Ain't No Party Like

I tried a new pie recipe and the custard separated because I overbaked it. I stayed up late doing the pie again so I could get it right. It was a really good pie. Maple buttermilk. The custard was perfect on the second run. It was solid on the fork, but then it collapsed in the mouth. A familiar experience for me, obviously.

I'm making another pie for a party tonight. It's a divisive pie. People love it or they politely hate it. It's a vinegar pie with honey for the flavor and sweetness. I sprinkle the top with sea salt. It's complex, but it's heaven. It goes without saying that my butter crust is perfect. Whoops. I said it.

God. Enough about pies. Spring, y'all. It has sprung. Which means I walked to the grocery today wearing a t-shirt. I love the grocery because there are always men there I can use to develop quick crushes. Everyone has to get groceries, even hunks. One of my crushes actually works at the grocery. Josh and I caught him fist-pumping the air once. He's probably straight. He was out front today smoking a cigarette with a girl. The girl said, "Are you sure I'm not going to get you in trouble?" and the guy looked around like yes, she might get him in trouble. "No," he said. "I'm good."

Josh is going to be in another play. Get your tickets HERE. He plays about ten characters with different foreign accents. He's been sexing up for the role. He flexes his arms and muscles pop up now. It's not like begging a noodle to do something it can't do.

St. Patrick's Day sure was a day. A couple walked down our street eating pizza right out of the box. The girl of the couple came into our yard and tried to feed her slice of pizza to a tree. The tree was not receptive. The girl steadied her drunk self and tried again. No dice.

On the same day, Josh and I were walking home from the library and a drunk girl leaned out of her parked car and yelled, "Are you all gay? My boy here's gay. Yeah, he loves penis." There was a guy sitting next to the girl. He was drunk, too. Josh and I kept walking. The girl was yelling, "Hey! Hey!" but we were gone. If the guy wanted our penises so much, he could've said so himself.

My Kentucky friend keeps calling to talk about her snake problem. She has snakes mating in her trees. I'm fascinated by snakes. My friend insists on calling it a snake problem, but I like to think of it as a snake opportunity. My friend was picking up sticks and talking on the phone with her mother when she almost picked up a snake. I think that's just wonderful. I wish my yard was tripping with snakes. It is, instead, tripping with dog shit.

The only animals I've seen around lately are cats. There's a new stray and she has these short little legs but a regular body. She crosses the street at intersections like a person. In the dark, she looks like an opossum.

Speaking of, I have a story at Monkeybicycle. A man in England hates my story, but he hates everything. It's adorable. I wish I could watch him eat so I could see on his face how much he hates the food. My story has an opossum and a car accident and two men getting in the shower. But read it anyway.

A Wounded Party

AWP made me want a cigarette. Well, not a cigarette, but to have cigarette smoke blown in my face by a hot guy. It was the worst on the last night when this very attractive animal of a man was rolling his own cigarettes while we all drank in the hotel bar. He couldn't smoke in the bar, so he asked if anyone wanted to go outside and smoke with him. I tried to come up with a way to decline a cigarette and yet ask if I could stand next to him while he smoked. There was no way. I stayed inside and thought maybe when he came back he would lean over to talk to us and a little bit of stale smoke breath would creep out of his mouth and into my nose. It didn't happen.

I met my soul mates, though. I would give you their names, but what if you think you're one of them and it turns out you're not? You are, though. You probably are. One of my soul mates tweeted about how that week in Chicago changed his life and how he was crying because he missed everyone. Then he deleted the tweet. I saw it and put my hand to my heart and thought, "I know what you mean." The connecting of faces to names was religious. I met Roxane Gay and it was like going behind the curtain in a temple.

Josh was with me. Josh isn't a writer, but Josh is a reader. Josh bought a ton of books. Josh danced. Josh made all the ladies go yeah. Josh was honest with me about my reading. "It was a little fast," he said. Josh was right. Don't tell him, but Josh is always right when it comes to things like that. Josh and I had a lot of whiskey gingers that were mostly ginger.

I met my best internet friend. I knew her by her hair. I miss her. She kissed my tattoos and then she made other people kiss my tattoos. Once upon a time, I internet joked about this one guy kissing my tattoos. When this guy was around, Josh would poke me and say, "There he is," and I would just look the other way like it didn't even matter. My one regret, I guess.

Chicago doesn't have better food than Kansas City. Josh and I ate a lot of OK food. We took the train and the bus and we went all over trying to eat the best of the best as determined by food critics. The stand out was this torta place, XOCO. The flavors, y'all. In every other way, Kansas City has Chicago beat.

People kept telling me I didn't look like my online pictures. I was taller or nicer or hotter, depending. Thank you, everyone. You were hotter, too. You all had very nice hands.