I know I’m officially old now, because I no longer enjoy leftover pizza straight out of the fridge. It has to be reheated in the microwave for me to think it’s remotely appetizing.
It happened suddenly.

One day, I was happy, munching on the tasty cold triangles of young adult bliss, and the next day my stomach is turning at the very thought of putting a congealed blob of nastiness anywhere near my mouth.

It was like someone, somewhere, flipped the “no longer a youngster” switch, and now I insist on eating it warmed to the appropriate temperature.  I feel old just writing that. Did I just use the term “youngster?”

I remember the smugness of my youth, sneering at those “fogies” that insisted on warming their pizza. “It tastes fine cold!” I’d say, or even “It tastes better cold.”  Now I am the fogie, and I can hardly wait until some whipper-snapper mocks my need to microwave. The circle of life.

I did it again. I added “whipper-snapper “ and “fogie” to the evidence against me.

Somehow, it was this, more than most things,  that really made me realize that I have arrived at middle age. I am not amused.

I hadn’t expected a sign like this, or even imagined it would make such an impact. I expected things like arthritis and gray hairs, so those didn’t impact me nearly as much as a need to have my pizza hot. Worse, I just figured it was a preference thing, not a sign of advanced age.

It’s probably signaling a host of other changes that I thought were personality quirks and not age-related mutations. I can see thigh-high pants pulled to the middle of my chest in my future. I’m starting to feel a “Get off my lawn you rotten kids” coming on. Like any never married female of a certain age, I wonder if I’m starting to develop a need for excessive house cats. Could unintelligible speech, ragged clothing, and an urge to hurl these felines be close behind?

I have never been especially fond of cats, but, if I come over all cat obsessed, my family needs to know this is a signal to break out the nursing home. It might soon be time for that pamphlet entitled “So, your family thinks it’s time for you to exit life by walking onto the polar ice cap.” If there are still polar ice caps when my time comes.

Part of me had never imagined turning into my grandparents without children and grandchildren of my own. How can you be old if there is no one from the next generation to roll their eyes at you and threaten you with expulsion to the cheapest nursing home that money can buy? Who will I bore with long rants about living in the “aughts,” or lie to about having invented the Internet?

Maybe I can find some kids on the Internet that I can rent for a few weeks every year.   I’ll work on that right after I put the cat out.

 

Dear Self,

Do not allow the weeds to get to knee-height ever again. It is much better to have several days between mowing than it is to have to mow everything twice in the same day. Every time you tell your future self “it can wait,” you should envision a puppy hanging over a pit of lava, with its paws getting toasty. It cannot wait.

Even if you find three left-hand gloves and zero right hand gloves, it is not better to just mow with one glove. Despite the fact that the puppy is getting uncomfortably warm, find a full pair of gloves or suffer the additional torment of a blistered hand.

In addition, remember that the vast majority of the growing things in your yard are of the milkweed-type, and that you are allergic to those, so when you are clearing their moist, green, pulpy remains from the mower, don’t use your non-gloved hand, unless you want it to quickly swell to the size of a dustbin lid, attain an angry red hue and itch like that spot on the bottom of your foot you can never reach..

On that note, do not reach up to clear your vision of blowing hair with your dustbin lid hand. Swollen faces and itchy eyes will see no better than eyes covered by hair. In fact, it’s likely to be much worse. Remember, it was you who insisted you didn’t need to wear a hat.

Since you are not particularly fit, it would be good to remember that after choking out the mower 300 times before you are halfway done, you will find restarting the mower increasingly difficult as the timeline to complete the chore lengthens. Also, if you happen to mow over a plastic sack hidden in the depths of your weed jungle, it can wind itself around the spindle that rotates the blade, and make the choking thing happen even more. Remove the bag with your gloved hand. Not that the other hand could perform the task any longer.

Apply topical anti-allergy gel to your dustbin hand early in the proceedings, as swollen hands don’t grip well, and your mower might not be secure, and might cause you to trip and fall when it doesn’t turn the way you you’d expect. Good thing it shuts off when you release the lever, fall to the ground and skin your elbow. You’ll be grateful you don’t have to worry about chasing the darn thing as you lie on the sidewalk feeling exceptionally stupid.

It is best to eat something before you spend a few hours exerting yourself. If you just decide not to procrastinate any more, and that waiting to eat something will only kill your momentum and you haven’t eaten a full meal yet, expect your blood sugar to crash just about the halfway point, forcing you to grab some hollow calories to be able to finish the stupid task and not have to lug the mower out another day.

When you ignore all this and it all happens again, you will deserve the “I told you so,” because this time, you actually bothered to write it all down as soon as your hand returned to its normal proportions.

 

I quit several times every day.

Usually,  I quit my day job first, then, I quit my night job, then I quit the dishes, then I quit my weekend job, then I quit caring, and then I quit quitting and start the whole cycle all over again.

Most of the time, I’m serious when I say it. I say it under my breath, try the sentiment on for size, and decide I’m not really much of a quitter, and go on about my not quitting.

Other times, I’m more than serious when I say it, and I have a long conversations with myself. I say “You can’t quit,” and I answer myself with “Why not?” At this point, the amount of cynicism I have stored in my bile ducts will determine how convincing I find the counterargument. If the cynicism levels are high, I will not be able to find a good reason not to quit.

On those occasions, I begin to work through the Script of Futility.  This is filled with brilliantly depressing one-liners, but the main through line is me reminding myself of the definition of insanity, where I have continued to do the same thing over and over again, and I get exactly the same results every time. These results are not encouraging. Having thus questioned my own sanity, I continue to harvest my own cynicism, and race down the Tunnel of Reasons Quitting is the Only Answer.

The Tunnel leads to a fork in the script. One branch plays all the “Against all Odds” tropes, where I remind myself of the people who kept going, and achieved great things. The other path is much darker, and plays themes of “sometimes, quitting is the smartest thing you can do,” and “if you continue to get a headache banging your head against the wall, not only are you stupid, but you’re about to be concussed.”

If I’m following the path of darkness, my brain likes to tell me that my failure to quit is just the latest in my ongoing string of “other than successes,” and then it laughs at the irony, which means I will resume my less-than-sane endeavors, despite not having any good reason to continue.

This specific column, I must’ve started and stopped more than 50 times. I kept telling myself there was no way I could fill a full 500 words on my failure to quit, and I should stop thinking about quitting and my failures to quit, and just write about Mother’s Day. Everyone’s probably expecting me to write about that.

From there, I argued with myself, saying, “I don’t really feel like writing about Mother’s Day,” and “Since when did I do what everyone was expecting me to do?” It’s been a Parade of Self-doubt all weekend.

And then, somewhere along the parade route, the weather took a turn for the better, and people smiled and waved in a friendly fashion, and it became a good day. When that happens, I feel that there is meaning in continuing down the path which now is playing the “Against all Odds” tropes. That’s when I am glad to continue, because having one small spark of hope is more than a good enough reason to not quit.

Someone once told me I should be a philosopher. I was very flattered. I imagined that I had said something wise and intellectual, or that I had caused her to examine her ideas or to change perspectives, or think of things that she’d never thought before.

And then the neurosis kicked in and I wondered if what she really meant was that I had the look of an unemployed, malnourished, homeless person. Possibly, she meant I thought too much and spoke in unintelligible phrases sounding vaguely like they came from a pretentious fortune cookie.

I ran to the bathroom to check out option number one. I clearly had the wild-eyed stare. My hair looked wind-blown and disheveled. My clothes, well, they were my normal, “not at work” look, which…

Yeah. Option one was a distinct possibility. The good news was that my deodorant appeared to be working and nothing was caught between my teeth. Currently.

Of course, there was always option two. Perhaps her comment was a reflection of an unconscious habit? Perhaps I spoke in paradoxes or riddles, or some other, important sounding, but ultimately nonsensical, phrases. Maybe she caught me on a day when I’d been to the dentist and uttered knowing lines like “The lion waits for the marmot to hide the casserole,” or “when two caterpillars share a leaf, the tree cannot fail to find a pillow.”

Could there be an option three?

Maybe she was saying something really unappealing. Perhaps she was wishing that I would end up in obscurity somewhere, writing thoughts no one would ever read, except for other philosophers. Maybe she was imagining that I would spend my nights writing useless dreck and my days I would spend asking such meaningful universe expanding questions such as “Would you care to Super Size that for a mere 39 cents more?”

Going back to the complimentary options, I did day dream for a few moments and imagine what life would be like if I could spend my work day doing nothing but thinking great thoughts and writing about ideas, and I remembered how many ideas I already have and how much they torment me day and night and force me to do drastic things. I shuddered and went searching for some brain bleach to banish the thought of more thinking from my brain.

I have no idea what would prompt me to talk about such things. Why would anyone spend this much time analyzing a simple comment? What could prompt me to spend hours trying to figure out whether it was a complement, or an insult, or what prompted someone to say such a thing to me? I could think of only a single answer to this insane train of thought. I probably had a column deadline.

April is about to find itself off my Christmas list.

I’d thought, with it about to be over and all, that I could simply pretend everything was fine, and that we’d just not speak about it until next year.  It’s much easier to ignore the problem, and hope it goes away than it is to talk about it, and acknowledge the painful truths about “the cruelest month.”

I never really thought I’d agree with Eliot on this point, and yet, April continues to conspire against us all, waging a war of violence and extended winter.

Over the course of my life, I was willing to let April and its reputation for cruelty simply pass by. “It’s an illusion, “ I told myself, “April can’t be all that bad. There must be some wonderful events that happened in April, and everyone forgets about them, because they focus on the bad stuff.”

I shouldn’t have looked.

And yet, look I did.

I opened the Google, and found a list of the prominent events of Aprils past. I knew of Shakespeare’s birthday and Earth Day, surely, there was some other reason to celebrate the month.  I thought it would make a “feel-good” story for the end of the month, when I could bring up the glories of the fourth month of the year.

Sadly, I’ve already pretty much shared with you the entirety of the “good stuff.”

Given how slim the pickings are I considered padding the list out by reminding everyone that it’s the month the Civil War ended. Unfortunately, you’d probably also remember It’s also the month it started, so that hardly puts it in the plus column. And, of course, Booth couldn’t be bothered to wait until May for his assassination of Lincoln, on no, he wanted to put the blame squarely on the front porch of April’s many crimes.

There are a handful of other pluses to the month, but, they are inadequate to the task of lifting the month out of its dark roots.  All I wanted was to feel better about April, and ended up feeling much, much worse.

At this point, I tried to reassure myself that every other month has probably got an equally high proportion of horrible events, so singling April out for the misdeeds it happens to harbor is entirely unfair.  It seems unlikely that any month could be so cosmically ordained to be skewed toward the craptacular.

This was the point I realized I really didn’t want to know.

I didn’t want to scroll through pages of horrible tragedy to see if there is such a thing as a month filled with the most despair, or to prove that April can’t possibly be the worst month on the calendar.

In the midst of the Googling, I was reminded that April is National Poetry Month, and I could no longer decide whether this was evidence that it was the worst month of the year, or whether it was just coincidence. Is its occurrence in April an indicator that people should focus on poetry to push past the gloom?  Or does it just mean that April is such a downer that every sensitive soul destined to document their pretentious inner turmoil increases their output in April?

There’s two days left of April for the year. Only two days for it to work its way back onto my “nice” list. April, I’m begging you, please. Do us all a solid. Bring us something awesome.

I really wish I could master the art of sleepwriting.  I’m not surprised you’ve never heard of it. It could be something I just made up. Or, maybe it’s a secret writer thing that once you non-writers have heard about, I will have to be killed, or you will, or both. Sorry about that.

Of course, it could simply be a super-efficient use of time that allows me to get really high quality sleep while simultaneously filtering all the thoughts running through my head into brilliant, scintillating prose. Well, more brilliant than usual, I suppose.

I am starting to believe that I just made that up.

But, maybe I could invent sleepwriting, and master it, and then take on followers who are aching to learn this incredibly useful art, and I can charge them outrageously, and develop festive eccentricities and arbitrary and capricious rules for it just to mess with people.

I could start now, even. All I have to do is stay a few steps in the process ahead of my minions, I mean, stupidly wealthy students, I mean, generous benefactors, and they’ll never know I’m a complete and utter fraud.

Unless of course they read that. I’ll just edit that part later to make it more charmingly eccentric.

I suspect even insomniacs will want to pay to learn these techniques. Maybe even other artists or type-A personalities will want to know this method so that they can apply it to their own situations and be productive and rested all the time. I think this is clearly my ticket to fame, fortune, not to mention more rest and increased output.

Part of me suspects I might’ve been half asleep when I came up with this notion. Another part wonders if it was the offspring of one of those mornings when the alarm goes off to get me out of bed early to write, and I really wanted to stay there and sleep. A sliver of me thinks that it came from wanting an easy method to siphon off my thoughts when I can’t get my brain to stop and I’m trying to sleep. The largest part of me wonders how I managed to call all of those suspicions individual ideas, when they are probably all the same thing, and probably all true.

Looking back through these thoughts, I’m beginning to wonder how many parts of me there are. Maybe a quick nap will clear that right up.

If I want to be remembered as a writer, I need to step up my production of fictional books.

I am not talking about writing fiction, though that probably wouldn’t hurt. No, what I need to be unforgettable are books that no one can read because they don’t actually exist.

Some of my favorite books exist merely as titles, jokes and plot points. I would really love to read Hogwarts, A History just so Hermione’s not the only one who’s read it. A book over 1000 pages has got to have more in it than convenient plot complications like the inability to Apparate on the grounds. Sure, it glosses over the darker bits like bigotry and the Rotfang Conspiracy, but there’s got to be something in there about how much it costs to heat the place in the winter, and how they managed to outfit the castle with indoor plumbing if it’s protected with Muggle repelling charms.

Despite the horrifying implications of The Nine Doors to the Kingdom of Shadows, I am intrigued by the puzzle revealed in its illustrations. The fact that I can never actually hold a copy of this occult text does nothing to quench the desire to look upon it with mine own eyes. Believe me, I want to see it just for the illustrations, I don’t have any designs on opening a portal to hell.

Non-existent rare occult books seem to hold a special fascination for me, perhaps because they seem so much better than the ones that really exist. Maybe it’s because I’m reminded that one of the most famous such books, The Necronomicon, is very likely the most famous book Lovecraft never wrote.

The manuscript which outlined a story of a vast medieval library where lived a copy of Aristotle’s lost treatise on Comedy? How I wish that Eco hadn’t ever even hinted that such a manuscript was anything other than a figment of his imagination.

Novels about the power a book can hold over a reader are a particularly compelling subject for authors. Most authors have felt that enchantment themselves, and creating characters who fall under the spell of a rare and wondrous volume is much more like writing fact than fiction, even if the book that captures their character’s imagination is completely and totally fake.

In truth, those fake books become perfect in our imaginations.

There’s little chance that any of these books could live up to the perfection they have attained in our minds. The reality of them is bound to be a disappointment.

If books that don’t exist can achieve perfection, all I need to do is convince you of the importance of my book, The Lost Cemetery. It was a very small printing about a decade ago, published under a pseudonym. I don’t even have a copy myself.

The Lost Cemetery is a compelling thriller which focuses on the lost burial place of John the Baptist. As many scholars know, his grave is rumored to hold the secret to a code hidden in the inscriptions on first century tombs. The cemetery code is discovered by intrepid librarian Sally Harris, who tries to follow the MacGuffin trail straight to the books saved by Ptolemaic priests from the lost library of Alexandria.

If you do find a copy of The Lost Cemetery, beware. Almost everyone who has read the book has died a mysterious death, which is not entirely my fault. You have been warned.

A writer has but one goal. Connect to the audience.

There’s great power in being able to capture the imagination of readers, introduce them to a wonderful place, filled with interesting people, and then murder the one they liked best, right in front of their very eyes, in the most gruesome way possible.

Clearly, with such great power comes great responsibility.

Take this little column for example.

You all signed up, hoping to have a laugh once in awhile, or maybe at least a smile, but, what happens when I betray that trust and tell you a very sad story about a small child who dreamed of leaving a life of poverty and managed to get a scholarship to a private school, and the school, while it’s in the same city, was more than a three hour walk for the boy, each way, and without enough food, he could barely get there in time for class, and one day, starving, he passes out along the side of the road, and freezes to death?

See what I mean? I broke our little agreement, to give you something light and funny to start your week, and instead I gave you a horribly depressing paragraph. You might even say I manipulated you and preyed upon your compassion for starving children just to make a point.

And, you don’t even know what the point is yet.

The first part is to highlight the callousness of writers who take joy in the suffering of their fans. People joke that writers enjoy doing this, but, they try to believe it isn’t really true that authors could be so gleeful in the pain of others.

Unfortunately, there is much uncomfortable truth in those quips. The times when I’ve written something that brought a reader to tears are some of the proudest moments of my life. There is a very small part of me that is properly ashamed that I am pleased to make people cry.

Writers have learned that tears of pain are the sweetest nectar to be found in the known universe; a feast of fulfilling achievement that perfectly nourishes our black souls.

There are occasions when I’m sad that I chose to write a humor column, because it limits the opportunities for turning you all into emotional wrecks and harvesting your precious eye nectar.

That was disgusting. I promise to never again refer to your tears in such a fashion. Unless it’s really, really, really funny. Or I forget.

On the bright side, sharing laughter is also nourishing to the writer’s soul. It’s a different kind of feast, usually with much less guilt.

And that brings us to the second point.

Most days, I’m much happier to bring you a sprinkling of light to fight against the darkness. I might not always be able to inspire an authentic “out-loud laugh,” but maybe there will be be enough silliness to ward off the gloom and nourish the flame of hope and joy in the world.

My sister loves disaster movies.

You know the kind – the ones where gigantic comets come hurtling toward the earth aiming to kill not only the photogenic and well-meaning actors, but THE WHOLE planet. Or the ones where ships crash and turn upside down and the only ones who will survive are the ones listening to the know-it-all kid who has the plans for the ship tattooed on his eyelids.

Over the years of our acquaintance, I have learned that it doesn’t matter how outlandish the plot appears to be from the trailer, what matters is that the earnest scientist/architect/reverend is always right, and the people who laugh at him end up dead, while realizing exactly how wrong they were.

Of course, there are also the innocent victims. There’s the lady whose birthday is being celebrated, and she just beat leukemia, and has a bright future in front of her as a virtuoso concert pianist, who ends up being crushed by something poignant, like a slab of concrete with her concert poster still hanging on it. There’s the lady trapped under a fallen beam, who hands over her infant to the know-it-all kid, so that at least her baby will survive. And there’s the earnest guy’s best friend who always believed his friend, but couldn’t escape the falling glass.

Naturally, the true star of a disaster movie is the disaster itself. It needs to be rendered in stunning visual effects which err on the side of “awesome” instead of on the side of accuracy. There ought to be scenes where nameless victims realize too late their doom, and attempt to flee, and get clobbered by the immense wave/blast/fire. The well-meaning person who leads a group of scared people toward the obvious survival path, against the advice of the know-it-all kid? Yeah, we’d better see slow shots of their cold, dead bodies. We will be sad for them, and tell ourselves that we would not make the same mistake.

I guess you’re supposed to leave the theater reflecting on how fragile our existence really is, and how if we’d only listened to the really crazy sounding guy, and changed our ways, we could prevent the inevitable doom of humanity. Me, I wonder if there’s time to somehow have a baby so that I have something to heroically hand-over to the know-it-all kid.

Maybe the earnest scientist is looking to start a family, and I can instead be his imperiled wife, who provides worried reaction shots to her husband’s selfless attempts to save their know-it-all kid who was on a field trip right in the path of destruction. Maybe I’ll have learned that when my husband’s predictions start coming true, it’s better not to sign the permission slip. Then, our happy little family can be together, and just say “he told you so” for the whole movie.

It is something of a cliche that women tend to complain about the challenges of finding clothing that not only fits them but adheres to their impeccable tastes and flatters their form. No one needs to hear yet another lengthy rant about that which we hold to be true. I take this as a given.

Instead, I wish to take a moment to mourn the near extinction of jeans made with actual denim.

It has not escaped my notice that the supplies of jeans have been infested with a strain of virulent, genetically-inferior forms, innocuously labeled “stretch” denim. It has some admirable qualities. It is comfortable, and more flexible than true denim; it conforms to diverse forms more easily, and moves with the wearer in a superhero-sort of fashion.

And that’s all well and good.

But, when I plunk down $150 for a pair of jeans (which, for the record, I won’t do, because, frankly, I’m cheap thrifty never going to think that’s a reasonable amount of money to spend on jeans. However, let’s say I took a temporary leave of absence from my sanity, and had $150 in mad money to spend on a pair of jeans. Having spent this amount, I’d still expect to be able to wear them more than three times.

The likelihood that I would be able to wear them more than three times is miniscule if they happened to be made of “stretch” denim. It’s worse if I decided I might like to wash them. By my (only slightly) exaggerated estimate, I could get at most two wearings if the washer got involved.

And here’s where I get positively old-fashioned.

I have never seen denim jeans disintegrate before, but, once infused with the evil taint of “stretchiness,” they can’t seem to handle their own rivets. If you happen to brush against a pine tree, you’re liable to have an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction. Levi Strauss would never have become a household name if his work pants had had the tensile strength of starched tissue paper, but that has become the new norm.

Frankly, I just want my jeans to be jeans.

But, they’ve become an endangered species.

While my keen denim senses can tell the good stuff from the inferior stuff from 50 paces, I am increasingly disappointed that you can’t just walk into any shop and leave with a satisfactory denim garment. The typical shops are more keen on selling jeans as items of fashion then as objects of utility.

My quest for stretch-free denim has led me to some desperate measures. I’m not yet guilty of invocating dark powers to cleanse the “stretch” from the face of denim-kind, but, I might’ve been seen looking through the denim selections in somewhat unorthodox places. I hesitate to say more, lest the supplies be further depleted, but, suffice it to say, I’ve determined what my inseam measurement is.