Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

When summer began, it came in with a series of blows destroying the crops in their wake.  Looking back it paints like a series of farm stands, succulent and fruitful from afar but upon closer examination, the wells of fruit have wilted and rotted under the sun's eye waiting for the next unsuspecting onlooker.  Well, technically that was the end of spring and beginning of the upcoming season.  A couple of months later I'm waking up front the jolts, gasping for air, and--as usual--looking at the changes, carnage, and circus of it all. The summer began with learning a cousin died . . . Another one this year.  This one, one I was fairly close to for years and years died at 49 . . . On his bathroom floor, I hear.  Lessons of the past I don't have it in me to go into, he and I parted angry ways half a decade ago.  Addictions and misgivings left a lot of the be said.  A lot to be desired.  Damage was done, to everyone and especially me, and with h...

As life goes, last summer I found myself looking at the heartland's horizon, and this summer I'll be duplicating and extending some of these travels.  And with that, I have thoughts.   Yes, I was in the American Midwest, rolling my economical car forward, with iTunes blaring, and some flavored water at my side.   In a poetic manner of speaking, I woke up and found myself on the road.   Though, as we all know, the realities of life don't afford for that.   Instead, I had spent weeks planning, crafting ideas in the wee hours of insomnia on my Pinterest boards, and I had prepped my car.   I had ample data for my GPS, I had a cooler with bottled water and a couple of sandwiches, I had carrot sticks, and I had a somewhat curated playlist.   What that came down to was my asking friends for road trip songs and adding their suggestions to my questionable music library.   I planned to stop and see some old friends, from college and before, but as...

Last month, as it really has been a month now, I took my annual voyage to the summer camp for nerds, AKA the College Board's read of the AP US History exams.  We've been in Louisville, KY for my tenure, which isn't all bad.  I lived in Kentucky twice, got my bachelor's there, and while it is not my longest place of residence it is the place that captured my soul for homesickness boughts and markers of oddly made binaries of identity.  In blunt laymen's terms, I'm not from the Bluegrass but parts of me are.  So, amid the mass of grading--and OMG there are so many essays in seven days--I meet up with some old friends from years gone by.  And . . . I partake in local cuisines, like Ale-8 and bourbon.  We all know that I have a long love of bourbon . . .  That being said, this year's view derives from the Marriott . . . as I wasn't at the Galt.  Did I mind? Eh, ya know . . . those little free apps and bourbon mixers at 5 everyday went a long...

So I'm like a whole freaking week late on posting the final Me Made May roundup.  Well . . . I was in Kentucky on work, and I won't apologize for having a beer after work and usually being too tired to stay up past 10:30.  Yes, lame.  Yes, true.  Yes, there were an hour of student and work emails too . . . nearly every night. But, for your viewing pleasure: Wednesday, a day of browns. An Amy Butler Barcelona, my new boat shows, a now toooo large cardi, and my insomnia bag (AKA Multi Tasker Tote from Anna Maria Horner). Of course,  I was still in NYC here . . . It was chilly, hence the cardi.  Guess where the cardi is now? In the growing Goodwill bin. Thursday . . . the day to finish packing what wasn't done the day before, remember the tablet and Advil (the sunscreen for kids who go to summer camp for nerds), and try to sleep. {There's no photo as my phone shit the bed a day or so later, and . . . this one isn't on my Google+ backup (meanin...

I find myself eating pickles and peanut butter, as I’ve had a hankering for days.  No, I am not pregnant.  Far from it.  Instead, pickles and peanut butter are an old staple I picked up from my days in the borderlands of Dixie, which is really just Dixie under a defensive name, in Kentucky.  More so, the Maysville kids generally all know the simple joys of pickles and peanut butter.  That town, a sleepy little one of about 9,000 along the Ohio River in northern Kentucky, has resonated in my mind’s eyes for nearly twenty years now.  We lived there for two years of high school, but those two years—and not withstanding the total of nine states I’ve lived in—seemed to have shaped and marked me the most.  Perhaps it was that I was in high school, perhaps it was that the kids did well on bringing me into the many folds, clichés, and complexities of Maysville.  Perhaps . . . perhaps it was just the natural course of life, and the trials of existenc...

Ions ago, in the mysterious and often booze laden days of undergrad, a tradition was started.  A simple tradition, but one that I have held stead fast to in the years since.  Every year on Kentucky Derby Day I consume Chinese food and bourbon.  Kentucky bourbon, Makers Mark, to be more pointed.  You might balk, but you should remember that grease and bourbon are a food group.  I assure you that the US Surgeon General is aware of this food group but has just fallen short of making it an official category of edible consumption.  None-the-less, in my yearly tradition--which I'm not sure if the roommates even remember or bother with anymore, I ate greasy Chinese and drank Makers.  The flavors along my mouth's taste buds are a subject for another day, but the act of consuming a memory, partaking in a self-imposed tradition, and partaking in a brief moment of sports for which I never watch and have no desire to engage (meaning little outside of my realm of e...