I’m Just Laura

It wasn’t for nothing that my alma mater consistently ranked highest in U.S. News & World Report’s survey of the best colleges for quality of life. The school was located in Southern California, where we could lay out by the manicured pool in January. A convivial, clever student body supported intelligent discourse among peers. And, most importantly, the administration placated us with all kinds of free booze.

Free. Booze. As in, the governing body of middle-aged adults would provide kegs for parties, so long as everyone had equal access to the goods and the party-throwers pretended to check IDs. Those kegs were purchased with the student body fees paid so faithfully by my parents and the parents of my friends, which was a neat trick. It’s nice to think that my basically tee-totaling mother had a hand in ensuring that Keystone Light was flowing on the reg. And even though Keystone Light is an admittedly shitty beer, it was free and, therefore, college life was good. Real good.

By senior year, I wrongly took free alcohol for granted, supplementing Keystone Light with my own purchases and – gasp – even skipping a party now and then to do something like watch a movie or play chess because I was (slash am) a big huge loser. This is extremely regrettable now that I find myself coughing up at least dozens of dollars every weekend to get my drink on.

But, thankfully, freshman year, I had yet to turn my back on free liquor. And still enamored of the idea of being able to drink without worrying about running from the cops or – worse – getting caught by my parents, I was game for just about any situation that promised access to adult beverages.

Including Latin poetry.

“It’s mostly a wine and cheese tasting,” Meredith had said convincingly, sitting on my dorm-room bed, kicking her feet innocently against the dresser I’d shoved underneath. “But the classics department is hosting it, so there might be a little Latin poetry reading, too. But optional. Mostly just drinking.”

Emily and I didn’t need much persuasion. The promise of free wine was all it took for us to immediately cancel all other plans, real or tentative. And as for poetry? Well, it’d be a much needed cultural evening, on par with taking the bus into Los Angeles to see an opera or driving down to Venice Beach or, uh, looking at the dinosaur bones at the La Brea tar pits.

Without a second thought, we cloaked ourselves in outfits of black, put on dark lipstick and marched over to the cold stone building at the nearby women’s college where the event was taking place.

High on the fresh evening air and cheeks pink with youthful enthusiasm, we pulled open the door to the hosting lounge with a flourish – and stopped dead in our tracks.

Our eyes flicked to the wine table, a festive line-up of bottles, not a one of which had yet been opened. This was immediately both unexpected and upsetting, but it didn’t become excruciating until we noticed the goings on in the room: About seven people were gathered in a circle – two of them teachers — nodding in pensive, silent thought. And a fellow college student clutched a book, voice crawling over so, so many words, including, most prominently, “his swollen, pulsating member.” WHAT?

Turns out, by “Latin poetry, ” Meredith had meant “erotic Latin elegy.” Group reading. With liberal arts teachers that were, euphemistically, getting on in years, and lacked both sex appeal and senses of humor. Which made me want to pull up a chair and join the group about as much as I’d like to sit down and look at raunchy anime porn with my four foot five inch 85-year-old grandma who calls “underwear” “delicates.”

We should have left. Immediately. But free wine prevailed, and biting our cheeks to keep from snickering, we folded into the circle as best we could, avoiding each other’s eyes as the girl tasked with the horrendous job of reading aloud finished the piece about intimate encounters, Julius Caesar-style.

“Mmm,” said one of the teachers, glasses perched on her beak, when it finally ended. “And what do you think that meant? What is this a metaphor for?”

Someone launched into an explanation. “Well, the phallic member clearly…”

A laugh slipped from between my teeth, despite my purple-faced attempt to silence myself, which caused Bitter Wench, Ph.D., who was tasked with leading this terrible club, to stare me down icily.

“You girls,” she said. “Introduce yourselves.”

“I’m Meredith, and I’m a classics major,” our friend piped up quickly, trying to mitigate our lack of maturity and justify our presence.

Emily and I looked at each other. “I’m Emily, and I’m a friend of classics majors. “ said Emily. I giggled.

“I’m Laura, and I’m a friend of classics majors, too.” This response can be loosely translated to “we’ve come for the booze,” a fact that didn’t exactly slip the professor’s notice. And she fixed us with a look that revealed quite clearly that she was rejoicing silently in her ability to punish us humiliatingly while doing nothing actually disciplinary. This was a life lesson, by god, and she was about to ensure that we’d forever think twice before accepting free alcohol without question.

“Oh, good, good,” she said, a cruel smile dancing faintly across her lips. “Well, Laura, I think you should read next.”

Her quivering hand extended, holding the volume of filthy stories, pages teeming with accounts of glory holes, orgies and graphic descriptions of sexual maneuvers I’d never even dreamt existed. I took it, timidly, and, voice cracking like a pubescent boy, began to read.

My tale was a play-by-play description of anal sex, replete with animalistic imagery. I think there may have been an eagle involved. Possibly also a mouse.

Aware of Emily and Meredith’s silent convulsions, I read steadily and in one breath, not daring to suck in more air, not daring to lift my eyes from the page. My voice broke over allusions to defecation and penetration and waves of sweet, sweet prostate-related glory, but, goddammit, I would not lose. Because this was a silent contest, me versus the classics wench, winner take wine. Yellowtail, probably. Maybe two-buck Chuck.

Miraculously, I made it through. And so did Emily, who read next. In fact, in our momentous effort to cross the booze-filled finish line, we’d managed to get ourselves under control, and we were feeling pretty good about it. Because we were liberated college women, and dirty, dirty sex was a humanistic urge, about which there is absolutely nothing funny.

And then Lily raised her hand and ruined everything.

She was clothed in a flowing flowery skirt and a pair of birkenstocks, her close-cropped hair unkempt, and her entire being radiating the sort of earthly love that suggests she partook in Wiccan ceremonies and took a variety of lovers, man and woman, plant and animal.

“I was inspired to set this next elegy to music,” she lilted, the scent of homemade hemp granola rolling off her tongue and filling the air.

Without further ado, she procured an acoustic guitar as if from thin air and began strumming.

“Venus has contrived your sleeping secretly with the boy
while he fears, and ceaselessly entwines your tender breasts,
giving wet kisses with panting breath and writhing tongues,
and printing marks on his neck with your teeth.”

Chuckling was not appropriate. In fact, even smiling was not recommended. A girl was really putting herself out there, singing a gingerly worded Latin elegy to a melody line she’d composed, and more pensive nodding was the only acceptable response. And despite my attempt to think only of terrible, terrible things, like hideous war crimes and puppy killers and the time in second grade when I wet my black jeans, didn’t tell anyone and was then forced to sit in the damp denim for hours, I was clutching my sides, gasping for breath, tears rolling down my cheeks from unstoppable, uncontrollable heaving laughter.

I didn’t need to spot the angry glares from the poetry aficionados or the bulging neck veins of the stern professor to tell me what was going to happen next.

We left immediately, apologetically and, most unfortunately, soberly.

Lesson most definitely learned.

In my own post-college existence, I’ve thus far failed to reach any major milestone typical to the decade of life known as “my 20s.” I don’t own a home, a husband or a child. I’m about to sell my terrible car for parts and rely completely on a rental system because I’m irresponsible with property. And while I’m absolutely certain I’ve settled into what will ultimately be my career, I still have moments of paralyzing doubt when I think about the fact that at the peak of my chosen profession, I’ll likely make less than my entry-level salary in consulting. (But hey, I’ll have fun doing it, so that’s what counts, right? Right. Wait, seriously, right?)

Unfortunately, my friends haven’t stalled on the life goal path in quite the same way, and navigating the major events of THEIR lives has resulted in a series of glorious, self-affirming, tear-jerking teaching moments. And by that I obviously mean a series of moments in which it dawns on me that I am actually a huge ass hole. For instance: it’s not okay to show up to a housewarming party empty-handed; it’s also not okay to shatter your obligatory bottle of gift wine on the way to the door and hand the host the jagged bits of glass as a consolation prize. Unless you’re offering words of encouragement (like, say, “You look so skinny in that! Absolutely flat-stomached! Eat something for god’s sake!”), your role as a bridesmaid during wedding dress fittings is to be seen and not heard – and you definitely shouldn’t start parading around the store in a veil, acting out scenes from Fiddler on the Roof and/or Mrs. Doubtfire. And, most importantly, if you’re invited to a wedding shower, you are required to get the happy couple two presents: one for opening purposes during the sunny backyard brunch, and the other shipped from a store of the couple’s choosing to fill their newly matrimonial home. Um, so, to all of my married friends who just received a wedding shower gift and not an actual gift in celebration of your nuptials, I’M SORRY. I’ll make it up to you on your fifth anniversary, which many of you are rapidly approaching. Probably with enough booze to make you remember your glory days, however briefly, before you pass out and wake up with the kind of hangover you couldn’t even imagine during your glory days.

My newest minefield of proper etiquette, though, is the baby shower. Love – or whispers of procreation — must have been in the air last fall, because I know quite a few lovely ladies who went and got themselves knocked up (by their husbands, though I wish I had a more scandalous situation about which to gossip), and now each of these women is nesting, preparing for the entrance of a brand new nugget of joy into her life. In anticipation, their friends and loved ones are throwing parties, complete with cake, finger sandwiches, artfully arranged fruit trays and mountains of gifts.

I didn’t foresee the treacherous nature of this kind of party. I’m generally fairly adept in brunch-time social situations, twisting a delicate flute of sparkling wine with bobbing raspberries between my fingertips, laughing at jokes, telling stories, digging into the personal histories of my fellow attendees (or, uh, being charmingly awkward until someone takes pity on me). But a baby shower is a whole different animal. A gross animal in which the mothers in the room tell the mother-to-be all kinds of disgusting facts about birth, breast feeding, rashes, barf and ointment (have I mentioned I hate the word ointment?) while the mother-to-be gives a minute-by-minute play-by-play of the status of the alien living inside of her. I’ve been lucky enough to escape rumored activities like baby food tasting, scrapbooking and onesie-making, but guessing the circumference of the pregnant lady’s belly by cutting a length of string seems to be a popular diversion to which I’ve yet to warm up — mostly because my hyper-competitive nature makes me yell things like “Come ON” when I lose, and I’m left with my depressing strand of yarn, FAR too long to fit around my friend’s bulging belly, but way too short to make it all the way around my baby-free waist. Upsetting.

But those issues aside, at some point during my very first baby shower of the season, I realized I was ill-equipped to give gifts for these momentous occasions.

Running 45 minutes late (by the way, “fashionably late” doesn’t apply when you’re dealing with a gaggle of child-bearing women), I scanned the baby registry of the woman of honor – who happened to be my boyfriend’s sister-in-law – and found just odds and ends left. Reasoning (wrongly) that a gift card would be more practical than, say, a sad little package of bottle nipples and a box full of diapers, I half-jogged to the register and made my purchase. But even I felt a little wrong about just handing the new mom a card and calling it a day, so I cast around for some sort of accoutrement to fill out the present. And obviously, I defaulted to what I know best: alcohol.

I know! I thought. I’ll get her a luxurious bottle of Champagne so she and her husband can toast the growth of their family in the delivery room in style! Man, I just have the best ideas ever!

I made a particularly excellent selection, patted myself on the back for my quick thinking and generosity, tossed my gift in the passenger seat and sped off to the party.

This festive event was held in a veritable compound, a property that had an indoor swimming pool, guest house and décor straight out of a lifestyle magazine – and an army of women ready for close-ups in said lifestyle magazine, being that they were cloaked in the spring’s newest fashion, impossibly thin (and most of them had biological children!), immaculately made-up and well-versed on what you buy a stylish new mom. My armpits were sweaty, and I hadn’t even had coffee yet.

I apologized profusely for my egregiously late entrance, tucking my gift into an empty spot among massive ribbon-adorned packages, stomach turning slightly at the sight of all those baby-oriented – and very alcohol-free – endowments. Luckily, there were flowing mimosas on hand to quell my nerves. Maybe things weren’t so bad, after all.

After everyone had their fill of brie and brioche, we took our seats in the parlor to watch the gift-opening, cooing as the new parent delicately unwrapped flowered baby clothing, pink accessories, practical things like baby monitors and burp cloths and baby bjorns, all while my lonely card and bottle of Champagne sat forlornly in a dark corner, waiting for its rightful place as last pathetic gift. Sometime during this period, it dawned on me that maybe alcohol is not the best thing to bring for someone who is supposed to lay off the sauce during fetal development and nursing. I just expected everyone would cheat a little on that plan for celebratory purposes. But as sheet of pink tissue paper after sheet of pink tissue paper floated softly to the pristine carpet, I began to realize I was wrong. Very, very wrong. And then the caffeine and alcohol kicked in, and a sweaty sheen spread across my worry-stitched brow.

Once all the packages had been unwrapped, the baby shower bridesmaid – the girl tasked with noting all the thoughtful souvenirs on an expensive sheet of paper – announced that we were finished. And still my bottle sat. I wrestled with what to say. Perhaps I should just ignore the fact that my contribution had been overlooked, letting someone discover it later, long after I’d left, when I didn’t face public humiliation in front of perfectly groomed women. But then again, was everyone staring at me, thinking I was the idiot who’d showed up empty-handed? It was a real battle of wills, lasting the longest 45 seconds of my life. And then the newly gift-laden mommy noticed my present.

“Oh, one more,” she said, glancing at the Champagne and the card. “Thanks.”

“I figured you’d want something for the delivery room,” I stammered. Polite smiles all around, but no positive reinforcement of which to speak.

The baby shower bridesmaid noted “gift card” next to my name, tastefully ignoring my faux pas by not documenting it. And I made a swift exit, bidding adieu to magazine life before I broke something expensive out of nervousness.

Somehow, even my boyfriend knew my action wasn’t appropriate. “You might as well have gotten her cigarettes and cocaine,” he quipped. I think I laughed, but I was crying salty, salty tears of misery on the inside.

If I’ve learned one thing in my haphazard life journey, though, it’s to learn from your mistakes and pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try again. So two weeks later, when I had another nugget shower to attend, I was determined not to repeat my glaring error.

This time, I was one of the baby shower bridesmaids so I met the mom-to-be and another friend for a pedicure beforehand, budgeting in plenty of time to run over and buy a more appropriate gift between the girly outing and the festivities. But not wanting to seem like I’d yet to purchase anything, I greeted my glowing friend with a big old, “I can’t wait to give you your gift! And it’s not even wine!”

“Yeah,” she said. “I thought, Laura’s really going to have to go out of her comfort zone on this one since she can’t bring alcohol.”

“Oh my god, yeah, who would do THAT?” I answered a little too fast, switching my nail polish color choice from black to red so as to more appropriately fit in.

We laughed, we joked, we watched domestic shows on Food Network and then, feet freshly de-calloused, I sped over to Target and printed out my friend’s entire registry, in power-shop mode for a perfect gift. And by god, I crafted a perfect gift, a glorious pink basket of goodies, an array of knick knacks nested in some shredded green paper (green was her other shower color, after all), complete with card and gift receipt. And I put the finishing touches on my parcel — wrapping the display in cellophane tied with a wispy pink bow — in time to show up a few minutes early and help perfect the pitchers of lemonade and yogurt parfait bar. I was on top of the whole world of imminent birth, god dammit, and nothing was going to slow my personal growth.

Feeling much more confident and much less sweaty, I listened, smiling, to baby-related horror stories, composing my face in a way that hid my internal wincing at phrases like “sore nipples” and “dilated cervix” (phrases, by the way, that are TOTALLY OFF LIMITS in my presence should I ever decide to have kids of my own).

But my inner strength paid off. Because when it came time to write down my own contribution to the party, I noted, in beautiful font-like script as everyone ooh-ed and ah-ed, “Laura: tasteful nugget gift basket, replete with bath goods, nursery fresheners and a soft nugget blanket. Color: pink. Gift receipt enclosed.”

Tasteful gift basket

Baby steps, kids. Baby steps. And in the immortal words of Bonnie Raitt, I will not be broken.

Lindsay and I got a new roommate about a week ago. Or I should say, LINDSAY got a new roommate, because she did 100% of the work to fill the room that the fairly absent man who paid rent on time vacated. In fact, our new roommate had lived here for a full week and I had never even laid eyes on him (which is kind of what happened with the old roommate; I actually ran into him on the street once, and it took me about half an hour to place where I knew him from– oh yeah, I live with that guy).

Luckily, that got remedied today, when we finally ran into each other in our living room. He strolled in wearing his hospital scrubs, fresh off a shift of saving lives and generally making the world a better place. I rolled off my place on the couch where I’d been napping for the last two hours, grunted an introduction, and rushed out the door, realizing I was late for happy hour (i.e. selfish consumption). We promised each other a later get-to-know-you chat, though, and I was looking forward to it.

He seems nice and charming. Also pretty manly, cuz I think he had a beard. And he dumped our biohazard on the porch and offered to take on the recycling, so, you know, generally, I like him already.

Interestingly, our chance meeting happened to coincide with my return to television after a five-year hiatus. I’d bribed Alexandra to come to Boulder by promising her we could watch Glee, a show which I previously knew nothing about, but involves high schoolers, a marginal plot line and a lot of singing and dancing.

I’m not sure if it was Jane Lynch’s saucy character and pithy lines, my secret love for epic drama and sexy dance moves, or the fact that this was an all Britney Spears episode—but I was immediately hooked, squealing in delight with every high note hit and hip thrust.

So what did I do after that? Oh, you know, what any rational human would do: marched up to my room and watched about five more episodes, cackling at the top of my lungs and singing along with the songs I knew.

And then I heard a noise in the hallway and froze. I immediately hit mute and dropped to all fours, creeping along my wall and peering out my (already open) door. Sure enough, new roommate was back, just hanging out in his room with HIS door open, hearing every gasp, giggle and sung line uttered in response to an EXTREMELY guilty TV show. On the night of our very first social interaction. On the night of my very first experience with the show. Doesn’t matter. Until we move out of the same residence, he is going to know me as his roommate that likes Glee. And Showtunes. And probably pop music, Juicy track suits and acrylic nails.

I will be dressing in black and playing nothing but very alternative music at full volume for the next week. Please send recommendations as I have nothing suitable.

Semi-related, I also tried to order a Mike’s Hard Lemonade today, only to be laughed at by a college girl in booty shorts who thought I was joking. It’s possible that I have a personality-altering brain tumor.

It’s time to close the book on a big old chapter of life, kids. On Wednesday, I turned in my last sheath of credit card receipts, tossed one more lovingly chiding comment to the chefs in the kitchen, gave a big juicy kiss on the lips to my regulars (metaphorically, people, no sexual harassment panda) and ambled on out the door and into the sunset (and by sunset I obviously mean hordes of bar patrons, embracing the final few days in Boulder without college students by getting drunk and acting like college students).

After one year and three months (almost exactly), I am no longer anyone’s friendly server, backwaiter, expediter, barback, or any other position in the front of the house of a restaurant. I do not work nights (sort of… shameless self pitch: read my restaurant reviews and blogposts here). I have weekends free.

My newfound freedom is terrifying. I’d entirely forgotten what it feels like to be part of a Friday night end-of-work-week shitshow, for example. Good thing it’s like riding a bike. This girl’s a fast re-learner.

You may recall that the past year has been marked with a number of decisions to get my shit together, having thoroughly scattered said shit to the wind after quitting my adult New York City consulting job to have some fun for awhile. But nothing says “clean up your act” like having a grown-up schedule and grown-up responsibilities, so my moment arrived, at last, last weekend. I tidied my room with an OCD eye, extracted the skis from my car that had been there since February, bought new furniture, got an oil change, bought a bedskirt, got a haircut and shaved my private parts. Don’t stop me now.

Lindsay also recently became a 9-to-5-er, so our apartment has undergone a transformation. The ugly carpets and cabinets may still exist, but real potted plants are supplanting fake ones, a dishrack supplanted a mangy towel, and most days, our house is tidy and kept. I should shed a tear for our dying childhood. Despite our best efforts to remain irresponsible and immature, we are becoming adults. Special.

We have a few items that are remnants of our carefree days of drinking until 4 am and sleeping until noon, though, and we’d like to auction them off as souvenirs. If you’re interested, please contact us with your best offer.

Exhibit A

Once upon a time, when we were but reckless youth, we liked to throw parties that carried the potential for shotgunning beers on the balcony. We’re not entirely certain how old this cluster of brewed beverages is— it likely pre-dates April–but you probably won’t perish if you drink one of these classy thirst-quenchers. I don’t know that I’d try to shotgun them, though. I’m no scientist, but I’d guess that Colorado’s spectrum of temperatures has some effect on carbonation that may result in hazardous conditions upon opening the can.

Exhibit B

Five months ago, our beloved roommate Paige moved out. We were very sad to see her go. She was very nice and very fun and she did a lot of the chores that Lindsay and I don’t like to do. Like take the recycling out. Before she moved, she insisted she was going to take our full tubs of plastic and glass down to the community recycling bins that exist a mere flight of steps away. We were adamant that she leave it. Really, it was my fault that it had piled up so high. I was the one who broke up with the boyfriend who used to take care of that particular duty. Still, we insisted that we would deal with the recycling. It is August. We still haven’t. We’ll probably institute some kind of bet or competition, loser gets to handle this mess, but fully recognizing that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, we’d like to offer it to you first.

Exhibit C

Let it be known that this garbage can of standing water is a vast improvement from the garbage can of half-empty keg that stood in its place from October 2009 – July 2010. However, with the nest of mosquitoes developing above this biohazard, the time has come to let our trusty capsule of fun go. If you can figure out how to get it out of our apartment without spilling a drop of water teeming with parasites on our floor, you can have it. Perhaps if you’re a composter this will serve a purpose (I don’t really know how composting works).

I have solved my sweaty armpit problem.

But before I get to that, I would like to thank all of you who suggested Botox as a potential solution. Upon hearing about that magical little fix, I figured I must have missed something in my female education, and I headed on down to Pharamaca, Boulder’s hippie pharmacy, in search of the stuff.

See, when you said Botox, I thought you were talking about a cream or powder or lotion chock full of botulism that I could spread across my pits on a daily basis, plugging my sweaty pores and allowing me to continue on with my post-pubescent life. I never dreamed that you actually meant the procedure, complete with needles and doctors and thousands of dollars.

So when I got to Pharmaca, I stood ashamedly in the deodorant aisle, perusing the natural products made by Tom’s and Organic Glen and Pangea, with nary a Botox cream in sight. Heart sinking, I became acutely aware that I was going to have to ask for help, further bruising my fragile ego by making the attractive lone-working male aware of my overactive glands.

I approached the counter while avoiding eye contact.

“Um, hi,” I whispered. “Um, do you have, um, botox?”

“WHAT?” yelled my attractive male helper. “WHAT? WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?”

I refused to raise my voice. “Um, um, botox? For, um, the pits? The, um, the armpits?”

He was clearly confused. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Isn’t botox an injection?”

“Um, yeah, but I think it comes in cream form for people with sweaty armpits,” I said, blushing furiously, moisture pouring forth from aforementioned crevices.

“Yeah, I don’t know what you’re looking for. You can ask at the pharmacy, though.”

Which I did. Only to be informed that you people actually mean BOTOX INJECTIONS. What the hell? How is that a sustainable solution for my needs?

It’s coo, though, I’ve solved my problem. I needed deodorant one night because I forgot to bring it to a, um, sleepover party, and I knew my Degree extra-strength wasn’t going to make me smell like a super cute girl all night. Which was important, given all the, uh, hair braiding and pillow fighting I was about to do.

Anywho, I stopped by a real grocery store—as in King Soopers instead of Whole Foods, which is the only grocery store that exists in Boulder, CO—and I was delighted to find that this place still sold products full of aluminum alloys and processed chemicals and a number of other scientific innovations that will probably someday cause me to die an untimely and tragic death.

And lo and behold, Secret Clinical Strength Deodorant. Miraculous. I bought a tube instantly, and slicked on a layer so thick I practically needed a trowel to spread the stuff out.

And guess what? My armpits stayed totally dry through all the, uh, pillow fighting! And later at work, I kept lifting up my arm to show my co-workers my utter lack of a wet spot. The stuff’s like cement. It clogs up all my pores so well no flood will get through. Course, it also leaves weird white residue on everything, but whatev.

Bonus: I now like how my pits smell so much I can’t get my face out from underneath my arm.

Just got off the phone with MCI, who was investigating my phone number for a customer who was disputing its listing on her bill.

It was a little harrying, a man on the other side of the phone asking who owned the phone number, verifying my name about seven times and questioning me repeatedly as to whether or not I was the holder of the line.

“Who wants to know?” I finally asked, after I’d confirmed for the eighth time that my name was, in fact, Ms. Shunk.

“Ms. Shunk,” he said.

“WHAT? YES I’M MS. SHUNK,” I yelled exasperatedly.

“You’re Ms. Shunk?”

“YES THAT’S WHAT I KEEP SAYING.”

“Ms. Shunk wants to know,” he said, confusedly.

“WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT. I’M MS. SHUNK! ME! LAURA SHUNK! YOU ARE TALKING TO MS. SHUNK!”

“Laura Shunk” turned out to be the kicker. My investigator was my mother, who didn’t recognize the long-distance New York based cell phone number I’ve held since July of 2008 on her bill.  Our shared last name was what was tripping the poor fellow up.

Hi. Did you miss me?

I’m sorry. Things are happening in my life.

1. I’m writing food and restaurants for Denver’s Westword on a fairly regular basis. It seems more prudent, then, to post all my silly thoughts on my edible obsession in a forum dedicated to that very subject instead of tossing them out to the universe on my mixed-subject blog.

2. I’m dating someone, and I’m trying hard not to scare him off (by, uh, divulging all of my thoughts on the situation on this here public platform) since I think he’s kind of rad. Perhaps, if I succeed in not scaring him off, I will soon be able to write about him. So, you know, you can look forward to that.

Unfortunately, the combination of those factors kind of takes away a couple of my main sources of material, at least temporarily.

Luckily, I’m still awkward Laura, despite some of my friends’ best attempts to crush that out of me, and so there’s a choice story or two lurking in the past few weeks that may turn into written passages. Like when I opened the sparkling Prosecco at a table and sprayed everyone in a five-foot radius with a glowing arch of foam. Or when I acted like a child playing Trivial Pursuit, ending the game by throwing all the cards on the floor in the middle of a crowded bar.

But for now, I’d like to comment on something more timely: Memorial Day Weekend.

When I was a kid, I remember waiting for Memorial Day Weekend with great anticipation. There was usually a barbecue or two to be had. The pool opened for the summer. And it signified the home stretch of school, occurring just a week before I’d be free to toss all my schoolbooks aside and play outside for three blissful months. Uh, by “play outside” I obviously mean, “participate in my library’s summer reading program” in which I would competitively try to devour more stories than any other small child in my neighborhood. I would win, too, because most kids were more interested in fun than fictional characters.

Now, I like Memorial Day Weekend for Sunday Funday, chock full of binge-eating and daytime drinking. I had a busy social schedule this holiday weekend, and I found myself trying to juggle a wealth of potential activities with a mélange of foci, ranging from diner fried chicken to home-brewed lavender mead. Reasoning that I hadn’t seen my Denver-based friends in quite some time (hey, it’s hard to leave the bubble), I chose to attend the two parties to which I’d been invited down south.

The first was a do-over of the housewarming at which I made a grand entrance with half a bottle of wine. I brought beer this time, did not slip on the ice, and spent a couple of delightful hours eating meatballs with a toothpick and dissecting every pro and con of Eric’s new smoker, in which he prepared a large quantity of pulled pork over charcoal-induced flame. I made small talk with a couple of people, heard a fascinating description of a hand injury that included two gay men and a cowboy hat, and enjoyed my lawn chair in the sun, complete with a cup holder for a cold beverage. Solid start.

The second barbecue in which I was a participant was located in a stressful place for me: the country. Recently, my old friend, Brian, marched down the aisle in his cap and gown after finishing 8 years of undergraduate work. Such an occasion called for celebration (and copious amounts of alcohol), and there was no better place to hold the event than on his parents’ property in the middle of nowhere on a day when everyone wanted to get blitzed.

Upon my arrival, I was handed a glass of high-alcohol homemade strawberry wine and asked to evaluate the mix of ingredients in a pitcher of mojitos. Nothing like starting fast. Brian’s brother had prepared a cornucopia of delicious snacks, including marinated mushrooms and a jicama and papaya salad, and I found myself noshing, again, and charming an onslaught of new friends with pithy comments and aptly-timed jokes.

All was going swimmingly until the entire crew of adults decided to play whiffle ball.

Whiffle ball may not be a sport to you, but it’s a sport to me, and not a single fiber of my entire holiday-weekend being wanted to be involved with an activity that involves swinging a giant plastic bat at a giant plastic ball. I was willing to be the photographer. I was willing to be the cheerleader. I was willing to ice down a bucket of beers for post-game drinking. I was not willing to run. I was not willing to swing a bat. I was not willing to stand in the middle of a field of thistle in my mini-skirt and flip-flops only to try to chase down or—worse yet—catch something.

Brian was not to be deterred, picking me second for his team, and it was quickly apparent to everyone that he’d made a mistake. Much like my college friends would tell me to go long during flag football, I was quickly relegated to deep right field. When our team was up to bat, I was the only member of the line-up to strike out. And halfway through inning one, I cut my foot on a sharp piece of grass.

Panic set in as I experienced a flashback to my awkward phase, when I’d hunch sullenly with my arms crossed, not talking to anyone, any time my friends were enjoying a rousing team sport.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I muttered, slinking off to the house as quietly as I could. And I remained in the empty kitchen, posted up at the counter alone, nursing my injury and my pride, until dusk had firmly settled over the land and disbanded the game.

I couldn’t get my social swerve back after that, what with my shame over being whiffle ball’s least valuable player, and so I made my way back up to Boulder instead of spending the night as I’d planned. I regretted that choice in the morning when I upsettingly woke to 8 am karaoke entertaining the 15,000 runners participating in another Memorial Day Weekend classic, the Boulder Bolder, just below my bedroom window.

I won’t say this weekend’s totally lost its luster. After all, I’m not running a 10K with everyone else in town. Next year, though, I’ll plan better, perhaps with my own social gathering, full of apertifs and free of athleticism.

Fact: I wait tables.

Fact: 90% of the time, I like my job. Not in the way that I want to do this forever because it’s my calling like my job, but like it better than a lot of other things I’ve done like my job. I get paid to socialize. And I get paid more when I socialize well. 90% of the time, I socialize well, reading my tables with ease and delivering a satisfactory experience that facilitates a good time and good tips.

90% of the time. The other 10% of the time, I’m having the kind of night that makes me want to ball up my fists and stand in the middle of the dining room and scream at the top of my lungs. 10% of the time, I’m enduring an 8 hour stretch that has me desiring a good session of throwing glassware at a brick wall. 10% of the time, I’m contemplating striking a match and letting the entire establishment burn to the ground.

Last night was one of those nights.

I was thrown off of my game early by a group of bubbly blondes. Given our $10 martini prices and heavily European wine list, we’re not the kind of bar that typically caters to Boulder’s sizeable college population. I wasn’t exactly expecting, then, the entire senior faction of Alpha Chi Omega to reserve our large table for a birthday party.

I smelled them before I saw them. The heavy cloud of intermingling expensive perfume wafting up the stairs announced their 5:30 arrival, and then they emerged: straight crispy hair, orange skin, white teeth, and cleavage strapped into tight white shirts with strategically placed ruffles and lace.

“I hear if they explode they leave glitter and Diet Coke in their wake,” a co-worker whispered to me. The backwaiter was hovering. The kitchen staff offered tours. I handed our bartender a fresh bottle of Smirnoff and took stock of the lemons and limes. They were Boulder’s fabulous freshly 21-year-olds, and they were all mine.

Plastering on my shiniest smile and flipping my hair a few times to “empathize,” I interrupted discussions of which girl was the most “naturally smart” of the bunch (I thought about suggesting an inverse correlation to natural hue, be it skin tone or hair color, but I thought better of it) to round up a drink order (11 vodka sodas with limes, 3 with lemons) and dinner requests (the vegetables and hummus were the most popular, the lardo pizza the least).

In the end, though, they were the least of my worries, content to blather on without attention unless they required more alcohol. They weren’t eaters, so after every girl passed on a course two and then dessert, they were splitting their auto-gratted check 14 ways and ducking out for the rest of their night, which I expected would include young men with spiked hair and tight abs and a dramatic fight or two.

In the meantime, a couple of tables away, I had a different kind of gaggle of girls, this one comprised of brunettes wearing sweater sets and orange lipstick. One of them was incredibly confused about the concept of the wine flight. Is it 3 wines mixed in one glass? Or 3 3 oz. glasses of the same wine? Why wouldn’t we just pour 9 oz. of wine in one glass? The entire conversation was upsetting her, and she ended up ordering the wrong thing, sighing in surrender, plus a basket of that “bread stuff” (bread, actually).

As I navigated the confusing world of women, feeling like a masculine amazon amidst the feminine qualities that comprise the elusive mystique of girlishness, I found myself picking up some of the ladies’ traits on my table of old school businessmen. Brain filled with the vodka soda lime or lemon dilemma, I nailed the Balvenie one rock order, but butchered the man’s man’s Ketel One tonic with an orange request, serving instead Ketel One and soda with a lime (apparently my mind is not complex enough to grasp twists on classics). Luckily, their brains were equally addled by the cloud of scent that hung over the restaurant like a dense fog, so they spent a few moments winking in commiseration before tucking quietly into the garlic fries and calamari.

I couldn’t quite recover after a start like that. I’d been reduced to my elemental human form, romancing some tables and alienating others with the brutally honest inner personality that, like a phoenix, was trying to rise from the ashes. I was off, and I was comping a lot of desserts to make up for it.

Service is an art.  Unfortunately, last night, I was a cheap Mac photobooth imitation of Andy Warhol.

“We go under.”

I was staring at a locked door, expecting Tal to relinquish a key and remove the barrier that was the only thing separating me from a hidden greenhouse. No such luck, but there was a small gap between the bottom of the door and the ground, just large enough to allow an adult to army crawl on their belly into the inner cavern. It was raining and muddy, but all I could think about was produce. If I wanted the goods, I was going to have to get dirty.

I’m an exceptionally tall human and not particularly good at contorting my body in a nimble way that allows me to adeptly maneuver within small spaces. I hit my back a couple of times, giggling nervously as I struggled through the opening, and I emerged in a room full of disorganized garden tools and scattered seeds. Tal’s bag slid underneath the door, and then he was pulling himself through the space slightly more gracefully. He’d obviously done this before.

We still weren’t where I wanted to be, blocked by yet another door. Luckily, that door was opened by a code and required no further flexibility to overcome. As I brushed the dirt from my pants and hands, he opened the threshold and beckoned me forward.

Tal and I had bonded over a love for food, but we came at it from different perspectives: mine was meal bolstered by process, his was process bolstered by meal. Foaming-at-the-mouth Michael Pollan fanatic that I am, the sources mean less to me if dinner tastes like crap. Tal, on the other hand, couldn’t even get into dinner if he hadn’t been intimately connected to each part of the creation, ideally from planting to consumption. My happy place is New York City, where great restaurants are inexhaustible; Tal’s is a vast open garden of produce.

We met in the middle at the greenhouse.

After bouncing around the Boulder Farmers’ Market during an early Saturday morning in the season, Tal had casually mentioned his access to a wealth of edible plant life to supplement our purchases of eggs and mushrooms. I’d had a strong nostalgic moment, remembering lazy afternoons of munching on the strawberries plucked from my mother’s backyard garden, and fixated on gaining admittance to the secret spot. Excited about my newfound interest in playing in the dirt, my friend obliged, and that brought us to the greenhouse door. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that grazing, rather than admiration of photosynthetic processes, constituted my ultimate motivation.

The greenhouse inhabited a small space, not much bigger than a walk-in closet, but it was teeming with life. Tal was an excellent guide, pointing out the mint, basil, and arugula, and showing me where beans and tomatoes would soon blossom. He focused on filling a tray with goods to take home while I posted up on a wooden planter, chewing leaves that I pulled from within and using the camera on my phone to take pictures of vibrant purple flowers. Tiny slugs were snacking on the same food, gliding across the greenery slowly, leaving a trail of slime in their wake. I’m not the biggest fan of insects, so I tried not to look at them too much, unless I had to flick one aside to avoid swallowing it.

Once I’d had my fill of arugula, I moved on to chocolate mint, noshing on the leathery plants and thinking about the various ways I’d incorporate it into dessert (hi, homemade ice cream… hello, cupcake). In the end, though, I have to admit that I was fairly content to sit and eat it straight, no processing or sugar necessary.

Despite my desire to hear his wisdom on the function behind the form, Tal and I didn’t speak much in the greenhouse, choosing instead to confine ourselves in our own experiences. I’ve no doubt that he was thinking about soil type, climate, and how to make the systems better while relishing what the earth had produced, hording it and saving it for future consumption. I was content to lie there and eat, marveling at flavor, staring at the environment without questioning why it worked. The greenhouse had afforded us both a happy place, a food geekdom that satisfied both types of chow nerdiness.

True to form, when we crawled back under the door, Tal had an armful of lettuce, and I was full but empty-handed. My brain was racing, contemplating the opportunities an urban garden affords a restaurant or a cook: a salad comprised of elements lightly dressed, flashed crisp green beans, carrots picked and roasted to order. There’s no denying that produce that hasn’t spent time in a refrigerator simply tastes better, and that’s something in which I want to partake, ergo uber-local sourcing for menu creation is a concept I could get behind, though I’ll likely never plant my own window box garden.

There’s also a special kind of simple pleasure tied to the instant gratification of eating things straight from the ground. My greenhouse lunch was a deviation from what I usually pursue for sustenance, but on that rainy afternoon, there was nothing I would have preferred.

Meal meets process. Delightful.

Lindsay’s home after a two-week world tour.

This is good news for a lot of reasons. She’s one of my closest friends in Boulder. She has pithy insight on life. She cleans the kitchen on a regular basis.

I’m also super excited that I no longer have to take care of her plants.

When Lindsay skipped off to Argentina and Israel, she left me with one responsibility: I was to water her plants thrice, on the days marked on the kitchen calendar, plus or minus 24 hours. She made me put those dates in my phone. And she made it clear that she was fairly confident that her plants were going to die.

That was probably fair. I’m not good at the whole caring-for-living-things game. When I was a kid, my parents stopped letting me get hamsters because I’d never remember to clean the cage. My New York City roommates would send our cat to other peoples’ houses if I was going to be the only resident in town for a weekend. I once had a fish that committed suicide. And I’ve even killed bamboo. That takes some focused inattention.

I don’t like to let things die, so I choose not to keep living things in my home, filling the space that should be occupied by greenery and caged creatures with books or art or decorative kitchen utensils. This keeps my life full and my responsibilities empty.

Until other people trust me with their living things, and I have to overcompensate for my neglectful nature by obsessing over keeping those things alive. Ergo, Lindsay’s plants have been an epic source of stress in my life for the past 14 days.

When I soberly took on this momentous responsibility, I was determined to show my roommate that I am, in fact, a responsible adult by making sure her plants not only lived, but also flourished. I was steeled to make my home ideal for photosynthetic activities. I was ready to pour water and love into those little pots of dirt.

For the past 14 days, I’ve been watching those little green sources of life like a hawk. I’ve been checking their habitats for moisture with a gentle finger. I’ve been forgoing social activities to spend time with them. I’ve been whispering sweet nothings to their stalks, encouraging them to fulfill their potential as vibrant members of the ecosystem.

And then one morning, I noticed that one of them was turning a sickly shade of yellow. Not good.

I panicked and started frantically perusing websites and blogs of better gardeners to find a magical solution to turn the leaf back to green. Water wasn’t the problem; I’d been following Lindsay’s schedule to the minute. And given that this was a common houseplant, light didn’t seem to be the issue either. I’m not sophisticated enough to understand other causes of vegetal death, so after a frenzied 45 minutes, I was reduced to wallowing, berating myself for failing at my easy task and accepting the certainty that Lindsay would de-friend me for my inability to follow through on caring for her special flora.

Since that morning, it was just about keeping the little guy alive long enough for Lindsay to come home and fix the problem. I did an okay job. Besides the yellow leaf, the plants are, in fact, flourishing.

She’s home now. It’s a big weight off the old shoulders. And she wasn’t really that concerned with the yellow leaf, but maybe that’s because there was a plant that lives in a hidden corner of the living room that I forgot entirely:

The good news is I think he’s still gonna pull through. Apparently, houseplants are incredibly resilient.

And given my record, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad.