When I went home for her birthday earlier this month, my mother’s only request was that I spend a few hours teaching her how to use Facebook.

“I need help,” she said. “I think cousin Scott is spying on me.”

“You what? What are you saying?”

“Well, we were talking on instant message this morning and, as he was signing off, he said he was going to let me get back to writing my thank yous. But, how does he know I’m thanking people for wishing me a happy birthday on Facebook??”

“Uh, because almost everything you do on Facebook is public?”

“What?? But I’m writing on my own wall! I’m just responding to people who wrote me happy birthday notes. This has nothing to do with Scott. Scott doesn’t know Deb from church.”

Needless to say, it was an exceptionally long afternoon. I’d be right in the middle of explaining how to share a photo or like a comment when something else would catch her attention and she’d be all, “Ooo, what’s that! And that!” and start clicking away somewhere else. I had to remind myself to take slow deep breaths and not snap at her, because I mean, how terrible and impatient am I that I can’t take ONE HOUR to teach my mother how to use Facebook after she spent ACTUAL YEARS teaching me how to speak words and eat food and basically do everything ever?!

The best part, though, was when I tried to explain to her that she needs to have a profile picture. I was like, “Ma, no one is going to take you seriously without a profile picture. It makes you look very spammy.” And she’s all, “Spam? Like the packaged meat?” I shook my head, “No, not packaged – oh, never mind. Listen, you need a profile picture. Don’t you have any pictures on your computer?” And she’s all, “I don’t know how to get a picture into the computer. Is there a slot for that, like how I insert a CD?”

I stared at her for a long time after that, trying to figure out the best next step that would a) get her a profile picture and b) not end with me yelling and making her cry.

I sighed. “Why don’t we just go outside and I’ll take a picture on my phone and upload it for you?”

“What? Now?? I can’t have my picture taken when I look like this! Why can’t you just use an old one – you know, from when I was hot.”

“Ma,” I sighed, “if you let me put up a current picture of you, I’ll create an entire photo album titled, ‘Look How Hot I Was’ and fill it with all of your favorite pictures.”

Her eyes lit up like neon saucers after that, and even though I had said it as a joke, my mother thought this was the best idea she’d ever heard. I shouldn’t have been surprised, not from a woman who used to carry around a photo from when she was in her twenties and ask everyone – my high school boyfriend, strangers at the bookstore, etc. – if they “wanted to see a picture of her when she was hot.”

Well, after that, teaching her how to use Facebook was a dream. She was so focused by the dangling carrot of this upcoming photo album, and I promised her that if she brings her old photos to LA when she and my dad come in June, I’ll scan them and put the photo album together.

When my dad got home later that night, she smugly told him that she now understood Facebook better than he did, and that there was soon going to be a photo album of pictures from when she was hot. He stared at her, standing in the middle of the kitchen in just her long night shirt, her hands hidden in the elbow length rubber gloves she wears after she covers her fingers in baby oil to stop her skin from cracking in the dry heat, and started laughing hysterically. He looks at her and goes, “Well, we could always take a picture of you right now to use as a ‘before and after’ for your photo album.”

She glared up at him, raised one gloved hand, and said, “Guess which finger I’m holding up for you right now, Alvin. I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the one with my wedding ring on it.”

Well, let’s see. I haven’t blogged about my vagina in a while, so I figure that now is as good a time as any to get back to that for a second.

(HI MOM! HOW WAS CHURCH YESTERDAY??)

So, here’s the deal. I recently joined up with Lucky Bloke for Mission: Great Sex! – a one-of-a-kind global condom review initiative where men and women in every possible demographic will test and (anonymously) review the world’s finest condoms.

When I first heard about this, I was all, “Uh, dude, I already have plenty of condoms.” But Melissa, the founder of LuckyBloke.com, was like, “Did you know that there are actually three different sizes of condoms and that guys can figure out their perfect size using an empty toilet paper roll?” And I was all, “What do you mean three sizes? Aren’t there just, like, regular condoms and then those magnum condoms?” And Melissa was like, “Aw, sweetie…” and then she educated the hell out of me about all things condom. Which was awesome. (THANKS, MELISSA!)

Even better than the personal education and the fact that Lucky Bloke offers everything from one-time purchases to monthly condom subscription services (with 10% of sales going to humanitarian causes!), is what she’s offering with Mission: Great Sex! If you’re selected, you’ll get to participate in the most comprehensive condom review in history, helping Lucky Bloke to determine which condoms really are superior to all the rest.

If you want to apply to be spoiled by the condom fairies at Lucky Bloke, just click here and mention that you came by way of this blog so they know you’re ready to offer up some bullshit-free opinions about latex love. Ooo, and if you’re selected you have to let me know so we can gossip about our favorite condoms – unless you think that’s weird, in which case, uh, I was obviously joking.

::shifty side-eye::

But wait! There’s more! Well, not more about condoms since we already covered the condom thing, but like, more random news about my life in general. Most importantly, I finished the final Twilight audiobook and had to deal with the horrible first-world-teenage-girl-esque problems of desperately missing Edward and having ALL THE DEPRESSIVE SADS. Seriously, you guys, I’m so distraught that there’s no more Twilight. What the fuck are you doing, Stephanie Meyer?? FINISH MIDNIGHT SUN, PUBLISH IT, AND THEN GET TO WORK ON WRITING THE OTHER THREE BOOKS FROM EDWARD’S PERSPECTIVE BEFORE I LOSE MY ACTUAL FUCKING MIND. I mean, c’mon, is that too much to ask?!

Then, in the midst of grieving the loss of Twilight in my life, I cut 8 inches off my hair & dyed it dark red. (WHAT? Don’t look at me like that. Drastic haircuts are a good way to manage the grieving process. HAS FELICITY TAUGHT US NOTHING??)

After chopping all my hair off, I added two new pages to my blog: one where I’ll be posting my favorite comments and one filled with links to books & articles I love from around the web. Then, I sent out my first Runner’s Brain newsletter (!!!!), made a lot of bad food choices (GIVING UP SUGAR IS SO HAAAARRRDDD), and re-watched an embarrassing impressive amount of Dawson’s Creek on DVD, a show I’m somehow totally hooked on again even though it’s so mother angst-ing terrible that I spend half of every episode cringing and the other half wanting to stab Dawson in the throat with an ironically sawed-off VHS tape.

Also, I spent 5 days in Arizona for my mother’s birthday where I learned that she’s deep into her self-described “purple period,” a phase in which her nails are constantly a dark, sparkly shade of lavender and her outfits/accessories aren’t too far behind.

Sigh.

PLEASE TELL ME THIS HELPS YOU TO UNDERSTAND WHY I AM TWO DEGREES AWAY FROM CRAZY AT ALL TIMES.

PS – How did we go from the very adult & responsible topic of condoms to the belligerently adolescent yelling about Twilight, Felicity, and Dawson’s Creek? What the fucking fuck is happening to me?!

The other day I realized that, come July, I will have been blogging for 5 years. FIVE YEARS. You guys, that’s the age of a kindergarten child. Can you believe that? MY BLOG IS ABOUT TO HAVE ITS FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN! GOLDFISH CRACKERS AND FINGER PAINTING FOR EVERYONE!

It’s insane to me that I’ve been sharing my life online for the past five years, and it’s even more insane to think that some of you have been with me that entire time. I mean, the internet is weird, right? Like, we have so much access to each other, and there are so many blogs I’ve read and loved for years and years, and yet I’ve never met or even talked to most of the people behind the avatars. I’ve met some of you, of course, through Bloggers in Sin City and tweetups and random trips around the country, but there are still so many people whose online lives I’m a part of but whose voices I’ve never even heard.

Which brings me to my main point: Isn’t it strange that we have no idea what each other’s voices sound like? I don’t know about you, but I love having a voice and a face to put together with the words on a blog, and I find that I enjoy reading someone’s writing so much more when I can actually hear their voice inside my head.

That’s what I like most about audiobooks and spoken word poetry, I think. There’s an added element of personality that comes from being read to, and I’ve been thinking about how much fun it would be to start a spin-off of this in the blog world. Not spoken word poetry, per se, but how about Spoken Word Bloggery? A chance to go back through your archives, pick a post, record yourself reading it aloud, and then share it on your blog. Man, I’d love if people did that.

But seriously, you guys, LET’S DO THAT. I know, I know, you don’t like the sound of your own voice. Guess what? ME EITHER. Guess what again? NO ONE ELSE EVEN NOTICES THE WEIRD SHIT YOU’RE INSECURE ABOUT BECAUSE THEY’RE TOO BUSY BEING INSECURE ABOUT THEIR OWN SHIT.

Got it? Good.

And, now that we’ve covered that, I’ll even go first by publishing an audio recording of a post I wrote back in January 2011 about my ridiculous mother and her ridiculous funeral demands:

OKAY. WHO’S NEXT?

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 my 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.

Beat that, future grandkids.