“If you try to make a shrimp boil, but the bag of spices bursts, and so you just toss it in along with whatever spices you can find in the pantry--you can make homemade pepper spray. Unintentionally.And everyone at your dinner party will run outside for the next hour, coughing and tearing up as if they've been maced, because technically they kind of have been, because mace was one of the spices I found in the panty. I blame whoever makes spice out of mace, and I remind my gasping dinner guests that even if I did mace them, I did it in an old fashioned, homemade, Martha Stewart sort of way. With love.”

“It's true, I did say I wanted girlfriends," I capitulated hesitantly, "but couldn't we start with something smaller and less terrifying? Like maybe spend a weekend at a crack house? I heard those people are very nonjudgmental, and if you accidentally say something offensive you can just blame it on their hallucinations.”

“There's a very mean girl down the hall who's trying to get me fired. I'm no good with confrontation, so whenever I say, "Have a wonderful day," to her out loud, I'm really saying, "Be nice to me or I will stab you in the face with a fork," in my head. I wish her a wonderful day at least once an hour. She's starting to get paranoid and jumpy about it, but there's really nothing she can do, because she can't complain about me wishing her a wonderful day without sounding totally insane. This is why you should never mess with nonconfrontational people. Because they're too unstable to second-guess. And because they're totally the kind of people who could suddenly snap, and stab you in the face with a fork.”

“Dear Victor: Wow. That … really got out of hand. I’m sending this cat in as a peace offering. I forgive you for all the stuff you wrote on the walls about my sister, and I’m going to just ignore all the stuff you wrote about my “giant ass” (turn cat over for rest) because I love you and you need me. Who else loves you enough to send you notes written on cats? Nobody, that’s who. Also, I stapled a picture of us from our wedding day to the cat’s left leg. Don’t we look happy? We can be that way again. Just stop leaving wet towels on the floor. That’s all I ask. I’m low-maintenance that way. Also, this cat needs to go on a diet. I shouldn't be able to write this much on a cat and still have room left over.”

“It's like I have a sensor in my head, but she works on a seven-second delay... well-meaning, but perpetually about seven seconds too late to actually do anything to stop the horrific avalanche of shit-you-shouldn't- say-out-loud-but-I-just-did.”

“Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I'm taking with me when I go. ”

“I just want to clarify that I don't mean 'without my vagina' like I didn't have it with me at the time. I just mean that I wasn't, you know...displaying it while I was at Starbucks. That's probably understood, but I thought I should clarify, since it's the first chapter and you don't know that much about me. So just to clarify, I always have my vagina with me. It's like my American Express card. (In that I don't leave home without it. Not that I use it to buy stuff with.)”