Life is Always Sunny in Palau

For Strangerville this week I decided to share a story about Palau. The written version of the story may be found below. Please enjoy. And also, don't forget to grab your tickets to Strangerville Live, July 12. Meg has decided to tell a story. Please come sit on the front row and clap really enthusiastically. Grab tickets here.

This time in Strangerville, Meg and Eli talk their weird phobias, Eli shares a story about what moving to “paradise” really looks like, and then there’s an unexpected therapy session for which we don’t apologize.

Story

Life is Always Sunny in Palau, by Eli McCann (including the cruddy music)

Production by Eli McCann & Meg Walter

Audio Playe

And That's OK

We're out on the patio. Skylar is studying. He decided to pursue a masters degree in the summers because apparently he's not sufficiently exhausted by medical school. This seems insane to me, but he's young so he can probably handle it.

I'm exhausted enough for the both of us. I've been working nights and weekends for much of the year. I'm supposed to be up for partner at my firm later this summer. How did I get that old? Wasn't I just sitting on a bed in my shared room in college creating a blog on my 15-pound laptop so I could tell my family what I was up to?

A few weeks ago I started crying in my office for absolutely no reason. It was 11:00 PM and I just started crying. And then I started laughing because I wasn't sure why I was crying. Then I packed up my stuff and drove home.

Skylar was studying when I got there. He was sitting on the couch, Duncan curled up next to him. It was strange how guilty I felt to just be getting home. I never used to feel that way when there was nothing waiting for me at home. I had gotten really used to nothing waiting for me at home.

We went to bed, and slept hard, waking up the next morning to do it all again.

I wondered that day if I was wasting my life doing things that made me feel exhausted. I thought about the same quandary I've considered a hundred times before. What am I actually accomplishing? Am I failing? Am I helping people? Am I helping my family? Am I helping myself?

Am I just wasting my life doing things that made me feel exhausted to no end?

Britney Spears, Crossroads

(Hola. Strangerville Live is on July 12. I had a dream last night that I fell asleep during the show and when I woke up everyone had already left and Meg said I slept through my own story and so we had to give everyone their money back. I'm just glad we have a good return policy in my dreams. Get your tickets at THIS LINK.)

It suddenly occurred to me that I had never seen Britney Spears's 2002 cinematic masterpiece Crossroads so this morning I pulled up what the kids are calling the Youtubes and I watched.

Not the whole thing, for that is probably illegal, and stuff. But I found clips, and let me tell you something about Britney Spears's 2002 cinematic masterpiece Crossroads: this is not a great film.

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

Hola. This is a reminder that we've got a Strangerville Live show coming up on July 12. Get your tickets at this link. It's going to be magical. Especially if you bring your magic sets and do some tricks for us.

Also, I think I have shingles again! Merry Christmas.

Please enjoy some Pictures & Distractions:

He likes to go outside so he can just stand at the window looking in at us.

How picking up the phone has saved me.

I have a new thing: I call people when they send me angry emails at work instead of replying to the email. Truly, for me, the most exhausting part of being a lawyer is the constant contention, which, by the way, is totally unnecessary.

The best lawyers I know are not jerks. Period. They don't yell. They aren't rude to opposing counsel. They don't snap at people. They don't send long aggressive threatening emails.

They don't have to do those things because they are smart and effective without turning into the worst versions of themselves. Whenever I hear people brag that they hired an "aggressive attorney who scares people" I immediately think, "yeah, and he probably sucks and over-bills you." (Yes, it's always a he.)

I'm letting you in on this little secret because I like you guys. I've seen a lot of lawsuits in the last decade. Most of them go on much longer than they should because the attorneys are jerks to each other. They are jerks to each other who fight tooth and nail over everything. So their clients end up paying thousands of dollars just so two complete jackasses with monster egos can file long angry motions and responses over some meaningless thing they should have just compromised on, like a short deadline extension or providing some document that is clearly relevant to the case.

The clients don't benefit. They sit there, smugly, happy that their attorney is yelling at someone on their behalf, totally unaware that they are paying an astronomically-unnecessary amount of money for this service that is most definitely delaying a resolution of their case.

Like getting bought by Google

Last month Meg called me and said The Beehive wanted to take over Strangerville Live and I was like HOW COULD YOU THIS IS OUR BABY and Meg was like "they've offered to handle the logistics so we only have to worry about developing the stories and not hauling stages and chairs across the state" so then I immediately signed over all of my Constitutional rights and emailed them my social security number. They said that was all unnecessary but I'd do it again if they also offered to take over my laundry.

The point is, Strangerville Live is now a production of The Beehive, and we could not be more thrilled about it. This feels exactly like when you develop an app and then google buys it for 12 billion dollars. I've already replaced all of Duncan's teeth with pure gold.

And, we have a show coming up! Join us on July 12 at 8:00 PM at Church & State in Salt Lake City for our next Strangerville Live, featuring such hotties as Mara Lefler, Clint Betts, Alisa Van Langeveld, and Eli Whistlebottom McCann.

Return of the Strangerhood of the Traveling Snuggie

Three things:

First, look how organized I am making lists and stuff I'M AMAZING SHOWER ME WITH COMPLIMENTS AND GOLD.

Second, my friend Andrea listened to the Strangerville episodes on the refugee crisis a while back (you can find them here and here) and because she's an amazing person who will be running the cafeteria in heaven (heaven's most coveted job, 3 trillion years in a row), she decided to do something about it. Andrea has organized a little charity event to raise some money for an organization that sends people and resources to the border to aide traumatized women and children.

Andrea gathered some local people who will be performing music. She asked Meg and me if we would sing and I was like YES MEG AND I WOULD LOVE TO PERFORM I GOT YOU BABE TOGETHER but then Meg was like I DON'T WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW ELI AND I ARE CONNECTED and I was like THEN YOU ARE MAKING A LOT OF VERY CONFUSING CHOICES IN YOUR LIFE.

Anyway, Meg is going to host the show and I'm going to tell a story and you guys should all come. It's in Riverton, Utah on June 22. It will be a very relaxed evening. I think there may be a silent auction as well. All proceeds from tickets and any other donations will go to the charity. So come! It will be fun! You can find more info through the Facebook event page HERE and the Eventbrite ticket page HERE.

Connie Crochet

I was about 7 when I spent my first ever one-on-one quality time with grandma on my mom's side. At least, that's the first time I remember having quality one-on-one time with her. My family was visiting her in her small farm town on the Mexican border in southern California in the house where my mom finished high school.

Grandma ("Nonna") was only 60 at the time. I can't believe that's true. I just had to use a calculator to verify because that seemed so impossible to me. In my mind, she was always this little old lady, and 60 is not old to me anymore.

Anyway, we had been at a family party one night in the small farm town when my grandpa showed up. My grandparents were divorced long ago and my grandpa had done some bad things over the years and he wasn't a particularly pleasant person to be around. I was a small child so I was relatively unaware of what was happening, but looking back I can fill in some blanks and see that it was decided by my grandma and the other adults that she would head home pretty shortly after he arrived.

I had been fighting with a cousin who was a few years older than me and I really didn't want to be at the family party anymore either. My mom must have noticed that because I was suddenly being sent out to my grandma's car, arm-in-arm, to head back to grandma's house. Two buddies who were breaking away from a party early to go have our own party.

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

You guys--people are mad right now and I can't hold them off any longer. All of a sudden in the last couple of weeks I've had multiple Strangers out of the blue write concerned and angry messages about where the hell the Traveling Snuggie™ ended up. I was hoping y'all would forget about it if enough time passed because I was too scared to tell you that THE TRAVELING SNUGGIE GOT STOLEN BY TERRORISTS. I think. Or it just got lost. All we know after extensive investigation is that it is missing due to the fault of no one except for the terrorists somewhere near Iowa or Ohio or one of those states that decides all our elections.

I've been thinking for a while that we should just start a new Strangerhood of the Traveling Snuggie quest but I haven't done it yet because lazy and tv and eating. So, you need to tell me if I should make this happen again.

And now, your Pictures & Distractions:

With tons of help from our friend Emily, we finally fixed up my dad's 1968 bike.

Back to School

Months and months ago I was sitting at home one evening when suddenly I decided I should enroll in school.

To be honest, wine was involved. NotThatWeKnowWhatWineIs.

I googled "writing class" on my phone and found one through the University of Utah and without doing any further investigation, I texted Meg, "I think I want to take a writing course."

Meg replied, "are you inviting me or is just some weird flex."

I told Meg that I was obviously inviting her so she said she would take the class with me. The next thing I knew, I was typing my credit card numbers into the internet, one glass of Merlot sloshing in the other hand, shouting to Skylar in the other room "I'M GOING TO BE A WRITER" but I said "writer" in a weird accent that was probably not French or anything real.

The next day I saw Meg and asked her whether she signed up for the class yet because I was all excited to sit next to her in the back and copy her homework and say stuff like, "ugh, school is the worst!" and then high five her.

This is why I'm so careful about responding to your comments.

I met Meg because we both told stories at The Porch back in 2014. She was funny and I immediately wanted to be friends with her. We ran into each other a time or two after that but I never recognized her because #facialblindness.

Then one day I wrote a less-than-supportive review of the cinematic masterpiece, Jurassic World, and Meg, who is like so obsessed with me, chimed in.