Friends & Foes

Best BFF and drug dealer: Tyler (the drugs are Hershey's Eggs, the ones you can only get at Easter)

Best brother and Twitch emote artist: Adam, always

Best therapist, two years running: Ashley, even though she didn't compliment my brows this year

Best personal trainer and friendship bracelet maker: Grace, and not just because she kept her promise to never make me do a burpee (but omg, thank you for never making me do a burpee)

Best cult: 🦔 Skirts Cult 🦔

Best Idris Elba look-alike: the guy who works at the bagel shop by my gym (sheeeesh, bro)

Best boyfriend: listennnn, the Idris Elba guy is married, and I flunked the entire “are you ready for a relationship” test from my therapist so hard that we both fell off our chairs laughing

Home & Abroad

Best solo trip: taking myself to Charleston, SC, for a week to distract myself from the anniversary of my mom’s death and also to decide if I wanted to live there in the future (working on the blog post about this right now)

Best city for everyone trying to give you their number: Charleston, SC (?!)

Best new-to-me city I would, in fact, love to live in: Charleston, SC, babyyyy. It’s cute and walkable and has like a billion great restaurants and doesn't gloss over its own history. And yeah, the people there are obsessed with me, which doesn't hurt.

Best mini road trip: driving 250 miles to Knoxville, TN, for lunch with some of my dearest friends and then driving back the same day

Best city I’m currently living in: Cincinnati, OH

Best things about Cincinnati: a truly absurd number of cute coffee shops and bakeries, walkable downtowns in almost every suburb, that Idris Elba look-alike

Health & Wellness

Best article that changed how I view taking care of myself: This list of eight areas of self-care and how to practice them has been so valuable. I tend to have a very limited imagination for what constitutes self-care, but now, I use this list to help make sure I’m doing things for my physical body and for my environment and for my brain, etc. Working on a blog post about this, too, but in the meantime, I'm stealing the categories for this section of the Skirts Awards.

Best physical self-care investment: signing up for a gym membership and a personal trainer, both of which allowed me to finally make peace with exercise (spoiler alert: in 2025, I have two gym memberships and a personal trainer)

Best mental self-care investment: taking a UX design class, which sparked the realization that I can use caretaking and creativity to help people as my job 🤯

Best emotional self-care investment: healing and growing SO MUCH in therapy; I live for the sessions when Ashley tells me how proud she is (and same, I'm so proud)

Best environmental self-care investment: this pomegranate cedar room diffuser (pro tip: if you’re easily overwhelmed by smells like I am, limit the number of reeds you use—you're welcome)

Best financial self-care investment: therapy again, where we’re doing the very uncomfortable work of dealing with my emotional spending habits 😭

Best social self-care investment: online, the answer is definitely streaming because I've made so many new friends through this venture and reconnected with a bunch of friends from past lives; offline, the answer is "getting the heck out of the house every week and being open to new friendships” (gross!)

Best recreational self-care investment: deciding to clear out old screenshots in October, having a three-week mental breakdown over it, and getting heavily invested in Japanese stationery and Italian fountain pens and a community of planner nerds on YouTube

Best spiritual self-care investment: getting really intentional about the safe space I wanted to create for my Twitch community, so I can bring my whole-ass personality to stream (as someone who likes to talk passionately about deep things and big issues) in a way that encourages everyone else to show up with their whole-ass selves, too 💕 

Hobbies & Obsessions

Best planner to get you through the aforementioned Menty B: Hobonichi Cousin, which has plenty of room for journaling your angsty thoughts and planning your comeback in yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily spreads

Best pens: Sakura Pigma Micron (fineliner), Kaweco Sport (entry-level fountain pen), Leonardo x Stilo&Stile Momento Zero (fancy fountain pen), and Tombow Dual Brush Pen (in every color ever)

Best worst ink: Waterman Intense Black, which was such an intense light grey color that I actually considered having a second Menty B

Best other hobbies: reading (exceeded my yearly goal of 12 books and actually read 30!), learning French, curating hedgehog accounts on Instagram, and having a weekly solo date at Starbucks to do more reading

Entertainment

Best TV shows, which I will bully you into watching: Only Murders in the Building (which I am still calling "Murder Cuties") and Shrinking

Best movie watched in theaters: Dune: Part Two

Best new-to-me musical artist: Laufey (vocal jazz)

Best song with perfect lyrics for an AIM away message: “Wish You the Worst,” by Ryan Mack

Best books that I actually enjoyed: The Third Gilmore Girl (actually one of the best memoirs I've ever read) and Lessons in Chemistry (the book was so much better than the show)

Best YouTuber who made me laugh out loud: Caroline Winkler

Best YouTuber who also makes the best planner stickers: TheCoffeeMonsterzCo (to be fair, Helen also makes me laugh out loud)

Best YouTuber who shares stationery shit and is also a whole-ass vibe: Ammie Y’all (again with the belly laughs)

Best YouTuber who is now a friend because I love her content so much: OlaOh (everyone I like is very funny, okay)

Best Twitch collab partner: Chronogem, even if he did think I might someday play Minecraft, bless

Best sneaky link to my own Twitch channel: 🦔 Skirts Cult 🦔

Best previous editions of Skirts Awards: 2023, 2019, 2018, 2014, 2013, 2011

Anyway, two of my friends—Beep and gRegorlove—have published their answers, and if you decide to share yours, please let me know, so I can add the links here. (Edited to add: Lauren and Justin have joined the fun, too!) And extra thanks to gRegor for being the one to gently “nudge” me to join.

1. Why did you start blogging in the first place?

Keeping an “online journal” was wildly popular at my high school, by which I mean that like three of my best friends started accounts at Diaryland.com, and I wasn’t about to be left out of the fun. We wrote silly stories about what happened in class and at home, like passing notes, except we didn’t have to worry about Mrs. Wright scolding us for it. I was sixteen years old when I published my first post, and now that I’m the ripe old of age of 112, I’m so glad I have all of those memories. 

2. What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?

I had to give up my spot as one of the last three MovableType users in 2019 when they stopped offering a free tier. (This is a slight exaggeration, but it did feel like a very exclusive club there for a while, lol.) I’ve been a very, very happy Ghost customer ever since. My must-haves in a blogging platform: 1) I want to be able to host my own content because I am a control freak. 2) I want some sort of commenting system, so I can bask in feedback. 3) Anything but WordPress. I'd literally rather eat my own hands.

Because of the control freak element, I'm on the self-hosted (and free) version of Ghost. I was able to do a lot of the set-up stuff myself because I was raised in a nerdy household, but I also have enough nerdy friends on deck that I can get out of a sticky situation if need be. Ghost does offer a paid version, as well, which is much more accessible for the everyday blogger and comes with nerdy support from real Ghost professionals. I think anyone who wants a blog or a newsletter should at least consider Ghost, but whatever you do, stay the fuck away from WordPress (and Substack).

3. Have you blogged on other platforms before?

Long before I got my own domain, I was blogging anywhere and everywhere: Diaryland, Xanga, Blogger, LiveJournal, DeadJournal (yes, that was real), TypePad, and whatever other sites would take me. I also had more Tumblr blogs than should be legal, and if we count microblogging, sheeeesh. Someday, I'd like to archive the best of those posts here, maybe at a subdomain like vintage.rachelskirts.com. But for now, please know that I earned my Queen of the Internet™ nickname.

4. How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?

I write in the Craft app because it’s the best writing app in the world. Next question.

5. When do you feel most inspired to write?

Obviously, the best time to come up with blog post ideas is when you have no energy to actually follow through. I’ve been using this method for years and have no intentions of changing.

6. Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

I want you to know that I sighed heavily and said, “ew, fuck,” as I read this question. What psychopath publishes immediately after writing? The sneakiest typos only reveal themselves after they’ve been left to do a bit of mischief overnight.

If it’s a weighty post of some sort, I first send a copy to my BFF, Tyler, and have him tell me how clever I am. If it’s something more lighthearted, I agonize over every word and every comma for an hour and then hit publish and immediately notice something stupid and race to fix it before my crimes get sent out to my subscribers.

7. What’s your favorite post on your blog?

I genuinely couldn’t choose if you threatened me or bribed me, so here are a handful of entries that make me smile:

• Sunshine and Walks, a reflection on caretaking for my grandparents
• A Teeny Tiny Moment, a favorite memory from a complicated relationship
• Almost Been Kissed, the story of five pivotal moments with five friends

8. Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

A redesign is long overdue, but I’d gladly put it off for another decade if it meant I could use that energy to do more writing. I share a lot of my stories on live-streams these days, but I always have more to say—especially now.

The world around me is seemingly on fire, and yet, I'm also finally hitting my stride in so many ways. I want to talk about that trip I took to Charleston, SC, last year and how I walked away with a pile of phone numbers and a plan to make that city my next home. I want to tell you about the UX design class I’m taking and how I'm writing my notes by hand with a fountain pen because I lost my mind in October and bought a bunch of stationery from Japan and Italy. I want to spill the tea about the books I'm hate-reading and let you in on how much fun I’m having as a streamer. (Blasphemous II is so weird and so good! Free the Daves!) I want to have a safe space to scream inside my heart, and I want everyone else to hang out in the blanket fort with me.

Anyway, that’s a pretty big wish list, and I hope I get what I want. Until then, know that I love you fiercely and might love you even more if you leave a comment. 💕 K byyyye!

I’ve had a few people ask me about my process, so I’m going to share it in two parts: this first post will cover how I set up my goals for the year, and then my next post will talk about how I break those annual goals down into tasks by month, week, and day. I’ll also include any relevant resources along the way, so you can learn more, if that's your cup of tea.

Step 1: Establish the Vibes

I like the idea of picking a word for the year, something that defines or inspires how you want to act or feel. I also like answering a few basic journal prompts to get my brain in “daydream mode.” It’s really hard to plan ahead if you’re being too narrow-minded, and it’s also really hard to get started if you’re staring fearfully at a blank page.

I found some easy prompts in this "Design Your Year Challenge" video by Jules Acree and spent about ten minutes writing down my answers:

• Words of the Year: Delight, Belong, Bloom
• Unwind with Hobbies: learn French, play piano (for me), read, edit photos, bake, blog
• Give Back to the Community: donate blood
• Expand My Comfort Zone: join a fitness class, travel solo, stream on Twitch
• Financial Goals: stay debt-free, move into my own apartment or home
• Travel Goals: visit Chicago, visit New York City, get a passport, take more road trips
• Celebrate Wins: bake something tasty, dance to a fun playlist, order a fancy drink from Starbucks, write a blog post, order fresh flowers

Step 2: Write Out Your Dream Day

In this step, you want to be as detailed as possible—and as vulnerable as possible—when writing out what your dream day looks like. Reality has no business being here. Pretend you live in your dream home in your dream location with your dream people, working at your dream job and spending your free time doing your dream hobbies. You aren’t going to be able to achieve that dream life unless you’re honest about it. Also, since you already put in the hard work of answering the prompts above, use those to inform your dream day.

I first learned about this from Sarajane Case in one of her former courses, and I read about it again in Girl, Stop Apologizing, a book by Rachel Hollis. It’s also something my therapist recommended! The endorsements for this strategy add up. Here’s my take on it for 2024:

I wake up with the sunrise and stretch in the middle of a cozy king-sized bed with a remote-controlled fireplace at my feet. I light the fire and prop myself up in bed as I prep myself for the day. I start with a glass of water, a meditation, and some self-care (gua sha, cuticle oil, seated yoga). Then I pull my planner from my nightstand and review my upcoming tasks and appointments—making sure they’re also in my digital planner.

With my mind at peace, I head downstairs to make breakfast and a cute cup of coffee in a kitchen that was tidied up the night before. (I am reunited with my pink dishes, and I am so happy about it.) I eat my food at the oversized kitchen island while sitting on a cozy stool and either reading a book or doing a crossword puzzle.

After breakfast, I tidy up the dishes and blast some cheery music while starting the rest of my morning routine: brushing my teeth, washing my face, getting dressed, putting on some make-up, and releasing my hair from my overnight curlers. After a quick spritz of my favorite perfume, I give myself a few minutes to dance and sing along.

I consult my planner again and get started on my tasks and appointments. I keep a full water bottle with me all day for hydration, and I take plenty of breaks to slow down—for tea, for stretching, for exercise (at home or in a park), for connecting with friends and family.

In the evening, I put together a nourishing and delicious dish that was meal-prepped over the weekend (or order a pizza for special occasions—or go out with friends!). I clean as I go, so the kitchen doesn’t become a source of overwhelm. I take my dinner to the couch and eat at the coffee table, watching a YouTube video or TV show or Twitch stream while wrapped in a cozy blanket and enjoying the warm lighting of lamps and faux candles. After an hour of unwinding, I call a loved one and chat on the phone while cleaning the kitchen and resetting the rest of the house.

To end the day, I allow myself fifteen minutes to reconnect with my body through yoga in the living room. I refill my water bottle and bring it upstairs. Then I shower and brush my teeth, do my evening skincare, and put on my pajamas and robe. I curl up in bed to journal about my day and plan for the next day. I dim the lights and enjoy reading more of my book before drifting into a restful sleep.

Step 3: Setting Annual Goals

Behold, the cutest vision board I have ever created. 🥹 This step actually starts with written goals, but there is a lot of power in creating a visual reminder of those goals—whether you write them on your mirror or create a desktop wallpaper (like I did) or make them into a custom coffee mug. I looked for images that represented my written goals and then plopped my three words for the year in the middle.

Adorable hedgehogs aside, the point of this step is to focus your previous work into ten achievable goals that move you closer to your dream life. These are the things I look at when I’m planning my months, weeks, and days, making sure I take practical steps toward achieving each one. (Thanks again to Rachel Hollis for explaining how powerful this tactic can be.) My 2023 goals included getting out of debt and fully decluttering my home, and I achieved both of those things by September. A few of my other goals just don’t make sense anymore, and the rest are mixed in with my goals for 2024:

1. I am intentional about budgeting my energy, using my planner and apps to set aside time for self-care routines and achieving the rest of my goals.
2. I spend lots of quality time with loved ones: spontaneous phone calls and body doubling, in-person visits, and handwritten cards.
3. I remain debt-free.
4. I move into my own home or apartment.
5. I nourish my body through thoughtful meal planning.
6. I set aside time for fun hobbies: editing photos, blogging, baking, reading, playing piano, and learning French.
7. I tend to my physical needs by hydrating and moving my body daily.
8. I budget time and money for travel goals: visiting Chicago, visiting New York, getting a passport, and taking more road trips.
9. I start streaming video games on Twitch.
10. I celebrate my wins by baking, dancing, or treating myself to coffee or flowers.

We are two weeks into 2024 now, and I'm so happy with my overall plan! In lieu of a real fireplace to wake up to, I play a faux fireplace video on my laptop every morning. I created my own Discord server to prepare for the launch of my Twitch/YouTube streams. I pushed through my social anxiety and celebrated a friend's birthday in-person. When I finish publishing this blog post, I'll celebrate with a dance party.

And obviously, it's fun to start something like this at the beginning of a new year, but it's also totally okay to start a new plan on February 29th (we have one of those this year!) or October 4th or later this afternoon. What are some of your current goals? Let me know in the comments! 💕

Any links to Amazon products in this post are through their affiliate program, so I get a small commission if you buy one of those products using that link. But what I'd rather get is the smug satisfaction that you are making smart decisions with your money, so prioritize that, friends.

Wishing you all a very happy new year! 💕 

Friends & Foes

Best Tennessee friends left behind: Jim, Jacquie, James, and Christy
Best new friend in Ohio: Lauren
Best BFF: Tyler, always
Best brother: Adam, always
Best new therapist, and not just because she complimented my brows one time: Ashley
Best community: basically all of the Souls streamers and their respective communities, but specifically the cuties of Twitch and YouTube who watch @LilAggy with me most nights (I got asked to be a moderator! It has been super fun!)

Best person who will haunt me for the rest of time: whoever was dressed as Winnie the Pooh and slowly trudged through an abandoned part of rural Tennessee in the pouring rain on January 22
Best worst temporary coworker, who managed to call me fat and unlovable while smiling and making a mess of my paperwork: Doreen

Home & Abroad

Best city abandoned forever: Crossville, TN
Best thing I did for myself before moving: playing the Minimalism Game, twice (I purged 1,000+ belongings in total, and I cannot even tell you how life-changing it was)
Best thing I decluttered: probably the lavender toga and coordinating purple sash I made for an eighth grade party celebrating all the Latin we had learned that year
Best thing I absolutely did not declutter: the Laura Ingalls Wilder dress, apron, and bonnet that my grandma made for me when I was young
Best mini road trip: Chattanooga, TN, to go to the aquarium and bully my friend into getting pedicures with me
Best reminder that I need to travel more in 2024: this blog post

Health & Wellness

Best life change overall: learning to ask for help, oops
Best result of asking for help: getting out of debt completely
Best new hobby: helping other people declutter and get organized—being bossy and helpful at the same time
Best physical health investment: that very trendy Stanley water bottle that holds 40 ounces and actually keeps me hydrated somehow, gross
Best mental health investment: the revamped chocolate croissant from Panera (or maybe the Calm app? hard to say)
Best worst illness that I wasn’t prepared to experience in my thirties: SHINGLES. ON MY FACE AND HEAD.

Entertainment

Best TV show, which I will bully you into watching: Only Murders in the Building (affectionately referred to as “the Murder Cuties show” by me)
Best movie, and yes, I dressed up in pink to watch it in the theater: Barbie
Best new-to-me musical artist: Emei
Best Emei lyric that I will always scream-sing in the car: “Who’s your therapist? . . . Fire your therapist.”
Best book that I actually enjoyed (instead of hate-reading): The Book of Boundaries

Best streamer, and not just because he made me a chat moderator: LilAggy
Best streamer to introduce me to “gyatt” and other Zoomer slang: BanjoTheUncle
Best cozy content gamer: OlaOh (please, please, please check out her short-form content on YouTube, too)
Best simplify-your-home content on YouTube: The Minimal Mom
Best manifesting-your-dream-life content on YouTube: all of those crackling fireplace videos, which I use while saving up to buy my dream home with a fireplace in the bedroom, eee 💕

Best previous editions of Skirts Awards: 2019, 2018, 2014, 2013, 2011

I have been meaning to reply to this tweet for well over a year now:

“Casual reminder to drop the books you are reading for pleasure but not enjoying. There are millions of books worth reading. Your time is better invested reading one that actually nourishes your love of learning.”
—@iconawrites (February 6, 2022)

This is such sage advice. When your entertainment of choice is no longer entertaining you (or otherwise benefitting you), let it go. The first time I understood this was when I played the World of Warcraft video game with a group of friends in my early twenties. As we got better at playing the game, the challenges required more and more time—sometimes five-hour commitments that we would schedule together. It started feeling like a part-time job, and I felt so free when I realized I could just opt out of that experience. The same can be true for television shows, movies, magazine subscriptions, etc.

AND YET. I have never ever given up on a book, and I probably never will.

Hello, my name is Skirts, and I love hate-reading.

My bestie, Tyler, has probably known this longer than anyone else, even me. He has been on the receiving end of hundreds of angry text messages with photos of whatever book I’m reading and a short (or not-so-short) rant about the crimes being committed by the author and/or editor.

For example, I was honored when my (very shy and reserved) boss told me about his favorite book series that he reads every year. I immediately borrowed the entire trilogy from the library. In the first book, the author used the word “crepuscular” at least fifty times, and the main character absolutely could not stop taking pee breaks behind bushes. I screamed.

I was delighted when a group of friends and acquaintances, many of whom are English majors, started up a book club. The first book they picked was written so terribly that it took me fifty pages to figure out that the author was (unintentionally) bouncing between first person and third person, present tense and past tense. No one else noticed. I screamed.

I was excited when Amazon Prime debuted their First Reads program, allowing subscribers to download one free Kindle book a month from a selection of new releases. But one of the books was a seemingly verbatim transcription of You've Got Mail but with two young women as the protagonists; the author didn't even bother changing the name of Brinkley, the dog. One of the books ended in the middle of a conversation, the only conversation that had the potential to move the plot forward. And the book that finally got me to stop falling for the First Reads scam described a group breakfast with this sentence: "There was a period of dedicated chewing until she returned.”

I am still screaming.

Yet amidst the screams, I have finished every one of these books. Did the experiences make me miserable? Yes. Do I also find it fun to read terrible books? Yes. Do Tyler and I still reference one of my most-hated phrases, “the chickens blew into the sea,” as a cherished emoji meme? 🌊🐓🐓🌊🐔🐔🐔🐓🌊🐓🌊🌊🌊 (Yes.)

Now, I will add one caveat, which is that I read abnormally quickly—speed-reading levels, apparently. So at most, I’m wasting three or four hours of my time on any given book. I assume that hate-reading would not be a good hobby for someone who reads at a slower pace or someone who listens to audiobooks. Also, while I log all of these books on Goodreads, you won’t catch me leaving a snobby written review—that’s a curse you must opt into by being a close friend.

So if you’re thinking of inviting me to your book club, please reconsider. If you want to recommend a book, please leave a comment. If you want to know what I really thought about the book you recommended, please ask Tyler.

The sound of the car warming up in the winter fills me with the most unsettling mix of nostalgia and anxiety. It is reminiscent of family vacations and early morning school events and my dad leaving for work while the rest of us were still in bed.

I have a note in my journal that simply reads: “Fred cells > incels,” which only makes sense in the extremely weird context of that night, when I had two decaf lattes at 9 p.m. and could feel every cell of my body vibrating. And all of the cells were named Fred.

(When I found out that Ashley was also a Chicago native who had landed in Tennessee, I actually screeched at my laptop screen. She gets me in so many other ways, too, but there’s just something about the Chicago bond that makes me happy.)

When we first started working together, I was feeling incredibly stuck. I was overwhelmed by chronic fatigue, weight gain, and other health mysteries. I had stepped down from caretaking in 2020 but still couldn’t find a way out of Tennessee. I had an enormous amount of debt. I felt lonely and abandoned. I was having stress dreams every night.

I didn’t know where to start, but I knew that I couldn’t do it alone. I was asking Ashley for help, and after learning a lot of other lessons, I learned to ask other people for help, too. Do you know how great it feels to let other people actually care for you and support you? It’s gosh dang life-changing.

Anyway, I wanted to share what I’ve learned so far (and document it for myself), so here are the four big themes I’ve worked on in therapy and how they actually helped me get out of debt, get out of Tennessee, rekindle my friendships, and find some much-needed healing.

Setting Boundaries

The very first thing that I wanted to work on was setting boundaries. I have a framed piece of art with the following quote: “May the bridges I burn light the way.” Until this point in my life, that was the only boundary-setting I knew how to do. Melissa Urban has an amazing book on this topic, and she always gives three scripts of what to say with increasing levels of gravity: green for when you want to gently inform someone of a boundary you will be holding, yellow for when you need to share a kind and firm reminder of that boundary and its consequences, and red for when you are enforcing those consequences (walking away, refusing to visit, etc.).

I had been skipping the green and yellow steps and just yeeting people off of a cliff with a red consequence and no explanation. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Once I started practicing the first two steps, though, I saw immediate improvements in every relationship. It's obvious in hindsight, but assuming that other people can read your mind and change their behavior accordingly is insane. And wandering around with resentment toward those people is doubly insane.

So for example, when my dad offered that I could crash at his house for a month while I did some job-searching, I accepted with gratitude and also clearly communicated one boundary: I did not want him to nag me to play piano for the dog. (Yes, I sighed deeply while writing that sentence, and yes, we will talk about it later.) He was a bit surprised by this request but was very understanding, and my time here has been that much more enjoyable because we have that mutual respect.

As Melissa says: “Clear is kind.”

Identifying Emotions

Once I started setting boundaries, I realized just how much of my life is spent biting my tongue and being angry about things. I was explaining this to Ashley, while trying not to sound like a murderous psychopath, and she lovingly laughed and took out her emotion wheel pillow. (Agreed, “emotion wheel pillow” is a crime scene of a phrase, but just bear with me.)

She explained that anger is a pretty big emotion and is often an umbrella term for more specific emotions—that’s the whole point of the emotion wheel tool. She then read out a few options: betrayed, disrespected, frustrated. Those all felt right, and by getting specific, I could identify that betrayal was an on-going theme in a lot of my stress dreams and nightmares. I was reliving past trauma every night while I slept—in large part because I didn't have the resources and the vocabulary to process my emotions during the day.

I have had terrible dreams for as long as I can remember, so this will likely always be my body’s default way of coping with stress and working through emotional experiences. But using the emotion wheel while I journal has helped me sleep better, and it also helps me communicate in my relationships. When you know that you’re feeling abandoned or inadequate or resentful, it’s so much easier to trace those feelings back to the root cause instead of just stewing about in a puddle of grumpiness.

Unhiding the Scary Stuff

Speaking of feeling abandoned, that’s exactly where my therapy journey went next, and I never could have predicted that. I had a cozy childhood, and I still love and adore my immediate family. I am the fastest bridge-burner in the Midwest, so I’ve never really felt abandoned by friends or partners, either.

But Ashley had recommended that I read It Didn’t Start with You, a book on inherited trauma. Not the cheeriest topic for a party, but wow, the science is amazing—how our DNA is literally rewritten by the trauma we experience and then passed on to our children and grandchildren. I was talking about the book with my dad when he confided in me about his own childhood experiences of abandonment. His stories allowed me to understand him more than I ever have, but in the context of the book, I also learned a bit about myself.

I know that my dad has made himself a promise to never leave his family. He has always protected us and provided for us generously. What looks like and feels like wonderful parenting can also be a trauma response for him. It’s one of those “both can be true” situations. And for me, I have learned from my dad—and inherited from him—the idea that loving someone means showing up for them before showing up for yourself, taking care of others rather than caring for yourself, and putting loyalty on a pedestal above anything else.

It’s why I stepped up to be a caretaker for my grandparents. It’s why I only stopped caretaking once my body was too broken to carry on. And it’s why I am notoriously bad at the next lesson: letting other people take care of me.

Asking for Help

As I mentioned earlier, the reason I started working with Ashley is because I felt stuck. I didn’t know what to do about it, but I was at my wit’s end trying to sort things out on my own. I only felt safe asking for her help because she was someone who was paid to support me—someone who willingly signed up to care for me.

This is painfully obvious now, but it took me until August to realize that I am actually surrounded by people who willingly signed up to care for me. People who have been waiting for me to let my guard down, so they could show me what love and care and support truly look like. That’s the definition of friendship. And I have some really, really good friends.

So I started leaning on my friends and family, and they responded with enthusiasm. I got help finishing my résumé. I hired a fitness coach. I was given a solution to my debt. I was gifted dozens of cards from people who love me, and I'm still getting more in the mail. And in the span of two weeks in September, I gave away or packed up everything I own and moved out of rural Tennessee.

I am no longer stuck.

And I guess the point of this is that I was never actually stuck to begin with—this was a journey that I could not manage on my own, and I am so grateful for the people who patiently waited for me to figure that out. To my friends, family, and beloved therapist, thank you for helping me learn to thrive.

Caring for Things

In January, I came across something called “The Minimalism Game,” a month-long challenge to get rid of one item on the first day of the month, two items on the second day, three on the third, etc. By the end of the month, you’ve purged nearly 500 things.

Now, I’ve been planning my escape from Tennessee for years, and I was determined that 2023 was the year I was going to get out. That was my primary motivation for paring down my belongings: the less you own, the less you have to pack up and move. I had also been making piles of stuff that I wanted to donate or stuff that needed repairs or whatever, and I was tired of being surrounded by unfinished tasks.

So I made the commitment to myself that I wanted to play the Minimalism Game, and I set up a list in my favorite note-taking app to keep track of what I purged. It took me six months (not 31 days, oops) to complete the first round, but my house started feeling noticeably lighter before I even reached the halfway point. I also completed a second round in September while I was packing up my house, and now everything I own can be shuffled onto a truck in twenty minutes.

Caring for People

A few days after my move to Cincinnati, I told my therapist how my health-related lack of energy in the past few years has really helped me to prioritize what matters and what doesn’t, especially with regard to physical belongings. She replied that I also seemed to be having an easier time letting go of relationships in my life and gently asked if there might be some correlation there. (This is where I mimed the idea of my mind being blown because I get very dramatic when I’m excited.)

Because yes, I have been hitting my limits so much faster with unhealthy family relationships and toxic friendships. I am like a bumbling baby giraffe when it comes to setting boundaries, but I am learning (and reading) and practicing. I say "no" more than I say "yes”—so that I can fulfill my few commitments with joy instead of resentment. And I overcommit anyway and get plenty of practice issuing genuine apologies when I can't be the friend I want to be.

It had just never occurred to me that letting go of things and letting go of people might be related.

Caring for Myself

Everything made sense once my therapist pointed out that I have an innate tendency to take responsibility for the things and people around me. This makes me a wonderful caretaker because I can effortlessly identify the needs of others and find ways to meet those needs. (It makes me a great accompanist, too—something I’ve been told my whole life but never understood until now.) And it’s also the fastest way for me to give away my energy and ignore what’s best for me.

So my homework assignment from therapy: pay attention to what I’m trying to take responsibility for that isn’t actually mine to worry about. And omg, it’s everything? Half of my energy crisis has to be because I am trying to be everyone’s project manager, therapist, cruise director, life coach, and best friend. And you know who secretly needs all of those things right now? IT’S ME. HI. I’m the goofball—it’s me.

Just being aware of this is already so helpful. I get to use my gifts when asked—like when my dad wanted help re-organizing his pantry, and I intuitively knew how to set it up for him—and walk away from problems that aren’t mine to solve. Because I’m not used to setting this boundary with myself, it’s still a bit exhausting, but I know it’s going to leave me (and my relationships!) so much healthier in the long run. And I’m really, really excited about that.

Fewer things, fewer relationships, fewer commitments. More time to care for everything and everyone I choose to keep in my life.

• the person who straightens the platters on “the gingham altar” for the technical bake section of GBBO (between when the bakers bring them up and the judges see them)
• a selfie consultant*
• the senior curator for a museum of hedgehog photography
• a digital organizer—someone who will rename all of your chaotic files and put them in perfectly logical folders
• the official Instagram influencer for Panera Bread

*People actually ask me about this more than I care to admit, but the real secret is to be very vain (and clean your camera lens).

Home & Office

Ugg robe ($80) • I bought this just before my move and almost lost it to a USPS mail-forwarding fiasco, but the shipping gods knew I needed this. I'd already tried two other robes, both of which were flimsy and cheap and awful. This robe? It’s perfect—thin enough that you could pack it for a trip and yet so cozy and soft and warm that you can forget at least three of your troubles while wearing it.

Humidifier ($80) • Ya girl has been working on her hydration for a few years now, and it's still not enough for that summer-to-winter transition. My lips get chapped, my nose bleeds, my hair starts trying to conquer neighboring cities—and then I remember that I own a humidifier. And this one doesn't wake you up in the middle of the night with a "blub blub" soundtrack; it's cute and quiet, as all appliances should be.

Desk pad ($16) • At one point, I was working from four different desks in three different offices, and I made sure every gosh dang one of those desks had a desk pad on it. I'm not always loyal to this exact brand, but I definitely love this style: minimal and clean. I like that they act as a giant mousepad while also making it easier to clean up spills and crumbs while also protecting the actual desk from scratches and ink stains. (This isn't really related to autumn except that I just bought a new one a week ago as a moving-in present for myself.)

Self-care & Beauty

Vaseline ($3) • Listen. This might seem obvious to everyone else, but I didn't understand the S-tier powers of Vaseline until a year or two ago when a dermatologist recommended it (instead of Neosporin!) for helping a wound to heal without scarring. I really put that to the test when I had shingles on my face this summer—yet another story for another time—and came out the other side with zero scarring and zero redness. I know it's going to come in clutch as the air starts to dry out.

Redness-reducing moisturizer ($35) • Speaking of redness, though, I do have a skin condition that is basically Dandruff+, and it means that the skin on my face is often redder than the skin on my neck or the rest of my body. I can cover it up with make-up, but I also wanted to address the underlying irritation and give my skin some relief. This moisturizer has tea tree oil in it, and I cannot even tell you what a difference it has made in my skin's appearance and in my overall confidence. It's lightweight enough to work well under make-up and powerful enough to use year-round.

Autumn eyeshadow palette ($70) • This is my first Patrick Ta make-up purchase, and I am so impressed. The color pay-off on the matte shadows is insane, the shimmers and glitters blend like a dream, and the whole palette is full of beautiful purples, golds, oranges, pinks, and browns that work in dozens of cozy combinations. This is the Gilmore Girls opening credits of palettes.

Apps & Tech Gadgets

MacBook Air ($999+) • Okay, this is another one of those things that is only seasonal because I bought it a few weeks ago (as a belated birthday present for myself), but I love it so much that I had to include it on the list. This is my first Air after owning three Pros, and I was really nervous that it would feel slow. And the only problem with the 2015 MacBook Pro I was using was the battery life, so I wasn't even sure I could justify the upgrade. But omg, this baby has the super-fast M2 chip and a battery life for days (even in the face of Adobe software)—plus it's a cute champagne gold color and barely weighs anything? I'm obsessed.

Sony noise-cancelling headphones ($330) • Autumn seems like it should be quiet and calm: gentle breezes, leaves softly tumbling to the ground, animals curling up for their winter naps. But leaf-blowers exist. And I can't afford enough to therapy to endure that sound—or most sounds, to be honest—so I basically live in these headphones. I've tried several alternatives from Bose, Apple, etc., and these are the most comfortable (for me) with the best battery life and support for connecting to multiple devices.

Wholesome Content

It Didn’t Start with You ($6+) • I can't fully explain this, but when the weather is cooler, I have much more patience for books that require deep thinking. This is definitely one of those books. My therapist recommended it, and I have learned so much about inherited trauma and how that literally shapes our DNA (the main topic of the book). I have also had some really meaningful conversations with my dad and brother about our personal and shared experiences. This sounds grim AF, but I promise that it is actually lovely and healing. (And maybe a bit grim, lol.)

Only Murders in the Building ($8+) • I have been obsessed with this show since I saw the very first trailer for it, and it absolutely lives up to the hype. Selena Gomez has charmed me to the point where I might have an IRL crush on her, and Steve Martin and Martin Short are perfection. I love that they all seem to be using the show as an excuse to work with their A-list celebrity friends in the weirdest and cutest ways. It's one of the few shows I will watch on a weekly basis as the episodes release, and I'm thrilled to hear we're getting at least one more season.

Any links to Amazon products in this post are through their affiliate program, so I get a small commission if you buy one of those products using that link. But what I'd rather get is the smug satisfaction that you are making smart decisions with your money, so prioritize that, friends.

I will proudly tell anyone who asks that the first concert I ever attended was Sharon, Lois, and Bram.

“There’s a Lava Cakes Anonymous, if you find yourself addicted. I’ve sent my wife."

— Domino’s delivery driver, July 27, 2019

Everything you need to know about me can be summed up by the fact that I left this note for myself in the middle of the night: “hot air balloon shaped like a hedgehog.”

Exactly twenty years ago, on April 23, 2002, I wrote and published my very first post for my very first “online journal.” I was a sixteen-year-old high school sophomore who loved the idea of sharing about my everyday experiences with my close-knit group of friends. We all signed up for accounts at Diaryland.com, and the rest is history—a silly, weird, wonderful history that would certainly haunt me if I ran for office. (No regrets!)

Of course, so much has changed over the years: I have new friends (many of whom I met through blogs!), new adventures, new challenges, and absolutely zero need to cram for finals. I've found heartbreak and love and a weird obsession with the agave lemonade at Panera. And most importantly, I've stopped spelling "school" with a 'K' to try to impress boys. But no matter what chapter of life I’m in, I will always enjoy having a little place on the internet where I can talk about hedgehogs and Hobbits and home decor to my heart’s content.

Thanks for keeping me company on the journey. 💕

As I write this, I have been sitting in the parking lot of a CVS pharmacy for two hours and don't plan on moving anytime soon. In fact, two hours ago, I went inside the drugstore and shopped for some essentials to prepare: a bottle of water, a package of Double Stuf Oreos, some pretty pastel Sharpies, a glitter-covered spiral notebook, and a new pen.

I wish I could say that I was planning a heist or creating a new TikTok challenge, but the boring truth is that I drove thirty miles to take a COVID-19 test and only then thought to call my car dealer (who is also in town) to see if the service center had any availability to fix my broken headlight. Shockingly, they had an appointment—five hours after my nasal swab. Faced with the choice to 1) drive another sixty miles home and back or 2) arrange the most cringeworthy campsite possible, I opted for the latter.

So here I sit, handwriting a blog post in a sparkly pink notebook, putting myself in a sugar coma, and trying not to think about the fever and sore throat that initially brought me here. I have a very classy instrumental jazz playlist lilting in the background, which is honestly a chaotic choice for someone whose dinner is twelve Oreos in a parking lot.

But when I eventually get home, things will only get weirder. For some reason, I have mostly lost my appetite except for two food groups: chocolate and a very specific mushroom and truffle oil frozen pizza. I've also lost all interest in TV shows or movies—except for the Harry Potter series. (I hadn't even watched most of the series until December and infamously dislike the books, so I could not explain this new obsession to you if my life depended on it.)

Once I finish my weird pizza and weird movie binge, I will immediately go to bed and sleep for ten to twenty hours. Except my sleep will be hindered by a pregnancy pillow (I am absolutely not pregnant) because I have an undiagnosed heart condition and have to sleep on my back—with support from the pillow—to avoid crushing the heart monitor that is taped to my chest for the next two weeks.

Anyway, I know that every part of pandemic life feels like an episode of The Twilight Zone, and whatever episode I'm living through right now won't seem so unhinged in hindsight. But right now, hot dang, I'd really like just one single scrap of normalcy.

I guess that's why I bought the Oreos. 🙃

I don't know where to start, really. When I last wrote a blog post in October 2020, I was excited to share the small moments of joy, the weird stories that turn into inside jokes, the brief glimpses of normalcy that give us just enough hope to survive—even in the face of a brutal pandemic, climate change, political chaos, bigotry, hate, and the damn murder hornets.

But a month later, my mom got sick. Cancer.

She survived chemotherapy and underwent a completely successful bone marrow transplant, but she never made it out of the cancer center ICU. I spent the entirety of May 2021 driving to and from Cincinnati to spend as much time with her as I could while she fought an unknown issue that caused fluid to gather around her lungs. Her health seemed to be improving, and the nurses and doctors were optimistic. But then she had a few minor strokes, followed by a much more serious stroke, and my dad and brother and I were told to say goodbye.

My mom had been put on a ventilator and couldn't speak, but we didn't need words. I know that she has always loved me, and I will always love her. In the end, nothing else matters.

I haven't wanted to share this publicly because I still can't quite wrap my mind around my grief or put it into words. I was so blessed to have a mom who became my best friend, and it is because that relationship was so dear to me and so full of love that I will never recover from this loss.

What I can say is that I am so grateful for the friends who were with me every step of this journey. I cherish every message, every reaction to a "close friends" Instagram Story, every Panera gift card, and every long-distance hug. And to the friends who are just now catching up, you already know that I'm a blubbering ball of emotions at the best of times, so thank you for always showing up anyway.

I like sharing funny stories and sweet memories. That was true when I first started blogging in 2002, and it’s still true in the seemingly godforsaken year of 2020. I also like finding ways to learn from and grow from the uncomfortable stuff that happens between the funny stories and the sweet memories—and I’m saying this to myself because I need to hear it. I have wanted to write blog posts all year, but everything just felt too sad or too scary or too overwhelming.

But even as this country stands on the brink of arguably the most important presidential election in history—and the world is ravaged by a pandemic (and systemic racism and climate change and murder hornets)—we all still have our own lives going on and our own tales to tell. Somewhere out there, a copier repair man named Dave moved to a new state to get a fresh start. Is he happy with that decision now? Is he staying safe? Whatever became of the guy who abbreviated The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King to “lodder-roddick”? Has he been imprisoned yet? Is the man with carbonated hair the kind of guy to wear a face mask in a pandemic? Or is he going to threaten the virus to a fist fight?

Yesterday, I watched a TikTok video about a word, "sonder," coined in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. The definition given on the website is as follows:

sonder (noun): the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

Of course, I have my own stories to tell from 2020. I reconnected with some of my favorite people by visiting each other’s video game islands. I got weirdly obsessed with pink (yes, again) and bought a pink rug, pink keyboard, and a now-legendary pink sweatshirt. I started going to Panera every Monday and documenting it on Instagram, something that other people seem to be enjoying almost as much as I am.

And I have plenty of uncomfortable stuff to learn from, too: I live in a state (and a country) that hasn’t taken this pandemic seriously, and the stress pushed me into a mental breakdown. I’ve cut off more relationships than I’ve rekindled. My grandpa died.

But I also miss the extras sipping coffee (and repairing copiers) in the background. For a while there, I was ordering from Domino’s so often that one of the delivery drivers told me I should join his wife in a “lava cakes anonymous” group. The laundromat has a new employee who yelled at some teenage boys walking across her freshly mopped floor exactly as though they were Lucifer, the mischievous cat from Cinderella. My least favorite neighbor, Goose Girl, finally moved out and took her awful boyfriend, Boink Boi, with her.

This is a long-winded way of saying that I have a lot more to say, and that tiny realization fills me with much-needed hope and anticipation. In the meantime, I'm sending love to you and yours. Stay safe, friends.

FRIENDS & FOES

Best boyfriend: J, always
Best new crush (sorry, J): Wendy from Billions
Best relationship GIF: the WWE one; he knows

Best friend: Tyler, obvs
Best brother: Adam, the only family member who might also read this list
Best inside joke: Grandma's got a mint!

Best person to cuss at (with love) when anything tech-related goes wrong: Tim Apple
Best person to cuss at (with slightly less love) when my mail gets locked in the wrong mailbox or left on the wrong porch every damn week: WHO KNOWS, but you probably shouldn't be working for USPS, missy
Best person to hate for the rest of time: the lady at the leasing office who refused to fix my air conditioning unit in a sane way, leaving me and my stressed pet in a sweaty nightmare for the hottest two weeks of the summer

SOCIAL MEDIA

Best Twitter account actually used: @BigSkirtsEnergy
Best new Twitter bio: "Bury me under the GBBO tent."

Best videos on Instagram: hedgehogs with their heads stuck in toilet paper tubes; the hedgehogs love it almost as much as I do
Best photos on Instagram: hedgehogs in hats

Best blog moved from Movable Type to Ghost: THIS ONE

Best vlogs on YouTube: Zoe Sugg
Best travel content on YouTube: Currently Hannah
Best yet-to-be-posted videos on YouTube: mine

HOME & ABROAD

Best prickly pet: Gus, still
Best purple console table purchased: this one
Best candle burned: Chicago, by Homesick
Best new vehicle: Kia Sportage, mostly because it isn't "The Hamster Car"

Best new-to-me dining experience: real, actual ramen
Best “dang, I miss Chicago, but this will do for now” pizza: Mio's Pizzeria in Cincinnati, OH (at least one location makes the cut)
Best new-to-me imported candy: Maltesers

Best vacation: Dallas, TX, with J
Best mini road trip: Lexington, KY, with my mom
Best part about Lexington: a luxury apartment directly above an Anthropologie, my new dream home
Best parade attended: the Cincinnati Zoo penguin parade
Best worst geocache: the one with all of the spiders

ENTERTAINMENT

Best can't-wait-for-more-episodes television shows: Billions and Star Wars: The Mandalorian
Best thing to come to the United States on a very slight delay (and also the best show to watch on repeat literally every week): Great British Bake Off, and Henry was my favorite
Best show that also ended in a very controversial way: Game of Thrones (holy cow, was that finale actually in 2019?)
Best moment of Wrestlemania: BECKY

Best video game watched: Assassins Creed: Origins (Playstation)
Best video game played until my arm started cramping: Mario Kart Tour (iOS)

Best book read for self-improvement: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Best book read to expand and challenge my worldview: Educated
Best book read purely for entertainment: Good Omens

Best podcast with three dudes: My Brother, My Brother and Me
Best podcast with two ladies: This Might Get Weird

HEALTH & WELLNESS

Best encouraging book: The Road Back to You (I need to do an entire post about how I'm learning to embrace my fierce, aggressive, protective nature rather than hiding it for the sake of weak men)
Best encouraging Netflix show: Brené Brown: The Call to Courage
Best tools for bad mental health days: the You Feel Like Shit website and the Sanvello app (formerly called Pacifica and recommended last year, too)

Best life hack: digital receipts (and coupons) at CVS, y'all
Best tiny splurge: pick-up ordering for groceries

Best all-around fitness app: Peloton (thanks, J)
Best yoga app: Down Dog
Best sleep tracking app: Sleep Cycle
Best hydration tracking app: WaterMinder

Best self-care gift: a stationary bike
Best self-care purchase: vlogging camera, which is a weird but effective way to inspire myself to tidy up around the house, take care of myself, process some thoughts out loud, go on more adventures, and generally just set the bar a little higher for myself
Best self-care project accidentally abandoned: KonMari, oops
Best self-care project currently enjoying: this gosh dang blog post, y'all—may 2020 be just as award-worthy for all of us!

Best previous editions of Skirts Awards: 2018, 2014, 2013, 2011

My grandpa has severe dementia, so many of the things he says are repeated as part of a routine. (“We aren’t the first ones here!” is something he exclaims with genuine surprise every Sunday morning when we pull into the church parking lot.)

Today, he surprised me with a new one. I was waiting in the car to pick him and my grandma up for church. As my grandpa opened the door and sat down, he said, “I hope you’re as happy as I am.”

I know he wasn’t trying to stump me, but I’ve been thinking about it for hours. 1) I’m so glad he is happy, even as this disease slowly erases him from our lives. 2) What a kind, loving sentiment. I feel so blessed to have such wonderful grandparents.

Oh, and I am truly happy. ❤️

This story was originally posted as a thread on my private Twitter account, but I didn't want to lose it in the archives.

Welcome to Skirts with Pockets, a weekly (fine, weekly-ish) collection of the online articles, websites, and other links that I've loved and now want to share with you. Please excuse any stray candy wrappers that fall to the ground as I empty my virtual pockets.

► Bird-watching with the Ravenmaster

How do you even get a job like Ravenmaster for the Tower of London? I am a sucker for stories like this—interesting people doing interesting work and loving it.

► Wine and Candy Pairings

To be honest, I bookmarked this article last year at Halloween, and I am just that far behind on sharing links. But it's never the wrong time to do a little wine and candy research, so hop to it.

► The Sugar Conspiracy

This is one of those "long reads," so you have time to do the wine and candy research before you get to the end of it. It's a fascinating history of nutrition guidelines and food science, full of a surprising amount of drama.

► Looking at Frames at the Louvre

"Today, the Louvre possesses one of the world’s largest collections of frames, with around six thousand in use and another three thousand in storage." Why is this so delightful? I miss museums.

► LEGOLAND Japan Breaks Record With Cherry Blossom Tree . . .

You could give me 880,000 LEGO bricks and stop time itself, and still, I would never make anything this beautiful. Truly stunning.

One Sunday in May, I had a date with myself to see Captain Marvel at the local theater after I wrapped up playing piano for my church. Because a girl can’t live on expensive movie theater candy alone, I stopped by one of the many fast food restaurants in town for a chicken salad on the way (okay fine, it was a Zalad from Zaxby’s, and their entire marketing team deserves to go to jail for making me say that).

I decided to enjoy my meal in the restaurant, alone with my Kindle—a small thrill for a true introvert. Occasionally, I stole glances at other tables and noticed several disinterested elderly couples, exasperated young families, and a cluster of well-behaved high school boys who nevertheless could only be described as “intimidatingly energetic.”

And then, it happened. I turned my concentration toward my Zalad (directly to jail, do not pass “Go,” do not collect $200) and let my guard down for a fraction of a second. A young lady gently interrupted my foraging.

“I’m sorry to bother you.” Panic, panic, panic. “Do you happen to have a pair of tweezers I can borrow?”

In that moment, I had two thoughts: 1) What about me makes me seem like someone who would carry tweezers? Is it my great brows? I hope it’s my great brows. 2) Oh no, I have recently started carrying a very small purse and definitely don’t have that Mary Poppins over-preparedness thing going anymore.

Lo and behold, my pocket knife has a small set of tweezers embedded in the side, which I offered to the woman hovering next to my table. She exclaimed her gratitude and then asked, “Oh, do you mind if I use them to remove a tick from my ear?”

She tilted her head to show me, and yes, there was in fact a tick on her upper ear. (I most certainly made a face of disgust, the same one I’m making now as I think about this three months later.)

But because I was caught unaware, I said—in a horribly merry and singsongy voice—“Of course! Do what you need to!”

Ten seconds later, she was in the bathroom, and I was at my table, finally coming out of my stupor. It was then that I realized: there will never be a non-gross reason for someone to ask to borrow tweezers, y’all. Never. They are gross tools for gross projects, and I don’t know why they aren’t sold as a combo pack with a bottle of disinfectant.

I had a second realization, which was that this woman was going to come back at some point with my tweezers, and I was going to have to graciously accept them with my hands, the same hands that would have to carry on using a sad plastic fork to bring food to my mouth. The same hands that would have to come with me to the movie theater. The same hands I would have to live with for the rest of my life.

I had just convinced myself that maybe the outside of a tick wasn’t that gross (self-preservation, y’all) and had resumed wondering “why me?” (the young mother across the aisle had a fully-stocked diaper bag) when the woman returned. She wore a smile of relief. “Thank you so much! I washed them thoroughly.” I forced my face not to cringe as I held out my hand to accept the returned tweezers. “Oh, you’re welcome! Were you able to get the tick?” She showed me her ear—it was clean—and then walked away, as casually as a bank robber after a routine heist.

Meanwhile, I immediately threw the tweezers into a napkin, finished eating my Zalad (which seemed to be openly laughing at me by this point), walked outside with the napkin-wrapped tweezers, shoved them in the center console of my car, drove to the theater, washed my hands for an hour in their tick-free restroom, and enjoyed one of the best Marvel movies to ever have been made.

The moral of the story, ladies and gentlemen, is that you should never talk to strangers. And that I owe Brie Larson a drink for saving me a trip to therapy.

What. A. Gosh. Dang. Delight.

The library candle was a fun surprise (and does indeed smell just like well-loved books and aged leather), but the Chicago candle has been soothing my soul. It smells like chocolate and baseball and jazz—with a hint of political corruption for authenticity. *chef kiss*

I don’t know when I’ll next be reunited with my favorite place (and my favorite pizza), but I like feeling like I have a little piece of it here with me now. Thank you, Tyler!

Welcome to the newly relaunched Rachelskirts.com!

With any luck, you won't notice very many differences straightaway, but behind the scenes, everything has been rebuilt. The content is now being published by Ghost, and the comments are embedded from a Discourse forum (both hosted on DigitalOcean droplets).

This marks the end of an era, a twelve-year love affair between me—a very loyal, very stubborn lady—and Movable Type. I started this site with Movable Type in 2006, and it will always have a special place in my heart. It was reliable, sensibly structured, and charmingly archaic. I installed the final free version in 2010 (and was very excited about that), and I would've carried on using MT 5 through the end of my days if not for an automatic update to my web server last year, which rendered the outdated code obsolete and unusable. 😭

Since I could neither justify nor afford the price tag of the current versions of Movable Type, I grieved and whined bitterly for months and then started looking into Ghost between sniffles. And here we are!

Many thanks to Tyler and my boyfriend, both of whom are so generous with their advice, expertise, and encouragement. I also want to thank myself for months of hard work. Thanks to my own grit and determination, the theme has been recreated, a few typos have been eliminated, and a handful of new errors have been hidden. I have manually moved over every damn entry, one at a time, and I am now working to move over the original comments.

It is so wonderful to have an online home again—a safe space for the ups, the downs, the laughs, the cries, the important memories, and the very mundane updates about how much laundry I have left to do. Thank you for joining me in this next chapter!

But there is almost always one story in each letter that makes me laugh out loud, and I wanted to share the one from January 1, 2019. (Backstory: my parents recently moved to Cincinnati to downsize but had to build a new home in a new neighborhood. They've been in a construction zone ever since.)

We're down to two houses under construction on our street. Someone moved in two doors down over the weekend. Caught me by surprise because they don't have a driveway or sidewalk yet. I didn't think you could get an occupancy permit without those?

To welcome them to the neighborhood introvert-style, we baked some chocolate chip cookies and ate them while we watched them move in from our window.

I love my family so damn much. Never change, y'all.

Social

Best nickname given: Ice King
Best nickname received: Fire Queen
Best nickname stolen: Knife Pervert
Best Twitter name squatted: @BigSkirtsEnergy

Best boyfriend: Ice King
Best new crush (sorry, boyfriend): Marty Scurll
Best friend forever: Tyler, aka @thursdayschild

Best new Twitter bio: "I'm into smart and beautiful chicks fucking everyone over."
Best inside joke: "Sip."
Best imaginary harem invented with Tyler: The Great French Bless-up

Home & Abroad

Best pet adopted: Gus the Explorer, a very cute and very aloof hedgehog
Best furniture inherited: a couch, finally; I sat on wicker chairs for two full years
Best plant not killed: a bird's nest fern ordered online from The Sill

Best meal cooked after a month with Blue Apron: this tilapia recipe, omg
Best food not found in Tennessee: bagels
Best pizza shipped across the country: Giordano's
Best new-to-me root beer: Virgil's

Best whiskey bar for @whiskeyskirts: The Stave Bar
Best beer not consumed: Clown Shoes
Best winery to frequent with my grandmother: Stonehaus Winery

Best event attended, #sincerely: NJPW Fighting Spirit Unleashed
Best geocache found: definitely not the one that required walking through small ponds in a forest until my socks and shoes were destroyed forever, Dad
Best unhappy travel companion: Gus, who does not like road trips one bit

Entertainment

Best new television show: The Good Place
Best television show to watch on repeat literally every week for the entirety of 2018: Great British Baking Show
Best television show for taking nine seasons to give me the romantic relationship I wanted all along, oh my gosh, just kiss already: Frasier

Best album for really letting loose in the car: A Pentatonix Christmas, which was on repeat for at least two full road trips
Best soundtrack to encourage speeding: Baby Driver: Music from the Motion Picture
Best Pentatonix song covered by my church (with a professional beatboxer and everything!): "O Come, All Ye Faithful"

Best movie sequel watched out of order, oops: Once Upon a Deadpool
Best oh-so-pretty movie that was also oh-so-good: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Best holiday movie watched with family: The Christmas Chronicles

Best video game watched: Assassins Creed: Origins
Best mobile game completed in one sitting: Donut County
Best mobile game full of garden gnomes: Sims Mobile

Best book read for self-improvement: The Five Love Languages
Best book read to expand and challenge my worldview: The Hate U Give
Best book read purely for entertainment: Foundation

Best podcast that I will actually stay caught up on: My Brother, My Brother and Me
Best podcast that I am very behind on but still love: Roderick on the Line
Best podcast episode that I immediately wanted to listen to a second time: Kristen Bell's interview on Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend

Miscellaneous

Best app: Pacifica, a mental health app which I downloaded at the recommendation of my boyfriend; I love it so much that I spent real money to unlock additional features for a year

Best smart home upgrade purchased for a hedgehog: Philips Hue bulbs, one of which is set on a schedule to simulate summer sunrise and sunset in the guest room (to help my nocturnal hedgehog maintain a steady schedule even in the dark winter months)

Best day of the whole damn year: November 16, when a new Panera opened in Tennessee (only thirty minutes away from my house; prior to that, the closest one was two hours away)

Best previous editions of Skirts Awards: 2014, 2013, 2011

In Tennessee, meanwhile, the postcards I've received this month all start off listing qualities like "Sunday school teacher" and "upstanding citizen" and "family man."

The last one hit me like a ton of bricks earlier this week, as I realized none of the women running for office listed "family woman." In fact, I've never in my life heard the phrase "family woman"—presumably because it's considered redundant. No one applauds a woman for spending time with her children; instead, they belittle her if she dares to pursue goals outside of being a caretaker and homemaker.

BUT MEN.

They get to award themselves a TITLE and probably a TROPHY if they can manage to glance at their children after a hard day's work of embezzling, and I'm here to report that this is still STUPID.

• Audiobooks are not the same as traditional books. If you love audiobooks, rock on. I have no beef with you or your audiobooks. But to say that the two things are interchangeable is a lie. I pick up so many new words by seeing them spelled out in written text, and (here is the heart of the issue) half of the fun of reading a good book for me is seeing and appreciating the punctuation. I would miss all of that with audiobooks, so as long as I have my eyesight, I will be banning all audiobooks from my library.
• Surviving a bitter winter will make you a better person. I have a loosely developed theory that cities like San Francisco and Portland are filthy because the weather is too moderate. In Chicago, you cannot leave your mounds of dirty man-child laundry all over the damn street because Winter Is Coming™. You cannot live under a bridge forever and call it "art" or "the next start-up" because Winter Is Coming™. You have to sort your shit out at least by September every year if you are going to survive, and the result is a community of fierce—albeit slightly insane—people who have a much firmer grasp on reality (and who get to live in a clean city).
• Self-driving cars should be focused exclusively on elderly and special needs people first. To think that able-bodied individuals will cede control to a robot without question is naïve. But if you offered my blind but independent grandmother a way to get out of the house again, she would bake you cinnamon rolls every day for the rest of your life. She's 91 years old but stubborn enough to outlive you to fulfill that promise. And the same could be said for the millions of people who are perfectly capable of navigating their everyday lives but who cannot drive due to (short-term or long-term) physical, mental, or emotional limitations.
• Tickling is a form of torture. I had many recurring nightmares as a child, and one of them was a dream about the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz, who would sneak into my bedroom and tickle me with very long fingernails until I couldn't breathe. I would wake up in a panic—sweating and screaming—which should tell you how much I hated it. (My mom eventually recommended pouring water on the witch to melt her the next time I had the dream. I did, and I never had the dream again. Thanks, Mom.)

• People who do gross shit on airplanes should be put in sky jail. A year ago, I was on a flight back from San Francisco to Chicago. There were six seats in a row, three on either side of the aisle. The two seats closest to me were empty, but after the flight took off, a woman from across the aisle moved over and settled in. By "settled in," I mean that she took off her shoes and her socks and put her bare feet on the seat between us and then proceeded to scratch her feet and legs for two full hours—dead skin flying in every direction—while I gave her every glare and horrified, angry, murderous nonverbal signal in the book. Every single part of that is an actual crime, and I want her to pay for her crimes.

Welcome to Skirts with Pockets, a weekly collection of the online articles, websites, and other links that I've loved and now want to share with you. Please excuse any stray candy wrappers that fall to the ground as I empty my virtual pockets.

► Daring Fireball | The Deck, Adieu

Some of my favorite sites of the last decade were supported by ads from The Deck, and I always thought well of both sides of that partnership—the authors for choosing a classy ad platform and the ad platform for being classy. It was nice to hear that so many authors valued that partnership, as well.

► See One, Do One, Teach One

I subscribe to Paul's email newsletter (from two different email accounts! and I don't even mind!), and while he always has interesting stuff to share, this particular piece really stuck with me. I get stuck in the "see one" phase a lot and am too scared to "do one" and definitely not brave enough to "teach one." (In fact, I've been trying to come up with an online class or ebook I could offer to make some extra money, and I keep telling myself I don't have anything to teach.) As always, I am grateful for the reminder to do more—more succeeding and more failing.

► John Coltrane Draws a Picture Illustrating the Mathematics of Music

I found joy in doing ratios with my dad long before I learned to appreciate piano lessons, but I've always loved math and music fiercely—and the fact that the two are linked.

► How Poverty Changes the Brain

There is no way I can relate to someone who grew up in poverty, but I do relate to getting overwhelmed by stress and anxiety to the point where I cannot rationally break down big problems into manageable steps. Working on it. But I'm fascinated (and delighted) to learn that people are studying this phenomenon and hoping to help break the cycle of generational poverty using science.

► Ethan Marcotte | Device Intervention

Until I moved to rural Tennessee, I had never experienced really bad Internet connections on a long-term basis. Do you know how fun it is to watch every frame of every animated GIF load on Twitter or Tumblr? It is zero fun. Think of me and my fellow cave trolls next time you build a site entirely out of video backgrounds and gigantic parallax images and bloated WordPress plug-ins.

► Vintage Illustrations for Tolkien's The Hobbit from Around the World

This. This. This. More of this.

Anyway, it does not surprise me at all that I am behind on my goal, but I am pleasantly surprised to have have finished ten books before May. In celebration, I decided to do a quick review of what I've read so far.

(I've included Amazon affiliate links to each review because I'm saving up for a couch the dumbest way possible. However, none of the reviews are sponsored in any way. I got these books from the library because I wanted to read them.)

Rachelskirts is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

I could write five chapters on Easter Sunday and the hilarity that ensued from beginning to end, but the best part was going out to get ice cream for dinner with my grandparents and my grandpa getting out of the car in his slippers (to the surprise and horror of my grandma) and then somehow making it all the way back home before realizing he'd lost a slipper along the way like gosh dang Cinderella.

I'm living in a sitcom over here, y'all, and I absolutely love it.

P.S. Happy ninetieth birthday, Grandma!

Welcome to Skirts with Pockets, a weekly collection of the online articles, websites, and other links that I've loved and now want to share with you. Please excuse any stray candy wrappers that fall to the ground as I empty my virtual pockets.

► Ugmonk | How I Designed a Super Productive Desk Setup

Every time I see photos of Jeff's desk in the wild, I smile and think of what a nice person he seems like and what great products he creates and how much I want this ampersand sweatshirt. (If my Internet fairy godmother is reading: cranberry, size medium, please and thank you.) Looking at my own desk, I can see how I've been inspired by his set-up in a variety of ways, so it was a treat getting to read about some of his favorite details.

► Historic GIFs wot I did

I would love to visit a museum that displayed these GIFs and nothing else.

► What If We Said Chores And Allowance Should Have No Bearing On One Another?

I was raised by nerds, so I had a very complicated allowance system as a child. (It involved a daily chore chart and an incremental payment system that reset weekly and after any day I failed to complete all my tasks.) It was a brutal set-up that encouraged my brother and I to help out only when we had external motivation, like wanting to save up for a toy or a bicycle or a computer. Once the allowance got cut off in high school, helping out around the house stopped, as well. I feel miserable about that in retrospect and take responsibility as an adult to change my behavior going forward, but I was thrilled to read this article. Society as a whole will benefit if more of us have the opportunity to grow up with healthy attitudes about money, plenty of practice managing our finances, and a willingness to help out in our families and our communities.

► Famous Authors' Handwritten Outlines for Great Works of Literature

My favorite is the outline for Catch-22, but all of these are super interesting. (And all of them make me even more certain that I have no interest in writing a book.)

► A Eulogy for Crayola's Dandelion

The illustrations in this post are adorable, and I will be running out to the store to buy a huge box of Crayola crayons immediately.

A few weeks ago, I took a four-day class to learn more about the software that Tennessee state employees use for managing contracts, tracking items to be paid, paying estimates to contractors, etc. The software is complicated enough to warrant a 300-page manual and a 400-page training guide, and even those don't go into every detail or exception. The whole thing is bananas, and I love it.

During the class, the instructor paused to ask some review questions. One of the questions just wasn't clicking for anyone, and the instructor was gracious in saying that she should rework the question to remove the ambiguity. She then shared advice she had been given in a technical writing class:

"Don't write something so people will understand it. Write so they won't misunderstand it."

I wish I could give attribution for that quote because I have shared it at least a dozen times already. It resonates with me as a person who spent a decade creating brochures, posters, websites, and the like, but it's also something I try to achieve in all my writing—whether that's a tweet or a blog post or an email or even a Post-It note with a reminder to self that I won't look at for three weeks. (It's definitely good advice for anyone who does online customer support. Cough, Squarespace, cough, don't get me started, cough.)

Anyway, I really like the idea, and I look forward to carrying it with me.

Welcome to Skirts with Pockets, a weekly collection of the online articles, websites, and other links that I've loved and now want to share with you. Please excuse any stray candy wrappers that fall to the ground as I empty my virtual pockets.

► 99u | A Brief History of the Pencil, as told by a Pencil Aficionado

This made me miss back-to-school shopping. And working at an office supply store. And having discretionary income for buying pencils.

► Ethics Can't Be a Side Hustle

One of my concerns when I applied for a job as a state employee was that I'd encounter corruption at every level. But I forgot that I live in a combination sitcom-fairytale, so all of my coworkers are kind and considerate people who honestly want to help those we serve. So I don't have to make a tough choice about ethics in my day job, but I think it's important to think about it anyway—to make up my mind about who I want to be before a tough situation determines that for me.

► Cycle science: Genetic evidence for PMDD

I love that scientists are finally saying, "Umm, hey, we maybe should learn how lady bodies work now." Bonus: the people behind this article make a really great app called Clue for tracking periods and other menstrual cycle information.

► Carrie Fisher's most feminist act was her frankness about being bipolar in a world where women are called "crazy"

*applause*

► Total recall: the people who never forget

I have a very good memory, and the people who know me well tend to find this very annoying. So dear friends and family: I could be much worse.

► Tracing (and Erasing) New York's Lines of Desire

"Desire lines" is my new favorite phrase.

I made it through the first half of The Girl on the Train book on Wednesday. I started reading during my lunch break and was immediately miffed that one of the main characters is named Rachel and makes up stories about the strangers she sees every day. I do this regularly. I've even been known to make up stories about the squirrels in my backyard. And since I already share too many mannerisms (and a favorite tea) with Ana from the Fifty Shades series, I complained to my boyfriend that my life is being stolen without my permission.

"I can't help it if you are a living, breathing, fictional character stereotype," he said.

I replied with a very melodramatic "Why me?" image from Bitmoji. "Maybe I should write about the people I spy on from work."

"The girl at the desk."

So here we are.

When I first moved to rural Tennessee, I knew that finding a job would be hard. The town I live in is predominately a retirement community, most available positions are part-time and pay minimum wage with no benefits, and oh right, I have PTSD after nearly a decade of abuse at my last job. It took me months to get a full-time position, and by the time I was standing outside the office, waiting to start my first day, I was in full panic mode. What if I end up in another abusive work environment? What if the work is grueling and my boss is relentless? What if my coworkers hate me?

Turns out™: it's a great job! I work for great people, from my boss to his boss and everyone on up the chain. They're the kind of people who offer to drive you home if you need to leave work early for illness. They buy you a breakfast sandwich if you are eating pathetic crackers at your desk. They patiently explain to you a hundred times how to calculate this, file that, and pronounce "tornado" like a native. (In the South, it's "ter-NAY-duh.")

In fact, the only complaint I've ever had is that the job is not particularly demanding. There are two administrative assistants in the office, and we were both hired on the same day. The previous assistant quit because there often wasn't enough work for one person. So whole days go by where Christy and I sit up front and do nothing but gossip, knit scarves, and make quilts. Sometimes, we even complain about the pain in our hips or lower back. We're two rocking chairs away from getting gobbled up by the retirement community we live in.

My mother used to tell me that I had an overactive imagination; Tom said that, too. I can't help it.

When we run out of things to share from our personal lives, we make up stories about the people who walk in front of the office's large front window.

Methy Mary was the first one to get a nickname. She would walk by early in the morning; we could hear her before we saw her. She'd take a few steps and pause, shouting into the sky and waving her hands, before walking a bit farther. We were sure she was on drugs. Now, she has a scooter, so she flies by on the sidewalk in silence. Sometimes, we can only recognize her by her signature red backpack.

One of my all-time favorites is Tall Sock Tom, who walks his two tiny dogs every morning and every afternoon. When the weather is nice enough, he wears a short-sleeved jersey with basketball shorts, sandals, and mismatched socks—one tall, one short. The tall sock is always on the same leg. We have seen him without socks, so we cannot figure out the value or meaning of the lone tall sock, but the mystery never gets old.

The minor characters are just as wonderful:

• Pelvis Pete: struts across the parking lot with his pelvis thrust forward in the most comedic and exaggerated way
• Silver Fox: has the most beautiful, long white hair
• Ella Ella: walks by in the afternoon with a baby strapped to her back and an umbrella for a parasol
• Napkin Nate: works for the apartment complex and (as far as we can tell) gets paid exclusively for wandering around the parking lot, picking up the same three napkins every morning
• Coked-up Carl: a one-time visitor who was acting very suspiciously at a very early hour and was kind enough to get arrested in full view of our office
• Doped-up Doug: spent twenty minutes violently shooting imaginary arrows into the pavement with an imaginary bow before the police were called; to our great disappointment, he was not arrested

Our most beloved character, though, is Discman Dave. I have been known to audibly gasp when I see his silhouette out of the corner of my eye. This young man is a music enthusiast—in a way that seems completely authentic and pure, not as some kind of affectation. He carries an honest-to-goodness Discman with him wherever he goes, and he sings and dances with reckless abandon. It is unbelievably endearing. Christy and I love debating what he might be listening to that would inspire such passion: Beyoncé? Evanescence? Linkin Park? Miley Cyrus? Whatever it is, I hope it never ends because his unbridled enthusiasm and fierce dance moves bring us so much joy.

Anyway, in the two days that I've been putting together this blog post, I also managed to finish the book. I no longer relate to the Rachel on the train very much, but I do like our imaginary friends and their imaginary stories. Don't you dare tell me why that one sock is so tall.

"Tell me what to write," I said.

"About sunshine and walks," he said.

So here we are.

I recently celebrated the first anniversary of moving to Tennessee and living on my own. This time last year, I was just starting to find a good rhythm with my grandparents—a happy balance of enjoying their company and helping them in small, everyday ways. I was in a blind panic to find a job before my parents' generosity expired. I was already loving the warmer weather, the extra sunshine in the longer days, and the freedom of spending most those days however I wanted to.

As the days and months passed by, I developed my own routines. Routines became habits, habits became myth, and for two and a half thousand years, the Ring passed out of all knowledge. (I promise I'll update the @LOTR account before I hit my two-year anniversary in Tennessee.)

But the traditions I've developed here really have become some of my favorite memories.

I love Saturdays with my grandparents. We share breakfast and do crossword puzzles while my laundry spins in the background. I drive my grandparents to the grocery store and treat myself to a drink at Starbucks while I wait. Back at their house, I fill pill boxes with medicines and vitamins for the week before driving home with my clean laundry, happy tummy, and joyful heart.

The rest of the week is no less magical. I spend Friday nights on the phone with my mom, continuing our decade-long tradition of binge-eating, watching Gilmore Girls, and decompressing before the weekend. Every Sunday morning, my grandpa (whose dementia was compounded by a stroke last year) compliments me on how I find a good parking spot in the so-early-it's-still-empty church parking lot. Twice a week, I sit in a waiting room and read a book for twenty minutes while I wait to see if my body will have a wild reaction to my allergy shots. On weekdays, I wake up at the crack of dawn to make sure the posts for Stories from the Trenches are ready to publish before I set about making coffee and breakfast, picking out an outfit, and getting ready (at my new vanity!) for my day job. At night, I clean or dance or do yoga or read books or pester my boyfriend for blog post ideas.

And on very warm and very sunny days like today, I set out for a walk in the park behind my house. There is a beautifully maintained walking trail throughout the park, and my favorite bit winds through the woods and alongside a river. (Bonus features: tiny waterfall, tiny bridge, Tolkien-esque ruins of a stone dam.) It's the perfect excuse to close those dang activity rings on my Apple Watch and work my way through a major backlog of podcast episodes. It's also the perfect time to think about how grateful I am to have routines that bring me closer to people I love, that allow me to do things I love, and that leave me with filled with joy.

Every August, I sign up to participate in VEDA (Vlog Every Day in August) as part of a wonderful community of YouTube friends. I never find the time to finish more than ten videos, but I sign up and do my best every year because I enjoy the opportunity to share in a crazy, creative adventure with people I adore. Plus, I get to hoodwink my brother into helping me catch up on any topics/prompts I missed from the previous year, and those catch-up videos are the silliest and the best.

But by the third day, I realized that I just couldn't participate in VEDA on any level this year. My days are filled with work, my afternoons are reserved for my grandparents, and the few hours I have to myself in the evening are increasingly valuable to me. I'd like to think that I could live without Netflix, books, and naps for a month, but it turns out that I need those things in my life to keep me from losing my cool when seven different people try to drive the wrong way through the grocery store parking lot at the same time. (I'm pretty sure only six other people live in my town, so I'm not even sure how this is possible. BUT IT HAPPENS EVERY WEEK.)

Still, it took me a day or two of being consumed by shame before I was finally able to send a message to the group organizers and let them know that I'd be withdrawing from the project. And that is insane. I should not feel ashamed that my life doesn't have room for everything all at once.

I knew that was crazy, and I knew I had a book that would help me navigate all the gross feelings I was struggling with. So I picked up Brené Brown's Daring Greatly and started angry-reading. FIX MY PROBLEMS FASTER, BOOK.

Turns out™: setting boundaries is an important part of being a loving, vulnerable, wholehearted person who is "shame-resilient," as Brené puts it.

We have to believe we are enough in order to say, "Enough!" For women, setting boundaries is difficult because the shame gremlins are quick to weigh in: "Careful saying no. You'll really disappoint these folks. Don't let them down. Be a good girl. Make everyone happy." For men, the gremlins whisper, "Man up. A real guy could take this on and then some. Is the little mama's boy just too tired?"

So I'm working on my boundaries. Again. And while the yarnheads in the grocery store parking lot might not ever appreciate it, I sure do.

I live in rural Tennessee now. The scenery is beautiful, the people are almost too friendly, the pizza is terrible, and I'm pretty sure I made this exact same observation on Twitter shortly after moving here. Oops, yes.

Being on my own (and in a new state) has been wonderful and scary. I have been given one of those rare opportunities to reinvent myself, but because I started out liking who I am, I'm really just finding the courage to test my limits. Sometimes, I push myself to break bad habits (eating too much sugar, being five minutes late to everything) or to start new ones (exercising, journaling). I say yes to things I never would have tried before—hiking a half-marathon, playing piano with a renowned oboist, asking for help when I need it. I also hide in my house and eat Lucky Charms in bed when I lose the battle with anxiety and fear.

I have found a lot of inner strength this year, but I have also re-discovered the joy of community and the support that comes with that. When things are going well, I have people in my life to celebrate with me. When times are tough, I have people in my life to prop me up with love and encouragement, gifts, hugs, and so much homemade food. I would not have survived this year without my parents, brother, grandparents, extended family, boyfriend, friends, coworkers, and even my new church.

There are still many days and many nights when this adventure seems like too much for me, and I have too much pride to ask for help or to admit defeat. But I am learning. I practice self-compassion and vulnerability (and read about it often) because I like taking off the mask of perfection. I like that my life is a hot mess this year. I like that I have a small army of people who are always on my side. I like that there is room for failure and room to improve.

"It's a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy." —Lucille Ball

Over the weekend, I leased a new car—a white Kia Soul—with help from my wonderful parents. We have always named our cars in this family, but I was struggling to come up with a clever name for this one, in part because a white soul just seems doomed to be racist or privileged or something awful. (Hashtag all cars matter.)

Yesterday, though, my dad made a joke about lining up insurance for "Snow White," and I'll be damned if it isn't the perfect name.

I've often been called Snow White because I have extremely pale skin. Snow White was the first Disney movie I ever watched, shown at the local library when I was very young. And as the story goes, Snow White had to flee one awful situation only to find herself betrayed a second time, which is tragically close to my own story right now.

I'm driving the car to Tennessee on Friday, escaping to live in a small home in the woods. Maybe I'll decorate my patio with seven garden gnomes for extra protection as I wait for my prince to find me.

It has been a long time since I felt like I had something to say, much less something worth saying. This post is really a preamble, to help me find my voice again. It is also the story of why I lost my voice in the first place.

PROFESSIONAL LIFE

I quit my job in October.

Four months later, I still have regular nightmares about being called back in to the office to pick up where I left off.

Every Tuesday afternoon, I meet with a counselor who specializes in PTSD and anxiety. She describes my former work environment as "toxic" and "dysfunctional" and my former bosses as a mix of "wildly inappropriate" and "abusive." We are using a combination of talk therapy and EMDR to help with processing and healing.

I have been without employment this entire time and never made enough money in my eight years as a church employee to build a savings account, but I made my last paycheck stretch through the beginning of February (through a miracle of biblical proporations and also with a little help from YNAB). My tax refund should carry me for another few months.

In the meantime, I have launched a freelance proofreading and copy editing business, Second Breakfast Media. It's the kind of thing that people hate to hear at a party because it's about as sexy as accounting: "Hello, I rearrange semicolons for a living." But fuck the haters. I am in a really weird place emotionally, and the rules and structure of language and grammar are just debatable enough to be interesting but just solid enough to be comforting.

FAMILY LIFE

Before I resigned, someone at the church accused me of neglecting my parents because I voiced a desire to move to Tennessee to look after my grandparents.

My grandmother is going blind from macular degeneration, and my grandfather is losing his sanity to vascular dementia. Neither one of them should be driving, but they would both benefit from staying in the home they've owned for decades and being in a familiar environment with friends nearby. If I get a remote job with flexible hours, I can move nearby and get the independence I desperately need while also being available as a driver for my grandparents.

Meanwhile, my mother has lost a significant amount of her vision because a simple cataract surgery aggravated a previously dormant auto-immune disease in her eyes. The diagnosis was relatively quick, but her body resisted the initial forms of treatment. She has been on improbably high doses of steroids and other drugs for months (all with their own intolerable side effects). She is only just now beginning to see improvement, although one eye still needs cataract surgery and gets worse with each new delay in calming the auto-immune disease.

Not to be left out, my dad was diagnosed with high blood pressure after a blood vessel burst behind his eye, severely limiting half of his vision. He is still in recovery and often wears a patch over one eye. He and my mother still feel comfortable driving one another to their respective doctor appointments, but in rain or snow, my brother and I will often volunteer to help.

The tl;dr version is that we have made a lot of "three blind mice" jokes over the past year. Also, value your vision. Also also, you are an asshole if you guilt-trip a person for wanting to take care of her grandparents.

PERSONAL LIFE

I think I am on the verge of being happier than I've ever been before.

But not yet.

I go to bed afraid, and I wake up angry. I don't like my dreams reminding me of how miserable I was for much of the last decade, but I do like that it makes me mad—I'm already so much stronger now than I was just a few weeks ago. As I learn more about how my self-worth and my confidence were devestated by years of cyclical abuse, I also look back fondly on the years before that when I flaunted my self-love enthusiastically. I used to love being me, all the time. Now, I will fight to get that back, and I will fight to protect it.

Little things trigger me throughout the day, but I also have little weapons of my own for self-defense. Meditation. Yoga. Self-compassion. I don't have to be trapped by my anxiety anymore, and I don't have to give in to panic.

To be safe, I avoid new media unless it has been pre-screened and approved by a trusted friend. My Netflix queue has been a nauseating smorgasbord of food-related shows, most of them about cupcakes. I listen to podcasts about productivity and read books about self-compassion. I thought it would be safe to read the first Game of Thrones book (since I'd watched five seasons of the show), but I was rewarded for that decision with a week's worth of gory, bloody nightmares, all featuring characters—and dragons—from the series.

CONCLUSION

The friends who pre-screen my media are just a few of the wonderful people who are helping me move forward. Together with my family and my loving boyfriend, they talked me through the last two weeks of my job, spoke words of encouragement to me as the bad dreams set in, supported me through a month of rest, gently nudged me when I hesitated to launch Second Breakfast, hugged me when I decided to seek professional counseling, and have stood firm through countless tidal waves of emotion. I am overwhelmed with gratitude.

This is not where I thought I'd be as a 30-year-old, but gosh damn, there is more potential in my future than I could have imagined. I care a lot less about what I do "for a living" and a lot more about the actual living. For me and for now, that means reuniting with who I am, with what I'm meant to bring to this world, and with the friends and family I get to enjoy life with.

There are exactly eighty-seven minutes left until midnight, the final eighty-seven minutes of my twenties. I hauled out my laptop to write about this from my bed, and I had to move a phone, a tablet, a Kindle, and a plate full of taco wrappers out of the way to make that happen. If that isn't the perfect bookend to whatever I was doing ten years ago, I don't know what is. In fact, the taco wrappers are such a beautifully pathetic addition to this story that I might frame one of them and belly-laugh about it until I'm forty.

I very earnestly thought I was going to be one of those people who could coast through this transition without getting sentimental or nostalgic, even though I'm one of those people who gets sentimental and nostalgic about taco wrappers. Surprisingly, I believed this lie all the way up until this evening, when my boyfriend texted, "You're running out of 20s, Bae." I stared at my phone and couldn't ignore it anymore. This is the end of a thing. I hate endings. I've been trying to work myself up into a proper panic ever since.

So here I sit, listening to Jamie Cullum's Twentysomething album on repeat and laughing at the mess on my bed and trying to figure out why this feels like a goodbye. I'm delighted with the person I became in my twenties, and I'm afraid that I will abandon some part of that as my responsibilities change and my world evolves. As with many fears, it completely ignores history (I have always been true to myself and have always loved myself for it), and it presumes that Future Me is somehow less capable than Past Me at adapting to new situations, which doesn't even make sense. I mean, just last month, Past Me bought a cowgirl hat at the county fair, which will obviously be a great asset for Future Me.

Maybe this won't be so bad. Maybe I can handle this after all.

Twenty minutes are left on the clock, and I have managed to talk myself out of a panic attack. I always legitimately look forward to birthday celebrations anyway, but I really want to be able to enjoy this particular birthday without fear or anxiety, gosh dang it. This is the start of a thing, and I really like starting things. And in the spirit of starting things off on the right foot, I will now clean up the remnants of Taco Thursday and settle in for a good night's sleep on a clean bed.

Farewell, twenties.

A pounding headache has been plaguing me for days, and I have decided to call it the "August hangover." (Awful things are less awful if they have adorable names.) I think I spent the entire last month checking things off a never-ending to-do list at work until my eyelid started twitching, and then I would go home, sleep immediately, and try again the next day.

But this morning, the calendar flipped to September (birthday month!), which means I survived the brunt of the insanity and can start thinking and functioning like a whole, healthy human being again. One of my big accomplishments this summer was that, in July, I met every fitness goal every day on my Apple Watch—move, stand, and exercise. I established a really great routine for getting away from my desk regularly during the work day, making time for a walk at sunset, and then calming down with yoga* before bed. When August hit, all that flew out the window, and while I don't want to beat myself for going into survival mode, I'm excited to get back into a routine.

The real reason I'm telling you any part of this story is to talk about the to-do app that I use to stay on top of this routine, and I don't even care about the app itself, just about the in-app cat. Yes, cat. Kitty cat. In the app. It's one of the perks I got for checking things off my list, and his life is tied to my ability to continue checking things off my list. I also get to feed him once a day and pet him and name him. (Well, the app was mad at me when I got my cat, so it named my cat Sludge as punishment. Turns out: I am very okay with having a cat named Sludge, so joke's on you, grumpy app.)

So basically, the best thing in my life right now is Sludge the cat, who lives on my phone.

The second-best thing in my life is Bennett the bee, who bumps into the sliding glass door while I'm eating breakfast.

September is already so great.

*A few people have asked what app I use, so here is the short version: I paid for the upgrade to the Fitstar Yoga app on my iPad ($40 annually or $8 monthly), so I can enjoy personalized yoga routine videos every day. As a newcomer to the world of yoga, I find the app really helpful and intuitive—good instructions, easy to use, etc.. I also really love that you can give feedback on every pose either during the session or at the end to indicate "too easy," "just right," or "too hard." Sometimes, my body just isn't strong enough to do a certain move, y'all. Anyway, this is not a paid promotion; I'm just sharing a thing I liked.

The final week of my twenties has arrived, and I am floating in a pool of nostalgia—Seventeen magazine in one hand, Capri Sun in the other, and my hair pulled back in a scünci. Part of that is because I spent the morning photographing my Teeny Beanie Babies before sending them off to a new home, part of that is because I'm always perilously sentimental, and part of that is because I just went traipsing through my blog archives to find out what I wrote about when I turned twenty. (Spoiler alert: my teen years ended just a few days after Hurricane Katrina obliterated New Orleans, and I was too busy writing about that to say anything reflective about aging or whatever. How weirdly mature of me! I did line up a date with Elijah Wood that weekend for the release of his Green Street Hooligans flick, though, so that was a refreshing bit of normalcy.)

I've been on a kick of cleaning out closets and other neglected corners for the past few weeks, getting rid of trash (cell phone bill from 2003, oh, how cheap you were) and treasures (Teeny Beanie Babies) and so many saved notes from high school. This is all part of a campaign to downsize the amount of possessions I will someday take with me when I get my underpaid butt into my own apartment, which will instantly look like a page from the West Elm catalogue because that's how uncluttering works.

Operation: Living Solo has chewed up whatever free time I had in August (which wasn't much; sorry for failing VEDA), and I expect that it will consume most of my September, as well, with some notable exceptions:

1. XOXO Festival: By sheer magic, my boyfriend and I both got tickets to XOXO this year (first time for both of us), so we will be spending a weekend in Portland with artists and musicians and nerds. Some of my favorite Internet people will be there, and I am excited to freeze in front of them and later kick myself for being so damn shy.
2. Frodo Baggins' Birthday: Woo!
3. Birthday Shindig Weekend: Because my job tries to kill me every August with an insane to-do list, I do not have enough brain left to plan anything for my actual birthday, September 4. Instead, the last weekend of the month is going to involve some eating and drinking and belated merrymaking in Chicago! Details to come.

So I've shared some thoughts and some news, and I guess that is how blogging happens? Hashtag the end.

Competitive reading is my new jam. It started in January, when one of my Goodreads book clubs decided to read through the first Harry Potter book together. The group is only made up of a dozen people, and I've always been one of the first to finish reading any of our assigned books—mostly because I have an inordinate amount of free time but also in small part because I'm a very fast reader. When I saw that one of my good friends in the group started Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone just after I did, I decided to increase the challenge for myself and try to finish the entire series before he finished the first book. Because I wanted to keep this casual (and also because I wanted to win), I did not tell him about the competition; I just filled my nights with wizards and witches and Hagrids.

The last few days were absolutely hilarious, as I finally spread the word about what I was intending to do. I checked Goodreads frantically, making sure my overall progress in the series was close to the progress he was making in the first book. I was living and breathing the books, as evidenced by the number of fake spells I was casting in my text message conversations. By the end, I had read 4,100 pages in ten days. He finished the first book on a Sunday afternoon, and I wrapped up the final book that same evening.

It was a sweet, sweet personal victory.

This was the story I was telling my coworkers yesterday afternoon (in a silly attempt to divert the conversation from snakes getting loose in people's houses). My senior pastor, a notoriously avid reader, was completely flabbergasted by this accomplishment, which prompted another coworker to issue a new challenge: the Wheel of Time series. It is a fourteen-book story by Robert Jordan that spans 11,520 pages. People have been urging me to read it for years, but I didn't want to set aside the time or energy required.

But here I have a set of perfect excuses and perfect rewards: wiping the smug looks from my coworkers' faces and enjoying a really great adventure along the way. (And yes, I do actually read every word of the story. I am also proofreading for spelling and grammar, highlighting my favorite quotes, and re-reading entire sections just for the fun of it along the way.) Competitive reading is my new jam.

In December, my boyfriend took me to the Art Institute in Chicago to see a series of miniature rooms, many of which were decorated for the holidays. It's probably as weird as it sounds, but I had been looking forward to seeing the exhibit for weeks. We marveled at the miniature stockings on the miniature mantelpieces, mocked the ugly miniature portraits on the miniature walls, cooed at the miniature grand staircases, realized in joint horror that we'd probably be very good at making and maintaining miniature rooms, started planning a series of miniature rooms from the '90s with teeny tiny boy band posters on the walls and teeny tiny glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. (There is a slight possibility that I flapped my arms up and down in excitement when I saw the room with the itty bitty tea set and then a very small doll who had her own even ittier bittier tea set.)

Halfway through the exhibit, he stopped and said, "Nearly every one of these rooms has an enormous rug covering the floor. Do you know how expensive those things are? I've done some research . . ." The monologue was cut short as I turned to look at him. His expression was the very chick-lit definition of earnest and sincere—brow slightly furrowed, eyes narrowed and focused, jaw set and determined—and I erupted in laughter. It was one of those moments when I couldn't help but love him, this man who could stand against a backdrop of absurd domesticity and still somehow discuss floor coverings with any level of intensity.

Last night, I went to the theater with my dad and brother and saw the final Hobbit movie. I legitimately don't know what I think of it, other than to say that I didn't hate it. It would be easy to get swept up in a rant about how pompous someone would have to be to think that Tolkien's work needed help from additional storylines, characters, etc., but I don't want to waste time being angry about things I have no control over. Also, my boyfriend suggested that Peter Jackson is now free to write content for a third trilogy that has nothing to do with anything, which made me laugh hard enough to break through any residual grumpiness.* So I guess I'll accept the Hobbit movies and enjoy them as they are, and I will continue to love Tolkien's stories until the end of my days.

*I cherish the idea of these movies becoming a real thing, especially if someone can convince Andy Serkis to play every character. (Sorry, Orlando Bloom.)

Best city visited: Las Vegas
Best grave visited: Daniel Burnham's
Best place that I nearly ran away to but didn't: Napa

Best song for making me laugh at the office: "Christmastime Is Here" cover by Jars of Clay, just the first five seconds; I don't know why
Best song for secret office sing-alongs with Young Coworker: "She Will Be Loved," by Maroon 5
Best album I kept on repeat: PTX, Vol. III, by Pentatonix

Best TV show: Downton Abbey
Best Netflix marathon: The first ten seasons of Top Gear UK
Best movie for vanquishing of foes: Godzilla

Best food delivered to my house: Grilled cheese sandwich
Best food dropped on the sidewalk: Ribs (at Rib Fest)
Best alcoholic chocolate shake: Somewhere in Vegas

Best friend for writing spontaneous musicals: Tyler
Best friend for sharing emoji-only inside jokes: Tyler
Best friend for all-caps text message shouting: Tyler

Best video game I spent way too much money on: Word Monsters (iOS)
Best video games watched: The entire Mass Effect series
Best crushworthy video game character: James from Mass Effect 3

Best books read: The Red Mars trilogy
Best quote from awful book: ". . . the chickens blew into the sea."
Best book club joined: 📘📘💣 with Tyler; only haters allowed

Best podcast I've been binge-consuming since April: Roderick on the Line
Best collection of pickle puns in a podcast: Episode 225, MBMBaM (NSFW, language and such)
Best podcast I failed to make again: Men with Skirts

Best kiss: Unexpected and at the Signature Lounge
Best misunderstanding the day after the best kiss: "I regret everything," followed by me choking on a gasp
Best fake engagement: Coming back from Vegas wearing a ring (sorry, coworkers)
Best real boyfriend: Prickly Bear

Best previous editions of Skirts Awards: 2013, 2011

Tomorrow, I will compile the 2014 Skirts Awards and share my favorite books, movies, podcasts, TV shows, nicknames, quotes, inside jokes, and other useless trivia. It will be festive and fun and lovely. I will have all sorts of energy and maybe even shower and wear real clothes.

Tonight, though, I will sit in my pajamas and eat pizza and listen to podcasts. When I have finished with that, I will read books and listen to Chopin. Then I will watch a movie with my family right up until midnight, when we will tune in to the local ABC 7 News anchors, who are always smashed and always kiss a little too much at midnight and always make everyone really uncomfortable. We will toast with sparkling white grape juice and watch the Chicago fireworks on TV and then immediately head to bed. It's a wonderful way to kick off the new year, and I really can't wait to see what the rest of 2015 brings.

Much love to all of you beloved Internet friends, and happy new year!

Say it out loud without shuddering. I dare you.

But it gets worse.

(Of course, I share this tale with all due respect, and if I ever get the chance, I intend to take these people out for a cup of hot chocolate and some grilled cheese sandwiches.)

The friend who told me about this beautiful and awful thing didn't know what the couple called the other two films. So naturally, we brainstormed for a while and came up with "Lodder-fodder" (LOTR: FOTR) and "Lodder-tot" (LOTR: TT), and that is why, if you listen closely tonight, you will be able to hear the ghost of Tolkien sobbing.

The #sitcomlife writers, who constantly threaten my quest for a boring existence, finally gave me a break today. I slept in, enjoyed breakfast in bed with my laptop and Sims 3, enjoyed lunch in bed with my laptop and Tumblr, and enjoyed dinner in bed with my laptop and Netflix. Tomorrow promises to be almost as uneventful, so maybe this is an extended commercial break or a scheduled holiday re-run. Regardless, I'm grateful for the opportunity to breathe, collect my thoughts, and completely ignore all responsibilities and dignity.

P.S. Still totally happy, though. How obnoxious!

"Yes, they really do."

Life has been more than a little surreal lately. I've joked before that I sometimes feel like I'm part of a sitcom, and I sincerely don't mean that as an excuse for being melodramatic or eccentric. Most nights, I find myself sitting on my bed, watching Netflix on my iPad, and dribbling pizza crumbs down the front of my shirt. Occasionally, I pause the show long enough to favorite some tweets, grump or enthuse about things with Tyler, and freshen up my English breakfast tea. It's completely mundane, and I love it.

So how, then, did I end up in Las Vegas (oh my gosh!) with my boyfriend (what even!) one week ago Friday? I thought it would feel more like reality once the plane landed, but the airport itself is part of some brilliant plot against normalcy—a constant theme throughout the city. I thought I would feel grounded when we got to our hotel, but even the elevator was too cool for me. Then we spent two days indulging in amazing food and great shopping and stellar people-watching and a fabulous show, and it is possible that my head will never stop spinning.

Before I left, I was given four rules: don't get married, don't go broke gambling, don't pull an Ocean's Eleven heist, don't get dead. I cannot say that I followed any or all of them, but I can share some favorite highlights with you instead:

• Being greeted at the airport with a Las Vegas snow globe and a kiss
• Kicking off the weekend with one of the top five chocolate shakes I've ever had
• Every surface of every venue being made out of or decorated with sparkles and magic
• So many neon shoes and horrible sandals (men of Vegas, your feet are gross)
• Sitting outside a swanky hotel bar and discussing browsers and podcasts while waiting for a table
• Being too busy smiling to take photos or even notice that my phone was dying
• Seeing the fountain show at the Bellagio a thousand times (even though I never found Brad Pitt or George Clooney or Matt Damon)
• The hotel having a view of the Strip and automated shades on the windows, which is somehow both glamorous and bad-ass (and just a fun addition to any evening or morning routine)
• Walking hand-in-hand from one breathtakingly beautiful place to another
• Receiving a kiss on every escalator (and there are a lot of them)
• The man who tried to sell me a selfie stick
• Getting gussied up and basking in a never-ending string of compliments (I really should shower more often)
• "Holding hands through the entire Kà show, applause be damned" (stolen from his recap)
• Being so overwhelmed that I couldn't even read a menu much less make a decision
• Dating someone who is super patient and also good at making decisions
• Eating steak and chocolate cake that were so good, I've had dreams about them since
• A fake proposal that resulted in me stealing his wearable for a day
• Joining the squinty-eyed "what is daylight?" crowd for brunch and bonding in a spirit of disorientation
• Spending every second of the trip home texting one another about our respective flights
• Waking up the next day and discovering it wasn't all a wild and crazy dream

"What if I told you we now have the technology to DEEP FRY OUR VERY SOULS [TED Talk audience explodes] [America high fives itself to death]"

— @fireland

"'Mommy, can we read the rest of the poop book?' We own a book about poop that is too long to read in one sitting."

— @CcSteff

"Pretty insensitive how the early bird instagram filter is based what the world looks like to victims of horse tramplings."

— @danielhuffman

"Million dollar idea: batting gloves that don't need to be adjusted and tightened after every pitch."

— @badbanana

"i'm pretty sure the answer, but to be clear, 'bishes' is just like a cool new way to say 'bitches'; it's not the name for female fishes?"

— @JesseDavidFox

"I'm up late, I'm on the Internet, and I'll be honest, I'm not even in the same time zone as sober"

— @cleversimon

"If you don't have prematurely grey hair, good luck being the CEO of anything."

— @KentMarlboro

"your password must contain at least one lie society told you and one dream you gave up for the financial means to survive"

— @nice_mustard*

"You Probably Heard Around the Office We've Been Making a Lot Of Difficult Cutbacks, Charlie Brown"

— @sloganeerist

"Have You Engaged With Any Brands Lately, Charlie Brown?"

— @giromide

"This Product Was Manufactured in a Factory That Also Processes Wheat, Charlie Brown"

— @loresjoberg*

"Coffee Is For Closers, Charlie Brown"

— @TimProbable*

*Disclaimer: I do not follow these people, so I do not know if they are joke thieves or legitimately great humans. Follow at your own risk.

While trying to figure out how to work the DVD player at the cabin, Adam and I were subjected to several minutes of some television show about hip-hop artists and the perpetually upset women in their lives. I was trying very hard not to watch it, especially after the first young man ended an argument with his crying girlfriend by shrugging, putting on a piece of bling, and leaving. The next scene showed another young man trying to convince his girlfriend to move in with him, and she was having none of it, in spite of his solid argument—made in a paddleboat—that it would help him figure out if he wanted to make a more serious commitment to their relationship. Just at that moment, text appeared at the bottom of the screen to identify the actor/rapper/Casanova.

"His name is Fizz!"

Adam replied, "Well, he does have carbonated hair."

Which is now obviously my favorite way to describe anything. (And it was entirely accurate.)

In college, I was a moderator for Hot or Not and was so good at spotting all the cheaters (people who hid their contact information in the captions of photos) that I was promoted to some elite moderator level, which was only cool to the two guys who convinced me to join in the first place (in the hopes that I would help them find and connect with "babes"). To clarify: I volunteered my time looking through low-quality photographs of people who were more Not than Hot and checking that the photos and their captions met a certain set of guidelines for the site. And when mistakes were made by other moderators, I went to an exclusive forum to tattle on them.

I have been repressing this humiliating memory for ten years now, but I guess you don't get a say in what kind of humble pie the Ghost of Internet Past will bring or when he will bring it. But maybe I'll stay home and skip the shower tomorrow just to be safe.

Over the river and through the woods is exactly where my grandparents live. Their home is nestled comfortably in a forested plateau, smack dab in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee. The roads are unpaved and often unmarked, and if you ever pass another person—family, friend, or stranger—while traveling through the neighborhood, you are required by ancient law to wave at one another with all the love you can muster.

It is my favorite place in the whole wide world and home to my favorite people. A weekend visit was far too short.

No part of that sentence went where I was expecting it to go, but I think that might be my favorite kind of sentence.

I've also been really grumpy all week because I slept at a right angle on Friday night, resulting in serious and non-stop neck pain. Getting old! Ugh!

To cure my foul mood and save you from it, I'm going to recommend watching the video Tyler recently shared on his blog. It features the most darling man and his darling store with all sorts of darling root beer (and other carbonated beverages). No really, it is precious. Watch it even if you don't think you need the pick-me-up, even if you can't imagine it being interesting, even though you don't have ten minutes to spare. Then take me out for a root beer float and do the same for Tyler.

Some people fly hundreds of miles to spend the weekend with you and buy you grilled cheese and laugh at you when the icy waters of Lake Michigan make you screech. Some people wait hours for pizza with you, and some people pass the time by making fun of strangers and their selfie sticks. Some people do not complain about the cold too much, even when it takes an entire hour to fail to light a house on fire at the Great Chicago Fire Festival. Some people do not run away when you later suggest burning down a very nice establishment because you are not being seated fast enough, and some people even offer to help you with said arson.

It's even possible that some people might kiss you and take you to the zoo to see a tiger, which almost makes up for some people not liking scotch.

• Snooze through alarms for an hour.
• Wake up. (Meh face.)
• Stay in bed to catch up on Twitter and text messages and emails.
• Shower.
• Putter around in a comfy robe, seeking coffee and breakfast.
• Sit on my bedroom floor in a pool of sunshine with my coffee and breakfast, listen to a podcast, and start applying make-up from my nightstand-doubling-as-a-very-short-vanity.
• Remain seated with coffee and a podcast and some make-up until five minutes remain on the clock.
• Attempt a hair thing.
• Get dressed.
• Shuffle out the door with a long sigh.

Some parts of this have been working really well for me. Ever since I stopped standing at the bathroom counter to put on my make-up (in silence, without food and drink, not a scrap of natural light to be found), I've been a much happier human being. And I like that I'm not rushed and don't have to get out of bed right away.

Kyla Roma's most recent post, "10 Ways to Make Waking Up Easier with a Seasonal Morning Routine," has me re-thinking other parts of my routine, though. Like maybe I should find time to walk around the block and/or calligraph a new word every morning. I don't have many evening commitments currently (a welcome change, I might add), so there's no reason I couldn't go to bed earlier and maybe spend less time hitting the snooze button in the mornings.

Then again, this Netflix queue isn't going to watch itself.

"Caught in the Act" is an endearing article on Al Pacino published in the September 15, 2014, edition of The New Yorker. One section in particular focuses on Pacino's admiration for Oscar Wilde and his work. "Part of Pacino's fervor for Wilde comes from a desire to claim the writer's intelligence and eloquence . . . Pacino, whose formal education ended in the tenth grade, grappled for years with a sense of intellectual inadequacy." There's a quote later on from Pacino himself, talking about how he overcomes this on the stage (emphasis added):

You don't need a college education. All the things that you were inhibited to talk about and understand—they can come out in the play. The language of great writing frees you of yourself.

New copier repair man did not come to the office today, so my anticipatory anxiety remains. If the dad from Calvin and Hobbes were here, he'd assure me that this experience will build character. Then I would pack sandwiches and comic books in a knapsack and run away from home with Hobbes.

I'm happy to report that Adam and I had another successful Librarypalooza adventure. He navigated toward the non-fiction this time, and we wound up in an aisle with all sorts of books on American history. (The distribution per topic was perplexing: Native Americans, six shelves; George Washington and the American Revolution, two shelves; James Madison, two books; Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, ten shelves; any other president or important leader or era, four books.)

It struck me as I stood amidst so many nondescript titles with equally nondescript covers that I really don't know which authors to trust when it comes to non-fiction. I loved Gore Vidal's Lincoln, but would I love any other book on the same subject? Are the books in the Local Library's Weirdly Unbalanced History of the United States aisle meant to be enjoyed casually, or are they only in the library for the high school students who need to fulfill a bibliography requirement for an essay?

In the end, I walked away with Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom, by Catherine Clinton. I can't imagine how someone could make the Underground Railroad boring, and the gushing reviews on the back cover seemed sincere enough. I also picked up Live and Let Die, the next book in Ian Fleming's Bond series, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman. We celebrated our literary outing with root beer floats, which is one more reason that Adam is the best little brother in the world.

Meanwhile, the new copier repair man is scheduled to diagnose and fix yet another problem at the office tomorrow morning, so if you need me, I'll be building my own underground escape tunnel to anywhere else in time and space.

The rules of Librarypalooza: every month, Adam and I walk to the local library on a Saturday afternoon. One of us selects a random aisle. We must both choose one book from that aisle to read, preferably something we're not incredibly familiar with. We can then take home one or two additional books from anywhere in the library.

The first time we tried this, Adam blindly led us to the aisle that contained all of J.R.R. Tolkien's works, and hoo boy, it was a struggle for me to find anything else I wanted to try out. In the end, I chose Red Mars, the first in a trilogy about humanity colonizing Mars. I mostly picked it because the reviews on the back cover were adorable, and the front cover had this incredibly stereotypical sci-fi illustration. It's exactly the kind of book I want to read but never do because I'm sure it'll be incredibly boring or horribly unrealistic.

It was the best book I've read in years.

The next two books (Green Mars and Blue Mars) were also fantastic, to the point that I can't properly write a review because I just start gushing and babbling and maybe even drooling.

The second Librarypalooza outing put us in the aisle with all of Ian Fleming's books, and since I've only seen the newer Bond movies, I felt like I wanted to know more about this dashing hero and his fancy cars and his pretty ladies and his enviable cocktails. I took home Casino Royale, and wow, the book and the movie overlap for maybe three chapters. I don't want to get shot for telling you which one I prefer, so I'll just tell you that the torture scene was equally unpleasant in both. (Also, the book had terrible pacing, but at least it painted Bond as less of a womanizer.) I look forward to continuing the series.

This weekend, Adam and I are headed out for the third time, and golly gee, I cannot wait. What will the library roulette offer us this time?! Comedy? Romance? Manga? Comedy romance manga? Tune in next week to find out!

*zazzly outro music*

The new copier repair man smells like a combination of Pine-Sol and cigarette smoke, a scent that invades my personal space even more often than he does. He laughs nervously at all the wrong times and has never once fixed a problem the first go-round. But worst of all, he is condescending when he explains to me how toner fuses with the paper, what toner is, and what paper is. "Well, 24-pound paper is very different from 20-pound paper when it goes through the machine, you know."

I smile at him as I wonder which paper gives the best paper cuts.

I simply don't like mornings.

(But I wouldn't mind some tea, if you're offering.)

Things I truly don't like:

• Chilly feet
• Pumpkin-spiced anything
• Knowing that winter is just around the corner and will never ever end

Things I want to like but probably don't:

• Scented candles (during any season, really)
• Hot apple cider
• Rainy days

Things I definitely like:

• Hot chocolate with so much whipped cream
• Scarves and mittens
• Snuggling with cats (or a very lucky person)

This is obviously heartbreaking news, since I love the entire Sims series and don't really have a decent Windows machine at the moment to enjoy the new content. However, I must admit that I cackled a bit at the idea of EA snubbing Apple so boldly. Adam and I were discussing this via text message while I waited for Sims 3 and some expansion packs to re-install (obvs), and I think we've both chosen well:

Me: EVEN THE SOUNDTRACK IS WINDOWS ONLY.
Adam: :( WUT
Me: THE GREAT BATTLE OF OUR TIME HAS BEGUN. EA VS. APPLE. CHOOSE SIDES NOW.
Adam: Ick. I choose BioWare.
Me: I choose a mortal life.
Adam: I choose you, Pikachu!

I haven't read any books in the past month or two, in part because I've been tremendously busy but moreso because The Picture of Dorian Gray took such a weird turn that I've been actively avoiding my entire reading list. (Thank you, past me, for hoarding hundreds of amazing magazines for just such a time.) However, I'm determined to make a vat of coffee this weekend and get back on track with my goal of finishing fifty books this year. For kicks and giggles, here is what I've enjoyed—and not enjoyed—in 2014:

• Divergent and Insurgent (good story, terribly written)
• Yotsuba! Vol. 11 & Vol. 12 (cutest, funniest manga series)
• Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories (haunting in a way that very much reminded me of The Awakening, by Kate Chopin)
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (had some good moments but was overall disappointing)
• Eleanor & Park (quick read, fantastic love story)
• Unless (also kind of haunting, not my fave but not bad)
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (so wonderful, possibly because I felt like I could relate to the autistic kid being overwhelmed by environmental stimulants)
• Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars (ohhhh my gosh, I cannot stop raving about this series)
• The Light Between Oceans (poorly written and super sad, but it generated my favorite inside joke of the year)
• Casino Royale (quick, fun read, even if Bond did mistakenly think many good Americans were from Texas)
• Howard's End (perfect first book to read for my miniature book club with Tyler)
• The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers (duh)

I took extensive notes on all of these books and will someday share them on Goodreads. Until then (and after then), add me as a friend and/or give me recommendations!

The main thing that kept me from flinging myself off of a cliff today was the fact that I didn't know where to find a cliff. I suppose that's something I could've asked Siri, but that sounded particularly exhausting, and since I was doing my best imitation of a morose character from a Douglas Adams novel, I stayed put and sighed as loudly as I could. Moments later, a masked hero stopped by the office with some really amazing doughnuts from the really amazing doughnut shop in town.

(Oddly, I just now remembered that my coworker and I opened a sample pack of business cards first thing this morning, and one of the cards featured the very creepy superhero mascot of a very creepy doughnut shop. Foreshadowing!)

There isn't really a middle part to this anecdote because, unlike Douglas Adams, I am incredibly bad at storytelling. However, I hope this serves as a reminder that even on the worst days, you shouldn't give up hope. And that hope sometimes looks exactly like a double-chocolate doughnut. Or two.

She replied, "Self-defense and violence all at once. I approve."

I wish I could tell you the story behind this conversation, but all I can say is that it came about after someone avoided a friend's devious verbal ploy by replying with a rather clever trap of her own.

Sunday afternoons are perfect for geocaching. Today, my dad and I hiked through a spider-infested forest and then through a mosquito-infested field and into a bee-infested forest to find a cache that was mostly filled with business cards. I signed the log book while my dad rummaged through the junk and found a tiny toy triceratops worth rescuing. (We left behind a Hot Wheels car, so the melting plastic giraffe wouldn't get lonely.)

It's a new adventure every time we head out, and that is hands-down my second-favorite part. I love that we find new parks, new trails, new waterfalls, and new birds and flowers and insects and trees. My heart still skips a beat when I think about the great blue heron that nearly collided with my face on its way out of the river we were crossing. Majestic and thoroughly terrifying. (We also see a lot of bunnies and deer and other critters fit to befriend a Disney princess, so it's not all scary.)

The absolute best part, though, is that I get to go with my dad. I know that sounds monumentally sappy, but the truth is that he and I are both workaholics and hermits. It takes a lot to tear us away from our laptops, even for the sake of family and friends, so this ritual of going outside to walk around in nature and make up silly stories and talk about books—it's near and dear to my heart, and I hope we get to keep doing this for a really long time.

Adam and I played through a few hours of Mass Effect 3 today, which is one of those video games that, in the midst of action-packed quests and a wonderful storyline, presents you with a number of choices and then forces you to deal with the consequences. Some of the decisions are easy (yes, I will help you with the quest to save your lost son), but many are less obvious (the mother wants to kill the daughter, and the daughter is a serial killer, so . . . coin toss?). I've chosen to build a character who is rather heartless but loyal to her crew and committed to justice. It's been an interesting role-playing experience, since I occasionally have to set aside my own morals for the sake of making a consistent and strong character. But honestly, my only regret in the entire trilogy is choosing to put up with my in-game boyfriend after he yelled at me for being dead for a while.

Captain's log, day two. Woke up to the sound of my own crying as I came to realize just how dreadfully old I am now. Fell out of bed and broke every bone in my crippled body. Disintegrated within seconds. This blog post is coming to you from heaven, and yes, the Wi-Fi is fantastic here.

"Do you feel older?" was the greeting I received this morning when I made it to the office—not dead, not even a little bit disintegrated. It was followed by many more such inquiries throughout the day because my coworkers are very loving and very excitable and very lacking in things worthy of that love and excitement. Thus, I find myself in need of a diversion. (#Legolas)

Normally, I would just poach an interesting topic from my Twitter feed and find a creative way to make it safe to discuss in a church office environment, but my Twitter feed has been nothing but dead celebrities and Markdown madness this week. I didn't anticipate the Internet letting me down, so I suppose it's convenient that I watched Lucky Number Slevin last night—the ultimate diversion handbook, starring Josh Hartnett and a towel and some really fantastic wallpaper. (No really, you know the wallpaper in a movie is truly stunning when it can draw your attention away from Josh Hartnett. I save at least one swoon for the wallpaper every time I watch the movie.)

Anyway, I guess I need to scrounge up some weapons, a love interest, and Bruce Willis before the weekend is over, so people will stop reminding me of my own mortality.

Today is my 29th birthday. It started with one balloon, two breakfasts from Panera, three cards from coworkers, and plenty of hugs and singing and laughter. Then someone gave me a knowing look and asked, "So . . . 29, huh? How are you handling that?"

In the moment, I smiled confidently and told her I felt fine, but I've been secretly dreading that question for weeks. I'm supposed to feel like I'm on the edge of a precipice, clinging to the remnants of my youth and beauty and hope as I peer down into the valley of the shadow of death and/or my thirties. But the only things I know for certain I will miss about being a twenty-something are 1) a decade-long connection with Jamie Cullum's Twentysomething album and 2) my equally long-lasting (albeit somewhat lapsed) connection to the TwentySomethingBloggers (20SB) community.

As such, I have decided to listen to Mr. Cullum's album as I write this blog post, and I have decided that this blog post will be the first in a series of daily updates—letters from my 29-year-old self that I hope to look back on for many years to come. I don't expect that my life will be significantly different simply because I survive another trip around the sun, but I do hope that my life continues to be impacted by the memories I choose to share and remember and by the friends I meet and love because of the Internet. That is why I started blogging in the first place, and it's why I continue to share photos and tweets and vlogs and Tumblrseses and so on.

So here's to another year of memories, another year of friendships, and one last year of being a twenty-something. Cheers.

I only sign in to Facebook on Mondays, and when I do, it's a very focused mission with three critical items on the agenda. 1) Look at all the tiger photos that Suzi tagged and curated for me. It's a special treat, and it never fails to warm my heart. I don't need extra reasons to love tigers or Suzi, but she gives them to me anyway because she is incredibly generous. 2) Tell the Internet how many loads of laundry I've completed. This started as a joke because I didn't have anything else to share on Facebook, so I decided to transform my profile into a #laundrybook record. No one shot me for this dumb idea, and thus, it lives on. 3) Lead the sock monkey troops to victory in the few remaining "poke wars" that just won't die out.

One of those wars escalated a month or two ago when a friend sent me a handcrafted poke in the mail. I just put a stamp on my return poke tonight (shh, don't tell him it's coming), and I couldn't help but smile. We know each other through his sister, and I know his sister through the blog of a brilliant woman known as Golfwidow. It's one of those friendships that is incredibly difficult to explain to people who haven't experienced a true Internet community. And heaven knows the struggles involved with convincing people that there is any merit to be found in the Facebook poke feature.

But here we are—weird stories, silly games, postage, and all—and I realize for the second time today how much I like my friends and how much I like my life.

Next time someone interrupts, fake-sneeze in his face and use that moment to casually resume your sentence.

I jotted that down on an index card the other night and left it on my bedside table, nestled among other treasured memorabilia like an expired coupon and a gigantic water bottle (half-empty or half-full, your choice) that my dad bought for me when we saw Frozen at the theater three weeks ago.

One of the appeals of blogging for me is that I can write down and convey a thought in its entirety. Something about my natural speaking voice invites people to tune out mid-sentence, at which point they either interrupt or just walk away. This happens at home, at work, in public, with friends, with strangers, and with family. I regularly have to convince my own mother that I'm worth a five-minute break from her jigsaw puzzle. (I know I'm not the world's best story-teller, but I like to think I have a smidgen bit more personality than a 1000-piece Thomas Kinkade cottage.)

For twenty-something years, I've been dealing with this by 1) allowing my frustration to simmer silently while the other person talks over me or 2) reclaiming the conversation through arm-flailing and foot-stomping. Either way, I exert so much energy that I then lose interest in continuing my train of thought, thus validating the other person's decision to cut me off in the first place.

It's a bona fide conundrum.

I'm sick of it.

So that is why I just sneezed in your face.

February is, and always has been, my least favorite month. It is far enough into winter that I am tired of being cold, and it is far enough from spring that the miserable grey skies start to gnaw away at my happiness. I enjoy the Valentine's Day chocolates and celebrating my mom's birthday, but the rest of the month is a minefield of bad memories. I'm still reeling with hurt and regret about a myriad of horrible things that happened last February, and my only distractions this past month have been almost as horrible—friends disappearing, an unusual number of funerals at my church, etc.

That said, I am thrilled to have survived to see the beginning of spring (even if it is snowing right now) and the beginning of eleven beautiful, not-at-all-crummy months.

P.S. This coming Monday is National Reading Day (how cool is that?), and I am forever looking for new book recommendations. If we aren't already friends on Goodreads, let's remedy that!

I have been catching up on Back to Work this week, and one of the two podcast hosts, Merlin Mann, made a great comparison in episode 93:

"Chewing Topps gum is like eating stained glass."

Few things bring me back to my childhood as quickly as baseball, and I still have every Topps card my dad ever bought for me. The gum did indeed shatter in your mouth, but that was somehow part of the fun. Everything about baseball is fun (doubly fun now that Wrigley is serving Giordano's pizza), and everything about baseball reminds me of family and summer. February keeps trying to overwhelm me with grey skies and gloom, but the thought of that stupid gum is allowing me to smile today.

Spring is on its way to Chicago, as is evidenced by the pile of wet clothes on my bedroom floor. I took it upon myself to collect every form of precipitation today, save for hail, by traipsing through snow and ice and fog this morning and culminating in the grand finale—a monsoon-inspired bit of rain—during the two minutes it takes me to cross the parking lot after work. ("She proclaimed, 'Tadaaaa,' and curtseyed.")

Of course, the coming of spring is a relief and a joy, so I will gladly wrap myself in a trash bag if need be to stay dry until summer arrives. Friends and coworkers would actually probably pay me to change out of my winter uniform: jeggings, Uggs, bright pink lip balm. ("And not a single damn was given that year.") Sometimes, I'm surprised that my past and future selves haven't shown up to slap me for how thoroughly I have embraced spinsterhood as of late. But then I realize that Pastskirts and Presentskirts and Futureskirts would likely end up making tea and curling up in bed and having a Top Gear UK marathon and talking about Ents and cats. We would also pamper ourselves with facial masks and braid each other's hair and drink root beer floats and collapse into a fit of giggles somewhere around 3 a.m.

So I guess what I've learned today is that 1) I should buy some rain boots, 2) I should make friends with some ladies who aren't imaginary and who aren't me, and 3) root beer floats are still delicious.

She is too proud to understand grace, and she is almost lonely enough to learn.

He is stronger than he knows, and he gave up without a fight.

She is weak, and she would give up everything for him.

Other posts in this series: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Best song for getting stuck in my head: "Wrecking Ball," by Miley Cyrus (in spite of the fact that I only know 2% of the lyrics)
Best album that I'm surprised to own: The Great Gatsby soundtrack
Best concert: CSO at Ravinia, playing the soundtrack along with the second Lord of the Rings movie, The Two Towers

Best TV shows: Doctor Who and White Collar
Best TV show characters: Chuck Bass from Gossip Girl and Handles from Doctor Who

Best worst movie: Pacific Rim
Best movie that I haven't seen yet: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Best movie character: Mike Wazowski as a youngster in Monsters University

Best video game played: LEGO The Lord of the Rings (iOS)
Best video games watched: Dragon Age 1 & 2 (PS3)
Best video game I haven't watched yet but desperately want to: Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (PS3)
Best video game reference within another video game: The Assassin's Creed reference in LEGO The Lord of the Rings was absolutely beautiful—the perfect marriage.

Best book I couldn't put down: The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand
Best book I couldn't finish for book club: All of them? (I am a book club failure.)

Best podcast that makes me want to be a better person (and read more comics): Back to Work
Best podcast that makes me laugh until I cry or drool: My Brother, My Brother and Me (warning: there is definitely adult content and a lot of cussing in this podcast; it is not safe to listen to this at work or home or anywhere)
Best podcast that hasn't actually come out yet: Return to Story Mountain

Best quote: "Cat hair is lonely people glitter." —Chris Glass
Best quote that turned into a meme: "Google it, Michelle." — Rachelskirts

Best previous edition of the Skirts Awards: 2011

Rachelskirts: I am over-socialized. I am annoyed by one person in particular. I might also be PMS-ing. It's a very terrible but also very apathetic mood.
Tyler: Yikes. It's a perfect storm.
R: It's a fucking nightmare. That scene where Galadriel gets all scary? That's me always. But definitely moreso today than most days.
T: Does somebody have a case of the power lusts?
R: This cannot be news to you.
T: It isn't. I actually assume you're slightly green and deep voiced about 75% of the time.
R: And then gracefully shuffling between one tree and another the other 25% of the time?
T: Yes.
R: Except replace "tree" with "Internet device."
T: And replace "gracefully" with "shoutfully."

*You already loved me and despaired back in 2008. I'm honestly surprised that's the only other time I've tried to use that quote as a title for a blog post. You can be damn sure I'll be using it as the title of my autobiography, though.

So you're writing a book on productivity, and you decide that you want the reader to make a list—goals for the year, biggest tasks that haven't been completed, top ten regrets, etc. You plan to use that list somehow to teach the reader a pertinent and relevant lesson, and hey wow, that is totally okay with me. I like participating, and I like learning. That is, in fact, why I buy books about productivity. For the love of all things holy, then, please do not make the very next sentence, "Now throw that list away." If anything in the world makes me feel the opposite of productive, it is doing a thing that I then must immediately undo.

Stop including that one horrible thing, and your life as a writer will be totally great and successful and rain down money all day and all night. I promise.

Hugs and kittens,
Rachelskirts

Every few weeks, I find myself doing something extra frivolous in my free time and stop to think how pathetic it will sound in my biography. "There really isn't much to say about January 2013. Rachel spent every waking hour alone, camped out by a virtual pool in World of Warcraft trying to catch a virtual fish for a virtual character whose achievements mean nothing in the real world." It's a harsh game I play with myself, and I rarely win.

I just don't want to get to my 80th birthday party and think, What have I been doing? It's too easy for me to flip on the cruise control and just coast through my responsibilities and routines without thinking about the connections or experiences I'm missing or destroying. I want to be intentional about saying "yes" to the right people and things, and putting them in the perspective of a non-existent biography is how I remind myself that beating the next level of Candy Crush is not what I want to be remembered for.

Looking through my summer photographs and ticket stubs, I see a lot of good progress. I've spent more time with friends and family, visiting waterfalls in Tennessee and getting lost in corn mazes and bonding over My Little Pony marathons. (Let's not forget my amazing performance in Dragon Age: Origins, working with my brother to bring Skirts the mage and Alistair together in a virtual love that will forever alter history.) Just last weekend, I marked two things off of my bucket list with the help of my lovely cousins, Jenna and Sandra.

Related note: macarons are even more delicious than I expected.

There is no fabulous conclusion or rally cry or royal decree here. I just want to take a moment to note that I'm proud of myself for a few choices and see room for improvement in others. I hope I can continue to be honest with myself about what my priorities are. And maybe eating a few more macarons will help me recognize my successes and my failures along the way, right?

1. It was turkey, not ham.
2. That's not how you do a countdown.
3. What happened to the two rolls and the one bottle of IBC root beer?

This has been sitting around as a draft for like six months now, and I'm only posting it now because I think it's great that I felt this was worth saving as a draft for like six months.

For years, I would beg my dad to let me tag along with him when he had to work on the weekends. His corporate office building was amazing, and I loved every sight, smell, and sound. I would visit every cubicle and just dream of the day I could have my own to work in and decorate. My favorite cubes had Dilbert comic strips under the name plates. That was a pretty good indicator that someone cool worked there. Sometimes, my dad would take me on a tour and tell me facts and stories about each of his coworkers. The one thing they all had in common was a shelf full of large, labeled binders, brimming with hundreds of pages of probably very boring documents.

No one else was ever working on his floor on Saturday, so my dad would set me up at someone's empty desk, turn on their computer for me, and let me play—usually solitaire or one of the old Linux games. After an hour or so, he would ask me if I wanted a snack, and we would venture off to the vending machines on some other floor. That's where I first fell in love with the smell of elevators. (The staircases in the building were sleek and gorgeous and also a cherished part of the adventure, but they only smelled like cleaning products.) The vending machines all stood in a row: one for candy bars and chips, one for cold beverages, a very impressive one that spit out disgusting hot chocolate (and probably disgusting coffee), and one with a fancy spinning racks that held a pitiful variety of yogurts and stale sandwiches. I always asked for a Twix and a Coke the first time around. On extra long visits, I would go back later for a hot chocolate on my own.

After the trip to the vending machines, we would go back to work, my dad doing something important while I read a book in the conference room and wrote meticulous notes on the white board. Occasionally, he would ask me to fetch something from a printer in someone else's cubicle, a responsibility I took very seriously. Long before I was ready, he would announce that he was done with his work, and I would pout a little and then gather my things and follow him back to reality.

Anyway, I logged in to that Twitter account from the web the other day and noticed that section of recently shared photos and videos. As I was browsing, I noticed that every single item falls into one of the following categories:

• Food
• Trees, flowers, clouds
• Elijah Wood
• My face
• Grammar stuff
• A single cat video

(I know that last one isn't really a category, but have some chocolate and get over it, please.)

This is a really accurate summary of the things I'm interested in, and that tickles me pink.

Today, I decided it was time for my bi-annual swapping party, wherein I move everything from one bag to the other and assess its potential usefulness for the next six-month period, and I thought it might be fun to do a "what's in my bag" post.

Clockwise-ish from top left:

A buhmillion bobby pins. I've been growing out a pixie cut for a year now, and I have reached the awful stage between chin-length and shoulder-length hair. It is just the right length to jump in my mouth when I'm leaning over a keyboard or a book, but it doesn't quite stay in a ponytail. Bobby pins to the rescue! (You buy them in jumbo packs because bobby pins disappear into thin air after 1-3 uses.)

Mini Moo cards. I have never ever had business cards, personal or professional, on hand at the right moment, even though I have a lovely collection of each. I now carry some in my purse, so I can hand them out to the zero people I meet up with during the week who don't already know me.

Jif-to-Go peanut butter. I bring a bagel to work every morning and eat it with peanut butter as my at-the-office breakfast with a side of coffee. Sometimes, I'm in too much of a hurry to grab these pre-packaged peanut butter cups from the pantry (yes, I realize how terrible that is), so I keep a spare one in my purse. I like to imagine that it could also come in handy as a method of distracting a vicious dog if need be.

Wristlet, debit card, driver's license, pocket knife, lip balm, lip gloss. I keep all of these items stored together in the wristlet (from NY&Co.) because I don't always want to haul around a giant purse, especially if I'm just walking to the nearby general store for a candy bar or some shampoo. Having a few essentials stashed in a separate bag makes it easy for me to dash out the door for a quick errand. The lip balm is Maybelline Baby Lips in Pink Punch, and I have no idea what the lip gloss is. (It is completely unlabeled and was a gift.)

Kate Spade tote. I love nearly everything that Kate Spade makes, especially her stationery and handbags. If I had the money, I'd get one or two more Kate Spade purses and rotate them out every few months, but until then, I will just bookmark this handsome thing for later and hope to find it on sale for $80 later in life.

Canon PowerShot 300 HS camera. I take a lot of pictures with my iPhone 4S these days, but I still like having a camera/camcorder with me at all times. This particular model is popular among YouTubers and makes a great little vlogging camera, so I have it loaded with a 16GB SD card just in case I bump into Elijah Wood and need to record every awkward second of the encounter.

Hair clip. My hair doesn't really stay in that yet, so I guess it's in my bag just to taunt me.

Top Trumps: Doctor Who. Ian introduced me to Top Trumps a long time ago and was immediately sorry; I kicked his butt every time we played. Even though we broke up a few months ago, I keep the game in my purse because it is a really fun, casual card game to pull out when you're waiting for food to arrive at a restaurant or for your flight to begin boarding at the airport or whatever. Plus, Doctor Who!

Advil (ibuprofen). I started stashing a bottle of Advil in my purse a few years ago for headaches and lady pains. Since then, I've discovered that guys just expect gals to carry this stuff in their purse for any time they get a boo-boo. Well, lucky for you, man-children of the world. I am totally that kind of girl.

Go-Go Squeez applesauce in Apple-Apple. This is the perfect snack! No need for a spoon or really even for your hands. I nearly died of hunger on a train once, but then I remembered the applesauce in my purse and survived to tell this cool story, bro.

Frango mints, milk chocolate. I self-medicate with three things: Lord of the Rings, chocolate, and pizza. I have The Fellowship of the Ring on my phone at all times, and pizza is only a phone call away. Frango mints are among my favorite chocolates on the planet, so I keep an emergency stash in my purse for really bad days. This little box holds four Frangos, and I refill it from a one-pound box I hide at home. Brilliant, I know.

Knit sleeve for coffee cups. This came as a surprise gift from @bethanyactually when she shipped my tiger mug many moons ago. Slipping this thing over a hot or cold beverage from Caribou Coffee brightens my day so much. Plus, it saves me from using a cardboard thing, making it cute and environmentally friendly.

Minimergency kit. When I saw this at the Container Store two or three years ago, I thought, "Oh, that would be a great gift!" So I bought one for myself. The kit contains a teeny tiny bottle of hairspray, clear nail polish, an emery board, floss, a sewing kit, bandages, a safety pin, hair ties, and much more. (Read the full list and/or buy one here.) It really does come in handy in a pinch, and it has even impressed a number of my coworkers. This is no small feat, since a lot of them are mothers and have way more life experience than I do and generally have a solution to every conceivable problem within arm's reach. All in all, really glad I bought this for me and not for you.

Wallet. This NY&Co. wallet has just the right number of pockets and slots for store loyalty cards and imaginary cash. Plus, it's pink. (My favorite color is actually purple, but my favorite accent color is pink. Yes, there will be a quiz later.)

Earbuds and decorative bag. This combo solves two problems for me: 1) it is way too easy to lose small items in a large purse and 2) earbuds are the devil's string. The decorate bag came free with another Etsy purchase, so I was thrilled to find a good use for it. The bag is easy to find in my purse, and keeping my earbuds separated from everything else makes it 20% less difficult to untangle them in a hurry (like when a chatty group forms outside my office to discuss the merits of kale for the third time in a week).

Dior Addict Lip Glow. This Dior product is best described as a balm that lightly enhances your natural lip color. It's a nice and easy way to freshen up my face. I don't even use a mirror to apply it, so I keep it in one of those "your phone is obviously supposed to go here" pockets for fast access while at a red light or while I'm running up the stairs to get to my office in the morning.

Fisher Titanium Bullet Space Pen. If you're only going to keep one pen with you at all times, this is the one. It is compact when closed, but the cap attaches to the body of the pen to form a full-sized writing utensil. It writes well at any angle, even upside-down, and even on damp paper. Also, it's adorable.

Compact mirror and brush. I picked this up ages ago at Bed, Bath & Beyond. It opens up to a mirror on one half and a small hair brush on the other, which is obviously nice to have for on-the-go situations. I rarely use it because I am very lazy about fixing up my appearance after I leave the house in the morning, but that's another story entirely. If I want to look pulled together all the time, I have the tools to make it happen.

There you have it. I carry quite a bit of stuff with me, and I can give you a reasonable excuse for every item. Impressed yet? Terrified? I'm dying to know what you take with you in your pockets or briefcase or purse or oversized hat. Tell me in the comments or put a link to your own post!

There are two squirrels living in the box elder tree in our backyard—Bob and Janice. They have returned to their home after a winter of hibernation only to find that the neighborhood has gone to hell in a hand basket. (Most notably, there is a plastic grocery bag waving from one of the tree branches nearby, which is not a symbol of classiness, even among squirrels.) Janice is very cross with Bob about all of this, and the first time I saw her, she was on the far end of one branch tapping her foot angrily at Bob, who was at the opposite side of the tree waving his front paws about in a gesture of helplessness.

"BOB." [tap tap tap tap] "Bob, this neighborhood is not what it used to be. I can't be seen here, Bob. BOB, what are you going to do about this?"

"I'm sorry, honey. The housing market isn't what it used to be. The Hendersons' tree was bulldozed just last year, and now look at them. We should be grateful to have a home, dear."

"I don't care, Bob. I want to move. Sally Skinnytail said her husband said that now is the time to invest, and I think he's right." [tap tap tap tap]

"The only available real estate nearby is that new sapling under construction, and it won't have room for a growing family like ours. The rent on a place like that is going to be way out of our price range anyway. You know we have to be careful with our budget after the winter."

[tap tap tap tap] "Whatever, Bob. I'm going next door to see what Sally plans to do about getting out of this wretched wasteland. Make yourself useful and find us some dinner, Bob. I don't care what it takes."

And then Janice scampered off across the fence, and Bob worked for ten whole minutes to get past all the squirrel guards to steal dinner for himself and his wife. Later in the week, he suggested they seek marital counseling, and Janice chased him around the base of the tree in a blind rage, shrieking at the top of her lungs.

Basically, I ran out of things to watch on Netflix.

I can't remember what I ate for lunch two days ago, but I distinctly remember the hot pink fountain pen I got for my 10th birthday. I still have and will forever cherish the beautiful, weighty silver ballpoint pen my dad bought home from a business trip when I was 13. To this day, I hold a grudge against the classmate who broke my Sensa Cloud 9 after history class during my sophomore year of high school.

For a long time, my dad was the only person I knew who enjoyed pens—and notebooks and planners and file folders—as much as I do. We bonded in the pen aisle of the local office supply store as easily as we bonded on the baseball field or watching favorite cartoons. Shortly after I started blogging, though, I started making friends online. And one of the best parts about the Internet is that it makes it so easy to connect with people who share your interests and passions and who don't think you're at all crazy for having more pen cups than beverage cups in your home

Fast forward to September 2011 when I got a follow and a tweet from @EuroPaper.

@rachelskirts Thx for the follow! We're huge @lotr fans too & just finished the extended versions for the 4th time #weneedtogetbacktowork :)— EuroPaper (@EuroPaper) September 12, 2011

@rachelskirts Too true! We just launched last week; so exciting!! & yes, we tend to abuse the privilege of exclamation pts (!!)— EuroPaper (@EuroPaper) September 12, 2011

It was the start of a beautiful romance. I started buying products from their site. They featured a link to my site on the sidebar of their blog. I signed up for and won a free Moleskine planner in one of their first giveaways. They highlighted one of my blog posts in a link round-up.

Then they joined Instagram and posted a photo of some misplaced inventory with the caption, "Look what we just found! What should we do with these extra journals?" As a joke, I called dibs on the cat-themed journal. As a not joke, they sent it to me. It's like they have a step-by-step guide posted in the breakroom entitled "How to Win Rachel's Heart."

At that point, I was so enamoured with everything about European Paper Company (EPC) that I was singing their praises at every available opportunity. Eventually, my dad subscribed to their weekly newsletters and shortly thereafter became an insufferable know-it-all about their selection of notebooks. Of course, he insists on buying two of every kind, one for each of us to try, so I really can't complain.

He also entered a giveaway, one I didn't even know about, and was one of ten winners. When he submitted his mailing address to EPC to claim the prize, he mentioned that I was his daughter and joked that I would likely be jealous of his new notebook. So they sent me a notebook, too. (Also also, they wrote this charming comment and this charming tweet, both of which thoroughly warmed my cold, dead pirate heart.)

I cannot say enough nice things about the European Paper Company and the people who work there, but I do need to end this blog post eventually. To sum up: these people are doing everything right in my book. They are incredibly generous, not only with product giveaways but also in how they treat other people in the industry, fellow pen and paper enthusiasts online, and their customers. They have a genuine passion for the stuff they sell. They embrace everything related to social media and use it not just to promote their own products but also to form actual relationships. It's almost a bonus, then, that they sell quality products.

They have not sponsored this post in any way. I have been meaning to write up this love story for at least a year. I think it's important that they know how much I appreciate what they do, and I think it's equally important to document what a stellar business-consumer relationship looks like in the digital age. Thanks for being so cool, European Paper Company. I look forward to being a customer and gushing fan for a long time.

I have April 23rd highlighted on my calendar to remind myself of this weird milestone, and when I looked ahead a month ago, I thought about how much I had to say when I was 16 and first starting an "online journal." I treated it exactly like that and shared the sort of things an angsty teen would otherwise put in a paper diary. This essay is lame. I love calculus. Eeee! K sat next to me at lunch today! I talked about anything and everything and had no concept of censoring myself. It was sometimes boring, sometimes refreshing, and always a little bit insane. (Some day, I'll import all of those cringe-worthy posts to this blog, but they haven't quite finished simmering in their awkward glory.)

Meanwhile, more than a decade later, I'm a little less spontaneous in what I share. (To be fair, no one exciting ever sits next to me at lunch because I use my lunch break to hide in my office and check Twitter and Instagram.) Life is more complicated now, in spite of Avril's best efforts, and I haven't figured out how to deal with that when sharing personal stories in a public setting. Even if K did sit next to me at lunch tomorrow, would his sister's friend's aunt read about it on my blog and call me a slut for spending time with a married man? If I talked about the app I just launched at my church, would people find it in the app store and stalk me at work? Would it be nuts for me to talk about sock monkeys in one post and crippling grief in the next?

I don't actually have good answers for those questions, but I also don't want to let them keep me from trying to share things online. The more I started reminiscing about blogging and journaling during the past few weeks, the more I found myself recognizing certain thoughts and situations as "potential blog topics"—things I really need to talk about in exactly this kind of forum. I'm getting back in the habit of jotting down notes and drafting ideas. Just doing that for one afternoon unleashed a flood of ideas, a talking flood that smacked me in the face and said, "Whoa hey, maybe you should lay off the Netflix for a bit and address all these feelings and memories you've been hiding from."

So that's what I plan to do. I've started six new blog posts: one about grief, one about outrage, one about faith, one about European Paper Company, one about my dad and office supplies, and one about visiting my dad's office as a youngster. I don't expect anyone to nag me to finish them. I'm just sharing with you that I'm really looking forward to writing about those things. I'm also really looking forward to another eleven years of writing online, regardless of the pace or the topic or the audience. Blogging itself is such a cool opportunity, and I cherish the experiences I've had and the friends I've made because of it. I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

There was a 20SB prompt a few weeks ago about the things we collect, and I immediately thought of my beloved sock monkeys. I never really intended to have a "collection" of them. One minute, I was standing in a Cracker Barrel and thinking that the sock monkey in my hand was the only thing I liked about that place; the next, I had a sock monkey tea set and sock monkey slippers and a family of five adorable sock monkeys smiling at me.

Pictured from left to right: Itty Bitty, Sugarplum the Violent, Cuppycake, Pierre, and Juan Pedro.

Juan Pedro was the first sock monkey I ever owned. As I said, I bought him at a Cracker Barrel and then asked the Internet to give him a name. He had too much personality for me, so I gave him his own Twitter account, Facebook account, and email address. (Some Central American TV celebrity whose name is Juan Pedro is really bummed that I got to the name first, but hey, I'm the queen of the Internet. Buzz off.)

Years later, my dad brought home Itty Bitty, who came with adoption papers and all of the cuteness in the world. Everyone wanted to know when she would get her own Twitter account and the like, but people, she's way too young for that. She and the others do work with Juan Pedro to manage all of my social media updates, though. I pay them in Scooby Snacks and hugs.

The third member of the team was Pierre, a gift from Cuddles for my birthday. His name was given to him by the fine folks at Pier 1 Imports, and it just sort of fits. (I saw him on a Pier 1 commercial months before my birthday and had been secretly hoping someone would send him my way. Thanks, Joey!)

Cuppycake showed up a few days later when I had my birthday party with my immediate family. I think my mom feels guilty about refusing to let me have a cat, so she's drowning her guilt—and me—in sock monkeys. I'm a little wary of Cuppycake, who has "Happy Birthday" written on her tummy in Comic Sans every day of the year. However, the other sock monkeys say she throws really great parties, so she stays. I guess she's the Pinkie Pie of the bunch.

Sugarplum the Violent was a stocking stuffer for Christmas, and she has a clip on the top of her head. She really isn't violent, but the other sock monkeys were afraid of the clip when they saw it, mistaking it for a weapon. I'm keeping it on her head in case the group needs to defend themselves against zombie Beanie Babies or whatever.

Anyway, that's my family of sock monkeys. If you'd like to meet them, I recommend hosting a tea party—real or virtual—and sending a formal invitation or five.

Short review: mostly good.

The book was a gift from one (two?) of my favorite friends, and I absolutely love Douglas Adams. That said, I really wanted to love every part of this book. For the most part, I suppose I did. The beginning was filled with tidbits about Douglas Adams' life and interests. It reminded me a bit of the beginning of Stephen King's On Writing. The end held a few wonderful short stories along with an unfinished draft of one of Adams' next projects. That part was nothing short of delightful. Something about his writing makes me glad to be alive. He was so clever and so funny and so full of surprising ways to say things. I couldn't bother stopping to jot down my favorite quotes, but I did take photographs on my phone and have transcribed and assembled the best bits below.

But before I get back to the happy part, I feel compelled to comment that the middle portion was a bit of a chore to get through. At times, it was even heartbreaking. Some pieces were entertaining enough, as they related to Douglas Adams' penchant for technology. He wrote about his first time using a hand-held computer in the bathtub and his hope that, one day, he could walk into his office with his portable computer and have the contents automatically appear on his desktop computer. (Hello, Dropbox!) Not as riveting for me as his fiction, but it was an interesting glance into the life of someone I very much respect.

(Actually, reading a few of the essays reminded me of a secret fear I have: that after I die, the horrible things I've started writing or even finished writing will be dug up from old shoeboxes and scraped out of old floppy disks and stolen from my personal computers and published internationally in some sort of postmortem shame festival/museum.)

I suppose if the middle portion had been just that, I would have muddled through it and appreciated the whole book without comment. But there was an awful lot about Adams' atheism in that bit, and it left me with the impression that Adams found all Christians to be idiots. Finding out that this guy whose work I very much admire would've found me to be absolutely moronic? Maybe it's silly, but it made me really sad. It'd be like telling me that Kate Chopin only befriended people who used Comic Sans or that Dave Brubeck hated anyone who used semicolons. It's one thing for a personal idol to believe the polar opposite of what you do; it's another to find out that idol would've disliked you because of it.

Maybe I got bent out of shape for nothing, but . . . too late. The middle portion of the book left a bad taste in my mouth, and it's really a tribute to Douglas Adams' writing that his unfinished snippet of a novel was so good that it redeemed the rest of the material in The Salmon of Doubt for me.

So without further ado, here are a few of my favorite quotes:

Jane, who is much better at reading guide books than I am (I always read them on the way back to see what I missed, and it's often quite a shock), discovered something wonderful in the book she was reading. Did I know, she asked, that Brisbane was originally founded as a penal colony for convicts who committed new offences after they had arrived in Australia?

I spent a good half hour enjoying that single piece of information. It was wonderful. There we British sat, poor grey sodden creatures, huddling under our grey northern sky that seeped like a rancid dish cloth, busy sending those we wished to punish most severely to sit in bight sunlight on the coast of the Tasman Sea at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef and maybe do some surfing too. No wonder the Australians have a particular kind of smile that they reserve exclusively for use on the British.

It does sort of make you wonder. Was there a criminal mastermind secretly behind this plan? Or are British people just crazy? Also, "[seeping] like a rancid dish cloth" is a brilliant way to describe a sky.

My favourite piece of information is that Branwell Brontë, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantelpiece, in order to prove it could be done.

That is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.

I just retweeted that sloth fact within the last month. Great minds?

"Josh," said a voice in a kind of Swedish-Irish accent.

That is a delightfully impossible amount of accent to cram into one syllable.

He was immediately glad that he had decided to build in a brief period of mental preparation. Almost immediately number one, a large duvet of a woman, came around the corner . . .

I don't ever want to be fat, but if that's my destiny, please refer to me as a "large duvet of a woman."

Dirk had recently moved to this new office—new to him, that was; the actual building was old and dilapidated and remained standing more out of habit than from any inherent structural integrity . . .

I like the idea of buildings having habits.

The following morning the weather was so foul it hardly deserved the name, and Dirk decided to call it Stanley instead.

Stanley wasn't a good downpour. Nothing wrong with a good downpour for clearing the air. Stanley was the sort of thing you needed a good downpour to clear the air of. Stanley was muggy, close, and oppressive, like someone large and sweaty pressed up against you in a tube train. Stanley didn't rain, but every so often he dribbled on you.

Dirk stood outside in the Stanley.

See? Delightful. The writing is absolutely delightful. (No, you find another adjective.) That could have been a terribly boring and commonplace description of weather, but it is not. It is Stanley, and it is wonderful.