Everything I Like Causes Cancer

As I lay in bed this morning thinking about my favorite accessories . . .

The necklace made of nails . . .

The headband made of fabric from the artist’s grandma’s dress . . .

And the beaver belt . . .

. . . I realized that I still had not made good on my promise to take funny pictures of me wearing my beaver belt to submit to the real-life Beevers who created it.

My initial plan was to go to the zoo wearing my belt and stage some dumbass picture of me in my belt with real beavers. I wore that belt to the zoo like three times this summer and never once saw a beaver.

So I lay there, wondering how I could right this wrong, when suddenly it came to me that I could WRITE this wrong and crafted this poem as a way of letting katrocket and The Beevers know that I have not forgotten my promise:

There once was a gal from Toronto

Who liked to do things on the pronto.

She gave me a belt.

My heart, it did melt.

But now I can’t find a damn beaver.

So, I'm sick. AGAIN. I sound like Kathleen Turner on the back-end of a 10-day bender and it feels like fire ants are living in the left side of my face. It's not a good feeling. It makes my eyes water which leads people to believe that I have feelings and shit.

Having been graced with an uncommon name that I love (Thanks, Mom!), my interest is always piqued when I meet other Gwens or when I see it mentioned anywhere. So much so that as a senior in college I once terrorized a freshman girl named Gwen in an effort to convince her that she should use her middle name. I think my position was something like, "When people say 'Gwen' around here, I know they are talking about me and I don't want there to be any confusion." Yeah, I was a peach in college.