Hey, a story.

The next story I'd actually planned to tell you was about cat. But when I started writing it, I realized it was taking me an inordinate length of time to explain the logistics of how I'd ended up in that room with that cat, so I started hating writing it because it felt forced or flat or I was too lazy. It's really hard to tell at this point with all the vodka.

Anyway, this time, I'll tell you a story about seeing a famous person in a desperately ordinary place.

Allow me to back up a little, though. I used to have a bead obsession so crippling, I'd drive over an hour to little shop in an unnecessarily fancy little town in NJ named Lambertville - right over the bridge from New Hope, PA, which is an unnecessarily artsy little town - just to sit in front of dozens and dozens of tiny drawers and containers of loose beads, so I could open each one, pick the beads I wanted, count them not-so-carefully, place them into tiny bags, then carry them home with me with the sort of delight that can only be measured in units of squee.

I loved two other things about that town besides the bead shop - the coffee shop that served an iced mocha with cinnamon and ice cubes made out of espresso, and a pizzeria named Giuseppe's.

I'd usually drag someone with me on these excursions, not only because there was a really fricking stellar flea market on the way, but also because I hate eating pizza by myself like some sort of sad psychotic. This particular trip, I'd dragged along my ex-boyfriend, whom for these purposes, we'll call Johnny.

Johnny and I entered the pizzeria and walked past the tables to the back of Giuseppe's to order at the counter. Once we arrived there, my ex turned to me, his eyes wild.

"That's that actress!" he hissed into my face. I stared blankly. "I can't think of her name! She's famous! GO LOOK!" he continued.

I shrugged. "Get me a salad with french dressing on the side and a slice," I replied before walking almost all the way to the front of the restaurant to get the best view of the occupied tables.

I turned around, and tried as casually as possible to look at everyone there. I spotted her. I whipped my head back to Johnny, who was still at the counter, staring at me with "Fuck, right? FUCK!" eyeballs.

"Oh. my. GOD." I mouthed to him before I sat down to do my best work at not staring conspicuously. It was definitely her - no makeup, sitting there drinking out of a paper cup, at a pizzeria in the middle of NJ, but definitely her.

Johnny walked back to join me and said in the loudest whisper allowed by law to still be considered a whisper said, "That is so Sarah Jessica Parker!"

"Subtle." I thought. With that, SJP stood up, guzzled the rest of her drink and had a brief argument with her dining companions (looked to be parental) about who would carry the bags out of the restaurant before she waltzed out, never to cross my dirty, working class path again.

And as usual, the pizza was fucking awesome.

Story Time

Most of my friends have heard all of my stories, at least twice. What can ya do? Tell your stories to strangers.

Between the ages of three and nine, my parents and I lived with my grandparents - I had my own bedroom upstairs and my parents had a sort of studio apartment set up in the rec room, which was downstairs from the kitchen, upstairs from the basement and adjacent to the utility room/laundry - the bedroom portion of my parent's area also lead out into the back yard.  The reason I'm giving you this mind-numbing amount of information about my childhood home is to illustrate the fact that my parent's domain was a very high-traffic area, which definitely made my mother insane. Not only did she have to live with her in-laws, she had to have them traipsing around her turf, irking her fucking hillbilly liver.

I was an only child to very young parents until I was eleven years old, and I apparently annoyed the ever-loving shit out of my mother. She had this thing about me going in and out of the house - maybe I slammed the god damned door every single time, maybe she just needed a Vodnax (vodka with a Xanax chaser). Your guess is as good as mine.

One day, she decided that if I came in the god-fucking house one more Christly time, I was not going to be allowed back out again, I could just fucking hide and watch, too. Well, that would just not fucking do. I couldn't go back inside. Not now. I was ... standing in my back yard with a friend.

But then I had to pee - urgently - as it always is when you're like, seven years old. Not having the benefit of years of experience drinking underage in the woods, I didn't know how to properly navigate the intricacies of squatting in the grass to relieve myself - at least not in a sanitary fashion.

I'd pissed all over my shorts. My mother's head was going to explode. Fucking explode. I looked at my friend, she looked back. "What do I do?" I begged.  She shrugged and said simply, "clothespins?"

I ran to the clothesline, wet shorts clutched loosely between my thighs. I attached exactly two pins to the crotch of my shorts. The shorts I was still wearing. Nothing happened. I'm sure about that detail, I watched.  I whipped my head back up to look at my friend again, panic screaming from my expression. "It's not working!" I cried.

As I'm sure you've noted, as a child I wasn't the sparkling genius standing before you today. Anyway, that's your story. Begone with you! Mama needs a nap.