My name is Elizabeth.I am homeless.
I am messy.
I am a woman prepared for anything.

A long time ago, before I developed a love for free napkins, I always had a tidy, well-organized purse. Actually, I had a well-organized everything. An obsessive-compulsive friend once swooned over my sock drawer. I’m not bragging. I’m just stating a fact.

Then, at an amusement park one day, a bird mistook my arm for a bathroom. A bird who had obviously enjoyed a large meal before taking a cruise through the park. What do you know….not a napkin in sight.

I began stuffing napkins into my purse every time I saw them. Assured that I was prepared for anything, I walked around with one eye tilted upward, quietly muttering,

Every Monday, I’m picking from the List of Things to Try, Places to Go, Possible Acts that Help and Possible Fun to Have. It’s a list I made before The Project started and I’m still adding to it. If you have suggestions, please, feel free to throw them my way. I’m calling the list my Monday Dares, as I get overwhelmed just looking at the words “challenge” or “goal.”

This week: I will count to ten before reacting.


My friend Anne has a condition. I bring it up about every third time I see her because I find it endlessly fascinating and alien.

She was born without a single mean bone in her body.

Her condition manifests in different ways. She remembers my birthday. She mentions what we talked about in our last conversation and asks for an update. She regularly compliments her friends….and means it. She turned away a door-to-door solicitor with such grace, he actually apologized for bothering her and scooted away with his head bowed.

Once, a guest I brought to her house broke something. She just smiled warmly and assured us that it was about to break anyway and not to worry about it.

The last time a guest broke something in my home, I sent her away and told her to never, ever come back. She was dead to me and no amount of apologizing was going to resurrect the friendship. I was nine. It was my favorite tea set.

Last December, on our way to Cal’s 10th birthday party, we stopped by the fancy ice cream store in our neighborhood to pick up her highfalutin custom ice cream birthday cake. The one that I painstakingly detailed down to the last swirl in a fifteen minute phone conversation with the cake artist….who forgot to make it. 


I may or may not have lost my shit.

I may or may not have insisted that the cake artist on duty call the offending cake artist so I could leave this message: