I’ve had some extremely weird rumors spread about me. Not recently, or at least not to my knowledge, but there was a time in middle school, in particular, when people actually came up to me to ask if they were true. Looking back, the rumor that I was a poorly behaved kid with dozens of detentions is not only laughable, but so benign that I can’t believe it bothered me as much as it did.

Which isn’t to say that rumors don’t have power; obviously they do. The stakes were low when I was 12 and the worst thing anybody could think to say about me was that I got a lot of detentions. I’m sure other people have said worse things about me now that I have 30 years of making friends and enemies with people, but I try—try—not to think about them.

The idea picks at me, though, that there’s a narrative about me that I can’t control, that somebody might have more say over the person I know myself to be than I do. Unfortunately, I just have to let it go, shrugging off the annoyance that I don’t get to tell my own story.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

My family is extremely Norweigian. Not necessarily in the tradition sense—though we are extremely fond of saying uff da, but in the food sense. I’ve never tried it, but my grandparents love lutefisk. We keep pickled herring in the fridge for Christmas. It’s not as bad as it sounds, though trying it once was enough for me.

Lefse, on the other hand, is a beloved favorite. It’s a thin, crepe-like potato pancake we smear with butter and sprinkle with sugar. The dough is sweet and delicate, and practically melts in your mouth.

The problem is that nearly every Swedish bakery in our area has closed up, and lefse is a laborious task. You have to rice potatoes (essentially putting them through a special press that turns them into thin grains), mix in flour, sugar, salt, butter, and cream, and turn that into a dough. Once it’s cool, it needs to be rolled out with a special grooved pin to 1/8th of an inch or less, then tossed onto a 400-degree griddle with a special stick. Cook it too long and it gets bitter, not enough and it’s still doughy.

I know all this because I spent some eight hours making it this weekend. And I do mean painstaking—my shoulders are still aching from all the rolling, my hands are burned from bumping the griddle.

But it was worth it. Not because it tasted good, but because I now appreciate how much work goes into it. Because I’ve started a new tradition where I make it for my family, especially since this first time it was a surprise.

And also because it tasted good. There are more burned spots and not-quite-cooked areas on my lefse, but it’s still delicious. 

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

Lucrezia Borgia probably wasn’t a poisoner. It’s a myth that persisted through the ages, likely because the Borgia family had many enemies who benefitted from spreading rumors about them. And despite the common “poison is a woman’s weapon,” refrain, most poisoners are men.

But the myths persist. Lucrezia murdered her family’s way to power thanks to a ring containing foxglove or arsenic, it’s said, despite there being no evidence that such a thing ever happened.

For some reason, I was disappointed to learn that it wasn’t true, that she was just another victim (likely not innocent, but a victim nonetheless) of rumor.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

I think a lot about revenge for a person who doesn’t think of herself as “vengeful.” I really do believe that living well is the best revenge, which is why I try to live exceptionally well.

I don’t. I struggle a lot, as most people my age do. I have vet bills, student loans, credit card debt. I also have good friends, a wonderful family, and work that genuinely fills me with joy. I have a book coming out in a week. That, too, is revenge.

Is it okay to harbor resentful feelings, I ask myself. Does it make me a bad, unkind, heartless person?

It might. So I try to balance it out. I think about revenge, and try to do something nice for somebody else. I think about revenge, and I set it aside to work, instead. I think about revenge, and how I don’t actually care about it anymore, because I have better things to fill my time with than to fixate on people who went out of their way to make me miserable years and years and years ago.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

I’m a high-strung person. I wish I was the type of person that lets inconveniences and frustrations roll of their back, but in fact I am the kind of person who fixates on mistakes until they take up my entire brain. I have to pencil in time for self-care or I will forget that my brain and my body need time to rest and recuperate.

I’m also not a person with many vices. This is, in fact, probably why I’m so high-strung. Sometimes, the best cure for a bad day is chopping vegetables or slicing steak with my giant knife or pounding coriander to dust with a mallet. Destroying things to make them delicious is my specialty.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.