Category: On My Mind

“Vomithounds: You Better Be Good, or You’ll Be Gone” (methinks this gel has a vomit habit)* Earlier this week, Girl was suffering from an undiagnosed Fever ‘N Ague. We knew she had a high temperature. We could see her glassy eyes and flushed cheeks from our vantage point across the room, safely out of germ-jumping…

“I’m Only a Paper Loon” Most days, I don’t think enough. I just kind of put the car in drive and let it take me places. Or if I’m in the kitchen, and I see a Cheerio on the floor, I instinctively bend to pick it up. Sometimes I eat it. Sometimes I put it…

“Bite Me” This much is a given: I need to lower my body into a large vat of rubbing alchohol and remain suspended there for some minutes. What has not yet been decided are the logistics of the lowering. Obviously, I need some sort of harness, right? And while I suppose a bathtub could suffice…

Consider this story of misdirected holiday hopes, broadcast last week on NPR: Richard Perez of Lake Station, Indiana, wanted to impress his beloved wife by giving her a plasma television this Christmas. The rub was that he didn’t actually feel compelled to *pay* for the TV. At this point, a little Grinchian ingenuity kicked in,…

I read and grade papers for a living. While I was recently compelled to poke a hole in my eardrum with a mechanical pencil when I read the 9,543rd paper on “why bow hunting rocks,” for the most part, my job has its perks: a great schedule, lots of autonomy, and an office door that…

“Downward-Facing ADHD Doggie: Frantic Yoga” I may pride myself on being a hearty soul, but the truth is that I host a puny inner wuss, a very small person who lives inside me and who doesn’t like scary or creepy things like: voles; people knocking on my front door wearing crisp white shirts and neckties,…

More adventures from the “Jocelyn As Idiot Runner” Files: I am the kind of person who can get lost between my house and my job (where I’ve worked for six years). I can take a wrong street on my way to Cub Foods and end up doing an 18-point turn to back myself away from…

Yesterday on the Western Waterfront Trail: -10 degree wind chill + an hour of trail running = me, in the clearance bin at the Lunacy Mart That’s the new math. Three minutes into the run, I was giving myself a serious dressing down: “Okay, this blows like Mt. St. Helen’s. This sucks like a Dirt…

Zoom in on 1997: One day, having just slammed a triple-shot mocha in an effort to fight off a marauding hoard of the late-afternoon grumps, I made a new friend. As I exited the coffee shop, a woman–a stranger to me–came up and said, “I see you all the time around here, and you always…

Here’s a statement that most everyone–outside of perky cheerleader Homecoming Queens, Buzz Lightyear, Paris Hilton, Lassie, and Barack Obama–can agree with: “I’ve spent a large part of my life feeling not cool but wishing I were.” Certainly, my desire to be “cool” has steadily and mercifully waned since high school ended, and my standards of…