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.

Everything is your fault. If you were a good girl, you wouldn’t have gotten into that car accident.

You’re life is accompanied by a swelling musical score that sounds like classical music, but it’s not. It’s really, really not.

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.