Let’s clear up a few things before we get started, shall we?

First of all, no, I’m not actually suggesting that Jesus is edible. But I mean, I didn’t create communion so this really seems like someone else’s issue. Second of all, yes, my mother does have some boundaries, contrary to what you’re about to hear, but I think she’s losing the grip on them little by little every single day.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Jesus.

So, a few months ago, I found a loaf of bread at Trader Joe’s that isn’t as much “bread” as it is “lentils and soybeans and millet and barley and a whole bunch of other non-bread shit that’s been cooked down and smashed together in bread form.” It’s delicious and healthy, and it ranks very highly on my list of Things I Eat Most Of The Time So That I Can Eat Gratuitous Amounts Of Nutella All Those Other Times.

In addition to being healthy, it’s also magical bible bread that bears the name “Ezekiel 4:9” on the packaging and a scripture quote on the side that’s basically like, “GOD WANTS YOU TO EAT THIS BREAD” and really, I’m in no position to be turning down instructions like that.

A few days after I first found the bread, I called my mother – our family’s resident religious person – to tell her that she should be proud of me for eating Jesus bread. She sighed and asked me to please not call it Jesus bread. I told her that I’d try, but that “Jesus bread” was a pretty catchy name and that I’d said it enough times already that she was probably out of luck.

When I went home for Thanksgiving, I brought some of the Jesus bread with me. I was all, “You have to try this!” and she was like, “I’d rather just stick with my English muffins, thank you.” And I was all, “Do you see an endorsement from Jesus on the label of those English muffins?” And she was like, “That’s not a Jesus quote! That’s an Old Testament quote! You’re eating Old Testament bread. Leave Jesus alone!”

A few days later, when I was cooking Thanksgiving dinner, I asked my mother if she could do me a favor. “This better not have anything to do with your Jesus bread,” she responded. “Relax, Ma, I just need you to hand me the cheese grater.” Except, apparently, my parents don’t own a cheese grater. To which I say: SERIOUSLY?? WHO DOESN’T OWN A CHEESE GRATER?

“Then how am I going to grate all of this cheese?” I asked.

“Well,” she said slowly. “I might have a solution for you, but you can’t judge me.”

“Um, okay?”

“No, really,” she said, “you have to know up front that I understand that this is going to sound more disgusting than it really is.”

“Okay…”

She took a deep breath, “We could sanitize my foot thing and use that.”

“Your what?!”

“My foot thing. You know, that little silver tool that scrapes dead skin off your heel?”

“……..”

“I mean, we’ll sanitize it! Of course we’ll sanitize it. Stop looking at my like that!! I’ll put it in boiling water and it’ll be the cleanest foot tool that’s ever been used to grate a block of Gruyere cheese!”

I stared at her in horror for a few minutes before carefully explaining why, in fact, we weren’t going to do that, and then I moved on with plan B for the cheese, trying desperately to rid myself of this new set of traumatizing mental images.

Later that weekend, she looked at me and said, “This is going to wind up on your blog, isn’t it?” I shrugged. “Yeah,” she said, “It’ll be right there next to all the other stories about how I accidentally sent porn to my entire church and how I don’t believe in evolution and how I’m forcing you to take my cremated ashes to Lapland so I can spend my afterlife celebrating eternal Christmas.”

I was all, “DO YOU HEAR YOURSELF RIGHT NOW?? Instead of worrying about individual blog posts, you should be grateful that I don’t have an ENTIRE FUCKING WEBSITE about you and all of your shenanigans and that I’m not charging you for a lifetime’s worth of therapy.”

If you have children and you’re not making them do shit like this all the time, I’m pretty sure you’re doing it wrong.

In case you’re curious, don’t worry, on a scale from one to that photo my mom was like an eleventy nine. For my first Halloween, she dressed me up as a yellow M&M, which, sure, was adorable, but she put these really intense M-shaped stickers on both of my cheeks “to make it more believable,” which she then had to rip off afterward, a horribly painful process that my dad claims made me cry hysterically forever and ever.

“Oh please,” my mother scolds whenever it’s brought up. “It’s not like you remember that, and the photos are beyond adorable. Look how happy you were as an M&M!” And she points to the photo on the fridge and I stare into the eyes of baby Nicole, who is totally oblivious to the fact that her fucking face is about to get torn off in M-shaped strips.

Now, whenever it gets close to Halloween, I’m always reminded of my mother. It’s not that we don’t have plenty of lovely memories from other seasons and other holidays – it’s just that the Halloween ones are the most fucked up. And isn’t that what family is really all about?

When I was 4, we lived in a two bedroom apartment on the 26th floor of a housing complex in Lower Manhattan. It was Halloween season, and the apartment was decorated from top to bottom, just like it always was for any holiday whose decorations my mom could lay her hands on, and for the most part it was adorable. Cute pumpkins, smiling witches, and plenty of candy; Halloween wonderland for a little girl. We had other decorations too though, terrifying ones that would have fit in perfectly at any House of Horrors, but my mom kept those hidden because I was only 4 and that shit isn’t appropriate.

And oh, by the by, do you know what else isn’t appropriate? Putting on one of those horrific, bleeding, hairy monster masks that are supposed to be hidden away and jumping into the bathroom to surprise your 4-year-old daughter while she’s taking a bath because you think “it could be funny.” I might not remember the M-shaped stickers, Mom, but I REMEMBER THIS.

I mean, there I was, just sitting in the bathtub minding my own little 4-year-old business, when my mother bursts through the door with that disgustingly scary mask on her head, yelling and making what she must have accurately guessed are the noises a zombie makes when it’s about 30 seconds from eating your fucking brain.

I lost my shit, clearly, and was so unbelievably terrified that I’m surprised I didn’t DROWN, which made my mom feel pretty awful afterward. She still feels pretty awful, actually, but that’s probably because I’m the insensitive bitch of a daughter who never lets it go. But listen, here’s the thing, when your mother is so wonderful that you only have a small handful of memories like these to hang over her head in times of need, you have to hold onto that shit and use it for all it’s worth. And this Halloween story is worth a lot, but it’s nothing compared to the milk story — the time my mother dumped an entire carton of milk over my head because she was so frustrated with my annoying behavior and general existence. That story is my ace, because WHO DOES SHIT LIKE THAT?!

Although, now that I’m thinking about it I should probably try to tease my mother a little less, seeing as how, out of nowhere, I’m fucking turning into her. I had that paralyzing realization last weekend, when I was decorating our apartment for Halloween and setting up the little Halloween village (complete with orange grassy stuff between the houses) and I looked up and realized that, fuck, most 26-year-olds aren’t meticulously setting up HALLOWEEN VILLAGES and oh my god I’m on the fast track to becoming just like my mother.

{PANIC!!!!!!}

I called her immediately and yelled, “I’m having an ‘I’m turning into you’ moment over here.” And she’s all, “Well, is it a good ‘I’m turning into my mother’ moment, or a bad one?” I sighed. “A good one, I guess. I’m just setting up the Halloween village, it’s not like I’m terrorizing children in the bathtub or dumping milk on anyone’s head.” And she’s like, “ONE TIME. THOSE EACH ONLY HAPPENED ONE TIME. DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’VE PUT ME THROUGH OVER THE YEARS?!?” Damn, she had a point. “Guess what?” I asked, trying to change the subject. And she was all, “What now, Nicole? Are there more painful memories from your childhood that you’d like us to analyze?” “No,” I said. “I was just going to tell you that I ordered orange toilet paper for my upcoming Halloween brunch party, and that I put a pumpkin mask onto James Bond’s big Buddha statue to make it more festive. Buddha is now in the Halloween spirit over here!” She laughed. “Oh yeah, you’re definitely my daughter. Have fun living down the aftermath of trying to scare your future child in the bathtub one day. In fact, you might as well invest in some M-shaped stickers with extra strong adhesive right now, just so you’re prepared. I hear one good rip gets them off in a single piece.”

So last week, my mom calls me in as much of a panic-induced frenzy as I’ve ever heard. As soon as I picked up the phone she was wailing, “You have to help me! You have to help me!” which is a totally comforting thing to hear on the other end of the line. I’m all, “What happened? What’s wrong? Is everyone okay?” because that kind of hysteria is usually reserved for the moment before you start a sentence that ends in the words “jail” or “hospital.”

She’s all, “I need you to fix this, Nicole!” and I’m like, “Fix what?” and she’s all, “I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!” and I’m like, “GET CONTROL OF YOURSELF, WOMAN” and finally she takes a deep breath and says slowly, “Someone is inside my email.”

“Someone is what?”

Another deep breath, and she yells “INSIDE MY EMAIL! THEY GOT IN!” And I’m all, “Are you trying to say that your email account has been hacked?” and she’s like, “Yes! That! I didn’t send those emails! I need you to help me bring them back!” and I’m all, “Uh… that’s not how the internet works” and she lets out a high pitched, exasperated moan and says, “But. But. Nicole! Whoever is in my account has sent sex emails to my entire church!!”

“Don’t laugh,” I thought. But that was impossible. I imagined all of the little old ladies I had met at my mother’s church opening their Yahoo and Hotmail accounts and innocently clicking into a collage of hardcore sex. I heard my mother start to tip into full-scale nervous breakdown mode at the other end of the phone, and her tiny voice croaked, “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, no. I sent pornography to Pastor Kelley!” in such an end-of-the-world tone of voice that I managed to suppress my laughter.

“The only thing I can help you do is change your password, Mom.”

“You mean you can’t go in there and bring all of the sex stuff back?”

“No.”

“Why not?? Just, you know, go in there.”

“The internet is not a crawl space under the house, Ma. Let’s just change your password.”

I logged into her account, clicked to the settings, and asked for the answer to her security question, “What is the name of my school?” to change the password. “What school?” she asked. “I don’t know! Whatever school you used when you created this account and its corresponding security questions.” There was a long pause, and then she said, “But… I don’t go to school” and I was all, “I KNOW, but you obviously chose this question and its answer, so what do you think you would have answered when you first set up this account?”

She thought for a few minutes, and then told me the name of her high school, which didn’t work. Then her middle school, which didn’t work. Then her elementary school, which didn’t work, and then we went a few more rounds before we weren’t allowed to try logging in anymore because the account had frozen. It wasn’t until about a half hour and 20 attempts later that we realized that she had used the name of one of my former schools for the answer.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. She ignored me and asked, “So, now that the password is changed, does that mean the sex emails have disappeared from Pastor Kelley’s inbox?”

It was my turn to sigh. “Yes, Mother, your new password has the power to erase porn.” She’s all, “Really?!” and I’m like, “NO! What do you think the internet does?” and she’s like, “RUINS LIVES WITH PORNOGRPAHY” and I’m like, “Huh, fair point actually” and she’s all, “What if the sex emailer comes back?” and I’m all, “Maybe the next batch of emails will be sent to your nieces, nephews, and all younger family members,” which is pretty much when she hung up on me in a flurry of wails and deeply depressed sighs.

A few minutes later my phone rang again, only this time it was my dad and he sounded like he was already in the process of wetting himself with convulsive laughter as he yelled, “YOUR MOTHER SEX-SPAMMED THE ENTIRE CONGREGATION!”

We then spent about 5 full minutes dying of laughter together, until I heard my mother cry in the background, “It’s not funny, Alvin! Stop laughing at me! JESUS AND I ARE HAVING A VERY BAD DAY.”

I’m moving to Los Angeles in the morning. Also, my hair is falling out.

My mother says that stress causes hair loss and that those two things are probably related.

When we first talked about it, she mentioned that the average woman loses between 50 and 100 strands of hair per day. I tried to ask her how it’s possible that she knows facts like these when she can’t even remember her own phone number, but she just rolled her eyes and told me that she’s a complicated woman. Then, she suggested that I count the strands of hair that are coming out of my head to see if I fall in the normal range, which clearly shows that my mother doesn’t understand how stress works because if I had the time to count every single hair that came out of my head each day, I probably wouldn’t be all that stressed out.

After we talked about hair loss, we talked about Vegas. She was all, “How did your dirty city blog thing go?” and I was like, “Sin City?” and she was all, “Oh yes, Sin City” and then I tried my best to explain how amazing it was by yelling a lot, even though part of me feels like Bloggers in Sin City is kind of like Fight Club in that the magic doesn’t translate when you try to describe it to someone who has never participated.

“You didn’t beat each other up, did you?”

“No, Mother. It’s not actually like Fight Club.”

“Well, did you at least do what I said with the face mask? What if you picked up germs in Vegas, or on the plane? What if you get sick before your big move!”

When I told her that no, I didn’t host an event for 57 people while wearing a surgical mask, she told me that I was a very vain girl and that I’d regret not listening to her if I wound up in the hospital with pneumonia.

“Mom, I don’t have pneumonia.”

“I don’t know, Nicole, you might have something. Pastor Kelley said that hair loss can be related to diabetes, or pregnancy, or auto-immune disease.”

“I don’t think you can catch diabetes in Vegas, Mom. Also, WHY ARE YOU TALKING TO PEOPLE AT YOUR CHURCH ABOUT MY HAIR?”

That’s about where the conversation ended, because contrary to what you may have heard there’s only so much crazy I can handle at any given time. Also, I made the mistake of trying to explain the highlights of Bloggers in Sin City to her, and she’s now upset with me for a) illegally jumping in a fountain for the third year in a row and b) trying to recreate a monologue from Absinthe where two sock puppets aggressively go down on each other while yelling things in Russian, but at least I can be sure she won’t be repeating that to Pastor Kelley.

And now, in an effort to make sure my mother actually speaks to me tomorrow, here’s a tiny non-offensive peek at BiSC that hopefully captures at least .4% of the mind-blowing fun.

PS – I didn’t think it was possible for so many incredible people to be in the same place at once without the galaxy exploding. Lesson learned.

PPS – Becca takes really good pictures.

PPPS – I have 5 mini BiSC gift bags to give away once I get through the next few days of moving hell. Moving first, then awesome free shit for you, including “I’m blogging this” panties and tiny bottles of SKYY Vodka. Hooray for drunk, underwear-filled gift bags!

My mother has started doing this new thing lately where she calls me and just starts talking as if we’re already an hour into our conversation. There’s no context at all, and she often just starts at some bizarre point in the middle of a sentence and expects me to have a clue what in the hell she’s talking about.

A few Fridays ago, I pick up the phone and she’s all, “Did you see the nipples?!” and I’m all, “What??” and she’s like, “The nipples!” and I’m all, “I seriously can’t talk right now” and she’s like, “Oh my God, what is that SOUND? Are you on fire?” and I tried to explain that our apartment building was testing the fire alarm (again) and that I was rushing to leave the building before my ear drums fell out of my head. She’s all, “I can’t hear you! Can you hear me? Did you hear what I said about the nipples? Are you sure you’re not on fire?!” and I’m like, “PLEASE JUST LET ME CALL YOU BACK.”

Five minutes later, outside of the building and back on the phone with her, she’s still asking me about nipples. I’m all, “What are you saying?” and she’s like, “The royal wedding! Did you watch it? Did you see Kate Middleton? She’s a very beautiful young woman, but that dress was just not flattering in the nippular area.”

I then explained to my mother, for the eleventy thousandth time, that I don’t have cable and can’t watch things on TV, so she made me promise that the first thing I’d do once I got to the coffee shop (“The very first thing, Nicole!) was look up a photo of Kate’s dress online and text her to share my feelings on the British nipple show. Which is how I wound up seated next to an old lady at Sugar Cafe with zoomed-in photos of the Duchess of Cambridge’s tits on my screen, wondering if other people’s mothers put them in equally awkward situations on such a daily basis.

And that’s her new thing, texting me, and while she’s so proud that she now knows how to do it, she’s also completely unaware that what she really knows how to do is text the same way she talks on the phone – starting in the middle of a conversation that I’m not at all a part of.

Yesterday, I get this text that says, “Are you having trouble buffering?” and of course I have no idea what she’s going on about and don’t have the hundred hours to wait for her to explain it by text, so I call her and she’s laughing hysterically and I’m like, “Um, what?!” and she can’t stop laughing and I’m all, “Seriously, woman, NO ONE ELSE KNOWS WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT” and she’s all, “I learned the word ‘buffering’ today and I couldn’t wait to use it! From the commercial I just saw, I think it has something to do with men who are very upset when their music doesn’t play fast enough on their laptops” and I’m like, “Yes, mother, that overly specific description is exactly what buffering means” and she’s all, “Aren’t you excited that I know such a technical term?” and I’m all, “Seriously? I’m working” and she’s all, “Working? OR BUFFERING?” and exploded into another round of hysterical laughter while yelling to my father, “Don’t worry, Alvin! She’s not buffering!”

At this point, I feel like all that’s left to do is set her up with her own Twitter account and accept that the rest of my life will be spent trying to explain what a hashtag is and reassure her that when someone wants to DM her, it isn’t code for some new dirty thing that all the kids are doing these days. Probably.

When I called my mother this morning, it took her about a 1/4 of a phone ring to pick up and yell, “HAPPY SPRING!!!!!!”

I’m all, “Today’s the first day of spring?” and she’s like, “Well no, it was yesterday, but I forgot to call! I forgot! I’m sorry! I’M SO SORRY!” and I’m all, “You’re sorry? When did we start celebrating the beginning of seasons via phone in this family?” and she’s like, “Well, it was 90 degrees here last week but now we’re getting a rain storm and it’s going to cool down to 60!” and I’m all, “Is this the same conversation we were just having?” and she’s like, “Today is my pastor’s birthday!” and I’m all, “You don’t even need me on the other end of the phone, do you?”

A few minutes later, once we’d regained some sense of conversational normalcy, she asked me what’s been going on. I was all, “What do you mean?” and she was like, “You know, what’s up! What’s new! What’s happening!” and I was all, “Huh, well… nothing.” That’s the thing, the past few weeks have been the kind of weeks where time passes, and it’s good time, but nothing really happens. Do you know what I mean? It’s like somehow, in the absence of Big Things going on, you just settle into the details of your life and hours and days and weeks go by without your attention being pulled toward any one particular or noteworthy thing.

After I got off the phone with my mother, I decided that that was impossible. I couldn’t have spent the past few weeks doing nothing, so I sat down to make a list of everything that has happened lately to prepare for our next phone call in which I’d be able to give her a better answer. I spent about five minutes thinking back over the past few weeks, and this is what I came up with:

1. I made myself learn how to spell vinaigrette
2. I scratched the hell out of my car by getting it wedged up against a pole in our garage
3. I baked whole wheat bread from scratch
4. I had my teeth cleaned by an exceptionally hot dentist
5. I debated dying my hair red
6. I ate a lot of mustard
7. I obsessively Googled photos of people who have dyed their hair red
8. I listened to my mother brag about how much more often she wears a bra these days
9. I watched an inappropriate amount of The West Wing

That’s it. That’s what I’ve done over the past few weeks. I feel like I’m living in a little bit of a soft lull right now, with lots of upcoming plans but nothing pressing in the immediate future. Once March and April turn to May, though, I’ll be manic levels of busy. May is when James Bond’s parents visit from Washington and when we celebrate the 100th anniversary of Bay to Breakers by wandering the city in costume and drinking liquor at 7am (luckily, these two things don’t fall on the same weekend). May is also when I’ll head to Vegas for the third annual Bloggers in Sin City, the social meetup I founded to make it easier for all of us who love each other on the internet to love each other in person (while jumping in fountains and drinking ginger vodka out of penis straws). Which reminds me: if you’re a blogger, or a Tumblr-er, or even just a Twitter-er, and if you like meeting incredibly warm and wonderful people, and if you like being surrounded by the absurdity that is Las Vegas, you should sign up for BiSC. I’d love to meet you.

Meeting people is what Bloggers in Sin City is all about, it’s a chance to turn our online lives into our offline lives, and in truth this event is the sole reason I’ve continued blogging during many of the times when I’ve thought, “THE INTERNET IS TOO MUCH PRESSURE! I WANT TO DISAPPEAR AND LIVE IN A YURT!” Do you ever feel like that? Like social media and Life 2.0 or 3.0 or 9.0 or whatever point-0 we’re on now are overwhelming? Sometimes, I want to crawl into a hole and never hear the words “status update” ever again. I think, “No more internet! Bye bye forever!” but then I remind myself that I am who I am because of the people I love, and that the people I love have almost all come my way because of this ridiculous pink blog. The internet can be overwhelming, sure, but we’re all real people, with real lives and real feelings, and isn’t it all so much better when we can experience that first hand?

So yeah, come to Bloggers in Sin City. I’ll be there, possibly as a red head. And all of these amazing-ass people will be there too, with whatever color hair they decide to have. Unfortunately, my mom won’t be there, but maybe I’ll call her on speaker phone or bring my favorite photo of her with me, the one that was taken a few years ago by the Arizona police camera when she ran a red light and made the best, guiltiest facial expression in the history of the world.

So, the other day my mom called while I was in the middle of doing laundry. Which, sidenote, what the fuck is wrong with people in communal laundry rooms? What are people doing that’s SO IMPORTANT that they put their clothes in the washing machine and then just don’t come back for them for like, hours. I can’t understand this. You put the laundry in and you set a timer. When the timer goes off, you go back up and, oh, I don’t know, get your fucking clothes out of everyone else’s way. And if you don’t, the fine print of being an Adult Person is that someone else has the right to move your clothes into an empty dryer. Not to start the dryer, but to get your shit out of the washing machine so they can put their own shit in there. Right? Right?! This is just how it is. The problem, though, is what to do if someone forgets their clothes during the dryer portion of the laundry adventure. Like, the clothes are fully dry, sitting in the dryer, but NO ONE IS CLAIMING THEM. This infuriates me. Because like, I’m not going to put them on the floor. And I’m not going to put them back in the washing machine (although, really, I should), so then I’m the one stuck in the middle of the laundry room with soaking wet clothes that can’t be dried because some asshat decided to wash all the sheets and towels in the world, put them in the dryer at the exact same time, and then leave to go on safari in Kenya or some shit.

So yeah, my mom called during that, and I’m all, “I’m going to need to call you back later” and she’s like, “No, Nicole, this is important, we need to discuss my funeral plans” and I’m all, “Seriously?!” and she’s like, “Remember how my will states that you have to take my ashes to Lapland and release them off the back of a snow mobile so that I can enjoy eternal Christmas?” and I’m all, “WHO COULD EVER FORGET SOMETHING LIKE THAT?!” and she’s like, “I’m concerned that getting to and from Lapland and staying in an ice hotel is going to be cost prohibitive for you” and I’m all, “I have to stay in an ice hotel? Your will really says that?” and she’s like, “Well no, but have you seen pictures of those ice hotels! Why would you not stay there?!” and I’m all, “Listen, if you want me to be the creepy person on a Lapland-bound flight who’s holding her mother’s ashes and terrifying children by telling them that a dead mother’s ashes will be all over the snow in Lapland and that the snow will melt and turn into water and that Santa’s reindeer will drink that water and then fly the dead mother around in their reindeer bellies next Christmas, I’m happy to oblige.”

There was a long pause after that, and then she was all, “I can’t believe you’d say that to kids. What’s the matter with you?? I’m going to change my will to specifically indicate that you can’t use my ashes to scare children under the age of 10.” And I’m like, “CAN I PLEASE HAVE THE LAST FIVE MINUTES OF MY LIFE BACK?!?”

After the call, though, (and after I was finally able to put my clothes in the fucking dryer), I started thinking about death. More specifically, I started thinking about where I’d like my ashes sprinkled, because I realized that there’s just NO WAY I’m going to let me mother win the family title for Weirdest Place to Make Your Child Take Your Cremated Body. Fuck that noise, my kids are going to have to release my ashes into the ocean off the coast of Bali while riding a blind camel at full speed, belting out John Mayer, and spraying gin all over everything with a giant Super Soaker.

Take that, Santa.

I just drove 800 miles, by myself, in less than 24 hours. And hey, guess what, there’s definitely such a thing as too much alone time.

I thought driving 16oo miles to and from Washington for Thanksgiving was bad, but at least I had James Bond in the car with me for that. I mean, 1600 miles is a lot to drive no matter what, but driving with JB guarantees that, because we have drastically different in-car temperature preferences, we’ll spend the majority of the ride changing the temperature up and down and up and down and therefore will always have something to occupy our time.

Whenever we get in the car together, the temperature wheel starts in the center, directly between the blue cold air line and the red warm air line. Neutral. Switzerland. Within a few minutes, I’ll start to feel hot, and I’ll move the dial a little to the cold side. He’ll shiver, and move it to the warm side. He’ll start to feel bad for me, and so he’ll move it back to the cold side. I’ll start to feel bad for him, and I’ll move it back to the warm side. Then I’ll sit there, hot, thinking that I’m being very accommodating, until all of the sudden I switch it back and yell, “I’M SORRY, I JUST HAVE TO TURN THE AC ON FOR ONE SECOND BECAUSE I’M DYING,” and he shakes his head, tells me that he wore an extra layer in preparation, and sits on his hands. He’s quiet, but I’m pretty sure he’s thinking, “Careful there, Jamie is about to leave for Europe and if you freeze me to death there won’t be anyone left to listen to your absurdity.”

I turn the heat up a notch.

At the start of yesterday’s drive down to LA to pick up everything I had left in storage, I tried to psych myself up by thinking about how deliciously freezing I could be in the car all by myself. During the first hour, I was all, “This is awesome! It’s so chilly! I have so much good music! I have so much time to myself!” By the second hour, I was like, “You know, it’s pretty fucking dark. This would be more fun if it were a little less fucking dark.” By the third hour, I had maxed out on all the lovely self reflection I had planned on doing; apparently, I’m not as fascinated with myself as I thought I was. So, instead, I started thinking about all of this really disturbing and unnecessary stuff, like what would happen if all of the gas in my tank suddenly disappeared and I was stranded on the side of I-5 in that pitch black dark. I tried to decide if it would be smarter to stay by the car, or to stay in the car, or to walk away from the car, or to hide in the trunk. I then started worrying about how I’d escape from the trunk if someone stole the car while I was hiding in it.

By the fourth hour, terrified of my own trunk and totally sugar high from eating an enormous bag of mint M&Ms, I had resorted to comforting myself by talking out loud, even though all I kept saying was, “Why haven’t I passed a goddamn In N Out yet?!” Eventually, my hunger beat my desire to wait for an In N Out and I was finally forced to stop at a Wendy’s/gas station combo, where, by the way, they have an automated scale in the bathroom that you can put two quarters into and find out your exact weight. Because clearly, the time I’m most excited to weigh myself is in the bathroom of a fucking Wendy’s.

I got back on the road. By the fifth and sixth hours, I’m pretty sure I lost consciousness. I made it to the Motel 6, collapsed into bed, woke up, picked all my things up from storage, and started the long drive back to San Francisco.

I thought this second trip would be better. “It’s so nice and sunny!” I told myself. “And you picked everything up from storage! You’re so productive! You can do it!” (Does anything good ever follow a self-initiated pep talk of “you can do it?”) I started driving. After about four hours, I realized that I was more bored than I had ever been – a very dramatic statement that is, in fact, much less dramatic than how I actually felt at the time. I just couldn’t fathom driving another two and a half hours. “I’m never going to make it!” I wailed through the phone to my mother, but she didn’t care. She only wanted to discuss two things: whether or not I thought Cleveland fans would be mean to LeBron in tonight’s game, and the fact that my Aunt Barbara is thrilled that, after seeing the movie Burlesque, she has discovered “an amazing new young singer named Christina Aguilera.”

“Please,” my mother said proudly, “even I know who Christina Aguilera is. I can’t believe Barbara doesn’t know about the genie in the bottle.”

I remember when we first got the internet at home. I was in 7th grade, living in London, and I quickly picked up an addiction to email chain letter forwards and the overuse of “u” in place of “you.”

Side step: I’m a grown ass woman now. If you’re still emailing me with “u” in place of “you,” it’s time to sit down for a serious reevaluation of your life. Not ur life though. Not ever.

My favorite were the email chains where someone had used the keyboard to create a picture. It was like you couldn’t wait to get on AIM and ask all of your friends if they’d seen the Santa Claus made entirely out of dashes and zeros. Then came the emails with the math, the ones where no matter which number you picked, if you did this and this and this to it, the result would always be 6. Always 6! How can the answer always be 6? That frantically stressed me out. After the math came the most stressful ones though, the emails with all the scrolling that asked you to make a wish and then promised you that your crush would call, but only if you forwarded the email to 12 friends in the next twenty seconds, otherwise you’d definitely die alone in a room full of knitting needles and overfed cats. What kind of damaging bullshit that is for a 7th grade girl.

Eventually, I gave up on the email forwards. I realized that if the answer was always 6 and if I was going to die alone, I had better things to do with my time, like write angsty passages in my journal and stare at my wall full of Leonardo DiCaprio photos.

Now, 13 years later, even though I’ve given up the absurd email chains, my mother certainly hasn’t. “Nicole, read this! This poor girl has cancer in her earlobe! And here’s a poem about friendship. And here’s an inappropriate joke – aren’t I such a cool mom?!”

A few months ago, I told her that enough is enough. I was all, “Jesus, mother, you have to stop sending me these ridiculous emails” and she’s like, “I can’t hear you when you take the Lord’s name in vain” and I’m all, “How’s this for compromise, you stop sending me emails with dancing graphics and I’ll stop with the vanity and the Lord.” She agreed, but not without mumbling how it’s a shame that I have bad taste and no sense of humor and therefore can’t just appreciate her and her taste in emails like everyone else does. “Oh Jesus,” I thought.

Soon after the email forwards stopped, my mother learned how to text. Then, she taught my 74 year old father how to text. Only she didn’t show him how to use punctuation. She also didn’t show him that it’s unnecessary to end every single text with “love dad.” He’s all, “Hi there did u land safely love dad.” Don’t even get me started on the “u” vs “you” with him. Some battles aren’t at all worth fighting.

Two weeks go, I brought James Bond home to meet my parents. They were completely captivated by him, giving me the not-so-sly thumbs up from the kitchen after only thirty minutes, which is a first, seeing as how they’ve never really liked any of my former boyfriends. Plus 10 for James Bond, clearly.

The downside to being thumbs up-ed by my mother, however, is that you’re added to the recipient list for email forwards. He got his first one over the weekend. “I watched that video your mother sent me,” he said. “OH JESUS.” “It was funny!” “GET OUT BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.” I explained how many emails she forwards, and how I’ve only recently managed to skulk off the list. He thought for a minute and said, “I’ll just forward you all the ones she sends to me. Perhaps I’ll tell her I’m doing it for her too.” Which is when I realized that no matter what I do, it seems that in one way or another I’m destined to receive emails full of inspirational PowerPoint presentations for the rest of my entire fucking life.

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.