Yeah, I’ll admit it. I’m a bit of a Sean Kernan groupie. Sh, don’t tell him. These things aren’t good for a white man’s ego. And it’s MY ego here we’re talking about. So let’s get back to spotlighting me, me, glorious ME.

I was a little – interpret as a lot – upset that my attempt to become a writer on his pub was ix-nayed. Six boxes of Merlot later I was fine. Well as fine as you can be after a night in prison with a roomie who specializes in shanks and buttplug drug drops.

My ego needed…

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The envelope, stuffed through your mailbox without even a chip from its ornate wax seal, is glowing. Big deal. It reminds you a little of that science experiment gone wrong in college chemistry class. The one where an entire campus block had to be evacuated — but only one person was hospitalized and since it wasn’t you, your professor, or your lab partner, and it didn’t affect your grade, all seemed okay.

Yanking the burlap brown envelope from the recycling box you sink your incisors into the edge…

🥶 🤡👹⚡🎉🙀💜

“It’s all ready!” shouts my partner, clove hitching the last balloon to the banister. We’re both winded after draining our lungs into 68 plastic sacs the color of our 13-year-old feline’s latest kill. “T minus 36 minutes until the crowds arrive!”

A week after our furry Ophelia had finished chemotherapy, we’d decided this impromptu birthday gala was the kind of joy-filled pep we all needed. All of our neighbors and friends had been sent hasty invites, catfood-filled cake had been baked, and goodie bags bigger than her litterbox had been filled with eco-friendly hemp toys.

“When’s that dude Benjie supposed…

“I’m just a little tired of this,” I admit to Cat aka Cat’o’Cheshire aka Dave Logan aka The Detective. “We’ve followed so many wanna-be clues. Are we ever going to figure out what happened?”

For three months we have spent too many late nights eating ham and cheese pizzas and following dead-end leads. My waistline and my sanity need a solution. Plus, as brilliant as limericks are, I’m about ready to transtemporal travel back to 1811 and interrupt the coitus that created Edward Lear — supposedly the first dude to popularize this form of poetry. …

“It doesn’t seem like you actually need me,” my husband once shared.

Because, well, I really didn’t.

My doorknob fiasco

“Yes!” I shouted as I twisted the last screw into place on the replacement door handle. Grasping the knob and turning resulted in…nothing. Stuck tighter than a Victorian-era twat.

Damn door handle. I’ve been fighting you for a little under 365 days and finally I replaced you. And you still don’t work!

As though I am behind a cash register during a robbery, my hands fly into the air. …

“That flower
Those petals
The smell
Are only dried up memories of love…”
Himanshu Saxena

In the middle of June, I always expect a gift. And I always receive it. No, it’s not a belated mother’s day floral arrangement or an early Father’s Day one I will accept on my husband’s behalf. Our summer anniversary rarely accompanies the bestowal of anything but a grunted “good morning” and I am a winter baby. This gift is generational, and sent from my shrub-loving grandma’s ghost.

Almost a decade ago bricks from my grandmother’s home were bulldozed into piles and shingles radiated heat…

It was 1983. My bangs were taller than the Empire State Building and my perm frizzed its way out between the straps of my headgear. Prancing my neon jelly shoes into the local music store I slapped down hard-earned babysitting cash and walked out with a paper bag-covered audiotape.

Sure I had been gifted Michael Jackson and Olivia Newton-John records for my tenth birthday but this was different. This was the very first audiotape I have ever owned or purchased.

Slipping on sunglasses that would now work better alongside a backwoods-cop-turned-pedophile Halloween costume, my sister and I crawled through the…

“Blood, sweat, and respect.
First two you give, the last one you earn.”
The Rock

You have to admit that Dwayne Johnson and his berry-bouncing hubcap-sized pecs know a thing or two about hard work and success. The guy gets up at 3:30, chucks back a java, and then does a leisurely 30–50 minute “jog” before breakfast and his real workout. The former wrestler-turned-actor’s net worth is $400 million.

So you wanna be The Rock of the Medium world?

So you wanna be The Rock of the Medium world? Blood and sweat, sweetums. …