My Ex Broke Up with Me on a Sticky Note
But I Got the Last Laugh
When I met Shane in person for the first time, I knew it was on when we got into a heated debate about the best song on Led Zeppelin I. During our second date, he told me he really liked me within the first 5 minutes. A couple of weeks after that, he dropped the L-word. I responded by asking him if that meant he would now fix my crooked flat screen and plant my Japanese willow for me. He said yes. Love was in the air! Like a fart. Except better smelling.
The first thing one must do when falling in love is decide on nicknames. I chose Muffin for him. Banana Nut Muffin specifically as an ode to the naughty bits. Unfortunately, he had a much harder time deciding on my pet name.
“Muffin, why don’t you have a nickname for me?” I asked, worriedly one day. This wasn’t child’s play. This was serious. It’s like the time I chose neon yellow at the nail salon, and then I was stuck with that hideous color for a month. A good nickname was essential. Word to the wise, don’t choose a nail color based on what Gwen Stefani is wearing. Unless you have the same skin tone.
“How about Berry?” he asked after briefly mulling it over.
“Just Berry?” I asked. “What kind of berry? There are raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries! You’re basically just saying I’m like every other berry!”
“I don’t think you’re like every other berry! I just can’t decide,” he said in all fucking seriousness.
“A nickname is specifically chosen because you feel a certain way about someone. So you clearly don’t feel anything for me,” I huffed. “This is an arbitrary nickname.”
“Alright, what if I call you Blueberry?”
I immediately froze. My ex Mike also called me Blueberry, (was there something just inherently blueberry-ish about me?). I didn’t want to tell Shane he had inadvertently chosen the same nickname as an ex.
“Actually Berry is good,” I responded.
We decided to hold a contest: who could create the best faux Led Zeppelin album using the best songs from all of their albums. Then we emailed all of our friends and asked them to vote on the best albums (we gave the albums generic titles so they wouldn’t know who made which album). Most of them thought we were insane and ignored us. The few that voted, voted in my favor of course. He foolishly neglected to include “Stairway to Heaven” on his faux album, which was the cause of his ultimate downfall.
Shane had an abnormal obsession with tomatoes. He could literally eat tomatoes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He would eat canned tomatoes straight of the can. He even learned how to jar them.
I was OK with the whole tomato thing until Shane got crazy.
“What would you want to reincarnate as?” I asked him one day.
“If I get reincarnated, I want to come back as a tomato,” Shane said.
“You don’t want to come back as a person? If you return as a tomato, we won’t be together.” He clearly didn’t understand this whole reincarnation thing yet.
“Isn’t this lifetime enough?” he asked.
“I can’t believe you don’t want to be with me for eternity! I am going to come back as a person and eat you and you’ll be dead.”
“I like the idea of you eating me,” he responded.
I frowned. “You clearly do not understand how reincarnation works. You cannot be a fucking tomato!”
“You’re so cute,” he said, grabbing me in a bear hug.
Shane stocked his apartment with contact lens solution, tampons, a little heater for one side of the bed when I got cold, and cleared out a shelf just for my things. On the shelf, he put a sticky note that said “Berry’s shelf.” In fact, Shane loved sticky notes. Shane left sticky notes all over the place. I would wake up after he left for work to find a sticky note in the egg carton that said “I love you more than all the stars in the Universe.” Or a note on the mirror that said, “You’re my favorite little swimmer.”1 I decided that I, too, wanted to get in on the sticky note action, so I left him ones that said, “You make me moist like a sponge” and “Thanks for having a big dick.”
However, despite all the love in the air, something started to seem amiss; his dick. It seemed like a cruel twist of fate. Shane couldn’t get it up. Or, to be more precise, he could get it up for about 2 minutes. But he was way too young to have erectile dysfunction. I was thoroughly confused. This made as much sense as when Pat Boone decided to make a metal album.
As I soon found out, Shane had a massive porn addiction, which was the cause of his limp ding dong. When he stopped watching it, his dick magically started working again, leading both of us to realize he had a major problem. We argued about it for months. But alas porn was his mistress and I was simply cockblocking.
I knew were on the rocks, but little did I expect the surprise waiting for me in my apartment. After weeks of arguing, I came home to find all my stuff sitting on my sofa with my key next to it. Shane broke up with me. ON A STICKY NOTE.
Shane, a man who met my parents and wanted to get married, just flat out “Berger-ed” me with a fucking sticky note. Our relationship had come full circle all via Post-its.
After I went psycho, got a cab to his apartment, banged on his door with a bottle of wine while screaming at the top of my lungs, smacked him for being such a colossal dick, got into a cab back while sobbing, listened to the driver console me and tell me Shane was an idiot, called out sick from work, and consumed nothing but wine and salt and vinegar chips for a week, I decided I was over it.
Breakups suck harder than a Dyson. But letting yourself wallow there is a waste of time. While you’re crying and looking up love spells on YouTube (I may or may not have done this), they are off drinking pina coladas and boning someone who hopefully gives them gonorrhea. And by the 937th time, your friends don’t want to hear your B.S. They go from feeling bad for you to wishing you would just shut the fuck up.
I knew it was time to move on. When I finally came out of my stupor, I realized I still had a plethora of excellent future sticky note phrases in my phone. I didn’t want to waste them. But what could I do with them?
That’s when it dawned on me.2 I should put these sassy phrases on greeting cards. And poof! Crimson and Clover Studio was born. What started off as 50 cards on Etsy evolved into hundreds of products from candles to notepads to stickers and is sold to stores and consumers worldwide. I quit my job, opened my warehouse and lived happily ever after.3
And I have Shane and his sticky notes to thank for all of it.
When I met Shane in person for the first time, I knew it was on when we got into a heated debate about the best song on Led Zeppelin I. During our second date, he told me he really liked me within the first 5 minutes. A couple of weeks after that, he dropped the L-word. I responded by asking him if that meant he would now fix my crooked flat screen and plant my Japanese willow for me. He said yes. Love was in the air! Like a fart. Except better smelling.
The first thing one must do when falling in love is decide on nicknames. I chose Muffin for him. Banana Nut Muffin specifically as an ode to the naughty bits. Unfortunately, he had a much harder time deciding on my pet name.
“Muffin, why don’t you have a nickname for me?” I asked, worriedly one day. This wasn’t child’s play. This was serious. It’s like the time I chose neon yellow at the nail salon, and then I was stuck with that hideous color for a month. A good nickname was essential. Word to the wise, don’t choose a nail color based on what Gwen Stefani is wearing. Unless you have the same skin tone.
“How about Berry?” he asked after briefly mulling it over.
“Just Berry?” I asked. “What kind of berry? There are raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries! You’re basically just saying I’m like every other berry!”
“I don’t think you’re like every other berry! I just can’t decide,” he said in all fucking seriousness.
“A nickname is specifically chosen because you feel a certain way about someone. So you clearly don’t feel anything for me,” I huffed. “This is an arbitrary nickname.”
“Alright, what if I call you Blueberry?”
I immediately froze. My ex Mike also called me Blueberry, (was there something just inherently blueberry-ish about me?). I didn’t want to tell Shane he had inadvertently chosen the same nickname as an ex.
“Actually Berry is good,” I responded.
We decided to hold a contest: who could create the best faux Led Zeppelin album using the best songs from all of their albums. Then we emailed all of our friends and asked them to vote on the best albums (we gave the albums generic titles so they wouldn’t know who made which album). Most of them thought we were insane and ignored us. The few that voted, voted in my favor of course. He foolishly neglected to include “Stairway to Heaven” on his faux album, which was the cause of his ultimate downfall.
Shane had an abnormal obsession with tomatoes. He could literally eat tomatoes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He would eat canned tomatoes straight of the can. He even learned how to jar them.
I was OK with the whole tomato thing until Shane got crazy.
“What would you want to reincarnate as?” I asked him one day.
“If I get reincarnated, I want to come back as a tomato,” Shane said.
“You don’t want to come back as a person? If you return as a tomato, we won’t be together.” He clearly didn’t understand this whole reincarnation thing yet.
“Isn’t this lifetime enough?” he asked.
“I can’t believe you don’t want to be with me for eternity! I am going to come back as a person and eat you and you’ll be dead.”
“I like the idea of you eating me,” he responded.
I frowned. “You clearly do not understand how reincarnation works. You cannot be a fucking tomato!”
“You’re so cute,” he said, grabbing me in a bear hug.
Shane stocked his apartment with contact lens solution, tampons, a little heater for one side of the bed when I got cold, and cleared out a shelf just for my things. On the shelf, he put a sticky note that said “Berry’s shelf.” In fact, Shane loved sticky notes. Shane left sticky notes all over the place. I would wake up after he left for work to find a sticky note in the egg carton that said “I love you more than all the stars in the Universe.” Or a note on the mirror that said, “You’re my favorite little swimmer.”1 I decided that I, too, wanted to get in on the sticky note action, so I left him ones that said, “You make me moist like a sponge” and “Thanks for having a big dick.”
However, despite all the love in the air, something started to seem amiss; his dick. It seemed like a cruel twist of fate. Shane couldn’t get it up. Or, to be more precise, he could get it up for about 2 minutes. But he was way too young to have erectile dysfunction. I was thoroughly confused. This made as much sense as when Pat Boone decided to make a metal album.
As I soon found out, Shane had a massive porn addiction, which was the cause of his limp ding dong. When he stopped watching it, his dick magically started working again, leading both of us to realize he had a major problem. We argued about it for months. But alas porn was his mistress and I was simply cockblocking.
I knew were on the rocks, but little did I expect the surprise waiting for me in my apartment. After weeks of arguing, I came home to find all my stuff sitting on my sofa with my key next to it. Shane broke up with me. ON A STICKY NOTE.
Shane, a man who met my parents and wanted to get married, just flat out “Berger-ed” me with a fucking sticky note. Our relationship had come full circle all via Post-its.
After I went psycho, got a cab to his apartment, banged on his door with a bottle of wine while screaming at the top of my lungs, smacked him for being such a colossal dick, got into a cab back while sobbing, listened to the driver console me and tell me Shane was an idiot, called out sick from work, and consumed nothing but wine and salt and vinegar chips for a week, I decided I was over it.
Breakups suck harder than a Dyson. But letting yourself wallow there is a waste of time. While you’re crying and looking up love spells on YouTube (I may or may not have done this), they are off drinking pina coladas and boning someone who hopefully gives them gonorrhea. And by the 937th time, your friends don’t want to hear your B.S. They go from feeling bad for you to wishing you would just shut the fuck up.
I knew it was time to move on. When I finally came out of my stupor, I realized I still had a plethora of excellent future sticky note phrases in my phone. I didn’t want to waste them. But what could I do with them?
That’s when it dawned on me.2 I should put these sassy phrases on greeting cards. And poof! Crimson and Clover Studio was born. What started off as 50 cards on Etsy evolved into hundreds of products from candles to notepads to stickers and is sold to stores and consumers worldwide. I quit my job, opened my warehouse and lived happily ever after.3
And I have Shane and his sticky notes to thank for all of it.
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1 We had been practicing swimming in my pool. I was not getting any better, but it was nice that he wanted to encourage me.
2 As I was listening to Jimmy Eat World’s “A Praise Chorus,” which is where I got the name for the company.
3 Well… with a few bumps in the road.
