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The Rollercoaster of Life

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“You know, when I was nineteen, Grandpa took me on a roller coaster. . .  Up, down. Up, down. Oh, what a ride! I always wanted to go again. You know, it was just interesting to me that a ride could make me so. . . so frightened. So scared. So sick. So excited and so thrilled all together! Some didn’t like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing.” ~ Grams on “Parenthood.”

Some have said I’ve been on one hell of a rollercoaster ride this year. I would argue that it’s been more like the Millenium Force at Cedar Point after three corn dogs slathered in yellow mustard and a large plastic baggie full of blue cotton candy. In the past seven months my rickety car has climbed toward the sky, stayed suspended at the top for a few moments in time, and plummeted down at lightning speed – taking my breath away. Read more

The Royal Wedding: Fairy Tale or Fucking Fromage?

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I was driving to school yesterday listening to what BBC coined their “Royal Wedding Disco” when the DJ pulled out Journey’s classic “Don’t Stop Believing.”

I almost ran my little Beetle right off the road.

How apropos. You see, I myself stopped believing in fairy tales when I was fourteen. My mom had recently married a man who would wake me each morn by yelling, “Wake up and piss, the world’s on fire,” through the railing of my bedroom loft. I would roll over and wonder what my mother saw in this vile man whom, with bitter irony, would get so plastered drinking Milwaukee’s Best that he’d forget where the bathroom was and piss next to the coal burning stove. That pretty much put the royal kibosh on any romantic idyllicism that I had up to that point. Read more

An Ice Cream Carol

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“Wake up and piss, the world’s on fire,” my step-dad used to yell up to me every morning through the railing of my bedroom loft. I would simply roll over and wonder what my mother saw in this vile man whom, with bitter irony, would get so plastered drinking Milwaukee’s Best that he’d forget where the bathroom was and piss next to the coal burning stove. Had I had more balls at age fourteen I would have hollered back to him that he had already put out the fire the night before. Alas I did not. It seems for my whole life the universe has been coming up with new and sardonic ways of getting my ass out of bed.

To put it mildly, I’ve never been a morning person.

After my step-father had urinated his last in our home, the task of waking me was once again set upon my mom’s shoulders. She’d shout at me to get up. And I – thinking myself rather crafty – would shout back, “I’m awake!” Then I’d quickly go back to sleep for fifteen more minutes. Read more