Packing My Office

A few recently boxed nuggs

In a happy-sad development, in addition to moving houses with my somehow-still-current husband (someone he ran into asked if we were really getting divorced, y’all are suckers for clickbait), I’ll also be moving out of the studio I share with three artists and raw dogging—my son hates when I say that!—the freelance life, working from home and various coffee shops.  

I’m sad because I’ve loved being in a studio with three wildly talented and wonderful souls: Sarah Walsh, Rachel Allen, and Tammy Smith—all of us are ex-Hallmarkers and have been renting together for three years. When I found out they were looking for a fourth occupant, I jumped on it. I was really struggling at the time. I needed the structure and seriousness of a Place to Work. 

However: finding and keeping a good studio is…difficult. We’re on our third in three years and having some issues that will no longer allow me to host workshops there. That development, combined with my current and much better state of mind, made me decide to go back to winging it. But that’s a good thing. I’m happy to not be so struggly.

Between packing a home and packing the studio, I’ve been recalling a lot of nuggs—a process that feels fun and nbd in the moment, but also leaves me drained and only able to watch shows that kill more brain cells than all of the amaretto sours I consumed at The Wheel in Lawrence, Kansas from 1992–1996. It’s been a lot, but a good kind of lot.

Here are four of the items I’ve packed and the nuggs they’ve dug up.

1. Stock certificate

The traditional first-anniversary gift by year is paper, and for our first, Paul got me a beautiful stationery set. (That I still haven’t used. Want a fancy letter? Send me your address—I’ll write you one!) 

For our second anniversary (trad. gift: cotton), he got me a stellar blues CD by an artist named James Cotton. That was the anniversary I so memorably ruined by getting wildly drunk the night before with co-workers and throwing up in the hard hat Paul keeps in his car (not in a sexy way, he’s in construction) on the drive to the romantic inn he’d booked. HOWEVER: because I was so hungover, and because I laid in bed all day long, out of boredom, we watched a new show called The Sopranos, which would become his all-time favorite. You’re welcome, Paul. And for the last time, yes, I’ll remember to pack the g.d. toilet gun!

The third anniversary (leather) brought me a new and very profesh work bag, and for our fourth (fruit)—the last we’d mark with a traditional gift, Paul having knocked me up with another gift that took over our lives—he very creatively gave me one share of Apple stock, which I’ve kept framed and might be worth a dollar? A billion? It’s a shame I don’t understand things.

2. Notepad

You know those dishes you’re not allowed to use because they’re so nice? This is the nice dishes of notepads, for me. My Hallmark pal Molly gave it to me and it delights me too much to ever use it.

Molly was a great mentor and friend and said several wise things throughout my career that I still think about. The one that crosses my big head the most is the shruggy marriage advice she passed onto me from a counselor: “If they leave a cabinet door open, just shut it.” So simple. So effective. If they puke into a hard hat, just empty it. Amirite P? I love the notepad almost as much as I love the wisdom, Molly. Thank you.

3. Dumb stupid plants

I am done with plants. DONE! Do you water them? Do you leave them alone? I’ve been traveling a lot, and in the absence of regular watering, one’s died (RIP Jane Fronda, pictured above on L) and another (Robert Plant, on R) flourished. I will simply never get it.

I have never been able to figure out how not to kill plants. I used to water them too much; I’ll never forget when another dear Hallmark co-worker, Russ, told me I smothered my plants like I do my family after I tended them too much and they all died. If you knew him, you’d know it was the kind of mean-funny that came from a deep and kind place. That’s how all of us humor writers showed each other love. It was rough. It was the best.

Russ has been gone a few years now, and I miss him. No one loved to make fun of me more. Like when he told me I “seemed like the type of person whose fridge you couldn’t find because it looked like a cabinet.” He—never had kids, vocally not a fan of them—would never believe how much his plant-based insult has guided me in this weird stage of parenting a kid in his early 20s: Stop watering them so much. Let them grow on their own. 

4. “Deodorant”

I bought this after a good hippie friend who shall remain anonymous successfully badgered me into changing my lead-laden ways. It didn’t work, just like I suspected it wouldn’t. Sorry, but I am #bigpharmaforever! I decided the deodor-ain’t would live at the studio as a backup, though, and mostly for the memory of what she said when I told her I hated it. Normally a kind woman, she once got so flustered with me during a pharmgument she yelled, “FINE! Enjoy your CANCER!”

Years later, I still love shouting that at her randomly. I will never throw my hippie stick away.

Update: I’m still entering the weekly New Yorker caption contest! Click here for the latest.

Did I come up with the winning caption? Find out.