If you spend your day waiting for inspiration, you’ll spend your day waiting, period.

NTKOG Year 2, #5: The kind of casual superhero who, promenading the streets of a night, notices a stray kitten clinging to the highest tree branch and punches it down.

I am: more mild-mannered than Clark Kent, only because…

I am not: extraordinarily good at doing anything that’s actually useful to other people. Writing? Sure. Calculating tips? As long as it’s not an end-of-night bar tab. Righting wrongs and doing good deeds? Dudes, my cape is at the dry cleaner’s.

The Scene: The chaotic streets of Allston/Brighton, only a few weeks after the city-wide menace known as Moving Day. And if you’re from a city too smart to observe this horrifying tradition, a word of explanation: because the population of the greater Boston area swells exponentially when all the college kids come back, sadistically brilliant landlords have set something like 90% of leases in the city to start and end on September 1st. In theory, this allows our nine-month residents to move into new abodes at just the right time, and leave a solid three months on their leases to sublet when they move back home or take internships over the summer before coming back. In theory.

In practice? If you ever want to see a seventeen-mile traffic jam consisting exclusively of U-Haul trucks, well, get thee to Allston/Brighton on September 1st.

One of the many harrowing upshots of this citywide menace is that furniture stores, hardware shops and big-box sundry emporiums (love you, Target) are nigh unbearable for the week or so following the universal move — leaving many apartment-dwellers to camp out with the bare necessities for a few weeks, then spend the last half of September lugging purchases into their new homes.

Even now, it’s not uncommon in my neighborhood to, near midnight, watch a dude struggling with an oversized Target bag or IKEA bookshelf, broadcasting that particular animal scent of despair that accompanies all housing woes.

So, last week, I decided to focus my (utterly non-existent) spidey sense on one of the few demographics I know I can help: dudes carrying heavy stuff. Y’know, no big deal. Just avenging physics.

Came upon my first opportunity while dragging myself home from my sister’s last Monday, near 10pm. As I shuffled along the main thoroughfare connecting our apartments, noticed a woman — mid-thirties, sweatsuit, hair coaxed into the type of extreme frizzball that can only signify a short, intense period of physical duress — apparently attempting to wriggle her body through the crack between her apartment’s double doors while lugging two boxes full of anvils.

In my mind? Swooped up to the stoop invisible, a force of nature, swung the door open, then disappeared into the night before she could turn her head and even flash a smile of acknowledgment.

In actuality? Turns out if you’re going to suddenly appear behind someone well after nightfall, you should, uh, give them verbal warning from a few paces away. Yeah, I don’t know, dudes. It’s not like there’s a WikiHow on this.

For the next few days, when I saw people on their stoops in my neighborhood, struggling with door handles through armfuls of boxes or grocery bags, flashed up behind them (after giving sufficient warning!) to grab the door. Such a little thing, but the kind of thing I’ve never been socially forward enough to do.

Then, on Friday, the excuse to take things just a little further. As I dashed downstairs to the convenience store, noticed a girl in my foyer struggling with two boxes of unassembled bookshelves and a small coffee table. She was one of those girls who, y’know, accidentally-on-purpose wears a translucent shirt to work, who has thoughts about bronzer, who, ten seconds after meeting you at a party, compliments your hair and then touches it. Not the kind of girl I know personally, is what I’m saying here.

And over the course of my short life, I’ve seen many things that touch my heart. Summer sunrises, babies laughing, the works — yet still, there is nothing in this world or probably the next that I find quite as compelling as seeing an extremely beautiful girl in distress, mewling like a kitten at her own helplessness. Ironclad don’t-talk-t0-neighbors policy be damned. Finally, an opportunity to fully utilize my newfound social proactiveness?

Asked if I could help her move them anywhere; she cautioned about fifteen times that the boxes were extremely heavy, and offered to go halvsies on the lifting; I laughed with gentle scorn, then let her step aside as I carried the boxes into a neat pile in front of the elevator.

Which was broken.

Cue twenty minutes of lugging increasingly heavy boxes up to the entrance of her fourth-floor new walk-up, after which, one quick thank you, and back I flew onto the streets, ready to receive my next assignment. As long as it didn’t require any heavy lifting. ’cause, I mean, ouch.

The Verdict: Hee! That was super fun! I think it’s bizarre that — based on my own experience, conversations with friends, and the occasional email related to this blog — most of us suffer this universal paralysis when it comes to stepping in and helping strangers with something minor. Counter-intuitively, we’ll sometimes hold ourselves back from helping a dude because we’re afraid of what they’ll think of us. (Like, oh, I don’t know, “what a helpful person!”?)

Presumably, after a few more years roving this occasionally hostile earth, it’ll sink in forever: people are kind. People are good. People want to give and receive love, even in disposable one-bite doses, like catching a heavy door or showing off your strictly average upper-body strength.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an extra set of bedsheets I need to sew into a cape.

At Life As A Human, I realize my neighborhood convenience store is nothing less than an urban farmers market.

At Secrety Society of List Addicts, I angst about which of my 24-year-old habits my 16-year-old self would have HATED.

NTKOG Year 2, #4: The kind of disgustingly perky Pollyanna who love-bombs semi-strangers with thank-you-(for-existing) notes.

I am: insanely grateful for the hundreds of quasi-anonymous strangers it takes to make just one of my days great — or at least keep it from lapsing into apocalyptic status.

I am not: as good as showing it as I am at thinking about it.

The Scene: Looping my favorite Coolidge Corner haunts after a fairly grisly day at work. Something about the grey autumnal weather casts a pall over my usual nauseating chipperness. All day, I cursed my computer and grimaced through phone calls, and just when I’d hit my breaking point, I did what any good American would do–

I went shopping.

Specifically, I ran to the big-box supermarket across the street from my office, vowing not to return until I’d found a way to buy a little sliver of sunshine. And, as is its providence, happiness was lurking in the last place I’d suspect: the stationery aisle.

Specifically, in the guise of a ridiculously overpriced pack of “Mommy Messages” — those little notecards printed for Dr. Phil-watching’ suburban housewives to tuck into their little cubs’ lunchpacks.

As I was taking this picture, an old man walked by and said: "I wish I were cool!" He was wearing a fedora, so I felt no qualms about immediately telling him, "I'm pretty sure you are cool, sir."

Quick jaunt around Coolidge Corner after work, while I wondered how I could possibly dig up five recipients. There’s … let’s see … the girl who rang up my last Wodehouse book at the Brookline Booksmith. And can’t forget one for the driver of the 66 bus. Oh! And big-smile cashier’s on duty at Trader Joe’s!

Huh, what do you know. After ten minutes of note-writing, I began to wish I’d picked up a second pack.

Sadly, there’s no real story to the giving of the notes: I went to each respective retail location (slash awkwardly swung myself onto one bus, before declining a ride and walking home), waited patiently in line, then smiled at the respective cashiers before muttering, “I, uh, I wrote you a note. Have a good day!”

PS: Marry me, please, Brookline Booksmith.

Got smiles in return, but didn’t stick around to watch anybody read them, ’cause why ruin a pretty okay thing?

Although, nice coda: whether it was the brightened weather or my disgusting love for Pollyanna-ing, my mood for the rest of the evening was all gossamer and unicorn nuzzles. Stopping by a neighborhood hardware store on the walk home, I spent five minutes bantering with the clerk about various types of drain snakes and, when he told me to have a nice day afterwards, I could only grin ’cause, dude, how could I not?

The Verdict: How do I always forget that the best way to ninja-kick yourself out of a funk is just to pay more attention to the people who are trying to make your life great?

And I think it’s no secret on the blog that I’m a little obsessed with chatting with retail clerks. In truth, the subject is dear to my heart. The summer after freshman year of college, I got my first-ever real job, working as a customer care rep in a big-box video store. For the first few days, I was overwhelmed by the indifference and casual beratement customers showed me while running their annoying everyday errands.

Then I realized how often I ran my own errands, snapping at salesclerks and chatting on my phone in line — pretty dang often, considering I was locked in that teenage it’s-cool-to-be-jaded mindset that, thankfully, most of us outgrow. And I thought about how many days I spent pacing a fretting, sinking into the quagmire of my own dissatisfaction, praying for just one little goddamn thing to go right for once.

So I made the first good decision of my teenage years: every day, at my stupid job, I’d try my hardest to be that one small, good thing for someone. Somehow, as though by magic, that silly summer of alphabetizing videos taught me how to be happy. Finally.

And now, many happy years later, nothing else makes me quite as ecstatic as seeing conscientious and enthusiastic retail clerks and cashiers making that same decision — to make their little corner of commerce a slightly dazzling place to be.

Oh goodness, I’m way too perky today. Who in your life deserves a little shout-out? Favorite barista, inspired hairdresser, cute old man who sits alone at the library every day? Let’s hear it!

NTKOG Year 2, #3: The kind of rabid running addict who makes her rounds in rain, snow, sleet, hail and Hollywood-ready thunderstorms.

I am: a fair-weather jogger. C’mon, dude — isn’t it enough that I haul my lazy bones out of bed at 6:30am without having to add hurricane conditions to the mix?

I am not,: even at the best of times, fond of that clear, non-alcoholic liquid that falls from the sky. (What do they call it? Rain? How quaint.)

The Scene: My warm, comfy bed at 6:45am last Wednesday, where — nursing a hangover and a few half-remembered glimpses of a dream involving Adrien Brody — I dragged my ass out of bed and into some (ugh) running gear. As I clicked on my “get psyched!” playlist and hit the street: horror.

A volley of raindrops the size of babies’ fists pummeled my bare neck and shoulders. Any normal day, I would have shrugged with mock-regret then turned heel to finish that rendezvous with Mr. Brody. Instead? Cranked up my music and surged onward, uphill.

After five minutes, I’d turned up my music to full-volume to compete with the mad thrashing of rain on pavement. Five minutes after that, I gave up the fight altogether and focused on the unrelenting hiss of water intent on wiping out the streets around me. Uh, anything to distract from the fact that my shirt and bra were entirely soaked with half an hour to go.

By a miraculous fluke of nature, the rain let up for a few minutes, and I enjoyed the unfamiliar coolness of air searing my wet skin — was just prepared to consider starting all my runs with a light shower — when I rounded a corner and THE WORLD CRACKED OPEN.

In the space of half a footstep, the whole visible horizon was swallowed by a monstrous grey cloud bent on weeping all of mankind to flood and extinction. I’m grimly compelled by storms, the way they can, in a moment, swell to cinematic Hollywood proportions — but this storm wasn’t even out of a movie. Or, if it was, not a very good one. Water dumped down in half-gallon jugs, thunder sound effects cued at cochlea-imploding levels, jags of lightning painted across the entire sky in a child’s melodramatic scrawl.

Out of nowhere, the storm was so bad that it wasn’t even a work of realism. It was an expressionist painting, and the paint was smearing all over me. (And, okay, maybe my feline aversion to rain and proclivity toward graphic description is overselling this. But, you guys, I might just be underselling the thing.)

By a mile from home, I had already passed half a dozen other erstwhile joggers, clustered miserably in bus stops or seeking shelter under awnings. Lightning cleaved the sky in a garish mo-friggin’ tableau. I unplugged my iPhone in a superstitious bid to ward off electrocution, but kept on at a steady pace on the now-empty streets.

And maybe it was my waterlogged brain, or a leftover sense of unreality from the previous evening’s riesling but — for those last several blocks — my silly morning jog became a little epic.

With the sky leaking water at a frankly absurd rate, the apocalypse-gray morning had the keen of scenery from the kind of movie I wouldn’t even admit to watching on Lifetime. The scene where the protagonist goes on a hero’s quest to regain his Great Lost Love and is thwarted from his true aim on all sides — planes crashing, dead dial tones, doors slammed in his face — and once he gets within a stone’s throw of his dream, running in slow-motion to her door, mother nature pelting him backwards one step out of every three, he turns his face up to the heavens — worn down to nothing but lizard-brain and stupid goddamn optimism — and bellows, “Ha! Is that all you’ve got?!”

…I — I spend a lot of time in my own head. Anyway. The point is, it rained really hard, but I still took thirty seconds off my usual mile pace. And I totally wanted to kiss my running shoes afterwards, ’cause they are champions and so am I.

The Verdict: Hey, rain? I’m not afraid of you anymore. And in a couple of months, you can go ahead and tell mother nature I’m only, like, mildly terrified by snow now.

And in related news, hey, I finished the Couch-to-5k program! Not only can I run for over half an hour without crying or vomiting afterwards — I actually do it like four times a week! Somewhere in Nevada, a former middle-school PE teacher just clutched her heart and keeled the frig over.

Happy Friday, loves! Engaging in random acts of Follow-Up Friday to give you a little update on the That Kind of Penpal Program — my teensy little initiative to provide a safe-haven mailbox to serve as a return address for people who would like to write to inmates, but don’t feel comfortable revealing their home addresses to their pen(itentiary) pals.

Since I got the mailbox in early August, I’ve made a personal goal of writing five birthday cards a week to inmates, and am thrilled to report that I’ve started receiving replies! It takes a while for letters to get processed through prison mail systems, but the results? So, so worth it.

In the past two weeks, I’ve received letters that include: a lengthy literary critique of The Odyssey, which a young man had just read because “Odysseus reminds me of me, kind of”; a beautifully rendered line drawing of a motorcycle; two short thank-you poems; and many, many lines of complaints about prison food.

A few of the letters I’ve received have been simple thank-yous that didn’t really call for a response. Others, though, have sprawled through several pages ripped from legal pads.

I’m doing my best to respond to every letter in a timely manner — a bit daunting for a dude who hasn’t written anything longer than a to-do list longhand since elementary school. A few weeks ago, I grabbed a seat in a tiny Bay Back coffee shop for three hours, rereading and then hand-writing responses to three letters on nice stationery in my best cursive.

As I sealed the last envelope, the waitress wandered by with my check, then hovered while I fished out my debit card. “That’s a long letter,” she said. “Boyfriend?”

I tipped her five percent extra just for the look on her face when I happily chirped, “Inmate!”

I’ve gotten emails from some readers who are taking part in the project, and I can’t tell you how ridiculously kittens-and-hot-cocoa it makes my chilled steel heart. So if you’ve been writing letters, thank you! And if you had only considered it, might I suggest you send out even one birthday card to an inmate today? It only takes a minute. And you never know what small, good thing is going to shift your world just a little on its orbit.

Have a gorgeous weekend! See you back on Monday!

NTKOG #237: The kind of starry-eyed, thoughtfully generous citizen of the universe who can chirpily remind herself to “pay it forward” without even stopping to sneer about that godawful Kevin Spacey movie.

I am: shocked, Kevin Spacey. You’re better than that. Costner, maybe, but dude, we expected so much more from you.

I am not: one of those angel in bluejeans types. For starters, I almost never wear pants.

The Scene: The “pay it forward” experience actually starts a bit before the NTKOG, with a lovely interaction in my office. On Tuesday afternoon, in those grumpy last dregs of the workday, a man limped into my office and leaned toward me: “I have a strange request.”

Dude, we’re 15 work-hours into the month. My life is a long, strange request.

But it turned out he meant really strange. He stuck his foot on my desk to show me the sandal that had completely snapped in half, then asked if he could borrow a stapler to try to fix it enough to get home.

Sir, say no more. We sandal-wearers need to stick together. As my boss stepped around him with unbridled consternation, I ducked around the office fetching staplers in increasingly heavy gauges and, when that seemed destined for failure, dug through my drawers to find masking tape and binder clips. Happily, though, staples seemed enough for his mission, and after a few minutes, he thanked me and left.

I thought nothing of it until the next day, when, at the nascent-migraine stage of late afternoon, a familiar face popped into the room and the hapless sandal wearer walked up to my desk. Dude, what now? Did he rip a seam on his pants?

I asked about his footware (he swung his whole leg up on my desk to show off the snappy new sandals), then pulled out a grocery bag. “Chocolate or vanilla?”

Um, what?

Chocolate or vanilla. He pulled out two of those tiny convenience-store containers of Haagen Dazs, then unsheathed two plastic soup spoons from the pocket of his khakis. I thanked my guardian angel of ice cream and enjoyed the treat. Small, good things.

The happy little story arc seemed to be perfect timing, too: all week I’d been psyching myself up to pull a classic “pay it forward” for the blog, but had kept ducking out of it because I never seemed to go to any stores that were appropriate for the task. I charged out of work that Wednesday, though, fired up to pay forward the sandal man’s little kindness.

But you know how plans are, right? Shortly after the man came, I did something unwittingly oafish at work. On the bus ride to the BPL, I compounded my accidental offense by saying something so devastatingly idiotic that it seemed practically calculated to be hurtful.

Instead of skipping into the world, a spreader of light and doer of good deeds, I ended up pacing outside the BPL in the jaws of a soul-crushing shame spiral, all but convinced that the passing pedestrians were mere moments from gathering their torches and pitchforks and chasing me out of town like the monster I am.

Doer of good deeds? Please, I can’t even handle neutral social interactions.

Then, just as I was prepared to close up shop and declare myself a failure for the day, I thought of sandal man and the ice cream he brought. Small good things. Trying to be a better person isn’t about being perfect all the time. It’s enough of a step in the right direction to take one stupid babystep right when you feel like curling up in the fetal position and sending the world away.

So before I retreated for the night to lick my wounds, I made a stop at the Finale in Coolidge Corner, where I bought treats for me and my sister, and one of their magically delightful whoopie pies for, y’know, whoever the next person who walked into the store happened to be.

The Verdict: Not life-changing for anyone involved, but pleasant. I’m trying very hard, day by day, to be a better person in microscopic little ways. And like all processes, some days go better than others. But at least I didn’t give up without a whimper.

NTKOG #232: The kind of college honors graduate who — wait a minute — actually learned a lesson in kindergarten?!

I am: allegedly an adult, but still playing house at a pre-kindergarten level.

I am not: good at cleaning up after myself, what can I say? That, and most of the junk scattered around my apartment is totally kindergarten appropriate: chalk, fingerpaintings, googly eyes, plastic beads, and toy robots of every description.

The Scene: My apartment which, I realize now, I’ve often referenced but always refrained from describing in this blog. My reason? Sheer, unadulterated shame.

It’s mortifying to have to admit this in a public forum, but I’m an absolute slob. I mean, really beyond the pale. Up until a month ago, my apartment looked like Frank and Charlie’s in Always Sunny: plates, clothes, plastic bags scattered around, peppered liberally with broken glass (I have a thing about broken glass). After spending a year as the obligatory neat-freak zookeeper for four boys, I made a little deal with myself: “You never have to clean. Ever.” And, uh, I stuck with that.

To be fair, I think it’s hereditary. Ever since I can remember, my mother’s proudly displayed a refrigerator magnet that reads: “Dull women have immaculate houses.” Funny the stuff that sticks with us from childhood, eh?

I had a pretty simple routine: as long as I was spending my time writing, I didn’t have to clean up my apartment. Once it got so bad I had literal nightmares about it, I’d spend four feverish hours tidying. Repeat as necessary. (Hardly ever necessary.)

However, as part of my recent-ish monastic schedule, as well as a general desire to de-clutter my life, spent a full weekend a few weeks ago genuinely cleaning the ol’ place. In just six hours, it was downgraded from crackhouse to frat house. Six hours after that, it almost looked like a real apartment.

Then, to top off the transformation, I came up with the GREATEST CLEANING TIP EVER DREAMED UP BY MAN. I mean, this shiz is powerful. Patent pending, so don’t steal it from me:

After I use something? I put it back!

You guys, if any of you steals that advice and gets a book deal, prepare to feel my dang wrath.

It’s been a little over a month now, and for the first time in my life, I actually live somewhere clean. Not spit-shined, not hastily swept under rugs — actually, legitimately organized. (Sort of.) I like to think of myself as a young urban Lorax, except, instead of speaking for the trees, I’m just trying to protect against the desecration of their hardwood floor brethren.

To celebrate this extremely uncharacteristic lifestyle change, I am — deep breath — hereby giving you the grand tour of my apartment. A big deal to me because, despite the 900+ pages of blog prose suggesting otherwise, I’m a very private person, and rarely let other humans into my personal universe. Like, for context, before this month, only six people had seen my apartment. Four were out of town guests. One was my super. And now, all of you get to.

My front door and -- light of my life -- my Wall of Rejection, where I paste all of my rejection letters. As you can see, I've been busy.

Fun fact: I've had an Attack of the 50-Foot Woman poster in some form in every room I've lived, even temporarily, since I was 18. I want a nice lithographed copy as a wedding gift. If slash when that time comes.

Nichka couldn't be bothered to wake up from her nap for me to photograph the bed.

Wall across from the couch. I like that the Lenin / piggy bank arrangement is kind of an Animal Farm tribute. Although I guess the addition of my grinning monster bowl makes it a ... Great Monsters Of History thing?

My kitchen, viewed larger than lifesize. Note: there is literally no built-in counter space. That's what the tops of microwaves are for, I guess.

My messy bathroom. Or, as I like to think of it, the second bedroom. Heck yes, clawfoot tubs.

The Verdict: Huh. Turns out the floor isn’t just the biggest shelf in the house. I’ll admit I haven’t done a perfect job keeping this up since it was moved from active NTKOG status, but it’s nice having an apartment that can be made company-ready in twenty minutes instead of a week and a half.

My apologies, but two posts today to keep us on schedule. For more correspondence-related thoughts, though, please do read today’s post proposing a communal PO Box for writing to inmates.

NTKOG #228: The kind of honestly-trying baby do-gooder who, having put her money where her mouth is, spends a little time for good measure.

I am: trying to do the right thing more often than not, but my attempts are often thwarted by my myriad personal failings. Laziness being chief among them.

I am not: even remotely happy about this.

The Scene: My imaginary Austen-style writing desk, on the heels of my week of sending birthday cards to various prisons. And if you, like I, are imagining one of those old-fashioned roll-top desk numbers with fancy scrolling and various cubbyholes, then may I let it be said: no cubbyhole was bursting more than the one filled with neglected correspondence from one source.

Save The Children.

After an inspiring encounter a few months ago, I started making monthly donations to this excellent charity. And while I’m always pleased to see my meager donation taken out of my monthly bank statement, I’ll admit, I’ve been an absolute beast about opening their correspondence.

Dudes send a lot of letters!

A few months ago, when I finally slashed open the dozens of envelopes they’d sent, it became apparent that they wanted more than my money. They wanted my time. Specifically, they had matched me to a specific donor recipient — an adorable fourth-grade boy in New Mexico — and wanted to make sure I was an active participant in their donor writing campaign.

Just think! they told me, With a letter or two a month, you could form a lasting, life-long relationship with a child who would truly appreciate it! A great idea. I’d get right on it. Tomorrow.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

After two months, I’d still written nary a word to the little dude, and my normal routine would be to think, “Welp, I’m just an awful person” and recycle the whole reproachful pile of papers. Because after so many months, there were many great excuses not to continue.

Obviously the kid was doing just fine without me. How useful can I be to someone who doesn’t talk about Nabokov or Shakespeare? If I were a kid, I wouldn’t want the burden of writing to an aimless twenty-something. Since I’e waited so long, it would be awkward and maybe even offensive to start now.

But frig excuses and frig habitual self-loathing. Picked up one of the last few sheets of my extra-luxe resume paper and, in my best hand-writing, wrote a one-page note asking him about the desert and his favorite subjects in school, describing my first time seeing snow in Boston, telling him I hoped we could enjoy our future correspondence. Tucked in two sheets of stickers (jungle animals and anthropomorphized fruits & veggies) and, in twenty minutes, dispelled two months of guilt.

The Verdict: Isn’t it funny how simple and non-intimidating the things we fear are, once we actually get them done? And, in related news, I really need to invest in some sort of functional mail-sorter so I can stop inviting at least some of these endless excuses to my TKOG-is-an-awful-person party.\

Updates if and when I hear back from the little dude, though! Slash hopefully pictures of an adorably decorated envelope!

NTKOG: The kind of frugal, level-headed domestic goddess who takes yo’ Depression-era grandma for a run for housekeeping money.

I am: at least a solid half-level above Microwave Gourmet in the kitchen. Isn’t that enough? No? You beasts!

I am not: secure enough with the essentials of domesticity to even begin considering thrift, frugality or any of those other Laura Ingalls Wilder motivational cross-stitch staples.

The Scene: My postage-stamp Brighton apartment, which is just about big enough to hold one — as long as you don’t have big dreams.

Let me level with you a bit, kittens: Ignore the number in the description up there. I haven’t just done 222 or 250 or even 300 of these NTKOGs — I’ve done more than I can easily count. The problem? Not all of them make good stories. In fact, half of the things I do specifically for this blog end up getting scrapped because there just isn’t 500 words of content in ‘em.

I’ve taken to thinking of these failed NTKOGs as didn’t-kill-me’s. ’cause that’s all there really is to say. Wore a too-short skirt work? Didn’t kill me. Told off a homeless dude for sticking his arm in my shirt up to the elbow? Didn’t kill me. Sat up until 3am drinking boxed wine on the curb with a Jordanian immigrant? Well, you get the message.

Unsurprisingly, many of these didn’t-kill-me’s are stories that take place in the privacy of my own apartment, where I try day by day to take on the non-glamorous task of finally becoming an adult. Still, in the spirit of frugality (and saving you having to read a post every single day ’til August 23), let us indulge for a moment in a compost heap of domestic-themed NTKOGs.

NTKOG #224: Washing and re-using various disposable household goods. This one was brought on by my year-long spurning of paper towels. Heck, if I can save a tree or two, how many casualties could I save in the plastic rainforest?

Cue many weeks of rinsing and reusing plastic cutlery at work, using old wine bottles as water carafes (’till they crowded out my fridge, that is — whoops), and painstakingly washing and drying my old Ziploc bags.

The Verdict: Oh man, this made me feel like the special guest star of a Hoarders prequel. With the exception of the wine bottles, which felt a bit roguish and debonair, it’s just — it’s just so much effort to save something that costs mere pennies. Plus, I’m not convinced it’s environmentally useful, what with the massive water consumption it entails. Voting this one a thumbs-down with a double serving of, dude, I am not my grandmother. (Which is probably a good thing, or else my fridge would be too crammed with decades-expired cans of lard to have room for wine in the first place.)

NTKOG #225: Eating expired food. See what I mean about the non-glamorous thing?

Let me be straight with you: I’m such a paranoid culinary princess that I can’t even eat leftovers more than 24 hours later. And the second we approach the expiry month of a food product? See ya.

Nonetheless, conquered my revulsion by working through two half-gallon bottles of month-expired soy milk. Which, unlike moo milk, tasted exactly the same as they did the day I bought them.

Later, growing riskier, I cleaned out my seriously limp crisper drawer into a pot of chili that tasted — what’d'ya know?! — exactly like my usual recipe. But my craving for zombified produce reached its pinnacle when I prepared and ate, of my own free will, banana-nut dinosaur muffins out of these:

I generally have a rule against foods that can be described as "sludgey," but even three weeks old, organic bananas are too $$$ to throw away.

The Verdict: The first didn’t-kill-me I’ve been delighted and surprised to find actually. didn’t. kill me.

NTKOG #226: The kind of gender-neutralized toolbelt-wielding lady who fearlessly handywomans her own environs. By which I mean. I scraped and re-grouted the crusty tiles in my bathroom. For fun.

The Verdict: Okay, this one actually did almost kill me. Because my Roomba was running in the other rooms I, like an idiot, closed myself in the bathroom for three hours with the caulking solution, then hyperventilated and passed out very briefly in the bathtub. Which is a lot funnier in retrospect than it was at the time.

Oh whatever. Like Bob Vila never had a bloopers reel…

Meta-Verdict: One doesn’t like to brag but — this guy? Totally not dead yet. No, no, hold your applause.

Correction: I might have died of cuteness after eating these.

NTKOG #223: The kind of jumpsuit-chaser who, not content with her current social milieu, jumps at the chance to add inmates to the mix.

I am: not sure I know anyone who’s ever been in prison. Primarily because I haven’t stayed in touch with anyone from high school.

I am not: well-acquainted with prisoners’ rights or psychology. Heck, I don’t even watch movies that involve prisons.

The Scene: My local CVS, where I picked up five pleasant by generic birthday cards. At the check-out aisle, the clerk asked if I had a lot of friends. “Not — not at all, actually.”

Afterwards, went online to Write A Prisoner. Y’know, as one generally does after visiting the stationery store.

A little background here: senior year of college, I got obsessed with the idea of becoming pen pals with Erik Menendez. It stemmed from a Radar article that was running the rounds, about a pop culture journalist, Bill Geerhart, who pretended to be his eight-year-old self, writing to famous Death Row inmates for advice about the kinds of problems eight-year-olds have. (Should I drop out of school? Why do I have to clean my room? Who would win: a shark or a T-Rex? That sort of thing.)

In hopes of getting his story, he also included a self-addressed stamped envelope and stationery for all of his correspondents. A number of them wrote back, including Erik Menendez who, with elegant penmanship, wrote something along the lines of: “Thank you for your letter, but next time there is no need to send paper or a stamp or that sort of thing,” before pouring out a thoughtful and amazingly sweet four-page letter.

I don’t know what it was, but that sentence made me cry. In fact, it still makes my eyes prickle. Maybe because it was so considerate, so hopeful, completely oblivious to the fact that he was being manipulated for a smarmy media piece.

When I first proposed writing to Menendez, Justice and another friend of ours vehemently dissuaded me — for, I’ll admit, the very practical reason that disclosing my name and address to a felon might be classified as a Very Bad Idea.

But while they were dissuading me, the other friend told me: “They’re just inmates. If you really want to do something nice, do it for someone who deserves it.”

Even all these years later, I still find that thought upsetting. It seems so … unforgiving.

So, after I bought the cards, I checked Write a Prisoner and found five inmates who shared my birthday and sent them a card. God knows I’ve had a few horrible birthdays, but never in the solitary-confinement class. Everyone deserves a little recognition on their birthday and no matter what awful things I might have done or might still do in this world, I know I wouldn’t want anyone to forget that small human fact.

The Verdict: To anyone who might be concerned, I did what I could about taking precautions. I used a modified form of my name (full first name + middle name) and a very non-specific address — which will, sadly, preclude people writing back. It was hard, actually, finding five profiles that didn’t begin “Hey ladies!”. Although one was by a man only a few years older than me, who quoted The Odyssey and talked simply and seriously about how he was looking to continue his self-education. I wrote him with my real address.

I’m not worried, because he doesn’t get out until 2028. I don’t know what he’s in for. I didn’t have the heart to look.

Now I’m looking into programs through local churches to actually write and receive responses from people without disclosing my address. It feels wrong not to try this. I call myself a writer because I cherish the absurd notion that I might be able to one day string a few words together in a way that changes someone’s life for the better. What if there’s someone out there who really needs a few considerate words? Wouldn’t I be a terrible phony if I didn’t at least try?

You can mock me or call me crazy all you want in the comments section. Doing this was my birthday present to myself. (Well, that, and about a million drinks in New York, which I’m enjoying even as we speak. A girl can’t strive for personal enlightenment all the time.)