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Pantsless Weirdo


Unfocused Essays from My Basement

control and emotions and tantrums and love

November 15, 2013


Perhaps it is crystal clear in reading what I write here, and it is certainly not news to anyone who knows me – I am a Type A personality. I like to be in control. I like to know what is coming next, so that I can plan for it and anticipate it and prepare ...

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four months

November 12, 2013


Four months ago you left us. Last week as I slept in a hotel room just outside Chicago, I dreamed of you and I wept in my sleep. I wept so hard in my sleep that I audibly cried out until I awakened myself. You were so vivid in my dream that it took me ...

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handshakes and hugs

November 6, 2013


This week I am at a conference for my job. My industry is very small, and I am younger than most people in it by at least a decade. It is also dominated by dudes, mostly of the older and white variety. This was my second conference, and I would by lying if I said ...

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crawl forward

November 3, 2013


Most of what I write has some deep life lesson embedded in it, which is rarely intentional. But in twenty-nine short years I have learned more about life, love, and loss than many people learn in a lifetime. Pondering and processing loss tends to lead one to think about life and love. The three are ...

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ratties and love

October 25, 2013


My previous post was meant to be about the experience of getting pet rats, but it took an unexpected turn. In this stage of my life, after several years of not writing consistently, I have learned to allow myself to write whatever bubbles to the surface. When I attempt to be rigid about what I am ...

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a tale of rats and vulnerability

October 24, 2013


Exactly two years ago today I sent an email to my then-boyfriend Todd. It was just before midnight on a Monday, and I had undoubtedly been up late working on school work in my last semester at the University of Illinois, and researching an idea I had. The email subject was “rats!” and the body ...

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Sheltered Beagle

October 19, 2013


As a young child, I was strange. This may or may not come as a surprise. Adulthood has not made me less strange; it has simply made me more able to fight (some of) my weirdo tendencies, and more able to hide the fact that I am a total weirdo. More often than not I ...

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strength to be in pain

October 16, 2013


Last week when I got back into town from camping, it was late afternoon and the sky was the muted cobalt blue that is an elemental part of the autumn. It is this time of year when the sun starts to hang closer to the horizon and even if it is still deceptively warm like ...

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Three months in one direction or another

October 12, 2013


Three months ago today you left us. Some days my sisters and I refer to it as being “three months in”. Other days we call it “three months out”. We are a few weeks out from having last held your hands, a few weeks out from the last time we heard you laugh or saw ...

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Disjointed Vacation Updates

October 9, 2013


Tomorrow I will go back to work after an entire week away. I spent my time off catching up on some life things, watching bad television, sleeping and also not sleeping, and drinking alone. For some reason, I anticipated that I would be wildly productive and I would go soul searching all by myself and I would ...

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Congrats, you made it to the end! Once more with feeling.