When I was a kid, I would make a list of my homework assignments every day and bring the appropriate books home from school. And there they would stay until I picked them up on my way out the door the next morning. All my New Year’s Resolutions throughout high Read more
My commute to work looks roughly like this: This is how I dress to bike in on these cold autumn mornings: And this is how I dress to bike home: Bulky sweats don’t fit in my backpack with my laptop and lunch container. The result is the most bundled-up office Read more
So, a couple of times I’ve heard jokes about pumpkin spice being for white women. Like… it’s our drug. Our sweet, sweet drug. Now, a sample set of ME concurs*. I will run into traffic for pumpkin spice baked goods. Thing of it is, I have friends who don’t like pumpkin Read more
In sixth grade, we were given the assignment to draw a self-portrait and then write six words that described ourselves. It was a lesson on adjectives. I picked “Obnoxious”, “Fat”, “Loquacious”, “Stupid”, “Grotesque”, and “lazy.” I was bitterly proud of my vocabulary. (“Loquacious” was my attempt to be nice to Read more
When I was sixteen, I attended my first writing workshop, bringing with me my first attempt at a short story. It was a first draft, all rough, no editing, no outline beforehand. It was everything you would expect from a sixteen-year-old’s first short story. In a word, it was crap. Read more
As a teen, I felt the agony of not fitting in. Advice from my peers didn’t help. “Dress how you want! But not in that!” I wrote many angsty teen poems about the tyrannical conformity of teal and pink penguins. I couldn’t escape ridicule for my clothes. I didn’t have control Read more
We were at Aunt Grace’s farm and her sons were playing battle in the snow. I wanted to play, too. They said I could be the princess they fought over. There was an igloo that would be my ‘tower’ and we set icicles in the doorway for bars. One of Read more