Just Me and 500 of My Favorite Morning Beverages...

[Written in the style of a young adult novel.]

Ding-dong.

The doorbell snapped me from a reverie of writing keyword-rich online content intended solely to satisfy the insatiable spiders created by search engines. I turned briskly from my standing desk and hurried to the door. As I fumbled with the knob, the bell rang again, twice. Ding-dong, ding-dong. I scampered down the dusty front stairs.

"Package for Brenna," said the delivery man. I signed for it.

I'm Brenna, as you probably guessed. And I had a pretty good idea what was in the box, seeing as I'd ordered it from the Internet about a week before. I bounded back upstairs and dropped the package on the kitchen table, then sliced it open with a steak knife.

If my life were a movie, a golden light would have glowed on my face from the open box, while a heavenly chorus sounded in the background. Unfortunately, I'm just a freelance writer who lives in Chicago. But what did shine in my face was green tea. Five-hundred bags of it, to be precise.

I felt the grin spread over my face like a bout of impetigo through a preschool. At last. The days of jittery java gulping were over. I turned to the camera for a closeup.

Hiiiiiiii, Mooooooommmm.

Things You Understand as You Get Older.

This week, your father and I received a Victoria's Secret catalog in the mail. I have to say, we used to get these at my parents' house when I was growing up, but I never before understood why they upset my mother.

However, now that I'm a married adult, I can see she had a point: it is pretty annoying that they keep putting these women's faces on photos of my body.

Sheesh.

(Happy birthday, Mariska!)

The Elephant in the Room.

So I got a rather offensive mailing this week from some weight loss company trying to raise money. I mean, they weren't very subtle about their suggestion that I slim down.

No thanks, American Association of Unfortunate Weights. I will not succumb to your insidious mind games and believe that, if I send you a check, I will one day be the size of the smallest, cutest elephant in the line instead of the biggest!

(But thank you for the stationery.)

Imitating Influential Americans.

Before you were born, children, there was a government operation called the "United States Postal Service," or USPS for short. The USPS was a kind of ancient email provider -- but without the "e." In fact, the word "email" actually means "electronic mail," which is to say the electronic version of letters and cards, which were, in the days of the USPS, written on paper and delivered by hand, if you can even imagine such extreme inefficiency.


One of the USPS's favorite pastimes was commissioning and selling stamps that commemorated famous and influential heroes of the past and present. Here is one example, circa 2012.


And some USPS customers found it invigorating and uplifting to imitate those heroes whose faces appeared on the stamps they affixed to their envelopes.

What kind of a person would be inclined to imitate a stamp personality, you ask? This kind. The real "Lucia X," who is actually named Lucia B---, and hails from Staten Island, New York.

I hope you learned something today, children. I myself feel less enlightened for having written this post.