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This is the archive page for my blog. I am now putting my writing here, and I have a newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.

Enneagram

A few years ago, my roommates introduced me to the Enneagram, which is a little like the Myers-Briggs, but with less of the fuzzy science nonsense and more of this kind of spiritual pagan thing going for it. So, in other words, I'm basically obsessed with it and I want it to be my husband.

Swamp

I like to tell this story whenever I go to the swamp, about how a friend and I used to go there in the depths of summer to draw the alligators. Once we went and sat down to draw this alligator that wasn't so far from us, and we'd look down to draw, and then look up at the alligator, and every time we looked back up, the alligator was a little closer to us than it had been before. Nothing had seemed to have changed; the alligator had just gotten closer.

Individually Together

If you haven't seen "The Lego Movie" yet, drop everything you are doing and go see it. I'm serious. It's the best movie I have ever seen in my entire life, and all of mankind should watch it, internalize its many messages, and make the world a better place by application. Ignore that Lego is kind of a shitty corporation, and that the movie has a stupid name. Just ignore those things. Everything else about this film is extraordinary.

Dear Cats

I have two cats. They are (adorably) named after jazz musicians (Satchmo and Coltrane), and they basically dominate my life. There was an article in The New York Times this weekend about how cats should not be allowed to go outside, because they are murdering birds, and spreading disease, and for lots of other reasons. This article successfully made me feel like a terrible person, but I am never going to make my cats live indoors. That would be like inviting your boyfriend to move in: the relationship would deteriorate almost instantaneously.

Racist

Five years ago, I sat in an old, falling-apart high school, not teaching two 19-year-old boys about reading. I was supposed to be teaching them about reading, but the other six kids in the class had failed to show up that day, and morale was low. It was incurably hot, and the room we were in didn't have air conditioning. After going through the motions of phonics exercises, we had stretched out in front of a jangly plastic box fan and were talking about the rapper Juvenile.

Family Math Night

Last night I ran an activity table at Family Math and Literacy Night at one of the schools where I work. I set up my go-to project -- collage making with tissue paper (it never looks bad, but simultaneously, no one is ever really all that good at it) -- and sat down at my station with a New Yorker. I didn't really think anyone was going to come to my station. Most of the kids who go to this school don't know who I am, and "art station" sounds like it has about as much to do with math and literacy as "whale station" or "popcorn station" might. (Although, I would absolutely go to a "whale station" if such a station existed.)

Saint Joseph's Day Sketch Book

My good friend Jordan told me that I had to watch the Mardi Gras Indians on Saint Joseph's Day this year, since he was out of town and would have to miss it. I confessed to him that in six years, I'd never been out for Saint Joseph's. He was aghast.

Love Letters

So lately I've been doing this really embarrassing, Oprah Magazine-y, you-go-girl type of thing. I've been writing love letters to myself. I don't mean that as a metaphor. I don't go out and get a latte, feel guilty, and then say to myself, "You totally deserve this, beautiful," (to the weird looks of other coffee-going customers). I literally and legitimately have been writing long, syrupy, sometimes kind of sexy love letters. Then I put them in envelopes, address them to myself, and put them in the mail with my own address on the envelope and a stamp. Yes, I know how much a stamp costs. And yes, I know that I live close enough to myself that I could easily walk to my house to drop off the letter in person. But there's just something about getting a letter in the mail -- especially an emphatic, doting, periodically salacious one -- that is particularly exciting.

Multitasking

My longest and most genuinely functional-seeming romantic relationship was with a comic book writer I had written a glorified fan letter to. He was much younger than me, so I think he saw my infatuation with him as sort of exotic. I had all these things he didn’t yet have: a job, a cat, groceries from the grocery store that I bought with my own money, shampoo, etc. I had been a shitty girlfriend to enough people to know how to not be one anymore, and I think that was also an attractive quality I possessed. The thing that attracted me to him, of course, was that he was my favorite comic book artist.

Magnets With Phrases On Them

I am unfortunately inclined towards the kinds of sayings that are made into magnets. Do I have "Keep Calm and Carry On" coaster? Yes. I hate this about myself, but yes. Do I secretly write down bumper sticker phrases -- like "Life doesn't put things in front of you you are unable to handle," or "In the end we only regret the chances we did not take" -- in a tangerine colored notebook titled "Things To Keep In Mind?" Guilty. If I was at someone's house and noticed they had tons of encouraging quote paraphernalia (especially, but not limited to, encouraging quotes made into vinyl stickers in Papyrus to be stuck on walls), I would dismiss that person entirely and never respond to their text messages. And yet, I am one of them.

Therapist

I made an appointment with a therapist. I'm telling you this precisely because I don't want to; because the whole idea completely mortifies me; because writing "I made an appointment with a therapist" reads to me like, "Well, I'm officially a complete failure. Soon I will live in a garbage can."

If You Have Come To Help

I heard on "This American Life" that you're never supposed to talk about y our dreams because no one is interested in them. The exception, of course, is when you have a dream about the person you are talking to. We all like to be stars in other peoples' subconsciouses.

Watercolor

I've been really into watercolors lately. That's significant because if you had asked me when I was thirteen if I would ever be into watercolors, I would look at you like you had just asked me if I believed the Backstreet Boys were ever going to break up. That is to say, I would have thought it was extremely unlikely.

Two Scoops

Last week Eva's cousin T, who was seven months old, died in her sleep. Eva's mom called to let me know, and I could tell she'd been repeating the news a lot. She had the kind of dull thud to her voice that sits just outside of grief -- a sort of fuzzy autopilot that flutters into gear in the wake of necessity.

Streetcar

Yesterday I got a rare gift. I was in the Lower Garden District (probably the most inconveniently far-away neighborhood from house in New Orleans proper), when my bike got a flat tire.

Craigslist Personals: Subcategory - Dinosaurs

Lonely Sinornithosaurus Wants To Make You Soar: I'm usually not good at describing myself but here it goes. I'm a big guy; charming; a gentleman; covered in feathers from head to toe. I'm not avian, but I can pass for avian if that's your thing. I'm not too classy (Read: PRETENTIOUS) for a little role-playing! I'd prefer that you were single, a little demure, and also feathered. It's not a deal-breaker if you're not, but I tend to do better with other feathered species. It's not that I'm a bigot or anything, I just find it hard to get excited about girls who don't have feathers. Anyway, if something I wrote here piqued your interest, there's more where that came from! Just make sure that when you reply to this ad you put in the subject line "I'M FEATHERED." That way I'll know you're a real (feathered!) girl who read my ad and not a robot, or SPAM.

Flappy Noodle: Tap on your device to make the noodle flap. Flap to try to avoid obstacles like "being eaten" or "being eaten by a bird" or "being eaten by a dog." Ultimately, flapping is futile, because you are a noodle. Noodles are powerless to do anything. Gamers have lauded Flappy Noodle as "harder than Flappy Bird." Nietzsche scholars have lauded it as "relevant."

Bending

I don't make plans on Thursday nights. My two roommates and I have Family Dinner on Thursdays, and it's sacred. It's the most important plan I keep, and I accept hands-down that the dinner will take the entire night.