True-ish Stories of North Dakota Weather

It is so cold here.

It is so cold here that even my Husky mutt does not want to go outside.

It is so cold here that the movie Frozen is starting to really tick me off.

It is so cold that I am currently huddled inside three layers of pajamas, between the micro-fleece sheets of my loft bed, surrounded by three or four additional blankets and I'm still shivering.

Humans... do not... belong here.

Anyway, the only perk I can spin out of the awful blizzardy weather we've been having is that people from out of state will pretty much believe whatever you tell them about the famous climate. Here are a few sort of probable stories to pull out, hopefully somewhere warm and sunny.

You lost your garage once and had to wait for the snow to melt to find it again.

Your tongue is fake, and the original is still stuck to a pole on your elementary school playground, where you were dared to lick the pole, and then the supervisors left your tongue there to scare off other kids, because everyone has done that at least once.

You lost your cell phone in a snow bank and thought it was gone for good until early that June, when it was found in the grass of your front yard.

If there are little kids around, tell them that you live in an igloo in the winter, and in the summer, you follow the buffalo.

Better yet, in the winter, the whole community has a giant prolonged sleepover in an Iroquois-style longhouse, and the different neighborhoods take turns cooking every night. Because you know, if it was going to happen, it would happen in Fargo.

There's a weather phenomenon called a "snow demon" where a cloud of shrieking wind drives razor-sharp chunks of ice into whatever gets in its way.

Another true story: You used to wake up with frost on your pillows because you slept too close to the wall and your breath crystallized. Did this happen to anybody else? It used to happen to me all the time.

If you inhale snow, you may contract snow fever, which is a sort of weird fungal disease where snow starts to grow in the bottom of your lungs and works its way up until you're coughing flurries. (Note: This is a good one to tell when the audience is actually there in North Dakota visiting you, because you get to watch them squirm when you tell them the symptoms are prolonged shivering, numb feet, and a red red nose.)

The North Dakotan "rivers" you see on maps are a myth, because they actually only exist in the spring when all the snow melts.

That is also the time when school is held on massive community houseboats.

In fact, everyone's house floats, so that the flood does no damage, and then when the water finally goes down everyone lands in a different place to keep things interesting.

And then it starts to snow.

Again.

The Best Hide and Seek Tactics

The other day I had some friends over to the house, and because none of us had the brain stamina to learn a new card game and we were too hyped to watch a movie and nobody had anything exciting to talk about we fell back to hide and seek. My mom thought this was hilarious, which I think is ridiculous, because hide and seek is basically the greatest game ever. You can play it over and over and it gets harder every time. You can play it with mostly all ages. I even learned that if the kids you babysit get bored with the name "Hide and Seek" you can glitz it by adding a wand and some sound effects and calling it "Zombie Bonkers."

No, seriously, we played for three hours.

Anyway, once you graduate Zombie Bonkers and end up playing hide and seek with the big leagues, possibly at my house, here's a handy playbook with some techniques.

For the Slenderman in all of us: find a dark room with a perch, like a bathroom counter or on top of a box in a dark closet, perch, and then make the most off-putting face/pose you know. You may be found quickly, but you have the satisfaction of taking a few years off the seeker's lifespan when they turn on the lights.

For the person who breathes really loudly no matter how hard they try: Hide in the same room as another person, AS CLOSE TO THEM AS POSSIBLE, so that they are given away by your amplified exhalations instead of you. They will then turn on you and give you away, but hey, at least you weren't found first.

For the compact one: find a place like a cabinet or dog kennel where a person shouldn't reasonably be able to fit, and then work your scary contortion magic. All the other players are secretly jealous of you.

For the tall one: find somewhere where you can stand behind a big piece of furniture in the corner, and then lean a piece of art or a backpack or something against whatever's left of you.

For the person who isn't really interested in the game anymore: wander aimlessly around the house with a laundry basket on your head.

For the one who doesn't mind being gross: a giant pile of laundry, and don't move.

For the one who is totally out of time to hide places: find a small object, preferably a pineapple, and then hide behind it, making it as convincing as possible by saying "Pineapple. Pineapple. Pineapple." (Bonus points if it isn't a pineapple.)

For the one who can turn into a statue: messy beds are your best friends. Find one, rearrange the mess to cover you up, and then own it, Michelangelo.

For the ninja: follow the seeker around the house. Literally. Right behind them. At all times.

For the bird: on top of something.

For the seeker: Be cool and leave Pineapple and Laundry Basket alone.

For the person who always hides somewhere someone else is hiding: Hide somewhere in the kitchen. There are never any good hiding spots in the kitchen.

For the annoying literalist: outside, or in the garage, because nobody TECHNICALLY SAID those spaces were off limits. All the other players are secretly hoping that some piece of nature bites you as you win time after time.

Happy hiding (and seekers, you're welcome)!

You're In Love (with Theater, of course)

For those of you unacquainted with high school theater, allow me to introduce you. You see posters around town. When you get old enough, you audition, and if you get in, your schedule magically transforms into a wondrous blend of glitter, feathers, and Stockholm Syndrome. Two or three months later, out of the screaming blue nowhere, the show... Closes! Closes! Suddenly, your life is empty... Empty... Empty... And ooh, the next show. Anyway, theater will change the way you look at the world. You'll know as soon as someone mentions some inauspicious word (such as "beginning" or "stars") and you burst into song.

How do we love thee, drama? Let me count the ways...

You tap dance nervously in long lines.

You can track your lipstick addiction back to the very first time you looked in a mirror and saw you in your stage makeup- an actress. AN ACTRESS. SQUEAL.

You sometimes privately refer to Mountain Dew as "sleep in a can."

Whenever something breaks you assure people that if you only had some gaffer tape, you could definitely fix it.

"What happens at cast parties/ in the props loft/ up the catwalks/ at strike set STAYS THERE!"

Acting is not the only skill you picked up. You also learned to build virtually anything out of wood, hang lighting equipment, tap dance, work with every personality type, speak stage shorthand as a second language, sew, and sleep standing up.

Sometimes when you burst into song a random, a few of your friends will pop out of nowhere and proceed to harmonize.

Did I mention, your friends are the greatest people in the world.

A normal teacher mentions that there are five minutes left of class, and without even thinking you holler "THANK YOU FIVE MINUTES!"

You would probably worry more about what people think you if you had  time for things like thinking.

You look at other people's activity schedules, laugh hysterically for about thirty seconds, and then cry.

You will defend your opinions concerning movies, music, and culture to the death.

You can sleep anywhere. Chairs. Tables. Floors. 

When you're in rehearsal, you feel like a piece that just locked into place.

Since freshman year, your makeup has grown from a basic kit into several bags.

The inside jokes are precious.

Like privacy. Privacy is a joke.

When people ask you if you work, you say yes, but you don't get paid.

You save set pieces.

You save scripts.

You save memories. Each show is unique.

You never forget.

How To ACTUALLY Cope With Sadness

Today, I shall tackle the topic of sadness, in honor of the continuing reality that we are, in fact, back in school. HAHA! JUST KIDDING! (Not really.)

I am not a huge endorser of the self-help industry, based on the belief that if you can help yourself, you shouldn't need an industry to aid you in doing it. Thus, I deem this method of sadness-coping the ACTUALLY SELF-HELPING method. Or you could all spread it around as the Mayim Stith method. Hint, hint.

Without further ado, here are some ways to actually make yourself better when you're behind on everything, low on sleep, or just feeling down.

Make other people unhappy. Don't make other people feel bad for you, specifically, just drag with you a general feeling of despair wherever go you. Debt. War. The fact that Walt Disney would flip over in his grave if he could see what goes on Disney Channel today. Let it spread.

Chocolate. Of any kind. In large doses.

Hang out with other unhappy people and share your displeasure.

If you're a runner, run. Apparently it helps. For the rest of us, take your chocolate-of-any-kind-in-large-doses down to your favorite misery couch and watch movies. Watch either those stupid happy-people movies to convince yourself that they're all delusional, or watch Les Miserables. It always helps.

Become that one person who steals all the M&Ms from the trail mix. Steal all the marshmallows from the Lucky Charms. Steal all the good things to fuel your sadness. In the immortal words of my little brother, "Don't steal all of one kind from the nut mix. And if you do, make sure it's not the almonds because those are all mine."

Lefse. For all your problems in this life, lefse.

FOR EXTRA POINTS! Chocolate lefse. Nutella is the nature's gift to sad people, as well as everybody else.

Cry, just not about the thing you're sad about. Cry about something else. Cry about Les Mis. They all die! And it's so beautiful!

Before all else fails, sleep. It all gets better when you sleep.
Happy sadness.

Some Useful Things to Do on Your Sick Days (Without Leaving the Couch)

I hate to be the one to break bad news, but someone should. After this Labor Day closes, we're all officially stuck in the school year. Despite random Professional Development and Snow Days, the weeks are going to be long. As you start getting assigned homework that isn't forcing your parents to sign the syllabus, the evenings are packed, the days are dreary, and it starts to get colder for the sole purpose of packing your locker full of coats. You will slog through this mindless grind, hopefully with a few redeeming classes (all electives, of course) to make the days kind of worthwhile. Still, don't lose hope! Before too awfully long, an wandering virus will take pity on you and grant you one of those miracles above all other miracles- a Sick Day.

What are the best parts of the Sick Day? Well, for one thing, you never have any makeup homework to spoil your time. After all, you didn't arrange to contract the contagion... right? Anyway, you're off the hook. It's a real, actual, satisfactual off day. And did we mention that it's an off day exclusively for you? Your friends and family are still in the grind, and you get to kick back and relax with the TV all to yourself.

Of course, I would never dare to suggest that you should leave your Sofa of Glory for any reason. I am a firm advocate of things like remote control and dining on that family-sized bag of Doritos for breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, luncheon, dinner, and supper. And so, for your next Sick Day, I have compiled a list of life-advancing but nonetheless couch-based activities. Here it is.

Become a nerd about something. What's on Netflix? We have Amazon Instant and the first three seasons of Star Trek are #FREE.

Ladies: Learn to play Minecraft. You will never be left without conversation topics on a date again.

Guys: Watch a few Disney princess movies of the highly antiquated, beautifully misogynistic variety. Now you too will never be left without conversation topics on a date again. Another way to go is Tangled (warning: you may cry).

Instead of lurking the Facebooks, become a meme expert. Become one of those lovely sarcastic people who care more about which meme base you use than who gets elected for president next term. After all, humanity is doomed.

Discover your inner Bobby Flay with the aid of the Internet and microwaveable desserts. This one does actually involve a little bit of moving, so to avoid that you could just dream up your own celebrity chef name and drool mournfully over pictures of other people's chef-ery.

Write inspirational quotes and post them on Instagram. Oh, wait. That's not useful.

Make memes instead. Much better!

Go through your entire music device and delete the stuff you don't listen to anymore.

Instead of cyber-stalking someone who's interested in you, research something that you're interested in extensively.

Or you could just stalk the hottie. Hey, it's your day.

Text bomb fill-in-the-blank enemy who always keeps their phone on in class.

After some careful planning during your friends' lunch break, send them a group text. Make sure everyone's ringtone is an epic fart.
P.S. Seriously, I've tried this one and it's amazing.

Do NOT, under any circumstances, watch the junk that is on Food Network during the day. Never. I have never once seen Restaurant Impossible on before six.

Remember your recorder from fourth grade? See how much you can re-teach yourself before you get frustrated and hurl the thing at the wall. Who plays recorder, anyway.

If you can't pick a movie to watch, just browse trailers and become a well-informed movie trailer connoisseur. TRAILER FREAKS UNITE!

Procrastinate. It's a life skill.

And finally, if all else fails, sit on your couch and think up useful things to do as the day slowly and gloriously drips by without accomplishing a darn thing. Here's to days off.

An Ode to My Satchel

 

Just kidding. Now to business.

 

There comes a time in every student's life when they have to put down their old, worn elementary school backpacks and head out into the wild world to hunt down a new bag. Possibly they grow tired of flowered prints and half-broken zipper tabs. Maybe the straps are frayed or entirely missing, devoured by a pet or rogue locker years ago. Me, I was perfectly happy with my old bag, but my new workload was dissatisfied with its capacity. (Ah, middle school.) A school bag is, of course, a crucial staple of your academic ensemble. How do you find a new one?

My old bag featured an awesome backpacking moose. Epic graphics like this are hard to find (this one was from L.L. Bean), and I didn't actually get to pick the bag because it was a present for my very, very first birthday. That's right, everybody, I got my backpack of ten years when I could literally fit inside it! But by the time I graduated fifth grade it was a) falling apart and b) had a backpacking moose on it, which was for some reason was uncool in middle school. And so I wanted a new bag. I made do with an intermediate backpack of some sort for sixth grade, but by seventh grade it was clear that that setup was not sustainable, by which I mean a backpack with nothing but a giant compartment in the middle is a recipe for a stinking black hole of junk. Actually, that's inaccurate. A backpack that is nothing but a giant fabric holding tank is destined to become your locker in miniature, which if you're me means it turns into a stinking black hole of junk.

So I maintain the standard that messenger bags are always cool. This is perfectly fine except for one disclaimer: sore shoulders are not cool. If you're willing to suffer for fashion, which I totally was at the time of buying my bag, then go for it.

My epic satchel fulfills all the parameters of a useful, long-lasting school bag. It has been slammed into lockers, kicked around under filthy bus seats, crammed until the seams stretch, and washed (both by the machine and by just being left out in the rain to fend for itself for a few hours). It is admittedly hard to test this in a store setting, but anything waterproof is usually a good idea. Think bullet-proof, shark-proof, bear-proof, you-proof.

We have already established that a good, simple messenger bag is always in style. But if you are craftily inclined, make sure that it is also able to withstand your creativity. Mine has been stabbed with pins, sewn, unsewn, ironed, de-stained, and generally artistically destroyed. But it refuses to accept destruction! Just like any good bag!

And finally we return to the original reason why I had to ditch the backpacking moose. Make sure your bag is not only barely able to contain your classwork, but very capably handle your classwork, reading book, junk stash of things to take nowhere, and generally the 150% of everything. There's never enough room. Just make sure you're not setting yourself up for a years-long space race. This ain't the sixties.

So there you are! Tough, creative, and size. I couldn't fashion them into a clever catchphrase (TCS, SCT, CTS?) so if you're going bag shopping, you might have to write them down. But I hope it helps!

One final note: monogramming. Consider carefully before monogramming, even if it's free. Remember that if you do your last name, it will be unwillingly handed-me-down to a lucky sibling, if you do your first name, you will inevitably feel like a third-grader at some point, and if you have a weird name like Mayim (MY-um) you will be called May-eeeeeem by random strangers for the rest of your life. Nice try, strangers.

Anyway, if you want to monogram, be creative, but careful. Think long-term. If you take my advice, your bag's immortal.

16 Ways to Escape Your House Remodeling Project

With apologies to my parents, I present the ultimate list for escapists, procrastinators, and just plain slackers everywhere who are trapped in the throes of household remodeling.

16 Ways to Escape Your House Remodeling Project

1. Lock yourself in the bathroom for a YouTube break. You deserve it. Just keep an eye on those minutes. I personally recommend BuzzFeed. You can typically watch at least three BuzzFeed videos before people start to think you've drowned in there.

2. Pretend to be useful by going to the library and checking out a book (example: How to Clean Years of Unspeakable Nastiness From Your Toilet and Sink Pipes). It's got to be better than the real job. Plus, if you're lucky, someone will put you in charge of the project and you can boss other people around on how to do it.

3. Contract an illness. Seriously. 

4. Become really, really good at one job that doesn't stink. That way, you will become the house authority on said job, and that is all you will have to do for the rest of the time.

5. Make dinner. Hey, somebody's got to do it, and everyone else is too busy. Bonus points if you need to go to the store for ingredients.

6. Hide something vital to the process, such as the scissors or packing tape. Then, join enthusiastically in the family's manhunt for it while leading them wildly off track. You could either hide it somewhere completely unrealistic (like the very top of the tree in your front yard), or somewhere feasible (inside one of your dad's old running shoes) to deflect suspicion. It was just misplaced, right?

7. Promote yourself to Worker Inspection. Parade around the house with a clip board and checklist, and fire one of your brothers or sisters from the family every so often to remind everyone that you are, in fact, in charge.

8. Send your parents on vacation. Somewhere nice, like Canada. We recommend a padded hotel room, since they will do nothing but worry about you and the house the whole time they're gone. Or...

9. Send yourself on vacation. Let them work if they like it so much! And if they won't let you send yourself on vacation, then...

10. Break something only your parents are capable of fixing. Hopefully, by this point, they're getting fed up enough to send you to your grandparents or something before they actually explode.

11. Just run away. Run. Hide. It's not subtle, but it's effective.

12. Run away, and hide in your shed. Snicker quietly as the policemen bring home reports of your whereabouts. Just make sure your family isn't one of those efficient families who actually uses the shed.

13. Hire an oracle to warn your family relentlessly that the project is doomed, as evidenced by the stars. Better yet, just dress up as an oracle yourself and save on oracle-hiring costs. Just make sure they don't recognize you.

14. Learn to play the bagpipes! Your practices will soon be kicked to the garage, because before you learn to play the bagpipes you learn to play something called the chanter, which is the only instrument we have concocted yet that is more awesomely obnoxious than the bagpipes.

15. Take summer gym. Take summer math. Take summer synchronized swimming, take summer anything to get out of the house.

16. Start a blog, and then insist that you must post something, because your readers (all two or three of them) are counting on you.

I appreciate it, guys.