I want to talk a little bit about my experience with the Greg Foreman Grill.

Now, many of you fact-checking hipsters are going to call me out and say that I spelled the first name wrong, but Greg Foreman is my cousin from West Virginia and he is the inventor of The Grill.

I’ve heard there’s another big name out there cock-blocking Greg from the prime lady-action that he’d inevitably get by being the inventor of The Grill, but let me say right here and now that it was Greg Foreman all the way.

I overheard some friends at my house one night saying: “Her tree looks more real than ours.” Why was this innocent remark, even compliment, so upsetting? Why did it keep me awake that night?

Welcome to Dry Clean City. Unlike other dry cleaners you may have used in the past, we don’t just clean your clothes at a low price in a bland, convenient location staffed by grumpy part-timers who wouldn’t know customer service if it jumped out, cuffed them, and read them their Miranda rights. No, we aim to be a true dry clean city, a polis whose entire existence is derived from and organized around the ancient and celebrated history, theory, and practice of dry cleaning.

Caty,

I feel like I didn’t get a chance to fully explain myself the other day on the phone, so that’s why I’m emailing. I’ll continue where I left off, I mean, from where you hung up.

Here I go, wasting the day again. I must be the laziest writer on the planet. My plan was to start writing first thing in the morning before even checking my email because I knew email was a gateway to surfing the Internet. But while the coffee brewed I convinced myself I would pop online only for a second, one single second, and gave in. I booted up my laptop and checked my email, which led to eBay, and then to Craigslist’s missed connections. I wondered if anyone saw me during the five minutes I was at the grocery store buying low-fat vanilla yogurt yesterday.