This is the start of an essay for a longer day, but it’s something that I’ve been thinking about. Mostly because of my last essay on Gwyneth.

“Well, it’s not like she’ll ever see it,” Mr. D said after I posted it.

“No, she might,” I replied. “She knows about the blog.”

An hour passed. I felt anxious about letting my bitch flag fly so flagrantly.

“Do you think she’d be offended,” I asked Mr. D.

“Probably.”

I thought about it for a minute more. “Well, it’s not like we’re good friends. Plus I ruin friendships all the time.”

Mr. D laughed. “And now you know why.”

Thathu, my grandfather, has been ready to “pack off and go” for decades, his morbid fascination with death just part of his 92-year-old charm.

Back when he was healthy enough to make the days-long flight from India to the US, he would sit on the sofa with our mutt beside him, pondering which of the two would “win the race.” Not sure what exactly he meant, but our dog died 11 years ago.

He likes to wrap up in a blanket and moan, “Yenna mo pandra da.” (“Something is happening to me.”)

His children describe him as a crafty old man who always gets his way. He has no qualms resorting to blackmail.

When he came to Minnesota to meet his youngest grandchild in 1991, he spent a few hours alone with the crying baby before threatening to jump in the lake.

He once screamed, “You’ve given me AIDS” in the middle of the hospital ward, as terrified patients wondered what the fuck was going on. My grandfather didn’t/doesn’t have AIDS.

He hates all religion and thinks Islam is a scam. Upon being introduced to his daughter’s pious Pakistani friends, he offered some unorthodox advice: “I tell my children, ‘You’ve left behind a shit place.’ But you’ve left behind a shittier place. Now that you’re in America, forget all this non-alcoholic nonsense you learned in Karachi.”

Thathu could toss ’em back.

Continue reading →

Thanks for checking out HighMom.com!

First, I just wanted to ask a quick favor. I am trying to keep this blog anonymous for as long as possible–and despite my level of inebriation, I really am not trying to get fired from my job. If you could refrain from using my name as it relates to this site, I would be eternally grateful. Thanks so very much.

Second, I am very curious to our experiment. Can you comment in this post and let me know how much was in your tip jar during the open bar portion of the event, and how much was in there when it switched to cash?

Also, is your manager a total dick? He struck me as one, but I could be mistaken.

Anyway, thanks again for the fantastic service! Hope you had a great rest of the day.

Warmest wishes,

HM

Why are writers and stoners my favorite people? Writers are very much in their own heads. Or the process of writing is about being inside your own head. How do you want to say something? How do you tell a particular story? To write is to think about an idea, over and over, to make it meaningful in some way, to parse out the significance. “Now that I understand the significance of everything that happened.”

For stoners—or at least for this particular stoner—I think weed is about very much the same thing. Moments just making sense. Unique insights and perspective.

Continue reading →

Scene: Bedtime, Little A snoring softly in the bed beside us.

Me: Are you excited about the election tomorrow? We’re going to have a new president!

Big A: I’m excited to not have school!

“I’m excited to not have work! I’m excited for a new president, too. But I’m also a little nervous. I really hope Hillary wins.”

“Do you H Donald Trump?”

“No, I don’t hate him. I’m just a little scared of him because he says things that angry people like to hear.”

Peach people, as Big A calls them. Lots of angry peach people who love their firearms a little too much and don’t necessarily believe that women’s rights are human rights or acknowledge that Black Lives Matter. People who want to go back in time to when America was great for their peach parents and grandparents, who didn’t have to compete for jobs against the wider world or the technology of the future. People whose love for the Second Amendment trumps their belief in the First, the very founding principles of America, the freedoms of speech, religion, press and peaceful assembly.

Yes, I am a bit scared. But hopeful, too.

That’s not, like, some self-help mantra. Or maybe it is.

I felt like I had some breakthrough on Monday. I was reading an interview with my favorite writer, Cheryl Strayed, whose advice to aspiring writers—“write like a motherfucker”—adorns an empty coffee mug I keep on my office desk. (Empty because I have a naturally over-caffeinated brain).

In the piece—a Q&A on how to write like a mofo—the interviewer mentions Neil Casey, an improv comedian I actually interviewed recently. (Irrelevant to my larger point, but isn’t it cool how sometimes it feels like we’re all connected?). Anyway, there’s a point in the article where the interviewer mentions an improv class she’s taking and says,

Someone recently asked [Will Hines, who runs Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York]: “Is improv a road to nowhere?” The question focused on Neil Casey, an improviser who was hired at Saturday Night Live after more than a decade of improvising. Hines responded: “When [Casey] was 20, . . . SNL was not on his mind. . .. If he never got a job, and now I can speak from experience, then he’d only have a life spent being happy behind him. . . . Spend your days in love with what you’re doing as much as fucking possible, and thank the stars for your chances to do that. Be nice and honest and brave and hopeful, and then let it go.” Don’t you love that?

Strayed responded, “I do. That’s exactly it.”

Spend your days in love with what you’re doing as much as fucking possible, and thank the stars for your chances to do that. Be nice and honest and brave and hopeful, and then let it go.

Damn, that spoke to me!

Continue reading →

There’s only one endorsement that would hold any weight this election season, and it would come from a man who knows more about ruthless ambition, moral ambiguity, corruption, greed and leadership than most in Washington. He is George RR Martin, supreme ruler of Westeros.

“When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die,” Martin wrote in the series’ first book. “There is no middle ground.” The words bear eerie forbearance to November 8, when a new ruler will ascend the Iron Throne of America.

On the one side, we have the real-life equivalent of Ramsey Bolton, the petulant bastard son whose power from a “very small” multi-million loan from his dad helped finance a campaign rooted in resentment and loathing; whose appeal resonates a little too closely with the pale-skinned masses, ready to build walls, defend guns and “knock the hell out ISIS.” Perhaps even flay some skin.

Then there’s Tyrion, the smartest person in the room, underestimated throughout her entire career, despised for her ambition, vilified for her networks, resented for her acumen. She is not the Daenerys Targaryen of the Sanders campaign. She would not liberate Meereen without a plan. She is slower, more methodical. Her secrecy serves as evidence of her low cunning, and she sleeps with the enemy in a way that repulses even her most ardent supporters. She may not be likable, but she gets the job done.

Meanwhile, the American Meereenese grow restless.

Continue reading →

I want a husband who wants me.

On a cerebral level, I know Mr. D does. But emotionally, physically… that’s where I’m starved. Potheads don’t have passion.

They’re kind and warm and funny, and make life a comfortable ride—you can be happy going nowhere, doing nothing, finding the joy in the monotony—and then all of a sudden feel broken and bereft.

Mimi and Sarge are probably the couple I most admire, possibly even more than my own parents, and my parents make a 35-year marriage look effortless. Mimi and Sarge have something special, too. They found forever in their second marriage, a blended Brady Bunch family of the 90s whose kids all turned out perfect (doctor, teacher, accountant, soldier), and who still, decades later, seem to have the fire.

Mr. D and I saw them earlier this month at a wedding, and I asked them the secret to a long and happy marriage. “Compromise—and good sex,” Mimi said. Sarge said alcohol.

I love weed, and I doubt Mr. D and I would be together if I didn’t. I’ve come to believe drug compatibility is essential for any adult relationship (and I define drugs in the broadest of senses–starting with Marx’s “religion is opium of the masses” quote).

But Mr. D loves weed more than me. He’s always loved drugs more than me. I don’t know why he doesn’t understand how much that fucking hurts.

Continue reading →

I hadn’t planned to go to my commencement ceremony, hadn’t even rented a cap and gown. “Do we have to watch you ‘walk,’” my dad asked. I probably shrugged. It wasn’t important. Not in the way that mattered to our family.

Studying, learning—that was different.

In middle school, I once brought home a report card full of B’s. My parents offered to drive me to McDonald’s and Taco Bell to scope my job prospects. “That’s your future,” they said at the time.

The both share six college degrees, though I’ve never seen a diploma. Probably just another paper my dad tossed in the recycling bin. Education is such a critical, natural part of life, why be all showy about it?

Continue reading →