give in, can't shut down, can't let the head settle Instead I write poems like beatniks Except not good I love you isn't roses It's midnight trips to Meijer Where I look for a birthday card for my mom while you grab coffee beans (which let's be honest is the real reason it couldn't wait till morning) You meet me in the card aisle with a basket full of coffee That is love, I think now. Today I changed my profile picture from the one of me and my grandma at my grad school graduation I never liked myself in it, my face is so chubby But she looked beautiful Almost handsome, Katherine Hepburn-ish And it's the only picture I can find of the two of us together Why did I not get more pictures of me with my grandma? At some point I had to take it down No use dragging it out Taking it down doesn't take her out of my heart or my head, or my memories, or ...

I think in an alternate life I could have maybe been a foodie. Take away my childhood pickiness—okay, the pickiness that lasted until I was like 30—and I think I would have gravitated towards cooking and trying new things. I'm not trying to be a commercial for Blue Apron, but it seriously has changed my life. It's exposed me to not just the meal that's the final product, but the ingredients—and made them familiar. Familiarity leads to a willingness to try things.  It's forced me to try foods and spices I normally wouldn't. When you pay that much money, you can't let it go to waste.  It's made us healthier. We're actually eating vegetables regularly.  Cooking the Blue Apron meals makes me more inclined to cook other meals, too. I actually added vegetables to my morning scrambled eggs. Wtf? Who am I?  So I have a newfound interest in cooking. It really shouldn't be surprising since I love food so much, but the pickiness has always stood in the ...

When I was a baby, my mom used to hand me slices of Kraft American cheese to snack on in my high chair. Maybe that was the start of my love affair with cheese, a foundational piece (along with chicken nuggets) of my diet well through my twenties. Okay, let's not lie. Cheese is still a foundational piece of my diet, despite my newly-found acceptance of vegetables. I love cheese. Cheese fries, cheese dogs, Cheez-its, quesadillas, queso, nachos, cheese pizza, cheddar goldfish crackers, grilled cheese, mac n' cheese. Now that I'm slightly fancier, maybe I've upgraded a bit to cheese plates, camembert & apple sandwiches, four cheese ravioli, sausage and ricotta flatbread, etc, etc, but really if it's got cheese on it, I'll probably like it. There's no denying that cheese makes just about anything better. That doesn't mean all cheeses are equal—there can be bad cheese. Once my brother and I stopped at a gas station on the way to the lake because we ree...

I've been obsessed with yoga headstands and handstands since February. I'm not sure what my deal is, but I just want to be upside down. It started when Amanda and I began taking a yoga class at the gym. It wasn't a great yoga class – the teacher did a pretty crappy job of explaining moves and talking us through things. It mostly just made me nostalgic for the classes I took in Indy last year. BUT it was yoga once a week, and it got me to start doing some yoga on my own at home, too. It's a common reaction to panic when a teacher says it's time to work on inversions – they're scary. Your feet are above your head, you feel like you're going to hurt your neck, you could fall over and break your face...and the chances of queefing are high. No one had ever told me the correct way to do a headstand, so I mostly just flung my feet up against the wall and hoped for the best. But as I started getting back into regular yoga practice (ho ho, that phrase is so fancy...

I'm at Starbucks today, where I just got my free drink with my rewards membership. This rewards membership is the best thing ever and a master stroke of loyalty marketing. Last year I tripped all over myself trying to get 30 stars so I could get the gold card, and now I live for the days where I get enough stars to get a free drink. You know why? Cause when I have a free drink I don't get my normal skinny caramel latte. When I have a free drink I splurge on a VENTI SKINNY CARAMEL LATTE WITH AN EXTRA SHOT. Which today I learned they call a TRIPLE VENTI. I now feel very hyped up, and it's awesome, and I'd do it all the time if it wasn't like $6 a pop. This makes me think that if it were easier to get drugs, maybe I'd do it. Who knows?? Being hyper like this reminds me of being a preteen, and how my friend Katie believed orange foods had a chemical impact on her mood. She'd shove Cheetos in her face and laugh maniacally, and I thought it was the best thing ...

Someday in an imaginary world where sugar counts as a whole grain and buttercream frosting is a vegetable, and where there are no recriminations, no consequences, no reasons to feel guilty that you're shoving cookie after cookie into your face, I will join the Cheryl's Buttercream Cookie of the Month Club. And every month, delightful concoctions will appear at my door, marking the passage of time with their seasonal sprinkles and appropriate cutout shapes, and there shall be cookies, all the time, everywhere. Never again will I say, "I wish I had a cookie." It will only be, "I shall go get a cookie, because I have many." Cookies will abound and be plentiful, and everyone will be happy. Ah, such dreams for mortal men! The glory.

Though Michael really couldn't care less about whether or not I diet, he's been trying to support me by thinking up ways to incentivize sticking to my plan. What we came up with (naturally) involves chocolate as reward. Shut up, it works. As long as I've eaten healthy the rest of the day, I get to eat a truffle at night. A little chocolate goes a long way.* Except I haven't been able to eat a truffle for the last three weeks because I've been out of control. Pizza and cookies everywhere! Our conversation yesterday: "Do you get to eat a truffle today?" "NO." "Why not?" "Because YOU took FOREVER to get home and I ATE ALL THE GRAHAM CRACKERS." It happens. You feel me. It's not my fault. -------- There are two best ways to eat ice cream. The first: put a couple scoops in a bowl, then stir it up until it gets soft, mushy, and creamy. Trust me -- it tastes better. We used to call it witches' soup, and the s...

I'm in love with my new computer. I'm not kidding. I'm in love with my computer in such a way that I'm sitting here writing a blog post -- the first one in three months -- instead of making my dinner, just because I want to hear the clicky clack of the keys and watch the font tap skip tap skip tap skip across the screen. Omg. I want to hug it to me and rub my cheek against the keyboard. I'm not insane. Swears. See, it's crazy how attached you can get to a computer. They really become something personal -- full of your screenshots and downloads, every URL you visit, the random images you photoshop together to entertain yourself... Have you ever been on someone else's computer and felt slightly dirty? Like you were invading something private? It's like wearing someone else's underwear. When I got my last computer over three years ago, it was in preparation for going to my first real marketing conference, in big old scary Boston. I typed my notes...

I feel like the post I just wrote is potentially pretty depressing, so I wanted to follow it up with this: And truth is, I had a pretty good day, and I do feel pretty good. Maybe not "grate," but pretty good. SPRING IS TECHNICALLY HERE.

I was sitting on the couch tonight, reading The Mermaid Chair and obliquely watching the Olympics, avoiding writing because it just seemed like so. much. work. So heavy, so hard. It's been rough, lately. This endless winter. Whine, whine, whine. And then an iPad commercial came on, and that, of all things, knocked me out of it. Welcome, commercialism. But I'm grateful for it. I'm sitting there, half reading, half letting my mind wander to all the little worries floating around my brain, when I hear familiar words. Have you ever had that feeling, when you hear a phrase you know, a song, a line from a poem, a quote from a movie, and it turns something inside you, something warm, something that says, "here's what's worth it, here's what's true, what's beautiful, what's important." I guess it's joy. It was a voiceover from Robin Williams' character in Dead Poets Society , quoting Walt Whitman. One of my favorite movies, and one tha...

I can't sleep tonight, and so I'm up wasting time, buying books from Amazon and thinking how miserable I'll be in the morning. My brain is working too fast, whirling around like one of those tops kids have where you pull the tab fast and it spins, spins, spins. Be quiet, brain. It's time to rest. Tonight I finished a book set in Hawaii, on the same island where we spent our honeymoon. The characters traveled over the volcano we hiked, swam near black sand beaches like ours, and walked through forests I can still see in my memory. They talk about the rain that comes every afternoon, and the frogs that sing them to sleep, and I can close my eyes and be there, in a world just far enough away. I miss Hawaii, but I think what I miss most of all was not having any worries or responsibilities. There were no demands on my time, no problems that had to be solved, no unpleasant tasks to deal with, no obligations. There was just me, my husband, the breeze, and sunshine. And t...

This isn't a great picture. I was trying to get a good shot of the mariachi band, but I didn't want to be like the mom next to me who was gleefully taking a picture and grinning like it was the best part of her weekend. I'm too cool for that, guys. But it's really rather fitting that this isn't a great picture, because this was not a great restaurant, and it did not have great food. It was disappointing because I was all, "Let's celebrate Friday!" and then "Yay, queso!"-- but this is what happens when you try new restaurants. It's not that great. That's why I stick to eating the same 5 foods in rotation and consistently order chicken fingers at restaurants. And while it has a certain novelty at first, I find restaurants with live music not that great, either. Especially when they come stand by your table and play while you stare at your quesadilla awkwardly wondering where you should be looking and when you can stop smiling. ...

No, I didn't spend my whole evening making this. I don't know what you're talking about. Me: "Tell me something I should create in my new image editing program." Michael: "Make Ryne play baseball." Me: (thinking) Michael: "You don't like that?" Me: "It's boring." Michael: "Make the plastic dinosaur fight a real dinosaur." Me: "And Clyde." Michael: "Okay." Me: "And Ryne playing baseball. You don't think big enough."