Merry Meltdowns of the Fascinating Sort
an excerpt

It all started out with a sock. Yes. A sock. I know that some of you are probably all like, "What the hell? A sock? Why the fuck would a sock be of any importance?" Well, simple really. When you're a costume designer working off to pay her college loans by putting on puppet shows for children, socks are pretty much something that are going to be an everyday sort of item you might have. And while most kids might think Mellow Yellow Banana Buddy is the coolest thing since dirt, a lot of kids prefer not to see you holding a giant plush banana. They want an element of mystery. Like, sock puppets.

But, I'm evading the point now. This particular sock, the offender of all that is good and natural, was a favorite sock of my roommate. I really don't know why she favored the damn thing so much. There was a hole in the toe, the top was beginning to unravel, and it was grey. It used to be white.

Anyway. Yours truly was hosting a workshop on making sock puppets, which was another way to help pay off my loans until someone decided to buy my costumes. And of course, the fates decided that morning that my alarm should make itself internally combust. So, while in the middle of running around trying to get ready, hacking up a lung because my alarm clock is exuding more smoke than my grandmother at Thanksgiving dinner, tripping over my cat Sebastian forty seven times, I managed to set my roommate's sock on fire. I personally am still trying to figure out how I pulled that one off.

It was in the midst of that entire ruckus that said roommate arose from her beauty sleep. Mind you, this was about noon, and she was very hung over from her night of ‘finding her inner self.’