I had this vision of the two of us holding hands or getting into some light petting behind shower curtains or up in the fencing aisle or some shit.

In the future if my mother tries to shame me with her disapproval, I will let her know in no uncertain terms that I reject her and all of her codependent baggage. I am Codependent No More.

This bastard was in a self-help program? For what? Square-jawed, cleft-chin sufferers? Handsome Bastards Anonymous?

The old man kept going about how he could never keep her home, how she loved to roam. He said she should have been a sheep in the foothills of Scotland. Now if that wasn't a load of shit I don't know what is. I'll tell you why that sheep roamed. The fences around here was held up with goddamn binder twine and half-assed prayers. That's why.

Earl had let Bertie off the porch for some fresh grass and I didn't want Dr. Eustace to see her. She still looked as though we'd put Hannibal Lecter in charge of her shearing and had hired the special effects team from Night of the Living Dead to bandage her.

...like the twig furniture she made, thinking it was going to make us rich, only she's shit with a hammer and nails and the stuff ended up being deadly. You were practically begging for a colonoscopy if you sat on it.

I debated whether to tell them I had long since abandoned my writing career and moved into radishes and fraud, but decided the timing was wrong.

It's been a pretty tough day," he said. "No sense making it worse with a salad.

Good luck with that," I said. Because seriously. The fuck? Strawberry social? Did I somehow move onto the set of the remake of Little House on the Prairie?