Category: Uncategorized

Girls can get away with being bad at so many things. Like how it’s endearingly cute when a girl loses her debit card for the twelfth time. Or how, when girls are less-than-adequate drivers, it’s written off as an adventure with associated risk rather than a concern. Not to mention, it’s actually borderline hot when a girl’s car is a mess – with Chick-Fil-A bags strewn all over the backseat. I don’t know if any of these examples are cool or uncool to bring up (in the sense of, do they fly in today’s world or do they not?). All I’m asking is that we add cooking to the list.

I can only offer around five different meals to those I care about in my life – most of which I’d consider snacks before anything else. But in a pinch I can pull out two stops: boxed macaroni and cheese and cheesecakes. Vastly different, because one literally has the word “instant” on the packaging while the other takes two-plus hours and requires a level of commitment in the kitchen that I don’t often like to exert. I also have to Google a cheesecake recipe every time I make one.

Anyways, I’m somewhat of a boxed macaroni and cheese celebrity within my friend circle. At high school parties, it wasn’t uncommon for people to offer up my services around 1AM to those who simply would not leave our house in a fashionable manner. My brother and his friends would be anxiously waiting for people to leave, so they could go outside and grill their homemade burger patties stuffed with garlic, onions, bacon, and shredded cheese. Meanwhile, they’d throw everyone else off the scent by being like, “Kels makes the best macaroni and cheese!” And look: I, too, would have rather eaten a homemade grilled burger over boxed Kraft. I’m just saying that I had a role to play within the construct of our friend group, and it was one that I played well. So well, in fact, that I once found myself in a “Macaroni and Cheese-Off” at a post-college bachelorette party, because another girl also said she was the best at making it. And despite the immense pressure, I won the popular vote and retained my title.

A few years ago I switched it up and went on a pie-making kick. Main reason being: I bought a $500 KitchenAid with all the attachments and had to make good use of it, otherwise people would file it away under, “Kelsey’s online shopping addiction purchases.” I was peeling apples and spiralizing spaghetti squash like you wouldn’t believe. Coincidentally this was during the pandemic, but I’m not going to say it was during the pandemic. I’ve lived my entire life going through phases, so this one was bound to strike regardless of what year it was. Ipso facto, I became pretty good at making pies until an injury forced my pie career to come to a halt. I burnt my wrist taking two little blueberry numbers out of the oven the night before Thanksgiving, and now I have a little white scar from it. At the time, I was also talking to a guy who made a big fucking deal about how we were going to get the pies from Point A to Point B, so sometimes the pie scar reminds me (that the past is real) of that and further deters me from wanting to ever make one again.

The only upside to the pie scar incident is that now I can hang my hat on being a girl who’d be open to tattooing someone else’s name on me. I’m not saying I would want to do that, I’m just saying that it honestly wouldn’t be any worse than the pie scar. And it could actually be a more manageable future fix depending on its location, since you could just get a cover up. Instead, I’m stuck trying to figure out what kind of tattoo I should get on my wrist as a pie scar cover up. It has to be something basic, something that won’t start too much conversation: like a butterfly or a Capricorn symbol or something. Otherwise it will just lead to the pie scar tangent, which is fundamentally the same as just keeping the pie scar visible.

So yeah. I can’t cook. But I can provide either boxed macaroni and cheese or tattooing your name on my body. Your call.

Sometimes harsh criticism is the only way to make things stick in my brain – especially regarding appearance and health-related situations. You’re really not going to like this example, but I distinctly remember watching an episode of Tosh.0 back in the day where he made fun of an overweight person and just said, point blank: “Stop eating, Fatty.” And at the end of the day, it’s relatively valid. You will lose weight if you just don’t eat as much. Someone also once told me that, “Back pain means you have a weak ass,” which sadly might also be true because my lower back pain magically disappears if I start doing more lunges and deadlifts.

Anyways, in high school for like – maybe a week – my brother and his friends thought it would be funny to go, “Look at Kelsey’s mustache!” when in fact I did not have a mustache. But they knew that it would bother me, so they’d all inspect my face before agreeing with additional commentary such as, “Wow, that is a dark one!” But what you have to understand is that this joke was just kind of the flavor of the week, and the more you seem bothered by a joke, the longer it would persist. So really, credit to me for not making it a bigger deal. BUT IT DID REALLY BOTHER ME. And like most fleeting snippets of high school, I just internalized it. Until it resurfaced probably a year or so ago at my skincare place in Boston.

I refer to it as “skincare” and say I have “skincare appointments,” but the reality is that I mostly go there to get 40 units of Botox in my forehead twice a year. Which would be irrelevant to the story if not for the fact that I need to paint a particular picture regarding the type of nurses who work there. Have you ever met a girl who thinks: doctors are misguided, the government is against you, and insurance won’t cover anything you actually need??? It’s basically an entire staff of nurses like that – with overfilled top lips.

For a long time, I had this awesome girl named Kim who used to work at Boston Children’s and was very down-to-earth and normal. She gave advice based on what would look most natural for me instead of just, like, suggesting that I should get 2 syringes of filler for fun. But then she ended up moving back home to Buffalo to start a family and stuff, so I became somewhat of an Injection Orphan who was passed around by the other nurses.

So one day I go in for some sort of facial or chemical peel, and I’m with one of said ‘other nurses.’ When all of a sudden she goes – exactly in these words – “What’s up with these chin hairs?”

Immediately, this statement both 1) set off my deepest insecurities, and 2) sent me into an oblivion of self-hate. After responding with a variety of, “What do you mean’s” and “I don’t know’s,” she followed up with, “You should go get your hormones tested.”

Keep in mind, this advice is coming from someone with acrylic nails and 24-inch black hair extensions. But in the moment, I was too embarrassed to evaluate the credibility of the source. So like an idiot, I listened to her and went and got my hormones tested. And if you thought I felt embarrassed before, imagine how dumb I felt when I had to rehash this entire story to my Primary Care Provider only for her to look at my blood panel and say, “Everything’s normal. You’re fine.”

I guess I don’t know what the moral of the story here is. Sometimes harsh criticism has some truth to it (weight, back pain) and other times you’re just being gaslit (mustaches, chin hairs). Develop a radar that will help you identify the difference. Then continue to internalize your high school trauma. Enjoy the photo of pop sensation Britney Britney from Fairly OddParents.

I once deeply disturbed a bartender at the 99 over a conversation my dad and I were having about marriage. Basically I was spinning a hypothetical scenario like, “What if I had a wedding someday, but I didn’t actually get married, and you guys all just assumed I was married because there was a wedding?” I could tell I was actually getting somewhere with my argument: the cheap bar venue, the lack of formal paperwork, the single-parent FAFSA, the eventual savings in divorce lawyer fees. Frankly I think I should be compensated for even sharing this idea with the public – I mean, we could take down Big Marriage. All until my dad invited the bartender in on the debate, who struck it down by saying it’d be disrespectful in the eyes of God or something virtuous like that.

But for the record, it could really be as simple as just changing your Instagram name and no one would be the wiser.

When I was 18, my dad said he would buy me a boat if I never got married. But now that time’s more on my side than his, he has yet to fulfill that verbal contract. Instead, we have 12 vintage snowmobiles, 1 mini snowmobile, 1 vintage mini snowmobile, and a weird four wheeler thing made by the same company as the vintage snowmobiles. So the Great Boat Dilemma might never reach resolve. As in: I might never get married, and we also might never have a boat. But we could look SO sick riding as a 12-person squad on snowmobiles that go 25 MPH.

I think my dad wants to get rid of me so he can discontinue being my primary male caretaker. For example, I told him that I haven’t put windshield wiper fluid in my car since I bought it back in July 2023 and he’s had to ask me about it three different times on the phone. I feel like it’s the same as when I graduated college and there was all this *~pressure~* on me to get a job. Now you want me to get a boyfriend, too? When does it end? Why can’t you just fly to Minnesota and put windshield wiper fluid in my car for me?!

See: I need you to continue putting windshield wiper fluid in my car because I am not a stable person at the helm of my romantic life – especially when it comes to the “choose your character” part. You are talking about a girl who once had to block a guy on Strava, a RUNNING app, because he started commenting on my runs to say that “[his] dog was dying and [I] didn’t even care.” His dog was, in fact, not dying. He also proceeded to type me a letter, written from the POV of “everyone in [my] building,” saying that I should go home to New Hampshire because nobody wanted me there. So like any dignified woman of the 21st century would do, I posted the letter on my Close Friends story and it became kind of like a running joke slash ‘solve the mystery’ bit for all of our neighbors. And maybe this makes me a villain, but it was incredibly hilarious. Especially because when he tried to tell everyone he didn’t write the letter, I was like, “Guys use your logic: who is the ONLY person in our building with a printer…” Well, his roommate did some investigating and coincidentally the printer had magically thrown itself into the abyss of his closet. Case closed.

Okay, so not only am I interested in dog death liars, I also go for guys who have a total disregard for Greek mythology: arguably the worst quality one can possess. This one in particular told me he wanted a painting of Sisyphus for his room. When I questioned why, he responded with admiration for Sisyphus, saying that he worked hard even though he knew he would never succeed. I was like, “You do know that Sisyphus did that because he was condemned to eternal punishment, right? He’s not, like, willingly pushing the boulder up the hill…” It felt like – in his hockey brain – he was equating it to putting in reps at the gym when you know the highest you’ll ever go is the ECHL. Safe to say my side didn’t resonate. Which is sad really, because Greek mythology rocks. I have this tan trench coat, and sometimes when I wear it I get comments like, “You look like you’re selling something.” And all I can think of is the Greek god guy in Hercules who’s just slingin’ sundials on the streets.

I don’t think anyone actually cares to hear about my dating endeavors, but there’s lots happening behind the closed doors of Single Person World. And maybe at a subconscious level, I don’t want to get married because I would miss it. One fatal flaw still exists though: I’m going to run out of windshield wiper fluid at some point. So I’d better get my ducks in a row. Or my wipers in a line. Or my free car wash at Tidal Wave Auto Spa compliments of the second period Shiny Shutout. My dad used to wash my car. Or make my cousin do it. Great, now I’m sad. Who wants a sundial?