Pink Lady

Last Wednesday The Lady-Killer called me up while I was at school and said, "Hey. How do you feel about going to New Hampshire?"

As a general rule, I feel pretty good about going to New Hampshire. It has no sales tax! It has liquor outlets! Its state motto is Live Free or Die! What else could possibly be needed to coax a person into a state?

So I told TLK I felt swell about going to New Hampshire. "And just what are we going to New Hampshire for?" I asked, hoping the answer was to buy liquor and shout the badass state motto at passers-by.

"To buy a car," he said.

Turns out the hours TLK spends skulking in the CARS AND TRUCKS section on Craigslist paid off. He'd found a car he was in love with. And it was a pretty serious love. When he showed me the ad, I could see hearts and rainbows and unicorns swimming in his big eyes.

"This car," he told me, "is fast."

"Yeah?"

"I mean FAST-FAST," he said.

"I don't doubt it," I said.

TLK loves fast. When his last car could no longer pass inspection because it was rotting, he and his friends tore everything "unnecessary" out, hollowing it out to be a rally car.

One day he and I went to his house, picked up his brother, and together we drove down to an old railroad bed that was now a rough gravel road that extended God knows where. TLK pointed his car toward the God knows where and asked which of us wanted the first ride.

His brother went first. And when they came back, the brother's face was flushed and excited. "I screamed!" he said. "Also, we were air-born!"

Then it was my turn. "Listen," I said as I buckled myself in, "if you kill me, my father is going to be very disappointed in you."

TLK nodded gravely and then, in the next second, he had us roaring down the road and we were transformed into nothing more than a spout of dust. And then we went air-born as TLK launched us over a bump.

I don't know what the appropriate reaction to a thing like that is, but the reaction my brain chose at that moment (and most moments since) was laughter. I squealed and I giggled and I buried my head in my heads.

When we got back to where we'd left his brother standing, TLK cracked a grin my way. "Just imagine if this was turbo," he said.

So it didn't surprise me at all last week that he decided in order to properly grieve for the loss of his beloved car (the one now turned in a hollowed-out shell of its former self), in order to properly process the loss, in order to move past the heartbreak, he needed to buy a car that would smoke his old car.

So I told him, yeah, okay, let's go to New Hampshire. Sure. Why not?

And so we did, and TLK inspected his car and then forked over the money for it and said, "I'll follow you home."

When we got home a few hours later, I parked my car and TLK pulled up behind me. I grabbed my purse and stepped out of my car. And then he gave me a gesture--a simple nod--that almost made my heart explode out of my chest. Here was a boy who was so pleased with himself, so happy, and he wanted to take me for a ride in his fast car, so he was giving me a nod, telling me, "Hey, Baby. Jump in." It was the world's most perfect nod, born of beautiful old films where the men wore leather jackets and white t-shirts and tight jeans, where they smoked cigarettes and slung a sun-tanned arm out the window of whatever smooth machine they were driving. It was American Graffiti meets a Bruce Springsteen video.

I went around, opened the passenger door. I slid into the seats--which were not normal seats but seats you'd find in a racecar--and strapped myself down.

One minute later, after TLK had driven us down the long road that circles the small airport around the corner from my apartment, we were sideways. The car was roaring, I was screaming, TLK was smiling as much as I'd ever seen him smile. We tore into a curve and the car slid through it gracefully, as if over ice.

It was then that I realized something very important about myself: I have always wanted to be this girl. I am the girl Milner gets stuck riding with in American Graffiti. I am a Pink Lady. I am, at all times, hoping to star in my own version of Grease. This would explain why I consistently disappointed my friend Greg in grad school when I chose rough-tough-working boys instead of, say, poets, which was who he thought I should be with. I said I wanted a man who could discuss literature with me, who would write poetry about the way my hair smelled or the way I looked coming out of the shower, but, really, honestly, deep down I wanted nothing to do with them and everything to do with someone who could get his hands dirty in a way most darling MFA boys will not.

If I'm completely honest with myself, I am certain this has something to do with the types of men I grew up around--my grandfather, my uncle, my brother, my father. My father, of course, isn't a rough-tough-dirty-man in the way that some of the others on that list are, but he grew up around cars. He grew up loving cars. He's the type of man who can identify the make, model, and year of any old car when it passes on the street. He's the type of man who, when I smile and ask him sweetly, will change my brakes for me.

So maybe I've always been looking for what I'm used to. And while I was in the sideways car, shrieking and giggling and saying, "Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!" I realized that, hey, look at this. I've found something I've always been secretly looking for, and in finding it, I have managed to transform myself into the girls I always wanted to be, the girls I always identified with: the ones who would run down the stairs and into the car of a boy who's wanting to take them out, show them some fun, drive them fast along the dark country roads where no one else is around and all that's there is the long squeal of a tire and a quick flash of light in the place where, just seconds ago, a car had been.

Best Rumor EVER

So I have an upper-level creative writing class this semester, and here's the thing: I am in love with that class. It's a particularly deep and soulful love, and I spend a lot of time thinking how I'd like to fly that class to Vegas, get it drunk, and then marry it.

Today I was headed to this class, and I passed the chair of the department in the hall. She'd been teaching in the room where I'd be teaching in a few minutes.

She grinned at me. "There is a pretty big rumor about you being spread around," she said.

"What?" I said. I was trying to figure out what was so rumor-worthy about me. Earlier, I'd caught a few minutes of Scrubs while I was eating my breakfast, and on that episode Carla was spreading a rumor that the hot new Latina nurse used to be a dude. I hoped no one was trying that with me.

"Just wait until you get into class!" the chair said, and then she was gone and I was left to face my students.

"WHAT?" I demanded as I crossed the threshold. "WHAT IS GOING ON?"

(I did not add, "DOES ANYONE IN THIS ROOM THINK I USED TO BE A DUDE?")

"YOU!" one of the girls shouted. She pointed accusingly at me. "YOU ARE ENGAGED!"

I almost fell over. "What?" I asked.

"People are saying you got engaged!" she said. "To some hockey player! A guy who plays for the Sabres!"

"RYAN MILLER!" I said.

"YES!" she said. "The goalie!"

And then I shrieked. And jumped up and down. A lot. "THAT IS THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER HEARD!" I said. Of course, what made it good, what made it really fucking good, was that people--multiple people--apparently believed it.

So, to celebrate my engagement, here's a picture of my fiance with some random animals dressed in hockey jerseys:



God, that boy can wear a suit. Mercy.

Just Call Him Mr. Dime Nipples

Last night at eleven, when I was driving home from the first round of weekend fireworks, my friend Josh called me. When I picked up, I could hear a bad band playing in the background and an awful lot of shrieking.

“JESSICA!” he shouted. “I’m at the beer tent! You need to come to the beer tent!”

In our hometown, the weekend surrounding or close to the fourth of July is dominated by the firemen’s carnival—in its 60th year now—which is all about the Italian sausage, the strawberry shortcake, and the beer tent. There are rides set up on the baseball field of course, but that’s not really what the majority of the town cares about. After the kids go to bed or get shuttled off to the babysitter’s, the adults and the underagers who are using someone older to score beers for them gather under one of the picnic shelters to drink cheap, watery beer and fling themselves around the dance floor.

“My mom is here!” Josh said. “She is drunk and she is dancing!”

Josh’s mother is like no one else’s mother. I love my mom, and I enjoy having some drinks with her, but there isn’t any bone in my body that has the desire to see my mom guzzle a ton of beer and then run around hugging me and all my friends, dance suggestively with her man, grind up and down in the middle of the dance floor for everyone to see. But Josh wants that, and for good reason: his mother is hilarious when she’s had a few, and that pleases Josh who values, above all else, a person’s ability to let loose and make an ass of herself. It is surprisingly easy to make an ass of yourself when you are with Josh.

“Who else is there?” I asked.

“Kristen,” Josh said. “And John. Jooooohn.”

I have always tortured Josh about his friend John. He is artsy and cute. He is a boy who is getting his MFA and looks like approximately like Adam Levine. One of my favorite pastimes is informing Josh of the extent to which I wouldn’t mind making out with John.

“Oooh,” I said. “John.”

“Are you coming?” Josh asked. “I can’t hear you! Are you coming?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m coming.”

And I did. I pulled into the park at midnight, which meant the beer tent would be open for approximately another hour. I parked my car on the muddy lawn behind the picnic shelter where the band was playing.

I walked around slowly, staying at the edge of the crowd, searching for Josh or his friends. I saw chubby girls jiggling across the width of the shelter. I saw teenagers with hair dyed black-black-black wearing purple eyeliner making sour faces as they searched for someone to buy them beer. I saw mothers still sporting the same unfortunate hairdos they had when they were in high school: big bangs and curls that had been attacked with a pick until they frizzed.

Men hung near the corners of the shelter, holding beer and cigarettes, and they watched the floor, assessing the selection of women available for hitting on.

Volunteer firemen were manning the pizza stand, the sausage stand, the beer stand. I recognized men who used to work with my father when he was a volunteer, and I wondered if they would know who I was by looking at me.

I couldn’t find Josh. I called him. “I’m here,” I said. “Come get me. Where are you?”

“Where are YOU?” he shouted. “Wait. Wait. I see you! You’re walking toward me!”

And suddenly I heard Josh’s voice, and it wasn’t on the phone. He was running at me, full speed. He was wearing a patriotic ensemble: a red-white-and blue t-shirt and a slick Pabst Blue Ribbon hat that was cocked crookedly across his forehead.

He snatched me up off the ground and hugged me like it was the first time he’d seen me since I’d been home, like he hadn’t just seen me the night before, when he’d had mojitos with us and then insisted that I ride on the back of his bike from one bar to the other, which, if I hadn’t already had four drinks, I would have recognized was a horrible idea. I’d clutched at Josh and screamed, “I DO NOT KNOW WHERE TO PUT MY LEGS! JOSHUA! WHERE DO I PUT MY LEGS?!”

But at the beer tent, that was all a distant memory.

Josh set me down and we made our way back to his friends, who were sitting at a picnic bench that was drenched from the earlier rain shower.

“Do you want a beer?” Josh asked. He was drunk and loud. “DO YOU?”

“You can have this one,” John said. He flicked a half-empty cup sitting in the middle of the table.

“Yeah?” I said. “What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s only spiked with a roofie,” John said. “No big deal.”

“I have a ticket,” Josh said, and he shoved it in my face. It was pink and said BEER!

“Will you go get it for me?” I asked. I gave him my best smile.

“Oh, okay,” he said, and he disappeared.

When he came back, he set the beer down and collapsed on the bench next to me. “Kristen,” he said. “I want to see your cats. I want to make love to Chumba.”

Josh and Kristen, who live together in the city, often have her cats living with them, too, and Josh loves this more than anything. He is crazy for cats—especially Kristen’s cats. He likes to balance them on top of doors to see how they will handle the new heights.

“I love the cats,” Josh said. “Hey. I saw Wagner in there. He’s such a fucking pussy.” He poked me in the side. “My mom is here, Jess. Are you going to write about this night sometime? You are, aren’t you? My mom is drunk.”

And not long after that, his mother made an appearance. She came up behind Josh and caught him in a hug.

“Hi, Val,” he said. “You’re drunk.”

She had with her a beer and her husband. You might remember them from one of the funniest conversations of my life (#3).

“Your uncle’s in there dancing on the table,” his mother said. “It’s great.”

“Mom,” Josh said, “do you remember Jess? This is Jess.” He put an arm around me. “Jess is the writer.”

“Josh!” his mother said. “Josh, you don’t have to introduce her by her profession. I know who she is. She’s a human being, not a profession.”

“You’re right,” Josh said, very seriously.

Now, Josh’s step-father was wiggling his hips to the beat of “Sweet Home Alabama.”

“I remember you,” he said. “You were at our house that one time.”

I’ve been at Josh’s house a lot, but usually no one else is home and we end up drinking wine and vodka at 3:00 in the afternoon and running around shooting leaves with BB guns.

“That’s me,” I said.

“You’re the writer,” the step-father said.

“Yes,” I said. “I am.”

"The writer!” Josh’s friend John said. He raised his beer and cigarette into the air.

“You’re very observant of all this,” the step-father said. He narrowed his eyes at me. He made the universal I’m-watching-you sign and gestured two fingers toward his eyes. “Me too. I’m like that too. I watch everything.”

Josh’s mother was hugging him and hugging Kristen and hugging John.

“You like to watch everything, take everything in,” Josh’s step-father said.

“I do,” I said.

“She’s going to write about this,” Josh said. “I know. I can tell.”

Josh’s step-father stepped to his right and began to hump the air around Kristen’s head.
Kristen closed her eyes and drank her beer. “Oh my God,” she said.

“Mom!” Josh said. “Mom, he is HUMPING KRISTEN!”

Josh’s mom was dancing to the music.

“Mom!” Josh tugged at the sleeve of her denim jacket. “Can you make him stop?”

“This is just like when I used to serve shots at the strip club,” Kristen said. Josh’s step-father held his beer carefully as he continued to pump his hips in the air.

“Are you going to come drink with us?” Josh’s mom asked. “We’re leaving.”

Josh shook his head. “We’re going to see the cats at Kristen’s.” He made a dreamy face and pretended to snuggle the air like it was a cat. “I love those cats,” he said.

“We’re leaving,” Josh’s mom said. Her husband stopped humping and brought his beer back to his lips.

“Okay,” Josh said. “Goodbye, Val!” He launched into her like a football player attempting a tackle, and he hugged her tight.

After they left to continue their drinking elsewhere, Kristen began taking pictures of the two boys. She conducted a pretty rigid photo sessions. “Turn your head an inch to the right. Okay. Hold it right there,” she would say. “Lift your eyes a little. Look up at the sky. Don’t breathe. Okay.” Then she would take the picture with the phone and turn it for us to see, and there was John or Josh encased in some frame that made it look like they were being swallowed by a shark or wearing a an old West sheriff’s hat.

The boys thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. Josh laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe, and he wheezed and leaned against me until he caught his breath.

“Pose like you’re sucking dick!” Josh insisted of John. “Do a little dick sucking!”

“Wait,” John said. “Am I posing like I’m sucking or being sucked?”

“Sucking!” Josh said. He demonstrated.

“Oh,” John said. “Right.”

The results were funny, and Josh leapt off the picnic bench and bent over, laughing. He started talking nonsense.

“Vagina,” he said. “Dick sucker!” He spun around at the precise moment a short but scrappy man walked by. Josh opened his mouth to say something, and I started to pray that he would have some small shred of sanity available to realize speaking like that in this guy’s direction was going to be a bad idea. The guy, who looked like he was the type to haunt any of our small town bars, drinking whiskey and telling other guys what motherfuckers they were until one of them challenged him to fight, narrowed his eyes at Josh.

Josh turned abruptly around. “Jesus,” he said and sat back down.

It went on like that through a few more beers. Josh couldn’t stop talking about how much he loved Kristen’s cats—“You really like them,” John said. “Are you going to finger-bang them?”—and people they went to school with kept floating by.

Josh slung his arm around a tall, chubby girl. “I bit her in elementary school,” he told me. “I got sent to the principal.”

“Hiiiiii, Josh,” another girl said. She walked by an sent a sly, flirty look over her shoulder at him.

She was ignored.

Kristen gestured to Josh. “Josh has nipples the size of dimes,” she said. “Seriously. That’s at their biggest. DIMES.”

“Dime nipples!” John said.

“Show us your nipples, Josh,” Kristen said.

“No,” Josh said.

“Come on!” Kristen said.

Josh shrugged. “Okay.” He tugged his shirt up and showed off his nipples.

“See?” Kristen said, smug. “Dimes! Told you!”

It started to rain soon after, and we decided to go—but not before the boys snuck off to go to the bathroom behind the tents and food stands, not before John told me about the new playground just behind the carnival setup, not before we walked straight into the dark and examined the new playground equipment, not before we climbed the slippery rock wall, not before John insisted I stand in the middle of the rickety, swingy wooden bridge so he could bounce me like the boys would do to the girls when we were little.

After we were finished on the playground, we headed off to our cars, and on the way Josh and John got into a scuffle—they were trying to wrestle, see who was bigger, badder, stronger. They locked arms and tried to force each other to the ground. This happened in front of the shelter, where the band was packing up, where everyone else was finishing up their beer.

“Oh Jesus,” Kristen said.

There were cops loafing in the dark, standing underneath the now-closed pizza stand, and one of them stepped forward, not sure if Josh and John were serious with their sloppy brawl.
I thought it was fairly easy to see it wasn’t serious—there was an awful lot of giggling going on, after all—but the cop bent close to say something to them.

The boys popped up and started talking back to the cop.

“Oh Jesus,” Kristen repeated. “I think we better go get them before they say something stupid.”
“Hi!” Josh said brightly as we approached.

“Good evening, ladies,” the cop said.

“Hello,” we said.

“Are you here to claim these guys?” he asked.

We nodded.

“You sure you want to?” the cop asked.

“Mostly,” I said.

“They need to go home.”

Josh was singing lyrics under his breath. He giggled.

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Have a good night then,” the cop said. “GOOD NIGHT!” Josh shouted, and then I took him back to my car, and he waited patiently while I made my way through the mud to unlock the doors.

“You’re going to write about this?” he asked. “Aren’t you? I love when you write about stuff like this. I love YOU. Hey! I’m going to get to see the cats!”

Summer Goal #3: Work on My Maine Accent

My first goal for the summer, of course, is to write. My second goal is to make it through my ten year high school reunion unscathed. My third goal is to practice and master the Maine accent.

I mean, seriously. Enough is enough already. I've been here almost two full years now, and I still cannot replicate the accent on command. And if you're wondering how many times I'm suddenly asked to do the Maine accent, you'd probably be surprised: it's a lot. A lot. And I can't.

I'd say it took me two years to get the Minnesotan accent to sit in the back of my throat, and now when I'm back in New York, I pop into that accent every now and again to get a laugh because--can we face it? Let's just face it--there is nothing sillier sounding than the Minnesota accent. Even a Cockney accent has more clout. Someone speaking in a Cockney accent sounds like he's got his mouth full of cotton balls--maybe because he was just in a bar fight and got slugged on the jaw and then slugged someone else on his jaw and then all out pandemonium ensued. That's at least a little badass. There is nothing badass about the Minnesota accent.

Of course, it's difficult to slide into that accent if you haven't been speaking it your whole life, and I've always found it helpful to start off with one word I know will strike some kind of chord in my memory, and then I can prattle off sounding like someone's sweet grandma from "up nordt." Usually those words are as follows: oh (ohhhhhhhhhh), yeah (yahhhhhhhhhh), for (fer), or Megan (Maygin). That last one is in honor of my old roommate, who can do the Minnesota accent like no one's business. If I channel her, I'm all set.

Sometimes I start off with a whole phrase--usually the one that horrified me the most after I first heard one of my office mates utter it in complete sincerity. That phrase is oh fer cute, and it means, I guess, Wow! That's super cute! (I'm not kidding you. People actually use that phrase.) It's usually a crowd pleaser. Once, one of my friends took me aside and said, "Come on. You're exaggerating. They don't really say that." And I had to tell that girl to stop living in a dream world.

Anyway, it's those things that can easily slip me back into my finely-honed accent. And that's what I need to kick start my Maine accent. I need to find a word or phrase that's going to clang in my ear and command: Start talking like this, and do it now!

For a while I thought it was going to be forty (fawty) or the classic Maine affirmation (ah-yup), but neither of those do it for me. Neither of those push me into an a-ha! moment, where suddenly I am dropping phrases and vowel sounds from my mouth in a way they'd never normally come out.

For those of you who don't know, the Maine accent is essentially Boston-ese but perhaps a bit crustier, a bit rougher, a bit more hick-ish, and then made even odder by Maine's insistence on bastardizing French words and sounds. Sometimes the things that fall out of people's mouths up here take my breath away.

But I think what I'm going to start practicing with this summer is the word "brother." The way guys from Boston say "brother" is "brutha," and that's the way some of my students--the students with thick Maine accents--say it, too. And I can do brother/brutha pretty good. I can say Whutcha doin' brutha and pull of a decent accent. So now I think I have to make careful note of more odd phrases and phrasing, more odd pronunciations to get it just right. But I'm betting that this time next year, if you asked me to spontaneously produce the Maine accent, I'll look at you, smile, and say, "Absolutely, brutha!" And then I'll be off with wicked-this and wicked-that and fawty mah days and ayup, that lobstah's got a pretty wicked pincha on him! And it will be spectacular.

I Might Not Have Won the Skull Trophy, But It Was Still a Good Day

I am exhausted.

I have no reason to be exhausted. I spent the day doing nothing strenuous at all, unless you count mini-golfing as a strenuous activity, and I'm betting you don't.

My whole day was low key, light, pretty not-exhaustion-inducing. It went something like this:

10:00 AM: I arrive at school. I check my e-mail.


10:15 AM: I think about dusting my desk. I decide against it.


10:17 AM: I watch as a plant with human legs walks through the door into the office. It is my office-mate and his plant. "This," he says, "is Quagmire." I'd agreed to water his plant while he is away on his post-semester vacation, and since he lives an hour and a half from where I live--yes, his is a monster commute--he brought the plant to me. "Don't kill it, okay?" he says. "We've bonded. We watch sports together."


10:25 AM: My office-mate tests the new camera he bought for his trip. He tries a video. He films me reading about Miss California's racy photos. When he downloads it to his computer, I complain. "Look at my back!" I say. "I am a hunchback! I have a hump! I look like I have scoliosis!"


10:27 AM: My office-mate tries for another video. "And there's Jess," he narrates as he tapes, "and her VERY STRAIGHT BACK."

"That's right!" I say. "This right here is a scoliosis-free zone!"


10:30 AM: It is time to do what we've all come to campus to do. We are off to the official Appreciation Brunch. The people in charge of dining had e-mailed us earlier to tell us what was on the menu for the morning. The list included things like french toast and ham and asparagus and chicken and omelets and hash browns and sausage and fruit and salad and scones and cheesecakes.

Because this food is free and because the faculty and staff is allowed to have as much of it as we want, there is a very, very long line to get to the food.


11:15 AM: We watch the president hand out the yearly awards. Someone is retiring, and that means that person is getting a lamp which is done up in the school's colors.

There is a running joke going on--the powers that be cancelled hand-shaking at graduation tomorrow because of the Swine Flu (sigh), so everyone is giving everyone else a hard time about it. The president gets fist bumps, hugs, high fives, salutes, and bows as he hands out the awards.


11:45 AM: It is determined that the weather, which looked spotty and sketchy earlier, is going to hold, thus making it possible for our department to wage the Second Annual Humanities Department Mini-Golf Smack-Down. We start gearing up for the two o'clock tee-time. This means I am off to change into my golf attire--my I Love Jordan Catalano T-shirt--and it also means I am off to buy a trophy.


12:30 PM: I am standing in the local dollar store. I am looking at ceramic cow statues, glass religious figures, packages of leis. I try to channel Diana Joseph. I think, If Diana was throwing a Baby in the Cupcake party, what would she get for prizes?

I walk out with a squishy gray skull whose eyes pulse out of its head, sloshing blood, goo, and worms when you squeeze it. I drop that into a plastic tiki stein left over from what seems to be the dollar store's Cinco de Mayo stockpile. I think DJ would be pretty proud.


2:00 PM: The Humanities Department Mini-Golf Smack-Down begins. We separate into two teams. It's the Humanities Gang vs. the Assorted Math and Science-y People Gang.


2:25 PM: On hole three, one of the members of the other group comes over and says, "Does this place serve beer?"

We say ha, fat chance, we wish.

"You mean you haven't been drinking?" she asks.

No, no, we haven't. This is just what we act like on a normal basis. Some of us are wearing sombreros. Some of us are insisting--loudly--that the ball is more likely to go into the hole if you dirty-talk it. Some of us are using our new cameras to videotape the whole thing and threatening to put it on YouTube.


3:25 PM: We are done and awaiting final scores. There is some confusion. The Math gang is saying things about averages and square roots and integers.

They win. Their average score beats our average score. In the individual scores, though, I am third. I am a mini-golf champ.


3:35 PM: We hand out the squishy skull and tiki goblet to the official winner. We are off to for martinis and food.


4:15 PM: We drink two-for-one martinis. We eat. I talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. My office-mate pours half of his second martini into my second martini glass, and I talk and talk and talk some more.

One of my former students is working at the place we love to haunt for our two-for-ones. At one point he sneaks up behind me and says, "Hey. That B- you gave me last year? It was my favorite grade of the whole semester. Everything else I didn't care about, but I worked hard for that B-."


6:30 PM: I go home. I lie down on the bed, on a pile of clothes I have been sorting out of my closet for Goodwill. I feel suddenly unable to move. I am exhausted. All I want to do is close my eyes and fall asleep while Scrubs plays in the background.

Katy calls. "Hey!" she says. "Great news! When I come to visit, you and I can now get married! Well, maybe. I know how Maine feels about gay marriage, but how does it feel about polygamy and gay marriage?"

"Oh, they don't need to know that you have a husband, too," I say. "We just won't tell them."


6:45 PM: The Wily Republican calls. "So, I've been watching Castle," he says.

"Yes?" I say. I, too, have been watching--and loving--Castle. In fact, I am the one who suggested he might like the show.

"And, okay, I'll give you this: it's kind of like our situation."

"Isn't it?!" I said. "You're the grumpy one going around telling me to stop being stupid, and I'm the one running after you and saying, 'Oooh! Ooh! Interesting! Let me see! I'm SO going to write about this!'"


7:00-rest of the night: I position myself on the couch and don't move through episodes of America's Next Top Model, Lost, and American Idol. At 10:30, I want to go to bed.

It's funny how everything suddenly just ticks to a stop after the semester ends. It's only then that the true weight of everything that happened over those fifteen weeks rolls over you. Everything you were thinking-feeling-hoping kind of just leaks out your ears, hisses out of those tight places in your shoulders and legs and toes. It's then that you realize Jesus, I am tired. And it's a serious kind of tired.

But luckily that serious kind of tired is about to remedied for three months. All that's standing between me and my summer is tomorrow's graduation, which is sure to be filled with fist-bumps aplenty. Now I'm just wondering if the post-graduation cookie and punch social is cancelled due to the Swine Flu, too...

And Now, a Love Letter

Last night at 6:45, after portfolios had been collected and evaluations had been done, I stood in front of my Wednesday night class--a group I called the Not Colleens because there was one girl who looked exactly like a girl I used to waitress with (Colleen) but was in fact not Colleen--and I unrolled my finest last-day pep-talk. It was all take these lessons with you! Use them in other classes! Use them in life! Let me be the voice in your head hissing, "Why are you putting that comma there?!"

And then I told them it was a great pleasure to have had their company for fifteen weeks. Sometimes--especially on the darkest nights of winter--the last thing you want to do is go teach a night class for three straight hours (which totally cuts into some of the best TV of the week), and you clunk into class feeling like it is the world's biggest chore. This class, though, with its fabulous mix of nontraditional students, high school seniors, and single dads, was about as good as they get, and they never felt like a chore.

I even baked them cookies. That's how good they were. Back when I first started teaching, I used to bake cookies for every class I had--and my last creative writing class at MSU even got a pizza party--but it just got to be too much. When I was teaching in Buffalo, I baked cookies for my engineering boys and decided that was it. I was done. I was finished. No more cookies.

But I rolled the cookies out for this bunch because they deserved it. I hadn't given a single A out in my other composition class all semester long--in fact, on their final papers, only two people were above a C--but my night class was a completely different story. It was A! A! A! A! It was pile after pile of essays that were consistently well thought-out, impeccably crafted, and painstakingly revised. It was clear that these were papers that were started more than twenty-four hours before they were due. Way more than twenty-four hours before they were due.

These students would come up to me and drop a paragraph on my desk and say things like: "I tried a little something new here. What do you think? Do you think the tone works? Do you think it's a good image to grab the audience's attention? Do you think the punctuation helps emphasize my point?"

Those questions are enough to make me fall over dead. The entire semester long, I was about three seconds away from grabbing these students and clutching them to my bosom and saying, "You are trying! You are thinking! You are WONDERFUL!"

I made sure they knew how much I appreciated them. After every batch of essays got graded, I'd walk into the room and announce that my giant teacher crush on them was as strong as ever because I'd spent the weekend marking high grades all over the place. One time, I even went so far as to draw a fat A wearing a bejeweled crown on one girl's essay because it was simply one of the best I'd ever read.

A teacher doesn't get lucky like that often. I mean, they were charming and funny and smart and thoughtful and helpful. They were everything you hope you get in a group of college students but often don't. I'm not foolish enough to think I'll have another group like that for a while. Which is sad. Which is very sad. Sometimes I come home after a day on campus and wonder if I'm even doing any good, if I've ever done any good, if I am teaching anyone anything at all. But I never once--not even for a second--felt that way or wondered those things as I left that class. I only ever felt wonderful, which is exactly what I was feeling last night after I finished my pep-talk and said my goodbyes and they all stood up and clapped for me. That right there? That's the best feeling in the world.

Buy It. Buy It Now.

Today is a good day. Today is the day this book comes out:



And let me just say this about its author: Diana Joseph was one of the best parts of my whole grad school experience.

She will invite you over for beans and rice or creamy cauliflower casserole or chicken noodle soup. She will invite you over and tell you the one thing she believes in is this: everything is made better with a can of Ro-Tel tomatoes. She will invite you to Wal-Mart so you can help shop for things to stuff inside a pinata for Cinco de Mayo. She will invite you to TJ Maxx so you can shop for things to give out if someone gets a baby you've baked into the cupcakes for her party. She will invite you over to walk next door and say hi to her neighbor, the one wearing the bathrobe and making a turkey sandwich, the one she thinks you should have a fling with.

She will let you cry and curse and yell about the people you hate, the boys you've loved, the friends who have done you wrong. She will let you fuss yourself out on her couch, at her kitchen table, over a glass of scotch. She will say things like You're okay, baby. You're okay. in a voice that somehow makes you believe that, hey, you are okay and everything will be fine. She will swing her hair around and around and around and tell you you should swing your hair around too.

A girl like that has an awful lot to say, and don't you want to listen to her say it?

Infinitely Better Than the Gun Raffle

Over last Thanksgiving break, the Boy From Work dragged me to a gun and meat raffle. Of course, dragged is a bit of an exaggeration. I'd heard him talking about gun raffles for months, and I was curious. I knew enough about meat raffles--Ex-Keith's mother haunted meat raffles like nobody's business and often came home loaded down with turkeys and hams bound for the freezer--but I didn't have any experience with gun raffles.

The way I pictured it, there was a fire hall filled to the brim with antsy rednecks who were jostling each other to get a better look at the stage. And on that stage stood the event host, holding rifles and pistols up under the lights before calling out the winner's name. Everyone waited with bated breath for their name to be called, and if it was, the winners would let out a mighty woop! before descending on the stage to claim their prize, fill out paperwork, and tote it home.

To me, that sounded at least mildly interesting. Plus, I was told there was a whole bunch of food at gun raffles, and, as we all know, I am a fan of food. So I let the BFW pick me up a ticket and drive me to the small-town fire hall. When we got there, I was filled with a sudden panic. The parking lot was frighteningly crammed, and a line of broad-shouldered men trudged toward the door, cases of beer crooked from their fingers.

"You can bring your own beer?" I asked.

The BFW looked at me like I was crazy. "Well, yeah," he said.

"To a raffle where guns are being distributed? You can just waltz in with booze?"

He nodded, grabbed my mittened hand, and tugged me toward the door. When we pushed through those doors, it was a surreal experience. First of all, there was no stage. There was no discernible front of the room, no hub, no center of the action. Instead, there was a giant hall filled with collapsible tables and chairs. Almost all the tables were full. Some people--the unlucky ones, the ones who had come late and hadn't had friends save them spots--were wandering through the aisles, pitifully looking for a place to sit.

People had coolers cracked open next to them, showcasing beers of all varieties. Men wearing confederate flag T-shirts were playing poker and slowly erecting giant pyramids of beer cans. Women with teased hair and big bangs were shouting at kids or rubbing beer bottles against their lips or shrieking at their friends.

Near the back of the room, volunteers from the fire department were setting up a buffet line filled with sliced deli meats, bratwurst, macaroni salad, Limburger cheese, baked beans, pickles, sauerkraut, and condiments.

There was no display of the guns that were being raffled off. There was no auctioneer calling out their names, statistics, or finer qualities. There was only a pair of tables covered with thick tablecloth, and those were the tables that housed the meat. Steaks, turkeys, hams, thick-sliced bacon, and roasters were spread out for display and scrutiny.

As can be expected, I did not exactly "fit in" at the gun raffle. It wasn't anything like I'd hoped. It was less like an auction and more like a social event, like an indoor picnic, like some giant family reunion--except less cooler than any reunion my family might have had; at those, there is at least a dessert cook-off. Here, instead of the tables filled with Best Chocolate Cookie or Best Brownie or Best Pie submissions, there were only tables of bloody meat. And no guns. Zero guns, which is exactly what I thought we were gathered to celebrate.

Today, though, I got to attend an auction--my first--and that was a much more satisfying experience. It was sort of what I was hoping the gun raffle would turn out to be. And at this auction, actual guns were lofted into the air for the general public to ogle before they flashed their bid cards into the air for a chance to make them theirs.

Before today, I had approximately zero experience with auctions, aside from what I've seen on television. The word auction made me think of the following things: artwork, mothball-smelling old ladies, and fast-talking men. When one of my colleagues suggested we go auctioning this weekend, I conjured up the stereotypical scene in my head--shouting! paddles in the air! fabulous items being carted to and from the stage!--and I thought, Yes. We SHOULD go auctioning this weekend. After all, I wanted to see how right I'd been in my head.

And, well, I was sort of right. There were an awful lot of mothball-smelling old ladies who sat in the front row--reserved seats--and bid on the lots of costume jewelry, rosaries, and plant stands. There was a fast-talking man who went straight through 600 lots without taking a break. And there was artwork, although it was less "fabulous" and more "icky" and "musty." Of course, that's not to say there weren't some deals. One of the people I went with picked up a great vintage photograph of a man bending over a book and looking very scholarly. "This," she said, "is going into my TV room." She'd floated her bid card into the air and--poof!--it was hers, and they marched it right over to her. The instant gratification was intoxifying.

Still, this was no New York City auction, where mink coats and grandmother's pearls and famous paintings were wheeled onto the stage. This was an auction where there were at least ten different lots of antique planers, chipped china, and moldy boat building manuals. But it was fantastic. It was exactly the experience I wanted in return for waking up at 6:30 AM on a Sunday so that we could drive to the sweet coastal town where the auction house sat flanked by two bear statues wearing Santa hats.

I wanted the smell of old wood and antique silver. I wanted the shouting. I wanted the bustle. I wanted the food table with its big vats of chowder, its buckets of oyster crackers. I wanted to throw my bid card into the air for a mahogany "pie crust" table (what would I use it for?) and a lot of small glass pitchers (why would I need that many?) and a lot of rose-printed teacups (how quickly do I want to become my grandmother?). And then I wanted to go eat lunch with a man who bought a lot of comic books in hopes that he could sell them on eBay and a woman who buckled her vintage photograph into the backseat of her car so it didn't get jostled on the way home. And then I wanted to go and stand on the marshy winter edges of my co-worker's home town--Southport, Maine (which looks like this in summer, but trust me when I tell you it's just as spectacular in newly fallen snow)--and I wanted to wish for the hundredth time that I could live on the water, so close to everything good in the world: beach, ocean, seafood, and a place where I could get a six piece wicker patio set for $25. (No lie.)

Well, I Want to Marry Her Again, So That Means It's Official: She's Back

The first time I ever thought about what it might be like to be a lesbian was in the year 2000. Amy and I and a bunch of our college friends were sitting in front of the television on a Thursday night. The VMAs were on. We were watching them because that's what most college students were doing on the first Thursday of the first week of fall semester.

It was an okay show. We were talking more about our new professors and the crappy selection of food at the Williams Center--were they ever going to get take-out chicken fingers?!--than we were the actual show itself, but that all stopped when Britney Spears came on.

Now, it's important to know that I have had a storied love affair with Britney Spears since she broke onto the scene at the beginning of 1999. The first time I heard the opening beats of Baby One More Time, I was hooked. After all, I loved to dance, and that song made me want to shake it eighteen different kinds of ways. I bought the CD immediately, and I've bought each of her CDs since then. And I don't even want to talk about the slightly embarrassing moment last spring when, after I'd agreed to drive a few of my colleagues to the local mini-golf place for a thank-God-it's-the-end-of-the-semester round of putt-putt, I turned my key and Britney's latest came blasting out of my speakers. "Oh my God," I said, "I'm so sorry you had to hear that." But I wasn't sorry I was hearing it. I blared that CD everywhere I went, and the only time I turned it down was when I came into the college parking lot. I didn't need any of my students knowing about my Britney obsession.

But back in 2000, my Britney obsession was just starting to intensify to manic status. Her VMA performance was a mix of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and "Oops!.... I Did It Again," and she came out on stage in a spangled suit which was, after the opening Rolling Stones riff, ripped off, leaving her bouncing around in nothing but a nude body suit covered strategically with rhinestones.

At the beginning of the performance, there was a slight wardrobe malfunction, and part of the spangled suit--black, business-like--edged down, and the audience caught a glimpse of something nude underneath it. I, like many people in America, assumed Britney's costume was about to fall off and there was a good chance she was going to be nude on the VMAs. But she went and ripped it off anyway, as had been the original plan, and then she went on with her business.

And in that moment--the moment where she ripped off her spangles and revealed the nude bodysuit underneath--I screamed. I don't know why I did it, but I screamed and screamed and screamed. There was something terrifyingly exciting about that moment. There was something very nasty about it all. And that was the precise moment I fell in love with Britney Spears.

Of course, it's been well documented that my grandmother thinks I'm a giant lesbian, and I've spent too much time trying to point out how boy crazy I am, but I'm not even going to pretend that I wouldn't run away with Britney if she asked me to. Maybe--somehow, some way--my grandmother knew about my reaction to the 2000 VMAs. Maybe she saw how my eyes widened, how my mouth fell open, how I shrieked until my vocal chords went numb. Maybe that's what planted the seed.

It sure planted the seed for me. The one woman I would ever go lesbian for is Britney Spears.

I cannot tell you how much this displeased some of my boy friends in grad school. They found this fact about me to be disgusting, trashy, ill-advised. "Britnnnney?" they would moan. "A silly pop star?!"

Yes, a silly pop star. A silly pop star who, whenever she wanted, could create an international sensation with a flick of her hip. The power she had was immeasurable. I wanted to be close to it. I wanted to touch it. I was sure that that power would feel like the hum of a million bee hives roiling under my palm. And just once--just for one second--I thought it would be interesting to be so close to something so beautiful and powerful.

Of course, all the power and beauty didn't last forever. Britney went and turned herself into the world's biggest punch line, and that lasted for a few years. There was the whole Federline business, the whole reality show business, the whole being immortalized in a sculpture that depicted her giving birth on a wolf-skin rug business. There was that whole shaved head thing and the tabloid reports of her traipsing into gas station bathrooms without shoes on. There was an incessant love of Cheetos and anything fried. There was chubbiness, zits, cut-off shorts, messy hair. And the world ate it up. One of the most beautiful girls in the world had lost her mind and gone to pot.

But then the tabloids kept saying, She's coming back! This will be her moment of triumph! She's going to have the world's biggest comeback! And then Britney would go out, get drunk, and show off her delicate areas to the paparazzi as she was exiting a car with Paris Hilton. It was all very ugly.

And I knew that everyone was wrong--she wasn't coming back just yet. I knew in my heart--because of the storied love affair, of course--that she wasn't ready yet. I knew everyone's predictions were premature. I wasn't going to get excited about a comeback until I saw her in public, appropriately panty-ed and with hair that had recently seen a comb. I wasn't going to get excited until I heard her give an interview without popping bubblegum before she spoke. I wasn't going to get excited until she stopped going places wearing wigs and speaking in British accents. I knew she needed to go crazy before she reeled herself back in. (Or before someone reeled her back in.)

And today I feel like finally that day has come. The comeback is bubbling. Am I 100% positive our girl is not going to go back off the deep end? No. But I am fairly sure she's going to be around in her current state--groomed, trim, long-haired, and beautiful--for a while. At least until she sells a substantial number of records.

And you can bet I'm buying the new one. Or at least that I'm requesting it for Christmas. After watching this video--finally released today, in celebration of the new album--how could I resist? How can you?

If You Asked Me What I Would've Done with Myself If I Had Been Born with Rhythm, This Would Be the Answer

Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay!

I don't know much about the gay lifestyle here in Maine. I couldn't tell you where the great gay bars or saucy meeting places are. I couldn't tell you about festivals, shows, or parades that celebrate Maine's LGBT population. I don't have a link to that world here--which, yes, distresses me a lot--but after this weekend, I can tell you this: there's definitely a gay undercurrent zipping through this state, or at least its southern coast.

I realized this as my mother and I picked our way through a large Christmas store in downtown Portland. My mother and I are both fools for Christmas decorations, and there is absolutely no time during a year that we aren't game for shopping for ornaments, garlands, trees, or holiday-themed place settings. So, while her boyfriend and her boyfriend's son sat in a bar down the street, my mother and I spent some serious time oohing and ahhing at Christmas villages, hand-painted Russian Matryoshkas, and a variety of lobster and moose-themed ornaments. Then we came to the last room of ornaments. There, lined up in neat rows that took up nearly an entire wall, were mermaid ornaments.

It's important to know why I saw the flicker of glittery tails and was immediately drawn to the wall. For a large period of my childhood, I was obsessed with the movie The Little Mermaid. I was so obsessed with Ariel and her life under the sea, I spent a considerable amount of time fantasizing that I was a mermaid, that I was able to float and twirl among sea anemones and schools of fish. Sometimes I would go so far as to pretend I was a mermaid for a whole day, and if my parents called me to, say, come into the kitchen and eat my dinner, I'd make my way lazily down the hall, arms stroking, hair tossing, voice singing Ariel's trademark songs.

I've always been into mermaids--probably more than one girl should be, especially considering mermaids aren't real. But still, this explains why I got so excited, why I squealed a little bit when I saw that wall of mermaids. I stepped over the wall to check them out--there were tons!--and that's when I stopped, gasped, and clapped a hand over my mouth. These mermaids weren't what I'd originally thought (mermaid ornaments depicting human careers and situations); instead, they were just slutty. And gay. Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay.

"Look at this!" I hissed at my mother. I plucked one of the mermaids off the wall and balanced it in my palm. It was the best thing I'd ever seen. The ornament was big--larger than my hand--and heavy. These mermaids and their glittery tails were made of real substantial stuff. Slutty, slutty stuff. Their tails were arched in various positions that insinuated sex; they were wearing outfits that should only be seen in the bedroom; and they always had liquor in their hands. A martini, a margarita, a flute of champagne--each mermaid looked like a Vegas hooker who was two drinks away from giving a freebie to that cute guy over by the slots.

"These mermaids are prostitutes!" I said, and my mother and I laughed and poked at each of the skanky sea creatures and their tiny glasses of booze. But none of the girls could even come close to the beauty, the brilliance, and the hilarity of the mermen. I'd never seen such blatantly gay Christmas ornaments before, and, needless to say, I loved them. I wanted to buy every single one of them and start a tradition of having a small themed tree devoted only to these ornaments and their sparkly awesomeness. Just picture it:

It would be the best themed Christmas tree ever. Start shopping.

That Seagull Owes Me $3.50

This afternoon I headed off to the beach, but not before I popped into one of my favorite bakery/cafes--the one that's very likely run by pretty dark-haired lesbians. They make killer desserts. Lemon bars. Whoopie pies. Mocha fudge brownies. And I wanted to make a little picnic lunch, something I could sink my teeth into after several hours of tanning, reading, walking, wading, and seashell-gathering.

So I picked up a panini, chips, and a pecan bar that was so big it might as well have been a mini-pie. I couldn't wait to eat it.

And the pecan bar sat perfectly hidden in one of my beach bags the whole time I beached. It sat under a giant panini. No one bothered it when it was sitting in my beach chair as I lazed on the ground, and no one bothered it when I was off on my first long walk of the day--the one that took me to the west beach, the one with the wildest waves.

At dinner time, I broke into the panini. I was busy enjoying the grilled chicken, the sauteed peppers, the sassy pesto dressing while nearby a seagull was busying eyeing me up like nobody's business. Earlier, I'd witnessed this same seagull--the one with a red stripe that looked like a ketchup stain on his beak--saunter up to a large group close to me and snatch a chip from an open bag that was leaning up against a lady's leg. She screamed. Her whole group screamed. She got up and galloped after that seagull, who loped away, taunting her by not even having the decency to fly away. The lady chased him so with such vigor that the whole top of her bathing suit almost came off. Her straps slid down her arms and she finally had to give up. She stopped and tugged those straps back up. "STAY! AWAY! FROM! ME!" she yelled to the seagull. The seagull just dropped the chip on the sand and started nibbling it into bite-sized pieces.

That same seagull was now looking at my panini like it would be a great next course to his meal. I ate most of it, though. There was only a little sliver of bread left, and I rolled that up tightly into a piece of paper before sticking it back in its original bag, back on top of the pecan bar. I tucked it away in one of my beach bags. I hid it under two books, a notebook, and a couple of bottles of sunscreen. I set that bag on the chair and put a blanket on top of it. I thought, Just you try, seagull.

And I went off on another walk, this time to the other side of the beach, where cottages and mansions sit above sand glittering with tumbled rocks and shells. When I got back, the beach leading up to my setup was littered with crumpled paper. At first, it didn't occur to me that the paper looked an awful lot like the paper my panini had been wrapped in. I got back to my blanket and chair and saw that my entire bag had been moved from the chair. The seagull had nudged it onto the blanket and burrowed down through all the other things to find my food. He'd taken the scrap of bread, and he'd taken my pecan bar.

My pecan bar.

And he was sitting in the sand a ways off, just looking at me, all smug and satisfied. And you know what? I didn't even get mad. Not one bit. Because--let's face it--that was one ballsy, clever, and strong seagull. I was sad about not getting to eat my pecan bar--it looked really, really good--but I was almost pleased to give it up to an animal who had so much commitment to thievery. The stake out, the execution, the whole robbery was well played. The only thing that bothered me was having to scuff across the beach and pick up my missing things--including a few sheets of my novel-in-progress that had gotten between the seagull and his dessert. But I came home and soothed myself the only way I knew how: by baking up a pan of peanut butter brownies. I stuck a cup of chopped pecans in the mix just so I wouldn't miss out completely.

A Girl with Tools

It's not a big secret that I'm not crafty. I'm not handy with tools or raw materials. In fact, I'm so awful at being clever with needs-assembly items that I was relieved of my crafting tasks at my friend Beth's wedding because I was the only bridesmaid who could not, no matter what, hot glue the guys' boutonnieres together. After seeing the job I'd done and after seeing how I'd covered myself in hot glue and ribbon scraps, Beth's sisters looked at me like I was a moron, and then they tugged the glue gun from my hands. I was given an alternate task: writing the maid of honor's dinner speech--a task I was much more suited for.

It's not that I'm lazy; it's that I don't have any talent for these things. I am just the type of girl who has to ask other people to do the grunt work for her. When I moved to Maine, the Boy From Work assembled every piece of furniture I bought while I stuck to tasks I was better at: drinking a giant jug of wine and sweeping up after him. When I had to change my New York license plates over to Maine plates, I selected one of my dearest students--an auto boy who had a toolbox in the back of his truck--and smiled so sweetly that he bustled sans coat into the freezing winter air and changed my plates while I told funny jokes and bounced from foot to foot to keep warm. If those boys hadn't helped me with those projects--or, to be more precise, if they hadn't done those projects for me--the result would've been crooked bookcases and Maine plates that had to be super-glued over New York plates. (Okay, to be fair, I have changed plates all on my own before, but that was when I had the proper tools at my disposal, and here in Maine I own two screwdrivers, which wouldn't have done anything to remove the bolts that anchored my plates to the car. Needles to say, I was very uninterested in going out and buying the proper socket wrench.)

For these and other reasons, I was nervous last weekend when I placed an order for new nightstands. They would arrive on my doorstep in boxes, with screws and--no doubt--a complicated set of directions written in a way that wouldn't pass in my technical writing class. I was concerned. I was so concerned I even considered delaying the purchase for a few more weeks, until I was certain the Boy From Work, who is visiting for Valentine's Day, would be around to be handy with the screwdriver while I sat on the bed with a mojito.

But these nightstands are way overdue. Since I moved in I have been balancing my remotes, books, water, and lamp on a cardboard box. This is neither "elegant" nor "sophisticated,"--adjectives I'm striving for in the decor of my bedroom--so I decided it was time to suck it up, place the order, and get handy.

The nightstands arrived this morning. It was night before I finally got around to them, and so I turned on TLC for moral support. I figured that my raging crush on Clinton could do me some good. I was counting on there being some rough moments in the assembly process, but I guessed that I could be soothed by a gay man talking about the beauty of wide leg trousers and the horror of pleats.

After selecting background noise for the assembly, I prepared myself. This meant pouring myself a glass of wine and putting on slippers. I got out the small red toolbox my father prepared for me before I moved to Maine.

The small red toolbox contains the only tools I own: the screwdrivers, a few measuring tapes, and assorted packs of tacks, nails, screws, and bolts. It turned out the only tool I would need during the process was a screwdriver, so I lucked out. I also lucked out because the nightstand was easy to put together. I extended the assembly process over two episodes of What Not to Wear, but that was because I actually stopped assembling during the really compelling parts of the program--you know, when the schlumpy-dressed victim has a breakthrough and realizes, hey, it's important to have a wardrobe that consists of more than a rainbow of stretch pants and Cosby sweaters. If I hadn't been that invested in the program, I could've had both the nightstands together in thirty minutes.

Needless to say, I felt pretty badass. I was pretty proud of myself. And I celebrated the only way a girl who is that badass and proud should: by eating a bowl of cookies-n-cream ice cream and reflecting on how nice it will be to not have to stack her bedside books on a cardboard box anymore.