Makes me miss my people before they’re gone.
Makes we want to document more moments like this:
The bbf and I kick a blue rubber ball around the yard after his long day at work and my colossal afternoon nap. I collapse on the grass. “I’m exhausted from all this soccer,” I say. “I think I’m coming down with something.”
The bbf throws the ball at my head. “I think you have the trust fund flu.”
He is the most adorable jock ever. And he better score a lot of goals to compensate for my leaving the internet for 12 hours. You hear me, bro? I want flashy, violent goal scoring. Like a video game. None of this sissy stuff. And it’s raining, so there better be hot chocolate at the tailgate.
I give you the best multimedia feature about arm wrestling the Daily Progress has ever done.
In January, 1943, my grandmother Bunny Murray enlisted in the WAVES. Born Jean “Bunny” Miller Brundred in 1920, my grandmother loved fishing, hunting, fashion, and the best of American values. When the United States joined World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and Bunny’s friends started dying soon after, she knew she had to help her country. At first her war effort was restricted to volunteering for the Red Cross and other community organizations, but soon Bunny felt she had to contribute more. She enlisted in the Navy and went to boot camp in the Bronx. That’s her on the right.
I think there should be a website devoted to online content that moms find funny. Then they can stop forwarding said content to their children.
I once had a friend who chased foxes on horseback. I met her at a makeup counter at the mall. I sat on her high stool and she pressed the thin skin around my eye sockets, rubbing shimmer across my lids. The most skittish strangers trusted her with the lining of their lashes. When you were in her hands, you closed your eyes and let go. She smelled like lavender. On the first day I met her, I spent $100 on credit and decided she should marry into my family.
She was young and in love with so many things. She especially loved horses and the stray dogs she was always picking up from the side of the road. She used to be a professional snowboarder, and when she rode the lift, her dogs would run up the mountain beneath her chair.
She told me that some foxes seemed to enjoy the hunt. If the hound dogs lost their scent, the foxes would come out of their hiding places to taunt them and prolong the chase. I admit that I didn’t believe her at the time. What kind of animal would laugh in the face of death, just for the thrill of the hunt? But now when I imagine her galloping across the countryside, always grinning behind the fox, behind the dogs, behind her horse’s bucking head, I can see that she too was being chased. A heavy fate was following her as well, but it never fazed her. She kept running, kept laughing, kept teasing the bitter wind that tailed her like a baying hound. And I like to think that maybe when that hound caught up to her, she wasn’t sad or angry like the rest of us; she just took it in stride like the fox who enjoyed his run but knows his time is up.
Amy Saulter’s memorial was yesterday afternoon. She died after a long illness that still remains a mystery. She was in a coma in the neurological ICU for five months, during which time her hair was cut short, she endured over three hundred thousand medical tests, and her parents had to touch her with rubber gloves.
But that’s the sad part of the story. The happy part is that Amy’s life blessed so many of us, if all too briefly, and that her energy will always be fixed somewhere in our thoughts, and that she was a sly and ecstatic sport in this foxhunt life that will one day catch up to us all.
Grandfather: I have always been impressed with my mother’s managerial skills. Not only did she parent ten children, but she also managed a full household staff.
Me: I know! When I read older English novels, I’m reminded of those extra responsibilities of the family matriarch. Like right now I’m reading Middlemarch by George Eliot. . .
Grandfather: I’m reading Middlemarch too!
Later, walking up a steep hill. . .
Grandfather: I rode one of the first geared bikes 190 miles from Yale to visit a girlfriend at Bennington. Later she wrote me a Dear John letter, telling me she was becoming a Sacred Heart nun.
Me: A boy once drove 200 miles to see me in a car with a driver’s side window smashed in by the burglar who stole his car stereo the night before. There was burglar blood and window glass all over the seat and he arrived in a rainstorm. Later he told me he was gay.
I try to be charming at parties, and yet I always end up dry humping someone by the bar or threatening to steal a girl’s baby. I lose people’s jackets, I feed hyper kids too many cookies, and if certain friends haven’t arrived by a certain hour, I make angry, drunken phone calls demanding their presence. But the important thing is that I have a good time. I always manage to have a good time. I am glad that the party ended when it did though, because otherwise I might have proposed mooning cars or playing the fainting game and I would have weirded out my last remaining friends. I didn’t go to many parties in high school and college was no disco, so I think I am still stuck in that middle school party place, where you want everyone to overeat popcorn and candy, gossip about celebrity haircuts, take forbidden drags of cigarettes, and make a public nuisance. And then it’s one in the morning and your guests are bloated, drunk, or pregnant, and they all want to go home. I, on the other hand, want to keep hanging out and play Truth or Dare or Ouija Board, but instead I put all my Pepsi and vodka-induced energy into washing the party dishes and sweeping the floor while the bbf passes out watching The Goonies, and then I kiss him on the cheek and I can pretend we’re playing house in the 1980s.
Thanks to everyone who came to our party! If you didn’t get an invitation I promise it was an oversight or I think you smell bad.
Tonight I found this website, which informed me that Darren Hoyt is “a name we all should know!” I totally agree, and that is why I have decided to publish my highly-anticipated interview with Darren Hoyt, captain of the web design blogosphere and my own buttered bun.
THE Q&A:
W- How did you get interested in web design?
D - I used to visit my Dad’s house in 1995 and play around with his Compuserve account. At the time there was a buzz about “alien autopsy” photos from Roswell that someone claimed to have published online. I was on Christmas break from college with nothing else to do, so I made a point of tracking down these photos. I finally met someone in a chat room who said he’d send me copies using whatever transfer protocol was around at the time. All I know is that it killed my dad’s 14.4 modem connection for the better part of a day. I finally found an actual web domain that promised the photos. This time it took three hours to load in the browser, and it was obvious no thinking person would mistake them for authentic. But I still stayed up til 3:00am anyway, watching a black-and-white JPG load one fragment at a time.
First draft
First person
Last chance
