It turns out the cat’s ninth birthday wasn’t really about him. It was about me, my daughter, and the next stage of my life.
Nonfiction
Friends, Family, Followers, and the like, I sat down this evening to write a post reflecting on the […]
Day 9: December 20, 2013
Wake up, and remember an email you sent seven years ago. An email you sent to all of your family and friends of the time. Remember it being hilarious! And witty. And all kinds of smart.
Good thing you saved it.
Upon reading the seven-years-ago email, however, you remember significant disappointment. You’ve remembered this email incorrectly.
It’s not hilarious. It’s painfully honest about things you shouldn’t have said aloud much less committed to writing for all your family and friends to read. Luckily, they still think it’s hilarious (but not in the way you wanted it to be).
Write a new letter, because you’re better at it now. (Or at least, you hope.)
Remember the art of editing, and try to save the personal information for your blog and essays (because that seems more appropriate somehow).
Make a list of all the people that matter to you. Get email addresses for as many as you can. Click send.
And then find a typo.
Day 8: December 19, 2013
Enjoy a belated birthday present from a good friend: a trip to the movies to see the Hobbit (spoiler alert: it was amazing).
You are both really bad at the timing thing, so you’re running late. Even so, you decide that you must have popcorn and a coke icee. Because you’re at the movies. And it’s your birthday (sort of). And seeing the Hobbit in IMAX 3D (!!) demands an extra serving of sugar (icee) and a bit of salt to cancel out the sugar (popcorn).
(You’ll want to question this logic at some point, as it is definitely not sound and you are definitely still hypoglycemic, but today is not a day for logic.)
You ask for smalls: small popcorn and icee, please! You say it proudly as if smalls make everything okay. But the girl at the counter gives you pause:
We don’t have small icees, she says, only mediums or larges.
Conundrum: do you explain that these terms—small, medium, large—in this context—containers of deliciously awful syrupy liquid—are relative terms?
She’s staring at you, asking if you want the medium instead?
Your mind goes to sophomore year biology and the terms “hyper-tonic” and “hypo-tonic” and the fact that they can only be used when comparing two things (this also makes you remember your alternating hypoglycemic and hyperglycemic conditions, and you try to remember which way the icee pendulum swings).
Day 6: December 17, 2013
Go to work. Tell someone good morning. Her response will be simple, yet unexpected: you dyed your hair. Say yes, yes you did dye your hair. And that you like it. Because change is good. Everyone needs change some times.
She surprises you again with her response: it’s stark.
Spend the rest of your morning defining the word stark because maybe it doesn’t mean what you thought it meant. (It does.)
Stark—adjective
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