So I was on the phone with my parents yesterday and they’re all, “What have you been up to lately?” and I’m like, “I talk to you guys like every single day” and they’re all, “But tell us more things!” so I struggle for a minute to come up with something that’s even mildly appropriate and not related to all the sex toys I’ve been reviewing and suddenly I’m all, “Ooo! Ooo! I’ve been going to concerts” because both my parents used to work in the music industry and they like when I do music things and they got all excited and my dad goes, “Which concerts??” and I’m like, “Well, I saw Lupe Fiasco last month” and my dad’s all, “Lupe Fiasco sounds like a disease you’d contract in Central America” and I’m like, “And I saw Damien Marley and Nas this week” and my mom goes, “What’s a Nas?” and I’m all, “And, AND! I’m going to see 50 Cent next Thursday!” and they’re all, “You mean that horribly offensive man you and the girls used to listen to in high school?” and I’m like, “YES!” and they’re both quiet for a few seconds and then my mom goes, “You have incredibly bad taste in music” and my dad’s all, “And apparently you don’t go see live music performed by white artists” and I’m thinking, “Fuck, I should have just told them about the sex swing instead.”

And then this morning I called my mom on her cell phone to tell her about this insane thing that I read and after a few rings my dad picks up and yells, “It’s not mommy! It’s me! It’s me!” and I’m all, “Dad, I can differentiate between your voice and Mom’s voice, please stop yelling” and he goes, “I’m sitting at the table having a jelly doughnut and a coffee and don’t lecture me about the doughnut because I’m going to be 74 years old next month and I deserve doughnuts but your mother still lectures me” and I’m all, “Are we even having the same conversation?” and he’s all, “I’M JUST SAYING” and I’m like, “Father, I don’t care what you have for breakfast, can I talk to Mom?” and he’s all, “Well, like I was saying, I’m sitting at the table having a doughnut and guess who’s not here? Your mother. But guess what is here? Her cell phone. And her wallet. And her ID. And her money. I wonder how long it’s going to take her to realize that she left the house without any of the items she needs for the day. Not that she can call me once she does realize it. Oh well. Hehehe. What do you need?” and I was all, “Well, I called to tell Mom about a thing I learned” and he’s all, “What thing?” and I’m like, “Okay, so, did you know that there’s a contest in Japan where sumo wrestlers compete to make babies cry?” and he’s like, “Excuse me?” and I’m all, “No seriously, I’ll send you the link later and the photos are hilarious and it’s some festival they do every year and each sumo wrestler holds a baby and whichever baby cries first wins. Or the sumo guy wins. Or they both win. I don’t know the details but supposedly it’s all because they believe that tears are good for the health of the baby.” And my dad’s all, “This is a ridiculous story. Why are you telling me about this?” and I’m like, “YOU ASKED” and he goes, “I shouldn’t have” and I’m all, “THIS IS WHY I CALLED MOM AND NOT YOU” and he’s all, “Time for another doughnut, bye bye.”

And then he hung up. So, you know, you should probably keep things like this in mind the next time you’re wondering how I got to be so fucking weird. IT’S NOT MY FAULT. I SWEAR. FINGER CROSSIE PROMISES.

A few months ago, my mother called to tell me that she had gotten a ticket for running a red light. “They caught me!” she screamed into the phone.

“Well,” I told her, “maybe you shouldn’t drive like an asshole.”

“It doesn’t matter because they caught me on that camera thing with the radar and they know it’s me and I got a ticket and it’s expensive and I can’t get out of it because they have my picture!” And then she showed me the picture and oh my god please listen to me when I tell you that anytime I’m in a bad mood about anything ever I pull out this picture and stare at her guilty guilty face and laugh until I’m convulsing on the floor with my legs squeezed together totally positive I’m going to wet myself because it’s the actual best picture and just look at her face, her face.

So I told Jamie this story last week, in preparation for our trip to Arizona that started out as a “let’s lay by the pool in 80+ degree weather” mini-vacation but became more of an “it’s about time my parents met my best friend/roommate/business partner/soul mate” trip because apparently we visited during what turned out to be the only cold and rainy days of the entire Arizona biosphere.

But, before the trip I told Jamie the red light story. And also the story about that time my mother tried to make loose leaf tea while drunk and naked in the kitchen. And also the story about that time she wanted to join a monastery. And also other stories. Just, you know, to prepare her. And then we landed in Arizona and headed right to my parents’ house for dinner and there was lots of wine because if there’s one thing my parents and I do well, it’s drink wine and so we drank a lot of it and my mother announced that she had recently purchased some new hats which she knows I dislike because while my mother is very pretty, she looks RIDICULOUS in hats because not everyone has a head shape that works well with hats and she definitely doesn’t and I tell her this because I’M A GOOD AND SUPPORTIVE DAUGHTER and yet she continues to wear them and each one is more absurd than the one before it and she got drunk at dinner and ran to her room to begin performing a hat fashion show in which she strutted down the hallway and posed dramatically with each one and the first hat was some sort of bonnet and the second one was a white top hat with flowers on the front and the next one was one of those big hats with the chin straps and she had the strap tightened all the way up against her throat and she posed and yelled, “THIS ONE IS TO WEAR WITH MY CHINESE OUTFIT” which is when we went from trying not to be impolite to trying not to puke from laughing so hard to trying to ask for clarification about what the fuck her Chinese outfit looks like.

Also during this dinner my 73 year old father announced that he has “quite a lot of friends on The Facebook” and I was like, “Please kill me” and he was all, “I get between 1 and 3 friend requests per day and sometimes I get requests from people I thought were dead but they’re not dead because they want to be my friend on The Facebook!” and then I showed him how to upload a photo so that he was no longer a creepy grey and white face and he got so excited and declared it “a momentous day” and said that next, he’d like me to set up a blog for him.

A BLOG. FOR MY 73 YEAR OLD FATHER.

And then I found out that my mother wants to shave her head and that she recently tried to get her hair stylist to do it for her but that the stylist wouldn’t do it unless my mom could come back the following week with another person who was sane and not from Craigslist and could somehow convince her that it was a good idea but my mother couldn’t find a single person to do that, which makes me want to open mouth kiss Stacey the Arizona hair stylist because I know my mother and I know that the second she realized that she was bald and that maybe being bald isn’t the best look for her, she’d resort to wearing hats all the fucking time and I’d explode.

Also, Jamie and I got matching quotation mark tattoos on Saturday.

Also, I think this is a good time to remind everyone that I really do still like cock, despite all the evidence to the Nicole & Jamie lesbian contrary, including the fact that my mother now seriously refers to herself as Jamie’s mother-in-law as if it’s the most normal and appropriate shit in the world.

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HI MOM

When I was packing up my car to move to San Francisco, my mother and I had a little incident regarding the white bowls.

The thing about the white bowls is that I absolutely fucking love them. They’re soup bowls, white with a little blue rim, and no one has a clue where they came from because there are only two of them and they don’t match any of her other dishes and they’re cheap, CorningWare I think, but they’re microwave safe and big enough for me to eat giant portions of tomato soup out of and so, of course, I put them in my suitcase and tried to steal them. But my mother is a goddamn ninja and she found them and took them out. So I put them back. And she took them out. Which happened for the better part of 10 hours before either one of us ever brought it up.

The bottom line here is that I don’t have the damn bowls because she’s selfish and now that I’m sick and want to mainline tomato soup I’m incredibly depressed about being forced to use my regular bowls.

The being sick happens a lot, unfortunately, because I have a horrible immune system. Like, horrible. Like, I get strep a few times a year and I’m sick always and if people who are sick even wink at me, I totally catch whatever the whatever they have. So if you’re sick and in the greater San Francisco area, please stop winking at me. Also, winking is weird and most guys can’t pull it off anyway so maybe to be on the safe side let’s just have a new general rule that you stop winking at me period.

Anyway, so I’ve had a sore throat for like a week and a half. Not a little bit sore, but really ridiculously sore and it’s less of a tonsil thing and more of an actual throat thing and while I wasn’t concerned before, I’m totally starting to get concerned because aren’t you supposed to see a doctor if a sore throat is sore for more than a few days? I think those are the rules. But, um, I don’t have fucking fuck fuck health insurance and doctors aren’t free and I just moved to this damn city and don’t even have a doctor so instead I started asking a friend what *she* thought the deal was with my sore throat and she’s all, “Maybe you have a throat STD” and I’m like, “Okay seriously? That’s anti-helpful” but of course I started researching it and I’m about ready to hurl myself off of a building because apparently there’s a strong link between oral sex and THROAT CANCER and OH MY GOD WHAT IF I HAVE THROAT CANCER??

Which is to say that if you’re a doctor and you read this blog you should probably make a house call and inspect my throat because if I have a sore throat AND I only have my regular bowls AND I have cancer AND I have to stop giving blowjobs, I’m going to be real fucking pissed.

It was the first thing on my to do list last Wednesday: pick up birth control refill. So I call the pharmacy and they’re all, “Oh, sorry, looks like you’re out of refills.” And I’m like, “Um, what? I just had my annual check up six months ago” and the pharmacist is all, “Just have your doctor phone in another prescription” and I’m like, “Okay, sure” and hang up, thinking it’ll be some easy 1 2 3 thing.

So I call the doctor’s office, right, and some chick answers and her voice makes me think that maybe she’s 12 and she’s all sweet and high pitched with her, “Dr. Silverman’s office, can you please hold?” and it sounds like she’s asking me a question but I know that shit isn’t really a question because she’s off the line before I can be like, “Actually I can’t hold because this is a birth control emergency,” and then she comes back after what is definitely enough time to grow a gray hair and she’s all, “Thanks for holding” and I’m like, “Thanks for giving me no other option,” and she’s all, “How can I help you?”

So I tell her the situation, that I’m a patient of Dr. Silverman’s and that I had my annual check up in May and that I just tried to get my birth control prescription refilled and that I think there’s been a mistake because I’m out of refills, even though it’s only been six months. And she tells me that actually, it’s not a mistake and then she pauses for a really long and conversationally inappropriate amount of time and I’m like, “So…?” and she’s all “You have to come in for another appointment.” And I’m like, “??” and she’s all, “We need to see our patients every six months” and I’m like, “Please explain to me how it’s an ANNUAL CHECK UP if I have to come every six months” and she sighs and says that if I want a new prescription, I have to come back in for an appointment and I’m all, “Yeah? Funny, I think maybe you already mentioned that” and she’s like, “I have an opening next Thursday at 10am, does that work?” and I’m all, “I’m living in San Francisco now” and she goes, “So 10am doesn’t work?” and I’m like, “Okay really? I’m not coming in. I don’t need you people to poke around in my vagina at 10am on Thursday because I JUST HAD AN APPOINTMENT SIX MONTHS AGO and you gave me a pretty decent poke that time around and all I want is for you to give me a new prescription so that I don’t have any babies” and she’s like, “We can’t renew your prescription if you don’t come in for another appointment,” and I’m all, “True or false, it’s more likely for me to be eaten by a turtle in the next two minutes than for you to start making sense” and she’s all, “I have a 3:30 appointment available as well, if that’s more convenient for you,” which is pretty much when I realized that we weren’t even having the same conversation any more and said, “Right, thanks for your time” which I hoped she knew was code for “Please tell Dr. Silverman that the two of you will be hearing from my baby daddy.”

And then, of course, I called my mom to bitch about the general ridiculousness of the gynecological world and the control they have and she pointed out that maybe I was being a little dramatic and that it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world for me to just not have sex for a bit. I told her that that was pretty funny, considering how I’m literally having zero sex right now and she’s all, “Well, maybe if you were having sex you’d have less time to be overly dramatic about things like this.”

Which is more or less when my head exploded and I started seriously considering how much I’d have to pay someone on Craigslist to bring me a vibrator and a shot of tequila.

So we’re sitting at the table having Christmas brunch, right, and the phone rings and it’s this loud insane ring that sounds like somebody sped up that old Nokia default ringtone and added a few thousand bells in the background. And I’m like “the FUCK?” and my 80 year old aunt, who doesn’t look a centimeter over 50, launches out of her seat and runs to her purse. “Where’s my phone?!” she screeches. “It could be the kids calling! The phone! The kids! WHERE’S THE PHONE!! THE KIDS!”

She fumbles around and finally pulls out the damn thing, but it’s too late. So she brings it back to the table with her, sits down, slips it into her bra, looks at me, pats herself on the nipple, and goes, “Don’t you worry, we’re fine now, it’s in the vault,” and turns back to her eggs.

Which is when I thought, “Wait, what exactly just happened?” And also when I asked myself why I don’t store things in my bra, a question that just got more pressing throughout the day as I made the particularly wonderful discovery that her cell phone isn’t the only thing my Aunt Barbara keeps between her breasts. There’s money. And car keys. And probably a rubber penguin.

After brunch, her phone goes off again and my dad is all, “Barbara! Your tit is ringing!” and starts laughing hysterically at himself while trying to gasp, “Put this in your blog!” which is this new thing he yells at me every time he says something that he thinks is even marginally amusing. And my mom is all, “Alvin. You’re so desperate. Stop trying to make it in the blog already.” And he’s all, “At least I don’t reuse my teabags.” And she’s like, “You’re just jealous that I’m so economical!” And I’m like, “Please don’t make me weigh in here.” And they both turn around and stare at me and I’m trying to figure out the nicest way to tell my mother that letting warm, wet tea bags sit in a cup on the counter until she’s ready to reuse them is maybe the most disgusting thing that has ever happened in our house, which is saying, like, a lot, but I can’t think of a better way to say it so I just say it exactly like that, except I add in something about it being a breeding ground for bacteria and she goes, “Well, your father bought me a package of 100 teabags for Christmas so I won’t be reusing them for quite a while and you can shut up.”

Then she dropped something on the kitchen floor, shouted “fuck,” gasped, turned her eyes upward, and did a thing that I think was her apologizing to God for swearing on Christmas. Or maybe she was apologizing to Jesus for swearing on his birthday. Or maybe she was looking at that weird spot on the kitchen ceiling and trying to figure out if it’s just a dent, or a dent and water damage, or a dent and water damage and mold.

Which is totally what I do when I’m in there.

Yes, this type of shit is exactly why I’m an insomniac. Yes, I also lay awake at night wondering if midgets buy their clothes from midget clothing stores or from the kid’s section of regular sized stores. Yes, I know they like to be called little people, I just think that sounds condescending and stupid. Yes, I’m so much more fucked up than you. Yes, I know this makes you feel good.

Asshole.

So let’s say you’re hanging out with my mom. And let’s say that maybe there’s wine. Except it’s way more than maybe because if you’re hanging out with my mom there’s definitely wine. So there’s wine. And my mom has had some of it. And you’re in the middle of a conversation about health care reform, or stray kittens, or Cheetos, and all of the sudden she’s like, “Wanna see a picture of me when I was hot?”

And you’re like, “??” because, um, OFF TOPIC, but then you’re like, “well, sure,” because when given the chance to see a picture of a hot chick, you don’t turn that shit down. Until you realize that she’s not hot anymore because SHE’S SIXTY, but by that point you’ve already agreed to the whole thing and there’s really nowhere to go but forward.

So you’re waiting for her to pull out the picture, right, and you’re internally evaluating your lying skills and thinking, “if she wasn’t hot, shits about to get real awkward,” but it doesn’t get awkward because my mom was *totally* fucking hot. Like, it’s actually pretty annoying. Like, she’ll nonchalantly say, “you have my old body, except I was maybe a little skinnier.” And then I’m all, “right, but you were also a total freak.” And she’s like, “what the what?” And I’m all, “the peach pit?” And she rolls her eyes and puts the picture away and yells, “WE WERE SERIOUSLY IN LOVE.”

And then she pulls down The Photo Album, the one and only photo album that my grandmother ever made for her, and it’s my mom’s entire life but it’s not in any sort of chronological order because my grandmother was a heavy smoker, a big gambler, a sugar addict, and an all around crazy. So you’re flipping through the album and there’s a picture of my mom at 5 years old, followed by a picture of me at five years old, followed by a picture of my mom as a 20-something flight attendant and 12 pictures from when she was in third grade.

And the conversation we have while looking through the book is always the same. Except it’s less of a conversation and more of her repeatedly saying, “Look how shiny my hair was! I was so hot. I could have been a hair model. I was so hot. Why wasn’t I a hair model??” and my job is just to listen and nod and mutter “fucking Pantene idiots” under my breath.

But then we reach the end of the book, which is absolutely my favorite part because the end of the book is where her prom pictures are, and when she turns to that page I get so excited in my pants I can’t even stand it. I shoot my hand out, point to the guy in the pictures, and yell, “REMEMBER WHEN YOU WORE HIS CHEWED PEACH PIT ON A STRING AROUND YOUR NECK??” I do this every single time. I mean, it never gets old. And when I do, she sighs and doesn’t say anything and I’m all, “and you have the audacity to tell me that I’m weird.”

(Don’t ever let anyone suggest that there isn’t enormous glory in the little victories.)

So the peach thing. I mean, I just don’t understand it. I’ve been in relationships before, sure, but the most stalker-movie thing I ever did was spray the guy’s cologne all over my bra. Okay okay, and one time I maybe stole his socks. BUT THAT’S IT! My mother actually waited for this guy to finish eating a peach, picked up the peach pit, poked a hole in it, threaded it onto a string, and wore it around her neck. Like, in public. Like, where other people could see it.

A FUCKING PEACH PIT.

And when the topic of peaches and my mom’s general weirdness came up at dinner the other night I was all, “You know, I spend a lot of time on the internet and I honestly don’t think I’ve found anyone doing anything even half as creepy as your peach pit thing.” To which my mother responds, “False. I know for a fact that there are women who sell their dirty underwear on Craigslist.”

Which is when my internal organs exploded and I asked politely if I could please be excused from the table. Because, um, HOW DOES SHE KNOW THAT AND OH MY GOD THE HORROR.

My mother: I can’t believe you didn’t notice.

Me: What?

My mother: We got a new fridge while you were in San Francisco!

Me: That one? It looks exactly like the old one.

My mother: It’s a completely different refrigerator.

Me: Okay. But it looks the same.

My mother: There’s no shelf in the freezer! How did you not see that? And it’s ever so slightly more beige.

Me: I’ve been home for less than six minutes. When would I have noticed that there isn’t a shelf in the freezer? And do you seriously think I made a mental bookmark of which shade of beige your kitchen appliances are?

My mother: I could paint my bedroom red and you wouldn’t notice that either.

Me: That’s not even a little bit the same thing.

My mother: It’s exactly the same thing. Also, the cheese is frozen.

Me: The what?

My mother: There are chunks of ice in the parmesan cheese.

Me: Because you keep it in a shelf-less freezer?

My mother: Because the fridge is too cold!

Me: Turn the temperature up.

My mother: I don’t have any loose change.

Me: ?

My mother: There’s this little groove in the temperature dial and your father says I have to use a penny to turn it.

Me: Let me try.

My mother: I said I don’t have any pennies! Stop messing with it, your fingertips are too large.

Me: My fingertips are normal size.

My mother: I can’t believe you didn’t notice we got a new fridge.

Me: If it makes you feel any better, I noticed that you traded the normal toilet paper for that rough Christmas patterned kind.

My mother: It’s for the holiday guests!

Me: You’re not having any holiday guests.

My mother: I could have holiday guests.

Me: Do you really think these hypothetical holiday guests want to wipe with toilet paper that has multi-colored ink on it? Not to mention that it’s closer to sandpaper than toilet paper. Like, it actually hurts to use it.

My mother: You and your vagina are so demanding. Why can’t you be more festive? I bet Mary didn’t complain this much around the holidays.

Me: Please tell me you’re not going to turn this into an argument about Jesus.

My mother: I was just saying.

Me: You were saying what? That on the night Mary gave miraculous birth in a fucking stable surrounded by dirty animals and men in robes, she wasn’t complaining? You think there’s even the slightest chance that she wasn’t screeching at the top of her lungs about getting all the pain of childbirth without any of the pleasures of sex?

My mother: Jesus wouldn’t hurt Mary on the way out.

Me: *

“AM I THE ONLY PERSON IN THIS HOUSE WHO KNOWS THE RECIPE FOR ICE?!”

I look up. My mother is standing in the kitchen, waving empty ice trays above her head and growling about how my father and I don’t deserve cold drinks because we are “lazy and insensitive in regard to our ice usage.”

She stomps around a little more before filling up the ice trays herself. Then, she picks up a dirty plate, scrubs it in the sink, gets it completely clean, slowly starts to open the dishwasher door, peers in, opens it all the way up, puts the plate inside, slams it shut, and jumps backward.

“Um, what? You just put a completely clean plate into the dishwasher. And what’s with the peering and the slamming and the jumping around?”

“The critters!!” she yells. “Enormous black bugs! Fast ones! THE BIGGEST ONES YOU’VE EVER SEEN. Sometimes I find them in the dishwasher. Everything has to be spotless!”

She turns around and pours vinegar down the sink drain and quickly plugs it closed.

I stare at her.

“The critters come through the sink too!”

I keep staring. The entire house now smells like we’re dying Easter eggs.

“Come on,” she says, waving her hand toward the door, “we’re going to Barnes and Noble.”

I ask her if she’s going to put real pants on. She tells me sweatpants are real pants. I point out that the sweatpants she’s currently wearing are bright turquoise and that with the magenta sweatshirt she has on, it’s not necessarily the most flattering combination to wear out in public. She’s asks when I became such a snobby fashionista and then yells at me for letting my shoes touch the carpet while I’m putting them on by the door.

“Your shoes track in particles!”

I don’t even want to ask. I raise an eyebrow.

“Particles of things the critters eat! Now I’m going to have to vacuum that spot! Go wait for me in the car. You’re driving. I’ve had wine.”

“I’ve had wine too.”

“I’M THE MOTHER!”

I sigh, walk to the car, and wait. She climbs in. I ask her if she knows where we’re going. She rolls her eyes at me, potentially to indicate that, um, duh, she’s not a total idiot. I start driving.

After about 15 minutes, I get this feeling. You know what I’m talking about. When you can sense that you’re going in the wrong direction but you’re not the one who lives in this damn city so you don’t say anything and she just sits there, eyes darting about furiously, and then at the last second she’s screaming her face off about how you “HAVE TO BE IN THE RIGHT LANE,” except you’re all the way over in the left lane like she goddamn told you to be and now you’re making all kinds of illegal moves while she repeatedly slams her foot into the floor, pumping her imaginary break pedal and asking where the hell you got your license.

Eleventy thousand turns later, we’re headed in the correct direction. I turn my iPod on and it’s the new Jay-Z song, the one about New York that I’m irrationally obsessed with, and it takes my mother all of six seconds to start shrieking about how much she hates rap music and how I’m inconsiderate. I tell her to just listen to the lyrics because she’ll like them, being from NYC and all. She’s quiet for a minute and then asks who Jay-Z is. I try to think of an answer that will hold any relevance at all for her.

“He’s married to Beyonce?”

“Oh, yes,” she responds thoughtfully. “He’s no where near as yummy as that Diddy person.”

So. Things have been happening over the past few weeks. Here are some of them, in a notably incoherent order:

1. I woke up on Friday with a deep cut in my pinky finger, no idea where my shirt was, and the worst hangover of all time. Well, except for that time with the 60 ounce fishbowl. And that time with the Heaven & Hell party. And that time when I thought it was the greatest idea ever to eat fried chicken with a stranger on the bathroom floor of a dive bar.

2. I decided that I want to work at a ski resort this winter. Preferably in Tahoe. I started applying for random customer service and sales positions, most of which come with some seriously sweet ski-related job perks. I haven’t skied since I was 11 years old. This should be disastrously fascinating. Stay tuned.

3. A post of mine was featured over at Indie Ink. Which makes me feel pretty fucking awesome. If you haven’t checked out their site yet, you should. You should also submit your writing (previously published stuff is fine) and then you’ll get featured too and we can start some kind of “look how awesome we are” club and get jackets and tattoos and do a big group striptease to show it all off. Or, you know, something more normal and socially appropriate. Seriously though. Indie Ink. Do it.

4. My mother called me today to discuss her current feelings on the weather in Arizona, and after an inordinate amount of temperature related conversation, she nonchalantly mentioned that she fell in the shower yesterday and thinks she might have a broken rib. I yelled at her for being on the phone with me instead of the doctor. She told me that it’s Sunday and that she has to go to church. I’m all, “God will probably understand you ditching out on account of potentially having a broken rib.” She’s like, “it might be two broken ribs, actually,” and then proceeds to tell me that she’s not really sure, because she doesn’t know how many ribs she has or how to tell when they’re broken, but that when she sneezes, it feels like she’s being stabbed with a machete, which is awfully inconvenient because in addition to the rib situation, she has a bit of a cold and can’t stop sneezing. I yelled some more about her needing to see a doctor. She repeated the facts about Sunday and church and the doctor’s office being closed. We continued to have that same conversation for the better part of an hour, until she finally promised to go first thing on Monday. I told her that if she doesn’t, I’m going to poke her in the ribs. She reminded me that, as is the norm in our conversations, I’m the only one who finds myself amusing. I grunted. She hung up.

5. The lovely Carissa from Name That Frame (a company that creates seriously cool custom photo frames) is giving one of my readers a free frame of their choice, valued at $49.95! To enter: simply leave a comment telling me what you’d like to see me blog (or video blog) about in the coming months. Enter anytime before Saturday, October 17. If you’d like another chance to win (and who wouldn’t? these frames are so damn fun), just leave a second comment telling me which word(s) you’ll pick for your frame if you win. Because, well, I’m curious and nosy. The end.

{Update: Contest winner is Nora from Walking through the Rain!}