Goodbye, Twinkie the Kid

We never saw it coming. There was no warning, no time to say, “You know you really ought to have a Twinkie. It’s been so long, and who knows how much longer they’ll be around.” Don’t be stupid, any of us would have said. Twinkies will be around forever. Not so. Twinkie the Kid is gone.

This, notably, is the only time “fresh” has ever been used to describe a Hostess Twinkies snack cake. Also notable is the tagline, “The fresh snacks with a snack in the middle!” Twinkies are a snack within a snack—a snack². Isn’t this really all we ever really wanted?

From Scratch

Homemade pie crust requires commitment and sincerity. Its challenge is an element of its virtue. It requires a level of focus and purpose not often called upon by the daily blur, and it can’t be done while texting. There is something prayerful about it. It is not a sandwich, stacked blindly in front of the TV.

Homemade crust is not quite so antique as home-churned butter, but nevertheless remains, for most people, high on the list of thank-god-now-we-don’t-have-to food crafts—this, despite the recent trend of homesteading twenty- and thirty-somethings home-roasting and home-brewing, canning, jamming, and candlestick-making. A sometime baker at best, I’m in no position to criticize the truly committed do-it-yourselfers.

Stop the Emails, Jurgis!

Where it all went down.

Once upon a time, I made the mistake of putting myself on a mailing list.

Not the kind where you type your email address into the computer at the register at DSW and the girl assures you, “ALL we send are coupons, I promise,” or the kind where you get a Hulu Plus account (finally, after “thinking about it” for like a year) and then you get emails that say unnecessary things like “John, Catch the Latest Fall TV This Week.” Not that kind.

I mean the kind where you write your email next to your name on a piece of paper on a clipboard, or taped to a table, or getting passed around the room. Kids, never do this. Ever.

MTA Lockout

At first mention of the “Frankenstorm”—or “Frankenstorm’s Monster,” as countless nerds have gleefully interjected—I scoffed, and remembered drunkenly snoring through Hurricane Irene last year after a bottle of wine and half a day spent scouring Midtown Manhattan for a flashlight.

Hangover Irene notwithstanding, with Hurricane Sandy on the way—loudly proclaimed to be even worse than Irene—I headed home to Connecticut to wait it out, whatever it might prove to be. How many times a year do these weather guys say anything relevant? I demanded cynically. Pshhh.

Now, in the wake of Frankenstorm’s Monster, I can’t get back. Eating my words and every h of my Pshhh, it seems I’m trapped outside the city.

Overwear

As of today, I am out of clean underwear. Two jobs and a partially-unpacked suitcase have left me with only questions, and no time to straighten them out—questions like, Did I wear these already?

If I’m being truly honest, my second question is typically, Did I wear these…twice? I know, I know, yuck. Cut me a little slack. (Incidentally slack is typically the two-wear giveaway.) Let him who is without laundry laziness cast the first stone. I’m out, plain and simple.

I Told You So: An Essay in Amateur Cartoons

It was one of those instances in which someone says, “I told you so,” and you aren’t even mad. They did tell you so. It was one of those sudden, disastrous events, after which someone huffily snaps their arms akimbo and goes, “See??” and you do see. This one’s on you.

Last weekend, my boyfriend Ashton and I drove up to visit my grandparents in southern New Hampshire. We spent a few days working through a few To Do lists, helping out able-bodiedly with the house- and yard-work that come with the changing of seasons—in this case a shift from breezy early summer to face-melting mid-July.

I was shuffling around the front yard in flip-flops, watering plants and weeding.

“Take off your chanclas and put some shoes on,” Ashton tsked, climbing off the riding mower while I knelt in the wild strawberry pulling crabgrass.

“Oh, I’m fine,” I answered, insouciant.

A few minutes later, crabgrass pulled and my flip-flops already far from my mind, I took up the task of moving six forty-pound bags of potting soil into a small metal trailer. I’m fine, I’d said.