Last weekend, the kids and I went to Tahoe to visit my parents and my sister’s family. It’s a short drive, about an hour and a half. The kids sit on their phones the entire time, and only speak when my podcast is bleeding into the audio from the string of 10,000 short videos they consume.
As the car snaked up the mountain, we entered a butterfly migration; we drove through hundreds of butterflies that met by my windshield at 60 miles per hour. I felt terrible, but figured the only way to go was forward; eventually, this mass murder would come to an end. Time dilated, as in most moments of crisis, and with every butterfly that bounced from my windshield, I screeched in horror.
It stayed with me. Just like the Sackler family, when I woke up the next day and looked at my coffee, I wondered how much damage was done. At least fifty butterfly effects were eliminated; all those chains of events now cease to exist.
Along with the kids and dog, I brought a basket of dirty laundry and a box of clothes that don’t fit. My dryer broke the day before, and I figured I’d take advantage of my parents' laundry machine as I gnawed on my thumbnail, thinking of the looming financial hit to replace this very necessary machine.
The box of clothes was mostly all jeans; the best jeans, an amazing collection I gathered while working part-time at Madewell. I started working there shortly after getting divorced because I had the time and wanted the discount. I was teaching at two other places, and Madewell became my third job. The thing about having three jobs is that there is absolutely no time to lie around and eat cheese and crackers while watching a three-part docuseries about a killer grandma. I was thin, and I bought a bunch of jeans for that very thin version of myself.
Whitney Cummings said in her podcast with Kathy Griffin that she got rid of all her jeans from when she had an eating disorder because it was part of her healing. With my older sister’s encouragement, I decided to do the same. Even though I didn’t have an eating disorder, I was tired of looking at these jeans. Occasionally, I’d pull them out when I was feeling trim, but would come to the same stuck-at-the-bottom-of-the-butt conclusion. I probably won't go back to filling my free time with a fabulous retail job where I get to chat and look at beautiful clothes. So my little sister was the lucky recipient of my healing.
She must have thought I was crazy as I pulled each pair out and gave her all the highlights as to why they are so amazing. I held back tears when I pulled out my favorite pair, the High-Rise Slim Boyjean. A jean that does not exist anymore in the Madewell jean universe, but has this amazing way of lengthening legs and making the butt look like it’s straight from a successful BBL surgery.
My sister is supposed to take her daughters on a big Girl Scout camping trip. My mom told me my sister has anxiety about the trip because she is sharing a cabin with a bunch of people, and she worries about farting in her sleep. I totally understand, since I have a similar situation looming.
Last month, I was very surprised to read an email from a well-known summer writers’ workshop. I apply to writers' programs a couple of times a year, and usually forget about it until I read the rejection email a few months later. However, this time, it was an acceptance email.
The accommodations available ranged from a single bedroom in a house to sharing bunk beds in a condo. I only checked the single room accommodations. They were double the price, but this is what credit cards are for: accommodations and dryers.
In the text box asking for any additional information, I was very clear: I can snore the roof off a house. I have been told, at least. I’m not bothered by other people’s snoring; it sounds almost like ocean waves, but I’m in the minority. From what I can gather on TV shows, when someone sleeps next to a snoring person, they generally toss and turn, punching their pillow, then smothering themselves with the pillow, followed by a psychotic look, where they decide to smother the poor, innocent snoring person.
I can’t risk my life by sharing a room with a stranger who can’t handle snoring. Plus, I don’t fart in my sleep, I fart when I’m awake, and I don’t want to share a room with someone because I won’t be able to fart, and by the end of the week, I’ll be as inflated as a balloon. Even my new jeans won’t fit.
I applied for the writers’ workshop in January. I’ve spent years on a screenplay, and its life has been small, passed around to individuals who like it, but don’t salivate at its potential. Since I put all this time into it, and maybe thirty people have read it, I decided to write it as a novel. A screenplay is like a hundred-page, incredibly detailed book outline. I was like Stephen King on his cocaine-fueled weekend writing Misery, but it took me a week and a lot of coffee, cheese, and crackers.
The manuscript is 30,000 words, so it’s too short to be a novel, but I’ll be able to fatten it up. The program director emailed me asking about a second manuscript. The manuscript I applied to the program with is for one-on-one sessions with real editors, but a second manuscript is for the daily small-group workshop.
“Ummm, but I’ve only written one book.” I should have said. But I’m on my summer schedule. I can take another feature script that has only been seen by a small group of people and write it as a novel.
After I told my older sister that I shed the weight of my amazing jean collection. She kindly said, “You’re going on summer, you’ll probably be able to fit back in them soon.”
I happily disagreed. “Lacey, if I want to wear size 25 jeans again, it will have to be my number one priority. It will have to be all I think or care about. I have to write a novel. So the jeans, no matter how perfect they are, really aren’t that important.”
Then Lacey told me about an episode of Maury Povich she watched over thirty years ago, about a woman who was raped by a ghost. She said it popped back in her head recently, and she called my mom, who was out with her twin sister. When Lacey told them about the episode, my Aunt Donna said, “I saw that episode too.”
Both of them were scarred by this horrific episode of daytime TV, and decades later came face to face with it, but their shared experience alleviated their fear of ghost fuckers.
Her traumatic story reminded me that I was a butterfly murderer. I didn’t say anything. I know, with time, I’ll figure out how to shed that baggage or pass it off to someone else.
Because now, before I start snoring the roof off the house, in addition to thinking about the novel I’m writing, I’ll also think about this episode of Maury Povich that I never even saw.
