My Intro

How do you go about introducing yourself to a group of strangers? If it was an addiction meeting, I would start with, "Hi, my name is Aimee, and I'm a (fill in the blank with an addiction)."' But it's not that type of intro. I can add here that I don't drink, though I used to drink and found that it made my already low-boundaries almost invisible. So, I stopped. I stopped also because I got tired of waking up embarrassed by something that I had said or done the night before while under the influence of two liters of bad white wine. I could start with my childhood, the basic facts. I was born to a single mother named Donna in a small rural town in Giltner, Nebraska.

Mom on a car with her brothers.

Mom before she had me. 

They were working animals, the same way that the cows are not pets, but products. It took me a long time to reconcile that the cows I saw with the wet-pink noses and swishing tails in the pasture would the same things that ended up on a hamburger bun. I stopped eating red meat after I learned that. My dad was a long gone shadow of a man named Butch. I knew that he used to be in the rodeo and that he then became a highway patrolman and that his real given name was Lars. I didn't know why he left, but I didn't actually think much about it until I grew up.

My dad.

I could talk about my life now, living in a rented duplex in Princeton, two blocks from the most beautiful public library I've ever seen. Our street is still diverse--the family next to us is Mexican and they have a little black chihuahua named Negra who used to bark fiercely at me, but who I eventually won over by feeding her treats every time I saw her. I have a husband named Dan and a step son named Luke and I don't know how to be a stepmother, even though I've known Luke since he was four (he's fourteen now). Mostly, I try not to infringe too much on his life, because he has his own worries and stress and I see my role as someone who is meant to be supportive and constant. We have a dog named Chaplin who is a Morkie (half Maltese, half Yorkie). It's the first dog who has ever been mine, though I have always loved dogs, and have a constant habit of petting any friendly dog I pass in the street. 

Me and Dan. I added this even though I said to avoid selfies.

Emma Carol. Tail down, sleeping.

I also have two cats, but they live with my mom in Ewing, New Jersey because Luke had asthma when he was younger. They are Emma Carol and Ernesto, both strays, and I remember when I first gave them up to move in with Luke and Dan about four years ago, I woke up one night, crying in my sleep, so so so so so sad that they weren't with me. Now, they keep my mother company. She was used to farm cats, these feral creatures who lived in barns and kept the mice population down, but now, she is a very big fan of all cats.

Emma Carol, awake, bottom of the stairs, waiting for you to fall. Ernesto, watching the world from my old row house in Philly.

Here are some things that make me laugh:

The Onion

  

Here are some short stories I've written that have been published:

"Jane Err"
"The Disabled"
"Feral"
"A Good Thing"

Here are movies I love:

 Here are two things I  am afraid of:

Here is one thing that makes me happy every single day: 

Mid-yawn. Don't mind the mustache. 

What I was like in middle school/junior high:

Shy, awkward, boy crazy. I had a crush on a red-haired boy named Steve Crossett who sang in the church choir with me. He was on the tennis team and covered in freckles. He wore Izod sports shirts and wore khaki pants every day. He barely knew I was alive. My favorite thing to do was to stand by the window in my bedroom and listen to the clock radio and daydream about how one day, Steve and I would go on a picnic together and then row out on a lake and he would tell me that he was in love with me. In real life, he barely knew I existed because I was on another planet, known as Seventh Grade. I kept a Hello Kitty Diary and tried to write in it every day. I believed in God and I was scared about going to high school because I worried one of the older kids would force me to smoke pot and then I would become addicted to drugs like the girl in the supposedly autobiographical, Go Ask Alice. That book haunts me to this day.

I also read Flowers for Algernon and my friend Juli Kleszy and I wrote a play based on the book. I had hoped I would get cast as the female lead, but it went to Heather Plaskett, who had perfectly feathered hair and a giggly laugh I could never master. Writing is what saved me from complete despair. Writing and reading have always been the things that keep me sane. If I can get it out on the page, whatever I'm worried about leaves my body for a little while, and it exists out in the world. There is great relief in that.