Elizabeth Ulrich

As a child, I didn’t want to have much to do with dolls. The only baby I chose to play with was a Cabbage Patch Kid name Jack Cornelius. Back then, my mother endured the lines and the mad rush to procure dolls for my sister and me, only to see me put Jack through the ringer once I brought him home.

When Will, my then-boyfriend, proposed to me over two cans of cheap beer on our anniversary in the same dive bar where we met three years before, I said yes. The planning began the very next day.
 

Some people see moving as a chance for rebirth. I’ve always believed it to be more like purgatory. When rumbling along in a moving van, I don’t feel hopeful.

I am a recovering addict. Well, that is if one can really be addicted to sugar — or the chocolate chip scones at Portland Brew, for that matter. When it comes to sugar addiction, the scientific community is divided. Many researchers and doctors say there isn’t enough science to support the theory that food is any more addictive than reality TV.

Megan* and I became friends at age 16 in high school algebra class. I watched as she swirled a piece of bubblegum around her finger, twirling it until it snapped and became lodged in her hair. Mortified, she turned around from her desk and looked at me pleadingly until I offered to pluck pink strings of sugar from her wavy locks.

As my senior year of college was ending, I was living in the height of proverbial college excess. I overslept and missed good portions of my morning classes (or skipped them altogether) to stay hunkered in the dark, dank garage apartment I shared with my boyfriend. Mike was a musician—tattooed, pierced and not at all interested in any form of adulthood.